Walker Holly: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Walker Holly: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
: 
 I am a new member of this House. I am new enough to remember why I got into politics and whom I am here to represent. When I decided to stand for Parliament I said I wanted to defend our welfare and education systems which served me so well as a child to ensure that they continue to provide every child in New Zealand with the essentials at the start of their lives so that they can grow up and have the same opportunities I did. So it is with some sadness that I find I have to stand and defend the welfare system from attack so soon after entering this House. But I am also very proud to do so. I am proud to defend our welfare system from this cynical attack and I am proud to represent the parents the young people and the children who will suffer if we allow the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill to pass. 
Despite the title this bill is not about work focus. It does not create any new jobs or any new training opportunities. It is not about youth support. It does not help young people to take responsibility for their lives and their finances or support them into employment. It is about dismantling the social safety net and casting vulnerable New Zealanders loose for the sake of a few votes and it is reprehensible. 
New Zealand needs jobs and training for everyone not beneficiary bashing. Making life harder for people on benefits will not magically create jobs for them to move into. The welfare reforms in this bill will increase inequality and they will make life harder for everybody. They will compound the challenges faced by unemployed and disengaged young people and they will undermine the ability of parents to take good care of their children. The Green Party cannot support this bill. 
The Government seems to believe that if you make life tough enough for beneficiaries if you introduce enough work tests and if you threaten them with enough sanctions jobs will magically appear for them to move into. Government members know it does not work like that. Their own officials have told them so but it is the only response from a Government that seems to have zero commitment to real job creation. It seems to be the only response it can come up with. 
It is actually possible to help people move off benefits and into work. Most people on benefits would cry out for the opportunity to do so because as many members of this House will know trying to make ends meet on a benefit is almost impossible. But the best way to help people off benefits and into work is to invest in job creation. We know this in the Green Party; that is why before the election we proposed a job package that would have created 100000 sustainable new jobs for New Zealanders including many that would be appropriate for currently unemployed and young people. But the Government’s package does not create any jobs. What it will create is misery and hardship for those who are already doing it tough. I say to this Government that if you are serious about helping people move off welfare and into work then invest in skills training and job creation. The Green Party will support you. But do not talk about helping young people move off welfare and into work when what you really mean is that you are forcing people off welfare and into oblivion. It might make the benefit statistics look better but it will create poverty inequality and desperation and it will cost us all in the long run. 
I want to focus on the impact that this bill will have on sole parents and their children. This Government seems to have forgotten something that every single parent in New Zealand knows—in fact not every single parent but every parent. Parenting is work. It is one of the most important jobs that there is and if we can support parents to give their children the best start in life we can save the country billions of dollars in future welfare health education and justice spending. The changes proposed in this bill will undermine the ability of parents to take good care of their children by taking parents away from their children at key stages of their development. Perhaps even worse than that the changes will entrench poverty for many children by sanctioning their parents. 
Children have the same needs—the same needs—for food clothing a warm dry house and a secure attachment to a loving caregiver no matter what the income status of their parents and whether their parents are in work or not. I challenge the Minister for Social Development to explain how it is fair to punish innocent children by cutting their parents’ benefits because they cannot meet work-testing requirements. It is an inhumane and uncaring approach that undermines all the Minister’s high rhetoric about improving the situation for vulnerable children. These changes will create vulnerable children and create the conditions of poverty financial stress and insecurity in which child abuse and neglect are rife. So I say shame on Paula Bennett for presiding over the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children on the one hand and introducing this bill which will create more vulnerable children on the other. 
Sole parents want to work and there are ways to support them to do that when they are ready. This starts with respecting those parents and respecting the fact that they almost always know what is in the best interests of their family. They are better placed than any of us in here to make a decision about when they are ready to re-enter the workforce. So it is about being flexible creative and supportive in helping parents find appropriate part-time work that suits their needs and the needs of their children. It is about encouraging employers to make this kind of work available. 
It is also about recognising that it is not necessarily better for parents or their children for them to move off welfare and into a minimum wage job. Supporting sole parents into higher education and training is one of the most effective ways to reduce the amount of time they spend on a benefit and to increase the amount they earn when they move off it. But in the face of this evidence the Government has cut access to the training incentive allowance for degree-level courses. The Green Party would help parents to move off benefits and into work but we would do that by reinstating the training incentive allowance for degree-level courses and extending it to sickness beneficiaries and invalids beneficiaries. 
We need a welfare system that recognises that caregiving and parenting are important and supports and empowers parents to move into work when their children are ready. Many children born into two-parent families get all the benefits associated with having a secure attachment to a full-time caregiver in the early years of their life including being breastfed past the age of 1. We know how important these things are to child development. It is well documented so why would we deny that start in life to a child born into a sole parent family? The message that this sends is that the child of a sole parent family is not as important as a child born into a two-parent family. That is a message that starts the moment the child is born. If this bill passes that message will be compounded at every turn until that child itself is an unemployed and disengaged young person facing a future of insecurity. This Government talks about breaking the cycle of benefit dependence. If that is what it really wants to do then it should not enact this flawed and uncaring bill. 
This bill is also about young people. We have a massive youth unemployment problem in New Zealand but this bill does nothing to support young people into education or employment. Young people need jobs and this bill does not provide them. They need skills and training opportunities and this bill does not offer those either. What it does is punish young people especially young parents for the tough situations they find themselves in. 
The National Party purports to stand for personal responsibility but in the provisions of this bill that relate to young people it does the complete opposite. How does income management by Work and Income or private sector providers teach young beneficiaries personal responsibility in relation to their income? It does the exact opposite: it makes them more rather than less dependent in terms of the way that they manage their lives. It will foster resentment and disengagement amongst those young people and it will not help them to become independent and resilient. 
The involvement of the private sector in the provision of services to young beneficiaries is also deeply disturbing. This approach has been tried in the United Kingdom and it has failed spectacularly. We should learn from these mistakes not replicate them. In the UK we have seen similar private sector involvement in welfare as is proposed by this bill lead to the displacement of paid workers and to existing staff losing the opportunity for overtime. We have seen the exploitative use of beneficiaries as free labour and we have seen Government funding being claimed fraudulently by private providers. 
If this Government is serious about helping people off welfare and into work it is clear what it needs to do and it is not what is in this bill. The Government should go back to the drawing board read the submissions to the Welfare Working Group which it ignored read the report of the Alternative Welfare Working Group and come up with a set of reforms that puts children’s well-being at the heart of the welfare system. Putting children first guaranteeing that their needs are met no matter what their family income status is supporting their parents to develop secure attachment with their children in the early years supporting their parents into education and training developing young people’s potential and supporting their independence and creating sustainable flexible jobs that pay a living wage is how you break the cycle of benefit dependence.