Bennett Paula: General Debate 
Bennett Paula: General Debate 
[Volume:656;Page:5459] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 In a recent poll we saw that Mr Phil Goff was at 7 percent. What I do not understand is why if one is accused of being invisible one would wear camouflage for one’s photo in the  
Listener 
. If one is already invisible to the New Zealand public why then go out and be like a lamb to the slaughter as I have heard the photograph being described many times and wear camouflage which quite frankly makes one even more invisible? 
We have heard from Mrs King in recent days saying about her fine leader and colleague that the king is dead but the prince is not quite ready yet. But like a lamb to the slaughter he stepped up today. In the last 2 weeks we have heard about over a billion dollars of welfare spending in relation to what members opposite want to do for middle New Zealanders. In week 1 we heard that the wives or husbands of millionaires could be eligible for a benefit under Labour’s great plan for turning stuff round. The most recent proposed spending we heard about was the estimated $450 million to be spent on the in-work tax credit for those on a benefit. But as the Prime Minister said there are no pixies in the garden. Money does not just come out of thin air. But boy do Labour members know how to spend; boy do they know how to load that spending on to taxpayers; and boy would they like to see this debt constantly increasing. 
Let us talk about what we are really doing. This week we announced another 16900 job and community work opportunities for young people. Let us not underestimate the problem we have here. The statistics are clear: about a third of those on the unemployment benefit are 25 years old or under. We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of young people going on to the unemployment benefit and leaving them to languish on that benefit is not an option for us. If we leave them with no future ahead for them that tells them that we do not care. It is simple this Government certainly does care. So the Government has stood up and said that first of all there are 4000 jobs under the job opportunities scheme. Job Ops will need employers to step up and say: “Here is a new entry-level role that we have been looking at introducing and that we need a young person to step into.” Let me give an example of a hairdresser in Taupo who owns a salon. Business has been a bit shaky for a while but it is starting to get a little bit busier and she wonders whether she has the means to take on a new entry-level person. We will help her out. We will give her $3000 upfront for that new-entrant role then $2000 at the end of that 6 months. That is a $5000 investment that we are putting into that young person to support the hairdresser’s business and to provide those sorts of opportunities. There are 4000 of those job opportunities. 
There are 3000 Community Max opportunities. That is for those projects in our communities that people would like to get done but they do not quite have the manpower—the people power—to get them done. That means iwi standing up and saying what could be happening around their marae and what they would like to see their young people doing. It means mayors stepping up for some of those initiatives whether it is tree planting whether it is painting something down the road or whether it is a project that really needs to be done. It could be a Lions club that will get something together under this scheme. For example the local Piha Surf Life Saving Club may have a project that it would like to do. It is actually limitless. We know that the ideas are out there in our communities; what we want to do is back those people to do it. 
I am pleased to say that there will be Community Max advisers. They are the very people who were working on the Enterprising Communities scheme. We are taking the local knowledge they have in their communities and asking them to go out and speak to local community groups to ask them about what needs to be done in their local areas and to talk to them about their projects. We will pay the minimum wage for 30 hours a week for up to 3000 young people. There will be a skills and training subsidy alongside of that for those young people and we will also fund a supervisor for them. There is no doubt that the package is impressive. Members will hear from others about the Youth Guarantee. They will hear about service academies being doubled—about another eight of them are coming on board. Limited service volunteers are the way to go.