Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): My goodness Mr O'Connor. Can the member believe that he was actually proud to put those words on the floor of this House? In suffrage week—125 years' celebration of suffrage week—Mr O'Connor stands up and says I don't know about people who buy into all this gender stuff." and then purports to uphold that "buying into gender stuff" pits genders against each other. This is the understanding that Mr O'Connor put on to the floor in this debate about uplifting peoples together. We will not here on this side of the House buy into the false trade-offs where we cannot uplift people together. That is what that side of the House does and it has become very clear that they will not support a simple legislative clean-up of connected pieces of law to allow us to ensure that this is simple easy to understand and accessible for practitioners and clients and people alike. It's because of the massive ideology block that that side of the House has epitomised by the words—I actually wrote them down because they're fascinating—of Mr O'Connor. The winter energy payment is going to some of our most vulnerable families children and people who are living alone including elderly who are struggling to pay power prices that are not just—that are unjust and are keeping people in hardship—and Mr O'Connor called that "a bribe with other people's money". It is that side of the House that simply does not get the concept of allowing us to bring people up together. No that side of the House believes that there is always going to be a group of people who need to stay at the bottom who need to keep struggling. That's what Mr Simon O'Connor put on the floor just before I got up to stand and speak. So now I've almost had to put all my notes to the side to be able to respond to those words.The Green Party is happy to support these bills now because it is not hiding behind the previous National Government's pretence of being a mere legislative clean-up when in fact they were pushing policy and ideology in it. Well fine but be really clear that that's what you were trying to do and then stand up for that. So I'm very pleased that the Minister for Social Development has now made sure that this is a legislative clean-up which was sorely needed—sorely needed. We heard the concerns around this legislation noting that since the Social Security Act had been introduced in 1964 it had been amended 131 times. There had been 54 new sections added and the Act as it existed included over 50 points of discretion. So yes it needed a simplification and a clean-up because this is one of the most important pieces of law. It can either uphold or deny people's basic right to live with dignity and for far too long we have upheld a narrative that pits groups of people against each other. And that side of the House—we just saw them keep doing that. We will not put up with that any longer. We reject that narrative that maintains that some people don't deserve help. That's exactly what that side of the House believes in: that some people will never no matter how much—two jobs 60 hours a week—they work deserve a decent level of living. So we reject that and this legislation is purely the legislative clean-up that is needed. It has fixed up the first rewrite proposed by the National Government which was hiding policy—which was trying to hide policy—so I'm very pleased that we were able to stand and support this much better rewrite from the Minister.I'm also pleased because we in this Government have managed to stop the increasingly punitive direction of the last Government—which also does not work. The evidence is very very clear that that punitive approach does not even work for what it is trying to do. It does not provide a good incentive for good outcomes. So fair enough you want to keep going on with that ideology that doesn't even work to do the things that you say it wants to—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Don't bring me into it.MARAMA DAVIDSON: The members on that side of the House—thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. So I acknowledge the efforts of Work and Income who are helping us to turn around the culture and ensure that people are properly supported. I acknowledge the oversight to stop what has become known as the Tinder sanctions the change to office design and the refusal to play political games with people's lives. People live in a reality that in this House we know nothing about. We do not live that reality—us here in this House—and we will stop playing political games with those lives. It's not all fixed yet and I'm very very pleased and proud to be working with the Minister and various Ministers on this work. There is still increasing demand for food banks there is still ongoing homelessness and our community sector are still struggling to support people.That was one of the oppositions we had also towards the social investment approach. While you can do social investment well that is not what the previous Government were proposing and in fact it became a way for the Government to protect themselves from the discriminative policies that they were putting up and it became a way for the previous Government to justify cuts to public sector core services and Government. Yes I'm very very clear that that is one of the core roles of Government: to provide strong robust public core services. So I am pleased that we are taking a whole different approach.So these bills in themselves don't represent that change but we are being clear about that. We are not trying to hide policy in this legislation. I am of course impatient and want all the other changes to happen now and we were disappointed that this Budget didn't remove section 70A sanctions but we recognise that tidying up the legislation first which is what these bills do gives the Government the best chance—the best chance—of achieving a comprehensive and coherent overhaul that the Greens will continue to keep supporting and pushing for. I again want to put on record my support as did Mr Darroch Ball about—I think it was—the Hon Nanaia Mahuta who said "This legislation in its current form is like sweeping the floor before bringing in the new furniture." We in the Greens also have that understanding—that we are tidying up the hut a bit and laying that foundation down so we can truly become a proud nation that supports all of its people especially at the hardest of times. So again I'm pleased that we're able to work with the Government to ensure that this is a truly policy-neutral move and that we didn't move policies into regulation that actually need parliamentary scrutiny.I want to be very clear. We're also pleased with the work of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group and our confidence and supply agreement with Labour offers the best opportunity that I've ever seen in my lifetime to put heart back into our social security system. That is not what this legislation in and of itself is trying to do. We're very clear that it needs a clean-up and we will keep pushing for further work. Thank you."