Radhakrishnan Priyanca; Tolley AnnePRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It is indeed an honour to stand and take a call on the second reading of the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. As members opposite have pointed out time and again over the course of tonight's debate it is indeed a huge and significant bill.I want to start with a well-known whakataukī: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata he tangata he tangata. What's the most important thing in the world? It's the people it's the people it's the people. That's what underscores this bill or at least that's what should underscore this bill and that's what underscores our rewrite of the social security legislation.New Zealand has a proud history when it comes to leading the world on progressive social reform. In fact it was the first Labour Government back in the 1930s who led on a wide range of progressive social reform and set the tone really for this country's economic and welfare policies for a long time. My colleague Greg O'Connor has reflected a little bit on the history and the roots of this legislation rewrite bill so I won't rehash that except to say that the 1938 Act was a cornerstone of that Government's welfare programme in fact. The values that underpinned that Act and continue to underpin today's rewrite were the fact that we believe on this side of the House that everyone has the right to live with dignity.What we do agree on—both sides of the House—with regard to this particular bill is the fact that it is disjointed that it's difficult to navigate and that those to whom this bill will apply specifically don't find this bill user-friendly. We've heard of course that there are about 500 different parts and there are a whole bunch of different discretions that are contained within this bill. And of course all of us regardless of which side of the House we're on agree with the fact that it needs to be user-friendly and that it needs to be modernised and that it needs to be cleaned up. So we definitely agree with that—the modern drafting style the logical structure and all of that and making things much more discrete. But here's what we're concerned with on this side of the House. This is particularly taken from I guess the Labour Party's minority view at the Social Services Committee but it holds true obviously today as well. The emergency benefit—so this is one part of the bill that we don't agree with and that we've consistently disagreed with: the fact that it will change to what the Opposition members formerly in Government wanted to call the exceptional circumstances benefit. It wasn't just a name change; it was also that with this name change came a whole bunch of work obligations. The fact of the matter though is that the primary demographic of those who were availing themselves of this benefit are those who are over 65 years and don't qualify for superannuation largely because of residency constraints. So these are people who need this benefit in order to be able to survive. What the Opposition members wanted to do was to change that around and bring in work obligations as well which is completely unfair.The other aspect of the bill that we found incredibly problematic was the redirection of benefit payments. They can happen as it stands without consent. But under the current Act there needs to be good cause. What this bill would have done if it had been passed was to remove that clause remove that need for good cause to be proven which then means that you can just redirect benefit payments and it largely could have been and would have been to the detriment of those who are most vulnerable. So when Opposition members then stand up and pretend that this was a bill that was being championed because they are those who fight for the underdog—I call you out on that because it absolutely was not.The other aspect of this bill that members opposite have been waxing lyrical about is the fact that the bill allows both parents in split custody care situations to be eligible for sole parent support but those in shared parenting arrangements cannot access this. Now they've stood there and they've lauded this aspect of the bill and they've said Oh but it's so unfair." Now if you split the family up and one parent has custody of two children and the other parent has custody of two children well they should avail themselves of this. Why didn't they then change it to allow for those in shared parenting arrangements to avail themselves of that as well? Why not actually keep the family together and ensure that we're not actually forcing families to split their children up just to avail themselves of this? Why didn't you do it the other way?But regardless of all that what we on this side of the House actually find disingenuous—and that's a word that's been bandied about by members opposite as well—is this: members opposite claimed that this was a policy-neutral rewrite. But was it though? Because they snuck in all these things. They snuck in all these absolutely punitive measures. They snuck in the fact that what they wanted to really do was to write into legislation their social investment approach.At that point let me bring in a part of one submitter's submission. I'm going to read that out in a bit because it's absolutely worth listening to. It's the bit about the social investment approach. It's about enshrining that in legislation in a rather sneaky manner that we object to. We've consistently objected to that and we continue to.This was a submission from E tū and I quote: "Unfortunately"—[Interruption] Well yes they are the largest private sector union with 55000 members. If you want to turn your noses up at that that's your call. But this was their submission: "Unfortunately the Ministry of Social Development has an Investment approach that seems to focus solely on the cost of people receiving a benefit and to focus on investing in employment and work readiness services and supports to reduce the long term costs within [the] Vote Social Development [budget]."They then go on to point out quite rightly that this is about reducing the people of New Zealand to a financial cost—"future liabilities that need to be dealt with." That is the social investment approach that members opposite laud. It goes on to say: "Often people go on benefits through circumstances that no-one would wish on another: redundancies death of partners relationship breakup unexpected pregnancy ill-health mental illness to name a few. These are not future liabilities that need to be reduced within a budget line. These are people that are hurting are stressed and need to be treated with dignity and we help them get back to being in a position to help themselves." That is what a true investment approach would look like but instead it was this whole limiting of liabilities that members opposite wanted to enshrine.The public scrutiny of legislation has come up. Again members opposite multiple members have gone on and on about this and pointed to the fact that—I don't know what they pointed to but they were trying to make out that we didn't agree with the public scrutiny of legislation. Can I just point out that this bill when it went through select committee received 121 submissions—52 of them wanted to be heard. But the time was reduced to six weeks. When those of us on this side of the House were in Opposition we pushed for that to be given an extension so that members of the public had more than six weeks to submit on a bill of such substance. But did they agree? No—it was truncated. The submission period was truncated by the former Government to actually shut people out. And then when those who came to submit actually submitted were they heard? No. The submissions fell on deaf ears. Did they change?Do they understand what "policy-neutral" means? We've been hit on the head on this side of the House for not including substantive policy in this rewrite but let me just point out to you: this was supposed to be policy-neutral. It was your former Government that snuck in bits of substantive policy; now when we remove it you slam us on the head for that? Do you not understand? Do the members opposite not understand what "policy-neutral" actually means?I'll end on this point: we've heard from members opposite that they've been slammed with a Supplementary Order Paper but others have quoted it. So which one is it? You can't have it both ways. Thank you.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'd like to try and have it both ways actually."