Volume 688 Week 38 - Tuesday 26 March 2013 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Volume 688 Week 38 - Tuesday 26 March 2013 
[Sitting date: 26 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8883. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Tuesday 26 March 2013 
Mr Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Questions to Ministers 
Ministers—Confidence 
1. 
DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does he have confidence in all his Ministers? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes. 
David Shearer 
: How can he have confidence in a Minister who considers a breach affecting more than 80000 confidential files from Canterbury households being “similar to someone putting the wrong address on an envelope.”? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: In principle if you were to post out the information that was emailed out they would both be going to an address and if the address was wrong the effect would be the same. 
David Shearer 
: In light of repeated breaches by the Ministry of Social Development ACC the Inland Revenue Department Work and Income Novopay the Department of Corrections and now the Earthquake Commission will he admit that there is a systemic failure of information management across the Government? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: No. I think there is room for improvement and the chief technology officer is working with all of those departments to ensure that they follow best practice. But we live in a world where technology is heavily used where people do email and actually from time to time people make mistakes. If the member is saying that we should go and sack this member of the Earthquake Commission—who I understand just from reading the newspaper today is a highly valued member—then that is a pretty high standard and actually not one that he held himself— 
David Shearer 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The latter part of that answer was well off the question and actually it was wrong in addition to that. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I think the question has been very adequately addressed. 
David Shearer 
: Given the number and magnitude of these breaches including the Ministry of Social Development ACC the Inland Revenue Department Work and Income Novopay the Department of Corrections and now the Earthquake Commission when will he instigate a policy across the Government to protect confidential information rather than dismissing it as he did yesterday when he said that “all of us probably in our lives have sent an email by mistake …”? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: We probably all have made mistakes. I mean this member cannot remember that he has got a bank account offshore— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! Supplementary question David Shearer. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! The Leader of the Opposition has every right to ask a supplementary question. 
David Shearer 
: In light of the repeated breaches by the Ministry of Social Development ACC the Inland Revenue Department Work and Income Novopay the Department of Corrections and the Earthquake Commission why has it not been made mandatory for all Government agencies to follow the advice of their very own information and communications technology agency policy to use SEEMail or Secure Electronic Environmental Mail which is specifically designed to protect data when sending attachments? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: You know very specific questions like that could be put down to the Minister but my understanding is that that is the policy. My understanding also is that the chief technology officer will be once again reiterating to those departments that that is the process that should be followed. But I say that in a modern world of modern technology people will make mistakes. 
David Shearer 
: What specific action will he take to give the public an assurance that their personal and private details are safe? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Well I am tempted to say: “Tell the Leader of the Opposition. He does not tell anyone about his private details.” 
David Shearer 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. If the Prime Minister thinks that this is somehow some trivial matter that he can palm off he is wrong and I would appreciate it if he could answer the question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I invite—[ 
Interruption 
] Order! I invite the Leader of the Opposition to re-ask that question. 
David Shearer 
: What specific action will he take to give the public an assurance that their personal and private details are safe? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: As I have said a couple of times in answering this question today the chief technology officer is working with all of the technology teams to ensure that they follow best practice and that matter of upgrading security has been in play for quite some time. But people will make mistakes. Last week that member— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! That is not necessary to the answer today. 
David Shearer 
: Given that the leak of last week revealed that the Earthquake Commission has the information on claims at its fingertips why are Cantabrians being kept in the dark waiting for months over the status of their Earthquake Commission claims? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I do not have all the details on what was available but what I can say and what I understand is that the person who emailed out that file did so in a way—not maliciously; not with the intention to embarrass other people but they made a mistake. Last week that member made a mistake— 
David Shearer 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I find this unbelievable. This is something—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! A point of order will be heard in silence. 
David Shearer 
: This is an email with 80000 people’s confidential information being made available right across the public arena and that Prime Minister will not— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! I am not sure what the point of order is. I can help the member there. The member asked about the Prime Minister’s specific action that he would take— 
David Shearer 
: No I asked about why it was that the Earthquake Commission had all the data but was not— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: —and the Prime Minister’s answer was that he did not have that detail and he then went on to elaborate. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My point of order is: why are you allowing the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings to be flouted—on this occasion four separate times—when the Prime Minister concluded his answer with an unqualified attack on someone else in the House? Each time you did precisely nothing. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No that is—[ 
Interruption 
] Order! The member will resume his seat. [ 
Interruption 
] The member will resume his seat. The member—thank you. On both occasions I rose to my feet and told the Prime Minister that his answer was well and truly completed. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think the question then is what about the other two occasions? And if it is three strikes and we lose out maybe the fourth time you could actually take some action. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: To complete what I was trying to say it was that you cannot think that just by stopping him on four occasions that that is an adequate response from the Speaker. Surely after three warnings or three stoppages you should have said that he should exit the House or is there a different set of rules for him and a different one for the rest of us? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No. [ 
Interruption 
] Order! 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am not going to litigate your ruling but the very point I was making was that this person made an honest mistake. That is my point. That member claims he also made an honest mistake. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Thank you. That was not a point of order either. Does the member have further supplementary questions to ask? Then we—[ 
Interruption 
] Order! [ 
Interruption 
] Order! I have attempted to be very patient and make sure that no one has had to leave the House during my time as Speaker. I will continue to try to keep that patience but it will not be helped if I get a barracking from either side of the House. I am calling question No. 2— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. With respect what would stop the barracking is that you have been asked to make a ruling. You simply did not reply to Mr Peters. You did not make a ruling on what action— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! [ 
Interruption 
] Order! I did reply to Mr Peters. I have called question No. 2—Peseta— 
Dr Russel Norman 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! I have a further point of order from Dr Russel Norman. Is it a fresh point of order? 
Dr Russel Norman 
: It is seeking clarity on your ruling. Are you ruling that the Prime Minister’s answers were in order or not? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have covered that point I think quite adequately for the rest of the House. But for the benefit of the member the Prime Minister certainly addressed the questions that were asked to my satisfaction but he added political points towards the end I think of two questions—and if Mr Peters says it was four it may have been more than two questions—that were certainly not helpful to the order of the House as has been evidenced today. 
Economic Programme—Progress 
2. 
Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: What progress is the Government making in its programme to build a more competitive and productive economy? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 The economy is growing and we are making reasonable progress. The Government has set out a wide-ranging programme to put the economy on a more competitive footing. Particularly we have embarked on more than 300 initiatives to build export markets innovation skills capital markets natural resources and improve infrastructure. This is helping to give business the confidence to invest grow and hire new staff. In addition sensible fiscal and monetary policy is helping to keep interest rates and inflation rates low. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: What do the latest statistics show about the economy’s performance and what are the key factors driving this? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: One should always be careful with the use particularly of economic statistics covering short periods of time. However last week Statistics New Zealand announced growth of 1.5 percent in the December quarter. This growth was broad based with 15 of the 16 measured industries growing. What is probably more important than the quarterly growth rate though is the annual growth rate which showed that in 2012 the New Zealand economy grew by 3 percent a bit faster than we might have expected and fairly comparable to the Australian growth rate for the same period of 3.1 percent at a time when it had a very significant boom in capital investment in minerals and resources. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: What independent reports has he received about the Government’s economic programme and the progress being made to put the economy on a sound footing? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: There are any number of reports that support the Government’s general economic direction but more recently some comments in the IMF’s latest concluding statement on New Zealand were supportive. It concluded that the Government’s fiscal consolidation strikes the right balance between sustaining growth and limiting increase in Government debt to reinforce the Government’s intention to stay on track to surplus in 2014-15. Although there are risks with the global economy and the housing sector the IMF says New Zealand is well positioned to respond to any other unexpected events through its monetary and fiscal policy settings. 
Hon David Parker 
: How can he claim pride in the performance of the economy when in the December 2012 quarter 23000 jobs were lost and in each of the last three quarters total hours worked have decreased so that there is now less work than when he took office in 2008? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well as we have discussed in the House before quarterly employment numbers are somewhat volatile and difficult to predict. It is difficult to work out exactly what is happening when in that quarter the economy grew by 1.5 percent which if you took it at face value would be one of the fastest-growing quarterly rates in the developed world. Let us just see how it unfolds. What we do know is we are on track for 2 to 3 percent economic growth over the next 12 months and further reductions in unemployment. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: What reports has he received on particular sectors of the economy? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I have paid particular attention to reports on the manufacturing sector. Excluding oil production manufacturing grew by 1.5 percent for the December quarter and overall through 2012 the manufacturing sector grew by 2.7 percent. It grew by 2.7 percent. So I was not surprised to see a report with the headline “Index shows ‘no crisis’ in manufacturing sector”. Not for the first time the facts are somewhat at odds with what the Opposition is claiming. 
Job Creation and Unemployment—Prime Minister’s Statements 
3. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does he stand by all his statements? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes. 
Grant Robertson 
: Does he stand by his statement that the household labour force survey is “the most rigorous form of measuring employment in the economy” and can he confirm that it showed a net job loss of 23000 jobs in the last quarter? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Yes but it is also important to look at the quarterly employment survey which is the one Labour used to quote from. 
Grant Robertson 
: Can he confirm that in the last quarter of the household labour force survey 30000 people left the labour force and that had they still been in the labour force the unemployment rate in New Zealand would be 8.4 percent? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Yes but that is also a function of the participation rate. It is also a very large drop in part-time numbers. We can question those but as I said the quarterly employment survey showed an increase of 54000 jobs over the last 2 years. It is not as good as it could be but it is not too bad. 
Grant Robertson 
: What more evidence does he need that his Government is failing on jobs than 200 people queuing for seven jobs in South Auckland or the front page of the  
Nelson Mail 
 showing hundreds of people chasing a single job at Nelson Hospital or does he not think that his Government has got a part to play in actually helping to create jobs not just destroy them? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: It is not unusual when you have a lot of people chasing one job. My understanding is that all 38— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: —members of the Labour caucus are chasing that job. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! That answer is not helpful to the order of the House. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. By my reckoning that is six times today the Prime Minister—five in a question—[ 
Interruption 
] Let me finish all right? It is five times in a question and once in a point of order. If we are going to have a point of order system surely it applies to every MP— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Would the member please proceed with his point of order. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: —and your job is to defend the interests of minorities in this House. It is one of the oldest rules of a Speaker in case some people do not know it. That is five times today in questions and once in a point of order that he has said that so my question to you is: when are you going to do something about it? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: As I said to the member earlier this is a political debating chamber. The question itself was reasonably political. It got a political answer. As I realised where the Prime Minister was going I stood and closed him down. 
Grant Robertson 
: If the Prime Minister thinks that the loss of jobs and the number of people queuing for jobs is such a laughing and relaxed matter will he decide to follow the narrative today and show up at the Department of Conservation and defend 140 more people losing jobs on his watch? 
Rt Hon JOHN KEY 
: Of course people feel for the people in the Department of Conservation who may be losing their jobs. But it is also important to understand that the process actually started under Labour in the Chris Carter review. It is also true that there are more people in the Department of Conservation today than there were when Labour took the number from 1500 up to 2100. It is also true that the director-general is working hard to make sure that at least one in two of those people will be offered another job. It is also true that organisations do need to restructure. In fact the director-general said it would not matter how much money they gave him he would still be taking the course of action that he is today. 
Prisons—Performance Tables 
4. 
JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) 
 to the  
Minister of Corrections 
: What announcements has she made on the introduction of prison performance tables? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Corrections) 
: 
 Today I released New Zealand’s first-ever prison performance tables. All 17 prisons are now measured and compared with each other on a range of security criteria as well as on the work they are doing to rehabilitate prisoners. The prisons are grouped into four categories ranging from “exceptional” to “needs improvement”. The tables will be released quarterly providing greater transparency for and accountability to taxpayers. 
Jami-Lee Ross 
: How will the introduction of performance tables improve the management of New Zealand prisons? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: The performance tables will allow prison managers to identify and share successful practices and focus on areas that need improvement. They will also allow communities to see how well their prisons are operating and will provide meaningful comparison between publicly managed and privately managed prisons. It is worth noting that the Serco-managed private prison at Mt Eden is in the “exceeding” category and is ranked as one of the best-performing prisons in New Zealand. 
Conservation Department—Restructuring and Job Losses 
5. 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
 to the  
Minister of Conservation 
: What is the total number of staff that will lose their jobs at the Department of Conservation as a result of staff cuts announced today and how many if any of those are “frontline” staff? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Conservation) 
: 
 It is not yet possible to determine the total number of staff who will lose their jobs. There is the loss of 140 mainly middle-management positions but the department for the last 18 months had a recruitment freeze so that 166 permanent positions remain open. Many of these fourth and fifth-tier managers will be offered this permanent range of positions but they also may choose to take redundancy. We will know the final number in July. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: What is the expectation of the advocacy role of the Department of Conservation following the latest round of cuts and will this expectation lead to an increase in the number of Department of Conservation representations in resource management hearings which fell from 98 in 2011 to just 48 in 2012? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I have made it plain to the Director-General of Conservation that in their advocacy role they need to focus on where the department is adding value particularly in the biodiversity area. When it comes to an area of landscape where actually it is very much in the eye of the beholder it is not my view that the Department of Conservation adds tremendous value to those Environment Court or council hearings. I very much hold the view that we should let elected representatives on their local councils decide where those landscape values are the priority so that is the change I have made. I am not in favour of the Department of Conservation making submissions to stop people getting jobs. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: How will replacing skilled and experienced front-line conservation staff with volunteers improve the protection of our conservation estate and our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Well that is not what is occurring. What has happened is that prior to the global financial crisis when the previous Government thought that money grew on trees the department expanded its staff numbers by 500 and more than doubled its budget. We are a Government that believes in balancing the budget. That means that the Department of Conservation has to play its part like every other agency. This flattened structure will enable us to deliver better conservation and value for money for the taxpayer. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Has he corrected the error of the Prime Minister who said that the latest Department of Conservation restructuring will not affect front-line staff given that the regional programme managers include activities such as species recovery and track building and that 22 of the proposed job losses are rangers’—or are species recovery track building and rangers no longer front-line positions? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The bulk of the reduced positions are in middle-management. There are a number that are for instance not middle-managers—people who are for instance infrastructure planners. I do not think this House considers infrastructure planners as front line. What I will say to the member is that at the end of this restructuring there will be more rangers—more rangers—in the Department of Conservation than there ever was which is very much the practical brand of conservation that this Government stands for. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: How does he expect Department of Conservation staff to do their job after today’s cuts and protect vulnerable species like this black petrel that was killed through commercial fishing when staff across the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Department of Conservation are already too stretched to ensure compliance with the rules that are meant to protect these birds? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I share the member’s passion for the protection of our birds but I would note this—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Since I was the Minister in the late 1990s the department today and next year will have 200 more staff. It will have over $100 million more in real terms than what there was a decade ago and I think that really does just show the level of commitment that there genuinely is to conservation and the survival of our native species. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: Will the Minister guarantee the survival of the black petrel in light of today’s cuts when there are roughly only 1000 breeding pairs remaining there is no action plan to ensure its survival and his Government’s last round of so-called non - front-line reductions led to cuts in departmental staff on Great Barrier Island the only place where this bird continues to breed? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I rate the chances of the black petrel surviving far greater than that of the Leader of the Opposition. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That was a straight question to the Minister. I think it deserved an answer. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Can I— 
Jacinda Ardern 
: Could you even hear it? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Can I invite the member to have a very good look at the content and length of her question. 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: Does the Minister consider the staff at the Golden Bay office in Takaka to be front-line staff; if so why has he cut staff from 3.5 down to just one? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The member’s figures are totally incorrect and I would be happy to table— 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I hope the Minister can table. He has just— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! The Minister can rise and say he does not accept your figures. That is quite acceptable. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: That’s not what he said. 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I asked a straight question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Mr Mallard is interjecting that I did not hear the question and the answer. It is because of the level of noise. I invite the member to ask his question again. 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: Does the Minister consider staff at the Golden Bay office in Takaka to be front-line staff; if so why has he cut staff from 3.5 down to just one? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I would be happy to have a bet with the member opposite for the best bottle of Nelson wine that after this restructuring there will be a lot more than one staff in Takaka—happy to take that bet. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member has a right to have his point of order heard in silence so we will wait until there is enough silence for the member to have his point of order heard. 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: That member made the same bet over electricity prices. I am still waiting for the bottle of wine. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order but we will consider it one-all. 
Child Protection—Social Workers in Schools 
6. 
MELISSA LEE (National) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development 
: How is the Government’s Social Workers in Schools initiative making a difference for vulnerable children? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 This Government’s expansion of Social Workers in Schools continues. By intervening early social workers in schools are able to work with children and their families to protect vulnerable children and ensure their safety and well-being. We committed funding to increase the number of social workers in schools—an extra 149 at a cost of $11.1 million per annum. By the end of 2013 an additional 70786 children and their families will have access to the Social Workers in Schools service. 
Melissa Lee 
: How are children families and communities benefiting from having social workers in schools? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: The Social Workers in Schools workers are from local trusted NGO providers and have been incredibly successful in building relationships of trust with families breaking down some of the historical barriers to asking for help. They also have broken down the barriers in working more collaboratively in their communities and are making a substantial difference. 
Melissa Lee 
: What feedback has she received about the difference Social Workers in Schools is making? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: We expanded Social Workers in Schools following calls from particularly those in lower decile schools to provide specialist support for children in schools. Recently a principal wrote to me and said: “We see our social worker’s role as a broad one that helps us achieve our school vision. Everyone in the school benefits. The teachers are supported in their work the children have another skilled adult to talk to and problem solve with and the parents get help to access community support and assistance.” 
Conservation Department—Restructuring and Job Losses 
7. 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
 to the  
Minister of Conservation 
: Can he guarantee that any job cuts announced today will not impact on the Department of Conservation’s ability to protect the conservation estate? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Conservation) 
: 
 Yes. The changes are about a more efficient and outward-looking department. The positions being disestablished are fourth and fifth-tier managers at regional and area offices. The department is maintaining all of its network of 99 field centres and the number of rangers is also being maintained. 
Eugenie Sage 
: How is this outward-looking focus and having volunteers and business take the place of Department of Conservation experts going to improve the chances of our 2800 threatened species? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: With this restructuring the department will have 1730 staff and a budget of $330 million per year. But it is also true that even if you print money there will not be enough to meet all of New Zealand’s conservation challenges. If we can partner with business and community groups to do more then I am all for it. 
Eugenie Sage 
: Why is he confident that volunteers or corporate sponsorship can fill the gap created by the loss of 140 jobs when managing threatened species such as the Okarito brown kiwi such as the New Zealand fairy tern requires dedicated professional expertise? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I can guarantee to the member that there will not be a single volunteer who is replacing the fourth and fifth-tier managers who are predominantly doing paperwork in area and regional offices. Where I think volunteers have played an incredibly important role in conservation is over the last 20 years where there has been a real growth all over the country in community groups becoming more active in conservation. That is to be welcomed and the department needs to reorganise itself so it can engage and work with them more effectively. 
Eugenie Sage 
: Is it not as Rachel Stewart puts it in the  
Taranaki Daily News 
 that getting sponsorship from companies like Fonterra is like the Ministry of Health receiving sponsorship from a tobacco company in this brand new partnership model? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: For the Green Party to make the analogy between New Zealand’s biggest exporting company Fonterra and a tobacco company is I find frankly offensive. I also say to the Green Party that I welcome businesses whether they be Air New Zealand whether they be Fonterra whether they be Dulux New Zealand or others that are prepared to work with the Department of Conservation to get good outcomes. What this has exposed is that the Green Party is not a green party; it is just an anti-business party. 
Eugenie Sage 
: How can he be confident that Department of Conservation staff will be in touch with and understand the conservation work needed on the ground when this Government has overseen the loss of 232 staff and another 140 today and is now proposing to halve the number of regionally focused conservancies? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: In the 3 years that I was a Minister of Conservation back in the 1990s we had a staff of 1500. With this restructuring we will still have 1730 people within the Department of Conservation. We will also have $100 million per year in real terms for conservation as compared with that. It is true that Labour went on a massive spending spree in conservation in last decade as it did in every single area of the public sector. If you want to rack up a whole lot of debt and have decades of deficits that is a good way to do it. We are not there. We are about balancing budgets we are about efficient Government departments and we can deliver for conservation with this reorganised department. 
Eugenie Sage 
: By reducing the number of conservancies from 11 to six will he also be cutting the number of conservation boards from 13 to six and reducing the public’s ability to have a say on the department’s plans and priorities? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Following the decisions on the restructuring it is my intention to review the number of conservation boards and to see how we can most effectively integrate that with the restructured department. I do not intend to initiate that process until consultations with staff and the final decisions are made on this new structure. 
Eugenie Sage 
: When funding cuts for conservation by this Government have resulted in the loss of 232 jobs since 2009 and another 140 jobs today are not Department of Conservation staff now an endangered species? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The members’ figures are incorrect. The number of staff— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: No they’re not. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
:  Well let me give you the exact numbers. The number of staff that the Department of Conservation had in 2000 was 1522. Prior to the global financial crisis when the previous Government expanded hugely it peaked at 2063. The number that we are having in out years—2013-14 and into the future—is 1731. 
Resource Management Act Reforms—Commentary 
8. 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
 to the  
Minister for the Environment 
: Does she agree with Guy Salmon’s comment that she is a Minister who wants to lower environmental standards? 
Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 No. 
Dr Russel Norman 
: Well then what does she say to Guy Salmon an ecologist a former National Party candidate co-author of the National Party’s Bluegreens vision statement and one of the architects of the Land and Water Forum who said about her: “This is the first time I have dealt with a Minister who has been wanting to lower environmental standards. This shouldn’t be happening in New Zealand.”? 
Hon AMY ADAMS 
: It is not for me to speculate on Mr Salmon’s motives but I would say to him what I have said to everyone who has asked me that question which is that absolutely the fundamental purpose and protections in section 5 of the Act have not been proposed to be changed. Where we have proposed sections for deletion from section 7 it is on the basis of expert highly respected legal and professional advice. On the contrary Mr Salmon and fellow commentators have provided no evidence whatsoever to back up their wild assumptions. 
Dr Russel Norman 
: Does she agree with Guy Salmon an ecologist former National Party candidate co-author of the National Party’s Bluegreens vision statement and architect of the collaborative Land and Water Forum that her proposed changes to the Resource Management Act are “really tantamount to having the Minister direct whether a development goes ahead or not. This is how they do things in China.”? 
Hon AMY ADAMS 
: Well of course not. I would simply say that Mr Salmon in those comments is once more wrong and has shown that he has not understood exactly what was being proposed which is that central government would be able to intervene only where a clearly stated national objective has not been fulfilled. I point out to that member that it is his own party that has been calling for stronger central government leadership to protect environmental standards and that is exactly what we are proposing. 
Dr Russel Norman 
: Why does she think Guy Salmon the architect of the collaborative Land and Water Forum said of her changes to the Resource Management Act allowing Ministers to overrule water conservation orders that “That really completely undermines the purpose of having a collaborative process in the first place. It is going back to Think Big days.”? 
Hon AMY ADAMS 
: I have no ministerial responsibility for what goes on in Mr Salmon’s head so I could not comment. 
Dr Russel Norman 
: Is the criticism by Mr Salmon of this Government’s environmental policy not simply a reflection of the fact that since the 2011 election the Government has been taken over by Ministers like Steven Joyce with an anti-environmental agenda a takeover by a faction that opposes everything the Bluegreens says it ever stood for? 
Hon AMY ADAMS 
: No. 
International Education—Revenue Impact of Christchurch Earthquake on Student Numbers and Promotion 
9. 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
 to the  
Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment 
: What has New Zealand’s income from international education been for the past 12 months? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment) 
: 
 I am pleased to advise the House that total international tuition revenues have increased to $745.7 million in 2012 which is an increase of 2 percent on 2011 to the highest level of revenue recorded since 2004. This includes an increase in university revenues of 6 percent up from $292.7 million in 2011 to $308.9 million in 2012. 
Dr Cam Calder 
: What has been the impact of the Canterbury earthquakes on international student numbers? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: Unfortunately the consequences of the Christchurch earthquake are continuing to impact the international education industry with a 31 percent fall in the Canterbury region enrolments in 2012. This contributed to an overall decline nationally in international student enrolments of 6 percent. The numbers would be just 3 percent if you exclude the impact of Canterbury and that would compare with Australia which has had a 1-year decline in numbers of 7 percent. It is pleasing to see that the number of students coming here from China who make up 27 percent of New Zealand’s international students has increased. There has however been a drop in Indian students of 8 percent. Australia has suffered a dramatic reduction in Indian students of 25 percent. 
Dr Cam Calder 
: What is the Government doing to encourage more international students to study here? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: The Government has identified developing the international education industry as an important part of our Business Growth Agenda and the target of increasing exports from 30 percent of GDP in 2012 to 40 percent by 2025. 
Hon David Parker 
: Well that’s not working. 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: You should look at the numbers for today. We are developing new education opportunities with our ASEAN partners and looking to expand on existing programmes like for example 400 additional accounting students coming here from Malaysia as part of an agreement signed last year. We are targeting an increase of 20 percent in the key Chinese and Indian markets. We are opening up new markets in South America where the Prime Minister in Chile this month witnessed the announcement of more than doubling the number of Chilean students coming here under the Penguins Without Borders programme. 
Question No. 5 to Minister 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister of Conservation) 
: 
 I seek leave of the House to table the Department of Conservation figures on the future number of staff in Takaka which is 16.3 and not the one claimed by the member for West Coast - Tasman. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table those staff numbers for the Takaka office. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled. 







Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Trade New Zealand - China—Duty Avoidance Kiwifruit Import Case 
10. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
 to the  
Minister of Trade 
: Does he believe that a multi-million dollar fraud case involving one of Zespri’s import agents in China has hurt New Zealand’s international trading reputation? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Acting Minister of Trade) 
: 
 No. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Is he concerned that the Zespri case will damage New Zealand’s trade and diplomatic relations with China given that the Chinese authorities are trying to crack down on fraud and corruption and Zespri’s Asian manager Yu-Jan Chen has a detention order placed on him by the Chinese authorities? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: In answer to the first part of the question no. But this case does serve I think as an important reminder to all New Zealand companies operating in international markets that they must ensure that they and their management understand and comply with local laws no matter which market they operate in. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Is he aware of any costs incurred by New Zealand parties as a result of the fraud case against Zespri Chinese import agents; if so what is the estimated total figure? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: If the member is referring to cost to Zespri I am sure there have been some costs and no I am not aware of the number. If he is referring to an impact on trade my understanding at this point is that the case has had no impact on the company’s sales in China. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Has he received any reports about how much foreknowledge Zespri management in New Zealand had of smuggling practices in China; if so why did he not release that information to the public? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: To the extent that I am able to answer the question on the Minister’s behalf the answer is no. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: If there are reports from the New Zealand Customs Service concerning incorrect documentation of Zespri kiwifruit exports to China what has he done about it instead of swanning around the world trying to get a job at the World Trade Organization? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: I will ignore the last part of that member’s question. The point is—[ 
Interruption 
] Well I thought that in this country we had a bipartisan approach to encouraging senior New Zealand figures to participate in world multilateral organisations but obviously that is off as well. But the point is that the case serves as an important reminder to all companies operating in international markets that they must ensure that they meet the local laws no matter which market they operate in. I am sure that all New Zealand exporters will take cognisance of what has happened in this case. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am not asking about the market or what everybody else should do; I am asking him what he has done about Customs Service reports of incorrect documentation. The question is pretty precise. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The problem is the addition of a further part to the supplementary question. But let us just have that part and see whether the Minister would just— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: All right let me ask him this. If there are reports from the New Zealand Customs Service concerning incorrect documentation of Zespri kiwifruit exports to China what has he done about it? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: The question is hypothetical because as I think I answered in the previous question the Minister to the best of my knowledge was not aware of any such situation. But perhaps as a wider point it is important that the companies take responsibility for their activities and that is truly the responsibility of the companies not the responsibility of the Minister. 
