Annual Review Debate — Social Development and Housing Sector

It is an honour and privilege to speak as the chairperson of the Social Service Committee this evening in regard to the annual reviews. We know the Ministry of Social Development delivers two particular services. One is the social support service that it delivers, both in the delivering and purchasing of services, and the other is social policy advice. This advice is quite important. It also administers benefits and superannuation throughout New Zealand, and it delivers that to over a million New Zealanders every year. So it is an important role that it plays. Also, it is the largest Government department in New Zealand at the moment, with 10,100 full-time staff.

I also want to commend the work of the chief executive, Mr Brendan Boyle, his senior management, and all the work that they do. They came to the committee and presented their report, and I would like to speak about some of those things in particular. The ministry’s total revenue in 2014-15 was $1.392 billion, which is a 10 percent increase. It is a 10 percent increase on the 2013-14 Budget, and that is quite significant. It shows that as a Government we have recognised the needs that are currently there and are providing for those needs as well.

The areas of focus that were reported on were threefold: operating of the benefit system and supporting people into work; carrying out social housing assessments and supporting projects relating to social housing reform; and working to protect vulnerable children. I want to talk about some of those facts in my speech this evening. Reducing welfare dependency and supporting vulnerable children is a key priority of this Government under its Better Public Services programme.

We have talked about some of the cross-sector leadership and agency work that has been happening, and some of the work conducted has been quite significant. In the year ended 30 June 2015 the number of people receiving a main benefit decreased by 2.8 percent. That is something to be celebrated. In numbers, that is 8,237. There are 285,345 people currently receiving a benefit. The most significant reduction—and I think this is something that is quite important and has been the focus of the ministry—is around sole parents. That is down to 6.5 percent. The job seeker numbers declined to 2.5 percent. I know there is not a lot of cheering on the other side, but we on this side—

💬 Darroch Ball: Job seeker, work ready. Are you sure about that, Alfred?

—know that it really is making a difference. Yes, Mr Darroch Ball, these are the figures; I know they are hard to accept. They are the figures that are there. Let us talk about sole parents—down to 6.5 percent. Why is this making a difference? I visited the teen parents unit at Henderson High School. Helen Peke was there, and she was talking about the difference that this Government is making to some of the teen parents there. Young mums, as young as 16, 17, 18, are going there. The focus on upskilling, the ability to be able to take their young children there to be cared for and looked after, and giving those teens the opportunity to move on—not to be dependent on welfare but to move into educational and employment opportunities—is significant. That is a fact. That is the reality. That is what is happening out there. [Interruption] I know that has got Labour members excited for all the right reasons, and I know they love this.

Here is another thing that will get you excited. Under this Government, we have set what is called an aspirational goal. I know that previously there have not been a lot of goals. The aspirational goal is this: we want to reduce the overall number of working-age clients by 25 percent. That is right. It is an aspirational goal. Why? Because we on this side of the House truly believe that the longer that our people and our communities are on welfare, the worse off they are in terms of their futures. So there is a significant goal that is really important as well.

Here is some more evidence that measures the significance of the role that the Ministry of Social Development is playing—long-term beneficiaries. At 30 June 2015, 65,550 beneficiaries had been receiving job seeker support for more than 12 months. This is 3 percent fewer than the previous year. That is making a difference. Why? Because, again, the role we are playing is about wanting to make sure—

💬 Darroch Ball: What does the Salvation Army say about that?

Well, let us talk about the Salvation Army. Let us talk about the Faith Factory down in View Road in Henderson. You may not have visited, but, actually, we go out and visit these places—real people and real places. We are talking to them about the roles that they are playing. That is right. We can name a place and name a person. We have actually been there. We have been to a soup kitchen to see the work that is happening, and it is making a difference. It is changing lives—we have seen that as well. Thank you.

Last week in Tauranga I attended a public meeting, and in the course of the meeting a woman in her 60s stood up and told about living in her car because the Golden Grove Holiday Park, where she has been living for the last 6 months or so, is being redeveloped. She has been on the emergency housing waiting list for 6 months, and is simply unable to find an affordable place to live.

Another woman, a solo parent with two teenage children, has been living in the Silverbirch Holiday Park for the last 6 months. She is a 42-year-old kindergarten teacher. She has put her name down with four letting agencies—no sign of anything she can afford. The Silverbirch Holiday Park owner, Sharon Makai, the next day told the Bay of Plenty Times that the holiday park was full, with up to a dozen people living in its cabins and caravans. The majority of them, she said, were looking for an affordable place to live. This is John Key’s New Zealand.

In Tauranga, one of our most affluent cities, the median rent is now $425 a week. The city is rated as severely unaffordable. The median house price is now more than eight times the median household income in that city. People are desperate. You only need to look at the pages of the Bay of Plenty Times every day of the week to know there is an acute housing shortage. So what is this Government doing with the 1,200 State houses that it owns in Tauranga? It is selling them. Is it building more houses, the obvious thing that you do when there is a housing crisis and a housing shortage? No, it is selling them off. This Minister for Building and Housing, Nick Smith, and Paula Bennett, the Minister for Social Housing, are so out of touch. Nick Smith said yesterday that the housing crisis is a media beat-up. It is not a crisis, apparently—it is a challenge.

