Appropriation (2016/17 Estimates) Bill, Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

I move, That the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. We made a commitment in our 2014 election manifesto to extend the Youth Service to a broader group of young beneficiaries. This bill fulfils that commitment. We want more young people to access the Youth Service because it makes a meaningful difference in young New Zealanders’ lives. It also aligns with the Government’s social investment approach, which is focused on making upfront investment in vulnerable New Zealanders to help them lead successful and fulfilling lives. The Youth Service provides young people with the support they need to build life skills, engage in educational training, and prepare for employment. Evidence shows that young people under 20 are likely to remain on benefit long term if they do not receive the support they need at this early age.

The bill requires all 19-year-old parents to access the Youth Service, including having a supportive relationship with a youth coach, parenting and budgeting courses, and support to engage in educational training. Making sure that these young parents have access to the support they need throughout their teen years will support positive outcomes for both them and their children. It also makes sense, as many will have been engaged in the Youth Service when aged 18 or younger, so it allows continuation of support.

The bill also enables 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries who are also at risk of long-term welfare dependency to be referred to the Youth Service. This is a diverse group with varying needs. Therefore, only those who are at significant risk and most in need of support will be targeted. This target group will be identified through risk modelling undertaken by the Ministry of Social Development. Those referred will remain on their existing benefit and their youth coach will provide them with case management to meet their work obligations. But like other young people in the Youth Service, they will also receive help with working towards life goals, budgeting, and money management.

The bill also includes two changes that improve the existing Youth Service. For young people who finish their studies in December, the bill extends the exit date from the Youth Service from 31 December to 31 March. This recognises that young people often need continued support over the summer period when schools and universities are on a summer break and it can be a difficult time to find work. The bill also allows young partners of specified beneficiaries who are engaged in the Youth Service to receive incentive payments.

The bill clarifies three matters in the Social Security Act. Firstly, people will only have review and appeal rights in relation to decisions about their own financial assistance, not somebody else’s. The second amendment allows the Ministry of Social Development to continue the practice of paying terminal benefit into a deceased person’s bank account unless their partner or their child’s carer applies to receive it. Finally, the bill clarifies that the ministry can pay the remaining credit held on a young person’s payment card to them directly when they are no longer money-managed.

I would like to commend the Social Services Committee for its efforts in considering this bill. The committee considered views from 10 written submissions and heard three oral hearings on the bill. Overall, submitters supported the bill’s intent to provide more assistance to young people, and acknowledged the wraparound support that the Youth Service provides. Concerns raised by submitters related to provisions around money management and risk modelling being extended to an older group of teenagers. Money management is a key part of the Youth Service and helps young people to gain financial skills and learn to make good choices with their money. They can move off money management as soon as they have demonstrated those good financial skills.

Submitters also sought more clarity around the risk model used to refer at-risk 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries to the Youth Service, particularly the lack of consultation with young people and what risk factors would be used in the model. The risk model is important to make sure young people receive the right service support, and amendments have been made to the bill in response to the Social Services Committee’s recommendations—firstly, a requirement to consult those at-risk 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries on their referral to the Youth Service. We have added that in, and that means that once they have been identified as at risk, providers will consult with the young people and give them an opportunity to comment and to provide any extra information about themselves. This conversation will then help their youth coach understand the wider circumstances of the young person’s life, which might suggest a different level of support. The Ministry of Social Development can consider recommendations from providers that a young person does not need the Youth Service, and their referral to the Youth Service can be withdrawn if appropriate. The amendment makes this consultation with young people a clear requirement in the legislation.

Another improvement to the bill that responds to submitters’ concerns relates to factors considered in the risk model, which are currently not transparent in the legislation. The risk model will likely consider factors such as young people’s education levels, whether they have had contact with Child, Youth and Family or the justice system, and their reasons for leaving school. It is in everyone’s interest to know what information is being considered in risk modelling to determine who receives service support, but it is also important to have flexibility to adjust the factors used to assess the risk to ensure that the model remains up to date and fit for purpose as new data-streams or risk-modelling techniques become available. The bill has been amended so risk factors that may be used in the model will be set by ministerial direction. This provides a balance between the desire for transparency and the desire for flexibility.

Six minor technical amendments have been made to the bill that correct minor drafting omissions and support alignment of the bill with policy intent and practice. Two amendments have been made to ensure young partners or spouses of specified beneficiaries in the Youth Service are treated the same as their peers—firstly, that money management be extended to young partners and, secondly, that the date that young partners exit the Youth Service should match that of other Youth Service clients. An amendment clarifies that the Youth Service is able to work with young people who are in but are at risk of leaving education, training, and employment. The definition of a specified beneficiary has been amended so that youth activity obligations would not be extended to a young spouse or partner of a young beneficiary who is caring for a patient. This is appropriate because no additional amount is paid for that spouse or partner.

For ease of operation and to avoid confusion for clients when they apply for a benefit, an amendment has been made so that 19-year-old parents who apply for a benefit after the bill comes into force will receive a young parent payment. Those who apply before the bill comes into force will receive a different benefit. Lastly, an amendment is made to maintain the existing agreement between the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Education, which enables information sharing through an amendment to the Privacy Act.

This Government is committed to supporting young New Zealanders who need more support to meet their education and employment goals in their transition to adulthood. Extending the Youth Service is an opportunity to assist more young beneficiaries to get on to a better life pathway and to reduce the future liability to New Zealand taxpayers. I commend the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill to the House.

Second Reading

We continue, at this stage, to support this bill, but we do have major reservations. I am signalling now to the Government that at the Committee stage we will have amendments that we want made and it is likely that our support at the third reading will be contingent on those amendments. I want to talk to the reasons why we do have some level of support for this bill, but also why we have such strong reservations.

We know that the bill amends the Social Security Act 1964 to extend the existing Youth Service to all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children, and 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children who are considered at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency based on how the Government is choosing to measure the risk of long-term welfare dependency.

Labour does support the extension of provisions for young people who may be at risk of long-term welfare dependency, as the Government has put it, and supporting them toward a better future through the Youth Service, which offers assistance with educational aspirations, employment opportunities, budgeting, and parenting support. Our concern is that the framework in which this has been placed is faulty, and we have real concerns with the Government’s social investment approach, or what it calls the social investment approach. We have real concerns with the predictive risk modelling and real concerns with the platform on which this so-called support for young people has been built.

We have got concerns around the success of the Youth Service, given that it is a relatively new intervention and comprehensive analysis is yet to be completed. We have asked for reports and evaluations on the existing Youth Service and have been given very little. So to think the Government is expecting this House to support further investment when we do not know whether or not it has been successful so far is a little bit presumptuous, I think, of the Government. Rather than being solely focused on employment outcomes for young people, we think the Government needs to be equally supportive and encouraging of educational achievement and higher-level education for New Zealand youth, especially in light of the expected decrease in tertiary student numbers forecast in the Budget. We are just really concerned that there are low expectations and a lack of aspiration from that side of the House for our young people.

If we look at this bill, the only expectation the Government has is that young people will achieve National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2, and after that there is no support for them to go on to further education. It is all about work obligations once NCEA level 2 has been achieved. We know that in this world that is not enough, actually. If these young people have further education aspirations, then they should be supported through the legislation to be able to go on and achieve higher than level 2 NCEA. So it is disappointing that that is not the case as it stands at the moment.

Again, I just want to reflect back on the social investment approach. Social investment should not just be about moving people off benefits in the short term. It should be about the long-term outcomes for these young people and the children they have or are going on to have. It should be about investing in them so that down the track their life, their opportunities, their life achievements—

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: That’s exactly what it is.

—are going to be much greater because of the investment that a responsible Government makes up front. The Minister for Social Development is rolling her eyes at me, but the bill supports education for these young people to only level 2, and after that it is work obligations that take precedence, and we cannot support that on this side of the House.

For those youth who are looking for paid employment, there need to be the jobs for them to go into, and the Government ignores the fact that, actually, it has failed to take responsibility in that department. It has not been creating jobs and it has not been creating job opportunities for these young people. In fact, we have recently heard the Deputy Prime Minister, Bill English, talk about the fact that these people are “pretty damned hopeless”, actually. He went on to say they are illiterate. He went on to say they are unemployable, and then he went on to say that, because of this, the Government has made the immigration process, or system, a little bit more permissive. It has made it more permissive to make up for the fact this new generation of workers, according to Bill English and the National Government, is unemployable. I just think: where is the social investment approach in that when the expectations on these young people are so incredibly low? Where is the hope for those young people when they have got a Government that does not back them?

Of further concern is the rising number of young persons—15 to 24-year-olds—not in education, training, or employment, which is now at 87,200. That is 87,200 young people who are not in education or employment. That is over 26,500 more than when National took office. So of course we on this side of the House are going to question that Government’s attempt to address this situation, because it has been unsuccessful so far. There has been an increase of 26,500 young people not in education or employment, and the Government is telling us that its Youth Service to date has been successful. It is asking us, in the House today, to support a bill to extend the provisions of that Youth Service when clearly it has not been successful, with a further 26,500 young people not in employment or education under that National Government since it took office.

There are rising concerns about the ability of the Government to support youth into quality, stable employment, given the failure of this Government to facilitate benefit-to-work transitions for main benefits. That is based on the March 2016 figures, which have only 19,730 of the 49,907 benefit cancellations actually going into work. When we look at the number of beneficiaries overall who have had positive outcomes—if we are measuring positive outcomes in terms of employment outcomes—then we can see that a large number of the people who have gone off the benefit have not actually gone into work. So our concern for these young people is that success is going to be based solely on whether they go off the benefit rather than on whether or not they go on to anything better for them.

Even when we look at the Better Public Services target that the Government has set in relation to this, it is not about improved outcomes for those individuals or their families. All it is about is reducing risk of long-term welfare dependency, not that they actually go on to anything else. I think that as a country we should be concerned that we have a whole lot of people going off the benefit who are not necessarily going into work, who potentially not only do not get an income from a benefit but also have no income from employment and are potentially living off nothing. I think many of us can see that every day in the increase in numbers of people whom we see begging outside our shops and homeless thanks to the National Government.

Labour supports the amendment that came out of the Social Services Committee’s report requiring consultation with the 18 or 19-year-olds in question about their referral to the Youth Service. However, given the punitive culture of Work and Income, with heavy-handed use of sanctions, Labour must call into question what this consultation will look like. Labour, therefore, urges that youth are consulted in a way that ensures they feel empowered and understand both their obligations and their rights, because even young people who have to access welfare have rights, and I think we need to remind the National Government of that.

Finally, the other concern that I want to point out is my concern, Labour’s concern, about the discrimination, really, against young parents in this bill. Actually, what we are doing is we are pushing them into work even sooner than is required for parents who are on sole parent support. This could have negative implications for their children’s well-being. This bill would require young parents to be in full-time education, training, or work-based learning from when their child is only 1 year old, rather than 3 years old under sole parent support, and it can be even earlier depending on whether there is a teen parent unit in that area.

Of course we support young people to get education and training and to be supported to go back into work, but young parents deserve the same rights as older parents to be able to stay home and care for their children if that is in the best interests of their children. We are concerned about the discrimination there. As I have said, we will be putting up a number of Supplementary Order Papers at the Committee stage. At this stage, after discussions with my colleagues, I think it is unlikely that we are going to be able to support this bill at the third reading unless there is some support for the amendments that we make at the Committee stage. Thank you very much.

