Turei Metiria: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:13186] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Just to follow on from my earlier discussion about the advance payment of benefits the Minister in the chair the Hon Paula Bennett stood up to say that people can do a budgeting activity—which is not very different from budgeting advice or trying to organise for beneficiaries to rearrange their money better—knowing as she does full well that there simply is not enough money and that beneficiaries seek support through advances in various forms because they do not have enough money to cover the very basics. Of course we saw an example of exactly that today in the newspaper. Although the Minister will spin this measure as being one to try to help beneficiaries at the root of what she is says and at the root of the provision in clause 23 of the Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill is the assumption that if beneficiaries cannot manage on an income that is insufficient that must be entirely their fault. It is assumed that they must obviously be people who are not doing a good enough job of managing on money that simply cannot be stretched any further to cover the very basics. 
The Minister herself would understand what that means having been in a similar situation to that previously as do I and as do others in this Chamber who have been in similar situations. We understand what it means to not have enough money to cover the very basics and to need help. In the current situation with the regulated temporary additional support we now have very set criteria that do not take into account the circumstances of a particular parent and what he or she needs. It might be the case that his or her child has over the last few weeks been extremely ill so the parent has had real difficulty in going to a part-time job which maybe brings in 50 or 80 bucks a week so the parent does not lose money on the abatement. There might be very basic particular circumstances but if people fail the regulatory tests set out in the legislation then they will not be able to access that additional support. They will go without the very basics and so will their children. 
The other part of this measure is weird in the sense that it talks about an excessive number of advance payments. It says those who seek an excessive number of advance payments will have to seek budgetary advice. Again that goes directly to the blame-the-victim mentality that is part of this legislation. 
We need to provide in welfare legislation systems that are simple understandable and transparent; that incentivise beneficiaries to gain the extra skills that they need in order to move into the workforce when they are ready; and that provide support for the children of beneficiaries to be parented as effectively as possible. When a sole parent is on the domestic purposes benefit we have a real opportunity for skill development. If the person does not have a very good education or has not had an opportunity to get further development or training we should look at their skills and support them to train for better skills. There is an opportunity to support sole parents to get access to child care so that their children get very good high-quality early childhood education which they can participate in and be part of. There are a lot of excellent opportunities in early childhood education for parents to be involved with their children on a regular daily basis without the stress of having to find work or of being forced to lose their benefit as a result of not finding the work that their case manager says they should find. 
There are ways to give families the support that they need in order to do the best job of taking care of their babies and children. But what happens with legislation like this—which is based on a blame-the-victim mentality and a punitive approach whereby people whose circumstances mean that they need help now are punished for needing that help—is that at the end of the day it punishes the children of those families. 
I support the amendments that the Hon Annette King has put forward. I agree entirely with her comments on the 20 hours a week. The Government by making the work test 15 hours a week and not 20 hours a week is cutting off for beneficiaries the opportunity to make the step up from the benefit. It constrains their ability to move off the benefit and into 20-hour work where they could then move into being supported by Working for Families. It traps beneficiaries into the poverty cycle. The idea that there are a whole lot of 2-day-a-week 7-hour-a-day jobs is just unrealistic and untrue.