Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'd like to begin by acknowledging former MP Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki for bringing this bill and we'll acknowledge the Hon Duncan Webb for picking it up. For us this is a matter of justice and it's a matter of the systemic failures that have led to so many people on low incomes having attachment orders that basically end up stripping away so much of their income that it makes it impossible to survive. Unlike other jurisdictions—for example in parts of Australia there are mechanisms to wipe attachment orders when it becomes basically impossible for people to pay them—we have very little recourse to wipe those attachment orders and to adequately limit them.So it was interesting to hear from Paulo Garcia from the Government side where he identified the problem right at the beginning. He almost got it right. He talked about how actually one of the issues that we have is that a huge proportion of those attachment orders are on people receiving income support and that those people are some of the people who are on the breadline. And yet despite that while also acknowledging the narrow scope of the bill and that we need to take systemic action he didn't speak of any intention by the Government to do anything about this. So what I'm hearing from the Government side is they're not going to support this but they're also not intending to do much to resolve those broader systemic issues despite acknowledging the extent of the problem which is that a huge proportion of people who have attachment orders are beneficiaries. A lot of them—a great proportion of them—are women and equally Māori which I think becomes a Treaty issue in the sense of the Crown not meeting its responsibilities for looking after our communities. Once again we're back at square one by the Government admitting that they don't want to do anything.We have had so many advocates on this issue. In fact recently last year we had a coalition of groups including FinCap Child Poverty Action Group the Dunedin Budget Advisory Service Pakuranga and Howick Budgeting Service Henderson Budget Service Auckland Central Budgeting Debtfix Good Shepherd New Zealand the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services the Society of St Vincent de Paul and the Salvation Army as well as the Nelson Budget Service penning a letter to the former Ministers at the time calling for attachment orders to be stopped for people on the benefit. They were the ones who recognised the extent of the issue.Our front-line service providers are at the front line of recognising that attachment orders on those who are already struggling to survive does not do anything to incentivise better money management as Paulo tried to identify. Instead all they do is they push people into needing more hardship assistance into more debt. And the key thing here in unpacking that so broken and beaten-up argument over personal responsibility is that you can't actually make life choices when you don't have the choice. Like if you get stripped of so much of your money when you literally have no money left to make decisions on how you spend it it doesn't matter how good you're at budgeting; you're put in that impossible situation where you then have to take more debt to survive.Part of these attachment orders on people on the benefit is that it creates a perverse cycle of debt and hardship that creates that poverty trap that people aren't able to escape. Rather than just preaching about personal responsibility we should realise the collective responsibility we all have to not have a system that pushes people into poverty that traps people in hardship and that fails to acknowledge why people may find themselves with those attachment orders in this place because we've built a House that is broken and that entrenches inequality.So the Green Party does support this bill. We do think that there is space to have a broader and more systemic conversation on attachment orders but it would be naive to imply that there wouldn't be a difference being made by reducing the amount an income can be deducted to 5 percent for somebody who's on a benefit and that it would really really limit the negative impacts that really high attachment orders have on people.This is one area where I do think we're starting to fall behind as a country in recognising that attachment orders do not do good. In fact they do harm particularly for those people who have very little money already. So it could have been an excellent opportunity by the Government members to support this bill to the select committee to then to be able to hear—from the same people that the previous speaker was talking about who he doesn't think have made the right decisions—about actually what led them to have these attachment orders. And then we could have had a constructive conversation on how to address it but unfortunately it seems that the Government side is content with the status quo of trapping people in poverty.