Ardern Jacinda: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8392. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is a real opportunity actually to take a call immediately after the Minister for Social Development to speak to some of the points that she has raised. She is right to point out that on this side of the Chamber we take our role as Opposition very seriously. We use evidence as the basis of our positions and as the basis of the arguments that we make in this Chamber. So of course it was to the evidence that we looked when we formulated our own plans around child hardship.So when it comes to Part 1 of the Support for Children in Hardship Bill—because of course we need to keep in mind that this is a bill whose purpose is packaged up as reducing hardship for children—when we look at the evidence base around that what does it tell us that we should be doing on behalf of those children? Well clause 4 in Part 1 as the Minister has rightly pointed out changes the definition of “part-time work” to 20 hours. The argument being made by the Minister of course is that by increasing the threshold of hours that are expected to be worked by families who are on benefits we increase income we increase engagement in the workforce and therefore we presumably reduce hardship in the home. That is not always going to be the case.Firstly we need to take into account of course the abatement regimes that apply to households that are benefit households. If the Government truly wanted to focus on increasing the income of these homes then it would also be looking at abatements and the impact of abatement on families who are in part-time work while also receiving a benefit. That would have been a useful combination of issues to look at because simply increasing the hours required in the threshold test does not necessarily have that wider impact. We as a party have looked at that. We have got a very clear view on the need to increase the number of hours that a benefit family can earn and keep before it starts seeing its benefit abate. So that would have been a useful thing for the Government to do—Carmel Sepuloni: They could have voted for the bill.JACINDA ARDERN: And in fact it could have voted for our bill which was before the House not too long ago. So that would have been a nice thing to add to clause 4 if it was going to increase those hours.The second claim that the Minister has made is that when you look at the evidence around benefit households and their transition back into work—obviously we are primarily talking about sole parent households—they tend to transition into work at the time that their child turns 3 or 4 already before a law change. Of course this piece of legislation in clauses 4 6 7 and 8 reduces the age of children at which the work requirement kicks in for their parents from age 5 to age 3 and the point that the Minister just made herself was that actually by and large parents are already doing that. Why? Because they want to work because they know that in the longer term—even if in that moment with abatement regimes being what they are they are not better off—they end up being better off if they are able to put themselves back into stable employment. Those who can do when the child is at that age—3 and 4.That is the point that we are trying to make on this side of the Chamber: those who can do but it is not a given that that is going to be the best thing for every single family. You may have a family with a child or children who has special needs. You may have a situation where a family is able to find 15 hours that work around early childhood education but it is unable to find 20 hours. It will tack on an extra bit of after-hours cleaning that does not quite work but it juggles it to try to reach the requirement set out by the Government and it then has a wider negative impact on that family’s make-up. Those who can do and those who cannot often have a very legitimate rationale and all that we are saying is that for those extra 2 years—those extra 2 years of making it mandated—what gains are we making if predominantly those families who can are already moving into work?What might be some of those barriers to clauses 4 6 7 and 8 being complied with? Well we have covered some of them off already—the availability of work at hours that are conducive or sit in alignment with early childhood education hours is one of them. Again another thing that the Government could have done in Part 1 if it wanted to ease the pain of trying to find work that worked around early childhood education is it could have increased the hours. It could have increased the hours—the free hours available to families—from 20 to 25.That would mean that even if the Government was then bumping up the hours of work required there might be a bit of buffer for travel time. That might have been a buffer. If it was going to mandate that you be required to work for 20 hours by giving 25 free hours for early childhood education that would have allowed even perhaps a little buffer time for parents to drop off their child and pick up their child around that part-time work. Again something that Labour has promoted is that increase in hours because there is nothing to suggest that increase will have a detrimental effect but it could ease some of the difficulties for those families. So again another missed opportunity.Abatement increasing the early childhood education hours—those would all make a difference for those families if truly it was hardship that this bill was genuinely focused on and not as I am afraid I have come to conclude simply that the Government is giving with one hand and wants to look like it is waving a stick with the other rather than looking at reality. When I say “looking at reality” again when Labour designed its package to try to ease poverty amongst children we did look at the evidence. We looked at where children in poverty can be found. The Child Poverty Monitor 2013 is a really good start for telling us where we need to target. We know now that there are 305000 children living in poverty. That is based on income measures so that is the number who are living on 60 percent or less of the median income. Those in severe poverty—those living on 50 percent or less those in the hardest end of poverty—were at the time that the Children’s Commissioner did this report roughly 10 percent. We know that those often tend to be families who are benefit-reliant and who have younger children and those are the ones who are living in persistent poverty as well. That exists from the age of zero to 4—roughly if we want to take an age range.So if the Government was trying to create a targeted package rather than make necessarily a generic payment of up to $25 per family across the board what it might have done was be more generous in the package but target those families with children under say the age of 3 or 4. That would make the fundamental difference to children living in poverty. How I know that would make a difference is that we did the exact same modelling the Government did when we came up with our own package. We worked out that if you genuinely wanted to make a difference to children living in poverty 25 bucks per family was not going to cut it. The gap between what these families are living on and where our average incomes are required to be to survive has grown so much that as Jonathan Boston has modelled you need payments that are as generous as an increase of roughly $60. So that is why our Best Start package was modelled around a $60 payment per child and I would love to hear the Minister’s view on why she went for a per-family payment rather than a per-child payment which was the recommendation that was set out by the Children’s Commissioner and the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty.In fact I would be really interested in the Minister’s views on some of those recommendations generally which again suggested that those payments be heavily weighted towards children on the younger end of the spectrum rather than our current regime which tends to weight to older children and makes assumptions about the cost of feeding and clothing and so on and does not take into account that it is easier for caregivers to work part-time or full-time at that point in the child-rearing stage. So we should be weighting the payment towards younger children also not only because it is harder to be in work and care but also because those are the most critical child-rearing periods. The first year—or first 3 years of life in fact—is the most critical in terms of attachment brain development and so on. So that is where our support should be targeted.Those are some of the reasons why the evidence base in our view around clauses 4 6 7 and 8 is contradictory and in fact could have the counter-effect of doing more harm than good even though there is some good in this bill. The increased payment is good. We are pleased about that. Our concern is the generosity and if of course there was a limit to the amount the Government was going to spend it could have made a trade-off and really weighted it at one end of the spectrum.I want to use my final contribution to support Supplementary Order Papers 135 136 and 137 in Carmel Sepuloni’s name. One amendment makes part-time study an alternative to part-time work. That gives longer-term options for families. The other is to retain 5 as the age and the other is to make the work requirement for parents of under-fives dependent—dependent—on access to early childhood education. The Minister has mentioned that. If it is her view that that is what is needed to make the bill work why will she not legislate for it and give that discretion in the legislation to allow parents if they cannot find adequate early childhood education to not have that requirement mandated upon them in the absence of that?