Upston Louise; Sepuloni CarmelHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Chair. My final question in this part of the debate because I know there's a lot of areas to traverse is a question that I've had from the dozens and dozens of community organisations that I've met with over the last 18 months. And their questions are—for example in Taupō at a workshop recently: 1293 job seekers and every single one of the organisations supporting people into employment were shocked. They were shocked at that number. They had capacity to work with them support them whether in mental health whether specialising in working with women returning to the workforce working with young Māori or working with young people. Why is it that there were 1293 job seekers in Taupō massive capacity in the community organisations waiting times on the phone of one two and three hours trying to get through to Work and Income? There's capacity in the system Minister. Why aren't you using it?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): I think this is a very important point that the member raises. There is a very important balance to strike between the outsourcing of contracts to support people into employment and then the responsibility of the Government agency to provide some of that support themselves. I want to refer to the Welfare Expert Advisory Group's work and report. When they consulted with people for the purpose of informing our welfare overhaul overwhelmingly people were saying that they were not getting the employment support that they needed through Work and Income.As I've said many times in this House those supports have been run down under the previous administration. Financial hardship had gone up but also actually staff resourcing was inadequate. And so when people were going in to get their financial hardship support or their income support the natural place where they should also be able to have a conversation about work quite often they were not able to do that because there was no longer the capacity because the investment hadn't been made. What we did was straightaway rectify that and year on year from 2019 have continued to bolster that.I get a lot of positive comments from businesses from industry out there telling me how much they appreciate things like the work broker support that they get through the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). MSD works hard with that work broker support to match the right client up with the right employer because—this is another good point—employers don't want us sending people to them that are not ready that don't have the skills for the job that don't have things like a driver's licence if it's required. And so the trust that has been built between MSD and industry and those businesses is actually really important. They need to know that when we send them clients it is an appropriate match and that it's going to not only work for our clients but it's also going to work for the work broker.Now I'm in no way undermining the work of organisations that provide employment support and we continue to fund them as well. But it's not an either/or; it's an and/and. We need both and we need to make sure that we strike the right balance. We don't want to be outsourcing what we can currently do in this space where clients are going to come in anyway. And so I think as a Government we have struck the right balance.I do also refute the comment made by the member about the one- to three-hour wait times. I think that the most recent update that I received was that it's actually between 12 and 26 minutes. There are peak times when people will ring through and then actually it may take a little bit longer. However it certainly isn't anything like the member has described. I will say perhaps going back to when we were in the depths of COVID and people required more support of course the wait times were longer then but it is not a consistent thing. So I'd hate for this House to think that that is the norm.