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  Note: All transcripts are copyright to Front Page Ltd but may be used PROVIDED attribution is made to TVONE and AgendaAGENDA Presented by RAWDON CHRISTIE RAWDON Last week parliament was told doctors were being bullied by beneficiaries to go on to the sickness rather than the unemployment benefit. Work and Income says it does happen and it is aware of it, but the claim points to a bigger issue – at the end of March 46,000 people were on sickness benefit up from 38,000 just five years ago, yet Social Development Minister Ruth Dyson says we're experiencing some of the lowest unemployment rates New Zealand has ever achieved. So are there some fundamental problems in our welfare system. The Minister is in our Christchurch studio and joins Guyon Espiner now. GUYON ESPINER Well Minister you hear Rawdon Christie there talk about the success in bringing the unemployment numbers down but let's talk about the level of the unemployment benefit, I mean apart from changes to reflect inflation the level of the unemployment benefits are roughly where they were more than 15 years ago. Do you believe the levels of the unemployment benefits are adequate? RUTH DYSON – Minister of Social Development We have been committed to ensuring that every year the rate at which all benefits are paid is adjusted in line with the CPI. GUYON Are the levels adequate in your opinion? RUTH We're looking at the moment about additional pressures that families are placed under, we know that people are facing increased transport costs because of the price of petrol, increased food costs particularly with dairy products and of course accommodation, so we're working through those issues now to make sure that people … GUYON Yes but are they adequate Minister, you're acknowledging the obvious which is those costs are going up, I'm asking you whether the level of benefit is adequate. RUTH We're just doing the work at the moment to make sure that those additional pressures are able to be met by the people particularly those who are on a benefit. GUYON Okay so you're not going to answer that question. Some research from your own department in 2007 said that the level of the benefit as a proportion of the average wage on all the major benefits is worse than it was in 1991, I mean surely that’s a source of shame for a Labour Party Cabinet Minister? RUTH The data that was used for that report was from 2004, so that was before of course the roll out of Working for Families, but it is true that wages have increased faster than the CPI on average, so that the gap between the benefits and the average wage has increased, that’s what that showed. So wages have gone up faster for some people than benefits have been adjusted. We've driven a lot of that change because of things like annual increasing of the minimum wage, we've ensured that the minimum wage has gone up quite dramatically from $7 to $12 in those last years. GUYON That's irrelevant isn't it Minister, that’s not relevant to this, that is people who are working. I'm talking about the people who are on the unemployment benefit, they are as a proportion of the average wage worse off than they were in 1991, we've heard Helen Clark talk about the whole underclass being the spawn of those 1991 benefit cuts and yet you haven’t addressed that. RUTH They're not worse off because benefits have been adjusted every year in line with the CPI so they have literally had their rate of benefit increased to reflect the cost of price increase. That’s what's happened every year under our government, wages have on average risen faster than that, that’s not an automatic assumption you don’t always have an annual wage adjustment those have to be negotiated, we've ensured that benefits are adjusted every year. GUYON Should they be adjusted for wages like superannuation is? RUTH That’s one of the considerations that I think is worth putting into the mix for the future, we don’t have a link currently between the level…. GUYON What do you think, do you think it would be a good idea to look at? RUTH I think it's worth considering, it may not always solve the problem that you're alluding to because you can have situations where wages are quite stagnant, we saw that in the 1990s where the minimum wage wasn’t adjusted except once, less than a dollar an hour for the entire nine year period, so that on its own wouldn’t necessarily solve the relativity problem. GUYON Before I leave this issue of benefit levels I'm wondering if I can look at this a little more broadly. Is it your policy to set benefit levels at a rate which is so low that it forces and encourages people to look for work, is that the theory behind it? RUTH No it isn't, but we have ensured that the difference between being on a benefit and being in a paid job guarantees that that person will be much better off financially. We did have a clear commitment and I am certainly very proud of that to make work pay. People who are in a paid job should get more than people who are not in a paid job. GUYON Okay we had Michael Cullen the Finance Minister on this show last week and he was talking about the possibility of raising some of those special needs allowances, which ones and by how much, can you