Education Ministry—Confidence and Resignation of Secretary for Education 
11. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: Does she have confidence in the Ministry of Education; if so why? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Yes I do. The ministry has been working hard to deliver on key Government priorities including greater participation in early childhood education implementing national standards and improving National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) achievement. However I acknowledge that there is always room for improvement. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Does she have confidence in the information and analysis the Ministry of Education provided her as the basis for her decision making around the future of schools in Christchurch; if so why? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: Yes I do bearing in mind that we are in the stage that relates to interim decisions so no final decisions have been made. But yes I do have confidence. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Did she express to the State Services Commission that she had a lack of confidence in Lesley Longstone as the Secretary for Education; if so why? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: I have previously acknowledged the contribution that the previous secretary made and I would refer all employment matters to the chief commissioner. 
Chris Hipkins 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It was a very straightforward question— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will ask his question again. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Did she express to the State Services Commission that she had a lack of confidence in Lesley Longstone as the Secretary for Education; if so why? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: No. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Did the State Services Commission consult her prior to accepting the resignation of Lesley Longstone as the Secretary for Education; if so what did she say to it? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: No. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Did the State Services Commission consult inform or in any other way communicate to her that Lesley Longstone would receive a $425000 payout following her resignation; if so when did it do that? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: Yes I was advised of it after the decision had been made. 
Chris Hipkins 
: If she did not indicate a lack of confidence in Lesley Longstone as the Secretary for Education to the State Services Commission was she advised why Lesley Longstone departed from her contract early with a $425000 payout? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: Those are matters that should be directed to the State Services Commission as the chief commissioner oversaw that process not me. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Point of order Mr Speaker— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am going to ask the member to ask the question again. It is within the responsibility of the Minister to answer that question that was directed to the Minister. 
Chris Hipkins 
: If she did not indicate a lack of confidence in Lesley Longstone to the State Services Commission was she advised why Lesley Longstone departed from her contract early with a $425000 payout? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: I was not given all of the reasons. This is a matter of employment between the State Services Commissioner and the former Secretary for Education. 
Chris Hipkins 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I accept that to some extent that is an answer from the Minister but you will recall we put these questions in the House to the Minister who is responsible for the State Services Commissioner and his answer was “you should ask the Minister of Education”. I have just done that now and she is not answering it. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Which you have done. No no I think you are right accepting that the Minister has now addressed that question—maybe not to your satisfaction—I think on this occasion she carefully listened to it the second time and she has certainly addressed the question. The member has further supplementary questions? 
Chris Hipkins 
: Did Lesley Longstone undertake any action in her role as Secretary for Education that was contrary to the Government’s expectations; if so what did she do? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: I think it is pretty clear that last year there were a number of educational challenges in the portfolio and those matters have been dealt with. 
Chris Hipkins 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That did not address the question in any way. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I invite the member to ask that question again. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Did Lesley Longstone undertake any action in her role as Secretary for Education that was contrary to the Government’s expectations; if so what did she do? 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: I cannot think of a specific action that the member might be seeking. 
Treaty of Waitangi Settlements—Progress 
12. 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
 to the  
Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations 
: What recent progress has been made towards the settlement of historical Treaty of Waitangi claims? 
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations) 
: 
 Excellent progress. Last Friday I initialled two deeds of settlement with negotiators of claimant groups. The first was with MaungaharuruTangituhapu; the second was with NgaiTuhoe. The negotiators will now seek ratification of those deeds of settlement by their people. If they are ratified they will be signed and then legislation to give effect to them will be introduced in the next few months. 
Louise Upston 
: What does this recent progress mean for this Government’s record on Treaty settlements? 
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: Well we are getting the job done. Since the beginning of 2009 there have been 216 milestones achieved by this Government including 33 deeds of settlement which is over twice as many as the 15 deeds signed in the 9 years before that and more than half the total since the Treaty settlement work began in the mid-1990s. 
Chris Hipkins 
: So much for bipartisanship. 
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: Here comes the bipartisanship. With the assistance of this House and I acknowledge it deeds have been given effect to by legislation far more quickly than had previously been the case. Indeed 12 bills were passed last year. 
Points of Order 
Privilege—Definition of Deliberately Misleading House 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This is the first of two points of order. This one relates to a ruling that you have made with regard to a breach of privilege. On 14 March Phil Twyford raised a matter with you to which you replied on 20 March. I want to make it clear that I am not attempting in any way to have you reverse your decision and I think it was largely consistent with rulings that Speakers have given. However there is within your letter a ruling that I think would be unfortunate if it stood. That is where you say: “Only where a member can be assumed to have personal knowledge rather than knowledge by way of his or her official capacity and makes the statement in a situation of some formality can a presumption of intention to mislead arise.” 
The point that I would like to make to you quite forcefully is that if a Minister has an official report has read it and says that he has read it and if he then deliberately misuses figures from that report in a primary answer it is my view that that would be a breach of privilege. Clearly it is a high test but to suggest that someone can breach privilege only when the information they have is personal—and if they have official information they cannot breach privilege—appears to me to be wrong. I would ask you to consider that and to rule on it at some stage if you so wish. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I thank the member. The advice I have received is that this is a longstanding practice and it is based on House of Commons practice. But the member raises a point that is serious. I accept that. I am happy to have another look at the tone of that letter and I will come back directly to the member. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to emphasise that it is the word “only” which is the one that I do not think has appeared— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member has made his point. The member will now sit. 
Questions for Written Answer—Ministerial Responsibility for Operational Matters 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The second point of order relates to a written parliamentary answer from the Hon Peter Dunne received last Friday where the question goes to whether he or his predecessor indicated a lack of confidence or a relationship breakdown with staff and the reports that he has received. The text of the answer is that that is an operational matter and the responsibility of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue. 
I repeat—and it is actually quite parallel to question No. 11—that the question goes to the indication of a Minister to a chief executive of a problem and the awareness of the Minister of a response. Speaker’s ruling 155/4 I think goes to the question and  
McGee 
 also makes it very clear that Ministers are responsible to the House for their official actions and for the general conduct of their department and officials. For a Minister to reply to a question and say that this is just an operational matter I am sure you would rule it out and you have ruled it out in the House. But I would like you to look at that and to indicate whether or not your standard for Ministers addressing questions is going to apply to written questions as well as those in the House. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I thank the member again. I want to have a look at the question and I want to have a look at the answer before commenting further. I will come back directly to the member. 
Urgent Debates Declined 
Earthquake Commission—Release of Personal Information 
Conservation Department—Restructuring 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have received a letter from the Hon Lianne Dalziel seeking to debate under Standing Order 386 a privacy breach by the Earthquake Commission. The breach is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. The test for whether a particular case requires the immediate attention of the House is a high one. Even though a matter may be important for it to take precedence over other business there must be an element of urgency. The Privacy Commissioner notes that the Earthquake Commission has taken an “open and honest approach” to the breach and it seems to have been quickly contained. The commissioner will be following up to identify what can be done to make sure that similar breaches cannot occur in the future. Given these circumstances I do not consider that I would be justified in setting aside the business of the House today. The application is therefore declined. 
I have also received a letter from the Hon Ruth Dyson seeking to debate under Standing Order 386 the Department of Conservation’s release of its national review and the announcement that up to 140 jobs will be cut. The announcement is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. A period of consultation is under way and no final decisions will be taken until feedback has been considered. Any changes will not take effect for some months. There will be other occasions on which the House can debate the final outcome of the national review. I am not persuaded that the setting aside of the business of the House for an urgent debate can be justified today. The application is therefore declined. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I just want to check that in relying on the comments made by the Privacy Commissioner as you did in ruling on the first of the debates you were not relying on the comments that were made before the second discovery. The letter referred to the full case. What happened was that there was an admission on behalf of the Earthquake Commission and the comments were then made about it being open and honest. But unfortunately it then became clear that it had not been open and honest and the number went from I think about 9000 to about 80000. You relied on comments that related to the first issue and the first number when the House now knows that in fact it had not been open and honest. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I took into account the whole story that evolved from I think Thursday Friday over the weekend and today in making my decision. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I seek the leave of the House to debate the privacy breach that occurred last Friday. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought for that debate. Is there any objection? Yes there is. 
Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill 
In Committee 
Part 1 Substantive amendments 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chairperson for the opportunity to speak in the Committee stage of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. We have made it very clear from the outset that Labour does not support this bill but it was indeed our focus and our intention through the select committee stage to make the best of a bad lot as it were. Even though we were not in agreement with what the Government’s drivers were in respect of particular aspects—like for instance the punitive sanction-based nature of these changes—we did want to ensure that we could reduce the negative impacts as much as we were able. I want to speak to some of those changes today. 
Before I begin I want to thank all of those who made submissions on this bill. It is fair to say that probably the most significant viewpoint that we heard—just in terms of the size the scale of submissions—was from those parents in particular who wanted the ability to home school their children. That is something we will probably each individually canvass when we talk about this bill. But I think it is fair to say that the point the Social Services Committee reached was to add within the bill—it is technically covered by section 1A amended by clause 5 which sets out the social obligations but it is also referenced later on in the bill—the provision that basically if you are able to get an exemption from the Ministry of Education to home school your children that will then allow you to be exempt from being sanctioned by the Ministry of Social Development if they are not enrolled in school. Or—my understanding is—if that parent is using the correspondence curriculum for early childhood education then that will also have some application. 
We may need some clarification from the Minister for Social Development on that because although that is certainly my understanding—that an exemption allows that distance learning curriculum to be used—some of our submitters believed that that has not been the final outcome. It probably would be very useful for us to clarify that here and now for those submitters because I know that this is an area they feel very very passionate about. So that is my understanding—that for anyone who has that exemption be it across early childhood education and the specific curriculum there for distance learning or an exemption for any other form of schooling it will apply for the purposes of Work and Income. That is a really important point to make because I know that for all members of the select committee I think that was a good outcome on that particular issue and we want to make it very clear to submitters what the resolution was there. 
Coming back though to some of the wider context of the bill it is important for me from Labour’s perspective to again reiterate that it has always been our belief that the social security system in New Zealand should be dignified it should be active and of course it should be work focused for those who are in a position to be able to work. We hold some differences of opinion from the Government as to whether or not that is actually what this bill achieves. When you look at those criteria within the context of the environment we are in at the moment—the 170000 unemployed people seeking work—obviously it is a tough environment in which to be seeking work. In our view that means that we should be looking to ensure that our active social security system is focused on upskilling and is less focused on being overly punitive for people who are trying to find work but are not having success in that search in this particular environment. 
In that regard I would like to touch on some of Part 1 specifically new sections 11E and 11H in clause 9 which set out the new pre-benefit activity requirements. It is unfortunate that in this country there is probably an assumption that if you lose your job you just walk into Work and Income and from day one you are granted a benefit. That is not how it works. Of course depending on the way that you lose your job there may be a stand-down period you will go through an extensive process with a Work and Income case manager and you may be required to undertake pre-benefit activity. If you are in hardship you can access emergency assistance directly—I should highlight that—but ultimately the majority of people will undergo some kind of pre-benefit activity. This bill further clarifies the range of pre-benefit activities that can be required of those on jobseeker support sole parent support or an emergency benefit. 
Some of our concerns exist around the fact that we have never really analysed to much of a degree how useful and how tailored some of this pre-benefit activity is. Let us be specific. Subsection 3 of new section 11E states that it could include “attending and participating in an employment related seminar”. That could be a CV-writing course for a graduate. I have had graduates who have come into my office and said: “I was required to go on a long CV-writing course—I already had a CV. I knew how to write a CV. I’ve been required to go on computing courses—I’ve just finished an honours degree.” We must be more tailored in our approach to working alongside those job seekers to make sure that we are actually being useful in our engagement with them. None of that really was discussed at the select committee. 
The pre-benefit activity I have to say is a broad-brush approach and is being misused currently. A young person who wants to go on a benefit at the moment is being told by Work and Income brokers that they have to go on a Limited Service Volunteer course. Technically you could call that a pre-benefit activity but it is not meant to be a compulsory course. Yet I know of young people who have been told that if they do not do the course they will not access a benefit. That is not right. 
It may also require them to undergo any other course that Work and Income feels is necessary. I know that some of our job seekers for instance cannot read or write yet Work and Income’s contracting now with service providers means that some of those courses which used to be quite lengthy courses as you would expect for that degree of education are now being chopped back sometimes to 6 to 12 weeks. You cannot make a real difference in someone’s life with such short sharp shocks yet that is some of the pre-benefit activity we are talking about. 
Our point is that of course we want an active system but make sure it is tailored to the individual and not the benefit category. Make sure it is not a course for a course’s sake so you can fill in some kind of number and make everyone feel jolly that you are doing the right thing by someone. We have to make sure that these are useful interventions particularly when there are sanctions attached to the back of them. 
There are also a number of changes around the benefit categories via this bill which I am sure a number of my colleagues will traverse today. They include the fact that anyone who is currently on an unemployment benefit anyone who is currently on a sickness benefit and anyone who is currently on a domestic purposes benefit with a child over the age of 14 will now go on to a job-seeker benefit. I can understand that this is a system that at the moment is overly complicated is difficult to administer and could have used some simplification but by creating broad benefit categories and then overlaying on top of them some crude rules about what you can and cannot do when on those benefits we again risk treating individuals as categories rather than tailoring our response to them—or to use the Minister’s language taking the truly individualised investment approach that she continually tells us about. 
One of our biggest concerns is the limitations that now exist for people on jobseeker support to train educate themselves and get into a position of long-term sustainable employment. I have raised in the House before concerns that for instance someone who wants to do a longer-term course say nursing is now being told that they cannot engage in even part-time study because they must be available and ready for work and not necessarily full-time work. I have had cases of individuals who have been told to stop studying so that they can become available for part-time work which would still render them reliant on the social security system. If our goal ultimately as a Parliament is to see people in sustainable dignified non-precarious work then surely we should be setting people out on trajectories that allow them to get off the welfare system in the longer term rather than the short-term approach that this bill I am sad to say further entrenches because of the oversimplification—the way we have lumped everyone in together in benefit categories. 
The same could be said now for the lack of a true investment approach around particularly those who are seeking wellness to work. I mean specifically those who are currently on a sickness benefit or those who might be on an invalids benefit but are soon to move on to supported living payments. There will be a subset of people within the current invalids benefit who will be job seekers absolutely who are looking for work. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I am talking to Part 1 of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill which really contains the nub of the Government’s arguments and the bulk of the provisions that this side of the Chamber has major difficulties with. When one considers those sanctions in particular and what Part 1 does one has to start asking some very very deliberate questions about the morality and the ethics of this approach to the most vulnerable in our society. This Minister for Social Development and this Government have taken a particularly punitive approach in the provisions in Part 1 of this bill. They are trying to couch that in the language of caring and the language of backing our most vulnerable. But in fact that does not wash with us at all. Underneath that what this Minister and this bill produce is a far more complex system and far more hoops for our vulnerable to go through in order for them just to get enough resources to live by until their situation improves. I think that that is the centre of our criticism of this particular approach—the ethics and the morality that are contained in these particular provisions. 
The Government had other ways of doing this. These are the people who are excluded in our society by and large. What the Government is doing with its social sanctions is precluding them even more from participating in our society preparing for work in our society and preparing to lead their lives. That is objectionable. It is objectionable to us. Again ethically and morally it has got holes in it. But what is also worrying is how we got to this point. How did this Minister make the argument—how did this Government make the argument—that this is what society needed? There certainly are no big savings from the bottom line of the Government’s budget in these provisions. I think it makes about a $20 million difference in the initial period in its budget. So it does not save a lot of money. 
There is this promise that the Minister has talked about that indeed in time it will produce great wealth for our society. But it will not. Again how much are we prepared to put our vulnerable through in order for them to receive the kind of assistance that our decent society ought to be giving our most vulnerable? The Government started by overstating the case for dependency. The Government has a view against those who rely on benefits for a period of time. So by overstating the case designing its task forces to look at the dependency regime it actually overstates it. It overstates welfare dependency to such an extent that it has created in our society this huge problem which the provisions of Part 1 are now designed to help us get over. So the case for dependency has not been made. Yes there are cases. Yes there are a small number of cases of those who have gamed the system. But as many people in this Chamber know there are many many more cases of people accessing the resources and the services provided under our benefit system that have given them the opportunity to get ahead with their lives to look after their children and to become great citizens of our society. There are many many more examples of that and yet by overstating the case we develop a punitive system. 
That is again what the provisions of Part 1 are talking about. They are punitive. There will be I predict over time a whole army of people in Work and Income who will design a whole series of steps to monitor the small group of people who will learn even harder ways even more entrenched ways of gaming the system. That is where the game will be played out and the most vulnerable will be caught in that. If the Government wanted to be sincere about addressing the needs of our most vulnerable then it would actually develop a far more productive approach to what it considers to be the need to provide for our most vulnerable a pathway out of welfare and into work and preparing for life independent of assistance from the State. 
The other thing that the provisions of this bill do is underplay the complexities of our modern world and the complexities of what our vulnerable have to go through. Life is not easy for many of these mums in particular bringing up children. On top of that what some of the sanctions do is make that life for them that much harder. Once children arrive in families once children are there there is not much point in being moralistic about how they got there. There are mums and dads who have to bring up these children and provide the best example possible. Yet what we find for those who rely on assistance from the State in doing that job which is a service to our society—I mean these are our children. There are many leaders of our society who started life dependent on the State as children of sole parents. We ought to be supporting them better but the provisions of Part 1 of this bill will actually make it more difficult for them. Even if the parents were the best people in the world to provide care for their children between 3 and 5 this bill says: “You’re not allowed to do that. You’ve got to be work-ready. You can’t do it on a full-time basis. You’ve got to go out and find at least a certain number of hours of work because that is good for you.” If you happen to be living as a couple where you are not dependent on the State you have all the rights in the world to bring up your children in that way but the provisions of Part 1 of this bill when it comes to those sanctions around the compulsory use of childcare actually are a travesty of that right that parents ought to have. We do not give up our rights to bring up our children in the way we want to provided it meets certain basic standards because the State tells us to do something else. So there is an absolute nanny State type of flavour to the provisions in this particular bill and I personally object to this. 
I know many of the people who have relied on the State to bring up children and I object to this notion of tarring them all with the same brush because there are some cases of those who might not have used the resources particularly well. Life is complex enough for these families yet these provisions will make it even more difficult for them. 
So what are the provisions of Part 1 actually addressing? They are addressing some kind of bigotry that does exist in our society towards this group and you hear talkback shows and talkback hosts particularly in Auckland pumping this up all the time—that here we are these are the people who are taking away from us as taxpayers our wealth so to speak and therefore must be punished. We know enough from history that the pattern will repeat itself because this is a punitive approach. This enables us to be negative towards our neighbours because they draw their income from some other place. To then impose that on the most vulnerable I think is what is most objectionable in this particular bill and the provisions in this particular part because we do know that if we did give them a decent opportunity to get started in life things would be better. 
I am convinced myself that there are enough provisions in the social security system at the moment to use a different approach—an approach that encourages people to prepare for work to meet their childcare responsibilities and to be guided to the extent that they need to be guided to provide the best environment. Yet here we are; we are maligning a whole group of people. We firstly malign them then we subject them to denigration we then call them bludgers and then we put in place a punitive system. Later on in the calls I will take I will talk more about those whom we respect in our society who have come to the select committee and very very unequivocally said that this is not the way to do things because by doing it in this particular way we will create an even worse environment down the road. If Governments think of just a short period of time then we will come back and talk about those— 
Le’aufa’amulia ASENATI LOLE-TAYLOR (NZ First) 
: 
Fa‘afetai lava Mr Chairperson. First I would like to talk about clause 5 in Part 1 of this bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. Paula Bennett the Minister for Social Development concedes and accepts that some parents do not need to enrol their children in early childhood education. Although the provision in the new bill places emphasis on the need for beneficiaries to take all reasonable steps to ensure that their dependent child aged 3 years or over is enrolled at and attending an early childhood education centre until they start school the Minister in the chair accepts that it may not be necessary for some—right? Thank you Minister. I am glad that you are agreeing with me. So New Zealand First wants to know whether there will be subsidies for early childhood education. We also need to know whether early childhood education providers will be able to cope with the potential growth in enrolments. 
Reports suggest that of the 220000 children whose parents receive welfare only 31500 are 3 or 4 years old. Of this number the Minister has said that the test will apply to only say around about 20000 to 25000 children each year and that “The others we expect them to but we won’t be checking up to see if they have.” So the honourable Minister has made it clear that the benefit payments may be halved if they fail to do this. Then later she said that “people who could not access early childhood education would not be sanctioned.” 
Parents also have to enrol their children with a general practitioner to avoid sanctions. Implementing such a policy is problematic when the Government does not have the means to monitor all these children. I think recently there has been a case where screenings for children’s hearing have been recalled because of the lack of checks that had gone into that and it just shows that there is a clear indication of a lack of resources being put into place to manage those kinds of situations. 
It may mean a double standard within the system where only some beneficiaries are followed up while others are not and it is obvious that if the Government does not have the resources then the changes in this bill would not be cost-effective to administer. It is also evident that the Government is a little unsure about the direction it wants to take because on the one hand it wants beneficiaries to comply with the rules and on the other there seem to be loopholes where leniency may be granted on certain grounds. 
More important the Government is attempting to dictate to parents how to parent. This is the Government’s way of policing the way parents raise their children and we do not think that that is necessary. How can the Government take away people’s freedom of choice when it comes to child rearing? 
Ms Bennett not every beneficiary is a bad parent nor are they all drug users. I am sure there are a lot of parents out there who are good parents. Some families may not have the means to put their children through early childhood education or maybe some providers do not have the space to allow more children to enrol. I know being a parent myself that when my children were young even though there was availability of early childhood education I felt more confident and very sure that my children were much better off with me than being sent to early childhood education. 
New Zealand First is not trying to downplay the importance of removing drugs from the workplace and especially from the home where young children live. I mean that is a reason why I have introduced to the House a bill to address the issues of where children are exposed to criminal activities. What we want to see are some amendments to the proposed changes that will make them more practical if enforced into law. 
This bill will contribute to draining more families across the Ditch. There is a variety of reasons as to why beneficiaries need State assistance. We believe that the State should be there in times of real need. We also expect beneficiaries to try to gain paid employment once they are capable of doing so. 
This Government’s direction with social security sends out a clear signal to the rest of the country about its perception of beneficiaries. The Minister will foster greater difficulty for beneficiaries trying to make a better life for their families. She is deliberately shrinking the dreams and hopes of families who are receiving State assistance for the right reasons. The social obligations of this bill symbolise the dictating nature of this Government. 
I now want to move on in Part 1 to clauses 9 11 14 and 15—I am going to try to see whether I can fit them all in in 5 minutes. I wonder whether anyone in the Chamber remembers these words being spoken: “That is what I want for others—the feeling of being self-reliant in work and of saying to Work and Income: ‘Thanks but I don’t need a benefit any more.’ ” I remember the Minister saying those words in her second reading speech on this social security bill. Although a dreamer can visualise the impossible at times with his or her dreams a visionary can make these dreams come true. So I say to the Minister does she know the difference between a dreamer and a visionary—does she know? On the jobs front neither dreamer nor visionary is going to have any luck in this country. 
The Government can try to fool us with the visage of good statistics and shed light on success stories that are meant to tug at our heartstrings. They are few and far between. The reality is that there is a lack of ears in the National Government to hear what we have said over the past year in regards to job creation. 
When you rely on the economic might of Australia as an employment policy you get the following results. A possible 1500 job cut for information and communications technology specialists—what is going to happen? They move to Australia. A budget freeze on our front-line police—what is going to happen? They move to Australia. We have restructures happening within Government departments forcing the expertise of many public servants to venture into overseas opportunities. They may as well take New Zealand’s wildlife with them. We have skilled workers being pushed out of their jobs especially where the Department of Corrections actually needed to fit some of their prisoners into Release to Work schemes. What is going on here? An increase in the 50000-plus annual exodus to Australia. A manufacturing sector under siege due to major Government procurement projects going to firms manufacturing overseas—I sure hope that this will not happen with our insulation industry. 
Why is this Government working with a failed monetary policy approach costing thousands of jobs in the export and manufacturing sectors? We cannot inflict these reforms under a new social policy when reality differs. Although National pays lip service to the country on its vision that the unemployment rate has gone down this country’s reality states that we have an increase in the number of people going on to the benefit—we have. 
New Zealanders have given up looking for jobs in this country. There has been no reflection on the fact that skilled workers are moving across the Ditch. They do not want to stay here and take on unskilled work. Furthermore our tertiary and higher-education graduates are not sticking around to pay off their loans. The starting-out wage will see a fluctuation in job losses for older and experienced workers while employers seek to pay less for the same productivity rate. 
Can I now also address Part 1 clause 39 amended section 88A of this bill. This is about work-test obligations and drug testing. The bill before us today will attempt to make it compulsory for beneficiaries to undertake a drug test if they are considered to be at risk. The Government can sit there and play the pointing game and blame employers for wanting to drug test beneficiaries upon their taking up a paid job—and we do support the idea of drug testing—but at the end of the day responsibility needs to lie somewhere and in this case it belongs with Paula Bennett and her bill. 
New Zealand First considers drug testing to be important. We do recognise this. It is vital that employers feel comfortable to employ people who can be trusted to do the work. However New Zealand First has concerns about how the Government intends to roll out this initiative particularly with the way it will be administered and with the number of people involved. 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
: 
 I would like to focus my comments in the debate on Part 1 of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill in the Committee of the whole House stage on clause 25 new section 60RA which concerns the social obligations of certain beneficiaries with dependent children. I would like to start by reminding the Committee of some documents that were tabled in the House last week by my co-leader Metiria Turei during question time. Those documents were advice from the Ministry of Health on the sanctions imposed in this bill and their likely impact on child health and well-being. If we listened to the rhetoric of the Minister for Social Development about this bill I think we could be forgiven for thinking that that advice was very favourable. The Minister repeatedly contends that by making Well Child / Tamariki Ora checks compulsory and a sanctionable social obligation under this bill the health outcomes of children will be improved. Indeed that is her stated motivation for including meeting Well Child check obligations as one of the social obligations introduced in this bill. 
