KEY POINTS:
New cabinet minister Paula Bennett's life has gone full circle - from being a solo mum on the domestic purposes benefit (DPB) to now controlling the benefit purse strings.
Prime Minister elect John Key today appointed the second-term MP to the high-powered role of social development minister - a position where she will oversee almost $20 billion in annual spending.
The appointment is a stratospheric elevation for the 39-year-old Maori Waitakere MP, who was placed well down National's party list despite performing strongly in the last Parliament.
But it is a branding coup for Mr Key who has been keen to put a softer face on the welfare portfolio.
As social development minister, Ms Bennett will also be tasked with working closely with Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia, who has been given an associate role with responsibility for Child, Youth and Family.
Like Mr Key, Ms Bennett's life story is one of pulling herself up from humble beginnings.
Ms Bennett told NZPA she had been on the DPB on and off for the first five years of her 21-year-old daughter Anna's life.
"I was definitely living day to day and struggling financially and emotionally, and I worked out that the only way I was going to get out of that trap was to get into meaningful paid employment."
She moved from Taupo to Auckland where she worked as a nurse aid in a resthome while studying part time.
"It took me four-and-a-half years to get that degree and that was the catapult for me."
Her degree was in social policy, but ironically she had not used that until becoming an MP and one of three National associate families spokespeople in 2005.
In between she had been an electorate worker for National MP Murray McCully, before moving into human relations and recruitment. By the time she left to become an MP she was managing a recruitment business.
Ms Bennett said she did not mind being the poster girl for National's welfare policies as long as people recognised there was more to her than just that.
"I'm a woman, I'm a mum, I'm Maori, I've got tertiary education and business experience and a lot of life experience in different areas."
Entering via National's list in 2005, Ms Bennett - a self described "Westie" - also worked hard to take the previously safe Labour west Auckland Waitakere seat at the election.
National's strong showing in west Auckland where it engineered a reversal of Labour's dominance in the party vote was partly credited with dominant election night result.
Ms Bennett says she is a firm believer in opportunity and hard work.
"Aspiration and believing in yourself with a huge dose of hard work can make anything possible."
Ms Bennett made a name for herself in the last parliamentary term scoring multiple hits on the then government with her attacks on Labour's 20-hour-free early education policy.
But she said she was not opposed to more support for childcare costs, but the discrepancies in the policy, the exclusion of playcentres and kohanga reo, which National has promised to address and its incorrect branding as "free".
National has been accused by its opponents of stigmatising mothers on the DPB, but Ms Bennett said she tried to take a balanced approach towards welfare.
In 2006 she gave delegates at National's annual conference a lesson on what it was like to raise a child alone.
She told the mainly older delegates that mums on the DPB should not all be lumped together.
She said there were some solo mums who needed to be persuaded back to work through "mutual obligations" such as work testing and training.
But about a quarter of mums were off the DPB within a year and another 37 per cent were off within four.
For most of these mums welfare was only a temporary backstop they were keen to leave behind.
She said National was committed to giving those mums the tools to re-enter the workforce through re-training and employment schemes.
"There are many that if we gave them the opportunity and if we gave them the inspiration and belief in them and showed them the way then they actually would be getting off more."
- NZPA
