Tolley Anne: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTolley Anne: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 29 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:359. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development):Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard can I start by congratulating you on your elevation to the role of Assistant Speaker. Unlike many in the House I am not surprised to see you sitting there and I have high expectations of you in the role because of your great knowledge of the Standing Orders and perhaps your experiences in the past. What is it—the poacher turned gamekeeper knows all the tricks and turns. So I wish you the very best over the next 3 years. Can I at the same time congratulate my colleagues the Rt Hon David Carter the Hon Chester Borrows and my good friend Lindsay Tisch on their election to their roles in the Speaker’s Chair.It is a privilege and an honour to govern for the next 3 years in a Government that New Zealanders have given such a strong mandate to. It is nice to be in the House and I guess take part in a democracy in a country where even the Opposition does acknowledge such a strong mandate for a Government to take its place. Can I at the same time thank other people of the East Coast electorate for having the confidence to re-elect me again with an increased majority. It is a wonderful electorate and I am very proud and honoured to represent it.This Government is under the leadership of whom I am positive will go down in history as one of New Zealand’s greatest Prime Ministers the Rt Hon John Key who has made it very clear that he intends this Government to work in the interests of all New Zealanders. And as our economy grows following some of the darkest most difficult economic times that this country has faced he wants to make sure that we work to share those benefits right across New Zealand. It is indeed a privilege to serve with such a great man.This Government does have a very good track record with New Zealanders. It was something we talked about a lot during the election campaign. We have a record of being very open and transparent. We have a record of saying what we are going to do and then getting on and doing it. New Zealanders responded to that. I know through my experiences on the campaign that people appreciated knowing exactly what the Government was going to do and had a great expectation that that would be carried out.I also want to take the opportunity to welcome the Government’s partners. It is great to be working again with partners like ACT United Future and in particular the Māori Party and it is great for me to have the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell as a colleague in the Cabinet structure. Our electorates cross over and I know that he is highly respected in his home electorate. He is a hard worker and I look forward to an ongoing relationship with him.Can I also extend my congratulations to my Cabinet colleagues. We have got some new and exciting talent in our Cabinet and those Ministers are eager and full of energy. Also in our caucus we welcome 14 new caucus members who are also extremely talented keen willing and eager to get on with the job.The role of this Government of course is to lock in the gains that we have worked so hard to achieve for New Zealanders over the past 6 years. Some of the facts that New Zealanders came to understand during the election campaign were that New Zealand has an economy that is one of the fastest growing in the developed world that our average wage has increased by $2500 in the past 2 years and that the average wage is forecast to be around $62000 by the year 2018. We made it very clear that an extra 83000 new jobs were created over the last 12 months and Treasury forecasts that around another 150000 new jobs will be created in our economy. Cost of living increases are low. Inflation was just 1.6 percent in the year to June—well below average weekly wage increases of 2.7 percent—and food prices dipped by 0.8 percent in the year to September. So it is a pretty bright future that we are facing in this term of Government and as I say the Prime Minister is determined that all New Zealanders will benefit from that.Getting parents into work is what this Government has decided is the best way to increase their incomes and to improve the lives of their children. New Zealand’s welfare system is extremely generous. We all acknowledge that we do need that safety net to help people through when times get tough but we always have to be vigilant that we do not trap people into a life of dependency. That way lies limited choices and options for people and anyone who has had to manage on a benefit for any period of time knows that it is extremely difficult and that your life can be extremely narrow and focused. We want New Zealanders to have plenty of choices and plenty of opportunities to live full and successful lives.So over the last 6 years we have seen major reforms of our welfare system and I pay tribute to my colleague the Hon Paula Bennett who has done a fantastic job of reforming our welfare system so that it is focused sharply on getting people into work. And we are having success: 1600 people a week are leaving welfare dependency for work—every single week 1600 people. We know that we have 30000 fewer children in benefit-dependent households than we had 2 years ago so we are making some progress. Benefit numbers are continuing to reduce and the number of people on welfare for the September quarter is the lowest since 2008—that is when New Zealand entered the economic recession—and sole parents are leading the drop. There are over 10000 fewer people on welfare now compared with September last year and more than 70 percent of that drop are sole parents. So we are focused as a Government on providing better public services for New Zealanders and our welfare reforms are having a significant effect on the lives of many New Zealanders.I want now to turn to the Unicef report that was released today. I think no one has mentioned that the title of it is in fact Children of the Recession which actually acknowledges that this is a study that looks at the effect on children during the great economic recession which was a time when Governments all over the world grappled with a dropping economy and falling employment numbers and had to make some very difficult decisions. The report actually shows that New Zealand has not done too badly. The number of children living in hardship from 2008 to 2012 is much the same so the focus that this Government has put on protecting those most vulnerable in our communities during those tough economic times has paid off. We have not seen a significant drop in equality throughout that time and we have not seen a significant increase in the number of children who are living in hardened circumstances.I think we can take some heart from that but the Prime Minister has made it very clear that that is simply not good enough. As the economy grows he expects that everyone will start to benefit so he himself is leading the big piece of work that this Government is doing on how we lift more children out of that hardship and how we improve their lives and make sure they have all the opportunities that we want for them to live full and successful lives.The other thing that is quite interesting when people have talked about this report today is that they have not talked about the youth and the report actually spends a lot of time looking at young adults in New Zealand. We on this side of the House will know that this was a great big focus for us when we first came into Government. We introduced a range of measures for youth who were at most risk of falling employment with unemployment rising. We put in place a lot of measures: the Youth Guarantee the trades academies the youth rate and the 90-day trial period etc. And when you look at the league table in here we have done better than even our neighbour Australia which is quoted as being better than us with the child hardship figures.So this Government has focused on protecting the vulnerable. The report today shows that we have been reasonably successful with that through the recession and we can now look forward to a big piece of work that makes the lives of all New Zealand children better.