Logie Jan: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 03 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4312. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I am very pleased to resume my call on the Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill which was unable to pass on the last members’ day because for some reason the Government members felt compelled to waste the time of this House on what seemed like endless meaningless repetitious speeches on bills that no one disagreed with. That is not uncommon given the behaviour we have seen again this evening. I was disappointed that the children and their families who are following the progress of this bill so closely were again left hanging. That to my mind was disrespectful.I would now like to acknowledge Tracey Martin from New Zealand First for bringing this bill to the House and for shepherding it through the select committee so effectively to get it to this point.Tracey Martin has had to swallow I would say some dead rats in the process but she prioritised the needs of children and getting a result over the intent that she originally came to the House with. I think that deserves to be acknowledged.The Green Party supported this bill at its first reading and supports it now but we are greatly disappointed by the Government’s warped priorities and meanness which has reduced this bill down to making children wait until 2018 to get the intent of the original bill for only an amount of money that is less than the flag referenda in practice. What this bill is about is fairness. It is about addressing a small but important inequity in the funding that goes to support some of the most vulnerable children in Aotearoa New Zealand those who through death or family breakdown have lost the support of their parents and are now in the care of other family members. Although the quantum of the funding discrepancy around this issue of the clothing allowance may seem small to us sitting here in the House—and it really does seem small to me I have got to say in the scope of all the things that this House considers—it means a lot and it counts for a lot for those families who are struggling to get by and are wanting to provide the very best for the children in their care.Basically to recap again what the heart of this bill is about it is that children who are in foster care in New Zealand because of family breakdown or death are entitled to a clothing allowance of just over $1100 a year to be able to buy whatever clothes they need. Usually they will be new clothes and that is really really important for kids—what you wear at school; I am sure we remember that. It counted when I was a kid way back when and it seems to count even more now. That $1100—plus a little bit—allowance is not available to children who are being cared for by their family members. Those family members many of whom are grandparents who are getting by on fixed incomes have no ability to provide for just that extra for those children to enable them to have those new clothes—they are not able to do it. They are looking at these other children and feeling that they are letting down the kids in their care. They are giving up so much of their life to care for these children and they feel as if somehow they are letting them down because they are not able to provide for them in the same way as children in foster care. There is just something so perverse about that to me.In some cases these grandparents or people in our community are so wonderful that they are caring for their own children and family and they are caring for foster children. Their foster children are entitled to this money and so there they are in this one household buying new clothes for these children and not able to buy those same clothes for their own kin in the same house at the same time. That is a perverse perverse thing and should be rectified by this House and I thank the member Tracey Martin for bringing this bill to the House to enable us to fix that injustice and inequity and to enable parity between children in foster care and those being cared for by kin carers.It is just a very very sad thing that the Government has said that it will not do it until 2018 despite getting entreaties from those children. I am sure members of the Government have been getting as we have letters with the picture of those children asking us not to make them wait until 2018.I do just before I close want to touch on some of the process around this and what I saw happen in this House. I had a Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee stage of this bill to bring that time forward so that it would be able to happen this year for those families. I had support from the Labour Party and support I think from other parties within this House. There was the intent for New Zealand First members Tracey Martin and her party also to be able to support that Supplementary Order Paper because that was the initial intent of this bill. They wanted to be able to vote for that Supplementary Order Paper and while we had that in front of the House the Minister came down and sat beside the member and told her that the Government would withdraw support for the bill entirely unless they voted against that Supplementary Order Paper. That degree of pettiness and politics disgusts me to be honest. To prevent a member from being able to deliver—or even vote symbolically for the intent of the bill to show that actually this is what she wanted for children and she wanted to be able to deliver it to them now as they are requesting—and to be able to bully a party into voting against their own intent and desire to me is a misuse of power and one that speaks to the heart of this Government and it is not a pretty sight.But I will finish on the positive note that this bill at least will deliver parity in 2018 and it has the hearts and the well-being of children at its centre and it is at least a great thing that the House gets the opportunity to put children first at any time in this House because it does not happen very often. Sadly it is still not happening with this Government but at least it is in there in the intent of this bill and the Green Party is very happy to support it and recommend it to the House.