Second Reading

It is an honour and a pleasure to rise in support of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. Can I just start off by pointing out some of the facts about some young people in New Zealand. We know, when we look at the future liability of welfare dependency in New Zealand, that 70 percent of those people on the benefit went on it before the age of 20. For those 18 and 19-year-olds who go on the jobseeker allowance, the average time they will spend on that benefit is 13 years. So we know that this bill is much needed. We need to extend the entitlement and the provision to more young, vulnerable people in New Zealand.

It is not all that bad. We know that if those young people can get into jobs, employment, and training, they will go on to be productive members of New Zealand. We know that in the jobseeker allowance space, around 70 percent of young people are able to go on to employment, education, or training within 6 months. We need to capture what works well for some young people and support what is not working well for a smaller amount of young people.

When we link this to the Budget last week—there was quite a big announcement around social investment. The Minister of Finance announced $652 million into the social investment package. Of that, $61 million was specifically for this Youth Service package to get vulnerable young people into employment or into training, giving them skills to go on and get employment and be productive members of New Zealand. This Government takes this very seriously, with our Better Public Services target of reducing dependency on welfare by 25 percent and a future liability of over $13 billion to New Zealand taxpayers.

Can I just take some time to not only talk about what this new service will look like but also touch on some of the value and impact of the submissions to the Social Services Committee and the amendments that the select committee made to this bill, which I think make it a better bill. It is coming back from the first reading through the select committee process to its second reading a lot better for having been through that process. We know that this Youth Service will have very definable outcomes of reducing young people’s risk of long-term dependency. They will need to gain National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 and go on to have better social outcomes—not only for themselves; a lot of these young people have children themselves.

When we talk about these young people I think we have got to take a step back and appreciate how vulnerable these young people are, and why it is that these wraparound youth services are required. They are intensive and they are active wraparound services because a lot of these young people are dealing with very complex and challenging issues. When the select committee looked at the cohort of young people in the Youth Service, 38 percent of them had been victims of domestic violence, 76 percent of them had been victims of emotional neglect, 5 percent had been either homeless or victims of sexual abuse, and most of them had disengaged from mainstream education. That is why we need to expand these services through this bill and give further entitlement for a greater population of young people to be able to access these intensive and active wraparound services, because we know it works.

When the Youth Service was reviewed four out of five had gone on to get into education, training, or full-time or part-time employment, and research on the Youth Service showed that every dollar put in was returned through reducing future liability by $2.53. That is a great social investment: a dollar put in and future liability reduced by $2.53. Really, what it did was it gave this group of vulnerable young New Zealanders hope that they were engaging in a framework of services in which people were listening to them, understanding their needs, and providing effective services that would allow them to go on and get the training and the education, and they would be productive members of New Zealand society.

I just want to touch on some of the amendments through the select committee process. We had 10 submissions; three of them were heard orally. One of the main themes that came out was the lack of transparency about talking to young people when they had been picked up on this risk assessment matrix, and also about their referral into young people’s services. I think most of the committee felt it was not right to be referring young people without their knowledge. When you look at the great work the Hon Anne Tolley is doing around the Child, Youth and Family review, it is going to be children-centred, young people - centred, and that is exactly what this amendment to this bill will do. Now young people will have more involvement in their care, which will lead to better outcomes. Ultimately, these will be wraparound services, and they will be young people - friendly.

I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.

Second Reading

Malo lava le soifua Le Fofoga Fetalai. It is my pleasure to take a call on this, the second reading of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill, as Labour’s youth spokesperson. I have not had much to do with the passage of this particular piece of legislation, but obviously I am incredibly interested in it. What I have done is take the time just to read through as much of the material as possible, and to simplify it. I am going to share it with the House.

This piece of legislation is about amending the Social Security Act 1964 and extending the Youth Service. It is going to apply to all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children, and 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children who are considered to be at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency. They are the “who”, but the “who” is incredibly important if you look at two particular submissions to the Social Services Committee. I would like to quote from those submissions.

The first was from the Salvation Army, which says that “In general The Salvation Army opposes the intent and much of the content of the Bill. The principle [sic] reason for this opposition is that the Army believes that is both paternalistic and somewhat contradictory to treat 18 and 19 year olds in the same way as 16 and 17 year olds. The Army believes that it is important to respect individuals’ legal and civil rights ahead of particular policy objectives which may in themselves be of questionable value. It is the Army’s opinion that the proposed extension of ‘young persons services’ and the associated obligations and sanctions, to 18 and 19 year olds is a clear example of the State placing its policy objectives ahead of the legitimate rights of citizens and that as a practice this is unwise and unfair.”

I would now like to quote from the Human Rights Commission submission. I found it interesting that “The Attorney-General’s report on the Bill’s consistency with the NZBORA notes that the Bill discriminates against young beneficiary parents and ‘at risk’ 18 and 19 year olds on the grounds of age,”. I find it really interesting that in terms of the “who”, in terms of who will be impacted most by this piece of legislation, we have had two organisations say that, actually, this legislation is discriminatory and it should not be taking choices away from that cohort.

A previous bill that we discussed in this House was the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill—and I am glad that my colleague the Hon Annette King is here because on 11 May this year in the Committee stage there were lots of debate about whether we should ban sunbeds. National’s position in that debate was that no, we should not. We should protect children—that is fair enough; those who are up to the age of 18—but if you are over 18 you are an adult and so we should not take away your rights. That was the philosophical position in that particular debate of both the Minister of Health, Dr Jonathan Coleman, and Simon O’Connor, who is chair of the Health Committee. So I wanted to highlight the “who”.

In terms of the “why”—actually the “why” is very clear. The “why” is all about the money. The Better Public Services framework I suppose has an objective to reduce long-term welfare dependency, which actually is about reducing beneficiary numbers by 25 percent and the overall cost—not investment, everybody—by $13 billion. That is actually the driver of this piece of legislation. The Government can talk about investment and about valuing young people, but actually, at the end of the day, its primary objective is to save money. So let us just put that on the table. That is the “why”.

So then we look at the “what”. How the Government plans to do all this is through the Youth Service. I took the time to download the report. The Youth Service was established in August 2012 to address the extremely high risk of long-term benefit dependency. The Youth Service was established with the objective of helping a group of vulnerable young people. There was a report that was produced after the first 18 months of the service, and I have that particular evaluation. What I would like to highlight from that evaluation is this, which is at the bottom of page 1: “Many young people who enter Youth Service have serious or complex issues that require intensive support. For example, a review of Youth Payment grants by Work and Income found that 38 per cent of applicants were victims of domestic violence, 76 per cent suffered emotional neglect and 5 per cent were homeless or victims of sexual abuse.”

I think, for me, the most important aspect of that analysis is to ask how we support the young people who, through no fault of their own, are living in those circumstances. If the underlying intent of this piece of legislation is to put in the services and support so that this group of vulnerable young people can have their needs met, then, actually, I think we would support that 100 percent. One of the other aspects of this piece of legislation is around risk assessment and risk modelling. How are we going to find these young people whom, actually, we are going to treat as children? How do we find them?

I would like to acknowledge that the Greens wrote a minority report within the select committee report; they are opposing the bill. They are opposing it on solid grounds. But one of the things that they highlighted was the risks—who knows what they will be? They may be about whether they have been with Child, Youth and Family (CYF). They may be based on gender. I think the Minister has alluded that educational outcomes and the reason for leaving school were some of the reasons. But what we do know is that from 2013 the Government has been working quite seriously on this issue. For example, there is a Government data project. It was looking at four indicators. It was about whether or not children had engaged with CYF and there was a finding of abuse or neglect, whether or not there were long-term dependency issues in those families, whether or not a parent had a corrective sentence, and whether or not the mother had a formal qualification.

But the interesting thing to note about that data project was that it looked at different cohorts of children. It looked at the zero to 5 cohort, the 6 to 14 cohort, and the 15 to 24 cohort. I wonder, based on all that information, why the project is not dealing with the zero to 5 cohort. Why is there not a whole lot of investment going into those children, really early on in their lives—making sure they have a house to live in, making sure they have a roof over their heads, and kai in their puku; and making sure that mum is well supported, so that, yes, she is getting support to be a better parent, through budgeting advice, so that we are going to make it easier for her to get further education and make their lives so much better? But, no, this Government would rather wait until they are 18 and 19-year-olds, and it will use a big hammer on these kids. That is part of the issue that we have with this piece of legislation.

The other key thing I would like to highlight is from the Greens minority report, but it was also one of the concerns raised by Kay Breerton, I think, of the National Beneficiary Advocacy Consultation Group.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Great woman.

What is her name, sorry?

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Kay Brereton.

Kay Brereton—yes. What she said, or what is written here, is that they support wraparound services, but expressed the view that making young people’s income dependent on meeting certain obligations fundamentally changed for the worse the relationship between the young people and the people in a position to help them. So basically what that means is that telling young people what to do is going to have the opposite effect from what we want it to have. So that is a fundamental flaw in this piece of legislation.

I hope the Minister has been listening to my contribution, given I have taken the time to read through everything and to contribute to the second reading debate. But I do want to reiterate what my colleague and lead on the Social Services Committee and in the social development portfolio Carmel Sepuloni said. We will be proposing a number of amendments to this piece of legislation. I think we are really clear that if the Government does not want to listen, and will not support some of the amendments we have proposed, based on quotes from people like Kay, then we will not support this piece of legislation. We do not believe that it is in the best interests of young people. Kia ora.

Second Reading

Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. This is a very good piece of legislation and I rise in absolute support of it.

In 2012 the Government moved to improve the outlook for young people, particularly vulnerable young people who were beneficiaries. There has been a bit of a look at this over the years to see how effective it can be, and I think what we are starting to see are some good results for those young people who initially went on it: those who were single parents, young parents, and those who were at high risk of long-term welfare dependency.

I just think it is really important for us to clarify that when we talk about young people being “at risk of long-term welfare dependency”, this is not a judgment call—this is not a way of us looking down on them in any way, shape, or form. What I can tell you is that if the Government is having to spend a lot of money supporting you over a long period of time, it is probably because you are not having good outcomes in life. Generally, for people who need that level of input, things are not going well for them.

We are absolutely aspirational for these young people, in that we want the very best for them. We want them to be able to get beyond simply being a welfare beneficiary long term. We want them to be able to have education. We want them to be able to be in work. That is why, over this period that they are involved with the Youth Service and receiving these payments, for the 16 to 17-year-olds—absolutely—education is the focus. NCEA level 2 is the absolute minimum that we want these young people to achieve educationally.

But it does not have to end there, and if they want to go further they will be supported to go further. And yes, for 18 and 19-year-olds the focus is work. We do not want these young people to be trapped, out of study, or out of work, or without qualifications. We want them to have the tools that will be useful for them to be able to achieve the kinds of goals that they want to achieve.

I have been privileged over the last year or so to speak with some young people who have been involved with the Youth Service, and I have been—I have to say—pretty excited by the kinds of things they have said to me. They do have aspirations, they are setting goals for themselves; they do not want to just settle for second-best. They want to get better educated. They want more for their children as they go forward. I think that is great, and I think it is important that we continue, as we seek to expand the service through this legislation to another group of young people—to some slightly older ones—to ensure that they too will receive the mentoring. And to ensure that they too will receive the budgeting advice and the money management advice and increase their skills, to be able to give them an even better footing for life and an even better start for their children as they go forward.

We received 10 written submissions and three people presented oral submissions. For me, when I look at that, over my experience of being involved in putting things out, when you get a low number of submissions it is generally because people think it is a good idea. People do not tend to submit when they support things, they tend to submit only when they think it is a bad idea. So I see the low turnout of submissions that we had as highly positive. I think that we are going to see some really good results for young people going forward.

