Williams Poto: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2625. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):Thank you Mr Chair—a good choice.Hon Members: Ha ha!POTO WILLIAMS: Yes great—thank you. I rise to take a call on the Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3)—an innocuous name for a bill that does as my colleague Jacinda Ardern suggests tidy up a few bits and pieces that are probably related to drafting errors that were made when the original legislation was drawn up.I want to make a couple of comments in this call. My first comment I guess relates to how long it has taken for this piece of work to come before the House and to reach this stage. I understand that it has taken about 4 years. If this bill were a 4-year-old child under the reforms of the welfare system this child would probably have been in day care for the past 3 years. So it is interesting that it has taken this long to get this piece of work before the House. And I wonder why now. Why is this piece of legislation before the Committee now? I would suggest that it is because the Government is kind of running out of ideas on what to do next. I would suggest that this Government actually lacks any vision inspiration or aspiration for our people so it is casting around through its work programmes for bits of work to do. So this 4-year-old child has come to the House to finally have those drafting errors corrected.I just want to make a comment about some of the specific cases or scenarios that this bill will affect. One of the issues that was raised by submitters and by people working on this legislation was about ensuring that our students get the kind of support that was designed for them and their circumstances. What I mean by that is around the student allowance and as my colleague has already pointed out the scenario that has been suggested is that students will forgo their student allowance and will opt for the accommodation supplement because it may give them a little extra. We all know about students. I am sure that those of you with young people in your homes know that students are very canny at finding ways to maximise their advantage. I would suggest that that is a little cynical and that this bill is a little cynical in this regard.It also speaks to student allowances and to how we support our young people at university technical institutes and the like and to whether we are actually doing enough in that regard to support them. I would suggest that you are right Ms Sepuloni. I do not believe that we are. So perhaps another option rather than trying to align these two pieces of legislation may be to actually look at how we support our students better.In this particular call and I hope to take more later this evening I also want to talk about the ACC programmes that are leading us to look at equal treatment—at aligning some equity between those people who receive ACC payments through the normal ACC programme and those whose ACC payments come through an employer-accredited programme. The employer-accredited programmes came out of a piece of work that happened in I think the mid-1990s from memory when private ACC programmes could be developed by employers and it has taken an awfully long time for the realisation that when employees access their ACC payments they may actually receive more under the ACC-accredited programmes delivered by their employer. There are some major employers still employing those programmes. [Bell rung] There are employers who employ up to—[Interruption] Sorry Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I call Poto Williams.POTO WILLIAMS: Thank you. Yes I did call but—Hon Member: Quietly.POTO WILLIAMS: Yes it was quietly. I will try to be louder next time. There are some large employers who still continue with those ACC-accredited programmes and it could work out to be quite significant for them that we have finally realised that there is a level of inequity in those payments to employees.I also want to comment—if you will just bear with me Mr Chairman; I will just have a look at my notes—specifically with regard to clauses 5 and 6. I am just taking some reference from the regulatory impact statement—I refer back to that inequitable treatment. ACC-accredited programmes were really designed to encourage employers to take responsibility for their employees but if we look at the broader issue around ACC there have obviously been some comments in this Chamber in recent weeks on the ACC levies that are currently being charged to employers on the impact of the overtaxing of employers by ACC and on the use of those funds to bolster what it has actually become quite apparent is a bit of a sham really in the Government’s surplus. It has actually all been around the overcharging of employers for their ACC levies and I think it is about time that the Government recognised this and spoke to employers about why it is continuing to do this. Employers are now actually starting to realise that the Government should not be doing this and should be reducing levies to employees.Back to the regulatory impact statement: this legislation will actually look to make some changes retrospectively and if we do not change this legislation retrospectively there will be some windfall gains of additional benefit payments to those people whose employers have agreed to manage their own ACC compensation. But it has taken 4 years as I have said to get to this point. Four years is a significant cost to those employers. Will we look at how we may compensate those employers for this? I do not think that this is something we are looking at but it certainly is a case to be held up for them.In summing up in this particular call there are two major scenarios that are playing out in this amendment bill. It would be good to hear from the Minister—firstly as to why it has taken so long to get this bill to the House to ensure that these drafting errors are taken care of. While the Minister is in the chair I would welcome hearing the answers to the questions that my colleague Ms Ardern put to her too. Thank you.