Bennett Paula: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett Paula: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 18 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3652. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 I wanted to speak to a couple of things that have come up in the debate so far and just sort of see where we are. In response to Mr Prasad I just want to say that actually there is an exemption for high-needs children. It does not answer all of his questions but there actually is. There is an absolute exemption there that does acknowledge those who are over 14 who are at home and need a parent there; they can get that.  
In response to Holly Walker as well—and I will just get her Supplementary Order Paper so I am giving the wording correctly—she says: “the chief executive is satisfied that recovery of the sum may deprive the child of food or shelter or would otherwise be detrimental to the wellbeing of the child.” The actual problem we have with that is a case manager cannot make that judgment either sitting at the desk with the person in front of them or many times without them in front of them. They cannot make that kind of call so they will eschew doing it. That is the truth of it. So you are quite right when you said they are likely to fall on the part of but it is not because they are necessarily concerned about the deprivation; they just cannot make that judgment based on the information that they have. So as a consequence they will not. I can go through the financial details if you like but to be fair in terms of the sanctions the estimate that they have is that it would cost between $200 million and $300 million over 4 years if they do not impose those sanctions. As I say the practical effect of this change would be to largely prevent Work and Income from applying sanctions and undertaking debt recovery for anyone with dependent children.  
I also wanted to go into other parts of this part which are relatively substantial; we have been making our way through them I think very well. That is certainly so around having subsequent children while on benefit which is a topic all in itself as we know. To give some of the facts around having subsequent children while on benefit data shows that 28 percent of those receiving the DPB included additional newborn children in their benefits. Actually 5 percent had two subsequent children 2 percent had three and 5 percent had four or more children while on the DPB. As at November 2011 26000 women receiving DPB had included an additional newborn child in their benefit at least once since 1993. So looking at that when we say there is not a problem the reality—and I do not have this figure right in front of me—and from what I was seeing as well is that there were about 5000 births for those on DPB as well in recent months.  
The effect we have here and the reason for it is that—like I am sure many members of this Committee—we are quite concerned about particularly those mothers and their children. I do not think anyone sits here and thinks that it is a life of luxury on the DPB and that those on it are doing incredibly well. I do not think that is the premise and it is certainly not where I am coming from as Minister when I look at this. But the reality is that the longer they keep having children on benefit staying there the longer they are likely to be there and be living in that kind of hardship tough as it can be. So the best thing we can actually do for them is see them getting ahead in life and having options other than just welfare. A big part of this is making sure that there is childcare available and a significant amount of money—in fact around $80 million—is going into making sure that there is additional childcare for those mothers and certainly for those teen parents as well which I think is going to make a significant difference in making sure we have the support around them.  
I want to talk about that work expectation stuff too and getting work-ready. I suppose I have this kind of vision of when it has gone through for a while because the reality is it is going to take a lot of time for it all to go through. As you see when someone’s youngest is 3 or 4 years old and in 20 hours’ free childcare they are able to get that training and they will be able to get that upskilling so that when their child is actually 5 years old they can go into that job and they have got a skill that they can give. It is worthwhile and it has given them time to get ready. So there are substantial changes in this part of the bill but ones that we think give that balance back to work testing.  
There are also the changes for widows and women alone. That certainly was not made lightly but when you look at a modern welfare system—and quite frankly some of this when I looked at how archaic I think our system can be—there was a call that the widows benefit and the women alone benefit be changed and be brought into the new benefit categories.