I do not want to see young people languishing any longer than they have to. I want to provide the best that we can for them, through the mentoring programmes and the wraparound services from Youth Service—for the number of extra people who are going to benefit from this going forward. I think we are going to see some really incredible results. We are going to see empowered young people ready to take on the world, and move forward. With that, I will conclude. Fa’afetai, manuia le afiafi.

Second Reading

Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. The Green Party is voting against the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill.

I just heard from the previous speaker, Jono Naylor, that the National Government has aspirations for young people, yet it seems to believe they are incapable of having aspirations, or achieving them, themselves. I have to point out that its actions do not match its words. This is the Government that removed the training incentive allowance for higher-level courses, which means that most sole parents who had aspirations to be able to get into well-paid jobs and to have a career that will support them properly and support their children, are now stuck in lower-level education that is funnelling them into low-wage jobs that it will be very hard for them to get out of. That is not what I call aspiration.

We are opposing this bill for many reasons. It is the flagship of the Government’s investment approach to everything, which is increasingly being critiqued by a wide range of organisations, from the Morgan Foundation to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, to child advocacy organisations.

I would like to comment on some of the analysis from the Morgan Foundation, where it talked about what makes a data analytics or predictive risk modelling approach work—because that is what we are talking about. The Government uses the language “investment approach”, but, actually, this is predictive risk modelling. Whether it will work depends on three things: whether the people running it can recognise the data that matters; whether the programmes that they then funnel people into are effective; and, finally, whether the outcomes that it is all driving towards are the right ones.

The Green Party is concerned that this model effectively entrenches this predictive risk modelling with criteria that are open to change. This model will be used to decide which young people will have more obligations put on them and exceptional scrutiny and supervision by the State. We have been told that the modelling is likely to consider educational outcomes, prior contact with the Department of Child, Youth and Family, gender, and reasons for leaving school. And we do know that although ethnicity is not a criterion, 58 percent of young people who are in Child, Youth and Family care are Māori. We know there is a bias against Māori in policing, and there is definite evidence to suggest a bias within Child, Youth and Family. The Green Party is deeply concerned that existing biases within the system will be exacerbated by this initiative, and that young people who have in all likelihood already had very negative experiences of the State, will feel further marginalised.

I raised this with an official during the Social Services Committee’s consideration of this bill: acknowledging that, clearly, they could not identify Māori as being a risk factor—because, obviously, that would be perceived as being racist—and asked whether they were concerned that the effect of using contact with Child, Youth and Family as a risk factor might still target Māori. The official said: “Don’t worry, we’ll get them anyway.” This did not inspire confidence in me. And considering the very negative experiences of Māori with State services, real efforts need to be made to acknowledge the needs of Māori and address racism within the systems, before creating another system that will channel Māori, identify them as risks, and increase the State’s supervision of them. On this basis alone the Green Party cannot support this bill.

Further, this risk modelling requires increased information sharing between education services, Child, Youth and Family, and Work and Income, and potentially other core social services, in the future. Although health information is currently not included, it could be in the future, without parliamentary oversight in that decision-making process. We are concerned at this level of information sharing for the purpose of placing increased restrictions and supervision on to certain groups of people—particularly when the policy is yet to be proven effective. We are starting to hear more and more stories of people not going to Work and Income for housing or other help because they are worried that their personal information is going to be shared with other people—their employers or other agencies—and that that fear is stopping people from getting the help that they need. This initiative potentially increases that fear and the risk that people will not have confidence in the system and will not get the help that they are entitled to and that they need.

This was all about the data going into the system. We also need to consider the effectiveness of these interventions. The first thing to consider is that we know that the numbers of young people who are not in employment, education, or training have gone up under this Government, under this type of model, and that the Youth Service is still a relatively new intervention and comprehensive data is not yet available to establish whether the service is even effective or not. That is not the time to be extending it to people who are actually considered adults in our law. When this Government says that it is all about the data, it should apply that principle to its policy making, and make sure it has the data before it extends any legislation.

The Green Party shares the view of the Salvation Army that “the proposed extension of ‘young persons services’ and the associated obligation and sanctions, to 18 and 19 year olds is a clear example of the State placing its policy objectives ahead of the legitimate rights of citizens and that as a practice this is unwise and unfair.” That is a very considered and measured commentary on what this is doing.

Concerns were also raised by Kay Brereton on behalf of the National Beneficiary Advocacy Group about how the service currently operates. Clearly we all support wraparound services that are strength based for young people, but she pointed out that making young people’s incomes dependent on meeting certain obligations fundamentally changed, for worse, the relationship between young people and the people who are supposed to be in the position of helping them. Community organisations and the people who are running these programmes have always been there, traditionally, alongside young people, focusing on their strengths and helping them to build those strengths to move forward and achieve their aspirations. This bill puts those organisations into the role of police, with the requirement to cut those young people’s incomes if they do not meet their obligations. That is absolutely changing the structure of our society for the worse.

Increasing international evidence shows that interventions that work best are less targeted, are unconditional, and involve extra cash. So we do not support a measure that uses our precious resources to increase targeting and conditions. It is strongly risk based, rather than strength based.

Finally, of course, the usefulness of all of this modelling depends on what outcomes you are driving towards. This Government has set up a system where the goal of it all is to move people off benefits to save Government money. It is not about increasing skills in our society. It is not about even giving people access to higher-paid jobs or achieving their aspirations or even—in a very limited sense, in terms of looking at children—access to quality accessible childcare. No, it is only about reducing the future financial liability to this Government.

That is not a society. That is not how we look after each other. In this country, how you move ahead is by actually taking responsibility and making sure that people have the resources to participate and achieve their aspirations. We absolutely oppose this bill.

There is one more aspect of this bill that is deeply offensive, which is that it removes a right of appeal, and limits the right of appeal in review to decisions about people, only to the person involved. This has quite a significant impact when there are shared custody arrangements. In 2012 the Social Security Appeal Authority heard the case of a mother whose child was granted an unsupported child’s benefit, payable to another caregiver, and ruled that the law allowed affected people to appeal. This bill reverses and removes that right of appeal; it gives people only the right to judicial appeal, which requires legal aid. And that is an offence to the rights of natural justice.

Second Reading

It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill at this stage because New Zealand First fundamentally agrees with the purpose, the aim, and the intent of the bill. I do not think that there is any question from anybody, including the submitters or any other Opposition party, that we all support the intent, purpose, and aim of the bill, because what it means, fundamentally, is that youth in need are getting more support.

We do have some concerns that I will be going over, but the concerns are not with the “what”. The “what” is the fact that the extension of the Youth Service aims to improve the educational and social outcomes for young beneficiaries. When that occurs they will be getting some wraparound support, including youth coaching services such as budgeting help and parenting courses, which are all good things, and New Zealand First supports that. We also support the fact that there are some obligations put on to beneficiaries because this is not a handout; it is a hand up in a time of need. New Zealand First understands that it is a social contract, and as with any contract there are obligations, and New Zealand First supports those. We are talking about positive obligations for the outcomes of the youth, especially things like them being subjected to money management.

But, like I said, it is not about the “what”—the “what” is good—but it is about the “how” and “why”. So if we look at the heart of what the legislation is trying to change, which is the extension of the Youth Service to all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children, that is the “what”—we agree with that. The problem that New Zealand First fundamentally has with that is that all it is doing is increasing the number or the size of the ambulances at the bottom of the cliff. That is all that it is. Actually, it is an indirect admission by the Government, after 8 years of being in Government, that the system is failing. If the system was working, and if the investment approach the Government was taking was working, then there would be no need to extend the new service. The new service would be working—apparently it is already, by the Government’s standard. But how can that be if it needs to extend it? It does not make sense.

The issue is that the Government is refusing to address the actual reasons why youth get on to the benefit in the first place. So we talk about the fact that the youth who are on the benefit are doing well, and the Youth Service, according to National, is doing well, so we need to expand it. But where was the talk about why the youth were put on the benefit in the first place? Where are the preventative measures—the legislation and the policy and the principles and the ethos and the values—from the Government that would stop our youth getting on to the benefit in the first place? It has been mentioned before, but we are talking about the fact that New Zealand has a very, very high youth unemployment rate.

We have just seen from Statistics New Zealand that in the last quarter unemployment has actually risen overall, but especially for the youth and especially for the regions. We are talking about Northland: 8.5 percent. We are talking about Gisborne: 8.5 percent. Wanganui and the Manawatū is at 7.7 percent, which is now the second-highest rate in the country. The highest increase in unemployment has been on the West Coast, which is at about 1.5 percent.

We have heard about the “neet” rates. We have got 87,000 youth who are disengaged with society. They are not just out of employment or education but actually disengaged with everything in society. That is over 12 percent, close to 13 percent, and, as has been mentioned, it has never been below pre-2008 levels. So, apparently, that is a success for the Government. The Government cannot be talking about “Well, we’ve gone through a rough period of the GFC and the earthquake.”, because, apparently, the global financial crisis, according to Bill English, ended in 2012. So what has this Government been doing? That is not success. We are talking about the issues—social issues with the youth, jobs issues, education issues, and health issues—and the Government has not done anything to solve those problems in 8 years.

That is the same approach that we have just heard in the last week or two from the social housing Minister announcing we have got some more funding for emergency houses—that is not a good thing. That is not a positive announcement because what it is doing is demonstrably showing that the safety net has failed. This Government is supposed to have a social obligation to ensure that safety net is strong and can catch people. People are falling through it and becoming homeless. To come out and announce that the Government is going to invest more money into emergency housing is an admission of failure. It is an admission of failure, and it is the same approach that this Government is taking with this piece of legislation.

I would like to use an analogy about what this Government is doing to solve the youth unemployment issue and the issues with youth and “neets”. It is taking the approach of emptying a sink full of water with a teaspoon without turning the tap off first. That is what is happening. What it is doing by trying to increase the wraparound Youth Service to include 19-year-olds is changing the teaspoon to a tablespoon—that is all that is going to happen. It is not going to solve any of the issues. It is not going to solve any of the issues. It will continue, just like the previous 8 years.

The other main thing this legislation concerns is 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children who are considered to be at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency. I know that we have heard it previously from a few of the other members talking today, but that brings into discussion the risk predictive models that the Government is using. The bill’s commentary states: “Some submitters asked how the risk of long-term welfare dependency would be assessed.” We have got an issue with the way the risk predictive models are being utilised to assess the youth. On the face of things, Joe and Jane Bloggs would look at a risk predictive model and an investment approach and think that sounds logical. But if I could use an analogy—if we, for example, were trying to target millionaires and the predictive model said that all people who drive red cars are millionaires, the indicator we would be looking for would be red cars, but if all people who drive red cars are millionaires, that does not necessarily mean that all millionaires drive red cars.

What that means is we are going to use a predictive model, we are going to use a criterion, and we are going to use a tick box to try to predict how these youth—and they are not just youth but they are adults; 18 and 19-year-olds—will be a long-term financial liability on the State. This has all got to do with the investment approach, and the Government has had legislation go through just recently about putting the investment approach in the entire purpose of the rewrite of the Social Security Act. Everything, including this legislation—and this is a demonstrable fact of that—has to relate back to the investment approach.

These are the Ministry of Social Development’s own comments in the departmental disclosure statement in regards to risk modelling: “The risk model for the Youth Service extension is still in development and will be finalised prior to implementation of the Youth Service in August 2016.” So, first of all, it is still in development. I am not sure what the backbenchers of the Government are talking about, or what the Minister is talking about, when they say they are happy with the development of their risk modelling and that they know it works.

