Bidois DanDAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Thank you very much Mr Chair. It's a pleasure to be taking my first ever call in the Chamber after giving my maiden speech yesterday. I do hope I do you justice and I hope that you pull me up if I'm not obeying the rules of the Chamber.It's a fantastic pleasure to be here taking a call on this bill. My colleagues have already spoken to a number of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs). I'd like to jump straight into Part 3 of the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. In particular what struck me was clause 131 Meaning of suitable employment". Of course we all want people to be back on their feet as quickly as possible and gainfully employed but this struck me as a little bit—let me just explain clause 131. It's saying that the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is satisfied that the employment is suitable for the person to undertake for the specific number of hours per week. That's part of what's called the work test which goes a back a few clauses to clause 125 where beneficiaries must satisfy a work test. So which type of beneficiaries? We're talking about job seekers: people who get the jobseeker support and people who get the jobseeker support for health conditions including the spouse and partner as well.So what are some of the questions that I've thought about in this? The first is that there's no guidance around what is suitable employment for this person. So suitable employment might depend in fact on what their skill set is and also the external factors surrounding where this person lives what part of New Zealand they live in. I think that there's a bit of hesitation or a lack of guidance for the ministry on what suitable employment is so I definitely want to ask the Minister to explain what the role of suitable employment is. This brings me to my colleague the Hon Louise Upston and I'm very happy to see a tabled amendment in her name here which is an amendment to clause 131. It's great to be here to speak on behalf of her amendment to talk to this clause. So what is her tabled amendment about? Essentially she is calling for subclause (1) to be added to clause 131 so that "(1) MSD must have regard to regional skills shortages seasonal work and the rate of unemployment when determining if employment is suitable." This is important because of course the reason employment is suitable is required for the work test. Let me just give you a couple of examples. I'm from Auckland which is a big urban city and some of the skills shortages there are more around manufacturing high-end IT skills but they may not be the same sort of skills that are required in some regional areas. For example my colleague the Hon Louise Upston is from Taupō and it's likely that there's not a big IT sector in Taupō so there's not going to be a massive skills shortage of IT skills in Taupō. So I just think that this bill requires some regional specifications and so that's why I commend my colleague the Hon Louise Upston for submitting this amendment to make sure that this bill takes account of localised factors such as urban versus rural. I just commend that for clause 131.I've got about 30 seconds left. [Interruption] I'm trying to do my best. Otherwise look—Hon Member: Don't weaken now. Don't weaken now.DAN BIDOIS: As I said this is my first ever call and it's just such a pleasure. I didn't know SOPs were this big. This is over 500 pages—and I only just learnt what an SOP is the other day."