give us any information on that today? RUTH That’s what I was referring to earlier, we are looking at the specific cost pressures that people are facing in accommodation in transport and in food and looking at what sort of response we should have to that, that work's been underway for a little while now and the outcome should be known soon. GUYON One you didn’t mention there which your department did mention in 2007 was the possibility of a special needs grant for power, to help people pay for their electricity bills, where's that work gone? RUTH People are able to get an allowance included in their disability allowance if they have additional costs for power because of some health need, so that’s already part of the policy mix. GUYON Okay let's broaden this up a little bit, I mean some of the criticism that was alluded to in the introduction is that there's been a one size fits all approach to welfare policy and we saw when the Kahui case developed the Prime Minister talking about getting Work and Income to look at socalled beneficiary clusters, households where there are a lot of people who long term have been on the unemployment benefit to try to break that cycle of dependency. Whatever happened to that work? RUTH That work was immediately picked up at the instigation of the Prime Minister and has been rolled out very successfully. GUYON What have we seen from that work? RUTH We have over 1300 children who are now part of that integrated service response. The idea is that we know that some families have engagement with a number of different agencies but often in the past those agencies haven’t worked well together so it might be Housing New Zealand, it might be a private landlord, and they might have some debt, they might be involved with Citizens' Advice Bureau, Police, Health, Work and Income etc, so there's a lot of different connections. The way that the integrated service response has worked is that people are now getting better engagement with the agencies, the children are staying in school, they're getting health checks, their debt levels have been reduced and people are moving into training or employment they're outstandingly successful, it takes a lot of focus and a lot of commitment from both the agencies and actually the families but the results are tremendous. GUYON Okay can I talk about the sickness benefit now, I alluded to earlier that you’ve had a lot of success in bringing down the numbers on the unemployment benefit, but since you took power in 1999 the numbers on the sickness and invalids benefit have gone up about 50% to somewhere around 120,000, how is that possible when we've been pouring billions of extra dollars into the health system that we have more people on the sickness and invalids benefit? RUTH The rate of increase in both has actually slowed in the last few years. GUYON But it's gone up 50% since you took power though Minister. RUTH Overall benefit numbers are dramatically reduced. GUYON But I want to talk about the people on the sickness and invalids benefit because – can you address that question – how is it possible when our life expectancy is rising, when we spend somewhere between 10 and 12 billion dollars on the health system that the number of people on the sickness and invalids benefit is rising, how come? RUTH People who are unwell or people who have a serious condition that means they can't work for more than 15 hours a week are entitled to be on the sickness or an invalids benefit, that’s a medical certification and I support the right of those people to have financial security when they're unable to work. GUYON What about those allegations that arose this week that doctors are being bullied by people to keep them on the sickness benefit, do you take that seriously is that the case? RUTH I certainly do take it seriously, it's totally unacceptable for any doctor to be bullied by someone into giving them a medical certificate which they're not entitled to receive and I would support any doctor who refers that to Work and Income and we can do a proper investigation through the department. GUYON Can I look at your ministry now because when I look at the numbers, the number of staff in the Ministry for Social Development is rising as dramatically as the number of people coming off benefits. I mean how is it possible that we need more staff to deal with fewer beneficiaries? RUTH If you look at what you're comparing the figures to which are probably the figures that have been alluded to in parliament, the old Ministry of Social Policy didn’t have the Department of Work and Income in it, didn’t have Department of Child Youth and Family Services in it, didn’t have the Office of Community and Voluntary Sector and didn’t have Ministry of Youth Development, so they’ve all been amalgamated into that . GUYON But you would surely concede – I understand that you’ve brought more of those departments in, I understand that Minister, but you would surely concede that you're using more staff to deal with fewer beneficiaries now? RUTH Yes we are using more staff to deal with fewer beneficiaries but that’s not all those staff do, we also have within those numbers a significant increase in the number of social workers. We know what happened a decade ago, when