Wall Louisa: Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWall Louisa: Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11579. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Malo lava le soifua Le Fofoga Fetalai. It is my pleasure to take a call on this the second reading of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill as Labour’s youth spokesperson. I have not had much to do with the passage of this particular piece of legislation but obviously I am incredibly interested in it. What I have done is take the time just to read through as much of the material as possible and to simplify it. I am going to share it with the House.This piece of legislation is about amending the Social Security Act 1964 and extending the Youth Service. It is going to apply to all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children and 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children who are considered to be at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency. They are the “who” but the “who” is incredibly important if you look at two particular submissions to the Social Services Committee. I would like to quote from those submissions.The first was from the Salvation Army which says that “In general The Salvation Army opposes the intent and much of the content of the Bill. The principle [sic] reason for this opposition is that the Army believes that is both paternalistic and somewhat contradictory to treat 18 and 19 year olds in the same way as 16 and 17 year olds. The Army believes that it is important to respect individuals’ legal and civil rights ahead of particular policy objectives which may in themselves be of questionable value. It is the Army’s opinion that the proposed extension of ‘young persons services’ and the associated obligations and sanctions to 18 and 19 year olds is a clear example of the State placing its policy objectives ahead of the legitimate rights of citizens and that as a practice this is unwise and unfair.”I would now like to quote from the Human Rights Commission submission. I found it interesting that “The Attorney-General’s report on the Bill’s consistency with the NZBORA notes that the Bill discriminates against young beneficiary parents and ‘at risk’ 18 and 19 year olds on the grounds of age”. I find it really interesting that in terms of the “who” in terms of who will be impacted most by this piece of legislation we have had two organisations say that actually this legislation is discriminatory and it should not be taking choices away from that cohort.A previous bill that we discussed in this House was the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill—and I am glad that my colleague the Hon Annette King is here because on 11 May this year in the Committee stage there were lots of debate about whether we should ban sunbeds. National’s position in that debate was that no we should not. We should protect children—that is fair enough; those who are up to the age of 18—but if you are over 18 you are an adult and so we should not take away your rights. That was the philosophical position in that particular debate of both the Minister of Health Dr Jonathan Coleman and Simon O’Connor who is chair of the Health Committee. So I wanted to highlight the “who”.In terms of the “why”—actually the “why” is very clear. The “why” is all about the money. The Better Public Services framework I suppose has an objective to reduce long-term welfare dependency which actually is about reducing beneficiary numbers by 25 percent and the overall cost—not investment everybody—by $13 billion. That is actually the driver of this piece of legislation. The Government can talk about investment and about valuing young people but actually at the end of the day its primary objective is to save money. So let us just put that on the table. That is the “why”.So then we look at the “what”. How the Government plans to do all this is through the Youth Service. I took the time to download the report. The Youth Service was established in August 2012 to address the extremely high risk of long-term benefit dependency. The Youth Service was established with the objective of helping a group of vulnerable young people. There was a report that was produced after the first 18 months of the service and I have that particular evaluation. What I would like to highlight from that evaluation is this which is at the bottom of page 1: “Many young people who enter Youth Service have serious or complex issues that require intensive support. For example a review of Youth Payment grants by Work and Income found that 38 per cent of applicants were victims of domestic violence 76 per cent suffered emotional neglect and 5 per cent were homeless or victims of sexual abuse.”I think for me the most important aspect of that analysis is to ask how we support the young people who through no fault of their own are living in those circumstances. If the underlying intent of this piece of legislation is to put in the services and support so that this group of vulnerable young people can have their needs met then actually I think we would support that 100 percent. One of the other aspects of this piece of legislation is around risk assessment and risk modelling. How are we going to find these young people whom actually we are going to treat as children? How do we find them?I would like to acknowledge that the Greens wrote a minority report within the select committee report; they are opposing the bill. They are opposing it on solid grounds. But one of the things that they highlighted was the risks—who knows what they will be? They may be about whether they have been with Child Youth and Family (CYF). They may be based on gender. I think the Minister has alluded that educational outcomes and the reason for leaving school were some of the reasons. But what we do know is that from 2013 the Government has been working quite seriously on this issue. For example there is a Government data project. It was looking at four indicators. It was about whether or not children had engaged with CYF and there was a finding of abuse or neglect whether or not there were long-term dependency issues in those families whether or not a parent had a corrective sentence and whether or not the mother had a formal qualification.But the interesting thing to note about that data project was that it looked at different cohorts of children. It looked at the zero to 5 cohort the 6 to 14 cohort and the 15 to 24 cohort. I wonder based on all that information why the project is not dealing with the zero to 5 cohort. Why is there not a whole lot of investment going into those children really early on in their lives—making sure they have a house to live in making sure they have a roof over their heads and kai in their puku; and making sure that mum is well supported so that yes she is getting support to be a better parent through budgeting advice so that we are going to make it easier for her to get further education and make their lives so much better? But no this Government would rather wait until they are 18 and 19-year-olds and it will use a big hammer on these kids. That is part of the issue that we have with this piece of legislation.The other key thing I would like to highlight is from the Greens minority report but it was also one of the concerns raised by Kay Breerton I think of the National Beneficiary Advocacy Consultation Group.Carmel Sepuloni: Great woman.LOUISA WALL: What is her name sorry?Carmel Sepuloni: Kay Brereton.LOUISA WALL: Kay Brereton—yes. What she said or what is written here is that they support wraparound services but expressed the view that making young people’s income dependent on meeting certain obligations fundamentally changed for the worse the relationship between the young people and the people in a position to help them. So basically what that means is that telling young people what to do is going to have the opposite effect from what we want it to have. So that is a fundamental flaw in this piece of legislation.I hope the Minister has been listening to my contribution given I have taken the time to read through everything and to contribute to the second reading debate. But I do want to reiterate what my colleague and lead on the Social Services Committee and in the social development portfolio Carmel Sepuloni said. We will be proposing a number of amendments to this piece of legislation. I think we are really clear that if the Government does not want to listen and will not support some of the amendments we have proposed based on quotes from people like Kay then we will not support this piece of legislation. We do not believe that it is in the best interests of young people. Kia ora.