Cover Story
Outrageous fortune
by Ruth Laugesen
Continued from page 1...
According to one chief executive in the NGO sector who met her at an umbrella meeting of welfare organisations, Bennett told them: “I don’t read. Don’t send me big documents – I don’t read them.”
The problem, says the chief executive, is that proposals put to the Government do require detail, background and explanation. “How do you convey all that detail and complexity in one page? You have got senior government officials trying to reduce complicated ideas to graphs and pictorials because they know otherwise she won’t read them. We are trying to convert quite complex ideas into flow charts and graphs and diagrams. It’s astonishing.”
Some Cabinet ministers are known to like data and statistics. Others prefer narratives and personal examples to get to grips with a policy idea. But all tend to want more written information, not less, says the chief executive, who does not want to be named because it could affect his organisation’s funding.
Bennett is indignant at the suggestions she is allergic to heavy reports. “It’s just ridiculous – there is absolutely no truth in it whatsoever,” she says, rifling through a few reports on her desk.
“You need the information to make the big decisions at the end of the day. Here’s one on the redundancy support package, you don’t do that in a page with your frick-in’ diagrams. It’s a 16-page document!” Here’s another 15-page report, her weekly briefing from the ministry, and a 22-page report on universities.
Bennett says people may have misunderstood her drive to dispense with bureaucratic jargon. “I probably do challenge people on language. Probably where it stems from is I’m not good with the platitudes, I like to know what the facts are.”
Bennett’s sprawling portfolio covers not only income support for beneficiaries, superannuitants and low-income working families, but also the care and protection of children and young people, employment assistance, funding to community service providers, and student allowances and loans. Whereas the previous Labour Government had a platoon of associate ministers to help with the portfolio, Key has given Bennett only one associate minister, Tariana Turia, to help with the heavy workload.
Bennett may be facing some criticisms, but she has also delighted welfare sectoral groups by successfully battling on their behalf in this year’s Budget.
Labour had promised $1.47 billion over five years on a “Pathways to Partnership” programme for funding social service agencies, but the promise faced the chop from Finance Minister Bill English. So Bennett, working closely with NGOs, went in to bat and kept the five-year funding against the odds.
In retrospect, was it really such a good idea to start her Cabinet career with a $20 billion portfolio? “Oh look, why not, you know?” says Bennett, laughing.
Then she becomes serious: “I think the thing that surprises me is how much I do know this stuff. If I was to be quite frank, when I sat around the table for those early couple of months with those officials, and when I was going out there and all of a sudden you have access to experts, and some pretty incredible people that are out there working in it are surprised at how much I actually know and my ability to drive it in the directions I think are important.”
Bennett’s own background means she knows some human truths that cannot be learned from official documents – the smell of poverty, how it feels to be trapped by circumstances and poor choices.
Bennett’s life story is remarkable – from a hard-working, middle New Zealand home in Kinloch, Taupo, she became a teenage bad girl and a solo mother at 17. She was on and off the DPB and worked at menial jobs for years, but still had enough grit and determination to buy a home at 19 with the help of a $56,000 Housing Corporation loan.
At one stage she was working part-time during the day at a tourism booking office, then toiling midnight to 8.00am waitressing at a truck stop while someone looked after her daughter, Ana.
Her break came while working as a nurse aide at a rest home, where she was inspired by the owners to enrol in university. At Massey’s Albany campus, she not only gained a BA in social policy, but became student union president. It was then she also connected with her Tainui ancestry.
Bennett has said making the decision to turn her life around gave her an enduring self-belief.
“When I looked at my future … I saw more babies and different boyfriends and pretty tough living, and I decided only I could make that difference to my future and the life I was going to have. With that came an inner strength,” Bennett said on Radio New Zealand’s One in Five programme.
She went on to become electorate secretary for East Coast Bays MP Murray McCully, a power behind the throne for the past five National leaders.
In 2005, on the strength of a recommendation from McCully, National leader Don Brash approached her and asked her to stand for Parliament. By that time, Bennett was a manager at a recruitment firm. She initially entered Parliament in 2005 on the party list, then took the Waitakere seat from Labour’s Lynne Pillay in 2008 by 600 votes.
Bennett’s Cinderella story is almost as compelling as Key’s own rise from state house inhabitant to Parnell multi-millionaire.
