Seymour David; Tinetti JanDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well I thank the Minister for that very interesting answer and for people watching this at home this committee is debating whether or not people should have to look for work after one year after having a child while on a benefit. That was a great example of why people lose faith in politics. A great example of ducking and avoiding the question. We heard from the Minister that there was a working group and that they did some research and it didn't come out of thin air—no one was saying that any of this came out of thin air. The question was very simple: will this policy lead to an increase in benefit dependency and does the Government believe that benefit dependency—other things being equal—is bad for children's welfare and development? Two very simple questions and we kind of got an answer at the end.Without pointing to anything in particular the Minister told us that she doesn't believe that requiring people to go out and look for a job has any effect on welfare dependency. Well that's another extraordinary claim because if it's true that requiring people to look for a job a year after having a kid on a benefit has no effect on whether or not people go out and get a job and get off benefits then you have to ask why are we here doing it? You'd have to assume that people are going out and getting a job anyway in which case we never needed this policy. Or on the other hand here's another possibility—what the Minister just said is not supported by the evidence. Actually having a requirement to look for a job a year after you have a kid on a benefit results in more people than would otherwise look for a job more people working and fewer people dependent on benefits. That sounds like a more plausible explanation especially when the Government itself is looking to remove the requirement. Why would they remove a requirement that didn't make any difference as the Minister claims?So I want to put the question back to the Minister. If it's true that a requirement to look for work doesn't reduce dependence on benefits then why are we removing it? If it doesn't make any difference then surely we don't need to make any change to the law. That's the first question. Why are we making the change if it doesn't have any effect?Number two I want to ask about equity which the Minister mentioned. The Minister said that she's very concerned about equity. Well perhaps she could talk to us and please be direct. We don't need to know about what did or didn't come out of thin air whether there was a working group whether there was a select committee; we just want a Minister with the data at her fingertips who can inform this committee about the law we're passing OK? That's all we want.What we'd like her to do is tell us how do working parents behave? How many working parents have to go out and actually get a job within a year of having a kid? How many people who have a kid in New Zealand get to take more than a year off? Or put it this way—what proportion of working parents in New Zealand have to go back to work within one year? Because I can tell the member when I think about all my friends—I'm at a time of life when a lot of my friends are having kids—they ain't taking a year off. They're back to work. I just wonder if their experience is common or how many people that have a kid in New Zealand at the moment are back to work within one year? And if the Minister can tell us that maybe we can think about whether this policy is truly equitable. So that's two questions that we're very keen to hear the answer to.Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs): on behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment: I'm quite happy to help out that member who obviously hasn't listened to my answers from before. So firstly to start with his second question—that's outside the scope of this bill. That does not come into this bill whatsoever. The equity that I have talked about with this bill is that as the Act stands at the moment we talk about the children from zero to three three to 14 and this particular policy setting makes an inequitable change to that by talking about then the nought to one. It takes away from the fact that it treats the first child very different to subsequent children and that is the inequitable setting and that is wrong if we're talking about children to treat them differently and talk about inequity between. That is the difference and what I have said here already today is that we are talking about the equity between the children as it stands in the Act at the moment and equity with the Act.But I also would like to point out that key themes from submission in support of the bill were that the policy impacts child development doesn't reflect on parents' caring responsibilities currently as it stands at the moment causes toxic stress as it stands at the moment it disproportionately impacts Māori and women and that has been identified throughout from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. It has created inequities in the welfare system has not achieved its intended purpose puts pressure on low-income families to have fewer children and contributes to hardship and poverty.I go back to what I believe is a fundamental of all parties across this party the belief that the first 1000 days—and I definitely know it's the National Party's policies because they put it out in their election campaign about their seven-point plan around the first 1000 days—but the first 1000 days in a child's life are incredibly important. This policy setting change—as I said a small change that we are making here—ensures that we have really put that importance and are showing that importance on that first 1000 days.