Robertson H V Ross: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson H V Ross: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3768. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Can I thank the Minister for explaining the situation. Nevertheless we have a rule in this place that no one is called a liar because indirectly you are not actually calling the person that; you are insinuating that the whole Parliament is like that. So in that case I would just ask the Minister to withdraw and apologise.  
Hon Paula Bennett 
: I certainly can withdraw and apologise if that is your ruling. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you—much appreciated. 
JAN LOGIE 
: The Green Party as stated several times already will oppose the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. We will continue to offer alternative solutions and we hope that after the next election we can be part of building a society that has a strong foundation based on a Kiwi sense of a fair go and community. We have many specific concerns about the content of this bill and many concerns regarding the context within which it is operating. We have many concerns about what we see as some pretty fundamental inconsistencies within this bill and many concerns regarding the underlying values inherent in this bill. Ultimately we have a different vision for our society and a different view of our fellow New Zealanders. I would like to speak to that a little bit more. 
Last night I went to a presentation by a great organisation called KidsCan which is working in New Zealand to provide raincoats for children who do not have them shoes for children who do not have them and food for children in lower-decile schools. This group is not a political group it is not advocating for structural change but what it described is absolutely relevant to our sense of social security and welfare. It described children who do not know when their birthday is because their parents have not got enough money to be able to put on birthday parties. It described little girls who are getting their heads shaved because the cost of buying lice treatment is half of the family’s income. It described children who are going to bed in raincoats that were given to them by this organisation because they are the warmest thing they own. The people from this organisation were very clear that it has not met one parent who does not want the best for their children. They have not met one parent who does not try their hardest for their children. That is the context we are living in. This is not about poor parenting; this is about inadequate income. Two out of five families living in poverty are working families. Pushing people off welfare into work will not solve the problem of poverty in this country. What we need to do is increase our base income. This bill does nothing to achieve social security. 
Now to speak a little bit more around the content of this bill and the points that we oppose. We oppose the contracting out of services. The Minister for Social Development talks about a wraparound service for young people and the need to care. I absolutely wholeheartedly support that. I have worked in the community with a lot of young people in that situation and I really recognise that when they do not have family to stand by them support is important. However we cannot support this model when we are undermining the value and the functioning of the community as opposed to the State. That is what this bill does. It puts community organisations into the role of the de facto State. That compromises the ability to build relationships and undermines the organisations’ ability to respond to their community needs. 
We do not support the starting point of controlling every young person’s finances and putting them on payment cards. The Social Services Committee had very strong evidence from some young people—and from young people I spoke to as well—about the need for flexibility. In actual fact many of their living situations tend to be quite tenuous and they need to be able to respond quickly and get out of bad situations. This provision is not going to help with that problem. In fact having automatic payments—things out of their control—may well put them into more precarious situations. 
We support aspiration for our young people. We do not support a one-size-fits-all solution which National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 as an aspiration for all young people is. It is a one-size-fits-all solution. It does not recognise the needs of young people with learning disabilities. It does not recognise the needs of young people who are refugees who do not even have literacy in their own first language. It does not follow best teaching practice which is that you focus on the students and their learning pattern not the teachers or some external goal. 
We do not support the information-sharing provisions in this bill which are not consistent with the Privacy Act. They are an experiment. We actually believe that the right to privacy goes over and should go beyond the Government’s experiment. We also have concerns that were brought up with us by young women around education. We really support that model in terms of young women being able to go to schools and have their kids in the same place while they are learning. But we do not have many of those schools in our country so the chances are that a lot of these young women are going to be sent to courses that are not going to provide childcare onsite and they are going to be separated from their children. There is real potential that that is going to have an impact on their bonding. We do not believe that that is good for the country. 
In terms of the provisions in relation— 
Mike Sabin 
: There’s a lot of good bonding going on within the dryer. 
JAN LOGIE 
: If that member does not think these young women want to bond with their children he has obviously not met many or had many discussions with them. The DPB— 
Mike Sabin 
: Well I’ve got six children; I’ve probably got some idea. 
JAN LOGIE 
: Are they in that situation? For the DPB we do not support the work testing at all actually. We believe that the evidence supports that when women are ready to go back to work and when their children are ready for them to go back to work they start looking for work. We do not believe they need to be pushed. We believe that their individual situations and reasons for being on the DPB in the first place actually often mean they should be there with their children putting their children first and in many cases healing from what have been some very traumatic experiences rather than trying to juggle the needs of their children and juggle the needs of a job travel and life. We believe that that is unrealistic. 
I would like to speak to some of the inconsistencies in this bill. One is that the intent we are told of this bill is to take an investment approach a really radical approach. The Minister has said that she makes no apology for the cost of it that it is going to be expensive but it will be worth it because it will pay off. Yet the Government used its financial veto to rule out my Supplementary Order Paper which would have extended the training incentive allowance to higher-grade courses which we know are the courses that will enable women to get off the DPB 6 months earlier and enable them to stay off the DPB for longer. We have got clear evidence on that. The cost of that provision was only $5 million to $15 million. 
I would also like to draw attention to the inconsistency where the Government purports to want the best for children yet again it used its financial veto against Holly Walker’s Supplementary Order Paper which would have provided the option for discretion when officials gauged that sanctioning a parent would make it difficult to feed clothe or care for the well-being of a child. The Government said that that would cost millions of dollars—hundred of millions of dollars—because it had budgeted for those sanctions. The needs of the child obviously do not figure in its considerations. For us that is a fundamental inconsistency. 
I would also like to talk to some of the values. The Government talks about the importance of work and we also heard this from the ACT Party. We share that. Absolutely work is important. Parenting is work. Actually contributing to our community is work. And most people want to work in paid work or otherwise. Part of the way we shape our society is by valuing work—not by valuing just the things we say are work and not valuing what other people consider to be work. We would also like to say that our understanding of a fair go is the understanding that everyone has—that we give our children a place to start in life that is comparable so that they can get ahead and everyone has the chance of getting ahead in life. We know that when children are living in poverty it means they are going to have poorer life outcomes poorer educational outcomes poorer employment opportunities—a whole range of really negative things. This bill is in fact entrenching that inequality in our country and I do not believe that inequality is a New Zealand value.