Pugh Maureen; Tinetti JanMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm really pleased that the Minister and the Green Party have raised this issue around evidence because it came up in the Social Services and Community Committee that actually the official advice was a little bit devoid of this information. In fact they did not analyse the impacts of long-term benefit dependency. The reason they didn't do that was because the Minister had indicated from the outset that this was the policy direction that they were taking and so that analysis had not been done. In fact I believe it was part of the confidence and supply agreement with the Greens that this sanction be removed from the Act. But the reality is and if the Minister would like some help with this the evidence is unequivocal and the evidence is that long-term benefit dependency does make it harder to enter the workforce and it is more likely to increase those cycles of hardship within those families and it is not the compassionate action to take in the long term. So that information is there and of course the social investment approach was entirely based on that evidence and the long-term benefits for both social and economic outcomes for this country. So I would like to ask the Minister that if this was a policy direction that was already decided on before it even went to the select committee and before this bill was even introduced to this House how is the Minister going to monitor and measure whether those incentives to work or those motivators to return to work are actually going to be introduced? And how will the ministry be measuring that and deciding whether this policy direction is actually going to create benefits for those children and their parents in the very long term? If we cannot measure and determine those outcomes then I think this bill is actually flawed. So can the Minister give us some confidence that there will be measures put in place that will support her contention that actually there is no downside from implementing this policy? Thank you.Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs): on behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment: I can give the member over there some confidence that this did not come out of thin air. This actually was part of the recommendations from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group's (WEAG's) report in February 2019 and again that did not come out of thin air. The WEAG did a lot of research and analysis around their recommendations. They did a huge amount of consultation and they went out and worked with different groups throughout the country and looked at what was working and what was not working for those groups and could see very clearly that this very small part that we're talking about here today was not working for different groups. They particularly highlighted the women who it was not working for. But also once recommendations were being made and officials were working through again this wasn't just taking that recommendation and saying to this recommendation We'll just take it and implement it and put a bill around this." There was some research that was done with control groups—David Seymour: What did it say?Hon JAN TINETTI: —and it was highlighted during the select committee process I know from the officials who were able to do that and report back to select committee around that—but it showed that this was not making a difference to benefit dependency. So I'm just going to go back to highlight that point because it does seem to be one that people do have some concerns around. The current policy settings were not impacting on that at all. So this bill this small narrow bill is about equity within the system as it stands now and restoring that equity."