Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Madam Chair. I rise to speak to the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill today in its committee stage. I'll talk to the parts of the bill which is Part 1 that we're discussing today which of course everyone in this Chamber will know contains the general provisions.There are 10½ pages of indexing in the contents of those provisions so it simply signifies how big this particular piece of legislation is. And it's massive but unfortunately it is quite changed from the version that we had been discussing as a Parliament and this Supplementary Order Paper 25 of course has made some significant changes to the social investment approach that the former Parliament was discussing.The purpose as we've heard today of this bill is as stated in clause 3(a) to enable the provision of financial and other support as appropriate"—and it is appropriate in New Zealand. We are very proud of our welfare system and the welfare state that has evolved in this country over many decades and it is rightly so that we should be held up as an example of a compassionate country that supports our less fortunate people.As part of that "Purpose of this Act" it is in clause 3(a)(i) "to help people to support themselves and their dependants while not in paid employment; and"—not "or" but "and"—"(ii) to help people to find or retain paid employment;". That is the bit in this bill that I find quite ironic from the people across the Chamber. We are asking people to find or retain paid employment when we are constantly hearing about the efforts of the present Government to compromise small businesses that provides most of the paid employment to the people in this country and where most of our small businesses provide those employment opportunities to the very people that we are discussing in this bill today. It is "(iii) to help people for whom work is not currently appropriate" and of course that is for people who may have some kind of a disability or may be injured or sick. So the welfare system supports people of all ilks.I'd like to just pay tribute to the Minister for Social Development who stood up before and mentioned the caseworkers that she had been working with and to use the opportunity to thank the people of the Ministry of Social Development the social workers and all of the front-line staff because I know that they do a fantastic job in supporting people in their workplace but it's one of those jobs that I hope will work itself into redundancy. What a great day that will be when we no longer need so many of those people employed to support people on welfare because they will all be then in paid employment and able to sustain themselves.We have heard quite a bit today about the deletion which is in clause 4(e) where the only deletion in the definitions in this bill has been the piece about helping people achieve the best outcome for those at risk of long-term welfare dependency. We know that the best opportunity for those people is to be off that welfare cycle to stop this cycle of benefit dependency within families to set good examples for our children. I'll use the example of a young man that I knew who got his first job at our local council and it was simply washing the fleet of cars after school. Although it seemed like quite a menial job the pride that that young man got from actually earning his own money saving up to buy something that he had aspired to was quite encouraging and I think that is what we aspire to for all of our people—that they have paid employment."