Delahunty Catherine: Social Security (Benefit Review and Appeal Reform) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Delahunty Catherine: Social Security (Benefit Review and Appeal Reform) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5736] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koutou katoa. I am so glad to get the chance to speak in support of this particular member’s bill the Social Security (Benefit Review and Appeal Reform) Amendment Bill. It is very interesting to note how often the member Sue Bradford has her bills drawn from the biscuit tin. I am sure there are some statistical reasons for it relating to how many bills she has written but I like to think that the gods favour the people who fight for the poor. I think that if Jesus and Buddha were hanging around in the Clerk’s Office they would approve of the magical good luck of Sue Bradford in having her bills in defence of children and the poor selected from the ballot. 
They would not get very excited about some of the bills drawn especially not the bills about building jails Tasers privatisation and trashing the environment. But being spiritual visionaries they would be very keen on this bill because it supports the people reviled by the media and the shallow unimaginative policies of decision-makers. They cannot visualise themselves waiting in a line at Work and Income for their moment of humiliation after hitchhiking from a village 2 hours away with two small kids and a power bill they cannot hope to pay only to be told they do not have the right to their entitlement but they can fill in a form to ask for a review by the system that has just rejected them. It works well but for whom? 
Sue Bradford’s bill makes the process of benefit review panels and appeals more independent and robust on behalf of the people who badly need to be heard and heard with some semblance of equity. It makes a vital improvement to that sad old bad old legislation known as the Social Security Act. It is a justice-based reform of the welfare system—an idea that does not appear to be on any major party’s agenda. We need to do something to try to fix the worst inequities of that Act and this bill is a useful amendment to it. The bill also requires the Ministry of Social Development to communicate decisions in a timely manner. That might sound like a small thing but it is not such a small thing for someone who is waiting at home for a decision. 
However I will leave the technical niceties to my more able colleague who wrote this bill and to the people who stand with her outside this place: the formidable and heroic beneficiary advocates. I came to know those people when I moved to Turanga-nui-a-Kiwa where poverty and unemployment have been the norm for tangata whenua for a long long time. In the face of statistics about the performance of Work and Income in that region we set up an advocacy group and then I met the national advocates who fight for the poor. Every day in Gisborne people without hope came through our door and they are still coming in bruised by a range of experiences with Work and Income. There are some good Work and Income staff and some useless staff but the problem is not individual; it is profoundly structural and attitudinal. How hard is it to have fair processes for beneficiary review when the entire context around these issues is riddled with punitive and judgmental attitudes? 
We need beneficiaries to have the power to review Work and Income’s decisions and to appeal those decisions with equity and dignity and with the ability to choose effective advocacy without economic hardship. Sue Bradford’s bill is based on an intimate knowledge of the dilemmas that beneficiaries face with the child disability allowance with the sickness benefit and the veterans pension. She is proposing to get rid of medical appeal boards and transfer that function to an independent benefits review committee which can obtain medical evidence when needed. These seemingly obscure changes to review and appeal are actually significant changes in terms of beneficiaries being heard and of justice not only being done but being seen to be done in terms of beneficiaries’ just entitlement. They are part of the very long journey by Sue Bradford and by her allies in the movement to educate the rest of the country about the fact that beneficiaries are actually entitled to support respect and a fair hearing. 
I urge every MP in this House to get over any residual socially reinforced prejudice against fair play for beneficiaries and to join the forces for good—who include Jesus Buddha and Sue Bradford—in their support for this bill. Kia ora.