Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I agree with probably a couple of minor things that the Minister Carmel Sepuloni has said. One thing that surprises me is that in the House this afternoon there's been vociferous debate about select committee scrutiny about the extension of report-backs for the Environment Committee to provide additional scrutiny for the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill—which is a three-page bill to go back to a select committee for scrutiny—and yet today we have 500 pages of a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that no member of the public let alone this House will get to scrutinise and—Hon Member: Policy neutral—listen.Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Policy neutral. So we've heard a comment from the other side of the House about the significant rewrite legislation which of course hadn't been touched for 50 years and legislatively it was a mess. It was unintelligible and absolutely needed to be tidied up. But one thing that puzzles me is that the Government who supposedly want to have a more empathetic and responsive system don't see that the Government of the day should've taken opportunities to make some minor policy changes to ensure greater well-being for vulnerable children to enable greater flexibility to support some beneficiaries and to support the very New Zealanders that that side of the House purports to represent.So let's just have a look at what these minor policy changes were and see if our listeners disagree about whether or not they would advance the best interests of children. Here's one around children whose parents are separated so it is a situation of split care—one parent might have one child the other parent might have two and both are not in work. This change would allow both of those parents to claim the sole parent support but no—that side of the House says No. We're going to make those children suffer." because of this minor change.Let me give you another one—and again I'll remind the Minister of her own comments which were about having Work and Income having a social security system that was "empathetic and responsive". So guess what? If you are a step-parent if you have a child and both its biological parents have passed away that is one vulnerable child that every New Zealander should support but no they're not entitled to the same support as other parents. So the Government's decided to kick out minor changes that at the very heart of the intent were about supporting children who needed the support the most—which is unbelievable—and about having a system that is easier for front-line staff to navigate and easier for the very people who need it most. It is absolutely staggering.I want to introduce a couple of other issues because there is another item that has been amended by this Government and that is official advice. So the Government is ignoring official advice from the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee 2014 guidelines about how to improve the structure of legislation which is about what should be in primary legislation and what should be in secondary legislation. I know for some people that doesn't mean a lot but when you are rewriting a piece of legislation for the first time in 50 years make sure you follow the advice of the legislation advisory committee.But no—no—this Government knows best! They don't think the public should have a say on 500 pages of an SOP. They've dumped it on the table a couple of hours before this debate with the intention of ramming it through the committee stage tomorrow. Well I say that's not good enough. For a Government that's supposedly open and transparent who's open to public scrutiny this is absolutely lousy lousy process.I want to give you another example of how lousy this process is. Normally what happens when a piece of legislation is drafted—or you could argue a Supplementary Order Paper of this magnitude—the officials then write a departmental disclosure statement or a regulatory impact statement. Has this been done? No. So here's another example of a Government short-cutting due process good process. This is all around making good law.So I say to the Minister of Social Development is the Minister saying there is not one mistake—not one mistake—in this SOP? We saw in the bill previously that there was one mistake. One mistake has been quite significant for this House—quite significant. But that one mistake is being fixed and is being scrutinised by a select committee—this isn't. Five hundred pages is absolutely outrageous for the Government to do particularly since it's "Transparency Week" this week. Perhaps they didn't read the memo about "Transparency Week".It's really interesting. I want to draw your attention as the Minister did to the Labour minority view. In the Labour minority view the Labour Party members were worried about—guess what?—public accountability and scrutiny. The Minister doesn't care about it now and is too arrogant to think about members of the public who have an interest in this—the very beneficiary advocacy groups she's too busy quoting getting the next person to speak to make sure they fill in the blanks that she didn't cover. I bet the House that there's at least one mistake in this SOP so you'll be bringing it back to fix it.But the other interesting thing from the Labour and the Green minority view is—and I would have thought the Greens would be really disappointed with this legislation because the one critical thing for them as they went into the election was the removal of excessive sanctions. The Minister had the ability in the Families Package before Christmas but didn't do it. The Minister's had the ability to remove sanctions in this legislation—hasn't done it. So the Greens must be pretty gutted that their principal social welfare policy is being ignored by the Minister.The interesting thing is that this is a completely missed opportunity for the Government. The Minister has said that there's a significant overhaul required to make the system more empathetic and responsive. The first opportunity first piece of legislation is a missed opportunity—not doing it; not doing things that support the very New Zealanders the very children that you have said are important.There's another item that I thought was worth bringing to the House's attention. On numerous occasions the Government of the day led by the Prime Minister have talked about the fact that this Government will put the interests of children at the heart of everything they do. I bet the House that this piece of legislation this 500-page SOP has not gone through the scrutiny to see what the impact is on children. There are children living in the households who should be getting more than they are today—getting entitlements Minister that they're not entitled to today—and you're missing the opportunity to help those families to help those very poor and vulnerable families to get more income to get more benefits than they are today.It's a hugely missed opportunity. I'm staggered. I'm absolutely staggered that the Ardern-Peters Government is ignoring a golden opportunity to support those who need it most and is instead taking away changes that simplify the system and make it easier for people to get the support they need. The principles that are being removed—the principles of social investment—are about supporting those who need it most. So that's what I'm finishing on.This bill originally was about supporting those who need it most and having legislation that was understandable workable easy for the Ministry of Social Development to navigate and easy for the very people that are supported by it to understand it and get better access to what they're entitled to. It is a complete contradiction and an absolute outrage that that side of the House won't allow scrutiny for an SOP that is 500 pages long."