Pugh Maureen; Sepuloni CarmelIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Social Security Act 2018CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members the House is in committee on the Social Security (Benefits Adjustment) and Income Tax (Minimum Family Tax Credit) Amendment Bill. Members we now come to Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 3 to 8 Amendments to Social Security Act 2018". The question is that Part 1 stand part.Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I've got a number of questions. Some are quite broad some are very specific to the clause. But I'm going to start with a broader question for the Minister that is relevant given the debate and the number of times that child poverty reduction and child poverty in general has been brought into the debate with respect to the implications that this particular bill may have on child poverty. Given we don't have much time to scrutinise it the actual supplementary analysis report Indexing Main Benefits to Inflation is really important to refer to when discussing the bill. The areas that I'm particularly concerned about are the paragraphs of 30 31 32 that talk about the preliminary modelling and the likely impacts that this change from indexing benefits to wage growth to inflation will have on child poverty in this country. It makes really clear that in the forecast period we could be looking at an estimated increase of 7000 children under the AHC50 poverty measure and an estimated increase of 7000 children under the BHC50 poverty measure. The fact that we have a bill where the advice is telling us that this will increase child poverty in New Zealand is of course of concern to us on this side of the House and I think it should be of concern to the Minister as well. What I want to know from the Minister is whether or not there are any legal ramifications for this bill in light of the legislation on child poverty reduction and the targets that have been set given that the advice clearly states that actually this bill is going to increase child poverty in Aotearoa. Now we all signed up here to the child poverty reduction legislation and therefore I would think that any Government has a commitment to ensure their policies across Government are constructive with respect to reducing child poverty. If we were to receive advice on a bill that said it will actually increase child poverty then I'm worried that actually it is running counter to other legislation that we have already put in place. So I'd like to know from the Minister whether or not there are legal ramifications for this bill given the implications for child poverty reduction targets.Also I have some questions for the Minister around how the determination is being made for the inflation measure and also wage growth measure. There is a paragraph in this particular supplementary analysis report that says we should have got the official figures that will determine how this is going to be set because we don't know what the difference is going to be at this stage between the general adjustment on 1 April. In this report it says "we [will not] know for certain until Statistics New Zealand releases the official figures on 24 January 2024 for CPI"—we know what those are—"and 7 February 2024 for net average wage." What is net average wage how has that been determined and what can we expect in terms of the difference between the Consumers Price Index and wage growth so that we can actually see for ourselves how much worse or better off potentially in this first year beneficiaries might be?I've got lots more questions particularly about the long-term impacts of this legislation on child poverty and the disproportionate impact that it has on groups but I'd like to start with that first one being around the legal ramifications for knowingly making a change through legislation that will take us backwards and increase child poverty in this country. Then secondly I need to understand how the Minister has determined net average wage. We can't find anything from 7 February 2024 when we were looking for that number online from Statistics New Zealand so where is that and what is that?"