Sio William: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8221. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): This is my first call and I am surprised that given the importance of the legislation that we are debating at the moment the only two pieces of information that are available to me are the Act itself and the departmental disclosure statement which does not provide a lot of information.I want to follow through on something that I do not believe that this Committee has really considered in depth in debating this particular piece of legislation and that is that we are amending the Social Security Act 1964 and this bill—the Government’s bill—does not really provide a lot of information in terms of the principles and purpose of the Act of 1964. I just want the Committee to cast its sight on that particular Act because that is what we are talking about. That is what we are amending tonight.The purpose of the 1964 Act is “(a) to enable the provision of financial and other support as appropriate—(i) to help people to support themselves and their dependants while not in paid employment; and (ii) to help people to find or retain paid employment; and (iii) to help people for whom work may not currently be appropriate because of sickness injury disability or caring responsibilities to support themselves and their dependants:”. That really underlines what we are missing in all of this.This is about vulnerable people and given that we do not have the select committee process and we do not have the benefit of advice from the general public I am asking the first question. How many of these people whom the vulnerable that this 1964 Act was set up for are affected by this retrospective legislation?How many sickness beneficiaries are affected by this retrospective legislation? How many disabled or people with injuries are affected by this retrospective legislation? Some people have caring responsibilities are unable to support themselves and their dependants and are dependent on the State to provide support. How many of them are affected by this? If the Minister is able to provide that information that can give us some clarity in terms of how much money is involved in this because I understand that Minister Tolley made a comment in an interview she conducted on Radio New Zealand National. She said on 16 September 2015 that we are talking about only a day so it is not a huge amount. So if it is not a huge amount what is the Government doing? What is it doing to the most vulnerable group of people in our community?All the Government has to do is ensure that those people who missed out on that 1 day of a payment are given it. At the community level the people on the ground would see that for the past 18 years a Government department has broken the law because it has not paid them something that they should have been paid. So it has broken the law. If a business breaks the law we take it to court. But in this case the harm or the damage was done by a particular Government department and now the Government wants to act on it by refusing to pay out 1 day to the most vulnerable people.As my colleague Stuart Nash said $20 is a lot of money to people who are in need. In the last 7 years the group of people in need has grown and continues to grow. So I am asking the Minister in the chair Nathan Guy to give us a total of the number of people in the various beneficiary brackets. How many are affected by this? Can the Minister also provide the amount of money that we are talking about because that has not been given to us.