Ardern Jacinda: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2860. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to speak on the Committee stage of the Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill. It is a bill that Labour has supported all the way through and I continue to commend the member Tracey Martin for bringing this important bill before the Committee.I want to raise a couple of issues in this Committee stage that relate to the technical details but first of all I just want toagain for the benefit of the Committee briefly traverse the difference—which is captured in the title—between those who are in receipt of an unsupported child’s benefit or an orphans benefit versus those who receive support for caring for a child who is in their care as a foster child. Obviously this bill is very specific to those who receive an unsupported child’s benefit. In New Zealand unfortunately circumstances mean that many of those individuals are grandparents raising grandchildren or those who are often described as kinship carers. They are in the devastating situation of their children not being in a position to care for their grandchildren and often reluctantly at great expense have to acknowledge that the grandchildren would be better off in their own care. Many of these individuals are living on pensions. Some scrape together meagre incomes through part-time work. All however have made the decision to put their grandchildren first and we should applaud them for that. I want particularly to applaud the group that has been organised since roughly 1999 under Diane Vivian—Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust—which has been an excellent advocate for change in this area.Qualifying for an unsupported child’s benefit is quite a test: you have to demonstrate family breakdown. That in itself is quite a difficult thing to demonstrate. You may have a biological parent who is very unwilling to accept their inability to care appropriately for the grandchild in question. That in itself can be a hard test to demonstrate to Work and Income which often requires family members to openly agree that there has been family breakdown and an inability to support that child. It is a difficult test. Work and Income also requires there to be a long period of time where a grandparent has actually been caring for that grandchild unsupported before they qualify. I know a lot of members in this House would probably have been advocates. Therefore I do think there is room to look at the threshold test for those families. But the distinction within the legislation that exists that the member is trying to remedy is that in qualifying for that unsupported child’s benefit you do not automatically qualify for the same support that a foster carer would receive. That is what this bill seeks to remedy.The Social Services Committee found however that in clause 4 inserting new section 29B which is the most substantive part of the bill—basically it sets out how administratively it would apply the extension of receiving a clothing allowance which is the one bit of foster care support that we are now trying to transfer to someone receiving an unsupported child’s benefit. The select committee has changed the way the original form of this bill would do that. The select committee has changed it basically by making a reference in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services Act around rates of payments to persons or organisations that are in charge of a child. Why has the committee made a general cross-reference rather than just simply stating in law that you would receive a clothing allowance? Well the select committee points out that the reason is: “the clause as drafted may give the impression that the chief executive is required to determine such an allowance. However section 363 of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act relates to the chief executive’s discretion to determine the rates of allowances payable to caregivers of foster children … We believe the amendment would clarify that although a clothing allowance is currently provided for foster children the provision as well as the amount provided is at the chief executive’s discretion”.It is somewhat concerning that such an important allowance is at the chief executive’s discretion. I would have thought that that would be the kind of support that should actually be entrenched in the legislation. Granted it is obviously currently available it is provided for—I would really challenge any Minister who would allow a chief executive to remove that support—but stranger things have happened in policy in this area. So I think it would be good if the Minister could consider entrenching such support and allowances into legislation so that we are not just cross-referencing the discretion of a chief executive in a bill like this.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): If the member would take her seat she will get the call back in a second but I think we have got something procedural to sort out.Jami-Lee Ross: I seek leave for all clauses in this bill to be debated as one question.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think also “and amendments”.Jami-Lee Ross: And amendments.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): So if we have the understanding that all questions on this bill are going to be debated as one question—is there any objection to that process? There is none.