Logie Jan: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Social Security (Clothing Allowances for Orphans and Unsupported Children) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2863. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I too would like to offer my congratulations to Tracey Martin on getting things this far. I will speak mostly to my Supplementary Order Paper 70 which relates to how Mrs Martin has managed to get the bill this far. It was a feat of quite supreme nuancing and finessing to be able to get this bill through the Social Services Committee and to get the Government to make adjustments to be able to keep this bill alive.It is a real credit to you to have been able to do that to keep this bill alive but I sense that it is not what you ultimately wanted because I know that this bill has come from Grandparents Raising Grandchildren and that Mrs Martin has been working very closely with those people all the way through. The fact is that they are now contacting us—or actually they are not contacting us so much; it is the children who are contacting us—as MPs in this House and I am sure that probably everyone in this House has had the letters and has seen the photos of these children. They are what this is about.The fact is that you have managed to keep this alive but I believe it is our duty now to respond to those children’s requests and to your perseverance in keeping it alive by taking this opportunity to give this House the chance to say: “Hang on. Actually do we really want to make those children wait until 2018? Do we really believe that our budgets are so constrained that we cannot afford that little extra for those children to be able to have new clothes to wear to school?”.I cannot imagine anyone standing up in this Chamber and actually saying you know: “My account for it is that it is a maximum of $8 million a year.” It is not anywhere near that amount because that is looking at the total sum for over 12000 children and at the full amount on top of $900 if there are 1600. I know that that is not the full amount and I have not been able to calculate it.So it is nowhere near $8 million and it is the chance for over 12000 children to be able to go to school feeling like everyone else in their class—that they have the clothes and they are able to stand tall and that if their family is fostering other kids they have the same clothes as those other kids in the same household. I really really would like to hear from any member in this House who would stand up and say that $8 million out of the Government’s Budget is too much to enable that.We have offered any member in this House the opportunity to just say that yes 2018 is too long to wait and we are not going to make you wait that long. All members need to do is support Supplementary Order Paper 70 and then 3 months from the day on which the bill receives the Royal assent we can give those kids the chance to be able to get those clothes go to school and stand with pride. And we can take that burden away from their families who are surviving in many cases as Jacinda Ardern has mentioned on pensions. They are struggling to get by and are trying to do the best for their families.I remind this House that these are not just any old kids; these are children whose families have fallen apart and who are now with their grandparents because something went horribly wrong. Often those kids have been through unimaginable trauma and they have enough to cope with. We can do this. We can just say that yes we will deliver this to you now. We are not going to make you wait until 2018. I hope against hope because nobody is listening to me right now in this Chamber apart from members on this side.