Ball Darroch: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBall Darroch: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8174. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill. In its essence it is a rather simple bill in so far as it wants to change one section of the principal Act. I would just like to read out part of the general policy statement which is in the explanatory note of the bill: “This Bill amends the Social Security Act 1964 to correct with retrospective effect to 3 June 1998 an error in the legislation that does not give effect to the policy intent that a benefit commences on the day after a stand-down period ends as opposed to the day on which the stand-down period ends.” In other words as the Minister has said and as other members have said this bill corrects a technical error in law. It is not a change in policy. That is the basis on which and the reason why New Zealand First will be supporting this bill.There are a couple of issues however and firstly I want to talk about the process that we are going through at the moment under urgency. There are a couple of issues about that process and one of them is the actual lack of communication from the Minister for Social Development and from the Government as a whole with regard to the change in legislation what it is going to look like the intent and even with regard to when we were going to go through the legislation and go through urgency itself. With legislation like this which is an actual correction in law that spans successive Governments you would think that communication was key.Why are we going through urgency in the first place? That is the second issue. We see if we put together the time line as Jan Logie did that in fact this change in legislation was actually placed in another piece of legislation and months later—in fact 18 months later—we now find ourselves under urgency. What are the reasons for that? I think it boils down to the fact that the Government was found out and wants to rush it through to ensure that it is not fiscally disadvantaged in the end.There is one key point that has been brought up by Labour and that is that the Government knew of this issue back in May 2014. In the departmental disclosure statement in the last paragraph under the heading “Any other unusual provisions or features” it says: “the Ministry of Social Development’s operational practice should have been amended when the error was discovered on 20 May 2014”. So the question that obviously comes out of that is: why was the operational practice not amended in May? As we can see and as I stated right at the start it is actually a simple enough bill and it is a simple enough change so why was it not changed and why was the issue not communicated to the beneficiaries and to the public back in May?As far as communication to the beneficiaries is concerned it is all well and good to give them 6 or 7 weeks—I think it has been pushed out now to 8 January—but again the lack of communication from the Minister is disappointing. However that time period is only as a result of the process we are now in—urgency. If we were not under urgency to get this pushed through there would be no need for a time limit on when people who got a benefit from May 2014 can apply.The other question actually is: if out of a matter of principle and fairness there is a 6 or 7 or 8-week period when beneficiaries who received a benefit from May onwards can apply why is everyone not able to get the back-pay for that? Why do they have to make an application to do so? In this day and age with digital computer records and everything like that going back to May 2014 there will obviously be records of all those beneficiaries who will be eligible for this back-pay. So why are we going through the rigmarole of making beneficiaries apply when it can be automatically done? That is a question that hopefully the Minister can answer during the Committee stage.The two main reasons why New Zealand First is supporting this bill are the intent of the original legislation and the intent of the stand-down period itself. It is easy actually to get dragged down an emotive pathway where we are seeing the effects of beneficiaries’ poverty. There is bill called the Support for Children in Hardship Bill going through the House and we have heard stories about children who are homeless in Auckland. We have got issues with child poverty throughout New Zealand and obviously those are big problems for this country. But this is not the problem here and this is not the legislation that we need to change to fix that problem. Labour and the Greens are opposing this bill based on that emotive pathway. So in reference to that I would actually like to look at the departmental disclosure statement again. It highlights right at the start that this bill amends the Social Security Act to correct “an error in the legislation that does not give effect to the policy intent …”. So New Zealand First’s stance is that if you take those beneficiaries from day one from 1998 and if the legislation itself was written to the intent of the bill—we know that it was not—those beneficiaries would have received exactly the same amount that they have already received.So if the legislative error was not there the beneficiaries would be no better off today than when the mistake was made. So we are correcting that and we have heard from Labour and from the Greens that the beneficiaries are owed money and that they missed out on a day but the intent of that original legislation states that they did not. And of course if the situation was reversed and the intent was for them to have the extra day and they did not of course we would be holding the Government to account on that.Also some have said that there is an issue with the retrospective effect. The departmental disclosure statement says that in this case the retrospective provisions can be justified to ensure that the Government policy intent is upheld that the practice and understanding that has been previously applied by the Ministry of Social Development is validated and that financial costs to the Crown that were not anticipated are avoided. New Zealand First agrees with that.I would just like to finish off with a 3 News article about this urgent Government bill that is going through to fix a benefit error. TV3 states that beneficiaries are being underpaid by 1 day. It is disingenuous to report that because that is not the case. Beneficiaries have not been underpaid by 1 day. The intent of the bill was fulfilled and that is why New Zealand First is supporting this bill.It has always been Government policy—in fact the Minister has said it too—that the benefit will commence the day after a stand down and that the stand-down period is a 7-day period. So it is not just the case under the National Government; it has been so under successive Governments. And it is a little bit contradictory for the Labour Party to oppose this when the policy intent was being fulfilled under the Labour Government too.I have got a few more things to say and I will say them in the second reading and in the Committee of the whole House but at this stage we will be supporting the bill.