Salesa Jenny: Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10913. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this brief call on the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. New Zealand has a proud history where we are usually forward-thinking about the social security of our citizens. New Zealand has led the world in instituting measures to ensure that there is a safety net that every New Zealand family has a house or a home to call their own that no one should starve or be forced into poverty and that our children are healthy and well educated.In practice however we are nowadays falling far behind other developed countries and our child poverty numbers continue to rise. This Government is failing some of our most vulnerable families and some of our most vulnerable children. This Government is ignoring the big and very real issues that everyday New Zealanders are facing each day—for instance the housing crisis particularly in Auckland and Christchurch; the ever-increasing rents; health cuts; a lack of jobs; low wages; and growing education costs particularly for our parents. Safe warm dry homes are becoming scarce in parts of our community including in South Auckland where I am a member of Parliament. We are seeing people who are living in severely overcrowded conditions. They are living in garages tents and caravans.Most of the time as electorate MPs we sit in our offices—in my case in Ōtara—and families walk through the door telling us that they are homeless or that they are living in cars. They come in their minivans sometimes. But last week I drove past a house on one of the roads in Ōtara and I saw this tent pitched at the front. I stopped and I went and knocked on the door. But before I got to knocking on the door as I walked past the tent I looked over and I could actually clearly see that there were four or possibly five beds set up in this tent. When I knocked on the door the mother answered the door and I said: “I’m the local MP and I can see that you’re living in an overcrowded kind of condition. Can you just tell me how many people live in this household of yours?”. This mother said to me “17 people”—17.People lived in the tent at the front. People lived in the garage. She had a caravan out the backas well. People lived in the caravan. She said: “Look into this house. You will see that there are beds in the hallway.” Some of her children were even sleeping in the hallway. People are living in severely overcrowded conditions and living in—this is an example of just one house where you saw all of these issues in the one household.Our social security legislation which we are discussing in this bill has itself been admirable but the Social Security Act of 1964 like many other Acts is pretty old. It has been kept going and been subjected to patches and amendments. Until now it has been just limping along in a fragmented and confusing way. It is indeed time that this particular legislation was consolidated into a clear and accessible piece of legislation. We owe that to New Zealand.But may I just talk about another example. Down the road from me in Māngere a few weeks ago they had what was called the Auckland Action Against Poverty beneficiary impact day in Māngere which was an eye-opener. They had over a hundred benefit advocates who were there on hand to help struggling families get their benefits—get their full entitlements. Organisers reported that they were stunned by the size and the desperation of the crowd waiting for help. On the final day of this action they had hundreds and hundreds of people lined up. Many of them had been lined up since before 7 a.m. that morning but there were so many people that unfortunately they had to turn some of these families away.Can I just end by saying that Labour supports this bill. However we have major reservations. One of the things that we have reservations about is that we can see that the principles need to be altered.However when we are looking at a bill like this one where many families are actually looking at it—ultimately they rely on this kind of help for the necessities of life—we as legislators must approach changing this kind of legislation with a lot of caution. Thank you very much.