Sepuloni Carmel: Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 23 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5287. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): We had much discussion about the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill in our caucus. It is with some major reservations that we will be supporting the bill’s referral to a select committee but we will be raising those concerns at the select committee and today I will highlight with the Minister for Social Development and with the National Government some of those very serious concerns that we have.I am going to start by saying why we will support this bill or the aspects of the bill that we can support. Really that starts with the fact that 19-year-olds will have access to the Youth Service and all the wraparound supports that come with that Youth Service. We support the idea that we put measures in place to ensure that our young people have access to—and all beneficiaries actually should have access to—higher-level education and have access and support to get into work. We do not disagree with the fact that our youth who are beneficiaries should have access to not only education but budgeting support and if they are young parents parenting programmes. We support that. We support the fact that in here there is a very small monetary incentive but at least it is a monetary incentive—a $10-a-week incentive payment—for those who meet their obligations. It is good to see a little bit of carrot rather than the stick that we have constantly seen from the National Government.But as for some of the concerns we have I am going to start with the fact that even in the purpose of the bill these young people are deemed as being at risk of long-term welfare dependency. I want to ask how the Government can assess these young people from such a young age as being at risk of welfare dependency. It is a stigma that the Government has already attached to them and actually it is part of the National Government and the Ministry of Social Development’s predictive risk model framework for risk of long-term welfare dependency that actually we are a little bit uncomfortable with. The reason we are uncomfortable with this predictive risk model is the fact that no beneficiary is informed that they are being rated in any way as being at low medium or high risk of welfare dependency. They are not being told that they are being rated. They are not being told what they are being rated for or what the measures are that they being rated against; they are just being assessed. They are actually being used in some ways as research guinea pigs and they do not even realise that this has happened. I have got real concerns that that is a breach of their privacy because when you are being ranked or rated by a Government department for anything you at least should have the right to know what you are being rated and ranked for and what measures are in place for that.We have got real concerns about the general culture of Work and Income. In some ways that is why we will support this bill because our young people are getting support from the Youth Service rather than the Work and Income offices which are providing very poor support actually under the National Government not because there are not good people in there wanting to do a good job but because they are working under a framework of a toxic culture that has been created by that National Government. That is one of the reasons why we have to support this bill. If it takes our young people out of that toxic culture of Work and Income and provides them with the wraparound services and support that Work and Income actually should be offering then we have no choice but to support that.We have got real concerns in general about the way beneficiaries are being treated and that actually includes our young people here. When we are talking about the $10 incentive that these young people are going to get as I said it is good to see a little bit of carrot but that is not going to go far. When we look at what this bill is asking for it is actually saying that these young people—19-year-old parents—will be required to go into full-time study or work in some instances when their child is 6 months old. I am not opposed to young people being put into study or being encouraged to go into study or work but there has got to be some discretion in terms of people’s different circumstances. I am unsure of whether or not Work and Income or Youth Service or the Government for that matter are able to discern or use their discretion to decide when that should be or should not be used. We saw on the website when looking this up that they will be required if there is a teen parenting unit to go into full-time study or work when the child is 6 months old. If there is no teen parenting unit within their area it will be when that child is a year old.So there is a little bit of a difference here—well actually a huge difference—between the way in which these young parents are going to be treated compared with the 20-year-old or older sole parent who actually does not have to go into part-time work or study until at the moment their youngest child turns 5—but we know that the Government is looking at shifting that to 3—unless because the Government implemented this other measure they have a subsequent child while on a benefit and then have to go into part-time work or study when that child turns 1. So there is a differentiation here between the way young parents are being treated compared with the way that parents who are 20 years old or older are being treated. We in this House all know whether or not we are in this situation ourselves that it is a really hard task not just being a sole parent but being a young parent. I want to have faith in the National Government that it will provide the supports that these young people these young parents need but how can I have faith given some of the things that we have seen recently?The Minister says that she wants to have a focus on making sure that these young people are in education that they are in employment and that the National Government is focused on ensuring that their aspirations are met but the reality is from what we have seen with people on the jobseeker support that it has not been about helping people realise their aspirations; it has been about getting them off benefits regardless of whether or not they are going into work. We saw that recently actually with the Minister’s own numbers that came out at the end of March when there were 11696 benefit cancellations and of those 11696 benefit cancellations only 2410 of them were cancelled because beneficiaries obtained work. What happened to the rest? Well actually the Minister does not care what happened to the rest. Actually the Minister said in the Social Services Committee during the estimates that it is not necessarily about going into employment; it is about going into independence. How independent can someone be if they are not only no longer in receipt of a benefit but not in paid employment? How independent can someone be? But did the Minister hear? No. Is the National Government collecting information on what happens to people when they go off benefits? No. Should we not therefore be concerned that the same behaviour the same actions the same process is potentially going to be rolled out here with our very vulnerable young people? Well yes we should be concerned and we are concerned and we will be monitoring this very closely when it goes to the select committee to try to make sure that the same things do not happen with these young people.The Minister says she is aspirational for these young people who are on benefits. Well I simply just do not believe that. In fact I want to go back to the select committee where her own chief executive officer of the Ministry of Social Development when asked “Aren’t you concerned about these people who have had benefits cancelled but who have not gone on to work?” said “Well they have other means.” If someone is not in receipt of income from work or from a benefit then what does he mean by “other means”? The Minister sat there and she nodded her head like that was true. Well they have got no income coming in from work they have got no income coming in from benefits and the number of those who have gone on to further study is minute. The number of those who had benefits cancelled because of the fact that they had passed away or moved overseas or their marital status had changed was minute. What are the other means that the Minister’s official was talking about? To be completely honest we were left there gobsmacked going: “Well actually how could they make money if they are not getting any money from paid work or from a benefit?”. And the only answers we could come up with were crime possibly; begging on the street; or prostitution. Those are three examples of other means which are perhaps what the Minister is implying when she talks about people being independent from the State. Obviously they are independent from paid employment because there is no information to prove that they are going on to work.We have real reservations about this bill but we will be supporting it to a select committee and we will be having robust discussion at that select committee to make sure we hold the Government to account on the way in which it treats our young people who are in receipt of a benefit. Thank you.