Turei Metiria: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turei Metiria: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2883. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 A great deal has been said tonight about all of the failings of this legislation the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill and I agree with it. I am pleased that our party the Green Party is opposing this bill. 
This Minister for Social Development Paula Bennett uses rhetoric to disguise her culpability in pushing more women and more children into severe poverty and hardship. This Minister Paula Bennett spreads deliberate misinformation because she knows that there is no evidence to back up these policies and in fact all the evidence shows that they will fail women and children. This Minister Paula Bennett knows that harm will come to women and children because of her reforms and yet she cares nothing for the impact on those children or their lives. This Minister Paula Bennett is stealing the future from those in poverty and hardship. This Minister is punishing women for being mothers.  
We can choose a different future for our children. We can choose a different future for all our children rich and poor if we choose to treat our children with dignity and with justice. So I want to outline some of the solutions that the Green Party has for dealing with these issues to bring women and children out of poverty.  
First research across the world proves that educating mothers significantly increases the well-being of their children. So for those who are on benefits the first most important thing to do is to invest in their education. We will bring back the training incentive allowance for DPB recipients and extend it to those on sickness benefits and to all levels of study so that other women like me and Paula Bennett who got degrees and got properly educated while on the benefit are able to do so as well. And we will extend it to sickness beneficiaries because they too should be entitled to further training so that they can get a decent high-level education for their future and for their kids. 
We will extend the in-work tax credit to beneficiary families because although this Minister Paula Bennett cares nothing for the family of two adults and two children that is on the benefit that has to survive on $75 a week after rent and food we do care about that family. We know and any New Zealander listening to this debate will agree that that family simply needs more money to make sure that their kids are properly fed properly clothed and properly housed. No MP in this House would ever expect themselves or their families to have to live on $75 a week after paying rent and food.  
But this Minister Paula Bennett cares nothing for those children in that family those children who are hungry and cold and she will intentionally discriminate against those children. The Green Party will not discriminate. We will make Working for Families fair for all New Zealand kids not just those who are wealthy. We will make sure that people are earning a decent wage when they do work. The Green Party will not tolerate the modern-day slavery wages that too many people—mostly women—earn in this country. A living wage is the best next step—to make sure that work does actually pay—to truly bring people out of poverty. When four out of five New Zealand families have struggled to put food on the table in the last few years we know that work is not a ladder out of poverty if wages are kept low. This Minister and the Government she belongs to deliberately keep wages low to keep families in poverty.  
Tonight we heard from Jan Logie the stories of women living on benefits—their real lived experiences. We heard in their own words their fears for their kids fears for their future and the shame that is brought upon them by this Minister’s degradation of them as women and mothers. Paula Bennett will force these women into work and their babies into day care to punish them for getting pregnant. She got what she needed out of welfare and now she kicks the ladder out from under her. Melissa Lee yawned when she heard these stories of women fearful for their children’s future. I guess to kick it off the National attitude to women might be to listen to those stories of women and their fears for their kids and liken them to dogs. Thank you.