Delahunty Catherine: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 18 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3658. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
Tena koutou katoa. Tena koe Mr Chair. I am delighted to have this opportunity to talk about Part 3 of the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill because I feel like there is something missing and there is an education that obviously whoever drafted it missed out on. Where are the men? Do the people who drafted this bill know how children are conceived? The responsibility has not been clearly explained in the bill. All we hear is “bad woman bad woman bad beneficiary bad mother”. That is the mien that is around the bill.  
Whatever the intention what Part 3 has achieved with the sanctions and the work testing is “bad mother” because dad was not anything to do with it. There is no father in this picture. She conceived immaculately. She must take responsibility for having more than one child on the DPB and that all by herself she got pregnant. There are no two people in this story. There is one and she will pay.  
Having worked with beneficiaries on a regular basis with sole mothers I would just like to say to the women out there who are listening that the Green Party does not hate you for having more than one child while on the benefit. Nor do we think that you did it by yourself nor do we think that if you are not in work you are failing your children nor do we think that staying at home with your children is a waste of time and nor do we think that breastfeeding a child over the age of 1 is a bad thing. In fact the World Health Organization says it is a really good thing. We would like to support you mothers to do just that. We do not happen to think that because you do not have a partner who can support you you are a bad mother if you do not want to go out to work when you have a 1-year-old a 3-year-old a 6-year-old or a 7-year-old and you are a sole parent.  
I know hundreds of women who are being mum and dad. Everyone in this House knows them. They are doing double the work. [ 
Interruption 
] Exactly. They are doing the work that two-parent families do. They are doing twice the work. If they have got an extended family or whanau who can back them up maybe going to work is a great option for them if they can find a job. That is fabulous. I have lived in Tai Rawhiti and have seen woman after woman coming to our benefit service. All they want is to do a good job as a parent but they cannot afford to feed their kids because not only is the benefit system too low but they are being work tested and there is no work.  
I invite the members who think it is easy to go and walk down the street of many of our small towns and ask for a job that is going to fit with your four or five kids if you are a sole parent. Go and ask for it because that is what they are doing when they are work tested. They are going door to door they are asking for a job and they are ticking the box. But they are not getting a job because there are only so many that fit neatly with the actual responsibility of being a good parent. If you decide that you will be home at 3 o’clock for your children is that a failure? If you decide that your baby is going to be fed past 1 year old are you a bad parent? And if you cannot get a job and you get sanctioned who is going to benefit? No one is going to benefit at all.  
Our whole society when we attack mothers and children fails. This afternoon I went to a seminar with KidsCan which is an independent charity that says that one in 11 children is living in poverty. The organisation says that 15000 children do not get enough food. Many of their parents are not bad people; they are people who do not have enough money and job creation does not exist to help them get out of poverty. Instead of the Government focusing on how it can make Holly Walker’s Supplementary Order Paper too expensive it would be really good if the Government recognised that there are many situations in the benefit system where the word “discretion” is very important.  
When we had the special benefit—when case managers were encouraged to be human rather than punitive—there was room to acknowledge the situation. I have probably spent more time in the Work and Income office than many people in this Chamber. I have spent a lot of time there advocating alongside people who found it really difficult to say: “I am not a bad mother. I want to stay home with my children and I need to stay home with them because one of them has asthma every third week another one has a learning disability and I’m feeding a baby.”  
I do not know what world people come from when they think that motherhood when you are a sole parent and you have got more than one child is somehow a lifestyle. A lifestyle—that is one of the most offensive things I have ever heard when I know the struggles of these women to try to live and to try to provide their kids with what I am glad to have provided for my daughter. I am a fortunate one I am a blessed one that I was able to get an education and to work. I have met so many women just as committed to being a parent as me who are now being punished.