With the Minister so adamant about improved outcomes for children we might assume that she had heard from officials that the policy would actually achieve better outcomes for children. But sadly we would be very wrong to assume so. Actually the documents that were tabled in the House last week by my co-leader show that advice from Ministry of Health officials in fact showed the exact opposite of that. Health officials were so concerned about the policy to sanction parents for not getting Well Child checks for their children that they repeatedly warned the Minister that such sanctions would cause “substantial negative impacts on families and vulnerable children including risks of increased maltreatment and neglect”. It is clear from this advice that officials were concerned that the integrity and the effectiveness of the Well Child checks programme would be compromised and undermined if Well Child checks were to be seen by parents as a sanction or a punishment as they indeed would be if they were made compulsory for a section of population under clause 25 in Part 1 of this bill. 
 Ministry officials were also concerned that there was no strong evidence that health-related social obligations are needed. They gave clear advice to the Minister that the best way to reach families who are not receiving Well Child checks at the moment is by improving the delivery mechanisms for Well Child checks not by imposing financial sanctions on beneficiary parents which is likely to simply lead to further harm to the child. They repeatedly gave this advice to the Minister as part of interdepartmental consultation on the development of this legislation but they did not get anywhere so they also wrote to the Minister of Health. They pleaded with the Minister of Health to ask this Minister to investigate alternatives to sanctions for non-compliance with Well Child checks because of their concerns about the potential negative health and well-being impact that this could have on children. But to no avail—sadly sanctions remain in this bill for parents who do not meet the requirements of Well Child checks as well as other social obligations listed in clause 25 in Part 1. Those sanctions could and in some cases will mean that parents see a loss of their benefit of up to 50 percent. I think that these sanctions represent a punitive ideological approach by this Minister who is unwilling to listen to advice or indeed evidence about the likely impact of the policies but has committed to them none the less. 
What the Ministry of Health advice that was tabled by my co-leader in the House last week highlights I think is the potentially harmful impact of the sanctions in this bill on children because children will be even less likely to access the health care that they need and to get the benefit of the Well Child checks programme if they are made compulsory for beneficiaries as proposed in this bill. 
But the other obvious way in which sanctions will harm children is the impact that the loss of income will have on children whose parents—who for whatever reason are failing to meet their social obligations—are sanctioned under this bill. The base-level payment of the DPB depending on the circumstances of the person receiving it is $293 per week. So if you were to lose 50 percent of that payment of $293 per week it is $146.50 per week. I defy any parent to be able to provide the necessities of life for their children on $146.50 per week. It is very important that we think about what we are actually condemning children to live on—children whose parents are sanctioned under this legislation—and what that means for their well-being in their daily lives and the ability of their parents to meet their children’s needs. 
Children have the same needs whatever the circumstances that their parents are in. Whether their parents are in paid work whether their parents are in receipt of a benefit and whether or not their parents are compliant with the social obligations introduced by this legislation children have the same needs. Those are needs like a warm safe secure home adequate food and nutrition clothing—shoes raincoats and warm clothes—and the ability to participate in their education and to take part in school trips school camps and so on all of which parents will find very difficult to provide if they have their income cut by 50 percent for non-compliance with the social obligations introduced in Part 1 of this bill. Children have these needs and they do not control their parents’ circumstances yet their parents need income to be able to provide them with these necessities of life. We in the Green Party are very concerned that many children will be deprived of these necessities if their parents are sanctioned under this bill. 
That is why I have proposed an amendment which is set out on Supplementary Order Paper 197. It states: “A beneficiary’s failure to comply with a social obligation cannot be the subject of a sanction under section 117 if—(a) the beneficiary has 1 or more dependent children; and (b) the chief executive is satisfied that the sanction may deprive the child of food or shelter or would otherwise be detrimental to the wellbeing of the child.” It would be my contention that prioritising children which is something that the Minister often says she wants to do means that we must give consideration to a dependent child who is supported by a parent against whom sanctions may be enforced under this bill. The impact on this child on his or her basic rights to food shelter and safety must be considered. To allow for this which we allow for in this Supplementary Order Paper discretion should be provided to the chief executive that when imposing sanctions they may take into account the interests of dependent children. It is our contention that this actually would bring us much more into line with our international obligations under articles 26 and 27 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which talk about the rights of children and citizens to social security to support themselves. 
We hear a lot about prioritising children from this Minister and indeed from parties all across this Chamber. This Supplementary Order Paper gives the Committee the opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to prioritising children in our social security legislation by allowing that discretion to the chief executive to actually consider the impact on dependent children before imposing a sanction. We have heard from officials from the Ministry of Health who advised the Minister—and even begged their own Minister to intervene—that the specific sanction around Well Child checks is likely to actually lead to detrimental health outcomes for children. Beyond that the simple fact of the loss of income represented by a 50 percent sanction for non-compliance with any of the social obligations introduced in Part 1 of this bill—the children who live in the households where parents will lose that income through no fault of their own and who have no control over their parents’ circumstances will find it very difficult to have their basic needs for food clothing and shelter met. We think at the very minimum that the chief executive should have the discretion to take that into account when deciding whether to impose a sanction and that is why we have moved this Supplementary Order Paper 197. 
Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Mangere) 
: 
 Talofa lava Mr Chair. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I want to make some remarks about the objectives of the bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill before I get on to Part 1 which is the substantive part of this particular bill. 
I am reminded of the building of a fale in Samoa. When you begin the building of the fale you have got to make sure that the posts of that fale are on a solid foundation and that they stand firm and straight. If they do not stand firm and straight what happens is the rest of the house is all over the place. I make reference to that because this bill here significantly changes the Social Security Act which we have had for quite a long time. The Government presented to the Social Services Committee the objectives of this bill which I will read out. It: “reduces benefit dependency: is work focused and [encourages] independence: supports an investment approach that focuses resources where they will be most effective:”—in reducing benefit dependency—“is able to work with a greater number of beneficiaries to support them into work: reinforces social norms and improves social outcomes through the introduction of social obligations for parents and encouraging beneficiaries with warrants to arrest to clear them.” 
On the surface of that those objectives seem—on the surface—to be OK. But when you really dig deep into them why is it that we are condemning those who are reliant and dependent on support? Why is that? Why is it that we are condemning mothers beneficiaries and those who are in unemployment through no fault of their own? When we consider this why should we not be considering that a child dependent on their mother is just as important? Why is it that we consider that the dependency of employers on our education system to provide a skilled workforce is OK yet we cannot accept the dependency of a solo mother who requires our collective support? Why is it OK for us to accept that businesses can depend on tax-funded roads for the distribution of their goods and services? Why is it that we cannot accept the fact that there is a group of people in our community who through no fault of their own end up being dependent on the collective support of the country because either they are unemployed they are sick their husband has left them or they are on their own because of death in the family? Why is it? Because of the flawed foundation of this bill—the flawed purpose—everything else is flawed as far as I am concerned. 
One cannot help—and this was raised by one of the submitters—but think that this second round of welfare reform is based in part on flawed United Kingdom laws. That raises more questions because not only does it look like New Zealand is about to repeat the mistakes of another country but the select committee considering the bill the Social Services Committee has been left in the dark over how the new rules for those currently on a sickness or invalids benefit will work. 
I want to draw your attention to the regulatory impact statement particularly with reference to children because at the end of the day many many submitters said that the group of people who will be detrimentally affected by this bill is children. At the end of the day when you sanction mothers when you sanction solo parents when you force them to work test who suffers? The submitters who came to the select committee said that it would be children. Here is what the regulatory impact statement said: “the home environment remains by far the most important domain for child development …”—by far the most important domain for child development. And here we have got clauses in this bill that say that a mother must find full-time work or part-time work. Therefore a mother is compelled to place a young child into long-term childcare facilities. And yet in the regulatory impact statement which was given to this Government it says that “by far the most important domain for child”—[ 
Bell rung 
] Mr Chair. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I call Su’a William Sio. 
Su’a WILLIAM SIO 
: Thank you very very much Mr Chair. What a wonderful Chair you are. It says that by far the home environment is the most important domain for child development. The regulatory impact statement then says that long-duration childcare from birth is harmful—long-duration childcare from birth is harmful. But this is what this bill is going to place a lot of children into because mums—solo parents—are going to be forced to place their children into long-duration childcare because of the work testing and the sanctions that are going to be imposed upon them. Long-duration childcare is required when a mother is required to work full-time or substantial part-time as is in the bill. 
Furthermore the regulatory impact statement says that the OECD found regarding child developmentthat “a return to work of the mother before the child is 6 months old may have more negative than positive effects.” on the development of that child. There is so much evidence—there is a huge body of evidence—that says that the most critical period in the child’s development is from birth to 7 years and I think that has not been given consideration by the Government in implementing this bill. 
I want to say that the submission from the public that stood out for me the most was from a solo mother by the name of Charlotte Murray who gave her own experience as a single mother with two children aged 2 years and 5 years. Her submission was that mothers with young children who are forced into work are going to be under extreme stress and they are going to pass that stress on and she submitted that in turn that is going to be harmful to the children. I do not know how the Minister and the members of her Government cannot really recognise that there is an issue here that has not yet been addressed. 
I want to also point to the fact that there were many submissions from the disability community. I want to quote what they said because it is more powerful in their words. Darren Kemp says that it is costly being disabled. It is costly living on a benefit. It is costlier living on a benefit when one is disabled and no one should be worse off than they already are. Darren Kemp says that his solution is job creation and job creation on a large scale not forcing sick people to look for jobs. He said that the Government bill should really be called the “Forcing the Sick and Solo Parents to Look for Work with No Support Bill.” 
I want to go on because I think it is important. Darren Kemp says there is a lot of anxiety for beneficiaries with neurological illnesses who get taken off the benefit and then put on again. He opposes these reforms because this is the practical implication he sees for people with neurological illnesses. The submission was that Work and Income case managers including receptionists require a major attitudinal change in order to support people with dual disorders and to stop the ignorance. The point he was making was that this was going to create havoc for people with disabilities and particularly so when even the managers and those who are dealing with them from Work and Income themselves have difficulty understanding the disabilities. So welfare changes will result in endless medical certificates and loads of paperwork by doctors with no knowledge of the impact it will have on people particularly on people with dual disorders. Many with dual disorders are denied Work and Income support to enable them to attend interviews and they said: “No interview no job.” This is another submission by Robin Williams. He said that more than 70 percent of patients with attention deficit disorder will have dual disorders. These disabilities are permanent; they remain for ever. Their point is that there is a high rate of unemployment for those with disorders. There is a high rate of unemployment for blind people. Blind people want to work but unemployment for blind people is at 60 percent.  
The point I am making is that people whether they are a solo parent whether they are unemployed or whether they have disabilities want to work but the foundation of this bill— 
Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
: 
Talofa lava and thank you for the opportunity to speak in the Committee stage of this Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. Mr Prasad got it right. He asked in his earlier statement what the policy intent is for this bill. It is quite clear—it is quite clear—what this Government is trying to do with this welfare bill: to change the mind-set of our country towards encouraging independence towards encouraging people into work and towards encouraging people to have self-reliance in order for them to look after their families. This bill is transformative for our country. It will encourage those who can work to work and it will encourage people off benefits and into work. Despite the scaremongering from members opposite this bill actually protects the vulnerable it protects those who are unable to work it protects those who have disabilities and it gives them benefits. 
All we on this side of the Chamber are saying is that those who can work should work. It is an investment approach because there will be more funding upfront in terms of case management. There will be more funding upfront in terms of work testing to get people prepared and into jobs. Members opposite have asked where the jobs are. 
Carol Beaumont 
: Where are those jobs? 
Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA 
: Oh Miss Beaumont will ask where the jobs are having been unemployed from this institution for the last 15½ months. I will tell her where the jobs are. If that member had looked on the website SEEK this afternoon at 3 p.m. 12500 full-time jobs were on SEEK 1000 part-time jobs were on SEEK 2000 contract jobs were on SEEK and 150 casual jobs—that is 16000 jobs that are on SEEK this afternoon waiting for people to work. Members opposite continue to ask where the jobs are. We know that as the Prime Minister stated quite clearly this afternoon the manufacturing sector is growing and that most sectors across this economy grew in the December quarter of 2012—1.5 percentage growth in our GDP. This economy is growing. We know that jobs are being created. Some have been lost but some have been created and we know that the jobs are out there. 
But what does the bill do? What is the problem that we are trying to solve? We know that around $8 billion per annum is spent on welfare. We know that. The Opposition members know that but they do not want to hear how we can progress people out of work and into jobs. It is a lifetime cost of paying benefits to our population. It is estimated at $78 billion dollars. 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: It’s all about dollars. 
Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA 
: That is more than the Government spends every year Mr Prasad. You know that; I know that. So that is a lifetime cost and that is why it is not just the fiscal implications that this bill brings about; it is also the social implications. Mr Prasad did not know where welfare dependency was. Well I can tell you Mr Prasad. I have welfare dependency in my family and in my electorate. I have seen it—from mother to daughter to granddaughter. It happens and that is sad. It is a sad indictment. We all know in this Committee that some members of our society need help when required but we also know that work is really important to get people off welfare and into jobs. When you have welfare dependency you set boundaries around having very low or no expectations and you have very low or no aspiration. The worst thing that we can give them is having very low or no hope in life and that is why it is important that our kids are incentivised and promoted into getting jobs. 
We know that the changes are around introducing benefit categories. We know that work-test obligations are critical. We heard Mr Sio saying that they must find work. No they are being work tested into work and if they are able to work and a job presents itself then they should work because the money that they get from working is actually quite beneficial to their families. It is good for— 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 This is truly a sad day having this debate. This is truly a very flawed bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. It is an ideological bill. It is not a bill that is built on common sense. It is extremely unfortunate that we are having to debate it in this manner. We object absolutely to the underlying assumption in this bill and in all of the provisions in this bill that those on Government support do not want to work. I do not know where the Government gets this assumption from. I do not know in particular whether that member who spoke previously Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga actually meets with constituents who are suffering from not being able to find jobs from not being able to get the support that they need to get to find jobs. 
In my electorate I have countless examples every single day of people who are having more and more barriers put in their way in order for them to find work. I particularly want to mention and reiterate what my colleague Su’a William Sio said earlier about people with disabilities. I recently had 10 people sitting round a table in my office—people with disabilities—telling me about the barriers that are being put in their way to being able to find jobs. They cannot even get to the point where they get an interview because of the barriers that are there and because this Government has taken away the mainstream funding that was providing support for them. 
Hon Paula Bennett 
: That’s not true. 
CLARE CURRAN 
: Yes it has gone. These people implored me to do something about this and to try to work out how it is that they could even get an interview and get to employers who were willing to interview them when there were so many other people standing in line for each of these jobs. 
This is a bill that we cannot support because it does nothing to address those barriers to work the availability of work the childcare costs and whether the individual has the necessary skills required. It is pushing the buttons of negativity. That is what it is doing—pushing the buttons of negativity and blame. It is targeting and demonising good people in our community who want to work and who cannot find work. The Government is punishing the most vulnerable members of our society for its own lack of ability to improve the economy. As I said my office is overwhelmed by increasing numbers of needy constituents who seek help to simply access their entitlements under our current social security regime and those barriers are just making it harder for them to move out of the poverty cycle. There is no carrot in this bill. It is like using the stick when a person is already cornered. 
Recently my office has had four cases of people approaching me when their benefits have been cut for non-compliance with job-seeking including a family with a very young baby. These are people who find it difficult to regularly report their situation to their case manager to state for instance the jobs that they applied for or that they have moved and they are getting into difficulty with these things. These are the ones who have already been let down by our education system and who are having difficulties with the regime that is providing more barriers for them. These are the people whom social welfare was designed to support into a better situation not to penalise them for their lack of skills. I do not think that members on any side of this Chamber will try to convince you Mr Chair that we do not need to decrease the number of people who are reliant on State support but what we do disagree on is how we go about achieving this. This Government is playing into the stereotypes of bludging of putting everybody into the same basket of— 
MOJO MATHERS (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party opposes this bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. We have many concerns with the whole fundamental approach and we are particularly concerned about the impact that it may have on disabled people. I am constantly amazed when I hear people say: “Oh this bill is all about encouraging people to get off the benefit and into work.” and yet I cannot see how this bill will do that for people with disabilities. 
Everywhere I have gone across the country one of the No. 1 issues that people with disabilities raise with me is their concern around not being able to get work. They share with me their stories about how they cannot get work. The barriers to employment are not because of their own lack of willingness to get work; the barriers to employment are out there in society. It may be the attitude of employers. 
One example I would like to give is of a woman called Judith who is deaf. When she saw a job in the paper that she thought she could apply for she rang the number that was available for an application form. Because she was deaf she used the relay service and she was told that the job was already filled. When her friend rang—her friend with hearing—the employer said: “No problem. We will send you the application form.” So she could not even get an application form sent to her because she was ruled out right from the start on the basis of being deaf. 
There are endless stories like this of the kinds of day-to-day challenges of trying to even get a foot in the door for people with disabilities. This is why there is so much concern around the focus on the work assessment model. We know that in the UK the work assessment model has not worked and that it is causing constant litigation huge suffering for people in the UK and indeed a spike in suicides as a result. People with mental health issues are particularly vulnerable to the kinds of assessment models that might focus on whether they can lift something—it does not look at what the real barriers to employment are and what they can really do. It should not be part of this bill. Assessment models can work if the sole focus of assessment is to help the person identify what they can do best identify their strengths and abilities and find work that matches these strengths and abilities. It will not work if it is focused on what they cannot do and tries to boil that down to a series of mechanistic tests. 
The other major concern that we have about the bill is around the social obligations for parents. I have already spoken in the second reading about how many parents have simply decided their children are simply not ready to attend an early childhood learning education centre. But a huge proportion of solo parents in particular with a child on a benefit—about 26 percent of them—have a child with a disability and certain disabilities are actively discriminated against in access to early childhood education. 
I have just been contacted by a mother of two young children with very severe disabilities. The early childhood education centre said they cannot take both of them together at the same time. It cannot provide for that and the most that it can do is to provide for one of them for 9 hours a week. These are the kinds of real challenges that parents of children with disabilities are facing. Some early childhood education centres have been petitioned by other parents to remove children with disabilities from their centres because the other parents do not like having these children there. 
There is more discrimination at the early childhood education centres than there is at secondary or primary school level where there is an obligation— 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 I just want to address some of the concerns that have come through from Opposition members. First of all I would like to thank all of those who submitted. I would like to thank the Social Services Committee for all of the work that it has done and for some of the changes that it has made. 
As I said I will now just go through some of the things that have been addressed. One of them was around home-schooling and it went right back to the first call that Ms Ardern made. I just want to be quite clear. In two parts she kind of said that if you are enrolled for home-schooling and you have met the criteria then you will not have social obligations put against you for early childhood education. That is not quite correct. However the second part of what she said which is that if you have enrolled for the equivalent of home-schooling which is Te Kura and which is the curriculum for early childhood education then you will not have social obligations put against you. So you cannot just say: “I’m going to home school my child when they turn 5 and as such I do not have to reach that social obligation.” However if you have enrolled with home-schooling and you are doing the curriculum then you will be fine. So that will address that for them. 
Look there was a lot that was talked about as far as individuals and targeting to individuals is concerned. I know that the bill itself—as it is in the legislation—is relatively broad and the proof will be in the pudding which will come about when it is put into place. But the whole theory behind this the whole motivation for it is that we are looking at individuals and what they can do and then getting them support to get them up to speed. It certainly plays on what Ms Mathers was talking about as far as people with disabilities are concerned and certainly on what other members have raised throughout their calls as well. 
I always think that when you look at it we have you know 320000-odd individuals who are receiving welfare. You know we can block them into courses as the investment approach does or you can look at it from the macro-perspective and from the micro-perspective but really it is once you get down to the individual. What that will do and certainly through the work assessments that were raised by the previous member and through other assessments that we do—and I am just going to detour slightly now and just talk about those assessments because for many of them they are a self-assessment. 
We have actually worked incredibly closely intensively and over a long period of time with the health and disability sector itself. We have purposely gone out and held open forums and we have gone through paperwork. We have not just given them the theory but we have literally sat down with them and talked about the wording that we use and about how we actually make it accessible for people with literacy problems or with disabilities that mean that they are unable to have physical access let alone those who might have other incapacities that mean that they are unable to understand the information that is in front of them. We have then really been keenly interested in how they can do those assessments that really address what they can do and then if there are gaps that mean there are barriers there we can put more money in up front and get them that level of support. The disability sector has said to me: “We are optimistic but nervous.” and I think that is entirely fair. I can say as I have said it 100 times and I will continue to say it that I am also equally aware that the proof will be when they get into place with what we are doing. 
What I would say to members is yes we have been making changes to welfare over the last 4 years. At each point it has been said that this is the end of welfare as we know it that people will be thrown out and that we will be treating people appallingly. The only times I hear the word “bludgers” and other horrible words are quite frankly from people who are trying to scaremonger. It is never from us and actually for all the changes we have made the world has not fallen apart. People have not been able to not get access to what they need and what they deserve and what their are entitlements are. In fact I get criticised for the number being too high and for me letting too many people be on welfare. Well I just ask you to look at past performance. I think it stacks up for itself and so does New Zealand. 
I hope you see these changes for what they are truly intended to be which is getting the right support for the right individuals with the right assessments and making sure that actually at the end of the day we will be paying more. You will see that through the Budget process just as you saw it through the youth services that this is about investing in people up front and earlier. 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. This is as I understand it the second part of a move to reform our social security system and to fundamentally shift the focus of the benefit system towards encouraging and supporting beneficiaries to move into paid work. Well that is all very good if there is some paid work for them to move into. I know that some members opposite seem to think that growth in our economy has meant more jobs. Well actually this is jobless growth—the growth that there has been recently. We still have exceptionally high unemployment in this country. Many many New Zealanders are absolutely desperate to get work and as somebody who has been out in the community full-time for the last 12 months or so I can assure you that I have talked to many people who are really desperate about their work situation. People want to work but that would not be the message you would get from looking at legislation like this. 
As I understand it this legislation is going to do some things like extend work-test and work preparation obligations replace seven current benefit categories with three new main categories and have all sorts of provisions around social obligations and of course sitting alongside all of that are some very nice sanctions. And what are the underlying assumptions with that? Well I think it absolutely says loud and clear that the Government believes that most people who are on benefits do not want to work and that parents who are on benefits are not good parents. That is why we supposedly need this legislation. I think that that is particularly and utterly galling in this situation with the current levels of unemployment. 
What are the facts? How many people on benefits do not actually want to work? How many of the parents who are receiving benefits are not good parents? My colleague Dr Prasad talked about very small numbers of people who are probably in those kinds of categories. The facts are that people want to work. They want decent jobs. They want to be able to manage bringing up their children if they have got them to have a job that pays them fairly and to be able to look after themselves. The fact of the matter is there ain’t those jobs there for them. That is the fact. 
What this is about is beneficiary bashing headline grabbing and the Government’s typical spin. This is a Government of spin. It is short on real actions and solutions but big on spinning. I think it is pretty rich for the Minister for Social Development to say that this is not about beneficiary bashing. As I heard the Hon Phil Goff say this is dog whistle politics this is knowing that there is a constituency out there who thinks that everybody receiving a benefit is a bludger. I believe honestly that most people in this Chamber know that not to be true. But despite that there is this sort of legislation which actually is not the most important thing that the Government should be addressing by a long way. The most important thing or one of the most important things is actually our economy and ensuring that the economy grows and provides decent jobs for people to work in. If those decent jobs were there then people would be working. 
I thought it was absolutely disgusting in question time today when the Prime Minister joked about unemployment. I cannot believe that the Prime Minister of New Zealand thinks that unemployment is a joke. There are 163000 New Zealanders who are registered as unemployed. There are 111000 other New Zealanders who want more work who are underemployed. They want more hours. They cannot live with a decent standard of living on the hours that they have got. These are real people: real people who are hurting and real people who want work. Our unemployment rate is staying very very high and the Government is sitting on its hands in the face of wave after wave of massive job losses. We have got the Telecom ones coming up we have had Solid Energy and there are the Department of Conservation job losses today. Those are just three out of a massive great list of wave after wave of job losses. Again these are real people. Two hundred people waited for seven jobs in a Carter Holt Harvey workplace in Mangere. There were 200 people for seven jobs. In my own circumstances—in my own family—my niece who is a graduate is desperately seeking work. She rang me the other night and she said— 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 If the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill is as the Minister for Social Development would have us believe about dealing with welfare dependency let us look for a moment at the record. The record is that since she became Minister unemployment is up 82 percent. Those on the DPB are up 13 percent. The first question we should ask you Minister is whether this is because 82 percent more people suddenly do not want to work. Is this because the nation has suddenly lost its morals and a lot more people are on a domestic purposes benefit because of that? The Minister knows that that is arrant nonsense. She knows that the reason why there are more people unemployed has very little to do with lacking the will to work and a hell of a lot to do with the jobs being lost under her Government’s management and the jobs not being available. 
I want to ask the Minister why it was that when I opened a New World supermarket for the jobs that were available there—I think there were 200—there were over 3000 people seeking those jobs. More recently I opened The Warehouse store in Stoddard Road. There were 80 jobs and there were 1500 people seeking out relatively low-paid employment. Most recently I opened a Countdown supermarket. There were 150 jobs there; there were 2600 people queuing up for those jobs. 
It is not about people lacking the will to work Minister and it is not about people wanting to be welfare dependent; it is about the fact that in the last quarter under this Government something like 20000 to 30000 jobs have disappeared and not been replaced. It is about the fact that this Government has not focused on the need of those out of work to be upskilled in order to get employment—things like the training incentive allowance. You Minister know about that. You took advantage of it. So why is it Minister that you have taken it away from people today who want to upskill in order to get into the workforce to get a job? 
If you want to reduce welfare dependency make sure the jobs are there make sure that people are skilled to take up those jobs and make sure that people have affordable early education assistance so that their kids can be looked after. Because for most parents out there their first obligation is to their children. They must look after their children. They must ensure their children have a stable background and every assistance those kids can get. That comes even before finding a job if you are a solo mum or dad. So let us make sure that the prerequisites to getting people off welfare and into jobs are there: jobs skills and affordable early childhood education. This bill is very strong on rhetoric; it is very weak on making any real difference in practice. 
I want you to tell the Committee Minister how it will work if you cut the benefit by 50 percent. Who do you think Minister is going to be the first victim of that? Is this another case of visiting the sins of the parents on the kids? The kids are already ill-clothed ill-fed ill-housed and disadvantaged and will never have the same opportunities as your kids or mine. Are you going to cut the benefit to punish the parent? Yeah come on. 
What is our social security system about? It is about a social contract. People do have an obligation if they are able to work to go out there and find the work. But you can do that with strong case management. You know that Minister. You know that to be the truth. If somebody is not working who should be you look at their drug or alcohol problem for example. Do not increase the pokies at Skycity. That will not help. Do not be gutless about your alcohol legislation and reducing dependency. That will not help. It is about addressing the problems. If they are unskilled do not cut $53 million out of the skills budget as you did 2 years ago. Do not cut the training incentive allowance because you will only make the problem worse. 
