Ardern Jacinda: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Ardern Jacinda: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
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JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise and on behalf of the Labour Opposition be the first to speak on the first reading of the Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3). For the record I state up front that Labour will support this bill. As the Minister the Hon Paula Bennett has set out predominantly the bill makes what appear on the surface to be some minor technical amendments. But as the Social Services Committee has found in the past with amendments to our social security system from time to time these minor amendments have unintended consequences and it is incumbent on the select committee to scrutinise these bills closely to identify where those unintended consequences might be. 
At this point I may not be in a position to raise some of those matters as I have not been able to look closely at the bill and question officials in particular but I assure the House that that process will happen in due course as it has with the arrangements in relation to the superannuation living alone payment rate which the select committee is currently looking at. 
As the Minister has pointed out this bill primarily amends three aspects of the Social Security Act. Firstly it requires that weekly compensation and payments paid under the Accident Compensation Act 2001 be deducted dollar for dollar from benefit payments. It applies equally to weekly compensation paid by ACC an accredited employer or a person acting on behalf of ACC or an accredited employer. That sounds reasonable on the face of it. 
The second aspect is to allow backdating of an application for a benefit when payments have been made by ACC and the applicant’s claim for weekly compensation subsequently fails. Backdating provisions can sometimes tend to be controversial particularly obviously for applicants and in my mind it is always appropriate for us to err on the side of caution from the perspective of the applicant to ensure that the applicant is not left short if backdating provisions are unfair. 
Thirdly the bill clarifies the provisions that exclude students who are eligible for assistance under the Student Allowances Regulations 1998 from receiving the accommodation supplement. My question to the Minister would obviously be more appropriate for the committee but I guess I feel it fair to forewarn her that at the select committee I will be very interested to try to ascertain what it means in monetary value for students to go to the extent of cancelling particular student allowance arrangements in order to receive the accommodation supplement. To me that points to two things. Firstly there obviously must be a significant financial difference between those two rates of eligibility but secondly in relation to the accommodation supplement these supplements are never designed to be overly generous but to ensure that an individual is able to survive. For the accommodation supplement to be disproportionately larger than what a student is subsisting on says to me that there might be an issue with the student allowance rate that the student is receiving. It is something that I would be happy to debate at the select committee and I am sure we will do so with vigour. 
Katrina Shanks 
: I can’t wait. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: I am glad that the chair of the Social Services Committee is here to hear me give big props to all of the work that the select committee will do on this bill. I might be overstating my enthusiasm at this point but perhaps not—we will wait and see. 
The Minister pointed out in her address that she saw this bill as primarily being about fairness. I am glad she raised that word. It is one of Labour’s favourite words at present particularly when it comes to the cost of living which in many ways this bill goes to the heart of with the issue I have just addressed in relation to students in particular. 
I would be happy for any member of the Government to tell me what is currently fair about what students in this country are facing. Not only do we have a situation where the Government is ensuring that in real terms it is allowing a shrinking of the caps that have been funded in tertiary institutions but also students who reach eligibility for our tertiary institutions are being either turned away or subsidised by the institutions that do not wish in a recession in good conscience to turn away young people who have met the threshold test to enter their institutions. To me that is an absolute shame. 
When we look at what Australia is doing to try to match what is happening in a recession we see that it is opening its doors. It is ensuring that its tertiary institutions are well funded and well placed in a time of recession to place young people who cannot find work into credible training institutions to make sure they are upskilled and ready for when the recession turns round. We are doing the absolute opposite. I have heard of institutions that are turning away up to 300 students at a time—to what? The unemployment rate is almost one in four for 15 to 19-year-olds. What is fair about that? 
Also what is fair about a situation where students are cancelling their student allowance which is relevant to this bill in order to try to get the accommodation supplement? Is that triggered by the fact that they are facing such a dramatic increase in the cost of living—about 4.8 percent—and that many of them of struggling to survive? If we match that with the fact that part-time job availability is decreasing we have a recipe for disaster. 
The student allowance scheme is not built to allow people to survive solely on what we provide them from the State. They need part-time work. They need to be able to supplement what allowances they may be eligible for and I really want to highlight the words “may be eligible for” given that they are all being means-tested against their parents’ income until the age of 24. It is absolutely ridiculous that we determine that students are dependent until that age when of course very few of them live at home or have parents who are able to support them at that point. Also they could quite possibly be married with children but they are still means-tested against their parents’ income which is absolutely ridiculous. 
What is fair about a GST increase that hits hardest those with the least discretionary income which includes students and people who through no fault of their own are trying to survive on ACC payments? What is fair about that? Just to throw it all into the mix what is fair about the Government’s voluntary student membership bill? I say “the Government’s bill” because the Government is supporting the ACT Party bill even though students associations are one of the small ways that young people in universities and tertiary institutions are able to access health centres at a reasonable cost or free of charge. They did of course at one point have the opportunity of accessing youth health centres but the Government has let a couple of those collapse as well just for good measure. There is absolutely nothing fair about any of those things that those people are facing all of which are touched on in some form or another by the Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3). 
I am also interested in the quite hefty regulatory impact statement—which is unusual for a Government bill these days—which almost seems to be potentially longer than the bill might be. I was interested in point five of that statement which states: “Assistance for students is designed in the context that benefits from tertiary study accrue to both the student and the nation so it is reasonable to expect students to contribute to their own study costs.” 
I have not at any point argued with that but I think it is interesting that we have a regulatory impact statement arguing that there is a public good to tertiary study. That is something that we would be hard-pressed to get the Government to acknowledge. In fact all of its policy towards students has pointed squarely to a firm view that there is a private good only involved in education past the point where a student leaves school as a secondary student. 
Not even night classes are viewed now as a public good by the Government unless of course one is learning literacy and numeracy and I mean that in the narrowest sense of the term because literacy and numeracy cannot be learnt in any form other than reading writing and arithmetic—if one is a member of the Government. Labour members of course take a much different view towards the notion of education its contribution to society and the public good that it is. We believe that it should be invested in at every step of the way. 
There are many elements of this bill that I would like to have a wider debate on. I am sure that my colleagues will pick up on the fairness theme in respect of ACC because there is a lot to be discussed under that heading. I am sure my colleagues will carry that theme through.