Collins: Recognising all Kiwis’ potential
new-zealand-national-party
Mon Mar 26 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Collins: Recognising all Kiwis’ potential
Monday, 26 March 2007, 3:41 pm
Speech: New Zealand National Party
Judith Collins MP
National Party Welfare Spokeswoman
26 March 2007
Recognising all Kiwis’ potential
Address to Auckland Rotary Club
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
It is always a pleasure to see so many old friends and former colleagues and to talk to you about an issue that I believe is utterly crucial to the well-being of New Zealand and New Zealanders.
As you have stated in your introduction, I am the Member of Parliament for Clevedon, and I am the National Party’s spokeswoman for Welfare, for Families, for Veterans and for Pacific island Affairs.
My primary area, Welfare, accounts for almost $16 billion and is the portfolio that spends more tax dollars than any other. That alone makes Welfare very important. But what really makes it important are the people whose income is represented by that money.
Despite all we hear about fewer people being on benefits, more money is now spent on welfare than at any other time. Almost twice as much is spent on welfare as on health. Education costs around $11 billion and despite its investment in our future, is still dwarfed by the almost $16 billion spent on welfare.
Where does the money come from? Well, if we note that in the past financial year all corporate tax brought in just over $10 billion and GST brought in a net figure of just over $10 billion, then it’s easy to see how much welfare costs.
Of the total welfare payments, $10 billion is being spent on the domestic purposes benefit, the unemployment benefit, the sickness benefit, the invalids benefit, family support, accommodation supplement, student allowances, disability allowances and others.
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Although the sums make interesting reading, they don’t tell us about the people affected by this. What we know is that the poor are getting poorer. The Government’s own Social Report has revealed this.
We export sheep meat, we export wool, we export dairy produce but I would argue that our biggest export is the almost one million New Zealanders who choose to live overseas. We export many people who have talent, skills, drive and determination and we do so hoping they will want to come back and contribute to New Zealand, not only in their retirement but also in their active years.
We hope that, just like John Key, they will bring back their skills, talents and experiences. We hope they will build successful businesses, increasing our ability to market our talents and produce our services to the world, and we hope they bring back their children because we hope like anything that New Zealand really is a great place to bring up children. And it is, for most children.
As I said at the start, I am the Member of Parliament for Clevedon. Many of you will know Clevedon. Many of you will think immediately of the polo at Clevedon. Well, my electorate is quite diverse.
Just along Clevedon Road, a mere 10 minutes from the polo ground, we have four schools in Takanini and Papakura where it is necessary to feed children their breakfast because otherwise they simply will not be fed. There are schools where, the teachers will tell you, 30% of the children don’t turn up on a Monday. For those who say there is no underclass, come with me and you will meet some of the poorest children in the country, living in the Clevedon electorate.
We have children who go to schools where 96% of their classmates come from welfare dependent homes. These are children where no adult member of the family or extended family holds down a full-time job. These children might, in other times, have looked to grandparents to save them from dysfunctional parents, but many of the grandparents are themselves simply dysfunctional parents grown older.
We have, in some communities, three generations of hopelessness, of poverty, of violence, of crime, of state intervention and of little responsibility. We have an aging population. We have a changing population. There are now almost 200,000 sole parent families that represent 30% of all families with children.
Ask people who emigrate why they are doing it. A number will say for the opportunities, for the experience and, for the increasing number moving to Australia, because they want their children to grow up in a more positive environment, not weighed down by negativity or over-regulation. They’re looking for an environment were everybody feels they have a chance, an opportunity, and where they can achieve based on what they do, not who they are, or where they come from.
This is the best little country in the world for most of us, but not for long if we can’t get more New Zealanders to buy into the Kiwi dream of self reliance, enterprise, aspiration and ambition.
There are answers. Parenting requires skill and patience. For those parents who have no parenting skills but who have children, we must promote and provide intensive parenting courses. Some NGOs and churches are already showing the way. Some run in-residence parenting courses for young mothers who have no such skills.
I visited one of these homes recently. One of the young mums, just 22 years old, has just had her fourth child, and since Child Youth and Family have threatened to take away her fourth child, as they did her first three, she has an incentive to stay and change.
In-residence, 12-month parenting programmes work. We need more of them.
The Home Intervention Programme for Parents and Youngsters or (HIPPY) programme started in 1992 in Papakura works. It picks up young mums and teaches them to be mums, teaches them to cook, to look after their children, and themselves, and then, for the best, it turns them into tutors, gives them a job and in some cases a career.
These programmes work, and they work because of the people involved. They aren’t government departments and they do the work that government departments could never do. They’re on the ground, they’re practical, they are often faith-based, they’re competent and they care. We need more of them wherever there is a need.