Well, Tauranga is one of two areas to get its housing sold off, and there are two short-listed consortia of groups. Remember these names. One consortia includes John Laing, the United Kingdom - based public-private partnership investor; another British company, Pinnacle Group; and a Canadian real estate investor, Brookfield Real Estate Services. The second consortia includes local iwi and Trust House Charitable Trust, but it also includes the investment firm Morrison and Co., two Australian property management companies, and investors. So for all of the talk about selling State houses to the Salvation Army and non-profit groups, which were going to do such a great job of managing them, this Government is selling off billions of dollars of land and housing to merchant bankers, to foreign companies, and to property investors.

If that was not bad enough, this National Government has already, in this process of privatisation, displayed the Wall Street ethics that are its trademark as it has gone about selling off State housing. Merchant banker Andrew Body was paid $2.3 million in contracts by this Government, first, to advise it on developing the policy to sell off State houses, and, secondly, to advise it on how to actually go about selling them—$2.3 million over 5 years. One of his clients throughout that process was John Laing, the UK private-public partnership investor, who had expressed an interest in buying the houses and is now one of the short-listed parties to buy over a thousand State houses being sold in Tauranga. Is that a conflict of interest? Is that a conflict of interest? The Government said “No. There’s no conflict of interest.”, and it took an investigation by the Office of the Auditor-General to show that the Government had broken its own procurement rules time and time again by not tendering that $2.3 million worth of contracts to Andrew Body, the merchant banker. The Office of the Auditor-General said the Government had failed to follow proper procedures in relation to the conflict of interest, and it was rapped over the knuckles.

This is what makes it so disturbing that the National Government recently legislated to give the Ministers—in this case it is Bill English and Paula Bennett—extraordinary unfettered powers to sell off billions of dollars of State houses to whomever they like on whatever terms they like. It swept away all of the normal legislative safeguards for the sale of State assets in this kind of situation.

I rise to my feet with the privilege of being the Associate Minister for the social development portfolio. I want to cover off on a couple of things this evening. The first thing I want to say is that this landscape is changing, and it needs to. That is because this Government is tackling some really hard things. I refer to the Child, Youth and Family reforms. I refer to the fact that instead of chucking money at people who are, for whatever reason, relying on a benefit, or chucking money at young women who are pregnant at a very young age, we are assisting those people to realise the full potential in their lives.

In my home patch of Rangitata we have seen an enormous drop in the number of teenage pregnancies. In fact, we have a unit at Timaru Girls’ High School, which not so long ago had 17 young women and, I understand, has only about four there now. In fact, what I also know is that for those who were there, they now have a goal. They will achieve what they want out of their lives. They will finish their education and they will therefore have a far better future for the children in their lives. What we are doing is not just simply dreaming up an inventive solution or a way of getting into the lives of these people and trying to help; we are also requiring that we measure what we do and that we make sure that the taxpayer dollars that we spend assisting people actually have an outcome—that it is measurable and that we have some research and evaluation going on, which has been woefully lacking in years gone by.

I want to bring this around to just a short commentary on the social policy evaluation and research unit. We are, within that unit, developing an effective evidence base for the social sector so that those making decisions can actually improve the lives of vulnerable New Zealanders. This is our social investment approach. It is about increasing the use of targeted evidence-based investment that will get better long-term results, not for some ephemeral sort of group of people but for real New Zealanders, for real vulnerable children, for vulnerable adults, for vulnerable families—real results.

I have to say, though, that the work that is going on within this portfolio and across Government is not easy. It is much simpler to just throw some money at it and hope it works, or even to instinctively think that it works, when the reality is that going out there and seeking the evidence and then channelling the funding through to where that evidence shows us we are making a difference in the lives of New Zealanders is really much tougher. But it is worth it. It is absolutely worth it. And we have seen that with the way that we have assisted young teenage mums, wrapped around them the assistance to keep them in education, to keep them in training, to assist them into jobs, to help them with budgeting, and to help them with parenting skills. I just know, because I have seen it and I have met them, that it makes a real difference in their lives.

Within the community investment portfolio we spend more than $330 million a year. Now we are doing a line-by-line review of what we spend, to ensure that it is directed towards the most vulnerable New Zealanders—those vulnerable children who really need us to make a difference in their lives, not just pat their mothers or fathers on the back and say: “There, there, you have our sympathy.” They need real interventions—real interventions that result in changes in their lives. We need to get better results from what are in fact billions of dollars that we are currently spending. We know the Opposition hates it, because what it shows is that the Opposition did not measure outcomes. It was too afraid because what that really meant was it is not intentions—it is outcomes. So, in fact, what we are doing within the Government is tackling the hard stuff. It is not that easy to work out how to measure whether what you are doing is actually being effective, and so that is a challenge for us.

Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. Around the country tonight, there are couples sitting around their dinner tables in their rented kitchens going over their household budgets and wondering how they are ever going to own their own home. They are probably not reading this Social Development and Housing Sector report. They are probably more likely watching reruns of The Block or Mitre 10 Dream Home. Kiwis, we sure do love our home renovation TV genre. But the fact is that for too many Kiwis this is not reality TV—this is fantasy TV. These are people who work hard, who want to raise a family in a home of their own. They are working, they are saving, but they are finding the deck is stacked against them. These people also have a name—these people are now called Generation Rent. This is a generation stuck in poor quality rental accommodation with out-of-date tenancy law.

It is not an accident. It is not a force of nature. This is the result of deliberate policies—deliberate policies skewing to screw the scrum, deliberate policies that benefit and profit property investors over first-home buyers. These are policies that discriminate against Generation Rent and present clear economic and social risks to New Zealand. It is no way to run a country—to reward property speculators over people investing in productive enterprises and employing new workers. It is clear that something is out of kilter when a house can earn more in a matter of months than someone can earn working over 1 or 2 years.

Simon Bridges last week said that the country does not have a housing crisis. But, Mr Bridges, say that to someone working on a minimum wage, paying the 12 percent before-tax compulsory student loan repayments, trying to save 20 percent for a loan-to-value ratio deposit—someone who is told they have got to start saving for retirement too. Mr Bridges says that there is no housing crisis, but say that to someone in Auckland, where house prices have risen by $100,000 since January this year. Try saying that to someone in Ōtara, where 80 percent of people buying houses there are, in fact, estimated to be investors. Try saying that to someone stuck in a cold, damp rental house, when the official estimates say that we are seeing 1,600 extra deaths and 40,000 child hospital admissions because of our poor quality housing. Try saying that to the couple who do not go to Bali twice a year, do not drive a BMW on lease, do not have a 42-inch plasma screen, and do not spend 200 bucks at the bar on a Friday night, but are told in the media that it is their fault, that they are not disciplined enough to buy a house.

There are thousands of New Zealanders locked out of homeownership, Kiwis and families living in the holiday parks and living in the garages, and thousands of Kiwis literally sleeping on our streets. Anyone who says that is not a crisis has their head in the sand, and they are completely out of touch. In this country we used to be called the half-gallon, quarter acre, pavlova paradise. Since those days our homeownership rates have now dropped to where they were in the early 1950s. Homeownership used to be called the New Zealand dream. But today it is just that: a dream.

For my generation—we are called Millennials or Generation Y or Generation Rent—housing unaffordability is in fact one of the highest-profile symbols of the wider generational inequities we see. My generation, and the broader generation, could, in fact, be the first generation that is worse off than their parents’ generation. This is a generation that is burdened with $15 billion of student debt, gifted from a generation that had free education. This is a generation working in an imbalanced and indebted economy whose glory days were in fact 50 years in the past. This is a generation facing and inheriting unswimmable rivers, species going extinct, and the very real possibility of runaway catastrophic climate change. For my parents’ generation there was State support to get into a house, free education, and a job as good as guaranteed for life. Today a good job, an affordable education, and a house to call your own are considered luxuries.

These are some pretty big issues facing the country, but what is the Government focused on? Well, its flags and its foreign trusts. A great president once said that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and what we have seen in New Zealand in 2016 is generations divided by housing. I believe in fair and affordable housing as a basic human right for all New Zealanders. If you work hard and you save, you should be able to get into a house for yourself, even in our biggest city. The solutions are not rocket science: (1) we need the Government to build a lot of new homes, like we used to; (2) we need a comprehensive capital gains tax, excluding the family home, to remove the unfair tax incentive to invest in property; and (3) we need restrictions on foreign property, as we see in other countries.

Well, for generations it has been the Kiwi way: the right of New Zealanders to be able to raise a family and have a secure place to live. Even through the Depression years that was something that New Zealanders were able to aspire to and to do, but not under John Key’s National Government—no more.

I am not talking about people at the lowest end of the income bracket even. I am talking about people who regularly come to MPs’ offices who are on decent wages, who are in the middle brackets of income, who are telling us that they cannot afford the unaffordable housing costs that are going on under this John Key National Government. The Government members opposite are so out of touch that they have used this debate to explain to New Zealanders that it is not even happening—that their reality is not a reality at all. That Government is arrogant and it is out of touch.

We have the Government members, in this debate about social development and housing, celebrating the reduced number of people who are receiving benefits. Well, the Labour Party members would join them. They would join in that celebration if those people were coming off benefits, to go into paid employment. But they are not, and there is no celebration in celebrating people being denied benefits only to end up at the food bank. Alfred Ngaro in his contribution recognised that that is what is happening. He talked about going to visit the Salvation Army to find out how much the food bank needs are increasing in the communities that it serves. That is nothing to be proud of.

