Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora Mr Chair. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to this Committee stage debate of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. I specifically want to speak to my colleague Carmel Sepuloni's proposed amendment which wants to amend section 170 through proposed new clause 27A to essentially ensure that parents are able to stay at home with their child until that child is 3 years of age. Currently when a young person is receiving the youth support payment the obligation for that young person is to be enrolled in or available for a full-time course of secondary or tertiary or approved work-based learning from when their child is 6 months old. So the proposition my colleague Carmel Sepuloni is bringing to the Committee is that actually that requirement should be on that young person receiving a youth support payment only when their baby is 3 years old. Our rationale for that particular age is actually really clear and based on evidence. That evidence comes from Unicef where research was clear about under 3-year-olds benefiting from being looked after at home. Why is it important for our babies to be looked after at home? Well it is really important for our babies to form an attachment with a particular person. That particular person is normally the mum. What that attachment does for that young child is it enables them to manage their emotions their feelings their bodies and it also enables them to cope with stress which enables them to manage themselves and actually form the resiliency that that young child needs to take throughout life. The irony of this particular piece of legislation is that this is all about young parents but in the process of forcing young parents back into further education training or work we are actually disadvantaging their children. What we should be looking at is how best to look after our most vulnerable smallest and most tender members of society and they are actually the children of young people who find themselves in a circumstance where they need the support of the State. I am asking the Minister for Social Development to specifically address the issue in the current Social Security Act that says that when your child is 6 months old you have to look for a full-time course of secondary tertiary or approved work-based learning. Where is the evidence that actually that is going to benefit the child of the young person? From our perspective that should be one of the critical factors in this legislation. If we really want to help that young person it is to help that young person to get into the best position possible to look after their children. We would contend that the best support we should be giving that young parent is to be the best parent they can be. To be the best parent you can be means actually staying at home with your child until they are 3 years of age so they are taught skills about how to be a good parent. A lot of people do not know. This is not just teenaged parents; actually this is all parents. How do you become a good parent? How do you read to your children? How do you interact with your child? How do you bathe them? It is we believe those skills and opportunities this Government and our Government should be facilitating for our young parents as opposed to forcing them back into education away from their child. I think it is really narrow-minded and punitive to force those young parents into a situation where they are not with their children and actually doing what we believe they should be doing which is bonding with their children. This is reinforced by a piece of research titled Children's elevated cortisol levels at daycare: A review and meta-analysis. It is a piece of research that came out in 2006 by Vermeer and van IJzendoorn. This is another piece of research where they collected research from a whole lot of people who had looked at the cost-benefit to the child of children being in a day care setting and not with their parent. The context of this research actually speaks to modern living. There are a lot of parents today who for a number of reasons actually do have to go back to work. We understand that—that ultimately it then becomes a choice for parents in certain circumstances to use day care as a means for them to integrate back into the workforce. The interesting thing if we look at some from research from the UK is that in 1981 24 percent of women were back at work within a year of childbirth. In 2001 that figure had increased to 67 percent of women who were back at work within a year. That increased to 76 percent of women who were back at work when the child was aged between 12 and 18 months. Day care does have a place in our society but I guess the context of the research has highlighted that the effect of day care attendance on cortisol excretion was especially notable in children younger than 36 months. It actually said because of their stressful interactions in a group setting—which makes it all the more vital to ensure that our children our most precious babies the building blocks of any society actually have an opportunity to spend the first 3 years of their lives bonding with their primary caregiver their parent. I would ask the Minister to seriously consider this amendment by my colleague Carmel Sepuloni. I think it is based around an age where there is very good evidence about how we best support young mothers from disadvantaged backgrounds. The other part of the evidence from the research I quoted earlier was that actually children from middle-class families do benefit from going to day care. We are not talking about children from middle-class families; we are talking about children of parents who are receiving the youth support payment and the obligations the State wants to place on those young parents—to go back to education full-time and I believe it is at the expense of their children. I would have thought we should be prioritising those children and doing as much as possible to ensure as the Minister said that they are enrolled with a primary health organisation that they are enrolled or on a pathway to ensuring that they are meeting all the developmental steps through Plunket and that we are supporting those parents to be the best parents they can be. What I see from this piece of legislation is that is incredibly narrow-minded and is not even looking at the next generation of New Zealand children. I would hope the debate we are having in the Committee is not actually falling on deaf ears; that it is actually falling on ears that want to do what is best not only for the young people who find themselves as parents early in life but also the children of those young parents. We would do everything in our power to make sure that they are not going to be the next generation of beneficiaries. I implore this Committee to further debate the merits of my colleague Carmel Sepuloni's amendment. I think a lot of thought was put into the amendment. The ages have not been plucked out of nowhere. I think the evidence is really clear and I think this is a real test of the commitment this Government has to young people. Otherwise it just ends up being about like everyone else has said previously the money about saving money—about I guess limiting the liability on the State. It is not about investment which we have heard so much about particularly from my colleague Alfred Ngaro tonight. I would have thought an investment approach would have ensured that we are concerned about the children of young parents and we would be doing everything we can to make sure they have a secure attachment with their parent and that their parent is in the best position to be the best parent they can be.