New Zealand, Australia and the UK have seen a big decrease in the numbers on the unemployment benefit over the past few years. We have also seen a massive increase in the numbers on the sickness and invalids’ benefits.
Around 127,000 working age New Zealanders are too sick to work. According to the government’s figures, 24.9% of sickness beneficiaries are capable of working. The current government claims to have just uncovered the problem, after years of blaming it on an aging population, and is now promoting legislation to allow them to ask someone on a sickness benefit to prepare a plan to work.
It’s a start, but only a start. What I think is missing is any acknowledgment of the experience, the expertise and the commitment of the NGO and not-for-profit sector.
Rather than employing more staff in the departments, the National Party believes that the NGO sector should be far more hands-on in this area and in the management of people who have, in some cases, simply lost all hope for anything better.
This is a major plank of our welfare reform. We see little point in spending the effort sending people for jobs when they are currently unemployable. We need to deal with the issues that are genuine barriers to employment – alcoholism, drug addiction, inadequate literacy and numeracy, and work experience.
We must lift people out of the quagmire of intergenerational welfare dependency. We can’t make a difference until we call it what it is, and accept that it is simply never going to get better for the worst-affected - the children - until we put their needs first, and help and expect their parents to be the best they can.
The focus of our welfare policy is to acknowledge that almost everyone has the potential to make a contribution to the community they live in. Just leaving people on benefits, excusing them of all responsibility, is to ignore their potential and condemn them to a life of poverty.
This is not an easy job. For a start, we need to get people the help they need to remove barriers to employment. We have to find out if they can read or write. That’s a start. It’s no good sending a young person to training to learn to be a truck driver if he or she can’t read or write. You’re wasting your money, destroying any goodwill, and setting him or her up for another failure.
We have to have medical assessments that mean something.
Even the government grudgingly acknowledges that not everyone on a sickness benefit should be there. Being on a sickness benefit can be a pathway into long-term dependency with almost no effort required to stay there. It’s just one of those benefits that no one seems to come off unless it’s to move to another benefit.
Our emphasis must be on keeping people off the sickness benefit in the first place by harnessing their potential, by helping them rehabilitate, and by retraining.
Instead of all the focus being on what these people can’t do, we need to consider what they can do. At a time of low unemployment, it really is time to address the lack of work skills of those who have left school to go on the unemployment benefit, or who have been on it for years.
For example, community work, doing work for others less fortunate, not competing with the commercial sector. These programmes have worked overseas in getting people socialised, providing them with new skills, and giving them the satisfaction that they too can contribute to the common good.
We need those raising children on the DPB to get into part-time work, training or community service when their youngest child reaches school. Leaving people on that benefit with nothing more than a plan does nothing to remove that powerful barrier to work, recent work experience.
We have to accept that dads are important, it does take two to tango, after all. They should be encouraged to take more responsibility for child-raising. A survey by the Ministry of Social Development showed that around 30,000 children have no other parent contributing towards their development. Fathers must be responsible for their children and we will require liable parents to meet their financial obligations.
And putting children first in all of this, acknowledging the children who I spoke of today, we’ll want to work with those who are surviving on the DPB to make sure they present pre-school children for all appropriate vaccinations, unless they have a conscientious objection and sign a declaration accordingly.
We’ll encourage them to get their children regular health and dental checks, and make sure their kids attend school regularly. 45,000 children play truant every week. 45,000 children are missing the most valuable years of their lives, and all too often their parents know. We need to reinforce to parents how important their child’s education is.
Most people who use the welfare system use it as a short-term safety net. National also understands there are people in our communities who, through no fault of their own, may never be able to work again. We will never turn our backs on them.
But if we are to help people lift themselves out of poverty, we must do better with the money we spend on welfare. We know that the easiest thing we can do is to just pay people benefits.
Money spent on dealing with literacy, drug and alcohol addiction, and getting people work experience can be expensive. However, when we view a future without those welfare reforms, the price of doing nothing – the price of complacency – is far too high.
In conclusion, I would like to leave you with a good-news story.
A few weeks ago, I was flying to Wellington and the woman sitting next to me introduced herself and told me she would vote National at the next election, to the shock of her family. She is a manager for a government department. Obviously thrilled to get her vote, I asked her why she had come to that conclusion. This is her story.
She is the eldest of 20 children and the only one who works. She has eight children, seven of whom are in paid work and one whom has just left work to have a baby. She traced why she is different from her 19 siblings to the time in the 1990s when she was living in her state house and was given the opportunity to buy that house.
She became a property owner, with a mortgage. She had a physical stake in the community and a means to better her financial situation. She went to polytech, she trained, she got a job, she did more training and she got a better job. She set an example for her children. That woman is a success both as a mother and a career woman. If she can do it, others can. I see it as my job to make sure many more people like her can tell their own success stories.
ENDS
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