Lees-Galloway Iain: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8208. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): We find ourselves in an interesting situation this evening. What we are doing is we are under urgency rectifying a mistake that was made under urgency 17 years ago. It demonstrates the danger of using urgency for these matters. We do not have a regulatory impact statement. We have not had the select committee process to scrutinise the legislation.I want to look at the departmental disclosure statement but to say it is scant is a bit of an understatement. There is very very little advice for those of us who are being asked to vote on this legislation to actually give us confidence that we are getting this right. I have been a member of this House for only 7 years and in that time I have seen a number of errors made—a number of errors made—when we have been in a rush.My concern is that again quite unnecessarily in this case we are rushing this legislation and we are in danger of mucking it up again. To the best of our knowledge this legislation will meet the Government’s purpose and intent but it thought back in 1998 that it was going to do that and it was wrong then. There is every likelihood the Government is going to be wrong again tonight.There is another thing that I find slightly unusual. It is not that we are retrospectively making something that was previously illegal legal because as Chris Hipkins pointed out that has happened before. Parties in Opposition tend to rail against that type of thing and then when they find themselves in Government they suddenly discover that it is actually perfectly acceptable so I am not going to rail against that as such. But what I do find odd is that the Government was prepared to carry on acting illegally once it discovered that it was doing so.This is not something that the Government has realised in the last few days or weeks or even months. The Government realised this was happening in May 2015 a full year and a half ago. So the Government has carried on quite happily acting illegally until it realised it was a political issue for it. Now all of a sudden we are in a rush.The Government could have brought this legislation—I feel like it is sort of Groundhog Day because I was saying the same thing yesterday with the last piece of legislation under this urgency motion. The Government could have acted more swiftly and brought legislation—the legislation is only two or three pages long.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): It is tragic to interrupt the member.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: It is is it not?Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Immediately before the dinner break I was lamenting the fact that it had taken the Government a year and a half to bring this legislation before the Parliament all four pages of it. It really does baffle me why it took so long to bring this legislation to the Parliament and now after waiting for such a long period why the Government is passing it through all stages under urgency without any opportunity for scrutiny. There is no regulatory impact statement and no select committee process.What we do have is the departmental disclosure statement which I think raises some issues and questions. Is 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? No. Were there any regulatory impact statements provided to inform the policy decisions that led to this bill? No. For the policy to be given effect by this bill is there analysis available on the size of potential costs and benefits? No. Is there analysis available on the potential for any group of persons to suffer a substantial unavoidable loss of income or wealth? No even though we in fact know that the impact of this legislation is to limit the opportunity people have to seek redress for having lost a portion of income that they were entitled to under law.Essentially for just about every question that is asked—the standard questions asked by the departmental disclosure statement—the answer is no. I think it actually demonstrates just how little work has been done to prepare this legislation and to make sure that what we do tonight rectifies a situation that was caused by legislation being passed under urgency back in 1998 and the errors that came with that.I would like to turn my attention though to the Supplementary Order Papers. There are three Supplementary Order Papers: one in the name of Carmel Sepuloni one in the name of Jan Logie and one in the Minister’s name. I would like to start with my colleague Carmel Sepuloni. The effect of her Supplementary Order Paper would be to delay the commencement of this legislation by 6 weeks and that is simply to give people an opportunity to actually seek some redress.I think we are particularly thinking here of the people who have been affected by the incorrect application of the law numerous times. We have spoken about the fact that for a lot of people this will not have affected them just once. There are many people particularly those on fixed-term contracts those who are in casual work and those who are in seasonal work in particular who will have moved in and out of work many many many times over the 18 years that this policy has been implemented inappropriately.For some of those people we could be talking significant sums of money. For most people if it has occurred only once or twice then probably the hassle of applying to retrospectively gain that 1 day’s worth of income is probably not worth it for them. But for some people there may well be some value in making that application.What Carmel Sepuloni’s proposed amendment would do is give people a very short window—and I think the Government could easily work with us on this—to allow people that opportunity to apply to receive the income that they ought to have had the legislation as it was originally drafted been applied appropriately. I have heard a couple of members dismiss this approach. I think when they do that they assume that everybody falls into that category of people for whom this has happened only once or twice. There will definitely be people—not that we know for sure because the Government has not been able to provide us with figures—for whom there would be value in exploring exactly how much they are owed by the Government and taking the time to do that.Jan Logie’s amendment is similar only it gives a 6-month window. Really what we are debating here is how long is an appropriate length of time for people to be able to make that application. Certainly on this side of the Chamber we have got no problem with the 6-month window—6 weeks or 6 months; either of those would be acceptable to us.Then we come to the Minister’s amendment. This is a really interesting one. This amendment allows people who have been denied what they were legally owed under the law during the period in which the Government knew it was acting illegally to be able to apply for that and to pick up retrospectively the money that they were entitled to. I find this interesting. I think it is good in a way that the Government is trying to rectify the fact that it was acting illegally but nevertheless it is a fact that the Government for a year and a half nearly knowingly denied people income that they were owed under the law even though the Government knew that the legislation as it was drafted said they were entitled to something different.We can support that as well but we do not think it goes far enough. We actually think that the amendments in one of those other Supplementary Order Papers—either Carmel Sepuloni’s or Jan Logie’s—need to be passed if we are to take a principled approach to this which is that people were entitled to some income it has been denied them and they should be given the opportunity to apply to receive what they were owed.My suspicion is that most people will not apply. It will not be worth their while to make that application but for a handful of people it will be worth their while making that application. I think there is value in supporting those two Supplementary Order Papers on that basis. I think I will end this particular contribution at that point.