Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I do want to say that it was good to hear earlier in this House the Minister for Social Development taking responsibility for this unlawful spending as we didn't hear that in the first reading speech only a matter of a couple of months ago.The Minister has just said that it was captured in time but I want to just put on record because it is really important that New Zealanders understand this that the payments made to over 25000 people were unlawful. They were not authorised by the Parliament and they were picked up—actually there's a bit of a time delay. The Minister was made aware of the issue months before in June 2018 and then the Office of the Auditor-General raised it again in October as an issue of unauthorised spending or unlawful spending. Over 25000 people had payments that were not allowed for in the New Zealand Parliament's law that was passed.This is a significant issue. I know the Minister wants the House to just kind of brush over it lightly but it is a significant issue to spend taxpayers' money that this Parliament has not authorised. That's what makes it unlawful. So it was great that the Minister took full responsibility for that. We didn't actually get any assurance in this House though that it won't happen again.One of the reasons that the National Opposition members didn't vote for this in the Social Services and Community Committee—it had a minority viewpoint in the select committee report and didn't of course vote for it in the first reading nor will we vote for it in the second reading—is because there is absolutely no guarantee that this piece of legislation which is fixing an error in legislation that was rushed through the House—this fix piece of legislation has also been rushed. It has a shortened report back and insufficient parliamentary scrutiny.We've had a Minister twice today sitting here telling us that she knows there is an issue that there is a group of New Zealanders who taxpayers will fund their energy payments twice—doesn't know the number. How is that acceptable? Taxpayers I think will be particularly concerned to know that there is a Minister who is quite happy to have rushed legislation fixing rushed legislation where the errors were originally made and still having errors. That is just such poor practice. It's hard to stress enough how bad this is but this is a Minister who also dropped a 500-page Supplementary Order Paper in May 24 hours before the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill and failed to get the details right at that stage as well.One of the issues that hasn't been traversed—and the Minister didn't mention it at all—is the fact that this is retrospective legislation. Now members in this House quite rightly have been scathing in the past of retrospective legislation. So Chris Hipkins in 2013 when it was the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill said simply imposing this by way of a legislative override effectively of a whole lot of organisations—the Regulations Review Committee the Ombudsman and various others … to ride roughshod over those organisations through a legislative process is not the right way to do it. It is manifestly unjust. It is simply not right. Retrospective legislation is not right."So not only is this a piece of legislation that's been rushed through the Parliament to fix a mistake because legislation was rushed through the Parliament without sufficient scrutiny but now we have retrospective legislation which according to members on that side of the House—they have said and I'll repeat "retrospective legislation is not right". Here they go again—here they go again. It's just not sufficient to say that this is a minor technical bill. It's not. One of the results of this bill will mean that taxpayers will pay energy costs twice for a group of people who are in full-time residential care that is paid fully by taxpayers and that group will get the winter energy payment as well.Again had there been sufficient time had the Minister allowed sufficient time for this House to do its work instead of sitting on her hands from when the issue was first raised in June 2018—if it was so minor and such a small technical change why wasn't the bill brought to the House? Why wasn't the bill brought to the House in a timely manner so the Parliament could scrutinise it so that this particular issue with the taxpayers paying twice for energy payments could have been fixed? But no—no. We have a Minister who is determined to abuse the parliamentary process to jam legislation through this House without sufficient scrutiny. Third time lucky—third time lucky. Unlucky actually—poor performance is more what it's about and you know quite rightly she takes full responsibility which is as she should. But this is legislation fixing something done under a rushed process without scrutiny. The fix is also a rush. It's not fixing the problem as the Minister herself has admitted and to cap it all off it is retrospective legislation which is a retrograde move for this House."