Maharey Steve: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Maharey Steve: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:624;Page:19398] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I rise at this point because most of the notified speeches in relation to this particular financial review have been given so it is a good time perhaps to provide a few words from the Government’s point of view. I thank Mr Gudgeon for what I thought was a careful and reasoned speech around the issues he was raising; certainly they are concerns that the Government wants to explore. 
I return to the address given by Mrs Judith Collins who is the National Party spokesperson on social welfare issues. I always thought that one of the responsibilities a member has when coming into this Chamber in order to spend at least 5 minutes of taxpayers’ time talking about an issue he or she is supposed to be an expert on—Mrs Collins is the expert on this issue from the National Party’s point of view—is at least to be informed. That is what scrutiny is for. That is why we have these financial reviews. That is why we have people sitting in the chair. That is why people are listening on the radio—I imagine that not a lot were listening after Mrs Collins’ intervention but perhaps there were more after Mr Gudgeon’s. 
I just want to come back to what I guess is the job. I point members to an example of what I think was simply a waste of time if that is what happens in a financial review debate. Mrs Collins raised the issue of seasonal workers. As far as I can tell Mrs Collins knows nothing about seasonal workers. For example she said that there was no issue in the Hawke’s Bay. I tell Mrs Collins that my associate Rick Barker comes from the Hawke’s Bay and that he has campaigned for many a year to try to ensure—as the number of people who are unemployed has decreased to almost nothing in the Hawke’s Bay and as growers have found that they no longer have a pool of labour that come harvesting time they can turn to—that people work together within the industry in order to do a lot better at getting labour prepared trained and available to clear crops. 
I was in the Hawke’s Bay last week talking with people from the industry. They sat in a room together and talked about how they appreciated the work that people such as Rick Barker had done and that the Government had done. They were keen to address issues such as toilets accommodation transport and wages and to not have people in the industry who simply hoped that labour would turn up at the door when they were trying to pick their Braeburn apples in the very near future. 
That has been going on for many years and it is a direct result of a shift in the environment of people involved in seasonal cropping. They relied a lot on the persistently high number of people who were unemployed. They would turn at cropping time and harvesting time to organisations such as Work and Income to ask whether they could have some people. There were thousands of people unemployed in the Hawke’s Bay. There are around 900 in the industry now; in the whole of the Hawke’s Bay region there are about 1600 unemployed people now. Clearly they are not all suited to work on orchards so the number of people available is quite small. 
Therefore there is only one way forward for the seasonal industry. Rick Barker has worked with the seasonal industry on that and the industry agrees with him: it must prepare itself like any industry does to try to make sure that it has its share of the labour market. The industry is moving to such exciting ideas as trying to create a harvest trail. So instead of perhaps people picking Braeburn apples and having a few months’ work—or even a few weeks’ work—at most they move from one crop to another crop; they move around the region and maybe find themselves 12 months’ work. 
All that work is going on. It has been going on for years. People whether they are in Northland Otago the Hawke’s Bay or wherever they might be compliment Work and Income because it is working with the industry and doing an outstanding job. Yes the situation will to some degree be augmented by bringing people into the country to help do that kind of work. Of course the work is very difficult to predict—if we get a different kind of climate one year then the Braeburn will come on during a different week from the week they came on last year. It is all a little bit in the lap of the gods to that extent so one has to have some flexibility. That is also what we have been working on—to ensure that we have access to immigrant labour. Immigrants can come in do that work and go back home again. It is good for them and good for this country. The working holiday programme is also part of the whole process of trying to have Italians Germans Swedes and so on who can easily access the work when they come here. 
If a financial review speech from the National Opposition spokesperson on this issue is going to have as its dominant theme an exposé—as she likes I imagine to think about it—of what is happening in seasonal work then what is the point of having this kind of debate? The Government would welcome—in fact we want to have—a debate about how to improve the way we get those crops in each year. But I sat here and waited for one single glimmer of a policy idea. All I got was some debate about whether Thai people need to go to the toilet versus whether New Zealand people need to go to the toilet. That seems to be the sum of the insight offered by Judith Collins on behalf of the National Party. 
I know that perhaps when members come to the Chamber at half past seven at night they are reliant on the fact that no one is listening to the radio. Maybe that is what they are doing. They may feel that if they pop down and say some drivel into the radio— 
Rodney Hide 
: They are not listening now! 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: That is no wonder after Mrs Collins’ speech. As I said before that has probably killed the listeners off. Listeners are not getting a debate. Mr Gudgeon gave a carefully prepared speech about the issues of concern to New Zealand First and the Government takes those on board. But really I just ask members in the Chamber tonight whether they learnt a single thing from the National Party about what it said was essentially its biggest issue—seasonal workers—in the debate on this particular financial review. Not one single policy was put forward. There was no glimmer of insight into the issues faced by the seasonal worker industry. Yet people from this industry listening at home know that they produce a huge amount of apples kiwifruit or whatever it might be across this country. They produce an enormous amount of wealth for this country. They have a serious problem in a low-unemployment environment—we have a 3.6 percent unemployment rate and potentially it will go down further—because they have to be able to pick those crops. I would have thought it was the job of a person given the task of being the National Party spokesperson on these issues at least to sit with some people from the seasonal industries in this country and at least to find out what the issues are and not to come here and waste people’s time in a financial review of this nature with the kind of speech we just heard. 
So I just want to reassure the Committee that although National Party members have nothing to say of any value at all about people who do seasonal work and who pick all those crops around the country Government members do. We have been working on that issue for 5 years. I began doing work on it when I first became the Minister for Social Development and Employment. Rick Barker now has that portfolio as a delegation. He travels all over this country and talks to people about those issues. He has done a fantastic job. I say to Mrs Collins that when I asked people in the industry in the Hawke’s Bay the other day what they thought of the work Mr Barker was doing the answer was that it was fantastic. They said that he understands their issues talks to them face to face is out there on the farms knows what they are up against and is coming up with policies that help. 
The last thing I will say as an indication of that—Mrs Collins might like to know—is that one of the major changes Mr Barker has fought for for a long time has been to get people who are in seasonal work such as in the meat industry support when they are out of season so that they can sustain their households and come back into the industry later on. It is a great issue that we will address in the near future because Mr Barker has fought for that. I imagine that people in the seasonal work industries will therefore see his work as good concrete helpful work by a member who understands exactly what they are on about. 
I thank the New Zealand First folk for their serious work this evening. They have taken this review properly. But I do despair at what I hear all the time from National Party members now. I guess we know that they have written off the next election and are merely going through the motions as they wait for the inevitable defeat later on this year. As a result they do not feel that they need to do any work. Well I say that they do. They still get a wage. They still get paid. They are still expected to come down and do the job in this Chamber. I am here because I want to be scrutinised and my department wants to be scrutinised. We want to hear about the ideas people have and if they have a good idea it will be in action tomorrow. That is how we work. We do not care where the ideas come from; they just have to be good ideas and we will carry them out. I will now sit down and hope that Mrs Collins will take a further call and give one single good idea that we can use to go forward and spend taxpayers’ money on in order to make a real difference to this country.