I believe that people have obligations to their community that there is a social contract and that our community has the responsibility to make sure that those in need and those who are most vulnerable get support and each of us has the obligation back to our community to contribute as much as we can to get out there and work when we can. Most people want to do this. This bill— 
TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Chair. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will not be supporting the bill but that is not because we do not believe that the Minister for Social Development truly has the intention described inside this bill. It is merely because we have grave fears that some of the measures inside the bill will have a negative downstream impact that has not been appropriately addressed at this time. 
New Zealand First believes that the welfare system of our country is a safety net not a hammock. I remember the first time I met the Hon Paula Bennett. We were both speaking at a political engagement in 2008 at Te Atatu. It was one of the most volatile political engagements I have had during any campaign that I have been part of partly because the Hon Tau Henare was in the crowd rarking it up. But where we made a point of contact I say to Minister Bennett was when I spoke of my great-grandmother the loss of my great-grandfather and their small child through the influenza epidemic here in New Zealand and the fact that my great-grandmother then had to put her two small daughters in with the nuns down in Wellington while she went to find herself a husband. There was no support. There was no way she could look after her two small daughters—aged 5 and 3 if I recall correctly—while she sorted her finances. 
You and I both agree that that is not a place we want to go back to. That is nowhere near where this bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill is trying to go; that is not the point. However when I read the parts of this bill that deal with and merge the widow’s benefit for example with the work-ready benefit or the work-focus benefit I have concerns about women such as my great-grandmother who lose their husbands and about small children who lose their fathers. 
Then there is a subjective process about when they are ready to come back. It concerns me and it concerns New Zealand First in terms of some of the subjectivity that can be inside what is outside your control Minister. This is going to be at the front line. So that is something as you say where the proof will be in the pudding but New Zealand First is concerned that it has not been addressed appropriately or the safety net has not been addressed appropriately here. 
We also agree that there is a social contract in this country. Nobody gets something for nothing. We all work hard and we should all work hard for the benefit of our country. But that is different from the term “social obligation”. The social obligations that have been placed inside this bill start to direct and impact on a parent’s ability to make choices and decisions for their children. It is of concern to New Zealand First that the social obligations start to push people who have found themselves in a place of requiring support from their country to start to lose the ability to make those choices for their own children. 
Some of that concern is around the Well Child / Tamariki Ora checks. New Zealand First has always been a proponent for Well Child / Tamariki Ora checks. If I remember correctly I think it was our policy that started it. But we were not asking for people to be forced into a situation of immunising their children. Yet again there is a requirement a subjective requirement that they make a fully informed decision that somebody on the front line can decide they have not made it fully informed and therefore they can penalise them. That is a concern to us. 
David Bennett 
: Who cares? 
TRACEY MARTIN 
: Mr Bennett I think everybody here cares. There are reasons why a social obligation as opposed to a social contract is so important. New Zealand First has a policy that again is based on that concept—that if your country supports you you should be doing something to support your country—and it is our community wage policy. There is a constant call: “Where is the work?”. I do not think that the Government although we have all this political rhetoric denies that we are in a time—let us say it is the global recession—where it is a very tight job market and a very tight labour market. 
But we want people to continue to have that work ethic. We want our young people to continue to get up in the morning and believe that you have to go out and do for country and do for your community. That is why New Zealand First would have liked to see some sort of positive social contract engagement inside this bill something built around our policy of the community wage. There are many many organisations that require voluntary labour and for 20 hours a week to gain your community wage or your work focus benefit of whatever the title is you should have to— 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is not a pleasure to stand and speak in the Committee stage of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill because actually this is a bill that shows—particularly in Part 1 with all of its punitive effects that it brings on people on mothers in particular—that the Government has just given up. It really has given up on this idea of a brighter future. No longer is it prepared to make sure that there are jobs created and that we have a society where people actually feel like they can contribute in a positive way to their society. Instead it is using Part 1 of this bill to bring in a whole range of punitive measures—a whole range of punitive measures—to get people lining up for jobs. That is the demeaning situation that we actually face here in New Zealand today under the National Government. It is that demeaning prospect of people having to line up for jobs. 
There were a couple of stories in the  
Waikato Times 
 just in the last week that really paint this dismal picture that the National Government has got us into that will not be rectified and that will in fact be worsened by this bill and Part 1 in particular. The first story was the front page of the  
Waikato Times 
 on the 18th of this month. It had a big banner headline that read: “Jobless fight for work”. The jobless are having to fight for work in a city like Hamilton. That is the sort of brighter future that this Government has delivered to us. What the story detailed was situations like 1013 people applying for 120 jobs at the Hamilton office of the Earthquake Commission—1013. The burger chain Wendy’s had 100 applications for six management positions. And they were expecting more than 500 people to apply for 50 minimum wage crew jobs. The Mexico Group is also looking to recruit people but these are not flash jobs; these are minimum wage jobs. Again about 200 people had applied for 25 jobs at that restaurant. So this is the prospect: people lining up in queues to actually try to secure the dignity of work. The demeaning lining up and queuing for jobs for the dignity of work—that is what it has been reduced to. 
The other story that I think is relevant to Part 1 of this bill which was in the  
Waikato Times 
 just a few days later was a story where—it was quite demeaning actually—this was the employers starting up. The employers were starting up to say: “We have these jobs. They are minimum rate jobs and when people line up to apply for them they are really not worthy of these minimum wage jobs.” It was disgraceful but tucked in there was a sentence where those employers were complaining that this piece of legislation was going to make matters worse. That was the employers complaining that it was going to make life worse for them. Never mind the people forced to line up because there are no jobs in this country forced to line up in those queues and go through that demeaning exercise with a punitive approach that this Government is about to take through Part 1 of this bill. In that queue after this legislation passes will be the mother who has been forced to look for employment against her will and against the needs of her children. They will be the people who have been forced to put their children into early childhood education against their will. They will be the people forming these queues. 
The employers in that story were already complaining about people lining up to be applicants who they said did not really want the job. I do not know how they have come to that conclusion that people— 
MELISSA LEE (National) 
: 
 It is a great pleasure to rise in support of and talk in the first part of this legislation the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. I would just like to address a couple of things that Opposition members have actually raised. I think Ms Moroney actually talked about what a shame it was that people are lining up for jobs. I say good on them. They are encouraged. They are actually out there looking for work. What does that member suggest those people do? Sit at home and do nothing? I do not think so. 
It was Phil Goff who actually wanted to talk about the records of unemployment numbers. Can I actually quote numbers from 2000 to 2008 when the Labour Party was in Government? Sickness benefit numbers rose 51.6 percent invalid’s benefit numbers rose 47.2 percent and domestic purposes benefit numbers rose by 8.5 percent. 
 Guess what? The Minister of Social Development and Employment at the time said that the rise for the two quarters in unemployment numbers was “Not bad actually”. I am sorry but that was the best of New Zealand’s economic times not during a recession or when we are recovering from the recession that globally the world is struggling with. In New Zealand with the leadership of our Prime Minister John Key and the Ministers we are actually growing. It is a very small number compared with Australia maybe. I think the recent number I saw was 3.1 percent growth in Australia. I think we lag just behind on 3 percent. But Australia has mining. My goodness! 
The Opposition asks: “Where are the jobs?”. Whenever this Government puts forward agendas for job growth and economic growth and policies to get people more jobs the Opposition is completely against it. Opposition members stand in this House—the hypocrites stand in this House—asking: “Where are the jobs?”. Actually my learned colleague Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga looked at 3 o’clock today on—what was it— 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: SEEK. 
MELISSA LEE 
: On seek.co.nz there were 16000 jobs available at 3 o’clock this afternoon. There are jobs if people want to go and get them. 
Actually I was walking around the businesses on Rosebank Road on Monday and I was talking to employers in manufacturing. They told me they struggle to find good workers with the right attitude who are willing to get up in the morning and actually work. Sometimes they have to get rid of some employees because they fail their drug tests. I wonder why they did that. They did that because their workers are dealing with laser cutters and heavy machinery. Of course these people have to be off drugs. I understand that there are times when people have to lose jobs but we are creating more jobs our manufacturers are creating more jobs our employers are creating more jobs and our farmers are creating more jobs. I looked at a website just before when Opposition members were speaking. There are plenty of farming jobs available. I think one member opposite talked about the right kinds of jobs. What is “right”? There are 220000 children growing up in benefit-dependent homes. I would have thought that when you provide for your child the best example for your child is for the parents to be not at home on the benefit but out working. 
One other thing that really upset me during the debate on the whole social welfare reform issue was when people said women like me who leave children in early childhood education centres and work full time are bad mothers. I beg to differ actually. I think I am providing good role modelling for my child. I think parents who work and are responsible for their children and for themselves and who are growing their businesses growing the economy and setting a good example for their children cannot be bad parents. So let me say this: please do not scare New Zealanders into thinking that getting a job is a bad thing. 
Le’aufa’amulia 
 Asenati Lole-Taylor 
: They’re already scared. 
MELISSA LEE 
: I am sorry but this bill is encouraging people. It says it is OK; social support is there from Government social welfare has always been there and we support it but get a job. 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I will not say it is a pleasure to follow that member Melissa Lee because her formula her solution to the lack of jobs in New Zealand seems to be to send them all down to the farm or perhaps even up the chimney. Perhaps that is what that member thinks we should be doing with this bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. But this bill is not about you Melissa Lee. This bill is about the people I talk to—that we all talk to—on a regular basis. 
I want to talk about one woman in particular and what she goes through. She lost her job last March. She spends 3 or 4 days a week working at looking for work: filling in forms surfing the internet—and she is lucky that she has got a computer at home because so many people do not have computers at home; they cannot afford it—and going through pointless Work and Income seminars and training. They are pointless when as we have already heard many of the people applying for jobs looking for work are already trained and already have skills. She waits on the phone to talk to her work broker. Can you imagine anything less dignified than that? She is waiting on the phone to talk to someone a job broker who is apparently brokering a job for her and you would have to say has failed completely so far. 
Occasionally very occasionally she gets to go to a job interview. This woman has applied for something like 75 jobs and I think she has had three job interviews. She is absolutely devastated every time she applies for a job and gets a rejection slip. She is devastated every time she applies for a job and has to go back with her tail between her legs to Work and Income and say she did not get the job. She has to start over and over and over again. So I think that the members of the National Government have no idea about the realities of people looking for work in this country. They have no idea how absolutely undignified it is for people like this woman who is really committed to finding a job and would do anything to get a job and how humiliating it is for her. 
Then we heard from the Minister the other day that what happens in Work and Income now is that they have got this new tradition: they ring the bell every time someone gets a job. I know that this woman would be delighted if the bell were rung for her but it has not been since last March—March 2012. She is still looking for work and now there is this bill that threatens sanctions and other punitive measures as if life is not already difficult enough. 
 We know that there are no jobs. We know how difficult it is. We have heard the stories today about people lining up for minimum wage jobs. Sam Lotu-Iiga says there are 16000 jobs on SEEK. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: There are. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Has he had a look at any of them? 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: Yes. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Have you looked them up? 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: I have yes. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Ninety-day trial periods? Minimum wage jobs? Good jobs like that? 
The other thing that worries me about this bill is that the Government is looking to contract out work testing. This is a UK idea and we have seen the failure it has been. Just this week there was a story about a job centre that has been pinged for setting targets for benefit sanctions. So what we have in that job centre in the UK is league tables for staff not to prove that people are getting jobs so that they can ring the bell but to prove that they are sanctioning people. What the Government in the UK has had to do is launch an inquiry into this after it was forced to admit that job centres are setting targets and league tables to sanction benefit claimants. 
That is the path we go down with this bill with the contracting out of work testing. It is based on a false premise that there are jobs out there that unemployed people do not want to work and that there are enough jobs around if you really try. It is an ugly piece of legislation I have to say. It is an ugly piece of legislation. It is based on blaming those who have been unable to find work. It is putting pressure on those who are struggling. It is ignoring the problem that we have in this country of children growing up in poverty. Their parents want to work and want to do the right thing but are unable to. It says that— 
ALFRED NGARO (National) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am glad that I have an opportunity to speak on this bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill because I have listened to a number of the comments that have been made on the other side of the Chamber and I have to say that I am very disappointed that there seems to be a complete misrepresentation really of the argument that we are making on this side of the Chamber. There is no question that every single person in this House is appalled when there are people who want to work and who cannot find a job—absolutely appalled that that is the case—because it must be a priority in any economy to ensure that those jobs are there. But I have listened to some very peculiar arguments particularly the one about how important it was to get your child into early childhood education so that you could go back to work as quickly as possible and that that was not an issue one way or the other. 
Well I just want to ask someone this question. In fact the Minister in the chair could perhaps answer it the best. If one knows through having read extensive literature on the impact on child development around certain features that a child’s educational outcomes are best predicted by mum’s educational outcomes—by her qualifications; not dad’s but mum’s—if that is the biggest predictor of how well a child will do at school and what qualifications that child will leave with what would you do with somebody on a DPB faced with the choice and with that knowledge? Would you send that woman out to work for a minimum-waged job—any job—just to get her into the workforce or would you send her back to school? Which one would you choose? 
The Government has made it absolutely crystal clear which one it would choose because a few years ago it took away the training incentive allowance for tertiary education. The Government left it there for the basics for the preliminary work that you would want to do just to get into a basic diploma course but nothing more than that. It used to be available for somebody who wanted to bring themselves up to speed with a tertiary qualification to take them into nursing to take them into teaching to take them into a profession of some sort—maybe one day to even have the ambition to be the Minister for Social Development. That is what the training incentive allowance was for. 
So I think that the Government has to seriously rethink its approach. It is starting from the wrong position. It looks at somebody on a benefit and it says that that person is dependent on the benefit. It looks and makes judgments about the individual. It starts from all the negatives from all the deficits. It is a deficit model that this Government has adopted. 
I want to talk about a strengths-based model because I believe that is the way we should go. I heard the most inspiring speech at a conference I attended recently. This woman was running a company that helps people off welfare and into paid work. That is what the company does. But it certainly does not have the ambition of getting anyone into the minimum-waged jobs that we are hearing about in this debate this afternoon. 
She described the company’s approach with a story. Here is the story. Two women go into the London office of this particular organisation. One has been living rough for 5 years. She has not showered. Her clothes are dirty. She is in her late 50s. She has become estranged from her family. She has had an anxiety disorder. She has faced some pretty tough times. She has a difficult condition. She wets herself while she is sitting in the waiting room. It is a difficult situation. The other woman who comes into the office has been out of work for a number of years but she used to work for a major corporation as the personal assistant to the general manager. So she has got great skills but she has a skill that nobody learns these days. She knows shorthand. Shorthand is the most fantastic skill you could possibly have and I know that many people value it. So this is a great opportunity for this woman to get herself back into work. She loves animals. That is her passion. She loves her grandchildren. So she has got a lot going for her; that is the way they see her. Of course the woman then said that these two women are the same woman. 
MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: The question is that the question be now put. Those who are of that opinion will say Aye— 
Jacinda Ardern 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Labour has tabled during the course of the Committee stage several amendments that I as the person who has put these amendments forward have not had a chance to speak to. I request the opportunity of the Committee to speak to those amendments. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Look I have listened very carefully to the debate. The member who raises the point of order has had two calls. We have had nearly 2 hours on this. I am going to put the closure motion. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Just further clarification. Those amendments—we were in the throes of ensuring that they were correct. At the time that I spoke they were not able to be tabled. We have since withdrawn and resubmitted one of those amendments. I would like the opportunity to be able to speak to them. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: And that refers to clause 2 which is further on in the debate. I am putting the question which is with regard to the closure. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the question be now put. 
Ayes 64 
New Zealand National 59; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 57 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Motion agreed to. 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. During that vote I had the authority to cast a proxy vote for Brendan Horan but the vote was not called by the Clerk. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: That is a fair point. So the member is now casting that vote and— 
Holly Walker 
: One opposed. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: —it is one opposed so that vote is now amended to Ayes 64 Noes 57. The result is the same. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 199 in the name of the Hon Paula Bennett to Part 1 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Amendments agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 197 in the name of Holly Walker to clause 25 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 57 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Noes 64 
New Zealand National 59; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Amendments not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Jacinda Ardern to Part 1 be agreed to: 
insert: 
9ANew section 12AA (Membership of Work and Income Board) 
After section 12 insert: 
12AAMembership of Work and Income Board 
The membership of the Work and Income Board must include a person with a background in issues relating to child well-being. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 56 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1. 
Noes 64 
New Zealand National 59; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Jacinda Ardern to clause 25 be agreed to: 
in new section 60RC(3) after “any social obligation of the beneficiary” insert: “; and that access to primary health care providers and early childhood education is readily available based on a quarterly report produced by the department outlining the regional accessibility and availability of primary health care providers and early childhood education.” 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 56 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1. 
Noes 64 
New Zealand National 59; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Part 1 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Part 1 as amended agreed to. 
Part 2 Consequential amendments and transitional and savings provisions 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to speak to Part 2 of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill although I think perhaps a lengthier debate on Part 1 might have been in order. But given there are some subsequent amendments within Part 2 I am sure that we can cross-reference some of the implications of Part 2 against Part 1. But before we do I am frustrated by the misinformation that continues to be pursued by Government members not least by the Minister for Social Development herself who has continually tried to portray the Labour Party as being against people accessing a benefit. Never a more ridiculous statement have I heard. 
As I have said before Labour was the architect of our Social Security Act in New Zealand. We will defend to the death people’s right of access to social security but what we have been frustrated by is this Minister’s continual attempt to portray her welfare reforms as successful based on one criterion. What is that criterion? A decrease in the number of people accessing benefits. All we have done on this side of the Chamber is simply point out the fact that that is not in fact true. If you use the Ministry of Social Development’s statistical assessment—which is released annually and uses June data and goes right back to the 1940s—you will find that based on that annualised data we have seen some of the highest numbers under this Minister. They are higher than we have ever seen before based on that ministry statistical assessment which is based on annualised figures from June. 
So what Melissa Lee said before about us having high numbers of sickness beneficiaries under Labour—actually it is not true when you look at the record of this Minister. So yes we will point that out because on that Minister’s criterion she has failed. But on the criteria of morality on the criterion of a dignified system and on the criterion of doing right by job seekers who are actively seeking employment this bill also fails. This bill fails on those sets of criteria that we set ourselves as members of the Labour Party. On those counts this bill fails and I think it is only fair that we continue to raise those issues in this Committee. 
I want to refer to clause 65 in Part 2 of this bill which has not been touched on. It amends section 60GAE which refers to beneficiaries having an additional dependent child whilst on the benefit. The Minister raised last week that this is the very reason for the existence of these changes in these welfare reforms. The Minister’s belief that there are too many people having babies on the domestic purposes benefit is her sole driving force in presenting this bill to Parliament. 
First point: if you go back to the 1940s and in fact if you look at welfare numbers for the last 10 years DPB figures have tended to sit around the same figure. We have not seen this dramatic jump or ebbing away; they have tended to sit at the same number for some time. Neither Labour nor National have made dramatic shifts in those figures. For the Minister to now claim that actually what she is doing is backing New Zealanders and believing in beneficiaries and then at the same time say that all that sole parents are is people who go out and breed so that they can get money—which is what this clause says; that is what this clause says—and try to pretend that it is about something else I find it completely disingenuous. 
Secondly show me the family who aspires for nothing more for their child than a life on welfare. Show me that family. Show me that mother because again that is what this clause is implying. It implies that that is the only aspiration that a family or a mother has for their child and that is absolutely wrong. 
Thirdly show me the woman who has a baby on her own and who is the only one responsible for bringing that child into this world. I might have missed the memo but at no point have I heard the Minister or anyone on that side of the Chamber talk about the responsibility of dads in this equation yet every time we are in here discussing sole parents we are talking about mums in the most derogatory of terms. Was there a memo on immaculate conception because if there was I missed it. It is time that we got real and section 60GAE is an absolute denial of reality. 
It takes more than the denying of access to a benefit to fix what can sometimes be generations of families living at the bottom of the heap and if this Minister thinks that she can fix that issue by simply denying a parent and therefore a child access to social security then that is the most naive of suggestions. On this side of the Chamber we will not deny that there are families who have been at the bottom of the heap for generations and that the issues they face are complex. But to simply say that cutting off their benefit is the answer is not only naive but it is just going to cause us other issues in other areas of our social security system or with our social services. 
I have seen those issues. I will take any one of those members out on to the streets with me with Lifewise or the Auckland City Mission and we can see what happens at the end point of some of these policies. Evidence tells us that the only way to deal with some of those harder end cases—the minority—is with intensive case management. Show me how you do that when a Work and Income case manager sometimes has on their books more than 300 clients. This bill does not address that. This bill is not realistic in addressing some of these genuine issues where they exist. Instead it is making political rhetoric and playing political games with some of these individuals’ lives. Let us get real. 
I also want to speak to the amendments that have been made around medical assessments. When you come to Part 1A of schedule 2 which I believe is part of this debate it talks about appeals to the medical board. Many of those appeals will be based on the medical assessment process. I would love to tell the Committee what that entails but we simply do not know. It is one of the most important parts of this bill and we are completely in the dark as to how it will work. 
In fact as CCS Disability Action said—and I think it said it really well so I want to share its submission—“We support their use of appropriate tests designed to find out what assistance and supports the person needs to obtain employment. However we have grave concerns about United Kingdom style assessments especially when these are carried out by contracted providers. Despite the rhetoric about focusing on people’s abilities these tests have proven to be medical model based checklists often administrated by people with little real knowledge of disability.” Why is CCS Disability Action worried about a UK model? Because in 2012 the Minister herself said that that was what she was looking to replicate. 
We sought clarity at the Social Services Committee from officials about what was going to be included in these assessments. We got back a short note that basically said that the bill contains provisions to enable assessments but that it does not include how assessments will operate in practice. We asked about the tender process. They said that no decisions had been made on which external contractors would be used for these assessments or whether there would be one contractor or multiple contractors. We simply do not know. 
Labour has tabled an amendment that says that we should not be passing any policy or regulation-based changes on medical assessments until they come back before this House and are debated and that is only fair. Any Government that denies our ability to do that is a Government that has something to hide. I suspect I am afraid based on the approach of Dr David Bratt who is the chief medical adviser that we have every right to be worried. I saw recently a presentation by Dr Bratt regarding people who are undertaking assessments for sickness and invalids disability. It is called  
Ready Steady Crook: Are we killing our patients with kindness? 
. He openly—openly—spreads the notion that access to social security is bad for people’s health. 
Actually do you know what is bad for people’s health? An undignified system that does not focus on people’s strengths and abilities to get back into work a system that does not focus on their wellness and a system that instead allows them to squander in poverty without the means necessary to even ensure that they are again one day employable. That is what is dangerous to people accessing our system and this bill does nothing to address that. 
Part 2 of this bill contains in it provisions that as I have said seem to take on this notion that we need to be cruel to be kind. Well we trialled that. It was in 1991 and Ruth Richardson cut benefits by 25 percent. Did we see a decrease in access? Well what we saw was an increase in harm. We went from 30 percent of kids living in poverty being in the homes of those on benefits to today when that rate is more like 70 percent. Mr Speaker this bill will do much more harm than it will do good. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Could I just remind members—speaking to the previous speaker—that when we are in Committee the presiding officer is the Chairman not the Speaker. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: I’m sorry. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: That is fine. I would not pull you up on that matter. 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 Part 2 of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill is all about consequential amendments to deal with the main harm I guess which has just been voted on in the Chamber this afternoon. I want to talk about those consequential amendments because they are based on the very basic but false premise that people who are on benefits today are there because they do not want to work and they are people who do not want the best for their children. All of these amendments are based on that very false premise. 
We know that it is a false premise—well actually on this side of the Chamber we know that it is a false premise—because when Labour was in Government we had very low unemployment in this country. In fact we had the lowest unemployment in the OECD for many of those quarters and when we were not the country with the lowest unemployment in the OECD countries we were the country with the second-lowest unemployment in the OECD. So what Labour has proven is that if given the chance if given a vibrant economy where there are jobs to be applied for then of course people will apply for those jobs and of course people will ensure that they have the skills to go and make sure that they are at the front of the queue for those jobs. 
What this Government has delivered those people is actually no hope—not a brighter future like it promised but no hope because they are standing in those job queues now. I should say “those jobless queues” because there is a small number of jobs and hundreds of people lining up for them. That is the brighter future that the Government has delivered. 
But with these consequential amendments one amendment that appears to me to be so vitally missing is the one that would make some sense if the Government really was using this legislation to improve participation in early childhood education. I do believe there is evidence that shows us that in the right circumstances for children who are aged 3 and 4 years old getting quality early childhood education for around about 20 hours a week does make a good and positive difference to their life outcomes and it makes a particularly good impact for children from low-income households. So that is perfect for many of these families whom we are addressing. 
But those families do not withhold their children from that quality early childhood education experience because they do not want the best for their children. There is a range of reasons why sometimes their children do not make it into that situation. Here is just one which was in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago. Actually the very good 20 hours’ free early education policy which Labour brought in was designed in fact exactly to improve access for these very families—but not in a punitive way; in an encouraging supportive and “let’s take the barriers away” kind of way. What is happening these days with the 20 hours’ free early childhood education policy is that a lot of the providers—in fact this newspaper found that 45 percent of those early childhood education providers—are saying to parents: “Well you can have the 20 hours only if you enrol your child for another 10 hours at a much higher fee”—at a much higher fee. 
So I want to see the consequential amendment in this legislation that stops that practice from actually happening. While that practice continues to happen what we are going to see is benefits being halved as a punishment for beneficiaries who do not have their children in early childhood education while they are being told by the early childhood education providers that they are going to have to pay a lot of money to even enrol their child. These are the very practical issues that this Government is turning a blind eye to. When the Minister of Education was asked about that situation she said: “Ah nothing to do with me—nothing to do with me. They’re going to shop around.” So here is the Government with this legislation forcing beneficiaries to put their children into early childhood education and punishing them if they cannot do that but then its own Minister is saying “Shop around.” That is her answer to those beneficiary families: “Shop around and see if you can get the worst quality.” 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on Part 2 of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. I repeat that all of the consequential changes that are being made under Part 2 are because of what has been approved under Part 1 so there is a link between what Part 2 is doing and our discussion about the provisions of Part 1. I want to talk in particular about clauses 64 and 65. That is what I will be referring to. 
It is interesting that one of the things that happens in this bill—and it is something we have not talked about a lot in the debate on Part 1—is that sole parents will no longer qualify for the sole parent benefit when their youngest child turns 14. So for the first time we now have this new rule that when children are aged 14 their parents are no longer really that responsible for bringing them up. Something is being said here about bringing up teenagers. You could have a 16 a 15 and a 14-year-old and the moment the youngest one turns 14 you are unable to qualify for the sole parent benefit. What is that saying about how we bring up our children? And why is it that this Minister for Social Development and this Government place so little emphasis on the care of 14-year-olds? 