people rang Child Youth and Family they couldn’t get a social worker to help them, but also our front line Work and Income staff are dealing with people who are on invalids benefit and people who are on domestic purposes benefit in an active way because we know that in the past those people were ignored, never got to see a case manager and were basically consigned to being on a benefit with no help at all, we have active response with them so that they can have the help from qualified case managers to move them into work when they're able. GUYON There's big bureaucracy there isn't there I mean when you took over and you had something like 5000 staff at the Ministry for Social Development now it's up to about 9500, I know you’ve taken in those extra departments but it seems a lot of money especially when we're dealing with those benefit numbers actually coming down. RUTH Well we are dealing with benefit numbers coming down and that’s why when you look at for example predominantly women who are on domestic purposes benefit for the first time ever that total number is going down because we are engaged with sole parents helping them into training, helping them into work so that they will have a better future for them and their children. GUYON I'm just looking at the spending though, you're the custodian of that spending if you like in that department, do you know how many people in the Ministry for Social Development earn over $200,000 a year? RUTH Not off the top of my head no, I don’t do their wage negotiations. GUYON It's 21 people Minister and in 2002 it was zero, I mean are we really in a situation where you can put your hand on your heart and say all that money in the bureaucracy of the Ministry for Social Development is being well spent? RUTH I think we see excellent results from our public service included the Ministry of Social Development, I am not involved in their wage negotiations nor should I be. GUYON No but are you comfortable Minister with the fact you’ve got 54 people in public relations and communications in the Ministry for Social Development, that is the biggest newsroom in the country, I mean what are all those people doing? RUTH We have ensured that people know what they are entitled to receive through Work and Income, understand the Working for Families package and are getting their entitlement, 97% of families who are entitled to get extra money through Working for Families are receiving it and that’s because we've said they're entitled to know and communicating that information is a critical part of them being able to get the money that they should be receiving. GUYON Okay just before I leave it can you tell me what happened to the work on the single core benefit which I think you started talking about as a Labour Party in about 2002, I haven’t seen any real result of that, have you dumped the idea that we should go to a single core benefit? RUTH We haven’t dumped the idea of a core benefit at all, that work is progressing very well. I've said publicly that further announcements will be made on that about the middle of this year which we're getting to quite rapidly. GUYON Minister thank you, back to you Rawdon. RAWDON Thank you Guyon, okay up next we've got the panel and myself we'll talk further with Ruth Dyson. Catriona we'll start with you and the work which you do with people in South Auckland and beneficiaries, I'm sure you’ve got a lot you want to ask. CATRIONA MACLENNAN – Barrister and Columnist Yes, first of all I'd just like to ask the Minister, what can you do to make sure that beneficiaries get the help the law says they should be getting? RUTH That’s certainly been a primary focus with our government and with Work and Income, people are entitled to receive whatever the social security system says they should, Work and Income are now clearly focused on ensuring that all people get the entitlement that they're allowed to receive. CATRIONA They might be focused on ensuring that but it's not actually happening yet and I make the comparison with the Housing Minister Maryan Street and when it was drawn to her attention the shocking conditions that people were living in in Mangere, good on her she went straight out there, she looked for herself at those shocking housing conditions, she immediately organised meetings and started to do something about it. You know because you have beneficiary advocates and people telling you that beneficiaries are still not getting what they law says they should be getting. Doesn’t it pain you to hear about people living in cars and people stealing food from supermarkets because they don’t have enough to eat? RUTH It certainly does cause a lot of anguish to hear of anybody living in conditions like that. I have regular meetings with my departmental officials who have ongoing relationships with beneficiary advocates around the country and anything that they bring to the attention of the officials is alerted to me and I haven’t had complaints in the way I had a decade ago when I was first Minister for Work and Income about people being denied any entitlement. That is not the case now and you know that if there are any individual cases then I would certainly be happy to look at them, or if there is a more systemic issue then