Logie Jan: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2641. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):Thank you Mr Chair for enabling me to take a last call on this bill. I would like to specifically address Supplementary Order Paper 56 and the amendment to schedule 6 of the Social Security Act 1964. The amendment will clarify that the $20 personal earnings exemption that is currently accessible to people caring full-time for people who would otherwise be in care will no longer be accessible to them. How extraordinary is that—in this week Caregivers Week when most of the country is spending a moment to actually thank the people in this country most of whom are women who are giving up so much of their lives to care for our most vulnerable people. Some of those people are in paid work and I have had a discussion with the Minister this afternoon about the very clear exploitation of those women workers and the gender pay gap we have in the country.Another side to this also is the almost entirely unpaid workers of those family members receiving the supported living allowance to care for family members who—through legislation that was rushed through this House under urgency after the last Budget—were denied access to a wage denied access to the Human Rights Commission and denied access to basic rules of justice. We get to see a pattern—and again this Supplementary Order Paper denies that group of people access to a $20 personal earnings exemption. For goodness’ sake! I know the Government has been desperate to try to reach a surplus but to claw back money from people who are looking after—giving up so much to care for—some of the most vulnerable people in our society is just beyond the pale of meanness. I really would like to hear the Minister in the chair stand up and defend that.The Government is saying that people who themselves have total blindness or permanent and severe restrictions in their capacity to work because of sickness injury or disability are allowed a $20 personal earnings exemption. It is so generous—so generous! Are we all not grateful to have this wonderfully generous social security system as we have heard from the National Party members? To deny it to people caring for some of those same people—I cannot understand a policy that would make that distinction. If we are at all interested in the well-being fairness and ability of people to contribute to our society then a $20 earnings exemption—surely that is the absolute minimum. Why would you even look at that and see it as a problem let alone a problem to come to this Committee at the last minute and not enable any members of the public to actually put in submissions on it and to pass it through this Committee? Again we have seen how under Budget urgency members of the New Zealand public were denied the ability to submit on the changes around restrictions to human rights and pay for some family carers and here we are again seeing legislation pushed through the House without the ability for people to submit contribute or comment on—affecting some of the very same people who were locked out of that earlier legislation. It is a shame.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 56 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley to Part 1 be agreed to.