💬 Alfred Ngaro: And then you go into National policies.

That is nothing to be proud of, Mr Ngaro. Your Government is putting more and more families through the food bank system—off benefits and straight into the food bank. That is not the vision that the Labour Party has for a brighter future for this country.

When talking about housing, we cannot ignore the unaffordability that is continuing to creep right throughout New Zealand, under this National Government. It used to be confined to Auckland, but because of that Government’s failure to fix or even recognise the Auckland housing crisis it is ending up in many other communities.

In respect of my own community of Hamilton, today the New Zealand Herald announced that in the last year house prices in Hamilton have gone up by 34 percent—in 1 year alone. That is on the back of the previous year, when house prices had jumped 21 percent. So do the maths: 21 percent the year before last and on top of that another 34 percent. It is no wonder MPs are seeing people coming through their doors in droves, saying that they cannot afford to buy into the market and they cannot afford the increasing rents that come off the back of that.

But at the same time—and here is the big kicker—the Government is selling off State housing stock. So the people who normally would fall out and drop out of the private rental market now have no safety net with State housing. Those Government members are pretending that they are not privatising; they are absolutely privatising the State housing market and they know it.

Here is a cautionary tale. Normally these tales come from overseas, but this is a cautionary tale from New Zealand. The Government is doing exactly what it once did with the rest home sector. It pretends to give it to charitable organisations. Those charitable organisations do it to the best of their ability, but find that they struggle quite quickly, and guess what? Within a decade we found that those rest homes are almost all now in private hands. That is exactly the path that that Government is using to privatise State housing stock and to get it into their private investor mates’ hands.

So we continue to see a Government that is focused on actually supporting people who want to hide their money and to find taxation loopholes in a country like New Zealand. We are becoming a tax haven, for goodness’ sake! That is where that Government’s priority is lying, rather than in actually addressing the issues that are affecting everyday New Zealanders—hard-working New Zealanders who, as I said before, are on modest incomes and on middle incomes, and increasingly are finding it hard to make ends meet on even the higher level of incomes, because of that Government’s failure to act.

It is not rocket science. When there is a housing crisis we need more houses. We need more decent houses and we need the Government to act. The market is not fixing this one, National. It is not fixing it. And we know that the National Party members sit on their hands and believe that the market will deliver.

If we were to listen just to the Minister and to the Government benches about what was going on in social services and Housing New Zealand, then the public of New Zealand would be led to believe that everything was hunky-dory and tickety-boo. But, as we all know, that is not the case.

I just want to concentrate on one topic, which is Housing New Zealand and the State houses and the state that they are in at the moment. At the moment we are actually entering crisis point and we are going to epidemic levels in regard to the P contamination of State houses. The main fact is that this Government has done nothing since it has been in Government, since 2008, and it is still continuing to do nothing about the P contamination of State houses. In the 2013-14 financial year there were 28 State houses found to be contaminated with P. In 2014-15 that jumped up to 230 houses found to be contaminated with P. And in just the first 6 months of this financial year alone that number is 280. That is in just the first 6 months of this financial year alone. That is epidemic levels. That is crisis point, but this Government is not even acknowledging that there is a problem with P contamination of Housing New Zealand State houses.

Not only that, add the fact that a quarter of all new State houses that were built in Christchurch have already been contaminated. In 2014 of the 196 houses that were tested, 101 tested positive and, like I said before, already 280 in the first 6 months of this financial year have tested positive. If you compare that with the hundreds of people on the waiting list because of these State houses being empty because of the contamination, then you can see where we are, with the issues with the waiting lists adding to that fact.

But how does that translate into costs for the taxpayer? Well, luckily enough we have got a poster here. In 2013-14 it cost $700,000 to the taxpayer, in 2014-15 it cost just over $2 million, and just for the first 6 months alone of this financial year it cost almost $6 million. That is what you call an exponential curve—that is what you call an exponential curve. There are two questions that fall out of this poster. Firstly, what is going to happen next year, 2016-17, if this Government continues to do nothing? The answer is that it will continue to exponentially increase.

The second question is this: why is there data only to 2013-14? That is because this Government did not even bother to collate the information prior to 2013-14. Even though it knew that the evidence was there that this was going to be a problem, that it was a problem since 2008-09, yet it chose to still do nothing about it.

In 2008 to 2012, prior to Housing New Zealand even collating the data about P contaminated State houses, there were no fewer than 16 major stories and articles about P contaminated State houses: from “P labs” to “Scientists telling of P house shock”, “P lab findings”, “Taxpayers carry can for P lab State house tenants”, and “P homes clean-up costly”. That was in 2012. If we talk about official documents that Ministers were given, there were no fewer than five official documents that Ministers were given between 2008 and 2015—the official reports stating the concerns with the P contaminated State houses.

