Ardern Jacinda: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Jacinda: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8922. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to speak to Part 2 of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill although I think perhaps a lengthier debate on Part 1 might have been in order. But given there are some subsequent amendments within Part 2 I am sure that we can cross-reference some of the implications of Part 2 against Part 1. But before we do I am frustrated by the misinformation that continues to be pursued by Government members not least by the Minister for Social Development herself who has continually tried to portray the Labour Party as being against people accessing a benefit. Never a more ridiculous statement have I heard. 
As I have said before Labour was the architect of our Social Security Act in New Zealand. We will defend to the death people’s right of access to social security but what we have been frustrated by is this Minister’s continual attempt to portray her welfare reforms as successful based on one criterion. What is that criterion? A decrease in the number of people accessing benefits. All we have done on this side of the Chamber is simply point out the fact that that is not in fact true. If you use the Ministry of Social Development’s statistical assessment—which is released annually and uses June data and goes right back to the 1940s—you will find that based on that annualised data we have seen some of the highest numbers under this Minister. They are higher than we have ever seen before based on that ministry statistical assessment which is based on annualised figures from June. 
So what Melissa Lee said before about us having high numbers of sickness beneficiaries under Labour—actually it is not true when you look at the record of this Minister. So yes we will point that out because on that Minister’s criterion she has failed. But on the criteria of morality on the criterion of a dignified system and on the criterion of doing right by job seekers who are actively seeking employment this bill also fails. This bill fails on those sets of criteria that we set ourselves as members of the Labour Party. On those counts this bill fails and I think it is only fair that we continue to raise those issues in this Committee. 
I want to refer to clause 65 in Part 2 of this bill which has not been touched on. It amends section 60GAE which refers to beneficiaries having an additional dependent child whilst on the benefit. The Minister raised last week that this is the very reason for the existence of these changes in these welfare reforms. The Minister’s belief that there are too many people having babies on the domestic purposes benefit is her sole driving force in presenting this bill to Parliament. 
First point: if you go back to the 1940s and in fact if you look at welfare numbers for the last 10 years DPB figures have tended to sit around the same figure. We have not seen this dramatic jump or ebbing away; they have tended to sit at the same number for some time. Neither Labour nor National have made dramatic shifts in those figures. For the Minister to now claim that actually what she is doing is backing New Zealanders and believing in beneficiaries and then at the same time say that all that sole parents are is people who go out and breed so that they can get money—which is what this clause says; that is what this clause says—and try to pretend that it is about something else I find it completely disingenuous. 
Secondly show me the family who aspires for nothing more for their child than a life on welfare. Show me that family. Show me that mother because again that is what this clause is implying. It implies that that is the only aspiration that a family or a mother has for their child and that is absolutely wrong. 
Thirdly show me the woman who has a baby on her own and who is the only one responsible for bringing that child into this world. I might have missed the memo but at no point have I heard the Minister or anyone on that side of the Chamber talk about the responsibility of dads in this equation yet every time we are in here discussing sole parents we are talking about mums in the most derogatory of terms. Was there a memo on immaculate conception because if there was I missed it. It is time that we got real and section 60GAE is an absolute denial of reality. 
It takes more than the denying of access to a benefit to fix what can sometimes be generations of families living at the bottom of the heap and if this Minister thinks that she can fix that issue by simply denying a parent and therefore a child access to social security then that is the most naive of suggestions. On this side of the Chamber we will not deny that there are families who have been at the bottom of the heap for generations and that the issues they face are complex. But to simply say that cutting off their benefit is the answer is not only naive but it is just going to cause us other issues in other areas of our social security system or with our social services. 
I have seen those issues. I will take any one of those members out on to the streets with me with Lifewise or the Auckland City Mission and we can see what happens at the end point of some of these policies. Evidence tells us that the only way to deal with some of those harder end cases—the minority—is with intensive case management. Show me how you do that when a Work and Income case manager sometimes has on their books more than 300 clients. This bill does not address that. This bill is not realistic in addressing some of these genuine issues where they exist. Instead it is making political rhetoric and playing political games with some of these individuals’ lives. Let us get real. 
I also want to speak to the amendments that have been made around medical assessments. When you come to Part 1A of schedule 2 which I believe is part of this debate it talks about appeals to the medical board. Many of those appeals will be based on the medical assessment process. I would love to tell the Committee what that entails but we simply do not know. It is one of the most important parts of this bill and we are completely in the dark as to how it will work. 
In fact as CCS Disability Action said—and I think it said it really well so I want to share its submission—“We support their use of appropriate tests designed to find out what assistance and supports the person needs to obtain employment. However we have grave concerns about United Kingdom style assessments especially when these are carried out by contracted providers. Despite the rhetoric about focusing on people’s abilities these tests have proven to be medical model based checklists often administrated by people with little real knowledge of disability.” Why is CCS Disability Action worried about a UK model? Because in 2012 the Minister herself said that that was what she was looking to replicate. 
We sought clarity at the Social Services Committee from officials about what was going to be included in these assessments. We got back a short note that basically said that the bill contains provisions to enable assessments but that it does not include how assessments will operate in practice. We asked about the tender process. They said that no decisions had been made on which external contractors would be used for these assessments or whether there would be one contractor or multiple contractors. We simply do not know. 
Labour has tabled an amendment that says that we should not be passing any policy or regulation-based changes on medical assessments until they come back before this House and are debated and that is only fair. Any Government that denies our ability to do that is a Government that has something to hide. I suspect I am afraid based on the approach of Dr David Bratt who is the chief medical adviser that we have every right to be worried. I saw recently a presentation by Dr Bratt regarding people who are undertaking assessments for sickness and invalids disability. It is called  
Ready Steady Crook: Are we killing our patients with kindness? 
. He openly—openly—spreads the notion that access to social security is bad for people’s health. 
Actually do you know what is bad for people’s health? An undignified system that does not focus on people’s strengths and abilities to get back into work a system that does not focus on their wellness and a system that instead allows them to squander in poverty without the means necessary to even ensure that they are again one day employable. That is what is dangerous to people accessing our system and this bill does nothing to address that. 
Part 2 of this bill contains in it provisions that as I have said seem to take on this notion that we need to be cruel to be kind. Well we trialled that. It was in 1991 and Ruth Richardson cut benefits by 25 percent. Did we see a decrease in access? Well what we saw was an increase in harm. We went from 30 percent of kids living in poverty being in the homes of those on benefits to today when that rate is more like 70 percent. Mr Speaker this bill will do much more harm than it will do good.