That redefinition of the sole parent benefit actually has this impact. I believe that quite often for many many parents that is a much more demanding time particularly when you have more than one teenager. It is a time when young people are testing all the boundaries and it is a time when parents—in this case a sole parent—would want to be home but now they have to be available for work. They can no longer access this particular benefit. That is a change that has been made and there has not been a lot of debate about it but it is one that concerns me because it leads me to ask the question of what the consequential changes that are being made under Part 2 say about the optimum environment or the best environment for bringing up children. 
It is very hard to find anything in this entire bill including the consequential changes under Part 2 that is about creating a better environment in which parents or a sole parent can bring up a child. I wonder whether this Government has any focus on that. That is a worry because we do know the set of conditions under which children do much better. It has to do with what happens in the home. It has to do with what happens in the community in the provisions of social policy and the way in which society sees parents bringing up children. But this Government for this group of parents who are bringing up their children has now put so many obstacles in their way that I wonder what it says about the optimum environment for bringing up children. 
I rather suspect that the Minister has tried to muzzle some of her own speakers. It is a surprise that a couple of them did sneak in a call but when they did speak to the consequential changes that are being made in Part 2 because of the decisions in Part 1 they did indeed expose the Government’s own thinking. I wondered what Sam Lotu-Iiga was saying when he said that the purpose of this bill is really to reduce the cost of benefits. I think the chairman of the Social Services Committee is actually honest about that because that is the underlying belief. It is not about creating a better environment for our children and it is not about parents in difficult circumstances—vulnerable parents—bringing up their children; it is about saving money. That is all that that member is talking about. 
Every time Melissa Lee speaks on bills like this she does make a fool of herself because here she was saying— 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: —again again I know—that she did it and therefore it is OK for every sole parent to use childcare and to do what this bill is saying because she was able to do it. What Melissa Lee does not tell us is that she was middle class she had the financial resources she was a businesswoman and she had a mum living at home as well. There were a whole bunch of other circumstances. What Melissa Lee is saying is that it was good for her and therefore it is good for the sole parents who themselves are vulnerable. 
I think there is a good reason why the Minister has muzzled her side from talking about this. The consequential changes themselves in Part 2 of this particular bill really carry on the negative impact. Thank you. 
MIKE SABIN (National—Northland) 
: 
 I am very pleased to take a short call on the second part of the bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. There have been a lot of politicised comments coming across the Chamber today. We have seen that over the years I think with law and order bills as well. The reality is that what we are dealing with here is New Zealanders who are not in work and finding better ways to support them to be in it. At its very heart that has been the core focus in this bill. One of the key ways that this transition will occur is through the seven benefit categories becoming three and simplification of and clarifying the important messages that really underpin what this bill seeks to achieve. 
There have been some comments around the numbers. We hear various numbers being batted around and defended and challenged and so forth but the reality is that between 2000 and 2008—if we really want to dig into those numbers—there was a 51.6 percent increase in those on the sickness benefit a 47.2 percent increase in those on the invalids benefit and an 8.5 percent increase in those on a domestic purposes benefit. As a police officer working in Whangarei and Kaitaia and essentially throughout Northland I saw throughout the course of that time an immense change in the welfare system in the approach to welfare and in the belief in what welfare was about. Those figures absolutely spell that out—crystal clear in my view.  
This bill is really challenging I guess one end of the spectrum that I do not think too many members in this House are keen to discuss. That is the end of the spectrum where there are vulnerable children being abused and being beaten and where there are young people who are hardly adequate in my view to be making decisions about being a parent when they are children themselves— 
Sue Moroney 
: It’s all coming out now. 
MIKE SABIN 
: —who actually through intergenerational welfare—and we will hear opposition from the other side of the Chamber on this but the reality is that there is a group of people whom this House is not willing to challenge and not willing to acknowledge exists and this is where the vast majority of vulnerable children are and where the carnage that we see out there is happening. We are trying to address that. This side of the House is trying to address it in many ways but the reality is that there is an end of the spectrum where unfortunately mothers are trapped in welfare and they are making poor decisions.  
The Children’s Commissioner absolutely alluded to this point in his submission. The Children’s Commissioner made it very clear and I will quote him from his submission to the Social Services Committee. He said that work is the best route out of poverty. There is no one in this House who can deny that fact. [ 
Interruption 
] We will hear objection from the other side of the Chamber as we always do from parties that will sit there and rail against every effort that this Government is making to introduce growth into the economy through legislation and through giving the business community the tools that they need. They can stand on that moral high ground they seem to have occupied and quote ad infinitum that there are no jobs but they cannot come into this Chamber and not support bills that are about job creation.  
The Children’s Commissioner went on to point out also that social obligations are a normal part of society—social obligations are a normal part of society—in a family in a business and in a church. Social obligations are a normal part of what we have as a society. The Children’s Commissioner absolutely backs that up. He also went on to say—and this is the important thing to note—that he believes that the area of greatest harm where vulnerable children are most affected is in the area of the people who will require the most amount of sanctions in this bill. This is about challenging that particular group to ensure that they have the support they need and to ensure that the safety and vulnerability of those children are actually being addressed.  
The Children’s Commissioner says that work is the way out of poverty. It is not a punitive thing—it is not a punitive thing. Social obligations are a normal part of society and the most vulnerable children are at this end of the spectrum. We must address them and this bill does that.  
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call in the Committee stage of this bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. The last member who spoke Mike Sabin really exposed himself and what this Government is about when he talked about this Government looking to give the business community the tools it needs. That is what this bill is about. It has nothing to do with looking after the destitute and the poor and those whose life chances have evaporated or have been taken from them. This has nothing to do with those who are the victims of the vicissitudes of a difficult labour market and a difficult economy. This is about punishing people. 
It is all very well to say that work is the best route out of poverty. You will find no disagreement with that on this side of the Chamber I say to Mr Sabin and to any other member of the Government. We agree with that. So the question that then remains is what you are doing about the work side of that component. What are you doing about the work side of that equation? Nothing is being done because job numbers are going down. Another 140 jobs have gone out of the Department of Conservation today 1500 jobs went out of Telecom last week—I am beginning to sound like an auctioneer now. How many more hundreds and thousands of jobs are going to go before this Government takes the job creation part of the equation seriously? It has got nothing to say and even less to do about that. 
So the only recourse now is to beat up on the most vulnerable and the poorest of our people: those who look to the State for help at a time of need those for whom life has not delivered very good chances and those who may have done well once but whose life’s fortunes have taken a turn for the worse. They quite rightly look to the State for support and assistance during that difficult time. 
Yes Mr Sabin we understand social obligation. Yes Ms Bennett we know about reciprocal obligations—everybody does. But sometimes people have a difficult time in their lives. Sometimes people lose the job that they have been committed to and have worked in for 5 years for 10 years or for 25 years. They do not exercise a choice over that—it happens to them. When they go through that difficult experience because they have paid their taxes they have raised their children and they have done the best they can they are entitled to look to the State for that bridging assistance for that bridging support. They are not to be punished for it. They are not to have labels bandied about. 
 What of the woman who loses her husband or her spouse or her partner to a health and safety accident at work to a road traffic accident or to a disease or some other misfortune? She is no longer to be regarded as a widow for the purposes of our social security system. She now has a work-tested benefit. What dignity does she have left under this Government with that system? None at all. 
This is heartless legislation. It is nasty pettifogging mean-spirited legislation from a nasty pettifogging mean-spirited Government. No one will come out of this with any dignity. It is about changing labels and it is about putting the emphasis on punishing people rather than on addressing the real problems that we have which are a sluggish slowing economy and a so-called recovery—a so far so-called jobless recovery—where people are still struggling to get work. Over 1000 people are lining up for 50 jobs in Hamilton. There have been a number of occasions now when we have had 10 or 20 or 30 people per person lining up for a vacancy. That is the state we are in and it is not a good state. 
Those people who do not get work at the end of their long time in the queue who get through the interview but are still turned down and who are probably turned down dozens of times every couple of weeks are to be recast now as victims of a social security system rather than those who have looked to it for support. They are to be relabelled and renamed. The sense of failure they will have which is no fault of theirs will be compounded and emphasised. That is how heartless this legislation is. So we reject this. 
There is no need for this sort of legislation. We do not need to rename the widows in this country who face stress enough and pressure enough. We do not need to re-victimise those who are already victims of circumstance and misfortune. So the transitional provisions of this legislation provide nothing. They provide no hope and even less benefit to those people who look to our social security system for a lot more. They deserve better. 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 The previous contribution to this debate—not the previous speaker Andrew Little who just sat down; that was a very good contribution indeed from Andrew Little—from Mike Sabin on the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill needs I think some revisiting. He talked about this side of the House not supporting bills that apparently his Government has brought into this Chamber that create jobs. Well Mr Sabin I cannot think of one bill that this Government has brought into this House in the time of a recession that has created any jobs. It does need to be put on the record that the National Government actually thinks that a bill that is attacking workers’ rights and attacking beneficiaries creates jobs. It is simply a nonsense but it is not the only nonsense that Mike Sabin spoke about—well actually this was not a nonsense. Something that he said that I agreed with was that one of the best ways out of poverty is work—paid employment I am guessing he meant because of course all people work; some of us get paid and some of us do not. 
But here is the difference: Labour actually delivered that vision to this country—actually delivered increased employment opportunities when in Government. Labour did not just bang on about how useless New Zealanders are put people down and take these sorts of punitive measures. Labour actually provided the stimulation in the economy because it is a stimulated economy that creates work and it is work that creates jobs. That is the scenario Mr Sabin not pieces of legislation like this bill which puts punitive measures on and actually threatens to cut the income going into low-income families. That is not the way for the brighter future. That is not the path to an improved economy and it simply will not do what he said. It will not provide the work that helps those families out of poverty. In fact it might do quite the opposite. 
Such is the impact of bad pieces of legislation like this that I just want to tell the Committee about a meeting that I went to in Hamilton just prior to the last election. It was a meeting of women on the domestic purposes benefit. They invited candidates for the election to come and meet them face to face hear their actual stories and put a face on people whom that side of the Chamber likes to bash continually: beneficiaries. 
David Bennett 
: Oh rubbish. 
SUE MORONEY 
: I think David Bennett was there. I know for certain— 
David Bennett 
: Yes I was and they lapped it up. 
SUE MORONEY 
: He says he was and he says that they lapped it up. I am about to tell you what he meant by that comment. Tim Macindoe was also there. I know that at the end of that discussion they said to these women: “Thank you for telling us your stories. Thank you for telling us your stories. We really appreciate much better the circumstances that you’re in.” Did they once come clean and tell those women that this is what they intended to do to beneficiaries that these are the punitive measures that they were going to land on DPB recipients? No they did not. They knew that coming back into Government this is exactly the nonsense that would be visited on those women but they did not dare tell them. 
The other sad part about that meeting was that when one of the women spoke said to us she said: “I’m not like those other DPB recipients. My husband left me with young children. This is the struggle of my life.” I went up to her afterwards and I said: “Actually you’re just like those other DPB recipients. Please do not fall into the trap of listening to what the National Party says because it would have us believe that every single one of those DPB recipients is a 16-year-old who deliberately goes out to make her life miserable by getting pregnant at the age of 16.” And this woman who was a recipient of the DPB herself had actually thought that that is what every other DPB recipient was like. She thought she was unusual. My message to her was that she was being a great mother and a wonderful role model to her children in difficult circumstances. She was like all of those other recipients. 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Thank you very much Mr Chair for letting me speak to Part 2 of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. This is the kind of bill that you bring into Parliament when you have got the worst economic record in 50 years—when you have got the worst economic record in 50 years. This is the kind of bill that you bring in if you are trying to lay the blame somewhere else. Instead of dealing with the highest unemployment rate since Bill English was last the finance Minister dealing with the 50000 Kiwis who have gone to Australia since this National Party has come to Government or dealing with the 50000 more people who have become unemployed since this National Government has come into power this is the kind of bill you bring in to try to blame somebody else. 
Mike Sabin the last Government speaker on this bill talked about this side of the Chamber not supporting any pieces of legislation that have come in to enthuse job creation— 
Andrew Little 
: It would be nice to see some. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: —since this Government has come into power. Well exactly. As Mr Andrew Little said it would be nice to see something—it would be nice to see something. It is very rare to see a piece of legislation come into this House from that Government that increases job creation. Evidence of that is that the unemployment rate since this party has come into Government has stayed high. It has not gone down in a huge way. The Government said it would create a brighter future for Kiwis but unemployment has stayed high under this John Key - led Government. The only jobs that have been created around this bill are the jobs of people who perhaps were in charge of the focus groups that made sure that this piece of legislation came to this House. 
Another thing that Mr Sabin said was that this is a bill that helps create the business conditions to help create jobs. A question that I would like to ask maybe the Minister in the chair the Minister of Immigration is where in the vast volume of this bill it says that it helps create the business conditions to help create jobs because I do not see anywhere in this bill that says it helps create jobs. I know that it cracks down on a lot of Kiwis who would prefer to be working who are slugging their guts out at the moment to try to get work but who are being supported by social security. It says a lot about smacking them down. But it does not say anywhere in here anything to support Mr Sabin’s assertion that this bill helps create the business conditions to create jobs in New Zealand. It is a serious question which I would like to put to the Minister in the chair. Can he point to the relevant parts of this legislation especially in Part 2 as we are debating that where it does create some jobs? Because I do not see that anywhere in this bill. 
My colleague Dr Rajen Prasad spoke about creating an environment where we can create jobs. We will not disagree with the other side of the Chamber. We want to create an environment where jobs are created but this bill in no way goes anywhere near that. I want to talk again about the fact that the bill is completely lacking any job creation initiatives. It does not talk about creating any jobs. 
Another—and I think miserly and ugly—part of this bill is that it is going to crack down or place sanctions on beneficiaries if they do not put their children into early childhood education. We on this side of the Chamber want as many kids who are under the age of 5 in early childhood education as possible—absolutely no debate about that. We want 100 percent qualified teachers; they have a different opinion over on that side of the Chamber. But on this side of the Chamber we want to see as many children in early childhood education as possible. That will free up those parents to be able to go and find some work but this Government has not created the amount of places subsequently needed in early childhood education for us to be able to do that. So in that respect the sanctions in Part 2 that are carried out against those parents who cannot find a place for their children in early childhood education really expose the smoke and mirrors of this bill. 
Also around job creation I want to speak in a Wellington context because in the last household labour force survey unemployment in Wellington went up by 1 percent. When this Government is talking about this bill as another piece of legislation it is putting through to stimulate job creation well in a Wellington context and the electorate that I represent the electorate of Mana that just is not happening. It just is not happening so anything that this Government tries to tell you about the legislation that is brought through this House in terms of creating jobs is not being felt in the communities here in Wellington because the unemployment rate has gone back up. 
I think it was Grant Robertson who showed the front page of the  
Nelson Mail 
 today where 300 people I believe it was in Nelson went for just one job. Mr Sabin said this debate has been political. Well it will get political because this Government has done diddly-squat to create any jobs in this country. Nick Smith should be ashamed of the front page of the  
Nelson Mail  
today. What has he done as Mr Sabin says to create the business conditions to create jobs when 300 people can line up for one job in Nelson? We have heard of other examples where we have got 20 or 30 people lining up for one job. So although this Government says that the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill is creating the business conditions to create jobs in New Zealand the bill is not worth the paper that it is printed on. This Government has not delivered on any of those promises that it made at the last election and the previous election. It has not delivered on any of those promises that it gave in the last election and in 2008. 
So this Government brings in this piece of legislation trying to say that it is creating jobs for Kiwis but it is not. What it is doing is smacking down Kiwis on benefits who are looking for jobs and who have not been given the environment as Dr Prasad has said so that they can be in work. I do concur with what Mr Sabin said. If the Children’s Commissioner said the best thing that we can do for these people is find them a job yes that is exactly what we should do for them but this Government has not delivered on that at all. 
When you look at the track record from this Government back to I think the last time Bill English was Minister of Finance in 1999 you see that the party on that side of the Chamber has a track record of high unemployment. It talks the talk on creating jobs but for this Government and for the previous National Government in which Bill English was the finance Minister it has not walked the walk at all. On this side of the Chamber when we talk about the opportunities available for people on benefits under Part 2 this party has walked the walk. As Sue Moroney said before the last Labour Government had the lowest level of unemployment in the OECD. 
This bill will do nothing and Part 2 and the sanctions placed in it will do nothing to create jobs for those people on benefits who really want jobs. This bill will do nothing and the fact— 
David Bennett 
: What a wasted speech. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: What a waste of a speech and what a terrible speech? Well what a waste of an MP in Hamilton or wherever he is from. What is this Government doing to create the jobs for the people here in New Zealand? You know 300 people apply for one job and this bill is what the Government puts through this Parliament. This Government is not about helping to create the conditions or the business conditions to create jobs. The sanctions placed in this bill in Part 2 will do nothing to help create jobs. This Government has talked a lot about creating jobs. This bill does not deliver. It has failed and that is why the Government has the worst economic record in 50 years. 
MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Mangere) 
: 
 Thank you very much Mr Chair. I appreciate the opportunity. The Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill as I said in an earlier contribution really is flawed from the get-go. Therefore it becomes quite difficult for the New Zealand public to find any genuine desire by this Government as represented by this significant change to the Social Security Act that this is going to address the problems that people currently face. 
I recall submissions to the Social Services Committee where there was a call by submitters to please support parents in poverty to become good parents. In so far as the public is concerned it appears that this bill is targeting unemployed people targeting solo parents and targeting generally low-income communities that are just struggling to make ends meet and are doing it tough in this economic environment. Nothing in this bill whether Part 1 Part 2 or any of the four parts of this bill provides any hope to the people who are trying to do their best in raising young children who struggle to try to meet the rising costs of childcare facilities and who are trying to make ends meet in terms of providing food on the table. 
I will give you some examples. In Mangere there were some vacancies available for seven jobs in the local Carter Holt Harvey. Over 200 people applied for those jobs and I understand that people sat around even though the company had filled the seven positions wanting to know from the employer whether there were going to be other jobs. 
Again I go back to the first statement I made. The premise that this bill is based on is flawed wrong and just totally unacceptable and that is evidenced by the overwhelming opposition put forward by the community who have made submissions here. I know of people who are currently under the Ministry of Social Development system who have been told to go out and find 10 employers and get 10 interviews to show their genuineness that they are looking for work. There are 175000 people on the unemployment benefit actively looking for work but over 200000 are people whom the Salvation Army classifies as discouraged unemployed. These are people who have been unemployed for more than a year and who through no fault of their own are unable to find work because the jobs just are not there. Again I make the point that nothing in this bill indicates to the unemployed 175000 or to the over 200000 discouraged unemployed that this is going to somehow help them get out of the rut that they find themselves in. 
 What is gravely disappointing for many is that they were promised—they were promised—by this Government a brighter future. They were promised 170000 jobs. None of those promises as far as the unemployed the discouraged unemployed and solo parents are concerned have panned out for them. In many ways that is a bad look for politicians generally. When the Government makes those promises and fails to deliver it makes every politician in this Chamber look bad. 
It is sad that when this bill comes into force there will be sanctions upon those who are receiving the benefit and who fail to find work. If their benefit is cut what then happens to them? What then happens to their ongoing living expenses? What happens to those children in those families? Because this is already happening today and this bill is going to accelerate that and enforce that. As far as working-class communities throughout New Zealand are concerned this is an attack on their dignity it is an attack an undermining of their desire to work and I think if the Government had not placed the foundation of this bill on such false and flawed logic then we would be here discussing how many jobs are required and just the kinds of activities that the Government should be funding in order to ensure that jobs are made available. But it is not just jobs. 
If there is a solo parent—and I gave the example earlier of Charlotte Murray—with two young children when this bill comes into force she will find herself having the stress of not only having to go out to find work but having to find work that pays enough to be able to support her and her two young children aged 2 and 5 years old. I would have thought that a good step by this Government if it fails to address the need for job creation is at least to try to alleviate the barriers between those who are unemployed those who are discouraged unemployed—the barriers that they face—and being able to match them with whatever jobs might be available. But the problem is that nothing in this bill again addresses the barriers that submitters have identified—the barriers to work—which are first having those jobs. The second is that if they do not have the skills what opportunities are available to them when this Government has shut down access to tertiary education and shut down access to a whole range of community and adult education that was once there? 
The Government keeps harping on about those dependent beneficiaries—kick them in the teeth it will. The problem is that if we look back to the last Labour Government that last Labour Government was able to create jobs reduce the number of unemployed and reduce those who were on the benefit and that should show to this Government that if you are wanting welfare reform you have got to create jobs not kick people who are already struggling to make ends meet not kick people who are hard-done-by through the economic failure of this Government to meet the economic challenges. But that is what is happening. I do not know whether this Government has taken the opportunity to read and consider the many many submissions and the constant emails that come through from mums dads the unemployed people without skills people with qualifications—tertiary qualifications—who today continue to look for work. It is wrong when somebody who graduates at tertiary level with a degree fails to find a job within 6 months fails to find a job within 1 year fails to find a job within 2 years. It is wrong when we see people who are tertiary qualified driving taxis just to make ends meet. To make things worse not only does this bill put people between a rock and a hard place but the other legislation which seems to be consistent with the theme of bill—that is kick people in the teeth kick them in the guts when they are down—all fails to deliver— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: What clause is that? 
Su’a WILLIAM SIO 
: Well it is clause 30 100—let me see— 
Hon Member 
: 64. 
Su’a WILLIAM SIO 
: Clause 124 OK. And what this does—clause 124 Part 2; you can look at the schedule or clause 107. [ 
Interruption 
] That is right. Clause 107 makes reference to those on the sickness benefit and that is a real bad thing for this Government to be kicking people on sickness benefits who cannot help themselves. 
JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the question be now put. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Motion agreed to. 
The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 64 Noes 57. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 199 in the name of the Hon Paula Bennett to Part 2 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Amendments agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Part 2 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Part 2 as amended agreed to. 
Schedule 1 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 199 in the name of the Hon Paula Bennett to schedule 1 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; United Future 1; ACT New Zealand 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Amendment agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That schedule 1 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Schedule 1 as amended agreed to. 
Schedule 2 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 199 in the name of the Hon Paula Bennett to schedule 2 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Amendments agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That schedule 2 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Schedule 2 as amended agreed to. 
Schedule 3 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 199 in the name of the Hon Paula Bennett to schedule 3 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Amendment agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That schedule 3 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Schedule 3 as amended agreed to. 
Schedule 4 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 199 in the name of the Hon Paula Bennett to schedule 4 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Amendment agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That schedule 4 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Schedule 4 as amended agreed to. 
Schedule 5 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That schedule 5 be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Schedule 5 agreed to. 
Schedule 6 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 199 in the name of the Hon Paula Bennett to schedule 6 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Amendment agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: The question is that schedule 6 as amended stand part. Those of that opinion will say Aye; to the contrary No. The Ayes have it? [ 
Interruption 
] Party vote—you must ask for a party vote. It just does not automatically happen. A party vote is called for. I ask the Clerk for a party vote. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That schedule 6 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Schedule 6 as amended agreed to. 
Schedule 7 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 199 in the name of the Hon Paula Bennett to schedule 7 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Amendments agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That schedule 7 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Schedule 7 as amended agreed to. 
Clauses 1 to 3 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to take another call on this bill. I believe this is the final stage of debate for the Committee stage— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Already? 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: —so I will take this opportunity to—yes I agree with the member Ruth Dyson that it seems like it has been a rather swift debate. There was certainly eagerness on this side of the Chamber to continue discussing not least some of the excellent amendments put forward by the Labour Party. We might have a chance to at least just reference them again because not all of them were spoken to and there is some relevancy to them around commencement dates in particular. 
But at this stage of the debate tradition has it that we often use this opportunity to talk about how we might alternatively refer to this piece of legislation. For those watching they will see the little ticker tape at the bottom of the screen. They will know that this is formally known as the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. But some of our contention on this side of the Chamber has been that the historical architects of the Social Security Act probably meant for the system to be something quite different than it is today. It is almost ironic that we are debating this bill in the 75th year or anniversary of the Social Security Act in New Zealand. It was brought in at a time when not unlike today there were hard economic times. The Labour Government at that time wanted to move away from this notion of the deserving and the undeserving poor. It wanted to create an egalitarian society where no matter what circumstances you encountered you were able to find some kind of support; you were able to live with a certain degree of dignity until such time as you were able to support yourself once more. 
Although the Minister for Social Development has entrenched in here these things called social obligations—which by their very nature imply that people who are on social security are not fulfilling some of these obligations which speak to the basic needs of their own children—in many ways social security has always had a sense of obligation attached to it because it is a social contract. It says that as a citizen of New Zealand you have a certain expectation that you can be supported—that there is no such notion as the deserving and undeserving poor—but in return as soon as you are able you too contribute back into the common good as it were into the net the pool that contributes to the social security system. 
Are we still fulfilling that notion and that ideal in this bill today? Does it deserve to be called the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill? We would contend no. We would contend also that the notion of putting “Work Focus” into the title implies that work has not always been the focus of our social security system. Indeed it has. In fact if the Government was truly dedicated to the notion of a dignified system that enabled people to transition back into the workplace its first port of call would be that workplace. It would be ensuring that those jobs are available as we have always contended it should. It would be ensuring for instance that for those who find themselves with a disability our employers are better placed to employ some of those individuals who do have some barriers to work. As CCS Disability Action and IHC pointed out so many of the groups they work with desperately want to get into the workforce but the work focus from the employers’ end from their perspective is what needs to be addressed. So we would contend that this is a mistitled bill. 
However “Benefit Categories” probably is the one notion that in its simplest form is quite correct. This bill does merge together the categories of the Social Security Act. We have already traversed the different outcomes of that. 
I would though like to refer to whether or not in its more simplistic form this bill would be better titled as the “Drug Testing Warrants for Arrest and Bad Parenting Bill”— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Again? 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: —that was the “Drug Testing Warrants for Arrest and Bad Parenting Bill”—because those are the notions within this bill that probably the public are most familiar with. If you asked them whether they had heard of the Government’s welfare reforms those are the bits that would be most well known. In fact the drug testing in particular would be well known because that was actually announced on three occasions—I went back just to check—first by Bill English to be fair to the Minister. 
But if this was genuinely a bill that was about addressing issues of drug dependency perhaps we might have paid more attention to what the Drug Foundation expert in its field had to say on this bill. For the purposes of further exploring whether that would be a more accurate title for this bill let us go back to its submission. I think it really summed it up quite well. It said: “The Drug Foundation supports measures to prevent drug use or dependence from being a barrier to employment.” We absolutely agree with the foundation of course. No one in this Chamber is ever going to stand up and say that if drug dependence is a barrier to work or indeed if drug dependence exists we should ignore that. The foundation said: “Paid employment can reduce recreational alcohol and drug use and make a significant contribution to successful recovery from substance dependence.” It goes on to say though that its “concern is that if the details of the drug testing and sanctions regime are not well thought through they may ultimately do more harm than good.” It goes on to note the Ministry of Health’s strong advice that that may indeed be the outcome of the drug testing regime included in this bill. 
