Maharey Steve: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Maharey Steve: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:623;Page:18187] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 As we learnt today that was a short intervention from the leader of faction 2 made up as Winston Peters informed us today from his very good sources of three people within the National Party who see that voice as the voice for the future of the National Party. So I will leave people to judge that. I will leave people just to weigh that up in their minds to say whether Gerry Brownlee has the kind of approach to life that might actually lead him into the position of leader. There have been so many in the last little while; there is no reason why he should not be the one. 
Most people will know if they have looked at the year so far that social policy has been very busy already—it has been a very busy area indeed. Most of that business comes from the programme that the Government has in place. But we saw a little bit of a sideshow recently at Orewa II. The sequel is always hard. Mr Brash was back for Orewa II. He went there after a massive build-up of the speech. It was so massive that the National Party had to try to get the speech down a little bit in terms of expectation. 
What did we get? Well we got the scintillating inspiring new phrase that we should have less welfare and more responsibility. I think I have heard that ever since there was a welfare State from virtually anybody who has been in politics because no one in politics thinks that a large number of people who are in a position of not being able to independently get on with their lives is a good thing. So whether one is on the left right centre or wherever one is there is an agreement that a sign of a society working well is people getting on with their lives taking responsibility and getting out there and doing something. It was a yawn to hear it again from Mr Brash. It was sad to watch. 
Let us be frank: welfare is a very difficult issue. Every country in the OECD struggles with the issue of welfare. Solutions do not come easy on those issues. They require a great deal of thought and sensitivity because we are dealing with sick disabled unemployed widowed etc. people who need assistance because they are vulnerable. So policies need to take that into account. What did we get from the PhD former Governor of the Reserve Bank Dr Brash? In the run-up to Ratana he told us that 50 percent of Maori children were on a benefit. The reason he rushed out to say this at Ratana was undoubtedly that for him to get statistics like that was like manna from heaven. He believes that if he can demonise Maori if he can make them look like they are the problem then he is quids in with that shrinking constituency of his who like to hear that message. But unfortunately for him he found that the figure was wrong. This is a PhD former Reserve Bank Governor who prides himself on figures and his 50 percent figure is wrong. 
So off he went to Orewa to try to carry on his message and he swapped from that to the domestic purposes benefit. He told us that teenage mums on the domestic purposes benefit should give up their babies; this should be the new lost generation. What do people do when they do not have contact with their biological parents? They spend the rest of their lives trying to get back in touch with those parents. That went down extraordinarily badly with people across the country who said to support those mothers to keep their babies and not to let them create a generation of young people who would spend their lives trying to find their mothers. 
He tried to tell us that that is the domestic purposes benefit person—young mothers were always having babies. The typical domestic purposes person is in his or her early 30s has left a relationship has a couple of children and quite often having a baby is a reason for leaving that part of the relationship. Often having had the baby is the last straw between the couple and their relationship breaks up. They are on the benefit for 3 to 3½ years and they move off it again to get on with their lives. 
What we need is positive assistance. Did we hear one thing about childcare and the domestic purposes benefit? Have we yet heard anything about childcare? I think that what we heard is an image that one adopts one’s baby out one goes to work and there will be no childcare. That policy simply did not work. That is a series of very half-baked ideas. One of the most interesting things was that when Dr Brash was challenged to say why he had re-run those ideas from the 1990s he said “What ideas from the 1990s? I have not read anything about the 1990s.” He told the reporter: “I don’t know what went on in the 1990s.” 
Well that PhD Reserve Bank man who says that he likes evidence has not read his own party’s policies from the 1990s and discovered that they were well gone. I have to say that other people knew he was wrong. Katherine Rich said she did not like those policies. She could swallow the speech but she could not swallow the policies. She is bright. She has studied that. She knows that the divide between the National Party and this Government is whether one creates those opportunities or fails to create opportunities. She knows that childcare training case management and partnerships with employers that positively make a difference to people getting a job is where the action is. She wants National to debate those issues. She is right. Mr Brash is wrong. Her failure to endorse his speech meant that he wanted her to go. 
Gerry Brownlee tells us that it was a benign discussion between Katherine Rich and Dr Brash that she wanted to shift to the second bench that she wants the only woman taken off the front bench to go back to the second and that she was saying to Dr Brash to please humiliate her by firing her today. That is not what happened. I will tell members what actually happened. I think that what has happened is that she is a young rising star of the National Party. She knows that Dr Brash is dog tucker. She does not want to be collateral damage during the next few months because she knows she has a future. When the National Party picks itself up after near annihilation after this election she wants to be still standing along with some of the others like the parked Simon Power like Mr Key who I know will move off that front bench as quick as he can if he gets into a fight with Dr Brash because he wants to have a future as well. 
That is what we are seeing here. We are seeing the future of the National Party get itself out of the way of the train wreck that is about to come. That is what is going on here. It is not some benign little change. 
Now Katherine Rich has been replaced with someone who makes Dr Brash look thoughtful. It is Judith Collins. Dr Brash may have half-baked ideas. She does not have any ideas. This is what she said about beneficiaries in a speech that was publicly reported. She knew it would be. The speech notes were available. She said and I quote that “beneficiaries sit around all day”—not just some beneficiaries all of them according to her—“watching Sky TV living off the taxpayer letting their children run riot and getting stoned.” That is Judith Collins’ view of beneficiaries. 
Does Mrs Collins know that 2000 people left the sickness benefit last year because they died? They were people who she said sat around all day let their children run riot and got stoned. They died. That is how they left the benefit last year. I also tell her that 87000 of those people sitting around watching Sky letting their children run riot and getting stoned left the benefit last year because they got a job. I ask Mrs Collins as the person who deals with welfare issues how she will convince an employer to look at someone on a benefit if she characterises them to employers as people who sit around all day doing nothing and are irresponsible lazy and useless. 
We are placing tens of thousands of those people each year because we are positive about them. We know they want a job. They want training childcare and a bridge into jobs. We have partnerships with employers. I am looking forward to Mrs Collins changing her mind or following Mrs Rich on to the third bench second bench or wherever she should go but we do not want people whose approach to welfare is to just use them as some way to kick their way into power. 
We will continue with the good news. Two million and twenty-two thousand people are employed. Unemployment is down 58 percent. The number of working-age beneficiaries is down 20 percent. We are changing everything about welfare to keep those good figures rolling. We have seen the Working for Families package and what it will do for low to modest income households. Today the Prime Minister talked about the second stage of that package of shifts in welfare that will be a single benefit. It will be an absolute transformation in the way the benefit system works and it will be all about one simple single principle which is to go to work. 
The benefit system over many years has become extremely difficult to run. It gets in the way of that transition to work. It ought to be about facilitating people getting on with their lives—getting trained getting motivated getting out there and getting on with their lives when they can. Security for those who need it and opportunity for those who can take it is the motto of this Government. Mr Brash failed the test of providing a way forward on welfare and he has provided nothing for this Government’s overall future. He needs to know that this Labour Government intends to win the next election not just to implement its own policies but to stop any of that rubbish being foisted on New Zealanders who have enjoyed success now for 5 years. They are enjoying success. They have achieved a great deal and this Government will not allow someone like Dr Brash to ruin what they see as a successful start to the 21st century.