Robertson Grant: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8203. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I want to pick up a couple of points from Annette King but I want to talk about two things: I want to talk about the issue of principle and the issue of practicalities. Up to now I have not spoken on this bill and as somebody who has observed this I fundamentally do not understand what the National Government is doing here in terms of the point of principle—the idea that a mistake was made an error occurred and people did not get what they were entitled to and the National Government chooses the date on which it discovered the error as the point at which compensation kicks in rather than going back to when the error was made. There is not a point of principle in that. That is the problem because if we were taking a principled approach it would be that an error was made.To quote the Attorney-General in this House recently—and he was quoting L V Martin—“It’s the putting right that counts.” The mistake has been made. The Government can now do what it needs to do in order to allow those affected by the error to make a claim. This legislation goes against the principles of natural justice which get talked about constantly in this House—the very thing that we are all charged with doing when we are elected as members of Parliament to uphold the rule of law and to represent the concerns of New Zealanders. It just seems to me that actually the National Government has taken a call for some reason to limit this on a financial basis and to trash the principle. That is what it looks like.That brings me to the second of my points—and I will come back to the issue of principle in a moment—which is as a member of Parliament and with this bill not having been through a select committee process I would want now to be reading a report from the Government that gave an estimation of costs. That is what would enable us to start making some good and sensible decisions. There is a factor that I know will make this difficult and that is the point that the Hon Annette King has just been discussing which is: just how many people would take this up? I have got an alternative idea about the information that we could get that would help us to decide the practicalities of this piece of legislation and that would be to get some information about the amounts of money that individuals who have already claimed have asked for. Was it $80? Was it $100? Was it $1000? How much money are we talking about at an individual level where we know who the people are?I accept the point that we are not necessarily going to know how many people will apply but I think the Minister in the chair or another the Minister might be able to stand up and talk to us about the amounts that individuals are getting because in total they will not be that much but they will be meaningful to those people who get them. We are talking here about teacher-aides people on short-term contracts students coming in and out of being a student and in and out of work and study requirements—people for whom $80 or $100 will make a difference. But you know what? That is not the point. The point is not the $80 or $100 even though it will make a big difference to those people. The point is the principle: that an error was made—an error that continued through different Governments; for nobody here can wash their hands of it. Perhaps some party members who have not been part of the Government might feel they can but nobody in here can really wash their hands of it because we have all been in Parliament. We have all got a shared responsibility in doing the right thing in actually saying “You know what? This was a mistake. We’re going to give a decent period of time”—and here I want to also support Carmel Sepuloni’s Supplementary Order Paper 142—“for everybody to have a look work out whether or not it’s worth their while applying and go ahead and do that.”I simply cannot understand why a Government that tells us it believes in natural justice that tells us it believes in the rule of law that says that it upholds the rights of the citizens of this country would not come here to this Chamber and say: “We get it. The mistake’s been made since the law was passed in 1998.” Now is the time to make sure that we can do that. Perhaps the Minister may well be able to do that now.