The worst thing is the fact the existing model used for the Youth Service is based on how the Government assesses the “neets”, and we have just heard that in the last 8 years it has never been lower than pre-2008 levels. We have had a record increase in the last quarter of young unemployed males. It is going up. It is not being solved by this Government, and yet this Government wants to use that same predictive model that it uses for “neets” for this legislation. So it is still being developed, and it has demonstrably failed in the existing model.

There are a number of issues that New Zealand First has with this legislation, but we do agree with the intent, and that is why we will be supporting it at this stage. I think that the Committee stage and third reading will be an interesting discussion and, hopefully, we can get some resolution for the concerns that New Zealand First has, but we will be supporting it at this stage. Thanks.

Second Reading

I am taking this call to support the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill in the second reading. As a member of the Social Services Committee, I want to thank each and every submitter. Looking at the number of submissions, we received 10 submissions, and I would say that was reasonable for this bill. Each and every submission was given thorough consideration and, as a result, this bill has come back with some good amendments.

This bill addresses a very serious social issue, and that is long-term welfare dependency. We know that when people go on a benefit at a young age they tend to stay on a benefit for a very long time. It is very important to engage youth in education—it could be just simple coaching, like budgeting courses or parenting courses—and it is important to help them get into employment, because that is the best thing we can do to help them. The Youth Service is aimed at improving social and educational outcomes for young beneficiaries, and this bill is to extend the Youth Service to 19-year-old beneficiaries with children and 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children but who are considered to be at a significant risk of staying on benefit for a long term.

This bill is about extending the support to a bigger group that is at risk of staying on benefit for a long term by helping them get into education, training, or employment. It is really important to engage youth, and it is not an easy task to engage youth in education, especially youth who are dependent on a benefit. This Government is fully committed to helping our young people. With the commitment that we have from the Government, and with the support of the community and families, we can definitely make the change that we want to see. The member from the Greens spoke about the investment approach, and she was critical of the investment approach, which is not just for the wider economic good but it is going to be good for them as individuals too.

Extending the Youth Service to 19-year-old beneficiaries with children and 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children—those who are considered to be at high risk of staying on benefit—is a good step. The Youth Service programme was set up in 2012—yes, I heard that members are saying it is a new programme, but it is not that new. It was set up in 2012, and it has been successful.

💬 Louisa Wall: Where’s the evaluation report?

There has been some evaluation done. An evaluation was done in 2014, and the evaluation showed that the programme is making a very positive impact on the lives of young beneficiaries. One evaluation that was done in March 2014 showed that for a number of people—young beneficiaries, those who were on a youth payment—when they moved to a work-age benefit, the numbers reduced by 8 percent. The numbers dropped from 38 percent to 30 percent, so it is definitely giving us positive outcomes.

The overall aim of this bill is to have fewer people relying on benefits. We know that employment is the best way of getting out of poverty, and that is why we are focused on this. We have recently also done welfare reforms. That was also to help people get into employment, and as a result we have thousands fewer children in benefit-dependent families. That is a very positive outcome. This bill is to help more and more young people have better opportunities in their lives. I support this bill and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Second Reading

The next call is a split call. Denise Roche—5 minutes.

Second Reading

I rise to take a short call for the Greens. As my colleague Jan Logie said earlier, the Greens will be opposing this bill. We have some very grave concerns about it, and they are basically outlined in the report that came back from the Social Services Committee. I want to touch on a few of them and quote from some of the submissions that were made to the committee, which highlighted some really pertinent points that I think this House should be considering, particularly when we come to the Committee of the whole House stage.

One of our concerns is that, essentially, this issue is not about the welfare of young people; it is about getting them off and out of the welfare system. It is not about ensuring that they have positive outcomes and the ability to be able to move from very low-paid work and poverty through to a much better-paid existence through tertiary education—that is not part of the deal. What is part of the focus here is getting these young people into low-paid jobs, because the only type of education that they will be aspiring to is National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2, and that is not an aspirational way to approach the future of our young people.

We support wraparound services for vulnerable young people—we absolutely do support that—but we have serious doubts that this is the way to go about it. We are worried that the Youth Service, as it has been outlined in this bill and as it has been playing out since it was introduced, is really around the privatisation of core services from the Government, which is actually counter-productive to young people.

I take on board the comments that were made by a Brereton from the National Beneficiary Advocacy Consultation Group. It had a very coherent submission. It basically said: “This service does not provide wraparound support and guidance, but contracted out case management, where Youth Providers are given the power to recommend sanctions to enforce the obligations imposed by W&I. Youth are not able to form trusting supportive relationships where they can discuss their fears and failures, as their ‘mentor’ is their case manager and might sanction them for their mistake.”

I think that is an absolutely crucial point that we should be taking on board. How do you empower a young person to change their life when they are afraid to talk to the person who is supposed to be helping them because that person has the potential to sanction them, to make them poorer, and to take them further down from where they are at the moment? I think, further on in that submission, Kay Brereton points to international research that shows that in this type of situation, where it has played out in other countries the case managers “cease to be mentors, and become enforcers teaching the rules to the unwilling.” That is what we are concerned about.

We share the concerns of the Privacy Commissioner as well, who believes that young people should be informed about their risk rating. What it says in this bill is that, essentially, young people can correct mistakes in information but they will not actually be able to appeal, and that, I think, is a breach of human rights.

We are concerned that the risk criteria captures Māori above every other type of person, and my colleague Jan Logie outlined the bias that exists within Government departments, which is basically racist, and we do not want to see that continue either.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: That’s just putting it bluntly.

Ha, ha! Well, you know—we support a strengths-based approach, and this is not it. This is actually a model that will undermine the autonomy of young people, and it is not what we want to see our Government supporting. We will be opposing this bill.

Second Reading

I call Marama Fox—5 minutes.

Second Reading

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Kai te pīrangi au ki te whāriki i ngā whakaaro o Te Pāti Māori e pā ana ki tēnei pire. Kāre e kore he āwangawanga kai roto i te pire nei, heoi anō, kai te tautoko i tēnei wā i runga i te whakaaetanga o Te Minita kai te hiahia ia ki te noho ki te tīni wētahi wāhanga kai roto.

[Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to lay out the views of the Māori Party in regard to this bill. Without a doubt there are concerns in this bill and, accordingly, we support it at this point in time on the basis that the Minister has agreed that he wants to sit down and amend parts in it.]

We in the Māori Party have grave concerns about a number of issues in this piece of legislation. Up until maybe a few hours ago we were prepared to not give support to this because we had tried to get some changes through and we were unable to do so. We have since then had some ongoing discussions and have had some guarantees from the Minister that we can continue to make some changes through the Committee stage to address the issues that we have. So with that, we will be supporting this bill in the second reading, and we look forward to those ongoing conversations around the issues that we have.

I am just going to articulate some of those issues with a couple of little anecdotes, if I might. I have five sons. No. 5 son struggled at school, for a number of different reasons. At one school he went to, they said: “This boy knows nothing about maths. In fact, he’s so far behind we don’t think he is ever going to be able to catch up.” They identified issues of his language barrier because he had come from a Māori-medium school. So we changed schools because we thought: “We don’t want to be underserved by you any more, thank you very much.” At the next school he came to, he was in a maths class, and I asked: “How’s he doing?”. I got told by the teacher, who was long-term relieving: “Your son is a predator.” I was, like: “Excuse me?”. The teacher said: “The young little boy who sits next to him in class is so scared of your son that he will not even look at him. I watched your son steal things from his bag and he did nothing about it.” I said: “Did you tell him off?”. The teacher said: “I’m telling you.”

So I go: “Son, what the heck?”. My son said to me: “Mum, we were playing touch at lunchtime. I put my stuff in my mate’s bag. He’s on his way to class. That’s my good friend. I came in late from playing touch and got straight to work. Instead of disturbing the class that was already working, I just grabbed my books out and sat down.”

If we are going to be information sharing from school to State based on a whole lot of litany of underserving our tamariki in our schooling system by prejudices that are being held by people who do not deserve to be standing in front of those students—some of them, because that is not all the teaching profession by any means. But this is an example, and I could point to a hundred of them, where prejudices against young people have inhibited their learning, where they have fallen out of the system and have then gone on to be those people who would be targeted under this model. Why? Because of the risk profile that they are presented with. We do not think that that is the way to target young people. Yes, we understand targeted services, we ask for them all the time—we get that. But you cannot blanketly say to a group of people that just because you walk like a duck and talk like a duck, you must be a duck.

We also have some grave reservations about the three strikes and the sanctions to young people. Three strikes—you do not turn up, you miss an appointment, something does not happen, and you are off the benefit. How does that then support that young person? The results of that are sleeping on Lambton Quay right now. That is what the results of that policy do.

So we have had some discussions with the Minister. I am pleased the Minister has recognised that actually there are other ways that we can do this. So if you are removed off the benefit, does your support stop or does the money stop? Is someone obligated to come and find you and see that you are OK? All of those questions we will continue to have discussions on. We will continue to come to this House and, hopefully, we will get those changes at the Committee stage.

Second Reading

It is my pleasure to take a short call on the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill in its second reading today. As we have heard today from my learned colleagues Mrs Parmar and Mr Doocey, the numbers are scary. For 18 to 19-year-olds on jobseeker support, they will spend, on average, a whopping 13 years on welfare. To consign these young people to the scrapheap and simply keep throwing more and more money at them without wrapping the support around them is simply not acceptable. It is a bad investment. It is not affordable for us as a country financially, but what is more, it is not affordable for us socially. It is soul-destroying to be on a benefit and to be beholden to the State for everything. We owe it to these young people to invest in them so that they can be successful, so that they can be independent, and so that they can be proud. More importantly, they need to be meaningful contributors to society as a whole, but I guess the highest priority for me is that they become meaningful contributors to their families and their children. Breaking the cycle of dependency and wrapping all possible support around these young people is an absolute necessity.

We believe in them. We know that when they find their way into work, into training, and into education, everyone wins—the downward spiral is broken. More of the same will deliver more of the same. We will wrap support around these young people, each and every one of them individually, and help them achieve. We must do something to ensure that these young people are better equipped to better their own prospects, and I am confident that the work that the Hon Anne Tolley is doing in this field is making a real difference. I have great pleasure in commending this bill to the House.

Second Reading

Talofa lava, Mr Assistant Speaker. I have a couple of issues I would like to address about this particular bill. I think my underlying theme is going to be that, actually, the Government needs to get a dose of reality. It needs to do a reality check when it is developing legislation because—we are supporting this legislation’s second reading, but we have some grave reservations.

The first reservation we have is about the effectiveness of this Youth Service. Mrs Parmar talked about the analysis that had been done and said that it is proving to be a really good service. Well, we would like to see that analysis, thank you very much. We would actually like to see the evidence, rather than putting some more resource into a service when we have no idea whether it is effective.

💬 Matt Doocey: You didn’t listen to my speech, obviously.

Here is a dose of reality, Mr Doocey: there are more young people who are not in education, who are not in work, and who are not in training. How is this bill going to address that? How are we going to address the reality for our young people when we cannot get the figures out of the Government? Give us the evidence, please—give us the evidence.

💬 Meka Whaitiri: A mirage.

It is a mirage. The intention of this is to reduce welfare dependency—that is what it says in the purpose of the bill. Actually, it is not. The intention of this is to get people off the Government’s books in terms of benefits, but it is not about getting them into work. It is not about the focus into work, because we have no idea whether this service is effective in the first place at putting those wraparound services around young people. Is it increasing their educational standards? Is it increasing their ability to obtain work? Is it increasing their ability to parent well? Well, show us the figures—show us the figures—before you make commitments like this. Where is this evidence? Where is the evidence, because there is no doubt that young people in this situation actually need the support to increase their ability not only to get work but to find work that is actually going to pay them a decent wage so that they can then live a fulfilling life and take care of the needs of their children.

