Bradford Sue: Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Bradford Sue: Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:19752] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party continues to oppose this bill the Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill because of what it does both in theory and practice to single parents on the domestic purposes benefit. The practical side of it is that the Government supported not surprisingly by the National Party and by some other parties is going to increase by $6 a week the penalty against those sole parents who fail or refuse to identify in law the other parent of their child. Although indeed as a number of members have pointed out repeatedly in the debate this is a token amount it is also $6 a week being taken from some of the poorest families in New Zealand. I find it incomprehensible that the Hon Steve Maharey finds it so important to increase penalties like this when his own ministry has done research showing the real extent of child poverty in this country and that single-parent families are clearly those most affected; and also that his own ministry in a background paper given to the Social Services Committee actually said at one point that “harsher policy measures would not be effective for the majority of this group”. The Minister does appear to be ignoring the advice and the research carried out by his own staff on this matter. As a result on the practical side of it we see a further $6 a week being removed from some family budgets. On the theoretical side we have a Government that is so keen to undercut Dr Don Brash and Dr Muriel Newman on welfare policies that it feels somehow obliged to make some show at least of increasing penalties against people on the domestic purposes benefit. 
I really do not understand why Labour has to feel it is in a race with the right to capture the exact same pool of voters who demonise beneficiaries. Labour has done a lot of good things in the area of social welfare although nowhere near enough mind you. For example increasing the personal support offered to domestic purposes benefit recipients ending forced work for the dole for unemployed and other beneficiaries and moving to improve the culture of Work and Income have all been positive steps forward. Why Mr Maharey has to take two steps forward and one step back is most puzzling. Surely his party and its union and community sector supporters should have the confidence to keep working proactively for positive changes in the welfare area instead of every so often coming up with a little doozy like this or the no-go zones of Jobs Jolt the abolition of the special benefit as part of the Working for Families package and so on. 
It has been more than two decades now since the era of Rogernomics began with the onset of mass structural unemployment deliberately created by a former Labour Government then later entrenched by things like National’s benefit cuts market rents for State houses and the Employment Contracts Act. Labour has seen clearly enough that the Employment Contracts Act had to be thrown out and income-related rents reintroduced for State housing. However for some reason when it comes to the benefit system and beneficiaries it cannot quite bring itself to go that extra step towards a clean break with the beneficiary-bashing of the past. 
Beneficiary numbers are coming down. Good work is being done on improving the availability of childcare and out-of-school care to make it easier for parents to go out to work. It was great to see Labour supporting my colleague Sue Kedgley’s Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill in the House last week as it should if it is serious about helping mothers and fathers cope with the real-life demands of balancing work and bringing up babies and young children at the same time. Why then in terms of the benefit system does Labour have to go ahead with clause 7 of this bill in its current form? Nearly all the submitters to the select committee asked for the penalty clause to be taken out. The Green Party certainly wants it taken out. It is a mere $6 a week but it is $6 that families on the domestic purposes benefit can ill do without on top of the $22 or more that they are already losing as a penalty. The mere fact that it is such a token amount almost adds insult to injury making it even clearer that what this is really about is moral judgements not economics. 
It seems to me that what the Government is actually saying in this bill is that a mother is committing a moral crime if she cannot or will not name the father of her child. From the department’s own research as offered to the select committee it appears that the three most common reasons for this happening are: first actions taken by the other parent—for example in denying paternity or disappearing when advised of the pregnancy; second the mother not knowing who the father was—for example because of casual relationships multiple relationships and/or the effects of drugs and alcohol; and third a parent who might be trying to avoid the other parent having contact with or rights over that child. 
In all those circumstances it is clear that the citizens of regular society can find many opportunities to make moral judgments about these mothers. But is that what a Government—any Government—should be doing? Penalising women who are going to live with the results of for example a drunken one-night stand for the rest of their lives and their children’s lives comes out of the same psychology as those who would still like to see young sole parents pressured into giving up their babies for adoption or the domestic purposes benefit done away with altogether because so to speak it only encourages them. 
In reality our country needs children and it needs parents who are willing to bring up their children with love and care no matter what the circumstances of their conception. I have argued this before and people do not like it but it does seem to me that the logical extension of the arguments behind this bill that some people make about penalising sole parents in these kinds of circumstances are basically that in the end they are saying it would be better for women to have abortions than to give birth to children conceived as a result of these kinds of circumstances because of their supposed immoral provenance. 
I reject all this. Every child born in this country should be a wanted child and every child conceived should have the best possible chance in life. Mothers in difficult circumstances who make the big decision to go ahead with a pregnancy rather than have a termination should be supported and nurtured not condemned. A truly compassionate Government would remove all penalties for not naming the father and do everything it could to support the parent and the child or children involved not the opposite. Children conceived and born in these kinds of situations need more help and support from all of those around them and from the State not less. 
The Green Party believes that these are big social problems and we are not trying to run away from them. What we are saying is that the solutions are different. They would be better dealt with through things like reforming the Child Support Act more in-depth education at an earlier age for schoolchildren about the realities of becoming a parent better support to the groups that work with mothers and fathers in these kinds of situations and things like the reintroduction of a universal child benefit once the old family benefit that would assist all families but particularly those living in comparative poverty rather than selectively penalising some of them as this bill does.