Barry Maggie: General Debate 
Barry Maggie: General Debate 
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MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) 
: 
 Debt management and welfare reform are enormously important issues in my electorate of the North Shore. Last Friday the Prime Minister spent the day with us and about 4000 people listened to the message that he talked about. He reiterated that we have a plan. Unlike the B teams and the bellowers on the other side of the House we have a plan it is a great plan and we are sticking to it. The Prime Minister outlined our four key priorities which we are making absolute progress on. We are responsibly managing the Government’s finances and we are on target to redress the balance of the books by 2014-15. We are also building a more productive and more competitive economy we are delivering better public services and we are rebuilding Christchurch. I absolutely agree with the member for Christchurch Central Nicky Wagner that Gerry Brownlee and the team are doing an outstanding job there and it is going very well under very difficult circumstances. 
In our first term as a Government we made very real progress modernising and reforming the benefit system. Let us take a look at the unemployment benefit for example. Since Future Focus was introduced in September 2010 more than 52000 people on the unemployment benefit have reapplied and they have gone through that process. As a result of that what happened was that 12500 of them cancelled. If we drill down into that figure we see that that 6500 people did not even bother to reapply and to complete the process 2500 cancelled for other reasons—quite a lot of them went to Australia we understand still claiming the benefit mind you—and 3389 told Work and Income that they had already found work and they did not need the benefit after all. Is it not a good thing to ask them to require them to step up and justify getting the benefit? As the Hon Paula Bennett told the House last week in the past 12 months the number of people on the unemployment benefit is down by 7837 and that is following an extraordinary recession. I think that is a sign of an excellent Government doing great work. 
I agree absolutely with Paula Bennett that Labour has a record of shame. Labour’s record of shame is well known to those of us who have paid attention from the 1980s onwards. It is cradle-to-grave dependency. Some of their happiest times were spent on the benefit themselves—unbridled spending galloping this country away into indebtedness. When you look at the unemployment benefit I have to agree with Pita Sharples a man of great mana. He has said that in the last few years when he looks at people on unemployment benefits he sees the reduction in mana. He has said that every day people are on the unemployment benefit it saps their pride and their self-esteem. They need to get off benefits for their own good and we are helping them. We are reforming welfare as I said by ensuring those who can work do work and we are supporting them to do that. We are also targeting resources at the people who really need them. Yes some people do need a hand up but not a handout for life.  
We are helping young people to make better choices and to stay either in educational training or in work. We are simplifying the benefit system and clamping down on welfare for these are long overdue and well-recognised programmes that are doing the job for New Zealand. 
When I look at some of the concerns that people in my electorate have brought to me in my constituency office they have been concerned about people having children while they are on the benefit. I think that New Zealanders do need to recognise that our welfare system is an excellent one but it is there for those who need it. It is not there for women to continue to breed when they cannot afford to do it. If they bring children into the world and they are only on a benefit then they need to look carefully at that. It does not need to be a punitive thing but it does need to be examined. I think we are doing it with compassion and kindness but we are doing it. 
We are taking the courageous step of actually looking at people who have been on benefits for far too long; 170000 people have been welfare for most of the last decade. The number of people on the domestic purposes benefit has consistently risen over the last 20 years and at the moment—most disturbingly of all perhaps—we have 220000 children who are living in benefit-dependent homes. How sad is that. We are concerned about the children who are born to sole parents who are already on the benefit. Last year alone 4800 babies were born to women who were already on a benefit. That adds up to about 29 percent of those on the domestic purposes benefit who have had a subsequent child while receiving a benefit. This is not a great idea. I do not think New Zealanders have the appetite for women to continually do this so sole parents who have another baby while on a benefit will be expected to be available to work after 1 year. That is in line with parental leave. In my electorate of the North Shore the feedback that I have had absolutely backs that up. Thank you. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.