Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): The Greens are very pleased and relieved to support this the first step of overhauling the welfare system and want to congratulate Minister Carmel Sepuloni on pulling together the expert advisory panel with the diverse background and range of backgrounds that the experts on that panel came from. She pulled together an incredible blueprint for all of us in this House to be able to work on together so that we might actually assist people to live their lives with dignity when they are requiring support. Thank you to the Minister for her leadership on this. It is a Greens confidence and supply agreement that we will make sure we see through.I cannot go past acknowledging the Welfare Expert Advisory Group chair Dr Cindy Kiro and her incredible commitment her wairua to the cause of making sure she could pull together not just the voices of the panel but the voices of the country bringing her incredible governance and leadership and insight experience as a human to this incredible blueprint that we have and all of the panel.I want to uphold the work of advocacy groups who for probably at least three decades have been on the front line of seeing firsthand what happens when we have a social security system that rather than helps people punishes people and entrenches poverty and entrenches intergenerational struggle when we create a narrative that accepts that some people should be dehumanised so that we can afford to give them less.I want to absolutely acknowledge the people themselves who have had to suffer under generations and decades of I will say successive Government policy which has not understood the importance of having a strong and robust social security support system especially in the context of a housing market even just the housing market alone which has blown affordability through the roof for people trying to make ends meet.This can only be a start to an overhaul. This can only be a start to transforming what our country has taken pride in in setting up and understanding in a social contract that at all times there will be some people who need some help—that we understand that mostly people want to be in paid work if they are able to be and that they want to be able to contribute. We can one day be proud again of what has been a foundation and a social contract understanding in this country.I will start with welcoming the move to finally index benefit income growth to the growth of average wages. That is the least we could possibly do especially considering that benefit income levels have been so below par of livable that it has been a shame on our nation that we have allowed people for no good reason to struggle with the basics of living.We have heard in this room today that several of us in this House several former MPs before us and more to come have experienced being single parents ourselves and I certainly am one of those people. We know that for the most part people try and do their best. So the fact that we have not allowed benefit income growth to at least move at the same rate of average wages should be a stain on us. But here we are today. We're going to fix that at the very least.I also in this want to remind the House that only 21 percent of our people who receive a benefit are physically and mentally able to uphold paid work. So I want to call to account some of the rhetoric from the Opposition which shouldn't surprise anybody which has continued to bash beneficiaries. I want to call that—Hon Louise Upston: Rubbish. We weren't talking about them.MARAMA DAVIDSON: Absolutely has. We heard it from the start. We saw last night the Opposition leader put up a meme on the internet for the National Party's narrative. They set up beneficiaries against workers. What is that if not bashing beneficiaries? They set that meme up in the House last night.I want to remind people that we have people in paid employment who are struggling and you want to set them up against people who receive the benefit. I want to remind people that today's beneficiary is tomorrow's low-paid exploited worker—that today's low-paid exploited worker is also tomorrow's beneficiary. That Opposition—the leader goes out with a meme to set them up against each other. That's all they've got. That's all the constituency they have left—is to continue setting up people decently trying to make their way in this daily life. They want to set them up.One of the previous Opposition speakers tried to say that they agree with people living lives with dignity. You are not allowing people to live with dignity if you continue to stigmatise them. If you continue to shame people who receive an income by setting them up against workers that is not allowing them to live with dignity. So I will call that out and I have an absolute responsibility to call them out—not to mention that we have people who receive an income for paid work who have been exploited themselves who are oppressed by the very same oxygen that keeps people living in entrenched poverty. They are struggling with the same issues. You want to divide people—that's your constituency—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! [Points at self]MARAMA DAVIDSON: Sorry Madam Assistant Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you.MARAMA DAVIDSON: They want to divide people. That's their tactic. This Government is here to bring people together. This Government is here to understand that there is a common ground that we have to find so that all people do not feel shamed when trying to access support.This Government understands that there are people with disabilities with mental or physical illnesses and people who cannot work because they are providing care who do make a contribution to the community who absolutely are a core backbone of our communities. Just because they are not in paid employment we cannot in this House—surely surely there's a social contract we can agree to in this House that means we stop devaluing their contribution to who we are as Aotearoa New Zealand.So I'm just going to pull that up for a second. Ending sanctions—OK. So the international and local evidence has been very clear that those sanctions those punitive sanctions do not work. It has been very clear. The experts on the panel who we should be listening to were very clear that not only have those sanctions not worked not encouraged other parents to pay but they penalised the custodian parents and their children for no good reason and they further entrench poverty.Now the Opposition wanted to crow about the conservative considerate benefit increases that they made of the odd what $20 a week? I don't know. It was so minimal I barely remember. But in the meantime they kept that sanction that took it off anyway. So how dare they—the shame of them trying to crow about that minimal minimal benefit increase while they kept that punitive sanction on the books and took it off them anyway. So I'll just call that out as well.What we are here to do in our jobs as representatives of the people is set up a vision for a social security system that works and that treats people with respect and mana. The very name of the welfare report Whakamana Tāngata is the welfare system that will benefit our communities our people our children our economy and our environment. When people can live without having to struggle and stress about the basics of everyday lives that is our work here.I'm proud to support this starting step. The Greens want to make sure that the transformational recommendations in this report—that we have a plan to put it in place so that we can really say with hands on our hearts that we are overhauling welfare. Thank you.