Moroney Sue: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19104. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):It is a pleasure to rise and speak in the estimates debate on Vote Social Development. I want to start at the beginning which is around child poverty because inequality is growing in this country and New Zealanders are very clear about that. The Government members can carp and wail and moan and cry their crocodile tears about it as they do but the reality is that the vast majority of New Zealanders when asked whether inequality was growing in this country said yes it was. That is because that is what they see day in day out in their own communities and they are not going to be fooled by a Government that first of all says that inequality is not growing and secondly refuses to actually even measure child poverty.I think the country feels very let down by the Government when it comes to social development because the Government seems completely out of touch with the impact of its own policies. I say that because the Government has had some deliberate policies that have grown inequality. Take for example its tax cuts right at the height of a global recession. Who would have thought that tax cuts favouring the wealthy would be the best thing that a Government could come up with as we were heading into the midst of a global recession? None the less that is what the National Government did. Who can be surprised then that inequality is growing? The area where we see that growing inequality causes New Zealanders the greatest discomfort is when the number of children living in poverty grows in this country as it has done under this National Government.So here we are in a food-producing nation—a very wealthy society actually—that has great resources and a good level of wealth and 27 percent of our children live in poverty. Twenty-seven percent of our children—that is more than one in four. More than one in four of our children live in poverty. John Key may well be relaxed about that. He may shrug his shoulders crack a grin and crack one of his jokes but on this side of the Chamber and in the Labour Party we are not relaxed with having 27 percent of our children in this country living in poverty. We are not OK with that and we are not going to stand by and just watch that continue to happen.In terms of the estimates for Vote Social Development you would think that having 27 percent of our children in poverty would be an issue that would concern the Government and that it would have some measure—any measure at all—in its Budget to address this issue. But there was not one measure not a single measure in the estimates in the Budget to help address child poverty. There was no move to create jobs. There was no move in the estimates to increase families’ incomes. There was no move in the Government’s estimates to actually help families out in this regard. So we saw no measures to address this particular issue.On this side of the House what we have seen is a Labour Party that is prepared to lead on addressing this issue. We are not going to pretend that this issue does not exist. We are not going to put our heads in the sand. We are not going to demonstrate how out of touch we are like that Government does day in day out when it pretends that this is not going on. People out there in New Zealand see it in their communities and they know it is indeed going on.In the Labour Party we have said that we are going to do something about it. We have a Best Start payment that we have announced. This will be a policy from the incoming Labour-led Government. What that will do is ensure that all families—actually almost all families; families with up to $15000 coming into the household per year—with a newborn child will get $60 a week. That will apply to all of those families over and above when they are getting paid parental leave as well. So families will get an entitlement to paid parental leave—and in fact under the Labour Party plan they will get an extended entitlement to paid parental leave. They will get 26 weeks’ paid parental leave and then they will get the $60-a-week payment.But for low and modest-income families it is even better because that $60-a-week payment will continue until that child’s third birthday. That is a measure that will reduce child poverty. It will also give some help to those families who are really struggling on a week to week basis to make ends meet because their power costs and housing costs are going up but their wages are not going up under this Government. So that is a very practical solution to a problem that I think is a source of shame for our country. I feel ashamed that in a country with wealth of the nature that New Zealand has we allow 27 percent of our children to live in poverty. That is not OK. John Key is relaxed about it. We are not.I want to go on to talk about another area in social development. The Government seems to be very boastful about getting people off benefits. Well it would have something to boast about if people were going off benefits and into jobs but the most recent quarterly data shows that of all the people who came off benefits in the quarter ended March 2014 only 36 percent of them went off benefits into work—only 36 percent of them. In other words 64 percent of them stopped receiving a benefit but they did not get a job. I am challenging the Government to tell us what is happening with the rest of those people because this Government has actually put in laws whereby for the first time in my living history people who miss an appointment with Work and Income or for some reason cannot turn up to a seminar—the seminar might be 40 kilometres away from where they live and there is no public transport—get cut off the benefit. If they have dependent children they get their benefit cut in half. I want to know from the Minister for Social Development what is happening to those thousands of New Zealanders who are suffering that fate because that is going to be a big driver of increasing child poverty in this country.What I do know is that since the welfare reforms have come into being 4328 people as at the end of March 2014 had failed these obligations and therefore ended up with no income—no income whatsoever—for 13 weeks. I think the Minister for Social Development owes the country an explanation about what is happening to those people. Where are they going? How are they paying the rent? How are they paying their power bills? Where are they living? How are they eating? What is happening to those people who suddenly have no income no income at all for 13 weeks and perhaps longer?The Minister for Social Development when I asked her about this at the Social Services Committee said she did not want to know. She said that people were not required to tell her and that she had no interest in knowing. I think that is an appalling indictment on a Minister who calls herself the Minister for Social Development. The National Government has changed those laws and so it has a responsibility to know what is happening to those people. This is another area that is driving inequality in our country.The figures that I just quoted do not even tell us the number of people who have children and who have had their benefits halved under these measures. We do not know yet what that number is but I am very concerned about that. The other figure that I am concerned about is the 64 percent increase between September 2013 and March 2014 in the number of people who came off a benefit because they went to Australia. Actually I do not know that they went to Australia but I do know that they went overseas. They left New Zealand. They gave up looking for jobs here in droves and they cancelled their benefits because they were going to live somewhere else. Probably they have gone to Australia to look for work and there has been a 64 percent increase in the number doing that.