Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. I'm rapt to stand in support of the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill. This is an overdue change overturning a cruel policy implemented by the previous National Government. I want to start by acknowledging that our caregivers are precious. They nurture our future generations. They do important labour in our society that often goes unnoticed. It's a full-time often all-consuming gig. We should support it and treat it as such. Our parents and caregivers should be celebrated and supported not punished. I'm incredibly disappointed by the rhetoric that implies that parents and caregivers outside of paid employment are simply lying there doing nothing. They're actually doing some of society's most important work and to imply otherwise does a disservice to the many people who have raised this. It's a disservice to our ancestors as well. Perhaps in a colonised Pākehā-framework state of mind caregivers are not part of our community but rather a burden to our welfare system. I disagree. So we'll be rapt to support this bill into the first reading. I also want to acknowledge this side of the House's comments around the so-called negative effects of benefit dependency because the only negative effects of being on the benefit come from benefits being too low to begin with. All the research tells us that incomes are one of the largest and most important determinants of health and consecutive Governments who have kept benefits far too low have created the conditions for people on the benefit to struggle. It is not the caregiver's fault while they're providing incredible labour to our society. The history of this bill is rooted in racism and misogyny and assumes that people are simply having children to avoid doing labour. I would make the challenge to caregivers who are taking care of multiple children that it is hard hard work. I had the small privilege of caring for my teenage brother for a year and a half and that was exhausting on its own. I can only imagine what it must be like to raise multiple tamariki. Despite the National Party quoting so-called research that shows the negative effects of long-term dependency what the research tells us about work-test sanctions and sanctions overall in the welfare system is that they do not work. They do not work to support our whānau into employment. They do not support people into aspirational empowerment situations. We've got multiple research that supports this including the Australian Journal of Social Issues that found that work obligations do not support people into work. The Ministry of Social Development's (MSD's) own modelling has shown that there's no evidence that the status quo is achieving desired outcomes to help people into employment. In fact if we go all the way back to 2017 when we had a National Party Minister for Social Development the Hon Anne Tolley their Parliament's social policy evaluation and research unit found sole parents in particular found themselves back on a benefit within two years of being obligated to take up work because of this sanction. What this shows is that this policy is not rooted in evidence. It shows that it's rooted in arbitrary prejudices about people on the benefit. It shows the disconnect from this House about the lived experience of people on the benefit and it's disappointing to hear people who have firsthand experience of being on low incomes talk about it in this way when the truth is that people on the benefit are struggling to make ends meet and doing more work than many of us in this House I would reckon. It's a shame that this House is being co-opted by a neo-liberal ideology that takes away people's right to dignity and it takes away the dignity of caregiving itself. I want to give a shout-out as well to all the people on the benefit who spoke out against this policy over the course of many years. In my time at Auckland Action Against Poverty before entering Parliament I worked alongside people on the benefit to submit to the Welfare Expert Advisory Group's public meetings and we heard very clearly from people on the benefit that these work-test obligations were not working. People on the benefit have been generous in sharing with us their lived experience about our broken welfare system and calling for changes themselves and it's overdue that we are discussing these changes just now. I'm excited to be on the Social Services and Community Committee with my colleagues on this side of the House who I know will be listening with care and duty to the submitters in the weeks to come. I want to also speak to the idea of work seminars and these work obligations that we place on people because the reality having worked at the front lines is that they're simply not fit for purpose. People on the ground have told me that they feel pressure to take up any job no matter how unsuitable out of fear of losing their benefit. Caregivers often are forced into work that provides irregular hours and often is far away from home. Caregivers tell us that they have to then fork out money for childcare which results in their sometimes being worse off than when they were on a benefit. Work-test obligations simply make no sense when caregiving is again a full-time gig that should be treated as such. We should be supporting our caregivers to nurture a future generation of people who are healthy and are thriving. People should be allowed to look for employment on their own terms. In fact MSD's own research also tells us that when supported living payment recipients who have no work obligations do find work they actually stay at work for longer and they find work that pays better because this set of people on the benefit who do not have these obligations can find people within their own terms and that is what the Green Party wants for all people on the benefit. We support this piece of legislation but we recognise that the problem isn't the subsequent child policy but the idea of obligations and sanctions in the welfare system overall. All that we do with these punitive obligations whether it's removing 100 percent or 50 percent of people's benefits is put people into hardship. What removing people's benefits does is create the conditions where children are missing out on food and people not being able to pay rent at a time when benefits are already acknowledged as being too low to survive. The Green Party believes in having a welfare system that provides unconditional support a welfare system that does not carry these punitive sanctions and obligations and a welfare system that allows people to live with dignity. This piece of legislation is a small step in the right direction but we're very clear that we want to see not only all the Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommendations implemented as soon as possible but a guaranteed minimum income that ensures that caregivers are able to find work on their own terms and that we value the work that they provide for our society. I look forward to future sittings of this bill and our select committee process and I hope to hear from people with the lived experiences instead of a neo-liberal narrative that is not grounded in evidence. Kia ora.