Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition to the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill. The bill proposes to remove the subsequent child policy also known as the additional dependent child policy from the Social Security Act. The reason I speak in opposition of this is very similar to my colleague Nicola Grigg who talks about how it's misplaced kindness. National of course believes that the welfare system must be a safety net. We believe that those without a job should get support and incentives to re-enter the workforce and of course we believe that it's absolutely important for parents to have time to develop strong bonds and connection with their children. It would be foolish of any of us to deny that.The OECD makes a really important comment about employment and poverty. The OECD says paid work is the most effective way of reducing the risk of family poverty enhancing child development and generally giving children the best start in life—not a" way not possibly something that could be done but the most effective way of reducing the risk of family poverty enhancing child development and generally giving children the best start in life. And if we believe that to be true then we should all be moving heaven and earth to ensure that we assist parents to get into employment because if we don't we are in effect saying we don't care about family poverty we don't care about children's development and we don't care about giving them the best start in life.I spent a lot of my time as you know as the chief executive of the Southern Institute of Technology. The polytech sector is an absolutely amazing place for second-chance education—I have seen tens of thousands of particularly women wanting to return to the workforce after starting their family. And I have lost count of how many women would contact me at the end of their studies and say what a change it has made in their life. I watched many of those women come in tentatively unsure of themselves lacking confidence and by the time they had got themselves on to a pathway for employment they were completely different women. They knew that they were being role models for their family and how incredibly important that was for them and their family. But under Labour what we are seeing is dependency.Now I listened carefully to Jan Logie of the Green Party talk about the kindness and what needs to be done for our parents and our young people. I think that she is saying those things with an absolute best of intent. This Labour Government has that sort of intent in so many different areas that appearance of being kind. But in fact it is not kind to take away the dignity of a person. It is not kind to take away their self-determination. It is extremely unkind to ensure that that dependency and that lack of thinking of self-worth is there because of the policies and the structures that you put around our parents particularly our sole parents.I listened to my colleague talk earlier about elevating parents of elevating mothers so that they are role models. And I would urge the other side of the House to think about that to think about ensuring that our parents can have dignity and self-determination and be elevated—not oppressed not to ensure that they are dependent because that does not serve them well and certainly does not serve their children well.I heard that there was a lot of talk about the National Party's 2020 policy on the first thousand days. There is nothing inconsistent with our stance on this amendment and the first thousand days wanting to see the first thousand days of a child's life be a really important and supported part of their life. Of course we want to see the wraparound support to ensure that a mother or the caregiver can get out and retrain and put themselves on a pathway to employment as well as supporting them to be able to look after their child as well as ensuring that good early childhood centres are available for them to put their child into and as well as promoting the self-determination of that family to do good for themselves; not to be constantly looking at the State to look after them.Now this seems to be a theme that goes on through this Labour Government of ensuring people are dependent and looking to the Government and looking to the State and thinking that the State will look after them. In the long term that is not going to serve those people well. It is not going to serve those families well. It is not going to show them that they can be elevated. As my colleague said it is not going to bring about the sort of things that this appearance of kindness says it's going to. So the National Party certainly does not want to have a bar of this encouraging dependency and this crisis of dependency that we are starting to see and that is so favoured by this Government. National will always stand for people being able to get ahead themselves. Of course we will always want to be there and give the assistance and give the support but we want that self-determination and that movement up to come about by the people being able to take their own responsibility.So in conclusion we cannot support this bill in that it removes one of—just one of—those policies and those steps and those structures that helps encourage people along their pathway. Thank you Madam Speaker."