So the Government has known. But what has been done? What has been done—nothing. It is zero. The only thing that the Government brought in in 2011 was a stand-down period of up to 12 months for a State house tenant who was caught using or manufacturing P in a State house. Bill English has already said in this Chamber that that is not a firm enough measure and that they are looking at things that are firmer. But nothing has been done.

Just out of some written questions—in fact, what I will go to, as I have got only a short time left, is looking at the responsibilities that Housing New Zealand actually has, as the country’s largest landlord. The Government’s own tenancy services state that if landlords rent out property that is contaminated by P they are breaching their obligations under the Residential Tenancies Act 1986, as well as other legislation such as the Building Act and the Health Act. This Government has let this crisis occur; it has known it was going to occur since 2008. The only thing it is planning on doing is selling off these houses.

There has been an awful lot of emotion and accusations thrown around the Chamber in the annual review debate on the Social Development and Housing Sector so far, but, I would have to say, based on very few facts.

I want to start off tonight by recognising the outstanding contribution of the staff who work for this Government, and this country, at Work and Income. As I get around the country and meet and talk with staff and the clients sitting in their offices, either waiting for an appointment or working with a case manager, I have to say I am continually impressed by the absolute dedication of those staff in working alongside those people who for one reason or another have found themselves in difficulty, helping them solve what at times seem like completely insurmountable problems. I am always impressed by their enthusiasm, by their compassion, and, most of all, by their professionalism in working alongside those people to support them through the tough times, always with a focus on helping them into work and, therefore, into independence. Because that is what coming off a benefit means: it means you are independent of reliance on the State to maintain you and your family, and you cannot underestimate the benefit of that.

The week before last I was absolutely delighted to announce that the number of people in this country who were dependent on a benefit had fallen below 280,000 for the first time since 2008. Did we get a celebration in this country from across this Parliament that that was an amazing achievement since the global financial crisis—that all those people have gone, for one reason or another, from relying on a benefit to being independent? All we heard from the Opposition was carping that we could not prove they had gone into work. Well, let me tell this Committee that most people go into work, but, funnily enough, people do not willingly give up a benefit if they have no other way of surviving. They can alter their circumstances; in fact, some people go to prison and therefore they do not need a benefit, but the vast bulk of them are going into work and that should be celebrated by every single member in this Chamber.

If people do not go into work; if they go off the benefit and not into work and there is not a valid reason for them to go off the benefit, then you have to ask why they would do that. I have asked that question of the Work and Income staff. I have asked that question, because the accusation has been made tonight that they go off the benefit into the food banks. I have asked that question of the Salvation Army, too, and some of the other food bank providers around—and that is nonsense. That is absolute nonsense. Some of those people have gone off the benefit because they have not fulfilled the obligations that the taxpayers have of them. In other words, they have not been out looking for work consecutively. This is a small number of people, but we do have obligations. If you are supported by the taxpayer, you are expected to do a number of things. In some cases, it is to look after your children well; in some cases it is to be out finding work, but the vast majority of people go off the benefit because they have gone into work.

One of the most successful schemes we have been running is 3K to Christchurch—1,900 people. I remember when Minister Bennett announced it, and she was targeting 1,000 people, particularly young people, moving down to Christchurch, where there was a huge need for construction workers. Actually, when you talk to them today, 1,900 people have accepted that challenge and moved down to Christchurch, and by far the majority are now going into the hospitality sector, are going into the care sector—not construction any more. And that is to be celebrated. Did we hear celebration across this Chamber for those people who had moved off benefit and into work? No, of course we did not. The Opposition went out and found some employer who said they stayed only for 3 months.

This Government is working hard and the staff in the Public Service, in the Work and Income offices, are working hard to support those people into independence, because we know that work is the best way out of poverty, both for those people and, most importantly, for their children. Every step we take should be celebrated.

💬 Hon Members: Mr Chairman.

There are no Labour Party calls available at the moment. The Green Party has four left.

I believe every family should have enough to sustain themselves, and that all children in this country should be safe and able to develop to their potential. Supposedly to deliver that goal, this Government’s top-line Better Public Services target is reducing welfare dependency by 25 percent by June 2018. But despite all its media releases telling us how much money it has saved and how many people it has got off benefits, there is no way, on current projections, that it will achieve this target.

Work visas match or outstrip new jobs, and job growth is projected to slow and unemployment is projected to increase. Government policies do not support beneficiaries getting into the workforce; they just tell them they need to do it. The Government has refused to pick up my member’s bill to provide workplace protections for victims of domestic violence, something that could significantly reduce the need for income support at all. The reality is that even the chief executive officer of the Ministry of Social Development described this target of 25 percent as aspirational, and not in the sense that the Minister in the chair, Anne Tolley, suggested as a positive thing, but rather a “we’ll never make it” sense.

