Sepuloni Carmel: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8413. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): That was a very good contribution from my colleague Stuart Nash. Thank you very much Stuart Nash. I just want to refer to the departmental disclosure statement for the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. That states clearly that: “The Bill also makes a number of consequential amendments that result from the increased benefit and tax credit financial assistance and extended work availability obligations. These changes”—as discussed by some of the people in the Chamber—“include: an amendment to the Education Act is required to provide that the Student Allowance CPI adjustment is applied to 31 March 2016 allowance rates before the Package increases to those rates are made on 1 April 2016.” As I have said earlier and as I have pointed out many of the submitters were supportive of this because they did not want sole parents who were studying to be disadvantaged in any way compared with those who may be on the benefit and not yet in work or in study.But there were a number of submitters who looked at this in relation to the in-work tax credits situation. Whenever this came up we had a number of submitters who also pointed out something needed to be done with tax credits. So we had the New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women Inc. which welcomed “the amendments to the Education Act that also allows an adult parent continuing their education who is also classified as low income to be eligible for this payment of $25.” but they “would also like to see this group of New Zealanders entitled to the same work tax credits as those not choosing to further their education.”So that is really interesting because it is not just the New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women Inc. that supported that but also the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services. It thought that “In the context of this bill it would be reasonable to assume the targeted children living in smaller households are more likely to benefit from any additional income received through the proposed policy levers.”—so the benefit rates being lifted by $25; Working for Families $12.50; childcare subsidy a slight increase there; and student assistance—“when compared to the same targeted group living in a larger household”. But it did point out that: “In short the bigger the family/whanau the tighter the financial stretch across each family member.”So the Education Act will be amended to ensure that the $25 increase goes to those sole parents who are studying but the same issue is in place for those students—that is that the bigger the family the more children in that family and the tighter the financial stretch. In fact the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services pointed out some research by Michael Fletcher who is a senior lecturer at Auckland University of Technology. He writes in his analysis of the full package that “a sole parent family with two children will still be around $77 per week below the lowest poverty threshold measured by the Ministry of Social Development” and that is something that I think we should all be concerned about.Although the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services supported the proposed increase to the benefit rate it felt that it did have the potential to create more complexity in the system which could undermine the intent of the Bill so we need to take that into consideration. It also pointed out the fact that $22.456 million over 4 years is identified as the implementation cost of introducing the proposed changes—across the benefit system and across the allowance system. It highlighted that this came up in the regulatory impact statement and that this is really a substantive amount of public money that the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services felt might have better gone directly to the children who are in need. So the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services recommended that the number of children in a household be incorporated into—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Tie it back to Part 2.CARMEL SEPULONI: Yes sure—so that it was not just a $25 increase for students on a student allowance who were sole parents with children or for sole parent beneficiaries; it was not just $25 in the amendment that was given to them but that it would be $25 per child. Obviously that would have had an impact on Part 2—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We are discussing amendments to the Education Act. That is what Part 2 is about.CARMEL SEPULONI: That would have had an impact on the amendments to the Education Act because we would not be amending it—