Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party in the Committee stage of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. I would like to start by responding to some of the points that were made by the Minister for Social Development Anne Tolley. She made several points. Her first was in response to the New Zealand First MP Tracey Martin's concerns about the predictive risk modelling aspect of this bill where the Government is going to be taking Child Youth and Family data school-exiting information data educational outcomes data and information about the sex of young people and putting all of that information together to decide whether a young person is going to have a long-term financial liability on the State—not whether that person may have additional needs but whether there is long-term financial liability on the State—as a result of those factors.The Minister's response to those concerns from that member was that The select committee made a great change to the bill. Yes it was a bit tough that the young person was never going to find out about that risk modelling so the committee's recommended that the young person can get that information and they are able to correct any inaccuracies." We are talking about 18 and 19-year-olds. I need to restate that: we are talking about adults in this legislation. Although the Social Services Committee did make the recommendation to change the bill so that the young person will find out why they are considered to be such a risk they will not have the ability to say: "Actually that is your analysis. That does not match how I see myself and I do not think that service that you are offering me will be useful." So 18 and 19-year-olds—adults—will be given a phone call. The Ministry of Social Development officials did tell us that yes they did recognise that this would be a difficult phone call and they had not quite worked out how they were going to have the conversation yet but we should feel OK that they would work that out.So I am imagining that I am an 18-year-old and I have been made unemployed from my workplace along with another mate who is the same age. We have gone into Work and Income together—or applied online as we may be encouraged to do now—and I get this phone call. My mate does not. Work and Income says: "So your family had dealings with Child Youth and Family and you didn't do so well at school. We think that you are a risk so we want to offer you this service where you are going to be given a money card. You will have maybe $50 cash that you have control over; the rest we will have control over. You will have to tell us about all your financial data any debts that you have your rents and all of those details of your life and you are going to have to report to us often and regularly." I might come back to them and say: "Oh well actually despite the situation in my family I had a really awesome auntie. Although things sucked at home and Child Youth and Family got involved I had this really strong relationship. I have already been in a job and actually I do not think that you are describing me as who I am. I think that I have got some strengths to offer here." That person on the other end of the phone might say "Oh OK. Fair enough. You can go through the usual channels." but they might not. They might say: "Well too bad." That is the bill that we are passing here. It is legislation to remove the control of our young adults to be able to define themselves.If we have this concern for our young people then what we know in terms of all of the research around youth development is that what will make a difference to a young person who is disconnected or struggling is to connect with them on a human level to focus on their strengths and to help them develop their strengths. And the more you focus on their risks or the things that have gone wrong in the past the more present that becomes in their life the more they are defined by that and the more they are unable to escape that. The pathway for young people to be successful in life and to be resilient and overcome challenges in their lives is to focus on their strengths and build strong relationships with other people who can support them. This piece of legislation has some fundamental flaws. Firstly it focuses on risk. Secondly it infantilises those young people and takes away their control. Thirdly it just does not focus on what is possible. The Minister previously in her second point of rebuttal was saying that this is not about a burden this is not about being negative and this is about having high aspirations. Well the test of that is whether the Minister will support Carmel Sepuloni's amendment to have this to National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 equivalent or higher because this Government that is telling us it has aspirations is the same Government that got rid of the training incentive allowance which actually enabled sole parents to be able to have a pathway into higher-paid jobs.Carmel Sepuloni: Pulling up the ladder.JAN LOGIE: Absolutely—keeping people stuck and in fact putting barriers in front of them being able to achieve more in their lives and support their families. That is not having higher aspirations. This legislation and the entire tenor of it are set on a level that just does not have confidence in people's abilities for themselves and keeps putting barriers in their way preventing them from being able to take control of their lives.One of the other parts that I did want to mention again—in terms of that relationship building for young people and what helps them if they are in a bad place—is a relationship of trust. This legislation also fundamentally alters that relationship of trust between the young person and the people in the community whom they previously could go to to be their sounding boards the people whom they could rely on and process everything with. Those people have been turned into people who are given the role of reporting back to Work and Income. If the young person is not meeting their obligations Work and Income has the ability to sanction their income which threatens their entire ability to put a roof over their head. That is not a trust-based relationship.I know some organisations are doing some great work within this model despite it. I will acknowledge that. But we have heard from some young people in a service that we went to—where they closed the door so that the people running the service could not hear the conversation that they were having with us because they did not think that that was safe—who quietly told us about people being sanctioned and whom they had never seen coming back to the course. For tangi or for very understandable reasons people were absent and then they were sanctioned. So this is not this perfect model. It was raised by the National Beneficiaries Advocacy Consultative Group which had concerns that the lack of transparency in this model means that there are not the communication channels to people outside for those young people to know what their appeals right are—where actually they may be able to challenge things—and there is not the transparency for us to be able to find out what is happening in there either.One of the other points that the Minister made was that she was saying: "We care about the life outcomes of these young people and it is not just about the money. It is not—really." Well then again my challenge back to the Minister is to change the Better Public Services targets to make them about the well-being of young people—about proven earning potential or just well-being mental health or any of those things that actually matter—rather than a reduction in the financial liability for welfare. That is not having aspirations for our young people. If you say you care and you care about their life outcomes then change your Better Public Services target and we might believe you. This legislation sits within a context of investing in a whole lot of bureaucracy rather than what I see in terms of the day-to-day life of these young people. That is money that could otherwise have been spent in our communities building relationships with those people that would last for an entire lifetime that would be strength-based and that would enable them to have the skills themselves."