Logie Jan: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1976. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I am very pleased to rise and offer the Green Party’s support for the second reading of the Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill. I commend the member Tracey Martin for bringing this to the House and for her excellent advocacy and communication of the issue as we went through the select committee process. I will come back to your submission in the process of my speech. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust for its advocacy on this. Even more I would like to thank these people for their wonderful precious work that they do which is making such a difference to their grandchildren and to our society as a whole.This bill as it was introduced and as it is now is fundamentally about fairness. It is about addressing a very small but important inequity in the funding that goes to support some of the most vulnerable children in Aotearoa New Zealand—those who have gone through death or family breakdown lost the support of their parents and are in the care of a family member.Although the quantum of the funding discrepancy may appear small to us sitting here in this House of Representatives it is very significant for many of the carers and children who receive it. It makes a tangible real difference that is visible in the lives of those families. There has been no logical reason for the inconsistency between funding for foster children and funding for unsupported children and orphans. It seems to be just one of those many anomalies actually that have developed over the years from the highly complex and much amended legislative and regulatory provisions Governments have put in place in their attempts to fix a system when issues have come to their attention with the goal I suppose of supporting our most vulnerable but which have left so many gaps because they have lost sight of our contemporary world and that vision of what we are hoping to achieve with our legislation.During the select committee process we heard really moving submissions from a range of kin caregivers and particularly grandparents caring for grandchildren who spoke about their desire to do the best that they could for their grandchildren after so many of them had already been through such terribly traumatic experiences. As I think Ms Martin described in her speech those children have experienced things that we would never ever want children to have to experience have seen things that children should never ever have to see and have ended up many times traumatised and with psychological disorders as a result of those experiences as well as physical disabilities in some cases.These children in the care of their grandparents who desperately want to do the best for them were missing out on the same opportunities the same support from the State that children who went into the care of strangers were getting. There were examples given to us of family members—I think it was grandparents—who were caring for a grandchild but also had a child in foster care. Quite often the generosity of spirit of these grandparents extends to foster children. There was bizarreness in that fact that they were getting money from the State a clothing allowance for that foster child and not for their own kin. They did not have the financial resource to be able to provide their grandchild with the same clothing support—imagine that. Imagine if that were you and you had your own grandchild in your care in the same house and you were not able to offer them the same clothing support that you could offer a child who was not a family member. That is a very bizarre situation and one that is rightly being fixed by this bill. I am thankful that there seems to be unanimous support in the House for fixing it. For them the clothing allowance is meaningful.I think I said in my first reading speech that as a greenie I am quite into second-hand clothing. I get the whole concept of making do and reusing and recycling. It is a thing I like. But I get that when you are in high school or at primary school actually there are only a certain number of kids who are into that and it is really important to fit in when you are at school and you have been through hard times. To be in a position where your family does not have a choice for you to have new clothes is unfair and we do not want that for our most vulnerable children. It is good to be fixing that. So this allowance is meaningful but is also symbolic. It is really important that those children and their caregivers know that this House this society supports them and wants as much for them as for every other child in this society.I do want to come back to Tracey Martin’s submission to the select committee. It was a thing of beauty I have to say. I seem to be commending other members in the House tonight and I am just going to go with that goodwill. But it really was. She came to the committee with two cut-outs one of Henry and one of Audrey and demonstrated to the committee what this bill was about by using Post-it notes. So we had Henry who was in the care of foster parents and Audrey who was in the care of a kin caregiver. Those families were both entitled to the same amount of basic allowance but Henry who was in the care of foster parents was also entitled to pocket money of $6.30 a week—he was a 6-year-old—which was $327.60 a year. Audrey who was in the care of a kin caregiver was not. So there are two children with the same needs and the same likely background but one is entitled to $327.60 a year and the other is not. Again Henry was entitled to an allowance of $82.60 for birthdays and Christmas. Audrey with kin caregivers got nothing. There was a really tangible feeling in response to it.Then we got to the clothing allowance. Henry was entitled to $1129.64 at that time a year. Audrey who was in the care of family got nothing. They could be in the same household. They could be being cared for by the same people with a really fixed income and an inability to match that $1129.64. That is unjust and I thank the member for making it so clear for the committee. She has done negotiations and accommodations in getting us to this point.This bill does not introduce absolute parity yet. It recognises that the Government through some initiatives has put in up to $550 a year for school and start-up fees by 2015 alongside a one-off establishment grant of $350. That comes to about $900 a year. It does not actually reach full parity so we are still not going to get there but you have made that allowance because that is a whole lot better than nothing. Although that money is there and guaranteed until 2018 this bill will ensure that money is available after that guaranteed funding stops.It is a really really important initiative but it does I have to say still seem a little bit mean-spirited of the Government not to just simplify the system make sure nobody misses out and just create the parity. To me it does not seem too much to ask particularly when really we acknowledge that this is a band-aid on the sore of poverty that is killing our children.