SpeechHon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister for Children): I cannot believe I just sat in the House and had Simon O'Connor quote the Little Red Book. Unbelievable unbelievable. The world's gone mad. We definitely have a crisis going on! However there was much inside that contribution that I'd like to pick up on. But the first thing I want to do for the New Zealand public is just actually clearly articulate what is the name of the bill that we're currently discussing. It's called the Social Security (COVID-19 Income Relief Payment to be Income) Amendment Bill. So we're not actually discussing the COVID income relief payment; we're discussing how it will affect your tax. Hence why many of the comments from the Opposition have literally nothing to do with the actual bill we are talking about.But let's pick up on some of the comments from the National Party shall we? Because I haven't heard them clearly articulate it; I apologise if I missed it. I'm going to make an assumption that the National Party's not supporting this bill. Is that right? Could anybody over there nod? Perhaps the whip could nod. Is the National Party opposing this bill?Hon Alfred Ngaro: We've already said that.Hon TRACEY MARTIN: Oh I'm sorry. I didn't listen. But that's good—no thank you thank you the Hon Alfred Ngaro. I really appreciate his directness; he's upfront always—always honest puts forward when you ask a question. You can always guarantee you get an honest answer from the Hon Alfred Ngaro.Now let's go back to—I did listen to some of what the Hon Louise Upston said. Now she said that she doesn't understand why and that the Opposition are playing a game of unfairness. So that's the word that they're using at the moment—unfair". This is "unfair". So just for all those New Zealanders out there who have lost their jobs after 1 March who are transitioning because of COVID from one job that now no longer exists but with the other supports that this Government is going to put in place around the Ministry of Social Development and the career hubs and the matching-up of your skills to the jobs that are still there or the jobs of the future—just as long as all those individuals who are going to use this temporary 12-week payment to make sure that you are able to still put food on the table that you are able still to actually pay your mortgage or pay your power bill because this Government—this Government—doesn't want this crisis to throw you into chaos. We don't want you to lose your home. We don't want more New Zealanders without homes. What we're hearing from the other side of the House is they would like us not to give you this relief. They would like us to take this money and give it to business.Now we're already doing a whole lot of things for business. We're still working with business. We're working with Business New Zealand. We're working on putting in supports for small and medium sized enterprises. You've heard the Prime Minister announce it. You've heard others announce it. We are already working with businesses. But we will not work with businesses at the cost of our citizens. So what we're hearing from the Opposition is that they will oppose this piece of legislation because they don't want our citizens to be supported; they want us to take this money and give it to business. And it's not that we're forgetting business; we just think that there's a balance here. We just think that we need to support our citizens whose businesses the businesses that they worked for have not survived because of COVID.Let's go to the 1 March date. Mr O'Connor says that it was just arbitrary—just picked at random OK? We had the first case of COVID in New Zealand on 28 February. We closed the borders to all bar New Zealand citizens and residents returning on 19 March. That is why we went as far back and as close to what was the beginning of the restrictions inside New Zealand and to give it a couple of weeks forward from that because of what we knew had been happening to New Zealand businesses. And that is why we've got 1 March. Mr O'Connor obviously doesn't remember what happened and the time line of when it happened. So that's the first thing.The Hon Louise Upston said she couldn't understand why there were two different sets of payments here: those for the 113000 to 114000 New Zealanders who had been on the jobseeker benefit before COVID and those that had lost employment from 1 March. But in the same sentence she said "Two different people in two different circumstances." I give you the answer. We're talking about two different people in two different circumstances. One does not take away from the other. One does not take away from the Government's work to improve what is the safety net that is required for those individuals who were among the 112000 to 113000 before COVID hit. Nothing is taking away from that work except COVID. The Hon Louise Upston's quoted somebody who's said—I think it was Adrian Orr; I'm not quite sure sorry; she didn't mention the name—that this might not be a one-in-100 event; this might be a one-in-160 event. And yet the Opposition seems to have a difficulty with trying to understand why we would move in and actually put in something different. It's because the circumstances are different.Mr O'Connor suggested that we should have had a regulatory impact statement on something that actually is not the bill. First of all he wanted a regulatory impact statement. He spoke mostly to the actual income relief payment—that's not what this bill is; this bill is about how it will be treated as income—but he said that he was prepared to let it go during a crisis but now that the crisis was over he expected to have all the regulatory impact statements back up and running. The crisis is not over and if we're talking about—again if I go to what his colleague said: if we are going to have unemployment at 18 percent and the worst case scenario by Treasury was 24 percent the worst-case scenario—and that is in papers that have been released—if that is where we are going this is a crisis of mammoth proportions. And this Government is up and running and doing things differently to make sure we support New Zealanders. Kia ora."