Judith Collins MP - National Party Welfare Spokeswoman

22 February 2005

Labour aims to hide inaction on welfare

National Party Welfare spokeswoman Judith Collins remains sceptical of Labour's plan to recategorise New Zealand's 300,000 beneficiaries.

"We all know how Labour likes to manipulate statistics. We've seen it for the past five years in the way the Government has handled the sickness and invalid benefits.

"Steve Maharey promised this programme would be in place by 2002, now we're being told it won't be ready until 2007 or even later.

"The hard working Kiwi taxpayer who has funded Labour's 'do nothing' approach to welfare has been made to wait more than five years for a pilot programme.

"This is classic election year hot air, designed to give the appearance that something is being done.

"Labour is afraid to talk about community work for welfare. It has deliberately avoided discussing work testing or the worrying growth in the Domestic Purposes Benefit. These are the hard issues that only a National Government can be trusted to deal with.

"National now looks forward to seeing the costings, projections and training programmes that Steve Maharey's had so many years to work on," says Ms Collins.

ENDS

© Scoop Media