Parmar ParmjeetDr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. On behalf of ACT I'm taking this call to support this bill the Social Security (Benefits Adjustment) and Income Tax (Minimum Family Tax Credit) Amendment Bill. We are supporting this bill because this bill is ultimately about affordability. I've listened to contributions from the Labour Party member and also the Green Party member and I would say that they have been really interesting contributions.Yes we acknowledge that arguments can be made both ways. This is about the indexation of benefits to the Consumers Price Index (CPI) or net wage growth and I want to acknowledge that yes it was the Labour Government that indexed benefits to net wage growth because it saw that the wage growth was actually historically growing faster than inflation. But very quickly they realised that inflation actually started growing faster than wages so there is no silver bullet there. Things change and inflation grew at a rate that was hurting people. And who was responsible for that kind of increase in inflation? It was the Labour Government. It was because of their irresponsible spending. It was because of the spend spend and spend policies.Yes I do acknowledge that there a lot of factors that we do need to take into consideration when we talk about inflation but definitely the irresponsible spending of the previous Labour Government fuelled inflation. Today those members are standing up and talking as if they really care about people on benefits or on low incomes but they need to realise that it was the increase in inflation that actually caused more suffering to people on benefits and low incomes. Why didn't they control their spending at that point to reduce inflation if they really cared about people—those on benefit and low incomes.On this side of the House we really care about bringing inflation down. If inflation comes down that is a good thing because in the last quarter December 2023 we have seen that inflation has been 4.7 percent. Yes it has slowed down; it's not exactly where we want it to be. But we want to see that inflation come under control. And that is actually going to give that financial relief. It's not about just putting more money in people's pockets which doesn't have that real value that comes with having money in people's pockets.Now coming to the Green Party member it's really interesting to see that the Green Party member thinks that somehow if people stay on benefit rather than going to a job that is a minimum wage job it is actually a better thing. If people have not been in employment for a number of years or if they don't have the experience if they start a job on minimum wage what is wrong with that? I ask: what's wrong with that? There is nothing wrong with that because they are only going to grow from there. So that is the first step and we really want people to take that first step—get into employment even if it is minimum wage because they will only grow from there.The other argument I heard from the Green member was that people will be worse off by $2000-plus if they stay on benefit for four to five years. Why do we want to imagine that somebody will be sitting on benefit for four to five years? That is not the kind of ambition we bring to New Zealanders. We have better aspirations than the Green member because we really want people to do well. We really want people to get into employment and this bill is a very simple bill—it is about indexation of benefits to the CPI which we support.