that would be fixed. CATRIONA Well I think that Work and Income the upper echelon knows perfectly well that people are not getting everything to which they're entitled because they – good on them – I wrote a very critical column last year and they acted on it, we had a meeting, we've for the last nine months had a pilot at Manukau Court with a Work and Income person being there to try and pick up people who are coming to court, getting into trouble doing burglaries, shoplifting from supermarkets because they don’t have a benefit and they don’t have a job, so we're trying to deal with that on the spot, but every Monday morning when I'm Duty Solicitor within the first hour of my work I can guarantee to find four people who are not in a job and are not getting a benefit. There's eight Duty Solicitors at Manukau Court every morning, Monday morning, there's courts all around the country, so it says to me that there are still an awful lot of people falling through the cracks, and it's not only the human side that we should be helping these people but give someone a benefit get them a job it's the greatest crime prevention strategy as well. RUTH I totally agree and I think the idea of working with people like you through the court system is good as is the activity that Work and Income does with the food banks, so we have a Work and Income person at the food bank, we know that if someone's going to a food bank they clearly haven’t got enough money to buy food, what else can we do to help them. I'm happy to pick up any of those proactive ideas that you have. CATRIONA Doesn’t the fact that beneficiaries are going to food banks, that just completely answers the first question that Guyon asked you, are benefit levels adequate and you didn’t answer that, but I can answer that and I can say plainly that they're not. RUTH The fact that people are going to food banks is obviously a concern to us but there are different reasons for that. Some people who are in paid work are going to food banks and that’s a major concern, that’s why we've continued to increase the minimum wage every year and have a commitment to continuing to ensure that people are earning enough either on a benefit or in a paid job to not have to go to food banks. RAWDON Bernard, is it working? BERNARD HICKEY – www.interest.co.nz Well I wonder. Minister we've seen a lot of money spent on policy development over the last nine years, a lot of programmes put in place but we see social dislocation as high as it's ever been, and the sort of social dislocation that causes violent crime, and that’s risen quite sharply over the last few years and leaves us with problems like infant mortality although it has improved recently just dipped back sharply. Do you think all that money has been spent efficiently and why do you think violent crime has increased so much when we've spent so much money on social policy? RUTH Well let's go to the first of your two questions first. In terms of best use of money I do think the investment we have made in social policy and moved from a welfare system which is quite reactive to people's needs to a social development model which is proactive and really engages people early, has been successful. We haven’t fixed every problem and I don’t know any social policy researcher or activist in the community who would think that we could have quick fix solutions to some of the really complex problems in people's lives. The response I talked about earlier with Guyon integrated service response where we get the different agencies together to ensure that children are getting proper health checks, to ensure that their health needs are being treated, that they get into early childhood education, that when they are of school age they are attending school and that their parent or parents are engaged in training and employment will have long term payoffs for those children their parents and our community, but these are not quick fix solutions, they have to be systemic and they have to be maintained. If I could just briefly respond to your second question, the issue of violent crime increasing is a major concern, I've done a lot of work in the youth justice area and have some legislation before parliament at the moment looking at ways of extending what have been successful interventions and ensuring that we can stop our young people reoffending. BERNARD But Minister surely the final result is of all this work on social policy, more child poverty, more violent crime, you’ve had nine years, surely you should have fixed something in that nine years. RUTH There are now 130,000 fewer children living in poverty in New Zealand than there were eight years ago,, that is something I'm very proud of, we haven’t fixed child poverty in New Zealand but 130,000 fewer children living in poverty is something that I'm very proud of and I want to continue along the path of social development to ensure that those remaining children can be lifted out of poverty levels. We've moved from the bottom quarter of the OECD in child poverty ratings to the top half, that’s something we should celebrate, but we need to continue to look at the interventions that are successful and what more can be done. RAWDON Minister, given another term if this government