There is a focus on getting people into work, but not just any job and not jobs that actually cost them to go to. What does it cost a young person to put their child into childcare, to access transport—what does it cost for them to do that, and has this been factored into supporting these young people to get what they need to get off benefit and into jobs? And tell me one other thing: where are the jobs? Where are the jobs for these young people, and where is the Government’s evidence that when people come off benefits, they are actually going into work? Where are they going? Show me where they are going, because I do not see any evidence that people coming off benefits are actually going into work and actually making a—[Interruption] Where is it? Where is the evidence? I have had a little pipe-up there from the Minister. Show me where it is that you can track people off benefits into work, because I do not see any evidence of that.

I want to refer to something that has been canvassed in this House, which is the effect of sanctions on people. How is it that you can actually cut somebody’s benefit when they cannot turn up for an appointment at Work and Income? Each and every one of us electorate MPs has had queries from people who have said to us: “We couldn’t make it because we’ve had to pay our power bill. We didn’t have enough money to hop on the bus to go to our Work and Income appointment. They’ve cut our benefit in half.” We are talking about people with children—half. How is that a responsible Government approach? How is that a responsible Government—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: They’re laughing.

They are laughing—they are laughing. Let me quote one of the submitters about sanctioning young people, which is actually abhorrent. This is abhorrent—OK. “The sanctions in place currently resemble a three strike policy approach to welfare distribution. The first time an obligation is not met, 50% of the welfare recipient’s benefit will be cut, the second time, their benefit is suspended and the third time means a full cancellation of their benefit”—excuse me? Excuse me?

💬 Chris Bishop: You’re voting for this.

Because we want some changes made here. This Government is scared of the “p” word. The “p” word is poverty, and yet with this bill it is throwing young people on the scrap heap and right into the face of poverty.

The relationship that young people are supposed to have with the person at Work and Income is supposed to be mutually equal and they are supposed to have rights and obligations, and then what do they get faced with? The possibility of having their benefit cancelled. How is that an equal relationship? When I worked in family violence, we talked about the cycle of violence and the power wheel.

💬 Hon Member: Abusive relationships.

It is—it is completely an abusive relationship. There is a huge power imbalance when a young person who finds it difficult to operate in the world anyway has to negotiate and cajole and work with people at Work and Income. It is absolutely, absolutely abhorrent.

Let us then look at the predictive risk model, shall we? How much evidence has been put into this predictive risk model? I recall being on the Social Services Committee and hearing what was going to go into the predictive risk model. Let us see what the factors are that the Government is going to use to determine whether the young person is from a family that has had previous welfare issues—be it race, their age. The predictive risk model is about what? It is about determining what we already know. It is about determining what we already know and, actually, we need to find different solutions, and cutting benefits is certainly not a solution that I would be recommending.

I really tautoko what the Green Party has been saying in its minority view, because—what did it say, OK. The modelling is about considering “educational outcomes, prior contact with Child, Youth and Family, gender, and reasons for leaving school.” That is supposed to be the predictive risk model to determine someone’s long-term dependency on welfare. Where is the aspiration in this? Where is the aspiration for these young people? Where is the support for these young people to actually get off welfare and into decent-paying jobs?

💬 Jono Naylor: That’s what the bill’s about. Read the bill.

OK, tell me where the jobs are. Tell me how these young people are going to transition into work. The Government cannot tell us how it is tracking where these young people are going. We have no idea where these young people are going. They are certainly not going into work, because the rates for young people not in education, not in training, and not in work are going up. So you cannot tell me that they are actually getting into work.

The last point I want to make is about the right of appeal. The right of appeal—we should always have the ability to appeal and review a decision, whether that is as a beneficiary or as any other person in our society. We slide down a slippery slope when we start taking those rights away from people, and especially people who are in a position of diminished power, such as a beneficiary. To me, this is one of the most significant aspects of the bill, which we should really give full consideration to at the Committee stage. Everyone should have the right to appeal a decision that impacts on their ability to actually live a decent life and, in this case, the ability to actually have any income. There will be some vigorous debates in the Committee stage on this bill, I have no doubt, but thank you very much for the opportunity to make my contribution.

The 2016 Budget of Bill English is a truly excellent Budget. How do we know that? We know that because of the way the Opposition has reacted to the Budget. Instead of challenging the Budget, instead of actually going through the Budget, instead of questioning the Budget, it has decided to do a diversion—a little diversion in the political environment. In late-breaking, “stop the presses” political news of the last 24 hours, Labour and the Greens have announced that they are going to campaign against the National Government at the next election. That is the news—they have decided that they are going to campaign against the Government at the next election. That is the news. They are not going to share policy, they are not going to have any arrangements around seats, there will be no commitment afterwards—no commitment afterwards—they are just going to campaign against the Government.

Do not take it from me. They went on the television this morning to explain what they were about with this big announcement yesterday. Mr Paul Henry said to them “So nothing has changed at all—nothing changes at all?”, and Andrew Little said: “No. Actually, what the agreement does is confirm what’s been happening for the last few months.” Metiria Turei said: “The first step is telling people that we’re going to work together.” Mr Henry said “But you must have had a discussion. You must have worked together to now.”, and Metiria said: “We’ve actually been working together for the last 18 months, but today we’re announcing we’re working together.” So there you have it: the Labour Party and the Green Party have announced that they are going to campaign at the next election against the Government.

The Labour Party has given the Greens a rose—it has. Do not just take it from me: they literally tweeted love hearts to each other on their Twitter accounts. They tweeted love hearts to each other on their Twitter accounts. Labour has given the Greens a rose, which makes Winston Naz. It does make Winston Naz. I feel a bit for Naz. I feel a bit for Naz.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a longstanding requirement in this House that you cannot refer to someone by their first name, and in his case he should put “Sir” in front of it.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I want to make a comment. [Interruption] Order! There have been a number of times in the last 2 days where Ministers, particularly, have referred to members by their Christian names only. It is unacceptable. It is against the Standing Orders. Members will be addressed by their Christian name and surname, or as Mr or Ms and by their surnames only. We cannot have the informality of speaking to members across the House using their Christian names alone.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Therefore, that makes the Rt Hon Winston Peters Naz, and that is sad for Winston Peters but probably sadder for Naz, to be fair. So there you have it—the announcement that wasn’t.

Except there was one interesting thing about this nonsense. Despite the fact that there was nothing new, there was one small thing that was new. Despite the fact that those members said all bets are off after the election and there is no deal after election day, they felt obliged to say that Grant Robertson would be the finance Minister if they won. Who was feeling insecure? Who required his leader to go out and speak for him because he was feeling a bit insecure? What we know is that this discussion occurred last Thursday night. It occurred last Thursday night. The two of them, Andrew Little and Grant Robertson, were sitting, having a beer—on YouTube, as it happens. They were sitting, having a beer, on YouTube. Mr Little said to Grant “I’m going to announce a deal with the Green Party.”, and Grant said “Well, that’s OK, although—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have just mentioned to the House that we cannot have the informality of referring to members simply by their Christian names.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. And so Grant Robertson said to Andrew Little “I need to be announced as the finance guy, as part of this deal.” while drinking his unfinishable beer that he had on the YouTube video—the beer that never finished, the beer that just kept going and going. So anyway the only thing we know, out of this deal, is that Grant Robertson would be their finance guy because he was worried that he would not be.

I worry about Julie Anne—what about Julie Anne Genter? What has happened to Julie Anne?

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Julie Anne Genter has been forgotten. She has been forgotten in this. She has become errant. She has been thrown under a bus by this Labour-Greens deal. Julie Anne Genter has been thrown under a bus by this deal, which is ironic. It is ironic, actually, because she is in favour of public transport. But she was thrown under the bus by this deal.

The whole show that we have seen in the last 24 hours is much less than it seems. It is The Bachelor, but there is no happy ending for these guys. They are doing it because they cannot respond to Bill English’s Budget, which is a strong Budget that invests in a growing economy, that delivers results for New Zealanders, and that invests in innovation, health, and public services. This is a strong Budget. The reaction from Labour and the Greens is absolutely worse than pitiful. It is a complete diversion. It is an announcement about nothing.

That is how proud Steven Joyce is of this Budget: he mentioned the word “Budget” twice in 6 minutes, and nothing else—there was nothing else whatsoever about the details in the Budget. He is obsessed with the reality TV show The Bachelor. The show he should be talking about is The Biggest Loser. That is the show that he should be talking about, and Steven Joyce knows who that is.

In regard to this Budget, I take the word of Dominick Stephens, the Westpac economist who produced a publication the day after the Budget entitled New Zealand Government Budget 2016: Fiscal mirage. That is what he said—he said it is a fiscal mirage. This is why. He said: “it’s clear that the improvement in the fiscal outlook has largely come from economic projections … rather than from policy decisions.” That is the point. There is no plan here to grow jobs. There is no plan here to get New Zealanders back into work, to get young people back into work, to transform the regions. There is just a fiscal mirage. Bill English is like some kind of Moses on Mogadon, stumbling about the desert for 40 years trying to find an economic plan, and it is not there. That is why Steven Joyce had nothing to talk about when he stood up today, because there is nothing in this.

There is nothing in this Budget, but the thing is to call it boring is actually an insult. It gives it too much credit. It is not boring; it is useless. It is a failure. It is hopeless. Another economist, Ganesh Nana, described it as breathtakingly visionless—breathtakingly visionless—and that is exactly what this Budget is. It has failed the key tests that New Zealanders would put on a Budget. What will it do to make their lives and their families’ lives better and easier?

If we take a look at the core things that are the building blocks of opportunity, which every single Budget should be built upon, this one failed. In health, the Budget once again failed to meet the basic test of keeping up with demographic change from an ageing population and an increasing population. It falls short again, adding to the $1.7 billion of effective cuts in the health budget. Every member of this House knows that district health boards (DHBs) around New Zealand are not keeping up. They are not keeping up with hip and knee surgeries. They are not keeping up with mental health services. Every DHB in this country is struggling, and this Budget failed to deliver an increase in funding that would see New Zealanders get the health system they actually deserve. And so New Zealanders will pay.

The New Zealanders who are parents will pay as well, because we have an education budget that, amazingly, freezes operational funding. Hekia Parata can stand up in this House and tell us: “Actually, we are targeting the funding.” Well, no, they are not, because it turns out that the targeted funding actually just goes to the schools. So it is not social investment; it is social disinvestment—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Divestment.

—divestment. Thank you, Carmel Sepuloni—divestment. It is not saying “There are 150,000 people in need, and we are going to get something to them.”; it is actually reducing the amount of money that schools need, and then claiming that it is targeted. It is disingenuous, and the Minister of Education should stand up in this House and say the truth to New Zealand parents: they are going to pay more. New Zealand parents will pay more. They are already paying 10 times the rate of inflation in terms of the increase in so-called voluntary donations, and a frozen Budget like this will not help.

Then we come to housing. Everyone in New Zealand was expecting the Budget to say something about housing—the biggest crisis facing New Zealand—and Nick Smith, he came up with the goods for the Government. He came up with the goods: another 25 hectares to go with the 12 hectares that he got from the last Budget—37 hectares out of a promised 500 hectares. Dr Smith’s maths might not be fantastic, but even he can work out that he is failing Auckland when it comes to actually doing the one thing that this Budget needed to do. Three words, Dr Smith: build more houses.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: We are.

