Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Whoo! That was a painful listen I've got to say. That speech from Amy Adams was to me the perfect speech of neo-liberalism which just outlined right there the messages of this side. The accusation that we would rather take people's money and spend it on wasteful poorly targeted programmes and take that money and spend it on poorly targeted universal healthcare poorly targeted universal basic education systems maybe poorly targeted community-based police services or—I don't know—poorly targeted and at least adequately funded community services or poorly targeted decent wages—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member needs to come to the bill.JAN LOGIE: This is the philosophy of that side. They believe that taxation and Government providing basic services is wasteful. They believe that those basic things which are the foundations of any decent society should be paid for by the individual and that it is wasteful for us to be using our tax money on those things.Well I will stand up here and say that we have a different philosophy on this side of the House. It is a philosophy that is grounded on experience of what delivers the best results for the most people and that is a universal approach to the provision of the foundations of our society which are decent education decent incomes and a decent healthcare system.So to get on to more specifics of the bill I do want to recognise the antecedence of this piece of legislation which I think can be significantly attributed to the campaigns from our communities to address child poverty. This week I was at the Tick for Kids celebration in this Parliament which was a meeting of young people and community leaders from all around the country. There were hundreds of people present celebrating this moment in time. This moment is where we have come to the point where in the election I think every single party acknowledged that child poverty was a shame on our country and we have the election I assume of a Government that has already made a commitment to addressing and reducing that poverty. This legislation today in the first 100 days is part of demonstrating to the country the commitment of this Government to reduce inequality and progressively eliminate child poverty from this country.Ensuring everyone—especially families—has enough to sustain themselves has been a driving force for the Green Party for years and I do want to specifically acknowledge the political commitment the intellectual leadership and the moral courage from Metiria Turei working alongside many advocates in our communities and around the country in this fight. He mihi aroha ki te mareikura a Metiria Turei mō tana tū kaha mō ngā whānau me ngā tamariki katoa.[A warm greeting to my esteemed friend Metiria Turei for her strong support of families and all children.]Our children and our friends and families and neighbours who are struggling need us to see them and address their needs. In the words of one of the speakers from the Tick for Kids celebration it is time we shifted the burden of child poverty away from those who are experiencing it. This House has the ability to lighten that load and to take some of that load and I am pleased today that there is a will in this House to do that.This bill alongside the Prime Minister seeking cross-party support for legislation to ensure that we actively reduce child poverty was a major reason for the celebrations this week. This bill doesn't remove the burden of poverty from all of our children but it is a start. It is a critically important milestone a signal from this Government that addressing inequality and ensuring that families have enough is a major focus for us in this term. It may not have escaped the notice of the National Party members that the Green Party supported their dodgy Budget legislation. They may seek to suggest that we were divided on that legislation and I do want to put it on record in the House again that it was a very very difficult call for us. It came down to the urgency of need amongst the people on lowest incomes experiencing extreme housing stress and the long-term fundamental harm of eroding our tax base. So I have got to say it is a real relief to be able to support this legislation that undoes those egregious tax cuts and ensures that families have got the support that we were initially supporting in terms of changes to the accommodation benefit.This legislation will ensure that the Government has the money to start rebuilding the foundations of an egalitarian society and entirely consistent with that provide more money in the pocket for families who have been doing it too hard for too long. This legislation will lift 88000 children—and we can only assume their caregivers as well—out of poverty by 2020-21. This is 48 percent more than the status quo and 39000 more children out of poverty than under National's reforms.I want to take just a moment to remind this House of some of the consequences of poverty: homelessness which in turn undermines people's employment opportunities and education as well as their health and sense of value in our society. Poverty results in overcrowding in homes which creates a significant health risk as well as exacerbating stress and increasing the risk of violence. It results in sickness and hospitalisation and more than one death a week from low-income related diseases. There are poor educational outcomes for kids having problems concentrating reduced opportunities for learning outside of school sickness and the impact of transience for not having enough money for the family to pay the rent. It results in social isolation something that is not often talked about but is a really profound impact of poverty where children are too embarrassed to bring friends home. They don't have the money or the resources to be able to get to events or to participate in sports or cultural groups or to go on school trips. They become ashamed and embarrassed and worried about their clothes—that they are out of place and they don't fit. That isolation has profound and lifelong consequences and results in mental health illness resulting from the stigma and stress and anxiety. We can and we need to do better for our children and the people who are out of the paid workforce.This legislation and the winter payment in particular I think of—during the election campaign—a woman in my street whose door I knocked on who was on a sickness benefit. It was winter and it was cold and she told me that after paying her rent she had only $20 to $30 left for everything. She could not turn on the heater and she was a sick woman unable to be in the paid workforce after years of being in the paid workforce and contributing. She was left unwell and unable to get well because she did not have the money to turn on the heater and feed herself. This piece of legislation will make a difference for her and I am so so pleased that New Zealanders voted to make a difference for that woman because she matters and we all are a little bit less of ourselves if we don't acknowledge her value and support her in getting well.This legislation does a lot of things and I'm sure in the subsequent speeches over this debate that I will get to drill into some of the details of it. But I do just want to say that if the Green Party had been leading the Government this isn't the legislation we would bring in. We would do it differently but this is a start. It's a quick fix in the interim before we get into solving the problems of Working for Families and the complexity and problems of the accommodation supplement. But this Government has a commitment to doing that and ensuring that everyone in this country has a right and an ability to participate and be well.