Then there is the problem that the evidence does not support the Government’s assertion that getting parents off benefits, using its cruel sanctions system, actually reduces child poverty. The Government does not measure the impact of its interventions on families or children. It cannot even tell us what happens to people once they are off a benefit, and it dismisses the growing number of children in relative poverty as irrelevant. Let me remind you, as we have heard from previous speakers, that this is the Government that says it is all about the data. It tells us that it is all about the outcomes and proving it can do it, yet it does not measure the things that matter.

The chief executive officer of the Ministry of Social Development told us that it thinks its case management system will reduce the number of people on benefits, despite the evidence that was presented to the select committee showing that it was not likely to. So it does not have the targets that are appropriate, it does not have the measures to improve any positive benefit, and then it tells us that a method is going to work to be able to achieve this, which the evidence says otherwise.

Then the Commissioner for Children clearly told us in their hearing that this is the wrong target if we want to improve the well-being of children. He told the select committee that we need to set four targets: (1), reduce relative poverty; (2), reduce material deprivation and hardship; (3), reduce violence; and (4), improve housing quality. If we set those targets, we would ensure that our children were safer and healthier and out of poverty.

I think we might also need to add another target to that, if that is not too arrogant of me, to suggest that we have a target of ensuring people are accessing their legal entitlements. Because despite the Minister telling us that when she visits the offices she is hearing that everything is fine, that there is no problem, we do not actually have evidence to tell us that. In fact, what we had in this last year was evidence that despite two court rulings over a period of time, Work and Income refused to change its policy to abide by the actual law, that it refused to give people their legal entitlements that had been twice established by the court.

We have no ability to be secure that people are able to access their legal entitlements. And I think that was reinforced again by the fact that last month in Auckland, community advocates helped over 700 people at just one Work and Income office over 3 days—700 people, at one office, who had not been able to access their legal entitlements. That, to me, is an indicator, and, at the very, very least, it is smoke. The Government should be taking that seriously and putting in systems to audit whether people are able to access their entitlements, because we are hearing so many stories, and there is growing evidence that they are not currently accessing their legal entitlements.

If the Government was serious about addressing actual social harm and improving the health, well-being, educational outcomes, and life opportunities of our families, it would start by ensuring that people got their legal entitlements. Then, I think, it would start listening to the advocates for children and the experts in our society, and follow the advice of the Office of the Commissioner for Children. But it is not serious and, as a result, child poverty remains entrenched. Children keep dying from living in cold, damp houses and from other low-income-related diseases at a rate of more than one child a week, in this country that we used to call the land of plenty, where there are so many who still have plenty but who are not sharing.

To go back to the Office of the Commissioner for Children, it was deeply disturbing to hear through the annual review process that the commissioner, who is tasked with the absolutely essential role of monitoring the safety of children in State care, say so clearly that his office does not have the resources to be able to do this properly, that there have been negative audit results where there were concerns for the safety of children, and that it is not able to follow up properly.

This is in the context of a 56 percent increase in recorded offences against children in State care since 2009 and a 40 percent increase in sexual abuse against children in our collective care, where the absolutely critical role of the watchdog of that system has been so underfunded that it is not able to do its job properly. That is a result of this Government’s policy—a Government that has promised, again and again, that this is not OK and that it would fix this. All we have had is report after report, an expert group, and a reduction in funding, and children have suffered in our collective care while that has been happening.

It is time to move forward. Good change is 100 percent possible. It may not be achievable overnight, but it is achievable. The Green Party would institute policies based on expert evidence and a fundamental belief that family, community, and society can thrive when the safety and other basic needs of our children are guaranteed—when our society is in balance. Currently, the policies of this Government are out of balance. I look forward to the Green Party rebalancing the policies in this country in favour of our children and the future of this country, to give all our families a decent go to be able to sustain themselves.

I know that the Labour Party members were keen to take some more calls, and I was almost tempted to actually give them one because I was missing out on my dose of fiction this evening, after two weeks of adjournment and having the opportunity to watch a bit of fiction on television. I was getting a good dose of it from listening to the Labour Party speakers, and it was tempting to listen to a few more.

Can I just say, being able to stand up and talk on this subject as a Government member is incredibly heartening. I feel incredibly proud to be able to stand up and talk about some of these things that have been achieved over the last 12 months in this review process. We have a Government that is not afraid to tackle the hard issues. We have Ministers in these portfolios who are prepared to face up to where things could be better and to actually do something about it, and I stand here with a sense of pride in being part of a Government that is doing some great work in this area. There are almost too many things to talk about. Some of them have been touched on, but, actually, there is an incredible number of things that are really great that are going on that we can be proud of.

For a start, I just want to touch briefly on the overhaul of Child, Youth and Family. This is a critical thing that needed to be done. It was long overdue, and I think we would all agree that the results of the things we were seeing for children in care simply were not good enough. Over the years, as the Minister for Social Development has said, we have had fantastic people who have worked on the front lines in our social services. They have been doing great work with the tools that they have had, but it is time for us to actually realise that some of the processes that we have got do need to come together and work a little bit better.

