King Annette: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8194. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): What is the Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill all about? We are told it amends an error in the Social Security Act with retrospective effect to 3 June 1998. It was an error. It did not do what we thought it was going to do and we need to correct it. It has got a retrospective element to it no doubt. But we are not standing here saying that that is the problem. What we are saying is yes it does need to be fixed no doubt about it but the Minister of Social Development said it needed to be done in a fair way. So the argument I am going to put to the Government is: is it being done in a fair way and is natural justice being served in the way that it is being done? And I will get to that in a moment.I always go to what has been said about a bill before it comes to this House because none of us are necessarily experts and so we rely on the best of advice. I always go first of all to the regulatory impact statement. We have relied on regulatory impact statements on bills in this House for as long as I can remember. And we are told by the member Alfred Ngaro who was I think the chair of the Social Services Committee that there was a regulatory impact statement. I went and talked to him and said: “But your regulatory impact statement doesn’t address this bill at all. It’s all about the extension of the youth service.” So members opposite when you stand up to speak with such eloquence you do not know what you are talking about because your regulatory impact statement does not relate to the bill. So if the members are reading this as some sort of comfort you are not going to get much at all.So then members opposite go and read the department disclosure statement. Maybe it will tell you something about this bill that you did not know. Always look to see what it says. It says: “Are there any publicly available inquiry review or evaluation reports that have informed or are relevant to the policy to be given effect by this Bill?”. Answer: no. “Were any regulatory impact statements provided to inform the policy decisions that led to this Bill?” Answer: no. This is one that I thought was interesting: “For the policy to be given effect by this Bill is there an analysis available on: (a) the size of the potential costs and benefits?”. What is the answer to that? It is no. And then we are asked: “Has advice been provided to the Attorney-General on whether any provisions of this Bill appear to limit … the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990?”. No advice has been given. So I go back to the point I started with: this has to be fixed but is it being fixed in a fair way?You see the Minister for Social Development has put up a Supplementary Order Paper saying that there are going to be some people who will be able to claim. And as my colleagues said the Government has known since May last year. So why has it not done something earlier? What it is doing in this is allowing some to claim the day they should have been paid. Is that fair? [Interruption]The Government is only allowing some to claim Minister Bennett from when it found out there was a problem. If you went to court and said “I didn’t know I was committing a crime.” is that a defence? Is it a defence when you do not know something? I think the answer is no. You cannot use that as a defence; it is not a defence. Just because the Government did not know and no Government has known it is not a defence. So Supplementary Order Paper 142 which my colleague Carmel Sepuloni has put up—and if it is accepted by the Government we will vote for the bill—is fair and gives natural justice. It says: “Give everybody who could have been affected 6 weeks to put in an application.”How many I wonder would put in an application for their 1 day if they were given 6 weeks but they were given a fair go and natural justice? What is so hard about that members opposite? All their heads are down of course because the members opposite know that is not natural justice and that it is not fair. And surely this Parliament should be about passing fair law just law and law that is based on natural justice. Do we not go out and make speeches about that and how fair we are in this democratic country of New Zealand? And then the Minister brings in a bill and allows some people to be able to claim their day’s benefit based on the fact that her department found out at a certain time. So when it found out from that time those people can be included. Does that sound fair? I do not think so.We would like to support this bill. In fact in respect of Carmel Sepuloni’s Supplementary Order Paper if the Minister wherever she is is listening I would suggest that she looks at it and that she considers it. Would you not want to have the major support of the parties in this House to pass this retrospective legislation which we all hate? Retrospective legislation has been passed in this House on many occasions so the member who just sat down in her seat Parmjeet Parmar who was being all righteous about the fact that Labour had done some retrospective legislation has not looked at enough debates and Hansards of this place. Of course there are times when there is retrospective legislation. There are times when you have got to fix mistakes that have been made in legislation. That happens. But because it is retrospective and because we are doing it under urgency therefore denying a whole lot of comment and input on this particular piece of legislation then I would have thought a Government that really did care about justice—and I cannot believe that Chris Finlayson can think that this is fair. He is the Attorney-General. Actually he did not get to provide any advice. I cannot believe that he thinks this is fair or just when an arbitrary date can be set and that is used to give some people the right to claim money back but disregards everybody else.I do not believe there would be very many people at all who would even bother to apply because you would have to remember between 1998 and today when you left work and when the person did not get their pay at the right time. You would have to remember that. And that I would imagine would probably be beyond the ability of most people unless they are very good at bookkeeping and they have kept all their records and their payslips and so on. So I would not have thought it would be very difficult to allow anybody who was affected from 1998 in a 6-week period to put in a claim for their 1 day. So I am very sorry that the Government cannot see the strength of that argument and I look forward to the chair of the Social Services Committee Alfred Ngaro returning to this House with his comments on the regulatory impact statement that he mentioned in his speech. He said the comments we needed were in this one. They are not in this one. There is no regulatory impact statement on the department report there is no advice given to us and all I can assume is that there is a whole lot of bungling going on yet again. Surely this should have been done in a straightforward manner with the principles of fairness and natural justice at the centre of it. That is not what we are getting today.