It goes further. It says: “Drug tests are a blunt instrument. They fail to differentiate between recreational substance use and problematic substance use. As such an occasional cannabis user could test positive despite their drug use having taken place more than one week ago outside of work hours and having no bearing on current workplace safety or productivity.” That point is an interesting one because what it was trying to point out was that a blanket regime says that if you are a recreational user then we will apply a sanction; if you are dependent though we might let you go on to a different benefit category. We will not sanction you; you can go on to some other form of benefit which does not then penalise you. Well that naturally creates the incentive to shift on to a different category. The flow-on is that you are then treated in the system for a dependency you may not in fact have and you are treated in a system that is already choked. We have up to 6 weeks’ worth of waiting lists in some of our areas around genuine drug and alcohol dependence issues. So are we creating a perverse incentive to declare dependence where dependence does not exist? I think it is a fair question and it was not one that was adequately answered through this process. 
Coming back to the other options for what this bill could be titled I heard from that side of the Chamber the line: “Jobs are the best route out of poverty.” We are not going to argue with that on this side of the Chamber but that requires there to be a couple of jobs around for someone to move into. Just on the other side of that argument jobs are in fact important for that sentence to actually be able to become a reality plus we need to acknowledge that for sole parents in particular there will be a period of time in which work is simply not the best option for them or their child—when their child is first born when they are in their infancy. Then what? Then what is the best route out of poverty? So we have got to take into account the many and varied situations that this bill will be covering. Perhaps then given the job argument we should just call it the “Ghost Jobs Bill” because we do not seem to have at any point really discussed the context in which this bill is operating other than on this side of the Chamber. 
If this bill had had a greater focus on children we may have been able to imply in the title that it had their interests at heart. But as the Children’s Commissioner pointed out in his really useful submission one simple little amendment to this bill could have got around some of the concerns we have about the way that sanctions would be used and the impact that would have on child poverty further exacerbating it. That was the suggestion where he said: “I am firmly of the view that all decisions made through the social security system that directly or indirectly impact upon a child or children should be required to formally consider their welfare and best interests as a primary consideration”. Who could be against that? And yet that suggestion was not picked up. 
I want to come to the commencement of this bill. It will come into force on 15 July 2013. One of the recommendations however from the Labour Party has been that given we do not know the details—and the Minister claims that these are being worked through with the sector and I am pleased that the sector is involved—surely we should have a little more transparency than that. One of our suggestions is that before that commencement date kicks in we as a Parliament have the opportunity to debate the final provisions of that policy. I accept that it is not a policy that requires legislative change but I think that it is only a fair suggestion given the amount of public interest there is in that element of the wider policy that we have the ability to discuss it as parliamentarians. That is a relatively simple suggestion. It does not change the substance of the bill— 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to take what no doubt will be my final call in the Committee stage of this Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill on the title and commencement clauses. I thank Jacinda Ardern for that last series of comments because she appears to get to some of the more important questions about this bill that have not been answered. Certainly the title does not reflect any of the kind of thinking that Jacinda Ardern was talking about. 
We know so much in today’s world about children and families. We know so much today about the historical ways in which we have addressed their needs and which ones have failed and which ones have been successful. When we go back even to residual forms of provision for the vulnerable we know how unsuccessful they have been. We also know today how there are so many opportunities to take a developmental approach to this sector yet this bill has not taken that opportunity and that bothers us. 
We also live in a time—and even the Minister talks about this ad nauseam—when we are ensuring that our social policy and our legislation are evidence-based. Well this bill is not. It is very very clear from the submitters from the research that is around—unless you are very very selective about that research—that the evidence that is available has not been utilised. Even those of our major institutions in New Zealand that submitted to us would agree that the bill does not reflect current knowledge and it is not evidence-based. Perhaps a more appropriate title might be the “Social Security (Not Based on Evidence) Amendment Bill”. 
If we look at what the Human Rights Commission told us it said that there were less intrusive ways to achieve the goals of social obligation than through the kinds of sanctions that this bill has come up with. There are less intrusive ways. Why have we not taken those less intrusive ways? Somehow the Government wants to appear tough. It wants to appear to knock those who in their own way seem to be abusing the system and this will fix it. In that the Government and the Minister are pandering to that element of a support base that actually sees this as a troubled and troubling part of our community. But these are still our mums and dads. These are the people who are bringing up our children. They deserve the best. That is why this system has been designed. 
Caritas noted—and it is a highly respected organisation—the potentially severe impact of financial sanctions and submitted that there needed to be checks and balances. Here the kind of financial sanction—a 50 percent financial sanction—is a severe sanction on the most vulnerable. So the title could have “50 percent sanctions” in there somewhere to say that this will punish the children and revisit the sins of the parents on to the most vulnerable. I cannot see how the Minister could defend that other than simply as wanting to be punitive towards this particular vulnerable section of our community. So “punitive” and “punishment” ought to be in the title as well because that is what the bill reflects. 
The Methodist Church raised concerns that the sanctions will not be used with great discretion. It was concerned about that. Sanctions of this type in our Work and Income and social security legislation in practice take on a life of their own despite the assurances given to us by officials. That is a concern that we would want to raise again. Perhaps the title to be honest might have reflected that as well. 
The Children’s Commissioner actually gave advice to the Social Services Committee that it was much more important to use non-monetary sanctions. It said there was some good evidence around the use of financial incentives and including that in the bill somewhere around attending parenting courses and things like that. There is lots to be said about how this bill does not use either the current signs available to us today or the current knowledge available to us today. So there is something else that is driving this particular bill. I think members opposite when they took calls on Part 2 and Part 1 of the bill actually did give the lie to that type of perspective which is that this is about concern about the amount of money that is spent in this field and about those people taking advantage of the system. 
The next series of comments is really about bringing up children. This bill says nothing about how we ought to be bringing up children today. Again that could be because the underlying assumption in this bill is that bringing up children is not work. That is the underlying premise the underlying value of this particular bill. And why is it not work? Any mum or dad bringing up children particularly if you are on your own but for any mum and dad it is important work and yet we give that no value. If you happen to be not reliant on the State for an income then yes you have that choice. But why is it that our most vulnerable are not enabled to spend time with their children in those critical years from 0 to 5? In this bill there is no value placed on parenting. I think that was a point that the Children’s Commissioner was making. If parenting is what we ought to be focused on then let us build some incentives around parenting. We would have supported something like that but it is not here. We seem to separate out this need to punish and not use the knowledge available to us. I am concerned that that is a worry and the title could reflect that. 
The next point I want to make is punishment is the theme. No matter how the Minister for Social Development and her colleagues dress this thing up it is about punishment. It is punishing those who get to a particular place in their lives. The Minister says: “I know I am expecting a lot of people.” which gives the impression she understands that. I do not think she does. If she did then the provisions here would have been different. Certainly I think that not enabling a sole parent with a 14-year-old teenager—taking that right out of the system—is something that we will regret down the line. Because bringing up 14-year-olds is still a difficult task particularly if you have got a 15-year-old or 16-year-old as well. But they are now taken right out of the system and others do not have that opportunity. 
Finally I want to say this and it is the last opportunity to do so with officials being here. I want to acknowledge the work of the officials. They worked with us for several months answering all kinds of questions we put to them and dutifully and indeed pleasantly they brought that information to us explained it and even at times when it was difficult they did that. So I want to sincerely thank the officials here and that includes the legal people as well from Parliament here. Thank you very much for that. 
There are lots of reasons why this bill ought not to be supported. I think my colleagues over the months that we have debated these provisions have not convinced this Minister one iota. There ought not to be this distance between those of us in this Chamber with some knowledge and experience in this field bringing that to bear on good policy and practice. But the Government has been blind to that. The Minister has turned her eyes away from that and has brought together a bill that I think in time will be regretted and we will need to fix. I am sure it will be left to a Labour Government to fix it as indeed it has had to do in the past to fix all of the mistakes in the social legislation of a conservative Government. With those words I thank you very much. 
Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I would like to bring Parliament back to some key facts around the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill in regard to the commencement date and the title. The Labour Party members have enjoyed a little bit of getting out their rhetoric which we are so familiar with. I would like to bring the Committee of the whole House back to some key facts. First of all regarding the commencement date it is very important that we make it clear that there are two commencement dates here of import. The first date is a key one—15 July 2013—for most of the changes in the bill such as the transfer to the three new benefit categories and the introductions of new obligations and expectations. So that is 15 July 2013. This date gives sufficient time for transition purposes to ensure that the Ministry of Social Development’s systems—IT systems—and payment staff are ready for the changes. So that is a key date to note. 
The second commencement date of course is the day after the date on which the bill receives the Royal assent. This is for two transitional purposes: so that certain people aged 65 years or older can be transitioned to an emergency benefit and so that the disability allowance can be used to fund specified expenses and the preferred suppliers of goods or services for beneficiaries. So those people listening who are interested or who are directly affected do need to know the importance of those two dates. 
Moving to the title Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill I would like to repeat what the Minister for Social Development said today in press releases and that is just to clarify some of the rhetoric that is out on the airwaves that the Labour Party and its good friends the unions are pushing. What the Minister says—and this how you melt down this bill to the most simple form—is quite simply that all we are asking for all New Zealanders are asking for all Kiwis are asking for is that people need to be available to work. If they are genuinely in a situation where they cannot find work that is OK. We will support them. 
However the National Party and our support parties are with the majority of New Zealanders who do not believe that we should be funding people to smoke dope. We do not think that we should be funding people to run away from the police and commit crimes. We do not believe that we should be funding people to commit fraud. There is a small proportion of those on a benefit who do smoke dope and employers will tell you that they turn up for jobs and do not pass tests. There are those people who used to be funded to run away from the law after committing crimes—they would still receive a benefit. There are those people who do refuse to work and we want to hold them to account. 
The Labour Party could never have a bill that had within the title the term “Work Focus”. The Labour Party could never do that. I think New Zealanders on the whole who are listening to the debate tonight instinctively know that the Labour Party would not get under control the whole welfare system. I look at the record. Labour shifted beneficiaries between different types of benefits when it was in Government. It did not shift people into work when it was in Government; it simply shifted them on to other benefits. For example the sickness benefit numbers under the Labour Government went from 33000 in 1999 to 46000 in 2008. In the time Labour was in Government there were 33000 people on the sickness benefit and it went to 46000 people. And that was during good international economic times. So either the Labour Government was lax in getting people into work or people were sicker under Labour. You make the choice. 
The invalids benefit numbers increased from 53000 to 85000. Labour abolished compulsory budgeting advice. Labour continued paying benefits to criminals on the run from police. How do listeners feel about that? The Labour Party which has been appealing to listeners all night essentially continued paying benefits to people on the run from police. I mean really! Who at home supports that? Labour allowed recreational drug users— 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I almost do not know where to start after that. I thought that the member the Hon Phil Heatley was standing up to try to give a speech without any rhetoric but we have had dope-smoking criminals apart from any other factors and a whole lot of trying to say that the Labour Party is scaremongering about this bill. What we are actually trying to do is point out that this bill is absolutely ridiculous and that it is not what the Government’s energy should be focused on. What the Government’s energy should be focused on is job creation and supporting an economy that provides jobs for people to go to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Clauses 1 to 3. 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: This legislation the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill I believe would be more rightly called the “Social Security (Beneficiary Blaming Absence of Work and Sanctions) Amendment Bill”. The component parts of this legislation are basically there with some underlying assumptions and I think the last member was right there on the old beneficiary blaming or beneficiary bashing. We have had them smoking dope and we have had all the criminals even though earlier in the member’s speech he did note that the people who were on social security who were not looking for work were actually a very small percentage. We would all agree that there are probably some people like that. 
I take absolute exception to the notion that was put up that Labour does not support people being in work. That is so absolutely contrary to the facts. Labour has always prioritised job creation and has always seen that paid employment and decent work are the best way to get people out of poverty. You will get no argument from this side of the Chamber and our track record stacks up. 
This legislation the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill or as I say the “Social Security (Beneficiary Blaming Absence of Work and Sanctions) Amendment Bill” is based on some pretty terrible underlying assumptions I think. I think the member who just spoke before me illustrated with his comments about beneficiaries the underlying assumptions that people who are receiving benefits do not want to work or that people who are parents and on benefits are not good parents. 
Let us look at the facts. There is 6.9 percent unemployment—163000 people are registered as unemployed. Those are the people who are eligible to be registered as unemployed. There are many many hundreds of thousands more who cannot register and are not counted in those figures. There are 111000 people wanting more work. We have had numerous examples all afternoon of people queuing for a limited number of jobs so let us get real here. Earlier today there were comments about 16000 jobs on the SEEK website. Well even if those 16000 were all potentially jobs that the pool of unemployed could take it is not going to make even a dent in 163000 people being unemployed. 
I want to talk about the domestic purposes benefit because that is one of the categories in which there is real potential for these sanctions to be used. Those on the DPB are one of the groups that I think are much maligned. Sixty-three percent of those receiving the DPB at the end of last year were doing so for less than 4 years and yet the image that is constantly presented is of teenagers deliberately going out getting pregnant and then staying on the DPB for ever and a day. It just is not so. 
There are real issues and barriers for people going back into work and the main one—I will repeat it again—is the lack of jobs. There is a lack of jobs and despite all the crowing about economic growth that has been going on it is jobless growth that has happened in recent times in this country. Where are the jobs? That is the biggest barrier for those people getting back into work which is why I think the title should include this “Absence of Work” component rather than “Work Focus”. I think that would be much more accurate. 
But training education childcare or early childhood education are all issues for people who are on benefits and who have children. A 2009 Inland Revenue Department paper found that among sole parents 67 percent of those available for work had problems getting work that paid enough 66 percent could not find work for enough hours for it to be worthwhile and 64 percent did not have the skills that employers wanted. In terms of the access to work the availability of jobs that will have got significantly worse since 2009. 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I want to talk to the title of this bill the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill which should really be called the “Social Sanctions Amendment Bill”. So many of my colleagues on this side of the Chamber and in other parties on this side of the Chamber have talked about this issue tonight—about how much this bill is about sanctions and what its focus is. 
I want to talk to you about Bronwyn who came into my office last month to ask for advice. She is 55 and has worked for a school for the last 12 years as a literacy tutor for 22 hours a week. Her husband was made redundant last October. He has worked all his life. Since then he has managed to pick up a little bit of casual work but he and his wife finally approached Work and Income for some assistance because he could not find full-time work. Instead of getting that assistance Bronwyn who has worked in this job as a literacy tutor for which she has trained for for which she has a lot of experience was told to leave that job and find a full-time job. She loves her current job. She is well qualified for the position and she feels that she makes a bit of a difference. But because of the necessity of accepting a helping hand from the State during an economic downturn she is likely to have to leave that position and get a full-time entry-level position that does not pay nearly as much as she is earning at the moment. Jobs in her area for her husband are scarce and these people are between a rock and a hard place. 
When a new Countdown supermarket opened in South Dunedin last year around 1400 people applied for the 115 positions that were available—1400 people. Of the 1285 people who did not get those jobs they have not just walked into other jobs. This is the fundamental issue with this bill. People want to work—people want to work. Why does this Government not understand that? Why does this Government not understand that what people want is a job and an income and to look after their families? We are not all as well off as everybody else. Some people do have disadvantages. This bill is ultimately about pushing the buttons of making those people feel as if they are second-class citizens as if they somehow do not fit the bill; therefore they have to be treated differently from everybody else. I do not understand that. I do not think anybody on this side of the Chamber understands that. So that is why we fundamentally object to the underlying assumption in this bill that those on Government support who are there because they need to be there do not want to work. 
I want to talk to you about the other group of people in society. I know some of my colleagues have touched on this. These are people with disabilities people who struggle—who struggle—to get to first base to get that interview because they either do not have the skills or do not have the ability to get chosen for an interview. These people many of whom are on the sickness benefit or the invalid’s benefit are desperate to work. They are desperate to contribute to society to be productive members of society. But for some reason that side of the Chamber is actually putting more barriers in their way by introducing bills like this. That is an absolute disgrace. As CCS Disability Action eloquently stated during the submissions on this bill this bill will not add one more single job for a disabled person. It does nothing about the attitudes of employers and workers. It does nothing about the ability to make adjustments in the workplace and nothing about access to education or work experience. If the bill wishes to provide opportunities for people with disabilities to move into the workforce it does not contribute. I mentioned earlier about the freezing of mainstream funding. I would like to know what this Government is going to do about that. 
MELISSA LEE (National) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: We have had seven speeches and half a speech has been on clauses 1 to 3. I will give Darien Fenton an opportunity. 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 “Dah-rien”. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Darien. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to round off the debate on clauses 1 to 3 the title and commencement and so on of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. I thought what I would do is just drill down a little bit into that title starting with “Benefit Categories” and just remind listeners exactly what this bill does. What it is doing is re-badging a range of current benefits that we have. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Clauses 1 to 3. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Yes the title. I am talking about the title and I am certainly talking about the new benefit categories which is part of the title. What the bill does is re-badge a number of existing benefit categories and squash them into a range of three. It squashes them up. It will take away the benefit categories that we have had for many years. Jobseeker support for example is one that a lot of people have talked about. It is not only a misnomer but also quite an insulting kind of category because it suggests that job seekers can actually find a job as does the title indeed when it talks about “Work Focus”. 
Jobseeker support just to remind the listeners will cover people who currently receive the unemployment benefit the sickness benefit the DPB the women alone benefit and the widows benefit and DPB sole parents whose children are older than 14 years of age. So all of those people who currently have different conditions and different titles for their benefits are going to be squashed into this jobseeker support by this apparent work focus amendment bill to try to pretend that all of them are going to be able to get jobs that there are many many jobs out there for them to apply for. Of course we all know that what happens is that if they do not take a job that is offered under clauses 1 to 3 of this bill their benefit could be cancelled and a 13-week stand-down could apply to any beneficiary who fails to accept an offer of suitable employment and beneficiaries with children will lose up to 50 percent of their benefit. How can that be? How can the title of this bill be “Benefit Categories”—well I think “Benefit Categories” works OK. But how can it be “Work Focus” when actually you are talking about sanctions and punishment for people who cannot find jobs? As my colleagues have suggested there are much better titles for this bill particularly around the area of sanctioning and punishing people. 
Also I suppose you could call this bill the “Social Security (Punishing the Children) Bill” because what is going to happen if beneficiaries with children lose up to 50 percent of their benefit? Who is going to suffer? Who are going to be the people who pay the price for that? Children are going to pay the price for that and that is extremely concerning. The Minister for Social Development goes on and on about how she cares about children. Well I think this is most uncaring and we should all in this Chamber be deeply concerned about that particular measure. 
But apparently this is all about a focus on work which is in the title of the bill—“Work Focus” is in the title of the bill. It is also extended to those on the sickness benefit. So people on the sickness benefit will also be considered job seekers. They may well have a long-term illness but they are going to be job seekers too. We are pretending that people in those categories can also find a job. 
Then as we heard last week of course we have had a new bill before Parliament which was passed last week covering 18 and 19-year-olds on the benefit who if they turn down a job paid at the youth rate after they have been on the dole for 6 months will be punished as well. 
 So this bill definitely has nothing to do with work focus everything to do with punishment everything to do with sanctioning and everything to do with blaming the people who are unable to find the jobs because this Government has completely failed in its plan and failed to have any plan in terms of getting a job. 
So I think that the title of the bill is fitting when it comes to “Benefit Categories”. It is completely ridiculous when it comes to talking about “Work Focus” because as I have said it does nothing to address the issues of work it does nothing to address the availability of work it does nothing to address the other barriers such as childcare costs and it does nothing to address whether an individual has the necessary skills. All it does is put people through hoops. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That clause 1 be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Jacinda Ardern has a typescript amendment to clause 2. This is out of order as it relies on an indeterminate event. Members can refer to Speaker’s ruling 117/2. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That clause 2 be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Clause 2 agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That clause 3 be agreed to. 
Ayes 61 
New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 60 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan. 
Clause 3 agreed to. 
Bill to be reported with amendment presently. 
Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) 
In Committee 
Debate resumed from 19 March. 
Part 3 Amendments to principal Act that apply for 2014-2015 and later tax years ( 
continued 
)  
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) 
: 
 I want to continue talking about Part 3 of this bill and in particular about clauses 63 to 66 of this legislation and that is around the definition of income for student loan repayment purposes that is contained in this bill. This is one of the reasons why Labour is supporting this bill. We support the fairness that is enshrined in broadening out the definition of what counts as income that can be assessed for the repayment of student loans. What this bill does in clauses 63 to 66 in Part 3 of this bill is make changes to the definition of “adjusted net income” for student loan repayment purposes to ensure that a borrower’s repayment obligation accurately reflects their ability to repay their loan. Amendments make further adjustments to net income to broaden out that definition of income to include any other type of income not currently captured. 
So what this bill does is it actually tidies up and makes it much fairer where you have the definition of income now including business profits and income from trusts. Labour certainly supports measures that do move beyond looking just at wages and salaries as income for which student loan repayments should be made. 
In fact Labour supports fairer approaches to taxation and taxing wealth where it occurs across the board and an analogy would be our support for a capital gains tax and how this ties into that. So this is a loophole in this scheme that Labour is happy to see closed. 
Mike Sabin 
: What about GST on fresh fruit and veges? 
Dr MEGAN WOODS 
: And I can hear from Mr Sabin’s calling across the way that he is overjoyed with our support for this bill and with the fact that we are supporting it. Actually broadening out this definition of income will save the Crown approximately $7.5 million over the next 5 years according to Treasury advice that was given. 
But what I want to do is juxtapose the fairness that is enshrined in these clauses 63 to 66 in this broadening of the definition of income with the fact that this bill does not address some of the other unfair decisions that this Government has made in relation to the broader area of student support. This is a very technical bill that tinkers around the edges but what it does not do is comprehensively review the whole issue of student support and how it is that if we truly really want to be an innovation-led economy that is based on having a very skilled very educated and very trained workforce then what we do is we support our people into education. This bill does nothing to address that. 
What Labour thinks is that we do actually need to take this broader more holistic look at things and see how it is that we can achieve these aims. What this Government is committed to is what Steven Joyce calls the dampening down of demand for education. For Labour this is absolutely counter to the kind of New Zealand that we want to see. We want to see a New Zealand where our young people are encouraged into this training. Actually Treasury has estimated that the changes made in Budgets 2010 and 2011 would result in 25000 people losing access to student loans and do you know the people who will not go on to study to train and to get an education? It is those 25000 people who cannot afford to pay their own fees and support themselves while they are there. We do not see that cutting off access to 25000 people is a way to build the kind of New Zealand that we want. 
What this Government has done is it has made some very very unfair decisions. It has cut off student allowances for postgraduate students and this is at a time when we have a whole lot of rhetoric from the Government about how we need more people with higher degrees in this country yet we take away the student support. I just want the Government members to reflect on how this compares with the fairness that it is trying to enshrine through clauses 63 to 66 of the current legislation. I want them to pause and think about how these two decisions and these two actions fit together. I want them to dwell also on taking away the right of people aged over 55 to take out a student loan. Where is the fairness in that? We do not see that there has been fairness. I would also like them to pause and reflect on the fact that the Minister of Labour ignored advice from the Ministry of Education in passing the youth rates legislation last week which said that youth rates will add to the burden that students have to shoulder as they study. Now when they go out and they are not getting their allowance they do not have access to loan or they have reduced access to loan. To add insult to injury these young people if they are students who are aged 16 to 19 years of age will be facing youth rates when they go out there. As someone who has taught and tutored at a university I can tell you that students who spend all their time working and not applying themselves to their studies certainly do not get the most out of their education that they otherwise would. 
What is contained in these clauses 63 to 66 is one of the bases of why Labour is willing to support this bill because there is fairness in there. But in talking about the fairness that is in these clauses of the legislation I would like members opposite to think about the very unfair— 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I rise to speak to Part 3 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). I feel that Part 3 is a really lovely encapsulation of the whole bill because it contains the aspects or themes that we see—I shall not speak about the whole bill but the aspects and themes that it covers—paralleled throughout the bill. We have as Dr Megan Woods has so eloquently enunciated a number of clauses that refer to the broader definition of income which is the aspect of the bill that is about fairness and that is about making sure that the student loan scheme is sustainable over the longer term. We on this side of the Chamber do believe in student support. We believe that it is something that is good for New Zealand and is good for those individuals involved. It leads to future prosperity. We would like to see more of it as New Zealand can afford it over time. We think this is a good thing. So the broadening of definitions is the part that we support. 
Then as we move on through this part we see that this part of the bill also contains the amendments relating to the repeal of provisions on the 10 percent bonus which of course is a Peter Dunne U-turn. This bill is rife with U-turns. This nicely encapsulated in Part 3 is not only the broadening of the definition of income which we support but the kind of embarrassment of a Government U-turn contained in this legislation. There are many of those through the bill and we have discussed the various U-turns contained in this bill in previous parts of the debate in the Committee stage. 
Finally at the end of the bill in clause 68 we also have some tidying-up. That tidying-up relates to the rushed changes that went through in Budget 2012. There we saw the Government make eligibility for student support much more difficult. We saw changes that restricted access. We saw in there an increase in the repayments threshold so that students who were on relatively modest incomes were forced to pay back a larger portion sooner and those with dependent children and so on will be feeling the pinch of that. 
So in Part 3 of the bill we have all different aspects of the bill reflected. It is kind of typical of the wider bill. We have the good intent we have the embarrassing back-down and we have the tidy-up the sweep-up after the Minister on some previous mistakes. 
The sweep-up at the end there relates to those eligibility and support mechanisms that we talked about rushing through in Budget 2012 the repayment thresholds that were adjusted in Budget 2012 and the reduced access to support. That again points to the differing attitudes between the two larger parties in this Parliament. If we remember back it was National that introduced student loans in the first place. It sought to make it a bit more challenging for students to attend university. Labour introduced interest-free student loans which made student loans more accessible and more affordable. Then subsequently this Government has introduced administration fees on those loans—a way of introducing interest again without introducing interest again. That is a clever back-door trick if you like to try to make sure there are charges on loans without going back on the promise not to introduce interest back on to loans. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: It’s a Clayton’s broken— 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: It is a Clayton’s— 
Dr Megan Woods 
: Being fair like clauses 63 to 66. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: Yes that is right; my colleagues are right there. So Part 3 of the bill encapsulates nicely the themes that stretch across the bill. 
Labour will be supporting the bill for the fact that it is an attempt to go after those who are avoiding paying their due. We support that. We know that there are 101000 student loan borrowers living overseas. Roughly half of those are of no fixed abode—their address is not known to the taxman who collects those things. A total of $2.67 billion is owed which is a phenomenal amount. The average amount of default is somewhere between $7000 and $8000 and there are 14000 borrowers in default with debts of over $10000. It seems unfair and galling to those who are making an effort to pay back their student loans when they see others getting away with not doing it. So it is essential that this broadened definition of income is applied and that the efforts to collect that money are realistic and forthright and the data-matching proposal seems to get to that extent. Whether it can be implemented of course is a different matter. 
