Logie Jan: Social Security Amendment Bill Education Amendment Bill Taxation (Support for Children in Hardship) Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Social Security Amendment Bill Education Amendment Bill Taxation (Support for Children in Hardship) Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 03 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8585. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take another call on these bills arising from the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. I would like to start my contribution by referencing back to a submission from a Plunket nurse who was working in Christchurch East. She was talking about the reality of the lives of some of the children whom she was seeing on a daily basis. This legislation should be about our children. This legislation we were told by the Government is delivering on child poverty which is one of its main priorities in this term. It is legislation that I think fails so significantly.From the evidence of this Plunket nurse—she was telling us that she is going into rental houses where families are paying a lot of rent. They are cold and damp houses that families are struggling to heat because they do not have enough money to do so particularly with the challenges of the quality of the housing. Some of the houses lack curtains and carpet and those families are not able to afford to provide that themselves. There is very little personal space for the children whom she is seeing and in winter everyone is in the same room. And we know that that is one of the key contributors to the spread of infectious diseases and that it is not an exaggeration to say it is killing some of our children. She is seeing vulnerable babies sleeping on couches and sharing adult beds because the family cannot afford appropriate sleeping conditions for their babies.The families are incredibly stressed there is poor food in the house—sometimes no food—and the adults are skipping meals trying to be able to afford to give their children that bare minimum. Their children are experiencing the parents’ stress. Infectious diseases particularly respiratory diseases measles and skin infections are happening as a result of this poverty. And these families are deeply embarrassed because they feel the stigma that is being associated with the rhetoric that we hear from this Government of saying that it is their fault that they need to get into work and that that would fix everything. Some of these families are in work and some of these children—because of their sicknesses and illnesses as a result of their housing and the poverty—need additional care which means that their family cannot go into full-time paid work or even sometimes part-time paid work.Our system as it is operating at the moment is causing sickness that is keeping parents out of the workforce and we are telling them that the answer to this is for them to get into the workforce. That is at the heart of the message that the Government is giving them in this legislation. It is completely wilfully ignorant to the reality of the root causes of poverty and the challenges of these families. When this is the Government’s big answer to child poverty it just deeply deeply disappoints me.I think we need to be reminded that in this legislation the Government is saying that it is increasing the per family benefit rate by $25 a week from next year—not immediately from the introduction of this legislation or even when the Budget was introduced this year when the Government announced this but next year—because it prioritised the surplus over even the small amount of money going to these families whose children are suffering. This $23 a week—the academics and the advisers told this Government that to move any of those beneficiary families out of poverty the minimum required from the Government to move just a small group of those families out of poverty was $30 a week. It chose a level below that.I have said it already in this House but that just offends me because it was a conscious policy choice not to move any of these families who are unable to work out of poverty. And this is the Government’s answer to child poverty! It is not an answer yet we are having to swallow this dead rat of supporting this legislation because $23.10 a week when you do not have shoes for your kids when you are going without food and when you are struggling to pay what the Government thought was an insignificant prescription fee matters. But it is not going anywhere near solving the problem.The Government’s emphasis on taking away family choice saying that these families will be subjected to more sanctions when up to 50 percent of these families’ benefits could be cut for not meeting an appointment which is what we saw—I think the evidence of the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services was that over 80000 families had had their benefits cut in half over a year and that for two-thirds of those families it was because they had missed an appointment. So I would like to see Alfred Ngaro deal with every single one of those concerns many of which I am sure were not valid. If you do want to contact him directly as he has kindly offered to help it is . I do encourage people to take the Government up on its word given that it seems so convinced that the system is not unfairly penalising anyone and that everyone is getting their entitlements when the evidence we get on this side of this House does not reflect that reality.But to get back too to the point of that $23 being completely inadequate it is also unfortunately going to increase inequality. We know that the families that are struggling the most at the moment are those with more children. So this means that because it is a per family rate children in the families that are struggling the most are going to get the least out of this. Those families are the families that we need to be investing in. If we understand the concept of investment and the concept of an ageing population then we would get it that actually a bit of money upfront now to help those young people those children to be well healthy and to participate and engage in school and have good outcomes will pay off for those of us who are likely to be relying on their workforce participation in the future. But this Government’s concept of investment seems to be a concept that does not meet my understanding of that word. It really seems to be so constrained by this focus on the short-term fiscal bottom line for this Government not the well-being of our children and not actually investment in the long term.I also want to mention that we have been told that there was good evidence for dropping the threshold for requiring parents to look for this work to the age of 3. The evidence that was provided was that that is the average age of their child when people are doing that. That is no evidence of why this is a good idea because actually it could well be that these families who are requiring income support are there because their children are sick. We know that a significant number of these parents in this situation have children with disabilities who require their attention. There are significant numbers—over 70 percent they say from international research—leaving violent relationships and their kids need them there. So it is not comparable. Actually the Office of the Children’s Commissioner also said that although it is the norm the commissioner was not sure whether it was a good thing. There is research showing that in families in Auckland parents are returning to work earlier and that that is being economically driven.Again if we were thinking and putting our children at the heart of our decision making and our planning would we want to say that economic necessity should override the choice of parenting and the decision making about what is best for our children particularly when we know that not all jobs are better than no job? Actually some jobs cost in terms of stress and in terms of money but it is the children in these situations who sometimes pay. This legislation is a sad sad disappointment.