Sepuloni Carmel: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8396. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I want to continue where the Green Party member Jan Logie left off. I just want to refer back to the main issue here which is that we have 305000 children in New Zealand living in poverty and I think that is something that all of us in this Committee should be ashamed of. The reality is though that we do not have the numbers to make legislative change like members on that side of the Chamber do. Of the 305000 children who are living in poverty 60 percent of them are in beneficiary households and 40 percent of them are in working households. Forty percent of them are earning so little money that they are also living in poverty and we need to make that connection. If we care about children living in poverty then we also have to care about the people who are looking after those children living in poverty.I have put forward a number of Supplementary Order Papers to amend this bill. We support any increase that will go to our poorest families. Of course as my colleague Jacinda Ardern pointed out we do not understand the science behind how the Government assessed $25 per family as being the right amount. We know that that will do very little to actually address the poverty issue but it does do a little bit and so we cannot deny our poorest families that. But we do have some concerns and those concerns are addressed by the Supplementary Order Papers I have put forward.One of the concerns is about the extension of the work obligation from 15 hours to 20 hours per week. We had the Minister for Social Development stand up before and tell us that there is evidence to support that. The Minister cited Norway and other European countries as examples of where there is a 20-hour work obligation for parents with a youngest child of 3. I just want to point out to the Minister that actually in countries like Norway work is readily available. That is not actually the case here. In fact we currently have 58000 people actively seeking part-time work. So to place the expectation on these sole parents when actually the work is not available is a little bit unrealistic.We had the Minister saying that people would not be pressured into taking up work that was inappropriate but I have had so many stories told to me by sole parents undertaking employment courses through Work and Income where they are getting pressure put on them to take up work that is inappropriate. In fact I spoke to two sole parents who were both doing the same course. They were both articulate educated women and each was a solo mother with one child. Both of them said that they felt for the other women undertaking the employment course because of the fact that if they were vaguely passive or passive in any way then despite the fact that the work that was being pushed on them was inappropriate they would often end up saying: “OK I’ll do it.”This topic actually raised a really interesting conversation in the Social Services Committee and that conversation was around the availability of early childhood education outside standard working hours. A concern that was raised at the select committee was whether we as a country are moving down the track where we would think that night care for children is actually acceptable. I think the general public would agree that early childhood education—and I do not think it can actually be deemed that if it is just a babysitting service at night time—is not appropriate at night time. I think most New Zealanders would be fearful of that becoming commonplace in this country.So we did put up amendments with one to say that actually the work obligation should not be moved to 20 hours and it should remain at 15 hours. The evidence that we found was that actually in countries like the UK and the US where work obligations like this were imposed unfortunately the reality for these sole parents was that they often ended up having to take up the lowest-paid work and they ended up worse off than they were when they were just accessing welfare full time. That is the risk that I think we are running here.The other risk is that we have seen so many media reports and so many reports out in general about the quality and availability of early childhood education. So the assumption is always “Oh you can put your child into an early childhood education centre and go out and work.” but actually sometimes there is no early childhood education available and sometimes there is no quality early childhood education available. Why should parents be put in the situation where they are forced to put their children into care when they are not confident that that level of care is appropriate for their children?One of the Supplementary Order Papers that I have put forward actually also adds study as an option alongside part-time work. I really want to talk a little bit about that because that Government the National Government has talked about being aspirational for New Zealanders on so many occasions but I really feel that where it is clear that it is not is when it comes to beneficiaries. Supplementary Order Paper 135 is aspirational. We do not want to just force sole parents into any old job. We want them to be better equipped to increase their earning capacity and to increase their chances of being able to get into long-term secure work rather than just push them into whatever minimum wage job is available. We think that the National Government should support this because it is aspirational.We had some conversations about this in the select committee as well and what came up was: “Well actually they can access the student allowance.” There are issues with that. The issue with that is that you have to be in full-time study to access a student allowance or be doing 32 hours a week. Any parent who might want to access say 20 or 15 hours of study will not be supported to do so with all of these measures in place. They will not be able to access a student allowance work obligations will kick in and therefore study will basically be denied to these parents.Why would we deny the opportunity for these parents to take up study? We know that all of the educational research out there supports them doing this. We know the impact that it can have on their children in terms of their children’s own academic attainment. So why would we not support this happening? I really urge all parties in the House to look carefully at that Supplementary Order Paper and to take seriously the option of study alongside part-time work. I—likea number of other MPs in this House I know—as a sole parent actually studied and was able to access support so why would we deny that to others given that there are so many in this House who were accessing support from the State whilst raising children by themselves in order to take up study and better their own lives and the lives of their children?I just want to go back to my other Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 136 which deletes clauses 4 6 7 and 8. One of those clauses is to do with changing the age for when work obligations kicking in from the current age of 5 to what is being proposed by the National Government—that being 3. We did have a discussion at the select committee. This came through in many of the submissions. Many parents do go back to work when their youngest turns 3. That is OK. That is OK if that is the choice but different parents have different circumstances that need to be taken into account.One of the topics of conversation in select committee was: “Hey you know that might be OK for the parent who has one or two children but what do you do with the parent who has four or five children? Perhaps it is a little bit harder for that parent to go back to work when their youngest turns 3.” I just want to point out that all too often when we are talking about those parents who have four or five children we get this kind of attitude and stigma that comes with that as if they did something wrong by giving birth to all these children. Well actually I just want to say that for members on this side of the Chamber there is no stigma or judgment attached to it. All we care about is the well-being of those children and if it is in the best interests of those children for that parent to stay home with them for a little bit longer then why would we not support that?Many of those making submissions on this bill supported the additional $25 per week despite the fact they felt it needed to be more. Many of the submitters pointed out the fact that parenting actually needs to be valued as well and the fact is that we are stigmatising these parents to the point where we are assuming that they do not want to go out and work when actually the evidence suggests otherwise—many of them do. But if they need to we should be responsible and actually support them to be the stay-home parent that they need to be in instances where it would be better for their family.I have had a lot to do with the team from the Growing Up in New Zealand study in respect of teasing out some of the research that it has done that is relevant to this bill. I just want to clarify for the Committee that all of that research shows that actually these sole parents—sole mothers predominantly—do want to work. In fact this research shows that they have got more of a desire to work than the parent who is in a relationship.