That is what this Budget needed to do. He says: “We are.” We have been through this. A consent is not a house, Dr Smith. It is just not—you cannot live in a consent. What Aucklanders need, and what the rest of New Zealand needs, is a State-sponsored housebuilding programme. It is the only way that we will get affordable homes built in New Zealand. Bill English, in his pre-Budget speech, said it: only 5 percent of homes built in New Zealand in the last 10 years have been affordable homes. It is not going to happen without the Government behind it.

The Labour Party has been saying since 2012 “Let’s do KiwiBuild. Let’s build 100,000 homes so that New Zealanders can actually get on to the homeownership ladder.”, rather than having the worst homeownership rates in 64 years, which is what we have got today in New Zealand.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Not true.

It is true, Dr Smith. It is absolutely true. We have the worst homeownership—and this is the problem. He is so out of touch. He sits in the House every day tut-tutting, saying that it is not true. Get out into the real world, Dr Smith. Get up to Auckland. I think they have gotten over seeing your face on the billboards. Get up there and listen to Aucklanders about what is happening in the housing market.

But here is the issue. Fundamentally, the housing system is a system, and when people cannot afford to buy houses, that pushes them into the private rental market. That pushes the cost of rents up, and that pushes New Zealanders out of the private rental market into having to find social housing, which is already overstretched, and that, in turn, pushes people who would get into social housing out looking for emergency housing. Right now, today in Auckland, there are people living in cars and garages, crying out for help and for emergency housing. Last weekend in Auckland there were no emergency housing beds available—none whatsoever. The wonderful whānau at Te Puea Marae stepped up, and I want to say, on record, congratulations on that whānau for stepping up and saying: “We will look after that.” But what kind of indictment is that on New Zealand, that today we rely on Te Puea Marae to be the social service provider? That is the core moral responsibility of a Government: to ensure that its citizens are housed if they cannot house themselves.

This Government has lost its moral compass. It has lost its ability to responsibly govern when it comes to housing, when there are people queuing up—people coming all the way from Whakatāne because they are so desperate to find a house somewhere, and, more than that, to find someone who actually cares. That is what they went looking for at Te Puea Marae—someone who cared—because they did not find it in the National Government. They could not find anybody over there who cared enough to step up in this Budget and provide the emergency housing that is needed, because this Government has lost its way. It is out of touch. It does not understand the plight of New Zealanders.

And it is not just Auckland. In the last couple of weeks there has been story after story about homelessness. Homelessness in my old home town of Dunedin—I do not remember that when I grew up there. I do not remember people living on the streets then. Dr Smith said that ever since he has been in Parliament, people have been coming to him. Well, I have got news for Dr Smith: it is worse, and it is getting worse and worse and worse under his watch. This Government has completely failed New Zealanders with this Budget.

In this Budget we also see that in the next 2 years real wages will fall. Real wages will fall—they will go down. All the promises in the world from the Government cannot get around that. Wages are not keeping up. Unemployment goes up. Anne Tolley sits over there—one in 10 people in Gisborne are out of work. The Government does not care. It is not doing anything about it. The Budget fails those people.

Well, I have got good news for people: a change of Government is coming. A change of Government—built on health, education, and housing—that New Zealanders can be proud of. A Government that is actually prepared to invest in the future, have a proper programme for infrastructure, build roads, build rail, and not pretend that the Inland Revenue Department computer system is infrastructure, as the Government has done in this Budget. A Government that actually says that wherever you live in New Zealand, you have the right to expect that there will be a decent job for you to do, a decent house to live in, a good hospital, and good schools, because they are the building blocks of opportunity in New Zealand. That is what the next Labour Government will bring. A Budget that we would bring to this House would be one that was about a fair share for all New Zealanders, and prosperity—not just the very few at the top doing well, but every New Zealander getting a shot at success. That is what a future Labour Government will bring, and that is what a change of Government will bring.

I am delighted to join in this Budget debate—the 26th that I have participated in as a parliamentarian—which, if you look at the core economic statistics, is the best Budget in a generation. It does not matter whether you look at the issue of the balancing of the books, whether you look at job growth, whether you look at income growth, whether you look at the state of the Government’s level of debt, or whether you look at the issue of inflation. I challenge members opposite to tell me a Budget in the last 25 years that has had a better set of core economic statistics than Bill English’s 2016 Budget. Let me go through each of them.

Economic growth—3.3 percent, 2.6 percent, 2.8 percent—3 strong years, both now and into the future. Tell me an OECD developed country that has its economy growing stronger than ours. I can remember Budget after Budget after Budget in this Parliament where we have had depressing numbers about our economy scratching to make 1 percent growth, let alone those strong numbers.

Let us look at the issue of jobs. When I came to this Parliament unemployment in New Zealand was 11 percent. We all know that there are countries in the world right now—the US, Europe—where unemployment numbers are up at 10, 11, 12, 15 percent. There are countries where 25 percent of young people are unemployed. And what this Budget shows is that not only is unemployment set to go lower than 5 percent but also, over the next 4 years, there will be another 170,000 jobs in our country. I again challenge the members opposite: show me a Budget in the last 25 years that has been as strong in terms of job growth.

Let us look at the issues—the hard issues—around living within one’s means. I have sat in this House so often, listening to Budget debates that are riddled with red ink—billions and billions of dollars of deficits, right through the 1990s. Look at those Budget figures in 2009, when Treasury said this country was going to run deficits for the next 10 years. Let us look at that Budget figure only 5 years ago, when the Budget presented in this House had a deficit of $17 billion.

I say to Mr English that to deliver a Budget balance last year, again this year, and next year is a stunning result, and so too are those future surpluses that are going to give this country choices.

💬 Dr David Clark: You borrowed more than Muldoon.

And then take an issue—the member raises the question of debt. When I came to this Parliament, this country had debt of over 90 percent of GDP—90 percent. What this Budget shows is debt levels of 25 percent. Do you know what—

💬 Hon Annette King: Who got it down?

Well, Annette King asked this question. Do you know what level of debt for New Zealand was projected by Treasury when I picked up my ministerial warrant and joined Cabinet in 2008? It said that New Zealand’s debt in this year, 2016, was going to be 110 percent of GDP—110 percent of GDP. Annette King, it was your legacy, and Bill English has it down to 25 percent. I challenge the members opposite and say: tell me the country in the OECD that has got a lower level of debt than New Zealand, because now it is even lower than Australia, which was the gold standard. Again, I say to Bill English, congratulations.

In so many Budgets that I have been a part of, the big debate has been regarding the cost of living—the cost to a Kiwi family of paying their food bill, of paying for basic costs of living. When we came into Government, Annette King, inflation was running at 5 percent. What did that mean? That meant that families were going backwards by 5 percent per year. Bill English has presided over an economy that has the lowest level of inflation in 50 years, at only 0.4 percent. I say that that is what you get with good economic management.

Equally, I remember so many Budgets where the big debate was interest rates. Why do interest rates matter? I will tell you why: because for families struggling to pay their mortgage, for farms, and for businesses that are wanting to invest in growth in jobs, interest rates matter a heck of a lot. Why are we not debating about interest rates? That is because they are at the lowest level in 40 years, and that is good for Kiwi families and that is good for Kiwi businesses.

And, at the same time, I thought the gall of Grant Robertson to say that there was nothing in this Budget for health. Well, let me tell him something. This Budget provides for bowel cancer screening. I have had people die—mates die—from bowel cancer. There are hundreds of New Zealanders every year who die from bowel cancer, and this Budget is going to provide a screening programme that is going to save over a hundred Kiwi lives a year. I say that is good news. And I say that the extra $70 million for Pharmac, which is going to enable this country to have more drugs so that we can prevent diseases so that we can save New Zealanders’ lives, is good news.

I openly acknowledge that because New Zealand’s economy is doing so well, tens of thousands of Kiwis are voting confidence in New Zealand and moving back to our country. That is true, and that is putting pressure on housing. But here is the real question: which Government has the wherewithal to deal with the root causes that are so pertinent to the issues of housing? I had to agree with Phil Twyford when he said 2 weeks ago that the most important issue around housing is land supply—on that we agree, absolutely. Here are the numbers: over the last 25 years the price of a section in Auckland has gone from $100,000 to $450,000, and if the section costs $450,000, of course there will not be an affordable home built on that section. So if this Parliament is serious about dealing with Auckland’s housing issues, we have to deal with the issues that have sections in Auckland costing $450,000.

There is the problem. We, on this side of the House, are very clear on the solutions. That is why we are reforming the Resource Management Act. That is why we are driving a new Auckland Unitary Plan. That is why, tomorrow, we will be announcing a new national policy statement on the supply of land for housing. But here is the rub: for all the love fest that occurred yesterday between Labour and the Greens, on the issue that Labour admits is the most fundamental to solving housing, these guys—Labour and the Greens—are a hundred miles apart.

The Green Party strongly believes in metropolitan urban limits. It is behind the policies that have seen section prices go stupid over the last 20 years. What I say to this Parliament is that the dysfunctionality on such a fundamental issue as metropolitan urban limits and housing shows that Labour and the Greens do not have the solution. They can have all the exchanges of roses in a Bachelor-style episode—[Interruption]—but they need to resolve, Annette King, the fundamental policy issues like Resource Management Act (RMA) reform and metropolitan urban limits if we are to deliver long-term, sustainable solutions around housing.

So I simply challenge Labour members opposite: are the Greens on the same page as you on scrapping metropolitan urban limits? Are they on the same page in respect of the requirements to reform the RMA, where they now recognise the requirements for reform? Because the truth is that members opposite are all talk on housing, but actually, around the core issues that we need to address, they have no idea, and they have not resolved fundamental issues like land supply, which are critical to finding the solution, long term, for Kiwi families.

The Minister who just resumed his seat, Nick Smith, spent the last 10 minutes telling us that this was the best Budget of a generation. Any young person who might have had the unfortunate pleasure of having watched that speech just now would surely be asking themselves the question “Which generation?”, because it will certainly not feel like theirs. When you have the lowest homeownership rate since the 1950s, people of this generation are not patting themselves on the back and saying: “How lucky we all are.”

When it comes to employment opportunities, we have over 87,000 young people who not only are not in employment but are not in education or training, and are desperately looking for opportunities so they can put a roof over their heads—[Interruption]—and I would add, Minister Tolley, that that is 25,000 more than when your Government took office. That group of young people is not saying that this feels like the best Budget of a generation. In fact, what is the measure of a Budget? What is the measure of a successful Budget? You cannot sleep under the roof of a graph of GDP.

People will be measuring the success of a Budget for themselves. How will they feel better off, if at all? When you have got a situation where wages are not looking to rise, according to the Government’s own Budget, in the next 2 years and when you have got a Government that has borrowed more than Muldoon—more than Muldoon—which generation is Nick Smith talking about? And for all of the platitudes about how, relative to other countries, New Zealand is in not quite the same shape as other places, that thanks goes to Helen Clark and Michael Cullen because they were the ones who got net Crown debt to almost zero before this Government came into office. They set us up for a rainy day—they set us up for a rainy day.

I will give some applause to Nick Smith. At least he talked about the Budget. The last few speeches I have heard from Ministers did not even touch on some of the Budget initiatives. In fact, I have heard more, creepy, discussion about The Bachelor from some of those Government Ministers—all of them male, I have to point out—than I have heard about the Budget itself, and maybe that is because this Budget did not present a vision that was worth talking about, and I have sought that almost every single Budget. Budgets are a Government’s opportunity to tell the people of New Zealand where they are going and how it is going to tackle the big issues that New Zealand is facing.