I have reflected on this when we were talking about other legislation. I remember being a social worker 20 years ago—and I still now have the dilemma in my own head—and, when you uplifted children, wondering whether you were actually, in fact, inflicting more harm on them by bringing them into State care than if you were to leave them in that situation. It is a horrible dilemma to be in, so that is why we have got a Minister who is leading the charge to ensure that Child, Youth and Family will have the overhaul that is required to ensure that we put children at the forefront of what we are doing and that we improve the level of care and we improve the outcome for those children, if they are going to have the State providing them with the role of parent. I am looking forward to seeing those changes as they come through.

We have heard a lot of talk this evening about housing, and there is this myth that has been put out there that the Government is sort of flogging off every single State house that is out there. The way it has been talked about—

💬 Louisa Wall: Not every single one; just 6,000 of them.

No, but the way it has been talked about is overinflated in terms of proportion. You know, we are talking about approximately 1,500 houses out of the 60,000-odd houses that are in Government stock. I for one have got to say that just because we had the really good idea some years ago that, actually, there would be a State housing service provided—it has been a good service. It has meant that people have been able to get into housing, and it has done reasonably well. But that does not mean it was the last great idea when it comes to social housing. We are looking to do some other things around social housing. We are looking to improve the service that people receive from the wraparound services that will be provided by community housing providers, and it is just great to see that, actually, some foresight and some forward thinking is occurring.

I went to Auckland the other week because I have heard so much about Auckland housing.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: What were you doing?

Well, it was something that someone has got to do—you have got to go up there and have a look. I had heard so much disgruntled conversation and talk about the Tāmaki redevelopment programme. People were saying what a terrible thing this was, and I thought that I should probably go and at least have a look to find out what was going on there and to see what the fuss was about. Well, what I saw there was a whole lot of quite rundown, not-fit-for-purpose, old State houses sitting on pretty large sections that were not really necessarily being up-kept because they were too big for people to look after. But actually what is happening now is that those 2,500 houses that are sitting there are becoming 7,500 houses over time. There will still be the same amount of community social housing provision there, but there will also be another 5,000 houses that will be warm, that will be dry, and that will be fit for purpose for the people who will occupy them. This will ensure that we are starting to address the need for more houses in Auckland.

There are good things going on in this space, and this Government is making sure that we are moving ahead, not stuck in the past, not just sticking to the old ways of doing things—

A fairer future for this country is 100 percent possible. Fixing the housing crisis in this country created by National is also 100 percent possible. Solving child poverty, largely caused by National, in this country is also 100 percent possible. It comes down to a choice—the choice of having the fairer, cleaner, more sustainable country that New Zealanders want to build, leaving behind the disgraceful record of the National Government, which is driving this country well into the past. It is time for us to move forward, and away from these old policies of the past from National, which drive our families backwards, and into the good green changes that can be made for our families and for our communities.

I have to say I found the Minister’s speech tonight disingenuous and disgraceful, frankly. When she stood up to say how great it was that all these people were moving off the benefit, she could not say where those people have gone. We have asked her for this information before. She does not know whether or not a person who has left the benefit has gone into a great job and is doing well—and we all hope that that is the case; we all want that to be the case—or is now living in a car with their kids, desperate for a place to live, desperate for a regular and decent income, and desperate for some respect from the State agencies for which she has responsibility. The thing is, she does not know because her department does not ask, and it does not ask because it does not want to know. It does not want to know because it is interested only in the half measures that make it sound good; meanwhile, our New Zealand families are still living in terrible houses that make them cold and sick, and living on miserable incomes so they cannot afford to pay the power bill and the rent, and feed their kids. That is the reality for New Zealand families under the National Government. That is what National has driven this country to, but it need not be like that. New Zealand can choose a different way.

I want to address two issues out of these reports. The first is the Children’s Commissioner’s report and then also the Housing New Zealand report. Let me first congratulate Andrew Becroft on his appointment in the future as Children’s Commissioner. [Interruption] That is one of the better decisions made by the Minister—yes, I agree with that. He will be a very fierce advocate for children and young people. He understands—she does not, but he does—how poverty impacts on children, the kinds of choices it constrains them to, and the difficulties they get into because poverty has exacerbated the risks that they face in their lives. He does not judge them and punish them and their families in the way that the Minister and her policies do. He is always looking for constructive ways to make sure that these children, these young people, have a path out of the circumstances into which they have been driven. I am really looking forward to his contribution as Children’s Commissioner.