Carol Beaumont 
: Mr Chairman. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Mr Chairman. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Carol Beaumont. 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 Thank you very much. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I am trying to share this around. I am sharing the love. 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: That is wonderful thank you. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Mr Cunliffe has already had two calls so that is why it is your turn. 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: That is great. Part 3 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) as others have noted concerns the parts of the bill that amend the principal Act that apply for 2014-15 and later tax years including the amendments relating to the meaning of “adjusted net income” and the amendments relating to the repeal of the provision of the 10 percent bonus. We support the provisions around amendments relating to the meaning of “adjusted net income” because that will be fairer. We think that all borrowers should make an equal effort to pay back their student loan. We also think that those who receive their income from a company trust superannuation scheme or other source should be treated in the same way as those who earn a weekly wage—and to be honest just as an aside that is often not the case. So we are pleased to see that in this regard some of those other forms of income are being drawn in and treated equally. 
We understand that broadening the definition of income will save the Crown approximately $7.5 million over the next 5 years—that is according to Treasury—so of course that is a positive as well. Those provisions in clauses 63 through to 68 seem to us to make sense and are the reasons why we are supporting this Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). 
But there are concerns. As my colleague Megan Woods has talked about we have concerns about how this fits in the overall approach taken by the Government to student support. There have been quite a number of attacks made on student support in an attempt to “dampen demand” for tertiary education. To us that seems crazy. Given the kind of economic change that we need in this country given our need to be smart and agile and given the need to really lift performance in our workplaces we need to invest more. We need to be smart and innovative. A major part of that is investing in our young people—in fact in all of our learners not just young people—and anybody who wants to upskill themselves and participate to a greater extent in their career. So we are concerned about the number of changes that have been made. Some of the examples have perhaps been mentioned already but I think it is important to just reinforce them. Over-55-year-olds in Budget 2011 were stopped from accessing the student loan. That just does not make sense. We want older people to continue in the workforce for longer. Although we have high unemployment at the moment the overall demographic trend is for an ageing population when we are going to want and need older people in the workforce. That means they are going to need to be able to upskill to look at career changes and to do all of those things. Arbitrarily cutting off access to student loans at age 55 is short-sighted in the extreme. 
There are also limits on part-time students’ borrowing for course-related costs. That was a cut made in 2010. Budget 2010 also imposed a 2-year stand down on new residents accessing student loans. If people can get into some form of tertiary education and get themselves the kind of qualifications they need that is probably a very sensible way for them to commence their residence in this country. After all they do have to pay that money back. 
In 2012 the National Government passed legislation to reduce the overseas-based borrower’s repayment holiday from 3 years to 1 year. That goes counter to such a long tradition and such an important element for many New Zealanders and that is that they study they go overseas they develop contacts and networks and they have other opportunities there. They then come back to New Zealand and it is beneficial to our economy. We did not support that. 
The decision in last year’s Budget to remove the allowance eligibility for postgraduate students is the one that I want to really focus on now. That has to be the most short-sighted and unfair thing that could possibly happen given the need to make structural changes in our economy and given the need to really look at innovation to look at how we can support manufacturing in this country. The sort of manufacturing we are going to need to be involved in is not just in lightly processed commodities; it is going to need to be in elaborately transformed manufacturing and we need people with ideas and smart things. We want these people to stay here. The fact of the matter is that those students who want to continue in postgraduate studies are likely to be some of the brightest New Zealanders that we have who are wanting to keep learning to research and to do those things. What are they going to do if they cannot access support here? They will go offshore. They will be snapped up. We do have a good tertiary education system. We have a good education system overall. They will be snapped up and taken on by overseas universities and once they are there they will end up being part of a research pool and part of a brains trust in other economies and not in ours and that just does not make sense. This is an enormous waste of New Zealand’s potential. We do need more people doing postgraduate study not fewer if we are to grow our innovative economy. 
All the while during all of these cuts and dampening of demand and short-sighted economically damaging actions by the Government student debt has continued to grow with the latest figure showing it has reached $13 billion—$13 billion. Student loan debt is now a huge burden on young Kiwis starting out in their working lives and certainly for most of those people they have no concept of the dream of owning their own home for example. It is very much seen as outside of their reach. Combine that with some of the other initiatives of the Government and the chances of those students minimising the loans that they need to take out—for example bringing in youth rates. Bringing in youth rates like we just have—well one of the consequences of that will be that young people will be less able to save for their tertiary study. What does that mean? Well they are going to have to borrow more. So that is certainly counter-intuitive to reducing student loan debt. 
Keeping wages down—a 25c an hour increase in the minimum wage—is the same thing. Young people are concentrated if they can get work in minimum-wage jobs on very low wages. Even if they are not on the youth rate they are less able to save to fund their tertiary education studies and therefore have to take out greater student loans. I could go on. The point of this is that those things combined with some of the cuts into student support are just a recipe for a disastrous economic outcome for us and also for those individuals. Social mobility used to be something that we valued in this country. It was a country not that long ago where if you were a kid with ability you could go on you could learn you could get a decent job and you could expect to do well for yourself and your family. That is no longer a reality for so many New Zealanders. That is something that I think we need to really consider. Do we want to have a haves and have-nots society? Well over on this side of the Chamber we do not. Tertiary education is a very important bridge to making sure that people have opportunity. So these things are very very damaging. 
So going back to this part of the legislation to Part 3 I remind the Committee that we are supporting these provisions. We think that they are logical and fair. Unlike the Government’s overall approach to student support they are sensible. The overall approach is one that we do not agree with and we think has major economic consequences. Thank you. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I start at the Hon David Cunliffe. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chairman that was very kind of you—eventually. Thank you very very very much. 
I would like to take this opportunity to rise and speak to Part 3 of this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) and do something that rather pains me which is to be nice to the Government. I am wanting to compliment the National Government for several changes that it is introducing in this part of the bill. Having said that I promise not to make a habit of this. I do not want people out there in listener land to think that we have completely lost our marbles but there are several changes here that make me think that Government members have become the Latter-day Saints of social democracy that they have discovered truth fairness and the Kiwi way because they are doing albeit a very small amount to shave some of the silver lining of the silver spoon that some are born with in their mouths— 
Dr Megan Woods 
: Next will be CGT! 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Who knows? Perhaps they will as Megan Woods has said introduce a capital gains tax to help the cause of fairness. But at least in this bill they are broadening the definition of income to include such things as—wait for it—trusts which the Law Commission tells us are being overused that we have one of the highest incidences of family trusts in this country. It is a major avoidance loophole and too often taxpayers are vesting assets in the hands of children simply for the purposes of minimising tax. But were any friend of the National Party doing that on this occasion—of this bill—the Government would be narrowing that avoidance loophole by saying that income from trusts will be calculated in the definition of income that is used to calculate student support entitlements. Likewise companies. That of course means a wide range of companies. It could even mean companies like I do not know Apple—Apple which is paying less than 1 percent of revenue in taxation in New Zealand even though its average profitability on revenue is over 20 percent worldwide. That would seem to be somewhat unfair but at least this bill is broadening the definition of income in student loan calculations to include income from companies as well as trusts— 
Todd McClay 
: There’s one more. You missed one out. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: —and superannuation schemes of which of course the member who is interjecting so rudely has many. That is of course a further broadening of the definition of income and that is a good proper and right thing to do. Why is that? I believe— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Part 3. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Yes we are in Part 3; I am looking at clauses 63 to 66 and particularly at clause 63 which broadens the definition of “annual gross income” to include income from trusts companies and superannuation schemes. That is amplified in clause 64 which replaces section 73 and clause 65. 
That brings me to the “So what?” which is really pretty simple. In our extended families I will warrant that we know young people who are very very fixed on tertiary education and who almost no matter what the odds will go and do it. They will take on loans and they will pass the exams. We probably also in our heart of hearts have someone in our whanau who really is not cut out for tertiary education and that is just fine too; they will find their own path. What this series of reforms aims to do is to address that group in the middle: the kids who need a hand-up who need the power of the State to provide them with the confidence and the financial resources to stretch to tertiary education and the money that is involved in that needs to go a bit further. That is why the silver spoon brigade has to be able to count or should count their trust income their company income and their superannuation income. 
I am not quite sure how this actually got through the National caucus and why Todd McClay a trust fund baby from way back the esteemed chairman of the Finance and Expenditure Committee did not torpedo this out of pure self-interest but it seems he was outvoted if he did try and here it is on the Committee floor. We on this side of the Chamber think that this is a very good thing. It is a small—a very small—step in the cause of social justice from the National Government. 
That brings me to clause 67 and as David Clark has rightly pointed out this is perhaps the most exciting clause—a breathtaking clause—within Part 3. Why I hear you ask out there in TV land is clause 67 so exciting? Because it repeals the 10 percent silver spoon bonus repayment. Kids from rich— 
PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chairman for the opportunity to make a comment on this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). It was encouraging to hear the spirit of bipartisanship reaching across the room from our friend Mr Cunliffe. The thing that surprised me was why he was not quite so focused on doing sensible things when Labour introduced this excessively generous scheme which this Government inherited—this excessively generous scheme which was wide and billowing with very few checks and balances. Labour did not do anything about drawing in the full income of households. It just opened the gate as wide as possible and encouraged people to borrow as much as possible and never pay it back. 
Of course that kind of activity that attitude that lassitude you might say extended to every aspect of Government spending through the 2000s and saw Government spending increase by 50 percent during those fat years up to the point of 35 percent of GDP. This Government has been about trying to restore some order to the nation’s books and get us back on track to surplus in a very difficult and dangerous world. 
This piece of legislation—I am drawing back here to Part 3—is all about that important task of making the student loan scheme more sustainable. When we look at clauses 63 through to 66 they are about working on some of those little minutiae that are really about just getting some boundaries around the scheme making the student loan scheme sustainable in the future reducing the need for more Government borrowing and preparing students for the way ahead. 
We should not forget that the New Zealand student loan scheme is one of the most generous in the world. Some might say that there is only so much we can spend on tertiary education and that if we devote all of it to subsidising student-free loans for people who can and should be paying it back faster— 
Tracey Martin 
: Student-free loans? 
PAUL GOLDSMITH 
: —interest-free student loans—then that is less money that we can invest in investment. 
When we look down to the detail what have we done? It is worth recapping briefly that the changes we made over the last few years have reduced the cost to the Government from about 48c in every dollar that is loaned—a truly horrendous cost to other people who are paying the bill—down to 39c and we are trying to get it down further. This is a significant achievement and it is a demonstration of the Government’s priorities. When we look at Budget 2012 repealing the voluntary repayment bonus and increasing the repayment rate from 10 percent to 12 percent that has significantly increased the speed with which these loans are repaid so students can get on with their lives safe in the knowledge that they have made good progress on their loans and can save for houses and so forth and the taxpayer is not unduly bent out of shape. 
In the main provisions I just wanted to draw attention to the question of the definition of income being broadened to student loan repayment purposes to align more closely with that excellent— 
Todd McClay 
: Does it include interest from bank accounts? 
PAUL GOLDSMITH 
: No it does not but it is the same income definition used for determining entitlements for Working for Families tax credits. We have here in the Chamber Minister Bennett who has done such a good job in the welfare area. 
These changes in Part 3 are absolutely common sense. Why do we do this? Because it is about people paying back their debts to other New Zealanders. That is what this bill is about and it is only fitting and proper. I was disappointed that we were left with such a wide and billowing scheme that was unaffordable and unsustainable and this bill is a number of small targeted well-crafted steps to bring this scheme back to a more sustainable level so that we can continue to support our students at university and build that brighter future to which we all aspire. Thank you very much. 
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) 
: 
 I am happy to make another contribution on Part 3 of this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2)—in particular clauses 63 to 66—because I think there is so much embedded in these clauses that we need a good discussion about them. One of the things that I would like to discuss is broadening the definition of what counts as income to be assessed for the purposes of student loan repayments. Of course this is going to apply not only to those graduates who are in the workforce who are domiciled in New Zealand but also to New Zealanders living overseas who have a student loan. So for New Zealanders living overseas who earn their money from a business or from a trust their income is now going to be assessable for student loan purposes. 
This brings us to another issue—and one of the things I want to talk about—in terms of these definitions and the fact that we are bringing in another whole category of people whose income can be assessed which is the changes that are made in other parts and the interaction with clauses 63 to 66 and the way in which the data of these people can be matched at the border. There were concerns raised at the Finance and Expenditure Committee around whether or not this gelled with the privacy legislation that is going to be coming before this House. These people who are caught under clauses 63 to 66 of this legislation which we think is a good thing will now be eligible for data matching at the border. This new group of people is created by these clauses under Part 3 of the bill. 
We have grave concerns as we have had yet another data breach from this Government. 
David Bennett 
: Oh get over it. 
Dr MEGAN WOODS 
: Only this week we have seen the details—and no Mr Bennett I will not get over it. There are 90000 Cantabrians who have had their details released and put out there when this is a Government that has done nothing to give Christchurch people access to that information despite the fact that they have been asking for it for months. So yes we do have concerns over the data matching that will happen for the new category of people created under clauses 63 to 66 of this legislation because this is a Government that has shown itself to not be trusted with people’s personal information. We would like to put on record that when you do data matching you have an obligation to make sure—not you Mr Chairman not you. The Government has a responsibility an obligation to make sure that it is protecting the information that it holds about New Zealanders and to not have the slapdash approach that we have seen which has led to the very serious breaches we have seen in ACC the Ministry of Social Development and the Earthquake Commission. We do not want to see this happening in terms of the new categories of people that are created under this legislation. 
We ask that Government members take a call and give us a reassurance that these new categories of people will have their data protected and that there will not be mass releases of it as there were with the people whose private information was shared in relation to their Earthquake Commission claims in Christchurch. This is an issue that we take very seriously and we would not like to see the categories of people created under clauses 63 to 66 in Part 3 of this legislation being subjected to their information being shared in this slapdash and haphazard manner. We invite the Minister in the chair the Minister of Immigration and we invite a member opposite to take a call and to give us that reassurance that this information will be protected. It is not good enough for us to just say “Get over it.” as Mr Bennett heckled from the benches opposite. We will not get over it. Labour takes seriously the fact that a Government has a responsibility to deal in a responsible manner with people’s private information. The reaction we have seen from the benches opposite and the Prime Minister’s reaction in question time today show that this is not a Government that thinks this is a serious matter. The fact that we are trusting this Government with more information and the ability to share more of this information under this legislation for the category of people created under clauses 63 64 and 65 of this legislation gives us cause to question it. We would welcome a Government call on this matter. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Just a point that the data-matching legislation is out of scope. It is not in Part 3. 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). I just point out that although Labour will support this bill and does support this bill it is a bill that deals with what is an unfair approach to funding tertiary education but it makes it a little fairer. In particular Part 3 and its redefinition of income means that those who can source their wealth—in particular their income—from sources that up until now would not have been captured by the definitions of income will now have that captured and that is entirely fair and appropriate. Without that it would mean that—and in fact there are people who can conceal hide or otherwise shelter their income and have it remain unassessable for the purposes of the student loan scheme and that is unfair because that is an approach that favours the wealthy and does not at all have an impact on those who find it more difficult to meet the rigorous requirements of repayment of loans under this sort of scheme. 
Let us remember that this scheme in the absence of full State funding of tertiary education and with an approach that requires more private funding for tertiary education at least knocks the rough edges off that approach. It means that it makes tertiary education accessible to people where it might not otherwise be so. But for that element of fairness to work it means that when it comes to repayment of those loans everybody should be treated in a fair and an appropriate sort of way. 
It is all very well for Mr Goldsmith to lament what he describes as the cost of the scheme and the fact that there is a large amount outstanding but actually the real measure is the number of people who now get to benefit from tertiary education. Or at least up until now because we know that those pressures are growing that those pressures are getting harder and that there are tertiary institutions where the pressure is now really on to lift fees and that is putting more pressure on the student loan scheme and more pressure on both students and of course graduates. The higher the fees are the more that has to be borrowed and the more that has to be borrowed the greater the pressure on graduates to repay it once they get out into the labour market and into the workforce. 
So in that respect the bill will help to make the scheme more viable long term by broadening the definition of income and that is a good thing—that is a welcome thing. Of course what I think is very welcome on this side of the Chamber as my colleague David Cunliffe pointed out is that that incentive which was really a godsend to those who could afford it—the very wealthy—to repay their loans very early and very quickly the 10 percent bonus will no longer apply so that everybody is treated fairly in that regard. If you accelerate your payments that is good for the scheme. If because of the job you go into—if you are a good hard-working Kiwi graduate and you go off to do some sort of honourable noble job like being a teacher or might I suggest a union lawyer—you will not be penalised because you do not have an income that means you can pay massive lump sums off your student loan. We should welcome that because this is not a Government that has enjoyed a particularly friendly relationship with teachers and even less so with union lawyers I might add from my experience. So I think these are very welcome changes and it is for that reason that we welcome it. 
But none of that should detract from the fact that every effort should be made when it comes to tertiary education to ensure that those who are talented those who display the aptitude and those who have the skills should have access to it. There are still people—young people in particular; not just young people but adult students as well—who are at a stage where they could perform well in tertiary education but simply do not have the means for whatever reason to get there and enjoy the benefits of it. The more people we can have enjoying tertiary education and lifting their skills the better that is for New Zealand as a whole. So anything that can be done to lower the barriers to make it easier and to create an incentive for people to get in there is good for New Zealand. For that reason we welcome measures like this we welcome this legislation and we will support it. 
IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the question be now put. 
Ayes 72 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan. 
Noes 49 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; Mana 1. 
Motion agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 185 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to Part 3 be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
Part 3 as amended agreed to. 
Schedule 1 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 185 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to schedule 1 be agreed to. 
Amendment agreed to. 
Schedule 1 as amended agreed to. 
Schedule 2 agreed to.  
Schedule 3 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 185 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to schedule 3 be agreed to. 
Amendment agreed to. 
Schedule 3 as amended agreed to. 
Clauses 1 and 2 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 Clauses 1 and 2 in the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) of course refer to the title and the commencement date. These clauses are often debated in a lively fashion and members suggest alternative titles and perhaps in some cases that the legislation should never come into effect. I do not intend to debate the timing around this bill because although we disagree with the introduction of the “Henry VIII” clause we in principle support the introduction of a fairer means of collecting. As my colleague Andrew Little has alluded to the attempt to make sure that all types of income are more fairly measured when repayments are made is something that we will support. I do however have a few suggested changes to the title so as to more fairly reflect some of what happens in the bill and I put them forward as suggestions. 
The first is that this bill could be called the “Fingers Crossed We Can Implement It Bill” because this is a bill that makes very clear and lays asunder the challenges that the Inland Revenue Department is facing in terms of implementing legislation because of its decrepit computer system. The computer system at the Inland Revenue Department as we know is 20 years old and the department has over 1 million returns that remain unprocessed and over $7 billion in outstanding tax. Those things all hint rather loudly at a computer system that is struggling and needs to be updated and we have a Government that seems to have been very reluctant to actually lay out a timetable and a credible plan for replacing this system despite not being the only country in the Western World that needs a functioning tax system. This Government has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to bringing the tax system up to date so that we can support the schools hospitals and other things that are done through a fully functioning tax system. So my first suggested title is the “Fingers Crossed We Can Implement It Bill”. 
If I read from the description at the start of the bill we can see very clearly that the provision for the relief of small amounts of loan obligations is needing to be adjusted: “Under the Student Loan Scheme Act 1992 repayment obligations under $20 were not collected and were written off. The 2011 Act changed this so that small amounts remain part of a borrower’s loan balance for future collection.” This was one of the changes this Government brought in. 
Now that the scheme will continue to be administered under the Inland Revenue Department’s current computer system it has been decided that it is not cost-effective to go down that path and so this bill reinstates the discretion to write off small obligations under $20. So we have a perfectly good provision that has been there for years then the Government says: “Right we’ll update it. We’ll make it a bit more modern.” Then it decides: “Well actually we have got a fair way down the track and we can’t do it.” The computer system simply will not cope with this little change it is not cost-effective to do it and so this bill aside from introducing those fairness components is also covering up a whole lot of humiliating back-downs that have slipped in there for things that this computer system cannot implement. The bill itself is a vehicle for getting all of those changes back through that amend—or repeal—decisions made by the Government previously. 
David Bennett 
: What about those overseas bank accounts? 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: Mr Bennett down the back is interjecting but I cannot hear what he is saying so I shall ignore him— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: You haven’t missed a thing. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: My colleague tells me I have not missed a thing. 
My second title that I would suggest is that this is the “Small Steps Towards Fairness Bill” covering over these humiliating back-downs because more generally there are more back-downs in this bill. In fact most—well not most but a good half; no actually a majority—of the explanatory material in the front of this bill is about other back-downs and reprioritisations as a result of changes not being able to be implemented. 
So this bill recognises “that some of the changes to the administration of the … scheme originally provided for in the Student Loan Scheme Act 2011 would be too complicated to implement within the Inland Revenue Department’s current computer system and should therefore not proceed.” So this is the material that explains the remaining humiliating back-downs that are in there. It introduces four measures that are provided for in the 2011 Act that should be cancelled. I have already covered the relief for small amounts of loan obligations. In there as well is the loan interest calculation method which becomes problematic and must be adjusted. It says that the bill as it was introduced with clause 54 would change the interest calculation method in two ways effective from 1 April 2013. This then suggests by way of amendments that clause 54 is removed from the bill to retain the existing loan interest regime and it also makes related amendments. 
There is also the payment calculation—“the removal of clause 59 in the bill as introduced in order to retain the existing way in which payments are allocated to repayment obligations and debt.” Again it was too complex to administer. Then further on there are some amendments that line up adjusted net income so that it is broadly aligned with the definition of income under Working for Families tax credits. 
Finally the other suggested title that I might recommend is the “Student Loan Tsar-creation Amendment Bill” because this bill introduces a “Henry VIII” clause for goodness’ sake to manage future changes should there be more embarrassing back-downs required. So in future when these kinds of embarrassing back-downs that I have just listed come up the Government has a provision in this legislation so it does not need to bring them back to Parliament. When the computer system cannot implement them the Government behind the scenes can change the regulations and say: “Well it was roughly in line with what we were intending to do. No need to put this out to the public. We realised that we can’t do it because we haven’t yet committed to building a proper tax system a proper tax computer system. We’re still struggling along with the old one. We’re not doing our job very well and we will at some stage announce some changes but we haven’t got around to it yet and so on we go. We’ll give it a go but actually we need these tsar-like powers in case we can’t actually manage it.” 
This is an embarrassing bill for the Government in the sense that it has had to bring about a bill that although it has some useful data-matching principles in it and some useful broadening of the definition of income really it is a vehicle by and large for a number of embarrassing back-downs. So these other suggested titles are up there for consideration. I guess I am not putting any false modesty up there when I say it is unlikely these titles will get adopted but I think that they illustrate some of the limitations in this bill and some of the limitations in this Government’s thinking. We really do need as a country a functioning tax system. We need to get past the situation we have where in the last GST period in the middle of the last year 70000 phone calls went unanswered at the Inland Revenue Department where $7 billion in tax revenue— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! Very narrow. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: I come back to the title. One of the suggested titles is the “Humiliating Back-down Bill” and I put it to you that really there is a humiliating situation at the Inland Revenue Department which is caused by the inadequacy of this computer system. That is the point that I am making because right now that department is unable to do its job properly and it is actually to do with the lack of Government planning around replacement of this computer system. It is no small beer—we are talking $1 billion here in terms of replacement cost—and we have not yet seen from this Government a credible plan to replace that tax system and no time line. This Government is sitting on its hands. John Key has talked about it over eons we have seen no action and it is typical of a Government that has taken its eye off the ball and its hands off the wheel and the economy in New Zealand is suffering. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 Fortuitous—a spontaneous eruption in support of this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). The title and commencement debate is an opportunity for us to summarise the key themes of the bill— 
David Bennett 
: Don’t rate yourself too much mate. You only had eight vote for you. Even Kevin Rudd had more vote for him. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: It is not a dairy farming bill Mr Bennett. You can go back to sleep thank you very much. 
This is a bill that the Labour Opposition supports for two reasons. Firstly it does take some small steps—some would say baby steps—towards ironing out some creases on the equity side of the student loan scheme. Predominantly it broadens the definition of income to include income from trusts companies superannuation schemes and other forms of income so that net income rather than gross narrow income is the basis for calculating entitlements and that is the discussion that we have had in the previous part—Part 3. 
Secondly what it does as we have discussed earlier is allow information sharing between the Customs Service and the Inland Revenue Department so that the Inland Revenue Department can access the contact details of overseas-based borrowers who are in serious default. And that brings us to a very sobering truth. National campaigned on a brighter future. Remember those big posters—“Kiss goodbye to higher taxes not your loved ones.”? That was probably before the car-park tax and the iPad tax and a few other barking mad taxes. What have we seen? We have seen a gross— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: —narrowing of the scope of the debate to the commencement date and title of the bill which of course is the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) in fact. 
We are in the Committee stage summing up the debate on that point by reminding listeners that this bill could be said to be the “Fiddling While Rome Burns Student Loan Amendment Bill”. We have over $2.5 billion in accumulated student loan debt and this bill over a period of—wait for it—4 or 5 years changes the balance by $7 million. How typical of the National Government—that relaxed Key “do nothing” Government. We have got a $2.5 billion problem and the Government can muster the courage signalling to address $7 million over 5 years. That is $1 million a year in the face of a $2500 million problem. Whoopee whoopee! But at least it is sensible. That is why we are supporting it—at least it is sensible. 
The fact is that the people who receive income from a trust or a company should count that as income for the purposes of their student loan repayments—that is the only fair thing. Although Labour has supported many efforts to improve the repayment of debt from overseas-based borrowers we do not support the Government’s last major change which was to cut the repayment holiday for overseas borrowers from 3 years to 1 year. We do support on the other hand the removal of the 10 percent bonus for quick repayments because of course that was— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! That is not in the bill. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Yes it is in Part 3 which is covered by the— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No. Just concentrate on what is in the bill. That is not part of the bill. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Part 3 is not part of the bill? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No we have done Part 3. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: We have done Part 3 exactly. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: We are on the peroration clauses 1 and 2. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: So taking the time on the title and commencement clauses as an opportunity to sum those themes up we could call this bill the “Student Loan Scheme Amendment (Removal of Silver Spoon Bonus Repayments) Bill”. That would of course satisfy that rule that we are able to sum up the key themes of the bill in the title. In so doing we are recognising that the 10 percent fast repayment bonus really was unnecessary and it really benefited only those who did not need to be benefited because they were already able to repay more quickly and thus have an outstanding balance for less time. 
There are all sorts of other problems with the bill. If we look at this bill perhaps we might call it the “Student Loan Amendment (Unfinished Business) Bill” because we have these weird paradoxes that the Government has not touched—in fact that it is responsible for—like you cannot have a student loan for postgraduate study. What do they think? How are people going to do postgraduate study? Or are the only people worthy of getting PhDs the trust-fund babies? Where does that come from? I mean what is the rationale for that? 
