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E nga mana, e nga reo, e te iwi o te motu, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

In this great little country of ours we have 328,000 people of working age receiving a benefit – that’s around 12 per cent of the entire working age population.

More than half of these people have been on welfare for most of the past decade. We have 222,000 children being brought up in homes where the main income is the benefit.

There are thousands of New Zealand children growing up in state care.

Around four and a half thousand at any one time.

But thankfully, there are also thousands of people in this country who care enough to

care for and foster these children.

About 4,200 children were in the care of caregivers and foster parents in 2010.

Without these outstanding New Zealanders, Child Youth and Family residences would be the only option for our children in care.

Welfare reform is a controversial subject.

I think we can all agree on that.

Often controversy stems from emotive arguments from different sides of the debate.

So let’s meet in the middle with the facts.

The fact is that the current welfare system was designed in the 1930s.

It’s been tinkered and toyed with and is now a conglomeration of add-ons.

It’s a mess quite frankly and it’s time we had a really good look at tidying it up.