Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party and to oppose this bill and hopefully to see the end of it from this House. There are many reasons that I've been pleased to see a change of Government and I must be honest seeing the end of this bill is one of those reasons. It was quite—I don't know the right adjective really but it was bemusing at times to sit on the select committee and hear the overwhelming submissions telling us what a bad idea this was and to see the then Government members on the select committee just keep engaging as if it was possible to fix it despite all of the evidence that we had. It started off being just amusing and got to the point of being disturbing actually. We were being told just so clearly of the dangers of this bill. So it is lovely to rise and speak on this tonight knowing that this will be the end of this bill.I do just need to reference for a second—not to defend New Zealand First or speak to their policy—that the last speaker's view that this was somehow something to do with scrutiny of the Social Security Act to me is just a bit of a stretch and a bit of a bizarre concept. I would have thought scrutiny of our social security system was actually about ensuring that it was meeting its purpose which was I thought about ensuring that we had a safety net through which nobody in this country would fall and that actually this piece of legislation was fundamentally undermining the purpose of that piece of legislation. So therefore good scrutiny of our system would involve rejecting this bill and I think that seems entirely consistent to my mind and certainly is consistent with the views expressed by the New Zealand First member throughout the hearings of this committee not just post-election.I will just briefly recap for people who may be enduring this debate that the point of this piece of legislation is that it is to enable corrections to trigger a process that would lead to benefits being cut for people who are not complying with their community work sentence obligations. To do that the corrections staff would send a written warning. There would be two written warnings two weeks apart stating that the benefit may be cut if the person doesn't comply within 14 days of that second letter. Work and Income would then be in a position if they weren't compliant within that time frame to cut their benefit. Now this was only for certain benefits not all benefits. It was for people on main benefits; it was not for people receiving New Zealand superannuation it was not for people receiving a veterans pension it was not for anybody receiving Working for Families entitlements and benefits and also it wasn't for anyone who was earning wages despite the fact that they were the people most likely to be non-compliant with their community work obligations in terms of numbers.The idea that this would fix things—that cutting people's benefits would motivate them to be good people and get compliant—overlooked several key things. One of them which I do think it is worth reminding this House of is some of the reasons that people aren't compliant. Sometimes the reasons that they're not compliant have nothing to do with their desire to be compliant but are actually to do with the way that the system works and I'd like to give the House three examples of that over recent years.In one case in April last year there was a spike in non-compliance in the Nelson area. This was because they had moved the reporting location for people on community work service from Nelson to Richmond 20 kilometres away—for a group of people many of whom were ineligible to drive in an area where there is very little public transport and there was no transport being provided by corrections. So a whole lot of people became non-compliant because they just simply couldn't get themselves to the place of reporting. Now would anybody sensibly say that the answer to that would be to cut that person's benefit?Angie Warren-Clark: The Opposition would.JAN LOGIE: The Opposition would. As has been pointed out they seemed to really just not want to engage with that point through the process at all.Another example we heard: in 2016 in Canterbury there were so many issues of non-compliance that actually supervisors were fired; so there were fewer people able to engage with people to find out why what was going on and to be able to support them to meet their obligations. So there was less support in being able to follow this up and you've kind of got to see this piece of legislation in that context of Well let's just send a letter. We'll just send a couple of letters—job done. Don't need many staff to do that. Just fire those letters off and then we'll cut their benefits and that's not our problem because then the police will pick them up and they'll be in court again for somebody else to deal with." You really do have to question the basic logic of this proposal.We also saw another example which I think speaks more positively around the Department of Corrections' engagement around non-compliance. In Tauranga I think in 2013 there was some research done on the reasons for non-compliance and they found that one of the major drivers for non-compliance was that people were choosing to go into seasonal piece work and earn some money rather than comply. It was a chance to get some work to be able to support their family and to keep engaging because they saw that as better for their long-term benefit. When Tauranga looked at this and did the research they thought "Actually for the betterment of society and that person or their family let's support that. Let's not consider that non-compliance and let's shift their times of responsibility for when they don't have the opportunity to work. Let's try and build support around people and have them engage positively in their society." That is the Green Party's vision in terms of rehabilitation for people rather than cutting people's incomes and driving them—and we heard this evidence so clearly through the select committee of the very high chances that this would drive more crime as people didn't have enough money to be able to pay their rent or put food on the table.It also needs to be pointed out too when you think of the people getting these letters and the idea that that will just magically trigger them to be able to become compliant—because it had nothing to do with the State's setting up of a system that didn't work! But we also have to acknowledge that among young offenders as an example 40 percent of them have foetal alcohol syndrome 20 percent of them have head injuries 80 percent of them are struggling with alcohol and drug issues and 40 percent of them with mental illnesses. These are the people whose incomes we're going to be cutting for not responding appropriately to a community work obligation or a letter that we've sent them which they may not even be able to read because we know that there are high levels of illiteracy amongst this population.So it is with a great deal of relief that I expect to see this bill voted down in the House this evening and to stand in support of a social security system that moves us out of the Victorian age and that actually recommits to supporting everyone in this society to be able to put a roof over their head and to be able to participate in society not just those people who have been fortunate enough to have good enough lives never to end up in the situation of engaging with the justice system and be on income support."