Turei Metiria: Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill — First Reading 
Turei Metiria: Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:9911] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 With respect to my friend from Labour I do not think this is dog whistling. I think this is a siren to National supporters. This is all about an ideological position. It has nothing to do with evidence. It is not dog whistling at all. It is about making it loud and clear to National supporters perhaps even to their funders that the Government will attack the most vulnerable families and do damage to the children of the poorest families in order to win itself a few extra votes. That is where this National Government is coming from. 
I do not think that it is an extreme position at all to say that this is dreadful legislation. It is abusive legislation which is misconceived out of the traditional National Party—and I do not say this lightly but I think it is true—pathological hatred of beneficiaries in this country. National has a pathological hatred of the poorest and most vulnerable families in this country. I am appalled that a Minister who herself was once a beneficiary as I was is responsible for the introduction of this legislation. It is a direct attack on her own community that seems deliberately designed to build on the failures of past National-led Governments in the area of so-called welfare reform. 
I lived through the first tranche of this in the early and mid-1990s. I was a beneficiary at that time and I worked with beneficiary families at that time. The “mother of all Budgets” cut welfare spending and cut the domestic purposes benefit by some 40 percent leaving those families hundreds of thousands of New Zealand families at the very bottom of the breadline and barely able to feed themselves at all and pay their rent and power bills. They were purposely put in that position by the National Government and it is intending to do that again. We can see how that is happening in this legislation. 
But I want to talk about the evidence—about whether there is any—for the intention of this legislation. Let us start with the regulatory impact statement which states: “There is no research currently available which accurately quantifies the size of the behavioural response from these changes in policy.” There is no evidence at all of any behavioural change. It goes on to say: “This prevents estimates with the degree of accuracy required from being made of the number of people who will move from benefit to work over a year as a result of the proposed changes.” There is no evidence to show that the policy will make any changes in people’s behaviour and therefore there is no estimate about how many people will be moved from benefits to work. This statement confirms what the Minister said in answer to a question I asked him last week that the Government does not know who the target is. The Government does not know who it is talking about when it says it wants to move people from benefits to work. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: It’s just rhetoric. 
METIRIA TUREI 
: Yes to National they are some faceless families. They are certainly not faceless to me because I was once a part of one of those families and I still deal with those families. Clearly the National Government does not deal with them and this Minister certainly does not. 
In other words the Government does not have the faintest idea whether or to what extent this bill will achieve its stated objectives. It is a pure form of ideological beneficiary bashing without there being a shred of evidence that anything in this bill will actually work. The regulatory impact statement reveals some interesting comments from Treasury and the Ministry of Health about aspects of the bill. That is a euphemistic way of putting it because the actual documents show that Treasury opposed the work testing of sickness beneficiaries. Treasury opposed the work testing of sickness beneficiaries one of the cornerstones of this legislation because as we heard earlier it will have sickness beneficiaries working for less than $1 an hour once their earnings exceed 80 bucks. That is less than $1 an hour for those who are ill. It is less than $1 an hour for those suffering from an illness that they need support to recover from. They need support so that they can be well and can go and earn better money in better jobs—jobs that can support them and their families. But no this Government will force them out so that they will end up earning less than $1 an hour. These are New Zealanders in the 21st century with a Government whose mind is still in the time of Dickens. Government members still have their minds back in Dickens’ day. 
I can understand why the Ministry of Health is concerned. There is already a creaking public health service that will struggle to cope with an additional 49000 extra doctors’ visits a year from sickness beneficiaries—49000 extra doctors’ visits a year that the public will pay for. The purpose of those visits will not be to treat these people to provide medicines and support or to provide assistance to help them to get well but to simply fulfil the bureaucratic requirements of this Government. This Government is putting in place the requirement for sickness beneficiaries to make those visits and for the public to spend all that money so that this Government can say that it will work test and continue to punish beneficiaries particularly sickness beneficiaries. So much for putting money into front-line services! Those 49000 extra bureaucratic doctors’ visits a year will do nothing for sickness beneficiaries and this National Government is costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars. 
Then there is the report under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act from the Attorney-General. It stated: “I conclude that by introducing a part-time work test for DPB-SB but not the WB and DPB-WA” the bill is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that that inconsistency “cannot be justified”. The bill is discriminatory against a woman because of her circumstances and that discrimination cannot be justified. In answers in public to questions last week the Minister for Social Development and Employment seemed to be suggesting that it is somehow fair and reasonable for the Government to make that discrimination but we know that that is not true. This is not an argument to increase the work testing regime to those women who are receiving the women alone payment or who are on a widows benefit. This is an argument for asking why women who find themselves in a particular kind of situation—mostly it is not due to anything that they have done; it is not their fault—should be subjected to discriminatory work tests that will impact severely on them and on their children. It cannot be justified. 
In the case of sickness beneficiaries we oppose work testing because of the ridiculous situation where people who are ill end up earning less than $1 an hour. Also it is compulsory work so if they do not take the job that will earn them less than $1 an hour then their benefit will be cut. But these people will have no option. They will be forced into this work forced into earning less than $1 an hour. In that regard this shows that John Key’s Government has reneged on a promise that it made in its election manifesto. It has broken another promise—one to add to the many. 
This Government’s policy was that the abatement threshold for all benefits would increase from $80 to $100 a week but that is not what it is delivering. It is delivering that for only some and those who will miss out are some of our most vulnerable people: those on sickness benefits. We know from the evidence that when Australia introduced a similar policy of work testing in 2006 subsequent reports looking at the effectiveness of that work-testing policy showed that it failed. It made no difference whatsoever to the number of people who were moving on and off the disabilities benefit which is the equivalent benefit in Australia. It made no difference at all to those people’s needs because people will move on to the benefit when jobs are scarce and when they need that support and they will move right off again as they did in the late 1990s and the early 2000s when jobs become available. We know that in a time of recession as we are in right now the impacts fall on those on the lowest income first. Those jobs are not there. 
Finally I will address the provisions that relate to the unemployment benefit. This benefit is paid to people who are actively seeking work and quite rightly so. That is the whole point of the benefit and those people are seeking work. This bill requires them to be interviewed 12 months after first receiving the benefit and to reapply after that date. But if this Government was serious about assisting these people into work then I ask why it would not do that earlier. Why would it not do at 3 months when people have had a chance to try to figure out what the job market is like and have had some time for support? I ask why the Government does not do it at 3 months but does it at 12 months. Actually it has nothing to do with trying to support people into work. It is just another bureaucratic measure that will cost more money punish people and make it look as if this Government is doing something about beneficiary issues when in fact all it is doing is abusing these people.