Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Chair. I do have to just address this real sense of irony that I've got from listening to that last speech—the party that I kind of believe bought the Band-Aid company is accusing us of putting a band-aid over the real need of New Zealanders. It's actually a little funny. This is the party who had as their primary public service target a reduction of 25 percent in the number of people receiving income support who didn't bother measuring what happened to people after they were no longer on a benefit and who didn't care if they even had an income or were living in a shed because they were too traumatised to go into the Work and Income that they set up.So I'll just move past that irony and get into the content of Part 2 of the bill. It is difficult though. So the issue that has been coming up continually is about challenging the idea that this isn't policy-neutral because it's including the winter energy payment. I'd just like to again point out to the Opposition: catch up. Wasn't it like six months ago that we passed that legislation? This is just making sure that that this piece of legislation is actually tidy. So we had the debate we won—move on.The other thing is they're saying that they want to include their items in it and that really the Government initially did introduce policy-neutral legislation despite the fact that there were very clear policy points that were addressed in the regulatory impact statement that clearly indicated that it was not policy-neutral and that what we have done is introduce a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that is genuinely policy-neutral except I would say for one point within this section which is the health practitioners update that came through from the submitters in the Social Services Committee and that is just to reflect a standard that goes across our legislation. So it's not a substantive policy point but it is different from what was there before and we are reflecting the change that was recommended by the committee.So we are removing in this SOP by virtue of wanting it to be policy-neutral the provision to allow parents in split-care arrangements to both receive benefits. I understand that that will be a frustration for some people but I will say that the intent of doing that is that we are trying to tidy up this legislation without getting into the policy debate. There does need to be a really thorough consideration about how we support our families in the environment where there are very different parenting arrangements from what there were in 1964. Our legislation hasn't caught up to that. We need to consider split care. We need to consider shared care. We also need to consider the interrelationship between the Social Security Act and the Child Support Act and Working for Families.On this side of the House we don't want to do that in a piecemeal way. We don't want to just pass one little part of that without thinking about how it interacts with the whole. When we—in the Greens at least—committed to an overhaul of the welfare system it was for a comprehensive consideration about how this legislation can deliver for all of our families in this modern world. We believe that that needs proper comprehensive consideration which doesn't mean passing one tiny little thing out of context.We also have removed the change that renames the emergency benefit as the exceptional circumstances benefit. We've heard from the Opposition side that they're questioning—saying we're kind of just being a little bit too picky by saying that we don't like those words exceptional circumstances". Then I question: why did they change it to "exceptional circumstances"? That was National Party policy—for them it was such a big deal they needed to change it. Now they're saying it's picky for us to say that we didn't want that language despite the fact that of those submitters who commented on it almost all of them opposed the change to "exceptional circumstances". They wanted it to remain as an emergency benefit because that was a clear expression of the purpose of the provision. [Bell rung] Thank you Madam Chair.They also were very clear in their opposition to including the discretion to apply work-test and work-preparation obligations to those receiving what would then become the exceptional circumstances benefit. They didn't think that it actually reflected the reasons that people typically apply for that benefit and was more erosion of the concept of social security by increasing the precariousness of the benefit for people who are already not entitled to any other benefit and who are in such a dire position that they don't have a financial situation to be able to support themselves. They're not entitled to any other benefit; this is it for them to be able to have any income whatsoever—an incredibly vulnerable place and it is not really appropriate to be putting on work-test obligations for people in a transitory incredibly vulnerable place. So I speaking for myself am very pleased to see that removed. I would also like to speak to the fact that this SOP in Part 2 moves some provisions from regulation back into primary legislation. That's part of why this looks so big in terms of the changes. That is something that the Green Party was really committed to doing because we heard from people that while we need to make the legislation easy to use—that's true—we also need to make sure that we have parliamentary scrutiny of core provisions. For the Greens the definitions of accommodation costs and cash assets for the purpose of being able to receive and be entitled to an accommodation supplement are critical social security supports that should have parliamentary oversight. When we move them into regulation we lose that ability for a select committee to scrutinise the decisions and the directions of Government that apply to really significant supports for people in our community.The other provision that has moved back into primary legislation is around eligibility criteria for funeral grants. If anybody in this Chamber has spoken to people who have needed to access those funeral grants and who have struggled to pay for the cost of a funeral for a family member because actually those funeral payments at the moment aren't adequate enough I really think that those experiences should call us to have parliamentary oversight of those regulations and take responsibility for those decisions to ensure that when people are in times of grief and extreme need we are responsible enough to ensure that they are able to provide for their family in that time. So I am pleased from the Greens' perspective to see that back in the primary legislation. So on that note I will sit down."