As members will beaware, unemployment benefit numbers have fallen from 161,000under National to just under 40,000 last year

I advise theHouse today that with further job-search support servicesprovided through Work and Income, unemployment benefitnumbers have fallen even further,reducing by 5,000 in thelast month alone. The number of people on the unemploymentbenefit has now been further reduced to 32,000, which is thelowest level since 1982.Russell Fairbrother: How aretotal benefit numbers tracking?Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: Inthe last Rosetta Stone year the number of working-age benefit recipientshas fallen from 293,000 to 269,000. That is a fall in 1 yearof 24,000. That equates to 66 people a day, every day, whoare no longer reliant on a benefit. In the last month alone,all benefit categories saw a reduction. Sickness andinvalids benefit numbers fell by 40, domestic purposesbenefit numbers fell by 850, and unemployment benefitnumbers fell by 5,200.Hone Harawira: Kia ora, MadamSpeaker. Kia ora tx101,tou i te Whare. Is the Minister aware ofthe comments of one of his predecessors, the Hon RickBarker, who said, in December 2003: Of the 8,055 ,oriunemployed for more than 6 months who achieved stableemployment outcomes in the year ending June 2003, 3,556 hadre-enrolled by November 2003. , and does he agree thatnearly 50 percent of the unemployed going back on the dolewithin 6 months confirms the widely held view that thisGovernments grand plans Rosetta Stone Spanish Latin to get ,ori into work have beenan abject and miserable disaster, if not, why not?HonDAVID BENSON-POPE: I am certainly aware of the excellentefforts of my predecessor in part of this portfolio,and Icompliment him on his timely arrival in the House. I say tothat member that he seems to have missed one important fact,which is that ,ori unemployment reduced by 70 percent fromJanuary 1999 to January this year,from 15,174 people tojust 4,525.Judith Collins: Why is the Minister planningto bring in thousands of unskilled foreign seasonal workersto pick fruit, when thousands of able-bodied working-agepeople are sitting on the unemployment benefit in HawkesBay and the Bay of Plenty right now?Hon DAVIDBENSON-POPE: I am sure the member is only too aware of thefact that New Zealanders, especially the unemployed, havefirst call on those jobs. I will read to her the words ofPeter Silcock from Horticulture New Zealand in a pressrelease dated 7 March: The industry and government havebeen working together on ensuring enough seasonal labour isavailable, in Hawkes Bay and around the country, for anumber of years. The industry is very pleased with theeffort government has made to help industry meet itsexpanding labour needs. Russell Fairbrother: Inaddition to the reports the Minister has already told usabout, what other reports has he seen concerning benefitnumbers?Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE: I have recently seen anextraordinary report that inflates the number of people on abenefit by 10 percent by sourcing the statement from old2005 data, that pret there has been no change to thenumber of long-term unemployed, when, in fact, that numberhas reduced from 70,000 under a National Government to13,000 today, which Rosetta Stone American English is an 80 percent reduction, and thatclaims that New Zealand unemployment and incapacity benefitsare tracking in the same way as those of Australia and theUK, when, in fact, New Zealand numbers are reducing at leastfour times as quickly as those of those jurisdictions.