Logie Jan: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 17 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1628. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I would like to join in other comments this evening in acknowledging significant passings in recent times both of Celia Lashlie and also Robin Duff who was the Vice-President of the Post Primary Teachers’ Association and an extraordinary advocate for the lesbian gay bisexual transgender and intersex communities and students. Celia obviously I think has helped expand our understanding of the world and how it functions and also helped us understand and see the best that is possible in our boys and how to bring that out in them. We are poorer for the loss of both of them.I move on to this bill and it is hard not to want to jump in and respond to the hyperbole of the previous speech which bordered on one of those speeches you give at school to prove you can extend 5 minutes talking about nothing. But the Green Party will be opposing this the Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3). The bill was first introduced into the House by Paula Bennett way back on 16 November 2010. Yes that is over 4 years ago. It finished in the select committee in that same term of Parliament. We did not hear one word of it—well at least I did not—in the last term. There was not one mention to my knowledge.I am left wondering why we did not hear about it then and why the apparent urgency that it has jumped up so high on the Order Paper in this term of Parliament. I do not have any definitive answers to that but I do suspect it is possible that the possibility of saving a few dollars from the Government Budget lines when the looming Budget deficit is pending—maybe it has got that desperate that it needs to claw back $700000 here from people on ACC and a few hundred thousand here from students struggling to get by. This Government is going to stoop to taking money from people retrospectively and clawing back from students trying to get by just to do whatever it can to edge closer to that possibility of surplus that seems to be becoming increasingly unlikely. It really is just a shame that in all too many instances we are seeing in Government policy and legislation that the money put towards achieving that or hoping to get towards that surplus seems to be coming from everyday New Zealanders who are struggling to get by or get ahead.The Government has framed this bill as being about consistency fairness honesty and equity. It sounds good. How could you not support those things? We certainly support those values in the Green Party but I do just want to point out that it depends where your starting point is. Part of the reason for our opposing this is for those very same values which we do not believe what is happening in this legislation is consistent with. It is not fair it is not honest and it is not promoting equity so we are opposing it for those same reasons.What this bill will do is ensure that students eligible for student allowances—whether or not they access them—are not eligible for an accommodation supplement through Work and Income. So a student may say: “OK I’m not going to apply for a student allowance even though I am eligible for it but I will apply for an accommodation supplement because that is worth more and that will help me stay in study and be able to cover my basic costs.” There is a loophole there at the moment so that students who may be eligible for the student allowance but choose not to apply can access that. So this is looking at saying: “OK now you can’t access that. Although that may make you a little bit better off you can’t do it.” The Government is saying it is about fairness whereas we would say actually the fairness is around the ability to access a reasonable amount of money. That is the first part—to be actually able to cover your daily living costs. And we want students. We want people to be studying. We want students to be supported in studying. Actually collectively as a country we have enough resource to be able to do that a bit better than we are at the moment.A previous speaker I think pointed out an example in Auckland where if you were on income support you may be able to access $225 for accommodation I think I heard whereas if you were getting the student allowance it would be $65 in accommodation support. That is not encouraging people to be in study and that does not seem equitable or fair. We were just seeing stories in the New Zealand Herald just about a week ago of students queueing up now with hundreds of people in the queues to get into a flat that is in any way close to their tertiary institutions. They are turning up with CVs with photos of themselves on them to prove that they are going to be desirable tenants. They are turning up with parents. They are offering more money that what is actually being asked for these places. There is so much competition for housing in Auckland and that is something that is echoed in different ways in other parts of the country.Our position is that the fair response to that situation would be for a Government to look at our resources and look at how we can better support students and other New Zealanders into good accommodation and affordable accommodation. The easiest way of doing that in the meantime is to be able to increase the support for people to be able to pay for their accommodation in the short term until we get more housing.And yet this Government’s response to that is to say that it actually thinks these people are accessing a little bit too much money so it is going to close that gapand to make sure that less money is being distributed to help address this problem. So that does not seem fair equitable or consistent and I call the Government out on its own rhetoric on that point. Really again it seems to be the Government choosing to ignore the actual real hardship rather than using our shared resources to ensure the protection and empowerment of everyone equally in this country and I think it is a real shame.I would like to point out another aspect of this bill and speak to the point around ACC which is part of the bill that we do support—the concept in it of the difference between the State-funded ACC provision versus the private schemes. It does not seem to make sense that there would be a difference there. At present benefit payments are deducted from weekly ACC compensation payments on a dollar by dollar basis. However a loophole was discovered through a case in the Social Security Appeal Authority which revealed that in law weekly compensation paid directly by employers accredited with ACC should be treated as income and deducted from benefits at a different more favourable ratio. So the current practice which this bill is seeking to retrospectively validate—and I really do need to point out again that if we are talking about consistency equity and fairness retrospectively validating a practice is not consistent fair or equitable and is repugnant to good legislative practice actually. That will be able to result in someone who has been on a benefit while working part-time suddenly having their benefit reduced to zero after an injury.We have heard that—what is it—$3.2 million is going to be recovered from doing that and it is going to be $700000 going forward. So there will be a retrospective factoring in of those costs to help reach the Government’s surplus in a way that is completely inconsistent and unfair I would suggest. The Green Party does not support people being able to double-dip. The dollar for dollar deduction is fair enough if someone’s eligibility for weekly compensation is caused by the same event as his or her eligibility for welfare. But that was not factored into this legislation and in fact when someone is receiving say a sickness benefit in respect of a chronic illness or any other reason but is working part-time it is completely unfair to exclude that and to suggest that that is double-dipping which is what this legislation does in part. So therefore again we find that we are unable to support that aspect of it because again it is not fair it is not consistent and it is not equitable and it is not about helping to create a society where everyone has a fair go where everyone has an equal chance of participating and achieving when we know that that vision of a society is not far-fetched; it is entirely possible. But we need to have the attention to detail in our legislation to ensure that that is what we are providing. Kia ora.