Menéndez March Ricardo; Sepuloni CarmelRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Kia ora Madam Chair. It's a privilege to stand here today to put some questions for the Minister on issues around our welfare system and particularly the interface that our homeless community faces with Work and Income. For the majority of the period that we're reviewing I was not a member of Parliament. I was actually at the phone lines working with our homeless community and people on the benefit helping them access their entitlements at Work and Income. One of the policies that I'm seeking some comment and answers on is the decision to charge our people in emergency housing 25 percent of their weekly income. I have been really concerned about the decision on this seeing as I agree with the Ministry of Social Development's advice around some of the disadvantages of this policy which risks creating significant hardship on people and the fact that no evidence has been able to be provided on the fact that not charging 25 percent of people's income may actually incentivise our homeless community to stay in emergency housing. I don't believe anyone wants to be in a motel wants to be in emergency housing and the people who do have to be in emergency housing they don't do it because they want to or they don't do it because it's an easy option. They do it because they don't have access to a home to live in. So my question is around the decision and particularly around evidence that the Minister had when making this decision that people were actually staying in emergency housing because it was free of cost and whether the Minister considers that this system of charging 25 percent of people's income who stay in emergency accommodation ultimately results in a sort of weird vicious cycle where people are having to go back to Work and Income to get a hardship grant due to this policy.This sort of hardship could be just avoided by supporting people on the housing waiting list by supporting them to find alternative accommodation if that's what they need without creating the hardship that this policy has created. I'm interested in the evidence and the rationale behind the decision made by the Minister that this was creating a perverse incentive for people to stay in a motel when the people who are there didn't cause the housing crisis. Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Thank you to the member for the question and I acknowledge the work that that member was doing prior to becoming a member of Parliament. We did make the announcement about the co-payment for people that are in emergency accommodation I think quite early on last year. I think the intention was actually to bring it into force around mid-year but because of COVID and the fact that we had quite a lot as an agency going on that was delayed until November. That decision came about from conversations mostly with community housing providers as well as insights from Ministry of Social Development (MSD) staff who were working at the front line with housing but mostly from the community housing providers themselves who told us that they were seeing a reluctance in some situations for people to move from emergency housing into transitional or into public housing. Recognising that with transitional housing and public housing there was an expectation that people will pay 25 percent of their income towards the accommodation that they are in then we thought with those insights that were given to us and the fact that that is the expectation for transitional and for public housing that for fairness for consistency and in light of what we were told it made sense to introduce the co-payment.Twenty-five percent I recognise for people that are on low incomes is still money out of their weekly income and I recognise there are some still that need to access hardship payments in some instances for a number of reasons. Sometimes it's because of debt. It's a range of different reasons. MSD is still able to provide hardship payments in those situations and still does. So I understand that that member doesn't support the decision that we made as a Government but as Minister I stand by that decision and there is no intention to change that policy decision.