Let me also say that our team in the Greens and I have really enjoyed working with Russell Wills and with his people as well. Russell Wills has played a critical role in making sure that child poverty is on the political agenda. It is on the agenda of New Zealanders, and that is part of the reason why New Zealanders over the years are increasingly saying that the gap between rich and poor, and child poverty, are major issues for them in this country. New Zealanders do not want to live in a country where children are going to school hungry. New Zealanders do not want to live in a country where they can see the gap increasing between them and their neighbours and their friends and their families. They want to live in a country that is inclusive, that is supportive of children, that does not judge people on the basis of their income, and that does not punish them when they are poor. That is what National does. That is not what New Zealanders want to do. Russell Wills, through his work with the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty and through his continual advocacy around the effects of child poverty on New Zealanders, has been exceptional and has really helped to put child poverty on the agenda.

National has traded away the potential of thousands of New Zealand children by allowing child poverty and the gap between rich and poor to stagnate at an all-time high. Under National in the 1990s child poverty and inequality rose to record highs, and it has stayed there because National’s policies continue to drive families down.

I want to take another call because I think, again, we need to put some facts on the table. A number of my colleagues have said that this Government has not been afraid to face the hard issues, and I concur with that. We have not been afraid to face the hard issues. We have not been afraid to invest early in prevention and rehabilitation. We have been a brave Government that has done things that other Governments have not been prepared to do. I would have to say that we have not been afraid to admit that some things are not working.

In fairness, in last year’s Budget we recognised that there were too many children living in this country who were experiencing hardship. Despite the emotive rhetoric of the previous speaker, Metiria Turei, this National Government was the first Government in 43 years to raise the benefit for families—the first Government in 43 years. That is amazing for any Government to do. When Labour went right through the 2000s with all the money that it had, surplus after surplus, which it told us about, how much did it put into the very poorest in this country? Absolutely zip. This National Government last month started paying $25 a week after tax to those families dependent on a benefit. And, what is more, we did not stop there. We said: “Aha, but there are also families who are working, on the lowest of incomes, who also have children who are not experiencing the sort of New Zealand life we want for all New Zealand children.”, and we increased their Working for Families payments as well.

That is what this Government has done, and last month that money started being paid out to those families. I have to say—I do not know about my colleagues, and I certainly do not know about the Opposition—that I have had people in my electorate offices saying: “This has made an enormous difference to us. We hadn’t realised how much difference that extra $25 a week will make to us and to our children.” I come back to the fact that you cannot escape the difference it makes in people’s lives when you help them into independence, so they are not reliant on the State for a benefit. What is more, it makes a difference for their children. This Government has not been afraid to tackle the appalling record of Child, Youth and Family in looking after the children who need State care. We know that we are in for a complete overhaul of that system.

This Government has not been afraid to tackle the issue of the harm caused to women, to children, and to their communities that gangs impose. The Minister of Police and Minister of Corrections, the Hon Judith Collins, and I have announced a whole range of issues, not just from a law enforcement point of view but as a social development hand as well. I have announced two community pilots where we are trying some stuff to see whether we can make a difference in the lives of mainly the families of gang members who feature too highly in all the deprivation statistics, in all the family violence statistics, in all the notifications to Child, Youth and Family statistics, and I have to say in all the statistics around arrests, prosecutions, and criminal sentences.

I come back to the fact that I say that this Government has not been afraid to tackle some of those hard issues, and accept that some of the tried and true things in the past are not working. They are simply not making a difference in people’s lives, and we should stop doing them. We should try to experiment and try to find better ways of changing people’s lives, with the taxpayers’ money that we are investing. This Government will continue to do that because we are determined to make a difference in the lives of those New Zealanders who rely on the Government to help them when something untoward happens to them.

Yet another half-truth about a half measure from this Minister and this Government. Let us make no mistake. Let us talk about the $25 increase in the benefit, shall we? What percentage of beneficiaries is getting the full $25? It is about 50 percent—right? Only 50 percent of those who are entitled to that $25 are actually getting $25, because this Government has given with one hand and has taken with another. And 22,000 of those families will be losing money because of the income-related rents. About 40 percent of beneficiaries will be losing money from that $25 because of other services or other funding they are getting through the Ministry of Social Development that they will not be entitled to. So when this Minister stands up and says that beneficiaries get $25 extra, she is not telling the whole truth. That is the problem with this Government: yet another half measure that does nothing. Her ministry and Treasury have all said that that $25 will not solve child poverty. So we know that it will not have an appreciable effect on families or bring families out of poverty.

Let us talk about another half measure, shall we? This is about housing. As we know, housing—particularly rental housing for poor families—is a key driver to entrenching their poverty because it is expensive, and driving more costs, and because their kids get sick and have to go to hospital. We know that a warrant of fitness—a proper, comprehensive warrant of fitness—for rental properties, to make sure that those rental properties are safe for the families and for the children who live in them, will save lives. It will save lives. Otago University has just in the last couple of weeks come out with a report saying that insulation to 2008 standards and a heating device saved 19 percent of children in those rental homes from going to hospital—a 19 percent reduction in hospitalisations because of high-quality insulation and a heating device. What is this Government going to do with its miserable insulation bill—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member but the time for this debate has expired.

Reports noted.