Not only did this Budget not present a vision but it did not even address the here and the now. I should have expected that because, recently, when the Prime Minister was asked about his view on the fact that people were sleeping in cars, what was his response? “Those people should go to Work and Income.” Any Prime Minister or any MP who has done constituency work knows what a ridiculous statement that was. We all have people coming through our office doors, day in, day out, who have been to Work and Income and have been turned away either because they did not fill in a form properly or there was a bit of information missing, or there was some little part of an obligation that they were not quite aware of.

There have been, according to Work and Income workers whom I have spoken to, more changes to the welfare system in the past year and a half by policy direction than there were in the welfare reforms a year ago, and all of them are discretionary little blockages to stop people getting the help they need. Any Prime Minister who is talking to his own electorate office staff or to people—or to people—would know that. I feel the same way about the housing issue that we are facing now. Any Prime Minister worth his salt would know that the need for the 3,000 State houses that this Government has sold is coming back tenfold now that we have this housing crisis.

I challenge Nick Smith, I challenge the Prime Minister, and I challenge any National member to go and visit Te Puea Marae, where they have done what needed to be done for their community. They opened their doors and they gave people who were desperate a bed. For the Minister to stand up in the House today and say that one of the families that has been referred to, which has a brand new baby, was denied housing because family members did not fill in their forms properly and tell Housing New Zealand they had a baby on the way—well, that just speaks to the problem. They were homeless, they needed a place to live, and, naturally, they were scared that if they talked about having a baby on the way someone might take their child away from them because they could not find a roof.

That is the reason we should be absolutely making sure nothing stands in the way of having a couple like that, let alone a couple with a child, housed. To instead explain it away as a rational reason why they now find themselves at the mercy of being housed by social agencies—and not social agencies; a marae that simply is responding to need—is simply not good enough. I met that little baby, and I would challenge the Minister to tell me that simply the incorrect filling in of a form is a good reason why that family is not housed. He needs to visit them.

I would challenge all of those members to do the same with education—go and talk to a principal and ask them whether the targeting of 150,000 students, leaving behind more than 600,000, is adequate. The Government has frozen the education budget. Health is pretty much the same. It needed $600 million just to tread water, and anyone who has had a family member show up at a hospital recently would have seen how much pressure our health services are under.

One shining light—and I will acknowledge this one shining light, particularly while Anne Tolley is in the House—is the $36 million that in the next year will go into Child, Youth and Family to ease the pressure on these front-line services. That is welcomed. The expert advisory panel that wrote about Child, Youth and Family modernisation and reform acknowledged that it was facing a deficit that could have been as big as $38 million. It needed that cash injection, but we also need decent investment and early intervention if we are going to improve the outcome for kids.

Those are the big ones, but perhaps what also deserves some headlines is what is happening in some of the portfolios where the Government is hoping that people will not be noticing—for example, the cuts being experienced in conservation. Also, there has been a reduction of about $10 million per year going into water quality, but then again, if your aim is only to make your rivers wadeable instead of swimmable, perhaps you do not need to spend as much money on water quality. Perhaps that is how you make your savings.

And for the arts community, I have to respond to that as the shadow portfolio holder. On Budget night we had Minister Barry crowing about the investment into the arts. It equates to about $2 million per annum.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: What’s that member ever contributed?

What have I ever done? Well, surprisingly, I am not on the Treasury benches, Maggie Barry. If I was, I would have done a damned sight more than that Minister did. There is $11 million coming out of Creative New Zealand—$11 million being cut from Creative New Zealand—and the Minister’s response was to find a small amount of money for three organisations that were all going backwards. They were stopping touring and were about to cut performers because of the state they were in, and the Minister was having salivatory selfies when other arts organisations are going to face cuts of 10 percent. She crows that she has done more than me. Give me 1 week in your portfolio, Minister Barry, and I will show you. I will show you what you should do with an arts portfolio.

Overall, this Budget could have done so much more. It should have presented a plan on housing. It should have presented a plan on poverty. It should have invested in education. Ultimately, this Budget needed to be about people and it was not.

I rise with great pleasure to talk about Bill English’s eighth Budget. It is an excellent example of its kind. It gives us choices that we have not been able to make in other years. We have listened to the arts sector, we have listened to conservation, and those are the two areas of my ministerial responsibilities.

I would have to say that that member Jacinda Ardern, who has just resumed her seat, is a tragic example of her kind. She has achieved nothing. She does nothing. When people compare that member with the actual member of Parliament for Auckland Central and all that the Hon Nikki Kaye has achieved, as opposed to her doing, what? Turning up at the odd disc-jockeying, turning up to the odd event—actually doing very, very little. In fact, I cannot think of a single contribution that member has made that has made a difference to anybody—a tragic and pathetic example of her kind.

But I am not going to spend any more time on the foolishness and delusional nonsense that is being peddled by the Opposition. Instead, I will concentrate on what we have achieved, and this Budget has achieved much. The economy is set to grow by 2.8 percent in the next 5 years, so when we look at what we have achieved around job growth, we have been able to spend more on health and more on education. Ultimately, those are much better results for New Zealand families and vulnerable children.

💬 Hon Annette King: No wonder they don’t want her back on the Henry Show.

Those are the kinds of things that count, rather than carping from the edges of the universe as the Hon Annette King does—again, an ineffectual individual who achieved very, very little. In fact, she put her portfolio backwards in the period of time that that member had it. When we look at Tony Ryall and at Jonathan Coleman, we see people who have actually achieved.

Let me look at my own portfolio responsibilities, because when you look at the arts sector in New Zealand it is very easy to see that there has been a vibrancy—cultural dimensions that have been added to enrich us as a society. I am very grateful indeed that we have such resilient arts organisations. I am very glad indeed that they put together good, strong business cases and I was able to support them. I put a very strong case to the Minister of Finance, who listened very carefully and acted in a way that I think was responsible.

For the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO), for example, its funding has increased by more than 10 percent. So it has gone up $1.2 million, from about $13.446 million to $14.646 million. This is an increase that will enable the Symphony Orchestra to travel more around the regions, to take its extraordinary world-class orchestral members and talent to the parts of New Zealand that are clamouring to have that kind of cultural engagement. The Symphony Orchestra has responsibility for the National Youth Orchestra as well, so it is nurturing the young orchestral people of the future. I think that is a very important part of the arts.

The NZSO was given the great accolade of being a finalist in the Grammy awards, up there with world-class orchestras—really up there, punching above its weight in those international stakes. It is doing that because it is supported in its own country. The Symphony Orchestra, I think, is a major asset for us. I think something like 60 percent of its orchestral members are now able to be used in a way that they were not able to be before. In other words, with the additional funding that it will have now, the orchestra will be able to travel around New Zealand, go to the regions, and make sure that the very talented line-up of people that it has, whom I saw performing on Italian National Day—20 of them went to the celebration and were extraordinary, and incredibly impressive to the ambassadors who were there and to all of us.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet is another example of a Crown entity that does an extraordinary amount. It has, out of its own endeavours for box office, for business, and for partnerships and philanthropy, managed to achieve more than 60 percent of the funding that it requires to run itself. That is commendable. That is the sort of thing that Crown funding can do to assist and back up its endeavours, which are already very good indeed. Tutus on Tour—the ballet will be able to send more ballerinas around New Zealand, and perhaps on some more international tours as well.

Along with Te Matatini, which has had a 56 percent increase—it will be able to take our national kapa haka, which is extraordinary and unique, and very much part of who we are as New Zealanders and our identity, to the world. To those who were privileged to see the Edinburgh Tattoo, our Matatini kapa haka groups that performed before it as the curtain-raiser, if you like, to the tattoo, were extraordinary and people love them. They have been invited internationally around the world. The money, the $1.94 million we have been able to allocate, is up from $1.24 million. This is, in fact, permanent baseline funding, and it will enable them to develop kapa haka around New Zealand. The regional organisation of Te Matatini will be able to set up 50 more groups a year in schools. They will be able to encourage kapa haka not only as a vibrant cultural expression but also as something that is good for your health—your cultural health, and your physical health as well.

When I look at the entities that are under my immediate responsibilities as the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage I am very proud of what they have achieved. I am very proud of the ability that they have to not only reach the people of New Zealand and to resonate with them but also to ensure that partners, philanthropists, and others really appreciate and value them. This means, of course, that the taxpayer’s dollar can go a great deal further than if we just paid one entity the lump sum of money and then did not look at developing other business partnerships.

My task is partly to make taxpayers’ money go that much further. I am concentrating on doing that as well in my Department of Conservation (DOC). Despite some of the nonsense that has been peddled, particularly by the Greens, and backed up by the other Opposition people, DOC’s operational spending has increased. It is difficult to understand why the Greens are having so much trouble with the mathematics. In 2008 the operational funding for DOC was $316 million a year. This year it is $391 million. That is a rise by everybody’s standards and everybody’s mathematics, except the Greens, who deliberately peddle misinformation and nonsense constantly about DOC, and also attack it—attack it for what it does, attack it for the fact that you have extraordinarily good-hearted people who work for DOC and try their absolute best, and they succeed. I am very proud of them, and I am very proud of what they do.

There is plenty of good news for conservation in this year’s Budget. Let us look at one aspect of it: the War on Weeds, which we launched last year, where I have the Dirty Dozen annual array of weeds that need to be kept under control. We have as our No. 1 weed—and I fear it will be so for many years to come—wildings. We call them wildings because they escape from where they ought to be and they get away on us in our New Zealand landscape. Generally, they are conifers, but there are also sycamores and other specimens that have done this. So on Budget day Nathan Guy and I announced a $16 million package, and that is going to increase our work to be able to control wildings.

Wildings occupy at the moment something like 6 percent of the country’s total land area. That is about 1.8 million hectares that is high-value, conservation, and very productive land. They also smother our native species and ruin the biodiversity of New Zealand. So when we look at the money that we spend on wilding control, it is up around $11 million a year, actually, and we are going to be targeting to control some priority areas, including the Molesworth Station, the headwaters of the Southern Alps, lakes and rivers, and the central North Island.

Battle for our Birds is another reality this year because of beechmast seeding, so $20.7 million has gone into landscape predator control, which involves the use of aerial 1080, but with that money I have allocated a reasonable sum to do two pilot schemes on self-resetting traps.

💬 David Shearer: A reasonable sum?

It is a very reasonable sum, actually. It is many millions of dollars, and it will be used to test and to pilot these self-resetting traps. Once you have dealt with the rodent population—knocked them back to negligible numbers—you then put the self-resetting traps in and they are able to protect our endangered and threatened species. This will be the biggest ever predator pest control operation in New Zealand’s history. So it will be more than 800,000 hectares, and that will prevent the plague proportion—biblical plague proportion, actually—of rats, stoats, and possums. The results of 1080 have tremendously improved our ability as a nation to be able to control these predator numbers—these introduced eco-invaders.

When I look at superannuation, as well—when we cast back over the 8 years that National has been in Government, superannuation entitlement has gone up 34 percent. This is a Government that cares about seniors and is concerned about the way that social isolation and elder abuse, the growing rates of dementia numbers, and so forth, are needing to be planned for—not feared; not worried about unduly, but to understand where we are heading with dementia rates with an ageing population. At the moment it involves about 50,000 New Zealanders. That will treble, and we need to plan ahead for that.

This was a great Budget. I am very proud to be part of the Government that delivered it.

I understand this is a split call. I will ring the bell at 5 minutes.

