Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise to speak on the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. Now I'm a new member and I came to this House thinking that what we did here was we made amendments to laws to make them serve New Zealanders better—that we came here to change laws to make a difference to people. So we've just heard the Minister Carmel Sepuloni speak at length about caseworkers and what could be done to help them apply their work better and to get more people out of welfare so I had a little flick through this 501-page bill and amended Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 25 looking for the amendments that actually enable any of the things that that Minister just spoke about.Hon Member: It's policy neutral.NICOLA WILLIS: Curious it is there is none of that in here. Yet in fact what there is is the removal of the very principle that would have empowered those caseworkers to really look at individual lives and make a difference. That is the principle of social investment and that is what this bill removes.So we have members opposite calling out a little phrase which I'm sure everyday Kiwis would be curious to have a definition for and that is policy neutral". I actually think that this is a reasonable aspiration: that members on both sides of this House would say "Well let's work together to tidy up this old Act that's in a bit of a mess." In fact that's what National got to work on doing got to work on tidying-up an old Act that didn't make much sense. But sensibly because we do not want to waste time and resources sensibly because we do want to be effective and efficient and put children families and New Zealanders first what we did do was we said that on the way through if there are small incremental changes we can make to improve the way the welfare system operates we will. And then what happens is the Labour Government come in and they say "No no no no no. We are going to take it all—strip it back and make it policy neutral." So I've been sitting here as a new member thinking: what is this all really about? And you know what? I think I've worked it out. I think that this is actually about the new Labour-led Government not being able to agree on what changes should be made in the welfare area. I actually feel sorry for them. On the one hand they've got the Greens who want to remove any punitive measures who don't think that work should be an obligation and then we've got New Zealand First on the other hand who are saying that actually we should be introducing ready-for-work programmes. So if we look at Part 1 as amended in SOP 24 and we think about what the general provisions in there are which are outlined in clause 5 and we look at that guide to the legislation we say to ourselves "This is a bit uncomfortable isn't it?" Because actually there is something inserted here which is far from policy neutral and that's the winter energy payment. So I don't think that's policy neutral because it certainly wasn't policy that was introduced in the bill previously.So instead what I'd like to turn to is the principles of the bill that remain in Part 1 and that I think based on question time today there may be some concern about on the Opposition benches: clause 4(b) which says "the priority for people of working age should be to find and retain work." and clause 4(a) that "work in paid employment offers the best opportunity for people to achieve social and economic well-being:". We had the Hon Willie Jackson get up in the House today and imply that picking fruit is beneath some people implying that that is not appropriate work for some people. So my question to the Minister is: does she intend down the line to re-examine these principles which remain in this bill around the priority of finding work? Because what she did just suggest in the previous speech was that she's concerned that any change to principle needs to be considered. So I want to know whether or not these principles are up for review because it shocks me and I think it would shock most New Zealanders that this Government would remove the principle of social investment that was written into this bill because that principle is simply common sense. [Interruption] Now the member opposite—I forget his name—the New Zealand First member wanted some help with a definition. I simply point him to Part 1 that we're debating right now where we've got a very nice definition of what social investment means in the context of welfare provision. It says "to … achieve the best possible outcome for people at risk of long-term welfare dependency". Now the hoops and jumps you'd have to go through to say that somehow that's something of malign intent! It is simply ridiculous to suggest that because what in fact we are allowing to happen by inserting that principle into this bill is empowering those who implement the welfare system to take steps to take measures that best target those who need help. But members opposite want to take a generic approach—want to do silly little things like not calling something an "emergency benefit" but calling it an "exceptional circumstances benefit". They take issue with the semantics but they don't attack the substance."