Bradford Sue: Social Security Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Bradford Sue: Social Security Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:639;Page:9250] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 Thank you Madam Chairperson for this second opportunity to speak in this part of the debate as I have a further Supplementary Order Paper—Supplementary Order Paper 113—in my name that deals with the section that relates to pre-benefit activity requirements for applicants for the unemployment benefit. The Green Party has no difficulty with unemployment benefit applicants being required to undertake certain activities while they are waiting for their benefit. The combination of a stand-down and delayed entitlements due to holiday pay and similar payments that may have been received often means that it will be several weeks before an unemployment beneficiary becomes entitled to payment of his or her benefit. I agree that it is incongruous that people should be expected to do nothing during that period when they are expected to take reasonable steps to obtain suitable employment once the benefit comes on stream. 
The difficulty with clause 36 as it currently reads is that it is an administrative shambles that is likely to result in instances of quite unnecessary hardship. It provides that a requirement by the Ministry of Social Development that an unemployed beneficiary undertake a pre-benefit activity may be given orally or in writing. That has the potential to cause misunderstandings regarding the precise nature of the activity required of the applicant. That in turn can result in benefit applications being inappropriately declined or their investigation and eventual granting being inappropriately deferred. 
The substituted subsection (3) of section 96A of the principal Act proposed by my Supplementary Order Paper provides that a requirement for an unemployed benefit applicant to undertake a pre-benefit activity must be given in writing and is a decision subject to review and appeal rights under sections 10A and 12J of the principal Act. Beneficiaries deserve to be advised of their obligations in a written form so that if they do not understand them they can take them to someone who does and have them explained to them. We had a number of submissions on that matter. Beneficiaries also deserve to have the right to challenge obligations placed on them that they may consider to be inappropriate. 
I am also very concerned about the implications of the new subsection (5) of section 96A of the principal Act proposed in clause 36 of this bill. Under that subsection the Ministry of Social Development will have no obligation to investigate a claim for an unemployment benefit until the pre-benefit activity has been completed. In some circumstances eligibility for the benefit will occur before the pre-benefit activity is finished. The new subsection (5) will inevitably cause unnecessary administrative delays in the granting of a benefit which may well cause consequent hardship. Although the benefit will eventually be backdated that is no comfort to a beneficiary who has been evicted from his or her accommodation in the interim solely because of the delay inherent in section 96A(5) or to one who incurs other financial difficulties. We are talking here about people who often have nothing at all or less than nothing. I am proposing to omit subsection (5) thereby ensuring that claims for the unemployment benefit like claims for other benefits are investigated as expeditiously as is practicable. 
The new subsections (6) to (8) of section 96A of the principal Act relate to benefit applications lapsing in the event of pre-benefit activities not being completed. Those subsections become redundant if the ministry is required to investigate unemployment benefit applications as promptly as practicable without deferring investigation until a pre-benefit activity has been completed. The ministry will still have the proposed power under new section 96A(10) to refuse to grant an unemployment benefit or to terminate one that has already been granted in the event of a pre-benefit activity not having been completed satisfactorily. That I think is sufficient to adequately sanction beneficiaries who do not meet their statutory obligations. I call on parties in the Committee who have understood what I have just said to support the amendments in my Supplementary Order Paper. 
Finally I will take just a moment to respond to the Minister’s response to my earlier comments about people not receiving their full and correct entitlements. The reason I do not take every case I hear about off to the Minister is that those are mainly cases that have already been dealt with in my own out-of-Parliament office in Auckland by other MPs’ out-of-Parliament offices or by information provided from beneficiary advocacy groups. They deal with those kinds of cases every day. In fact beneficiary advocacy groups would go out of existence if they were not dealing on a daily and weekly basis with people who do not receive their full and correct entitlements. I think the Minister and the department would be the first to acknowledge that that happens every day. I certainly respect the department’s efforts to do better—and it is doing better. But it is just simply a fact of life as I think every MP in this Committee knows that many people are still not getting what they are entitled to receive.