Mooney JosephSocial Development and EmploymentJOSEPH MOONEY (Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee): Thank you very much Mr Chair and thank you for the opportunity to report back as the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee. I just want to take the opportunity at the very beginning to acknowledge my colleagues on that committee a hard-working committee who are all committed to better results for New Zealand. I also want to thank the clerk and her team the Auditor-General's office for its contribution and the ministry and their team as well.I just wanted to reflect a little on the report back to the House and I just note that the core purpose of the Ministry of Social Development is helping New Zealanders to be safe strong and independent." I'll just outline some of the key functions which include income support and superannuation employment services and support funding and support to community service providers student allowances and loans social housing assistance and services providing social policy advice to Government hosting Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People emergency response services and monitoring three Crown entities and providing advice to the responsible minister. So quite a bit involved in that.In 2022-23 the ministry's non-departmental expenditure was $37.88 billion. That's compared to $38.24 billion in the year preceding that. Superannuation and the four main benefits—jobseeker support accommodation assistance sole parent support and the supported living payment—accounted for the bulk of that expenditure. Superannuation was the largest single cost costing over $19.52 billion.In the Auditor-General's standard audit report for the 2022-23 year the Auditor-General noted that the ministry's financial information and supporting systems and controls were good. However he rated the ministry's management control environment as needing improvement noting that major improvements need to be made at the earliest reasonable opportunity and recommending improvements to appropriation management recruitment and contract management information systems controls and identification and recovery of overpayments through the COVID-19 wage subsidy programme. And just on that we also heard about Te Pae Tawhiti - Our Future which is the ministry's multi-year programme to improve its services through major upgrades to its digital systems and processes. The ministry has so far allocated $183 million to cover the first two years of the programme. We noted that the overall cost of the programme is projected to cost somewhere between $2.1 and $2.6 billion. There was some discussion that we had at select committee—and reported back to the House—on the ministry's digital systems and the need to update them with the ministry reporting that it used several old and outdated systems which were described "as systems built on top of systems". For example the ministry's core payment system SWIFTT is over 40 years old and was introduced before both the internet and EFTPOS. The ministry believes that by improving its digital systems it will be able to respond faster to change and make processes less complicated for its clients. Through this programme it hopes to futureproof the welfare system both now and into the future.In terms of welfare dependency the Minister told us that she wanted the welfare system to be a safety net in times of need and she wanted to break the cycles of intergenerational welfare dependency. We heard that one way to reduce the cycle of welfare dependency is by encouraging paid employment with the Minister highlighting one of the principles of the Social Security Act being that work and paid employment offers the best opportunity for people to achieve social and economic wellbeing.We heard about work-related sanctions and we were interested to hear about what the ministry does in that respect and reasons given for failure to attend etc. We also heard about work seminars which are intended to connect job seekers with potential employers in their regions and encourage people into work. We reported that we'd be interested in seeing future work to monitor the efficacy of these work seminars.In terms of the social sector's staff capacity we heard the ministry employed just over 9000 fulltime-equivalent staff with just over 7000 providing front-line services to New Zealand. We also heard that the ministry had seen a decrease in demand for emergency housing in the last financial year.In terms of COVID-19 we heard that 70000 people went on to a benefit in a three- or four-month period and that the ministry was still conducting fraud investigation work to ensure that all those who received the subsidy were entitled to it. The ministry had noticed high levels of depression anxiety and other mental health - related issues as barriers to getting people into work since the COVID-19 outbreak. Thank you Mr Chair."