I understand that Kevin Hague will address Maggie Barry’s previous statement. This Budget commits the greatest of all possible mistakes a Budget can possibly make: it misjudges the future. It rests an interrelated whole-of-Government fiscal plan on a wrong premise. Get the premise wrong, and everything that follows is wrong. Let me explain how that has come about. In introducing the Budget last week, the Minister of Finance said that he was presenting a healthy set of accounts with rising surpluses and falling debt.

The Budget at a Glance booklet contains the 2016 highlights. What are they? There are five principal highlights and four secondary. The principal ones are growth, innovation, infrastructure, social investment, and health. The secondary ones are education, housing, justice, and—wait for it—the environment. Within environment are three component parts: fresh water, pest control, and the emissions trading scheme (ETS). The ETS contains one policy measure: restoring the one-for-one surrender obligation. That constitutes the sum total of the Government’s budgetary planning on climate policy. Of what significance is this? The Ministry for the Environment calculates that it will shave 0.7 percent off our emissions in 2030. Bravo! It is within the margin of error. This relegation of climate policy to the last of 45 highlights, with no perceptible effect over the longer term, shows the misguided world view that I mentioned.

What should the Minister have done instead? He should have placed the 2016 Budget within the context of a future carbon price. He started off optimistically: “I recall our first Budget, delivered in difficult times, with Treasury forecasting never-ending deficits and ever-rising debt. Today, however, I can present a healthy set of public accounts.” But, instead of patting himself on the back from then on, he should have said the following: “Although we have left those difficult times behind, we must recognise that unprecedented challenges lie ahead. A continued rise in global emissions guarantees dangerous climate change for the planet, including New Zealand. This Budget is, therefore, cast in the context of a transformational pathway to a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. Nothing less is required for us to meet our national responsibility level within the global carbon budget. If we do not move at this speed, New Zealand will face a fiscal overhang in the long term of unprecedented magnitude. I note that France is setting a carbon price of NZ$50 for 2017. We must prepare for a global carbon price of this size in our fiscal planning. The 2016 Budget rests, above all, on that premise.” That is what he should have said, and that is what is missing from page 1 of his Budget statement.

Let me cite another statement the Minister made in his speech last week. He said: “Budgets are not just an accounting exercise. They are about achieving better results for New Zealanders …”. How unwittingly prescient that was. Budgets are not about accounts; they simply express in dollar terms what kind of society we are, what kind of Government we have, what values our country embraces, and, above all, what level of prescience, foresight, purpose, and resolve we are showing.

This Government retains a world view that has damaged the planet and betrayed the people. Because this Budget hews to an old world view, it fails the simplest, most basic test. It presents an unhealthy set of accounts that appears stable and sensible and pragmatic and balanced on the surface but which, in ignoring the real cost of carbon, is dangerously unstable, lacking in sense, fails the test of pragmatism, and loses all sense of intergenerational balance. In concluding his Budget speech, Bill English claimed that the Government takes a long-term view of its stewardship. We commend the Minister for aspiring to take the long-term view; we condemn him for failing to do that in any way that can be seen as realistic, pragmatic, and sensible.

The public conservation estate is one of the great treasures of this country, and when New Zealanders look to their Government to determine what they seek from that Government, protection of those unique species and ecosystems that exist in New Zealand—and, typically, nowhere else in the world—is one of the very core things that they expect. Contrary to the remarks recently made by the Minister of Conservation, Maggie Barry, the Greens do not attack the Department of Conservation (DOC) and DOC staff. The Greens believe that the Department of Conservation and its staff are heroes. The work they do is fantastic. But, increasingly, they have been asked to carry out their work with one hand tied behind their backs by a Government that is determined to erode the funding that is available to the department to spend on conservation.

The analysis undertaken by the Parliamentary Library shows that in real terms—that is, inflation-adjusted terms, for the benefit of the Minister—the department is spending $50 million and more, on average, less each year than when the National Government took office in the 2008-09 year. That is more than $50 million a year less, in real terms. That is a very, very substantial reduction in conservation spending.

What does that translate to? I have spoken about the 46 percent of tracks in the conservation estate that are not up to standard, the 26 percent of huts that are not up to standard, the many structures that have failed their load capacity assessments, and the 38 structures that were overdue for serious or critical repairs, and the Minister has been completely unable to respond to that erosion in the conservation estate.

In this year’s Budget—and I brought along the document—

💬 Fletcher Tabuteau: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise sincerely for interrupting the speaker, but my understanding of the proceedings of the House is that for a member to move down closer to the speaker and harass him is completely out of order. The Minister needs to show some class in these proceedings.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, the last part was certainly unnecessary, but the first part is correct. A member should not move a seating position away from where he or she is set simply to interject on the speech that is being given by another member.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I have ruled on the matter. If it is a fresh point of order, I am happy to hear it, but I am not interested in having that matter relitigated. The member can move back to her seat if she wants to continue, but I will not accept an unreasonable amount of interjection, anyway.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. What I was about to draw the House’s attention to was this document entitled Estimates of Appropriations for the Government of New Zealand for the year ending 30 June 2017, Environment Sector. What this document says about the appropriation for the management of natural heritage is that the final budgeted amount for 2015-16 was, let us see, $187,877,000, and for the 2016-17 year it has reduced to $160,639,000. That is a drop of 14 percent.

One of the ways that the Department of Conservation has been forced to accommodate that reduced commitment to spending on conservation by this Government is through the partnerships programme. It is great if there is additional money that comes from the commercial sector or comes from the work done by volunteer groups—that is fantastic. That adds icing on to the cake. But in an environment where the department has less money to spend, what that does instead is replace the money that the Government should be spending. What that means is that when a commercial sponsorship ends, as the kākāpō one has just done, the Department of Conservation has to stop doing other conservation work to backfill that. It means that conservation work will be done on those species that attract commercial sponsorships rather than those that are most ecologically important. It means that the department will sometimes have to accept money from companies that will have other motives.

It is very interesting that the Minister believes that an oil company was sponsoring the Cook Strait whale survey because of a feeling of satisfaction that it may have given the company. In fact, what we have seen is that it is the Minister who is out of step with the Parliamentary Library’s analysis, the independent accountant’s analysis, and, indeed, the Budget documents themselves. Thank you.

Again, this is a split call—Dr Jian Yang.

This is a Budget with confidence. This is a Budget with a strong sense of responsibility. It is a Budget with confidence, simply because New Zealand is one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD—a top performer. Let us look at the growth rates in the past few years since 2008, when we experienced the global financial crisis. In 2009, after the financial crisis, we did experience a decline of 2 percent, but since then the economy has been growing. In 2010 we had a growth rate of 1.7 percent, in the following year—2011—we had a growth rate of 2 percent, and in 2012 we had a growth rate of 3 percent.

This is a sharp contrast with some other OECD economies. For example, in the United Kingdom the growth rate was only 0.3 percent, in the European eurozone it was minus 0.9 percent, in Japan it was 0.4 percent, in Canada it was 1.1 percent, and in the USA it was 1.6 percent. So our growth rate has been much better than many other OECD countries, and for the forecast in the next 4 years we are predicting about 2.8 percent on average. This is our economy. That is why we feel confident that we will be able to continue to do well.

This is also a Budget with a strong sense of responsibility, simply because although we believe that we are doing well, we want to continue to manage our finance responsibly. That is why we have returned to surplus but we are going to continue to increase our surplus, and we will pay our debt to make sure that our debt will continue to decline in the coming years. We will spend money where we think we need to spend it.

Health is one area we believe is very important to our public services. Each year since 2008 we have increased our spending in health—about $500 million each year. For that reason we are able to have today over 6,000 more doctors and nurses, and, also, 99 percent of under-13s are now able to have access to free doctors every day, day and night. This is a very, very outstanding public system. Based on what we have achieved and, also, a very high record of spending, this year we have another $2.2 billion for health, which will take our total health spending for next year to $16.1 billion, which is another record. This is what we are trying to do to further improve our public services.

Education is another area where we have been trying to invest more. We have a hard-working Minister of Education, a very strong leadership, and we have achieved a lot. Look at this: 96.6 percent of preschool children are now going to early childhood education, which has increased from 93.6 percent in 2008, and 84.4 percent of 18-year-olds are now achieving National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2, which, again, is a substantial increase from 68 percent in 2008. We have record spending of $11 billion for education. In addition to that, we are going to spend $1.44 billion more for education. We are going to build nine new schools—480 new classrooms.

To finish my speech, I will quote an OECD comment in 2015 that says: “Inflation and inflation expectations are well anchored … Strong fiscal monetary policy frameworks and a healthy financial sector have yielded macroeconomic stability, underpinning growth. Employment is high … business investment is robust, and households and firms are optimistic.” This comment still applies. Thanks.

It is a great pleasure for me to stand and speak to this Budget, Bill English’s eighth and my first. It was with some anticipation that I waited for Budget day. It was almost like a child waiting for Christmas, excited about the potential that this package held for me—and not just for me but for the people of New Zealand. I was not disappointed. With rising surpluses and falling debt, this gives the country the ability to make choices it simply did not have 8 years ago.

The benefits from this Budget are spread across the whole country and throughout all sectors. For Innovate New Zealand there is $761 million to help grow and diversify the economy. We all know that if we do not keep moving ahead, we are, in fact, standing still or moving backwards, because the rest of the world will overtake us. To invest in innovation is an absolute essential for us. The broadband initiatives: a $2 billion investment into ultra-fast broadband and the Rural Broadband Initiative. This has already created 4,000 jobs across New Zealand. It is extending out into the rural areas of New Zealand and making us more connected, making us more competitive.

Public infrastructure like transport and schools receive a $2.1 billion investment. That is absolutely massive and essential, and recognised by this Government. There is $1.44 billion extra for education over the next 4 years. This brings our investment next year to a record $11 billion in education. Tourism—this is one that is near and dear to my heart because of the area that I live in on the West Coast. Thirty-seven million dollars will go into small regional communities that have pressures on them brought about by the success of our investment into tourism and promotion. Small communities will be able to access funding for small projects like car-parks and public toilets—the things that tourists and the success of tourism bring into our rural communities. This will be great news for West Coast - Tasman, I can assure you.

Health, of course, is an absolutely outstanding winner in this Budget—$2.2 billion extra over the next 4 years. I am particularly proud that I can stand here with the knowledge that $9.7 million extra was found to support the new Greymouth hospital. This now brings that budget to $77.8 million. This is a huge relief to the people of the West Coast. I am so grateful that this Government recognised that need. On top of that, we have also recognised that an extra $3 million will be going into the West Coast District Health Board for its operational costs—a big thankyou to Minister Coleman for recognising that.

Another good news story that is heading into West Coast - Tasman is the project that will see a new road bridge across the Taramakau River. No longer will we have to share our bridge with the train, although it is quaint and often a tourist attraction. I have witnessed many times a campervan stopped in the middle of the road and a tourist standing in the middle of the train tracks photographing the train coming towards them. In terms of health and safety, I think it is an extremely good investment, and I look forward to that day as well.

What worries me is that all of the gains that are made by this Government in tourism, in goldmining, which is a huge employer on the coast, in dairying—another massive investment on the West Coast—and in forestry and fisheries will be put at risk if the unholy alliance of the “Reds” and Greens, which gives us that muddy brown colour, ever gets its hands on it. We know how the Greens influence Labour Party policy. When I promoted the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill that went through this House under urgency in 2014, we did not get the support that we needed or wanted. Fortunately—

💬 Chris Bishop: You weren’t even in Parliament.

Correct. I was not even in Parliament, but this Government recognised a common-sense solution to a natural event. We got that legislation through.

Bill English, you have delivered a fantastic Budget. It is solid and it is sensible. Thank you.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill

Second Reading