Logie Jan; Dean JacquiJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm going to break the mood and actually have a proper speech on this. Though I do listening to some of the National Party members just have to reflect. I wonder if they have a competition sometimes for the best arrangement of talking points because it's all I hear and I just wonder how that is to have to give those talking points again and again. Anyway to the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill which the Green Party is abstaining on. I know some people are struggling with that as a concept but it is because actually we as a caucus have not made a decision on the substantive piece of legislation so we do not want to support legislation that will speed through something we don't agree with. But again if it through consultation turns into something that is going to contribute really well to our society then we don't want to get in the way of slowing that down either. So we are taking the middle role of abstaining so as not to be in the position of doing either of those two things.We recognise very much that this is a technical bill to enable ACC to be able to do work to provide Government with the best advice around an income insurance scheme and implementation of that so that the Government can make a decision on it probably in June or July and if the Government decides to go ahead to enable them to implement it to get that in place by 2025. So I would just again state that for the Greens we share the Government's recognition of the social problems that we have around the impact of sudden job loss either through redundancy or sickness or disability and the lack of good supports to help people get back into—when it's time to return to the workforce to make sure that they're able to return to good jobs not just the first job. Because we know that that has a really profound impact on people's lifelong learning potential when they're forced back into the workforce just to be able to pay the bills rather than being able to choose the right job in terms of their career progression and enabling people to retrain.The proposal as it went out for consultation though the Greens have quite a few concerns about though recognising that this was—and it's quite a beautiful thing to see unions and business and Government negotiating and trying to solve come up with solutions to a problem. But for us the fact that the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG) had considered these issues and had not recommended an income insurance system—that for us is a bit of a flag and a concern as a starting point.But also the proposed scheme it just sits uncomfortably hearing National talking points around tax covert taxes and how that's a bad thing. We have a concern at the level of the levy and that it is as proposed to be universal. For really low-wage income workers we're worried about what that will mean for them being able to keep food on the table particularly at a time where people are really struggling and that migrant workers will be paying that levy but will not be entitled to the insurance at the other end. That for us is really problematic. At the moment we're having some quite robust debates around our receptiveness to migrants in our communities. It is I think—where the policy landed at least as it went out for consultation—for us another really worrying signal. Particularly also for migrants low-income workers and those in the gig economy in particular where the settings are it looks like there won't be a guarantee for some of them and particularly our artists whose work can often be quite sporadic—to ensure their access to the scheme while they'll be required to pay into it. Then the other points that I've mentioned earlier—around the fact that the biggest impact as I understand it—the cause of wage scarring for women is leaving the workforce to do caring work and that that is not being covered by this legislation. We know there is a massive difference between what this scheme will provide and paid parental leave. Our paid parental leave—I've just got to take a moment to just rail against the fact that at the moment I think it's a maximum a cap of $621 a week which isn't even the minimum wage. While we all recognise the importance of the first thousand days in supporting our whānau actually our paid parental leave isn't even enabling people to receive a minimum wage for that essential caring work that will pay off for all of us into eternity. So that is a bit of a problem for us at the moment.Also around the lack of clarity—the Greens had a policy we went to the election with to extend ACC for sickness and disability. This goes a little bit of a way you could say towards doing that because it enables—and the Minister's story in terms of bringing into the House those of cancer survivors who have been struggling in terms of our Work and Income system and still having been job tested while going through cancer treatment and not being able to work; just the inhumanity of that system. This could be seen as progress but it also could be seen as adding more complexity where we leave people who have long-term disability or illness in our income support system where we haven't seen an increase to the child disability allowance or the disability allowance I think in many many many years and the call has been from WEAG for that to be increased fourfold to basically meet the same level of support it initially offered—so we're forcing people with long-term disability into that. Or the really generous system of ACC—so it creates and embeds discrimination based on whether your disability is a result of accident or illness or birth and creates more complexity which worries us. But we're really interested in hearing people's feedback on that because I get that it could be seen as an improvement on the status quo but is more complexity. I do just want to flag that some of the Labour Party members in their speeches there was some language that worried me in talking in support of this around people who have been unable to work through no fault of their own" as opposed to people receiving income support which would suggest a sense of maybe that is their own fault and maybe we should be punishing them—is the kind of the background ideas that kind of sit behind that language. That is the deserving and undeserving poor and that is Victorian and that is absolutely not consistent with the work of WEAG to get us to a society where we all have a place to be able to thrive and all of our work—whether it is paid or whether it is domestic labour caring work—is properly valued so that our societies and our community has a chance to flourish.So for the Greens our initial proposals around addressing those problems we identified upfront would be a guaranteed minimum income compulsory redundancy of four weeks to implement the WEAG report to have free education and to have paid parental leave extended and increased to be able to enable people at that early time to be able to do that work and have enough not to be completely stressed the entire time. We can pay for all of this by a wealth tax which is not just about spending; it's actually about redistributing to all of our collective benefit. So that's where we're at with this at the moment. Thank you.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the lunch break. The House will resume at 2 p.m.Sitting suspended from 1.03 p.m. to 2 p.m."