Hon Maryan Street 
: What happens to the health system? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: What happens to the health system as the Hon Maryan Street has just asked. How are people supposed to get postgraduate tertiary medical qualifications? [ 
Bell rung 
] Mr Chair. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: The Hon David Cunliffe. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Thank you Mr Chairman for the very generous and not altogether foreseen opportunity to extend the debate on the title and commencement clauses but a very welcome one. I shall probably take only another two or three calls on this matter. 
Over-55-year-olds were stopped from accessing student loans in Budget 2011. That was disgraceful. Part-time students can no longer borrow from the student loan scheme for course-related costs as of Budget 2010. This is kind of a litany of penny-pinching is it not? Budget 2010— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! Those things are not in the bill. I just ask the member to focus on what is in the bill. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: The bill of course is contextualised by the changes that came before but I do take your point. Thus I suggested that the title of the bill be the “Student Loan Amendment (Unfinished Business) Bill” and that is some of the business that is unfinished. Budget 2012 froze the student loan parental income threshold and that is part of the reason we are back again in this bill to broaden the definition of income as we are here today. 
In the previous part we looked at a number of technical amendments. We could also call this bill the “Student Loan (Technical Amendment Hard to Understand) Bill”. It is very important that members of Parliament do cast their eyes over so-called technical amendments because it has been known in the “Sir Humphrey rule book” that some of the most intriguing and long-lasting changes are smuggled through as a mere change of a comma the addition of a plus or minus sign or the word “not” before a sentence. Those technical amendments can often make quite a big difference—changing the decimal place on a tax rate for example might make quite a big difference depending on one’s income stratum. So it is important that we bear in mind the technical detail in a bill like this 
Summing up in terms of the title and commencement clause the title “Student Loan Scheme (Missed Opportunity) Amendment Bill” touches on two small changes: the broadening of the definition of income and the allowing of information sharing. They are good as far as they go but the bottom line is we have got a $2.5 billion debt problem. At the same time we have got a whole bunch of people who cannot access student loans. The rigidity of the scheme is creaking under its own weight and in the face of such significant problems the Government has seen fit to tweak only two definitional aspects. 
One would have thought that a title for this bill might be the “Student Loan Scheme (Everything in the Garden is Bloody Near Rosy) Bill” but it is not. Everything in the country is not nearly rosy because we have got 270000 children growing up in poverty hundreds of thousands of people unemployed a sluggish recovery— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: —the worst economic record in 51 years and it is time I sat down. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I think so. 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Thank you very much for the chance to speak to the title and commencement clauses of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). 
As my colleagues David Clark and David Cunliffe have both chosen to do during their contributions to this title and commencement clauses debate I have chosen a number of alternative titles for this bill. I wanted to offer up one: the “Student Loan Scheme (Can We Trust This Government With Our Information?) Amendment Bill”. If I can I would like to just paint a picture as to why I think that should be the alternative title for this bill. 
Turning to clause 34 in Part 1 which looks to amend section 208 of the parent legislation it says “The purpose of this section is to facilitate the exchange of information between the Inland Revenue Department”—and I will come back to that soon—“and the New Zealand Customs Service for the purpose of establishing an information-matching programme to assist the Commissioner …” to do a number of things. Those things are offered in clause 34 of the bill. They are to: “(a) verify whether borrowers are New Zealand-based or overseas-based; and (b) verify whether borrowers are New Zealand residents; and (c) locate when they enter or leave New Zealand borrowers who are in serious default (within the meaning of … the Customs and Excise Act 1996) in relation to student loans.” 
I would suggest to this Committee and to the people at home that a lot of that information would be very sensitive information—information that you would not want to necessarily see go flying into the hands of people either who do not have the need to have it or whom you certainly would not want to have it if they had other agendas for using that information. I do think that we should consider looking at an alternative title to this bill for those reasons because of the track record of this Government around the security of very sensitive information. 
This week we have seen a rather large case around the security of information which is sensitive information that we are looking at here. So we want to make sure that within the bounds of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) and clause 34 that that information is held very tightly because we have seen 83000 pieces of information for a large number of quake claimants in Christchurch getting into the wrong hands. Again we would want to see some safeguards in this bill to make sure that did not happen again. 
Also in respect of the Inland Revenue Department which I say again I quoted as one of the parties here for the information exchange in clause 34 it has had an incidence where I believe—and I am looking at David Clark here for some guidance—around 6300 individuals were caught up in another improper release of private information. That is pertinent to clause 34 because we are talking about an agency within this bill that has been given the right to exchange information with another Government agency. We need to be sure around the security of the information that we are talking about in clause 34 because we have had a past transgression—6300 individuals concerned. We need to be sure there is some security put in place I guess at an operational level around this legislation to ensure that that does not happen again. So we do have the Inland Revenue Department involved directly in clause 34. I think that because it has had some past history of an incident we need to make sure. 
Maybe it is a question I can put to the Minister in the chair the Minister of Immigration—whether he knows what kinds of safeguards are being put in place to govern the operation of clause 34 in this bill and what kinds of safeguards there will be around that private information. 
We have also had the Accident Compensation Corporation and the Ministry of Social Development caught up in very large privacy breaches— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! That is not in the bill. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: Yes and I certainly would not want to see this happen with this student loan scheme bill because there are 101000 New Zealanders who have got student loans. A lot of them are overseas but a lot of them are here in New Zealand. If we were to see a large privacy breach of that scale concerning 101000 New Zealanders—and I am one of them I am still paying my student loan back—I would be very upset as a citizen of this country and as someone who does not want their private information put out there. So it is a serious question to the Minister in the chair as to what safeguards have been put in place to govern clause 34 of this bill. If the Minister in the chair could afford me an opportunity to answer that I would very much appreciate that as a citizen and as a member of Parliament. Around that I guess that is where the alternative title “Student Loan Scheme (Can I Trust This Government With My Private Information?) Amendment Bill” does come through. 
Another alternative title to this bill would be the “Student Loan Scheme (A Glimmer of Hope With This Government) Amendment Bill” because Part 3 I think it is of this bill does open up the bill to change the definition of income to ensure there is a principle of fairness that applies to this bill with measures to expand the definition of what income is. So as opposed to just a general old PAYE or whatever you get paid in your contractor’s terms this provision will expand the definition of income to include people who receive their money from a company a trust a superannuation scheme or other source which should be treated in the same way as those who earn a weekly wage. 
I guess in terms of that alternative title there is a glimmer of hope that there may be a principle of fairness on the other side of the House because they are applying it to this bill. As Andrew Little said in his I think it was Part 3 speech on this bill there is a sense that the student loan scheme levels the playing field for New Zealanders to let all people regardless of their level of income to be able to get a tertiary education. That is a very fair system. Of course everyone has to pay the money back and what this bill is about is making sure we can be much more efficient with that. 
What has not been fair in the past has been when people who have been able to manipulate their earnings whether they are in a trust or a company or through their superannuation scheme or through any other source of information have not necessarily been pulling their weight to pay their fair share of their income—which is what is contained in this bill—to repay their student loan. I think in that respect this does close a number of small loopholes in the scheme which on this side we are very happy to see. Because of that I think there is an alternative title to this bill of “Student Loan Scheme (A Glimmer of Fairness From The National Party) Amendment Bill”. 
Can I just—and I do not want to try the Chair too much—go back to the privacy issue because there were quite a number of submissions to the Finance and Expenditure Committee around that. One of them came from an organisation within my electorate of Mana the Whitireia Community Law Centre which did make a very strong submission against clause 34 the use of the exchange of private information and data matching. Can I take the opportunity to speak to that because in its submission to the select committee it did point out very strong opposition to that data matching because it did have reservations with that aspect of the bill. In particular it said: “… we are concerned about the potential breach of privacy over an individual’s personal information where data matching occurs.” 
If I can just carry on to another part of the bill where on point eight of the submission it said: “The Law Centre acknowledges that there are benefits to Government Departments sharing information however the more information that is shared leads to greater risks around an individual’s civil liberties and the reason for the information being provided by an individual.” So although the Chair might have been pulling me up in terms of going maybe outside the scope of some of those instances with the other agencies there is genuine concern out there in the community because of what has happened in the past around the security of the information that is contained in clause 34 around that exchange of information between the Inland Revenue Department and the New Zealand Customs Service. 
So I do reiterate my request to the Minister in the chair given the recent events and given the historical events around the exchange of information whether he can give us some kind of indication of what the Minister or the departments are doing around the security of information which I think is a very topical issue at the moment given what has happened at the Earthquake Commission. 
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on Part 1 of this legislation the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) in regard to the title. If we note that the title— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: We are on the clauses not the— 
Dr MEGAN WOODS 
: Sorry clause 1—clause 1 of this bill in terms of the title the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). In particular I want to talk to the “No 2” aspect of this title of the legislation. Of course what we have before us is a piece of legislation that is putting in some consequential amendments to the legislation that was passed last year amending the Student Loan Scheme Act. Our concern here is that this is a Government that is having to come back and continually amend this legislation. In fact we have seen that the Minister of Revenue has lodged a number of amendments to this legislation which we are debating tonight in this Committee because they were picked up as we went through. What we think is that there is a certain amount of uncertainty in terms of what is trying to be achieved. 
What we saw throughout the submission process in relation to this concern around the very piecemeal way in which this Government was operating in regard to student support is very much encapsulated in the title of this bill that we currently have before us in that it is titled “No 2” and we are coming back only a year later for a second bite at this cherry as it were to try to get this right. We support in the main the amendments that are being put forward in terms of the redefinition of income and the data matching with the reservations that my colleague Kris Faafoi and others have outlined tonight. Although we do support that we do have a concern about the piecemeal way in which this Government is approaching the issue of student support. The fact is that this is the second piece that this is the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) and that we are here debating the scheme only a year later. My colleague David Cunliffe has talked about the fact that within the consequential amendments we are seeing in this No. 2 bill there can be a lot of change that is occurring. More alarming—and my colleague Dr David Clark has talked about this tonight and indeed he has talked about it many times when this bill has been discussed at the Finance and Expenditure Committee and when we have debated this bill in the Chamber—is the “Henry VIII” clause which is the ability that the Government is giving itself to make amendments if it is seen to be within the spirit of the Act. We do have concerns about that. What we want to see is a Government that is going to get it right that is not going to take a very piecemeal approach to the very real issue of student support and that will not come back. We do not want to be debating the “Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3)” in only a few months’ time. 
My colleagues have put forward a number of alternative titles for this bill. I think they are very colourful titles some with a bit more character than Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). If we have a look we have talked about the “Little Bit Fairer Bill”. Kris Faafoi had a similar theme but called it the “Glimmer of Hope Bill”. What we see is that this is a bill that is a little bit fairer. I think either of those titles would be very fitting titles for this rather than Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) in terms of clause 1. What we see is that this is a little bit fairer. It does redefine those incomes but it does nothing to address the fact that this is a Government with an explicit agenda to dampen down demand for tertiary education in this country. Student loans are meant to be about giving access to education to students not taking it away. Our concern is that this is the policy agenda that this Government has been going with so we would suggest that either the “Little Bit Fairer Bill” or the “Glimmer Of Hope Bill” that my colleagues have suggested would be better titles for this bill. I think they are very very good suggestions. Treasury estimates that 25000 New Zealanders have lost access to student loans due to the cumulative effects of Budget 2010 Budget 2011 and what this Budget has delivered. That is why we think a name like “Little Bit Fairer Bill” is appropriate because really what we are doing on one hand by making the assessment of income a lot fairer does not offset some of the very unfair things that this Government has done in relation to student support. So I think that is one very good suggestion that has been put through by my colleagues. 
The other that I would like to suggest is the “Tinkering Around The Edges Bill” because I think that is one that picks up some of the aspects of this bill. Although there is nothing that we really disagree with in terms of what the Government is putting through here in that it is making it a fairer scheme and is doing things to increase that it is not doing anything to holistically address the issue of student support. That is where Labour wants to see things go. We want to see students supported. We do not want to dampen down demand for education as a necessary policy objective. We think that people having access to tertiary training whether that be skills training or the ability to learn a trade to go to university or to a whole raft of different tertiary education courses is a good thing. We do not want to have an explicit policy agenda to dissuade our young New Zealanders from accessing this. So that is why we think it could be the “Tinkering Around the Edges Bill”. 
When you put this bill in the context of the other things this Government has done over the course of this term the title “Tinkering Around the Edges Bill” makes a whole lot more sense. It makes sense if you put it in the context of the Government limiting postgraduate students’ access to the student allowance and the fact that this is not a Government that wants to encourage postgraduate study. On this side of the Chamber we think it is something we should be committed to and it is certainly something that we see as vital to our future both as a society and as an economy and it is something we will seek to encourage. We also see that this is a Government that has limited access to student loans to those aged over 55. Given the high levels of unemployment that we have in this country which this Government does not seem to have any answers for or any plan for we do not think it is good to limit people aged over 55 from having the opportunity to retrain and pick up some new skills. That is why we think clause 1 would be better amended to read the “Tinkering Around the Edges Bill”. 
My colleague David Clark has gone through some other suggestions and one of his favourites I think was the “Embarrassing Back-down Bill”. This bill is something we have had to come back to and I spoke about this earlier when I spoke about the specific reference to the “No 2” part of the title of this bill. It should be called the “Embarrassing Back-down Bill” because it is something the Government has had to come back and correct over and over and over when it comes to the issue of student support. We need to get this right. We need to look at the whole issue holistically. 
My colleague Kris Faafoi made a very good contribution I thought. I particularly liked his suggestion that the title should be the “Can We Trust this Government with Our Information Bill”. I think there are some real concerns. As someone like my colleague Kris Faafoi who has a student loan I have concerns about what the Government might do with the information it holds on me in relation to my student loan and whether or not that information is safe. I have presumably just had my information about my Earthquake Commission repairs revealed to the world so I would not like to see this. That is why we think the “Can We Trust this Government with Our Information Bill” is a much better name. This is a Government that has shown that it really is not to be trusted with the information and data of many of the citizens of this nation. Indeed what was spoken about was the very agency that is named in this bill the Inland Revenue Department. We have already seen that there have been problems with the way in which the Government holds information in the Inland Revenue Department. We have had problems with 6300 people’s information in that very agency and that is why my colleague Kris Faafoi’s suggestion of the “Can We Trust the Government with Our Information Bill” is a very very good one. 
 One other thing I would like to throw in there is that the “We Don’t Want Another Novopay Debacle Bill” could be another suggestion for what this bill could be called because what we see in the officials’ report to the select committee is an acknowledgment that the computer systems are just not going to be up to it. They are not going to be able to put the systems in place. We have a section in the officials’ report here that says: “Because of the complexity of the student loan system the detailed analysis has identified that the systems design development and testing required to implement some of the 1 April 2013 changes is significantly greater than originally expected. To ensure timely delivery of the core Government policies contained in the 2011 Act and the policies that have the greatest benefit for borrowers it is proposed to not proceed with some of the measures in the 2011 Act.” 
Here we have a Government that knows it is under the gun and has seen the muck-up that it has already done in education in terms of Novopay and the fact that teachers in this country are not being paid. So we think that changing the title to “We Don’t Want Another Novopay Debacle Bill” would be another good amendment to clause 1 of this legislation rather than using the rather bland name that it has been given the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). We see that the officials’ advice actually shows that this is a Government that not only is incapable of protecting our data but also is incapable of dealing with data and putting systems in place in order to deal with large numbers of data like that. So Labour does support this bill but— 
JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the question be now put. 
Ayes 72 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan. 
Noes 49 
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; Mana 1. 
Motion agreed to. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 185 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to clause 2 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments be agreed to. 
Ayes 106 
New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 7; Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan. 
Noes 15 
Green Party 14; Mana 1. 
Amendments agreed to. 
Clause 2 as amended agreed to. 
Bill to be reported with amendment presently. 
Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) 
In Committee 
Part 1 Amendments to principal Act 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 They say that politicians are like nappies. They need to be changed periodically and usually for the same reason. For that reason the laws that we have governing the election of politicians whether they are central government or local government need to be laws that promote and encourage integrity and transparency. If there is one thing that has been lacking from the local government laws up until recently and certainly during 2010 it is integrity and transparency. So we welcome the arrival of this bill and the opportunity to give closer examination to it because it does something that we did not previously have in place and that is to bring a level of at least transparency with integrity being the by-product of it to local body elections. 
Let us remember that what lies at the heart of this bill is the provisions that require greater and better disclosure of donations and better accounting of expenditure by candidates and there are other provisions too that relate to declarations to be made by candidates for example of not only the positions they are standing for but the ward or the area that they live in and those sorts of things. We are confident on this side of the Chamber that this bill will go some considerable way to preventing what we saw in the 2010 mayoral election at least in so far as the city of Auckland was concerned where we had money exchanging hands accounted for in different ways by different candidates and indeed behaviour by at least one candidate that was nothing short of an outrage. 
One of the remaining issues that we had with this bill as it left the Justice and Electoral Committee—and indeed the report of the committee noted this—related to donations in kind of a certain level and I think under $300 where a donation of that sort was made on a recurring basis to a candidate. Under the bill at that point in the interpretation of the relevant clauses of the bill there was an apparent loophole. I am pleased to see in Supplementary Order Paper 198 in the name of the Minister of Local Government that he has gone to now correct that with new section 103A inserted by clause 27 in the legislation which I think will fix or at least fill the gap that was left in the bill at the time that it left the select committee. On that basis we are confident that this will achieve the objective set forth which is to ensure that local body elections and we have them this year will now be conducted with a level of integrity and transparency that we are used to in central government elections in the general elections that we have every 3 years but that we have not seen in local body elections. 
Perhaps the reason for that is that local body elections were conducted in a very tame way—I would like to use the term “gentlemanly” but it is sexist in these respects. They were conducted in a way that everybody—candidates and those administering the elections—respected what it was all about which was putting themselves up for public office winning the confidence of the local citizenry of their area and generally behaving in a reasonable and sensible way. That habit if you like that practice and that culture very much evaporated in Auckland in 2010 and the need for this legislation was absolutely paramount. The Government has seen the need for that. We have all seen the need for that over the fiasco of the donations and so on to candidates in that election. This legislation will now address that problem. It will make a big change. It will be good for all candidates in the local body elections this year and ongoing. It may well be that there are some things in these provisions that we can now look to for general elections to make sure that those standing for election to Parliament might actually consider and get the benefit of them in terms of a greater transparency. 
These are good measures and this is a good bill. The Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper makes the changes that we think are needed to close out and make this a good piece of legislation that we will happily support. 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
: 
 I would like to start my contribution in this Committee stage on the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) by thanking the Justice and Electoral Committee for I think a very constructive approach and process on this bill. I very much enjoyed being part of it. I think there are a number of sensible amendments recommended by the committee by consensus that improve the bill and strengthen it. They are a good example of how the select committee process can work collaboratively and how it should work more often in this Parliament to improve legislation. 
Broadly speaking this is a good bill that the Green Party supports. It brings some of the provisions governing candidate donations for local body elections more closely in line with the equivalent provisions governing general elections and parliamentary candidate donations and returns. It has obviously been prompted by a very high-profile example in the 2010 Auckland mayoralty elections with the Hon John Banks and his memory lapses around the anonymous donations that he received. It is timely for that reason but also regardless of that example these are important changes that we think need to be made in the interests of transparency and fairness. Probably the most significant change that the bill makes is the change to the anonymous donations provisions so that anyone who works with a candidate now and who knows the identity of someone who makes a donation of more than $1500 to that candidate must declare the identity of that donor to the candidate and that candidate must therefore record that donation in their return of expenses and donations. I guess that is what we might call the “John Banks provision” in this bill and it is a good change. It is a change that we in the Green Party support. 
 However we think the bill does represent a missed opportunity to more properly align the local electoral rules with the rules for parliamentary elections. In the second reading debate speakers on both sides of the House talked about this being the object of the legislation yet if that is indeed the object of the legislation there is much more we could do that would align the provisions governing the two types of elections. It is a missed opportunity that the bill does not actually do more in that direction. 
However on that note we are pleased to see the Minister’s amendments set out in Supplementary Order Paper 198 which do bring the bill a little bit closer to alignment with the provisions in the Electoral Act by requiring donors to disclose when a donation is funded from contributions the name and address of every contributor who makes a contribution of more than $1500 and the amount of the contribution the total amount of contributions received from contributors who make contributions of more than $1500 and the total amount of all other contributions. That requires the candidate to disclose in their return of donations and expenses the identity of any donor who has made contributions in excess of $1500. And those are contributions in cash or in kind. So it makes clear in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper that that contribution could be a monetary donation but it could also be a donation of goods and services. It is a good amendment. It does as the previous speaker Andrew Little said fill a gap that was left after the Justice and Electoral Committee had considered the bill and we commend the Minister of Local Government the Hon Chris Tremain for bringing the amendment to the Committee. The Green Party will support the Minister’s amendments. 
But we think there is still much more that this bill could do to align provisions for local body elections with those governing general elections. Supplementary Order Paper 200 in my name puts forward a set of more comprehensive changes that would enhance the fairness and transparency of local body elections and candidate expenses and donations. The measures in my Supplementary Order Paper mirror the provisions of the member’s bill in the name of my colleague Denise Roche which had been in the ballot for some time actually before this legislation was introduced to the House and that would we think be a better way of both addressing the concerns regarding John Banks—and fixing up the provisions around anonymous donations—and actually making some more comprehensive and wholesale changes to the law governing local body elections. 
Our amendments would more effectively regulate the influence of wealth in local body election campaigns and they would promote transparency and accountability. They would do that in a number of ways. The main provisions in my Supplementary Order Paper before the Committee at the moment are to introduce a cap on donations by any person or group of a total of $5000; to lower the threshold for the disclosure of anonymous donations to be declared down to $500 from the $1500 proposed in this bill; to introduce a ban on overseas donations; to introduce a pecuniary interests register for members of local authorities much as we as members of Parliament have to file our pecuniary interests register; and perhaps most important to regulate third-party spending in local elections. 
I want to spend a bit of time talking about the need for the regulation of third-party spending and about what a glaring omission it is that this bill does not address third-party spending. If we think about the Auckland mayoral elections in the post super-city environment we see that we have a hugely influential position in terms of a local body election that candidates are running for. There is a lot at stake in terms of who the mayor of our largest city will be. There are a lot of interested parties that have a stake in the outcome of who the mayor of our largest city is. There are a lot of organisations that may wish to actively campaign either for or against a particular candidate or ticket in those elections. Although that is particularly apparent in Auckland in the super-city those very same issues are at stake in many local body elections around the country where local groups organisations businesses or individuals have an interest in the outcome of the election and may indeed wish to campaign and spend their money campaigning towards a particular outcome in that election. 
There is very little in the current regulations or provisions that actually regulates the spending activities of third parties in local body elections and there is nothing in this bill that would rectify that. Some might argue—indeed some have put this argument to me—that local body elections are lower profile and less likely to attract substantial third-party spending and campaigning and that there is therefore no need for this kind of provision. That may well have been the case in the past I think but with the greater amalgamation that we have seen in Auckland and that we are perhaps unfortunately likely to see more of around the country I think we are likely to see only more interest and third-party activity in local body campaigning. Indeed we are seeing it already. I have used this example in the second reading debate but we know for example that there is a wealthy individual in Hamilton who plans to campaign against every single incumbent councillor on the Hamilton City Council and there is absolutely nothing in the current provisions to stop him from doing so or to in any way restrict what he can spend in that campaign. That just does not seem right if we have a piece of legislation like this which looks to set spending caps and actually regulate local body electoral campaigning in some way. 
We also see the increasing use of campaign tickets to campaign in local body elections. Again there is nothing to restrict third parties from donating to the campaign ticket and if a donation is not allocated to an individual candidate on that campaign ticket there is no limit on what can be donated what has to be disclosed or how it can be spent. So that is a real gap in this bill. It is a gap that the Justice and Electoral Committee recognised and we said in our report that further amendments to regulate third-party spending were absolutely necessary to prevent inequities in the future yet we have not seen them come through the select committee due to time constraints. The chair of the committee did actually express some hope in the second reading that the Minister of Local Government would bring amendments to that effect in this Committee stage. I note that that has not happened and I am very disappointed to see that. So in the absence of amendments from the Minister to make this change I urge the Committee to support instead our Supplementary Order Paper 200 because it does bring in regulations for third-party spending which are so needed and also it does more closely align the provisions governing local body elections with those governing parliamentary elections. 
The other area of concern which my colleague Eugenie Sage will speak about when she speaks to her Supplementary Order Paper 201 is around the provisions that this bill makes to allow the Minister to postpone or adjourn local body elections. We are concerned in light of the experience at Environment Canterbury that that is not an appropriate mechanism. Although it might be necessary to allow an adjournment to take place it should be the electoral officer and not the Minister who does that. My colleague Eugenie Sage will speak to her Supplementary Order Paper to that effect later in the debate. For now I would like to urge the Committee to consider the importance of regulating third-party spending in local body elections and ask members to look closely at my Supplementary Order Paper 200 and the provisions within it. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very excited about this Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2). I want to start immediately by going to new section 103A in clause 27 which talks about a definition of the word “anonymous”. What is an anonymous donation? It would be fairly obvious to almost anybody at home listening in on the wireless or watching on TV what an anonymous donation is. It is clearly a donation that someone does not know where it has come from. The bill helpfully gives us a definition of an anonymous donation: “ ‘anonymous’ in relation to an electoral donation means a donation that is made in such a way that the candidate who receives the donation—(a) does not know the identity of the donor; and (b) could not in the circumstances reasonably be expected to know the identity of the donor”. 
So if somebody has lunch or dinner at a flash restaurant with someone and they give them an envelope with a cheque for 25 grand in it the candidate could reasonably be expected to know who was the donor. It is not an anonymous donation. But actually it gets better than that. If a candidate was flown by private helicopter to a donor’s house—mansion in fact with its giraffe—and given a donation there and that donor was to then put on a fireworks display for the whole city that is not an anonymous donation. That is a donation that a candidate could reasonably be expected to know about. 
So this of course is completely unnecessary. The only reason we are debating what actually is an anonymous donation is that John Banks filed a return that he knew was not true. He filed a return that he knew was not true and claimed that he had received anonymous donations even though he had personally solicited them and had personally been given them. He broke the law and he got away with it. He got away with it only because the time frame for a prosecution had lapsed— 
Progress to be reported presently. 
House resumed. 
The Chairperson reported the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill with amendment the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) with amendment and progress on the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2). 
Report adopted. 
Amended Answers to Oral Questions 
Question No. 11 to Minister 
Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I seek leave to correct a response I gave to a supplementary question I was asked during question time today. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to make a personal explanation to correct her response. Is anyone opposed to that course of action? There appears not. Leave is granted. 
Hon HEKIA PARATA 
: In response to a supplementary question asked during question No. 11 today I indicated that the State Services Commissioner had not consulted me prior to accepting the resignation of the Secretary for Education. Although I was not consulted at the final stage of the commissioner’s decision to accept Ms Longstone’s resignation I had been involved in earlier discussions. I wanted to clarify the position to the House. 
The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.