Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. If we cut through the waffle of what we heard from the Minister and see through the advice and the evidence this is a bill that will increase poverty. Our communities are served better than a Minister who doesn't actually understand the welfare system she's been put in charge of running because she is completely ignoring the fact that this is a bill that will see lower increases to benefits over the medium term that will see disabled people disproportionately affected. The cumulative losses will result in disabled people being over $2000 worse off than they would have been if we kept things as they are in four years.So when the Minister stands up and talks about the short-term impacts that's incredibly indicative of a Government that doesn't think of future generations and only thinks about the short-term gains at the expense of rising poverty of rising inequality and rising hardship in our communities. The Minister at no point has been able to be up front and clear about the impacts that this bill will have in the medium term. She talks about the other—on the one hand she says she's going to increase poverty and she admits that this will increase poverty; then she says she's going to have other interventions in place to mitigate that.But what are those interventions? So far she keeps talking about tax relief that will disproportionately benefit those on the highest incomes. She's taking away from the people who are doing it the toughest to put in place tax relief that will benefit those that are already living comfortably. This is a Government that will therefore increase inequality. She missed opportunities to actually support families into work. We put in place amendments that would have better supported families entering employment. The Minister was not interested. During the debate when we tried to unpack what actions she was actually going to take to support people transitioning from a benefit into employment there was nothing. So sure she talks about the other interventions she wishes to make to mitigate the reality that this bill will increase poverty and there are none that she can actually back up with evidence that will actually alleviate hardship. And even if she had other interventions in place you don't actually end poverty in the country by making it worse for some people and less worse for another because we have to remember that the people who she's choosing to scapegoat the people who she's choosing to dehumanise are going to suffer as a result of this piece of legislation. All at the same time the savings that she claims she will make by reducing benefit increases will be passed on to more people needing hardship grants just to make ends meet. All that she is doing actually is that she will be passing the buck to front-line Work and Income staff members who will then have to deliver more hardship grants because people will be worse off. Then when she says the quiet part out loud about what this bill is supposed to do which is to actually widen the gap between what people earn on a benefit and those in unemployment she ignores the fact that affects people who may be losing a job and may be needing support to get by because when you actually have a wider gap between benefit levels and employment you effectively scar the wages of people who are put in a situation where they're living below the poverty line and then they are put in a desperate situation where they have to accept jobs in the short term that may pay less that may have nothing to do with their qualifications. So this bill effectively by widening the gap between working people and those who are out of paid employment is punishing people who want to go into work. It is effectively going to increase the wage gap—both the gender and ethnic wage gap—and it is going to contribute to low wages.So let's make it really clear. This bill will affect people—in a negative way—who are trying to get into paid employment. When she talks in her absolutely ableist language about if people can work they should" she forgets the fact that some of the people who she is punishing the most in this bill are people who are not in a position to enter employment because they have really serious medical conditions; people who are disabled and are not able to work who they themselves—because actually we shouldn't need medical certificates for people's lived experiences to be taken seriously. But the people who have told us that they're not in a position because of their disability or because they may be experiencing severe health conditions those are the people who are going to be punished the most by this bill. So let's cut the BS from the Minister and actually accept that this is a bill that will punish disabled people the hardest. The people who she thinks can simply go to Work and Income and get a job despite for example having a cancer diagnosis and not being in a position to do so those are the people she is punishing the most. When it comes to families with children who are going to be affected by lower benefit increases what does she think will happen to the children when you put a household into further hardship? You're condemning the children in those households to poor health and education outcomes effectively creating long-term and possibly intergenerational harm; the harm that lower benefit increases cause as a result of this bill is long term. The harm that we do in the weeks that people may be experiencing—or months that people may be experiencing on those benefits—has profound year- and generational-long impacts because if a family is not able to actually meet the cost of rent as a result of poverty levels that are set below the poverty lines they have to move from the area that they're in to another area that creates transience for those children. Children cannot afford medication as a result of poverty levels that have been set by this Government. That affects the long-term health of the children impacted by this bill. So the Minister talks about the so-called short-term gains but fails to see the long-term harm that she is causing. She can't conjure high wages and people finding secure work just by demonising beneficiaries and simply talking about it. That's her focus as a part of this piece of legislation. Earlier in the House she could not even substantiate whether those so-called initiatives were to support people into employment. So the goals that the Minister continuously talks about are not backed up by the lived experience of beneficiaries and will only cause more harm. I just really wish that the legacy parties understood what is happening right now which is to actually turn benefit indexation into a political football. The previous Government had a chance to accept my recommendations and amendments to index benefits to wages or inflation whichever was higher to ensure that we guarantee the best and highest possible benefit increases so that a rising tide supports everyone. We put a similar amendment in this legislation that was not supported by National. There is no interest from the legacy parties to stop the political football on how we increase benefits annually to just actually take into account that we could all rally together to support people having enough to live on and turn these annual increases into a conversation on what else we need to do rather than for example as the National Party and their coalition partners are doing is: how can we take the most from people on the benefit to fund tax cuts that will disproportionately support wealthy people? So it should not be the case that we put a stake in the ground and say "We told you so" because we have a duty of care for our communities and right now we have a duty of care to do everything in our power to fight back against a Government that will increase poverty. But I'll tell you right now: in four years' time what we will see is more families queuing up at Work and Income needing hardship grants to make ends meet. We will see more families taking up debt whether it is from loan companies or from advances from the Government just to survive as a result of those benefit increases being lower than they would have been otherwise. What the Minister once again fails to understand and acknowledge which will result in these things is that we're talking about benefit increases to benefit levels that have already been set below the poverty line by successive Governments. These are not benefits that are livable levels; these are benefits that both sides of the House have decided to set below the poverty line and then this Government has decided that we should increase below-the-poverty-line benefits even more slowly—effectively condemning generations to living below the poverty line.The harm that this will cause will be seen by multiple and subsequent reports over the medium term by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). MSD will show it to the Minister and the Minister as she's shown us through the debate won't care because she didn't show any consideration to the best available evidence during the bill going through Parliament and she clearly doesn't seem to care for the evidence going forward; meaning that the coalition papers around using best data and available evidence is nothing nothing but lip service because this is a Government that is running on how to make life hardest on those already struggling to get by. These are the politics of cruelness and the Green Party won't stand by them."