Chadwick Steve: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Chadwick Steve: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:13137] 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 It is funny—we are all trying to do the same thing but we have different approaches. When I hear about this Government’s approach I simply say that today is a sad day for the Government. The Minister in the chair the Minister for Social Development and Employment wants to be known when she leaves this place for what she has done to make New Zealand a better place. If this is the bill that will brand the Minister I think she needs to hang her head in shame. 
Chester Borrows talked about statistics but I say to him that the statistics are starkly evident and worsening while this sort of trivial legislation comes before the Committee. I must say that I feel sorry for the policy advisers all the workers in the ministry and all the case managers out there who were working to change the culture of the ministry over the last 9 years and who will now have to enforce this punitive unfair and unjust legislation. 
I will read out the statistics for Mr Borrows. Unemployment has risen to nearly 160000 people. They are out of work. They do not want to be out of work. On the other hand the Government has absolutely no plan and no milestones to find jobs and stimulate the economy. The Minister for Economic Development the Hon Gerry Brownlee said today in the House that he had no milestones other than an aspiration to close the gap with Australia by 2025. He said today that that is the only milestone. When the economy expands—it is quite simple I say to the Minister—more jobs are available and benefit numbers fall. We saw it over the 9 years that Labour was in Government. I think it is stark that that is the issue that the National Government is focusing on. 
I will tell the Committee what we heard from the Minister of Education today. She stood up and crowed about trades academies. There is no trades academy in Rotorua. Youth and Maori unemployment in Rotorua is an embarrassment and the people who are trying to get work simply will not get work. They will not get training. They will not get skills. But the Government is smearing around a little bit of good news. The Minister said there were 12 trades academies but that is not good enough. That focus on education should have been on taking the cap off tertiary placements and putting back the adult and community education that this Government cut—those are the things that this Government is showing it is not interested in. 
I will mention another thing because the Minister of Women’s Affairs Pansy Wong is in the Chamber today. I had one fabulous year as the Minister of Women’s Affairs and I said that the health of a mother is paramount in terms of the health of her children. I tell the Minister of Women’s Affairs that we worked with the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Health and we developed a youth pregnancy and parenting plan. What has Pansy Wong done in the 18 months since she became the Minister of Women’s Affairs to implement the targets in the youth pregnancy and parenting plan? That plan was about wrapping services around young people instead of stigmatising them like the Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill does. 
Also the Minister of Health has cut funding to youth health centres where young people go to get advice about avoiding the risk of pregnancy. If that funding is cut around the country where can those young people go? 
The Government continues to keep its head in the sand saying that young people want to get pregnant in order to get a benefit. Well that is rubbish. I say to the Minister that I set up the Rotorua School for Young Parents—and the Minister now takes all the credit for the work that has been done for young parents. That school was about young women who got trapped by pregnancy who saw that education was their only way out of that conundrum and who found themselves alone without the support of family and friends and often without the support of the child’s father. 
I tell the Minister that this bill does absolutely nothing for those mothers who are trying to better themselves through education trying to get a break trying to get a foot into work and to step up as that Minister says. This legislation stomps on beneficiaries stigmatises them further and implements nothing practical other than the increasing of the abatement.