Pillay Lynne: Social Security Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Pillay Lynne: Social Security Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:639;Page:9243] 
LYNNE PILLAY (Labour—Waitakere) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to stand and speak in support of Part 2 of the Social Security Amendment Bill. In doing so I once again commend Russell Fairbrother for his very good chairing of the Social Services Committee. I also acknowledge the many submitters who came along and told their stories. I believe that at the end of it the majority of the select committee members had listened very hard and taken on board the issues that had been raised and I believe that we brought back to the House a really good report. I think the bill is the better for the select committee process. 
I am proud that the purpose of this bill is to enable the provision of financial and other support as appropriate. The bill is to help people to support themselves and their dependants while they are not in paid employment. But the bill’s real focus is to help people find or retain paid employment. It will help people for whom work may not currently be appropriate—because of sickness injury disability or perhaps caring for a young child—to prepare for a future career in the workforce. 
The bill accepts that there are certainly circumstances in our society whereby it is not appropriate for people to be in paid work. Indeed it is the role of a good society of a caring society to care for and support those people—whether they be mothers or people who are impaired in some way through sickness or injury. We will have a richer better more benevolent society if our citizens are supported in that way. 
I want to talk about the basic principles. Working with people to assist them into paid employment means offering the best opportunity possible for them to achieve their full potential. Indeed the best way that we can do that is by offering job opportunities by offering training by considering what is the best training for that person by having a department that does not treat people as just a mass but whose staff sit down with them talk realistically about their aspirations and goals and steer and support them in the right direction. Clearly that is happening. Clearly we see our unemployment statistics going down dramatically. That can only be because we are supporting people into work. We are actually working with people’s strengths rather than focusing on their weaknesses which the Opposition members are very much into. In the past through the 1980s and 1990s we saw very much a blame mentality; if someone was not in work he or she was somehow lazy or deficient in some way. That is often not the case. It is frequently not the case. It is most often not the case. We need to work on giving people a hand up rather than a handout. 
Government members believe that the Social Security Amendment Bill actually enhances the opportunities that we already have in place for people. Those opportunities are seeing our people in work thriving providing for their families and having the dignity of having a job. When it comes to self-esteem and to people feeling they have reached their full potential the dignity that comes from their having a job where they are contributing where they feel they are valued and that is not tokenism cannot be measured. Of course it also economically is more beneficial. 
I acknowledge that there are many times when it is not appropriate for people to be in the workforce. It may be that because—as I said before—they have an impairment or an illness be it a physical disability or a mental illness it is not appropriate or in their interests for them to be at work at that time. I acknowledge the submitters who came to the select committee and spoke very openly about such situations to us. I also want to acknowledge single parents—especially women—who contribute much to this society.