Hague Kevin: Social Assistance (Living Alone Payments) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hague Kevin: Social Assistance (Living Alone Payments) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:9097. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of my colleague Jan Logie to take a call on the Social Assistance (Living Alone Payments) Amendment Bill. I begin as some others have done this afternoon by wishing Roland a happy birthday. Speaking of getting older I say that the Green Party will continue to support this bill and to vote for it at its third reading. We believe it is a sensible change or sensible couple of changes. 
In particular what it does I think is it adds to administrative efficiency which is something that we could all support in Government department services but also it adds to flexibility. It is sensible to collapse these two categories of assistance into a single one and to make payment of that automatic rather than requiring some process. As Sam Lotu-Iiga referred to the reality is that many of those who needed these payments and who were eligible for them were missing out because they did not know that they needed to apply and nobody told them about them. So it is a sensible measure as I say. 
It is a little frustrating that the Government did not agree to the changes that were proposed by Jacinda Ardern in the Committee stage. They would have increased the flexibility that this bill actually provides by addressing one of the other aspects of the situation of these older people living alone in relation to the dependants. So it is frustrating that the Government chose not to take up that opportunity to actually better realise the principle that was motivating this bill in the first place. 
The other point I would make is that the complexity of the process around living alone payments which this bill seeks to address and the situation of people who are eligible for and entitled to assistance and are not being made aware that such assistance is available is not isolated to this situation and it would be good to see the Government moving to address those problems more broadly. 
The next point I want to make is in relation to the timetable. This bill has been a long time coming to its third reading. The Social Services Committee reported back to the House on 15 April 2011. The select committee’s report actually had amended the bill to change the commencement date to 6 July 2011. Here we are 2 years later practically with a pretty straightforward bill and a pretty straightforward set of changes and I wonder whether the incredibly slow progress of this bill is indicative of a lack of urgency around addressing this kind of problem. I think it would be sad if indeed better addressing the income security needs of older people was a low priority for the Government. 
I want to just briefly reflect as we do sometimes at third readings on some of the context to our income support for older people and in particular to quote Michael Joseph Savage from the 1930s as New Zealand’s social support mechanisms were largely being created for the first time. He said: “The honourable gentlemen”—they were in those days—“on the Opposition benches want to turn back the clocks. I want to know why people should not have security in the evening of their days. What is there more important in Christianity than to be our brothers’ keepers in reality?”. I think Savage’s words have motivated a spirit in New Zealand in all of those intervening years of commitment to supporting our older people. This bill which we sign into law today is a good step towards enhancing and consolidating the support that we provide for older people. In general we have a good record of keeping older people out of poverty. 
But the last point I want to come to in this contribution to the third reading is that we do not in fact follow that principle through to other groups who are in need. While we pass this into law we have some 270000 children in this country living in poverty. As Jan Logie said when will this House when will this Government turn the same attention and the same principles—the good principles that sit behind this bill—to addressing the needs of children who live in poverty to addressing the greatest support to those who have the greatest need? That is what the Green Party stands for. We continue to support this bill. We will vote for it.