Mark Ron: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMark Ron: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2638. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RON MARK (NZ First):I stand to take another call on behalf of New Zealand First just to clarify the issues having finally got my head around Minister the stray the phantom new sections 79(3)(a) and 79(3)(b). I am pleased that I persevered because it was just vexing me somewhat. I guess in summary what I now understand about this bill—and my colleague Darroch Ball has ably articulated this in his opening comments but I need to go through these steps because it helps me understand what has happened here. This bill came to the House in 2011. It was referred to the Social Services Committee on 6 April 2011. As Darroch Ball has said there were a couple of submissions heard and the submissions closed on 28 April. A few submissions were heard and it was reported back to the House. It is now very clear to me that it sat and languished in the House from that point.On 17 March 2015 we had presented to us Supplementary Order Paper 56. On 24 March—what is that? Two days ago? Two days ago we were presented with Supplementary Order Paper 64. Supplementary Order Paper 64 seeks to amend Supplementary Order Paper 56. It is within Supplementary Order Paper 56 that the phantom new sections that my people could not find 79(3)(a) and 79(3)(b) reside. It is those provisions that Supplementary Order Paper 64 seeks to amend. It is like the amendment to the amended amendment and so the story goes on. What I have got to say is that it is quite astonishing because collectively between them Supplementary Order Papers 56 and 64 are bigger than the original bill. How bizarre is that? So—Hon Ruth Dyson: Say that again. Say that again.RON MARK: I am holding two pieces of paper here. If I look at Supplementary Order Paper 56 and Supplementary Order Paper 64 and I hold up the original bill they are bigger than the original bill. Yet Parliament and the Government saw fit to send the original bill to the Social Services Committee to be examined. One would have thought that with such considerable amendments and then amendments to the amendments the Government might well say: “Well let us refer this bill back to the select committee 4 years later—4 years later—just to ensure that we had everything correct.”What we now know from the debate tonight—and my colleague Darroch Ball has raised New Zealand First’s concerns about student loans and the impacts on them and we have heard countless speakers from the Labour team once again raising their concerns—everybody agrees and this is the nonsense of it all. Please Government please Minister after Sunday let us reflect on how this House should be run. It is time to consult and talk to all the members of the House. If one does that then we can iron out these things and where we agree on stuff we can move it through the House and save the taxpayer a hell of a lot of money. That is something that I hear a lot of Government members banging on about: wanting to save taxpayers’ money reduce compliance reduce costs and reduce red tape. What we have right now is we are moving through the Committee two amendments to the bill which appear to be larger than the original bill without having put them to a select committee. Here this evening getting close to half past 9 at night we are having to answer questions that we could have answered in the select committee and progressed this bill a lot more smoothly.I am comfortable with the Minister’s explanation and I thank the Minister very much for that. I would have liked to see a better response from the previous Minister on the other issues pertaining to veterans’ affairs and adjustments to that KiwiSaver legislation that went through. I do not think that is the end of the matter because there are those of us who are always going to be conscious and wary about any legislation that is first retrospective—first retrospective—and secondly that impacts on veterans particularly at a time when we are creating new veterans by dispatching more people off to war zones around the world.One thing we know for sure as members of Parliament—and I say so across the whole of the Chamber—there is nothing more frustrating than trying to deal with officials and bureaucrats be they at ACC or Work and Income when trying to do the best by our veterans who may have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder or accidents that have then thrown them straight back into the ACC system or who may have lost a foot had an injury that one cannot recover from or had a wound. There is nothing more frustrating than having to fight the bureaucracy and the red tape as an MP. I say that on behalf of all MPs because I know all MPs throughout the Chamber struggle with those issues in their electorate offices time and time again. But we struggle because we do not always get it right here. We struggle because often we pass retrospective legislation without thinking for 1 minute that there might be half a dozen 10 or 12 people caught up adversely.