Logie Jan: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9181. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): It is with a degree of anger that I am rising to speak again against this Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill which will profoundly negatively impact on our collective well-being. I rise to speak against this bill which will against best practice solid evidence and heartfelt pleas further disempower and exacerbate the significant hardship that the most vulnerable people in our society are experiencing—that is namely sole mothers the sick and the disabled and those caring for them.This bill tells those people that the Government knows better than them. This bill tells people with disabilities that they cannot assess their own abilities. This bill tells parents on the DPB that they are likely to be such crap parents that the Government needs to tell them what is best for their children and to threaten them with sanctions if they do not do what Wellington says because Wellington knows best how to be a parent.This should not be an ideological battle yet somehow this Government all the way through the submission process and now still in this House has managed to reduce all of the evidence opposing this direction—from the Ministry of Health from community organisations on the ground from the Human Rights Commission and from you know that radical organisation called the Legislation Advisory Committee which is a subcommittee of the Attorney-General’s office—to an irrelevance. You know that is an extraordinary feat I think. In the face of all of the many perspectives telling us that this bill is more likely to create harm than good somehow this Government can still stand in this House and claim so confidently: “It’s for their own good.”Well several people with disabilities have told us just as one example that they wanted the name changed from the invalid’s benefit which they interpreted as an “in-valid benefit”. They wanted that changed and the Government listened—you know it has changed it to the supported living payment—yet the feedback from those same communities was that actually that is confusing because that is the name of another funding system a district health board support service. Yet in this final version of the bill we still see that same title. This may seem like a really small point but to me it sums up the complete arrogance of this Government. You know this point is not about money. It is not even about anything really substantive that I can see and yet this Government has refused to listen to the people who are most likely to be affected by it.What would it have taken to listen and change the name? The Government’s inability to listen and respond is to me emblematic of a very very deep problem.Last week I was listening to community advocates in South Auckland who told me that a few years ago they were giving out 35 food parcels a week and now they are handing out 200 a day. That is just one organisation. They told me that according to Otago University research a family of four in their area should be spending about $200 a week on food to be able to maintain their health. Yet their clients the average family they were seeing were able to spend only about $44 a week of their income on food. That is $156 a week short of being able to ensure the health—the basic fundamental health—of that family. They told me that the cost of private rentals in South Auckland had gone up by 16 percent in just 2 months and that there is a turnover of about four families a year in private rental housing because the community just cannot afford the housing.I have heard about a woman who is 7½ months pregnant and living in a car because she is $2 a week over the income threshold for Housing New Zealand housing. I have heard about a 15-year-old boy with a disability living on the streets of Auckland moving around on a skateboard. I know of a woman leaving a violent relationship who has had to tell her children to adapt to having holes in their shoes because she cannot afford to replace them. I have heard of a man looking after a son with a disability being asked by Work and Income to sell his car before it would offer him further financial support. I have heard of people with disabilities with PhDs who are desperate for employment but who are unable to get an interview for a job.Our society is showing deep signs of breakdown and people are starting to lose their resilience. Some people are starting to opt out of the formal economy giving up on Work and Income giving up on paid employment because they are just not able to survive.Children are getting sick. We have just seen the report from the Ministry of Health on rheumatic fever and on how the Government’s health programme is missing the fundamental problem of overcrowded damp housing and poverty. Our children are getting sick. Our children’s futures are being stolen from them by this Government’s refusal to address fundamental poverty. These stories are not exceptions. Sadly they are now the norm for the marginalised in this land of plenty.We have been sold a pack of lies. We have been sold the lie that there is no alternative—or at least that an alternative vision is not affordable—that the problem is the individual and that we need to fix them. We can empower them to get a job—the problem is with them. And if we reduce the employment rights of workers then maybe more employers will be more likely to employ more people. Well welcome to the thinking behind the financial crisis. Welcome to the thinking behind growing inequality and social breakdown.I have been listening to the Minister for Social Development. To quote her she was saying that she had heard quite a lot of rhetoric from the Opposition about welfare but that quite frankly she had seen no plan. Well I wish she had come to us and asked us for a plan earlier. We could have solved quite a few problems here because the Green Party does have a plan. The first step for us would be to consider our values. What kind of society do we want? What do we want for our children and our most vulnerable? Our answer would be that we believe everyone deserves decent work a living wage and to be treated with respect. We believe everyone should have enough income to fully participate in their community and to live safe healthy lives. We support welfare policies that are sufficient to ensure this simple to understand and access and universal in their application.In fact that is the antithesis of this piece of legislation the Social Security Act which it is worth noting has been amended 131 times. There are 54 new sections that have been added to the Act since it was first written and it contains over 50 points of discretion which as the Legislation Advisory Committee noted cuts across guidelines for legislation andCabinet Manualadvice.If the values I have been suggesting tonight seem radical to you I would remind you that they are at the heart of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the very possibility that these values could seem radical to you is truly a sign of how fundamentally fixed this society has become. There is a lot that we could do to support the most vulnerable in our society through streamlining our income support service making it easier to use reducing the costs of running it and actually helping to create work about solving some of those social problems that are leading a significant number of people to need social support when they may not otherwise have needed it.The Minister has said that she wants New Zealanders on a benefit to know that they have a Minister and a Government that are backing them to look beyond a lifetime on welfare. Well I want New Zealanders to know that the only people in this country who have ever been likely to spend a lifetime on welfare are people with significant impairments. This bill is going to do nothing to help them earn a living wage and be able to get off income support.