Hutchison Paul: Social Security Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hutchison Paul: Social Security Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:8972] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this Social Security Amendment Bill which our colleague Pita Sharples has pointed out is not about vision and is not about hope. I would add that it is about Labour Government bureaucracy and Labour Government social engineering. 
We have just heard the Minister quoting selectively the unemployment figures since 1999 but the real legacy of Labour must go back to 1990 when after 6 years in Government it left Pacific Island unemployment in the order of 35 percent and Maori unemployment in the order of 22 percent. Over the succeeding 9 years there was a dramatic trend downwards. Where the Minister goes to claim that Labour has made any difference at all to unemployment figures the difference has occurred despite the Labour Government not because of it—despite the Labour Government not because of it. 
We in National would have gladly supported this bill for its objectives but sadly it has been manipulated and distorted in the usual way that Labour is inclined to do in its Pavlovian-dog reflex which requires it to bring in more and more bureaucracy and more and more complication. I just quote to members the Ministry of Social Development’s aim in September 2007 for support case managers: 55 new employment coordinators principal health adviser principal disability adviser 13 health advisers 13 disability advisers and 13 health and disability provider liaison coordinators—whatever they are. [ 
Interruption 
] I ask Steve Chadwick over on the Government benches to tell us what these 13 health and disability provider liaison coordinators will be doing. They are just adding more and more bureaucracy to this ever-increasing mountain of bureaucracy that we have seen this Labour Government preside over in the last 9 years. 
This Government’s spending has caused interest rates to go sky high and exporters have been crippled because of it. When we hear David Benson-Pope showing some sympathy for Fisher and Paykel we should just remember that his Government has been utterly profligate. When we look at his plans in this bill to bring more and more bureaucracy we realise what a mess Labour has made to New Zealand over the last 9 years. 
When I hear Pita Sharples saying: “This bill is not about vision it is not about hope. What has it done for Maori?” I agree with him. Because after all it was Sir Apirana Ngata back in the 1930s who said to all New Zealanders Maori and non-Maori: “Just be careful of being trapped in the welfare dependency trap.” He was absolutely right in saying that—and this is the very sort of thing that this bill is doing. This Government is in denial of knowing that that is what is happening. 
One of the things that is particularly interesting in this bill is the requirement for the plan. The plan was to go to all the various beneficiaries and was to be the forerunner of what they were expected to do. Well we find out that beneficiaries might be shown the plan but they do not have to keep the plan. Some of them are given the plan but then it is taken away from them and they do not see it for a year. They do not have to act on the plan in any way or show responsibility for the plan. That is an absolute sop of what this Government was trying to initially do in this bill which I understand was to begin the movement towards a work-focused system by ensuring that requirements on recipients are aligned with significant developments in service delivery and support. 
Here we have a plan that beneficiaries are supposed to work out with support and then do something about but in actuality we heard from the Rotorua Peoples Advocacy Centre which did a study for the Families Commission that the plans are put in place rather than a work test but there is no need to act on them whatsoever or even to carry the plan out. That is the sort of lack of accountability this Labour Government requires of those beneficiaries. That is the sort of looseness this Labour Government perpetuates in this area of welfare and it is very very bad for New Zealand. 
Of course we have seen this phenomenal increase in the number of invalids and sickness beneficiaries over the last 7 years—a 50 percent increase. There is absolutely no requirement made by the Labour Government to make sure that the assessment to go on those benefits has improved in any way. We have heard the Minister say that one in five of those sickness and invalids beneficiaries is actually fit for work but there has been absolutely no effort made on behalf of this Labour Government to tighten those assessments. That again is another indictment on this Labour Government. 
I think it is fair to say that this bill does tinker with the bureaucracy. It does not do anything to bring in the basic simple incentives that should be brought in—reward for effort reward for individual responsibility and reward for accomplishments or qualifications. None of those signals are there and they should be absolutely spelt out cleanly and clearly. 
It is very interesting that we have in the commentary the definition of full-time employment. I would have thought that this would be pretty easy. I think that back in the days of Richard Seddon it used to be 8 hours’ work 8 hours’ play and 8 hours’ sleep. That was just one of the basic definitions. But in the commentary on the bill we see that the Labour Government is recommending the deletion of the new definition of “full employment or full-time employment”—because the Government thinks it is too hard. It thinks it is unclear because it refers to an average period. 
We see that it was thought that the proposed change would clarify the definition and that the intent of the proposal was to increase rather than reduce the period over which employment could be averaged. Once again the Government is unable even to define the basis on which the Labour Party began—back in the good old days. It cannot do that; it is just too hard. 
In the meantime the newly elected French President has said to the French people that a 35-hour week is not enough to increase their economic growth and that their hours of work will have to be increased. That country’s productivity rate exceeds New Zealand’s enormously. Under this Labour Government our rate of productivity has been stagnant over the last 7 years—and Labour cannot even define what full employment is all about. It cannot even define what Seddon defined way back in the early part of the last century. 
Unfortunately the Social Security Amendment Bill has been eroded and jumbled up by this Labour Government in a very bad way. It was an opportunity to see a new vision for and to put new hope into the benefit system in New Zealand which would have allowed clear incentives for people to proceed on to work. Instead the bill is mired in bureaucracy; it is mired in social engineering.