was given another term therefore if you're proud of that child poverty rate dropping so dramatically things would be done pretty much the same would they? RUTH Well certainly we have a lot of interventions which we have started which have been successful, some of them haven’t been rolled out across the whole country, for example one which works with people who are on an invalids benefit looking at often quite low level health interventions that they haven’t been able to access either because they don’t know how to access the system at all, or because they don’t meet the criteria, so some tagged funding for health intervention has been given to people on an invalids benefit. We've seen a turnaround in the number of people on that benefit, that’s something I'd like to put a lot more focus on, it has been successful but more could be done. RAWDON Surely given the level of staffing in the Ministry the people who don’t yet know how to claim certain benefits should know by now? RUTH I would hope that the majority of New Zealanders know that we do have people who are very disempowered, who are quite overwhelmed by their day to day living who we obviously don’t reach, Catriona mentioned them earlier on, I'm keen to try any new initiatives to ensure that people are aware of and receiving their full entitlement, that’s our government's commitment to people who are unable to be in paid work that they are able to access the financial security that our system operates. RAWDON How many of the nine and a half thousand full time staff in the Ministry are actually out on the streets in the front line trying to meet people and find these people who actually need the benefits, and also are there trying to work out who's getting benefit and shouldn’t be getting it? RUTH A large number of the over 9000 staff through the Ministry of Social Development are front line staff, not just in Work and Income but we also have social workers obviously in Child Youth and Family. RAWDON What sort of percentage? RUTH I think about a third but I'm sorry I can't do those figures off the top of my head. CATRIONA Well I think the child poverty action groups Left Behind report, what's your response to that, doesn’t it show that actually our children are living in shocking conditions? RUTH I welcomed the release of the Left Behind document and I am very appreciative of the focused attention that the Child Poverty Action Group have given to what is a key concern in our community, condition living in poverty. I know that the policies that we have will continue to move our children out of poverty into a life where they and their parents have better opportunities and better security. CATRIONA But the government's not gonna stop defending the court case that the Child Poverty Action Group's bringing in relation to the discrimination issue with Working for Families? RUTH That’s correct. RAWDON So if the government is confident with the level of benefits its receiving why do you think there has to be – and you're confident that the level of child poverty is falling well then we're all heading in the right direction and so therefore nothing needs to change, is that what you're saying? RUTH Some of the initiatives that have been successful have not been rolled out across the whole country, we haven’t achieved you know a paradise of a country where every child is able to live with the financial security that we would want. These policies move in that direction and they need to continue to do that. Groups like Child Poverty Action Group have a specific focus on child poverty and we should be appreciative that we have people in New Zealand who use their talents and expertise for the benefit of others. CATRIONA Do you think there still needs to be more work on culture change within Work and Income so that beneficiaries are not treated as the enemy that they are truly told everything they're entitled to, and that they're not put through a process which sometimes seems to me akin to torture with constant reviews, constant requests for documents that have been supplied many times? RUTH I have seen a dramatic change in the culture of Work and Income over the last eight years, I was Minister responsible for Work and Income in 2000 and I know that the correspondence that I get and the people I meet in Work and Income offices have a completely different sort of behaviour and attitude than they did a decade ago. BERNARD I just wonder those Minister, how can you fix the increase in our violent crime rates using social policy because it seems it hasn’t worked? RUTH I talked earlier about the integrated service response, that involves the Police and Police have been very helpful actually in identifying the top group of people within a community who are causing the most anguish. We know that if those people have help in ensuring that they're not accruing debt, that they have stable housing, that their children are linked in with early childhood or with the Compulsory Education Service and those people are supported into a paid job then we have a dramatic contribution to crime prevention, including violent crime. RAWDON Okay Minister, Ruth Dyson, thanks very much for joining us this morning. |
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