Turner Judy: Social Security Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Turner Judy: Social Security Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:8968] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to support the second reading of the Social Security Amendment Bill. The bill introduces some important changes to the principal Act the Social Security Act which provides the framework for income support in New Zealand. The most significant is an addition to the principles of the Act so that where appropriate benefits are paid to people with a clear work focus underpinning the support on offer. 
Work and Income will have three streams of work in regard to its clients. The first is work support which will target people on the unemployment benefit and includes some pre-benefit activities. The second stream is work development support for those who have commitments or challenges that make paid work a goal but not an immediate reality—for instance people on the domestic purposes benefit sickness benefit and some people on the invalids benefit. The third stream of work will be community support for clients who have no realistic chance of participating in paid work but who require support to find appropriate ways to connect with others in their community and that would include some people on the sickness and invalids benefits. 
This bill is all about expectations. Most people in New Zealand derive income by meeting a set of expectations that are either self-imposed in the case of the self-employed or imposed by an employer. Expectation is the basis of a person’s work ethic. United Future has always advocated for the notion that paying a benefit minus a reasonable expectation is foolish. Expectations need to be tailored to the type of benefit being paid. For instance the expectation on those receiving the unemployment benefit should be understandably different from those that apply to a beneficiary on a sickness benefit or invalids benefit. The unemployed need to be actively meeting expectations that see them doing all that is in their power to be work-ready. Sickness beneficiaries need to respond to an expectation regarding making every effort to recover. 
The bill also increases the expectations placed on the staff of Work and Income. More active case management includes being more responsive to the needs of beneficiaries for whom we have no work expectation—those for whom any expectation of this kind would be unrealistic and quite probably cruel. United Future is pleased that the community support section of this fresh approach recognises that beneficiaries can often need support beyond income and that Work and Income case managers will now have an explicit mandate to cater in a more holistic way to those clients. 
This brings me to the United Future minority view included in the commentary on this bill. We were concerned—and others agreed with us—that removing work with the community agencies from sanction provisions within the bill was included. We were particularly concerned that those on the unemployment benefit living in more rural communities where other work experience options are more limited may miss out by excluding those provisions. We felt that a case manager should be able to require a client to gain relevant experience with a community organisation particularly where there were no other options. 
I have explored ways in which a Supplementary Order Paper could be designed to that end. However with the way that this bill is structured it became obvious that it would be very difficult to change the bill without having the unintentional consequence of creating sanction provisions for beneficiaries with severe and complex disabilities. It was also difficult to design and word a Supplementary Order Paper that did not reduce the flexibility of case managers who need to tailor plans to individual clients. 
We also believe that although community organisations still present a real opportunity for work experience further work with the community sector would need to be done so that it was comfortable about taking on a role that included sanction provisions whereby it would possibly have a role in regard to sanctions. I believe it would be wrong to change this bill by Supplementary Order Paper to satisfy my concerns at this point without proper consultation with those directly implicated and by that I mean those in the community sector. So at this stage United Future is prepared not to move a Supplementary Order Paper at the Committee stage as we had planned because one does not do that unless one is sure one is adding value and getting it right. We do not believe right now that the timing of this would be correct. 
However we would like to encourage some more discussion to begin between the department and the community sector. We think there is real potential for a relationship between Work and Income and the community sector in this regard. We particularly think there is relevance in this regard in provincial centres where there are limited opportunities for work experience opportunities to be offered particularly to those on the unemployment benefit. We think there is real opportunity for dialogue in this regard so we signal that interest. I thank the officials who have worked patiently with me on this matter as I have tried to find a way forward and been unsuccessful. 
As I said earlier we could make progress but it would be to the detriment of people whom we did not intend to hit with a sanction and I am not prepared to do that—I know that the Green member will be very pleased about that. But I kind of support our minority view in that I still think there is much to be discussed around this matter. I think the community sector would be very open in some cases to helping with this and I encourage the department to continue exploring those options but we will support the second reading.