Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. How great is it that the conversation has finally shifted from not how undeserving people on the benefit are but by how much benefits need to go up so that people can live with dignity. For decades people on the benefit and front-line advocates have been organising and campaigning to lift incomes so everyone can live with dignity despite successive governments being hostile to people on the benefit either by cutting income support or adding punitive sanctions as late as 2013 by the previous National Government. And while not many of us vividly remember the mother of all Budgets" or were even alive to witness it we have lived under its effects which have meant a record number of people have needed food grants from Work and Income to survive.In recent years we've seen a chorus of incredibly diverse voices calling for livable incomes and an overhaul of the welfare system: unions faith groups poverty groups and over 70 organisations came together last year to rally for increasing benefits. The Green Party has proudly stood by these calls since our inception. We've tirelessly worked to bring about change so people can thrive not just survive. I want to take an opportunity to pay tribute to former co-leader Metiria Turei who in 2017 shone a light—as well as many other people on the benefit who have spoken out—on our inadequate welfare system and the fact that low incomes criminalise some of our most vulnerable and force them to lie to Work and Income in order to survive. This is a direct result of policy making by successive Governments and it's great that this Budget is finally turning the ship around and we're seeing an increase to core benefits.The increases to benefits this year would not have happened without the confidence and supply agreement we had with the Labour Party last term which led to the creation of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG) who recommended an urgent increase to benefit levels as well as a raft of other changes to our welfare system. We're proud of the work we achieved with the Labour Party that led to the report and has now started the work in overhauling the welfare system but we know there is far more work to do.We supported this year's Budget because we want to see benefits lifted we want to see people's ability to fully participate in their society but we do not just want to live in the past and look at the poor decisions of past Governments. We want to project to a future where our welfare system is fit for purpose. And so while we think it's great to see an outright rejection of the rhetoric laid out in the "mother of all Budgets" in the 1990s we now see it as an opportunity to match this rhetoric with action and policy that meets the needs of our communities because before the "mother of all Budgets" our welfare system was already broken. We had a welfare system that still accepted that people who found support and relationships didn't deserve to have their income with them—that they were made to be dependent on their partner. We still had a welfare system that accepted that people outside of paid employment didn't make meaningful substantive contributions to society. So there is far more work to do.The Government acknowledged that benefits were not high enough to live on with dignity last year when the income relief payment came about which was $490—almost double the benefit rate at the time. This was an acknowledgment that people who were becoming unemployed couldn't simply go on a main job seeker benefit in order to survive—that benefits needed to go a lot higher. The Minister acknowledged just pretty much a couple of weeks ago that $315 wasn't an amount that was easy to live on and acknowledged that far more work needs to be done. So the Green Party will continue campaigning to increase core benefits as well as bring about a raft of changes.So we want to acknowledge that the increases in this Budget to benefits were a direct result of the recommendations of the WEAG report. We think that the WEAG report was made before COVID. It was made at a time when the cost of living wasn't as high as it is right now so we want to make sure that we continue working to individualise income support that we make sure that temporary additional support doesn't eat away the increases in benefits that people have in their pocket the amounts laid out in this Budget by the time their paycheque comes we want to remove punitive sanctions and we want to ensure that people can thrive not just survive. That should be the end goal of all of us in this House: to ensure that people have a right to a life of dignity. Kia ora."