Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Madam Speaker—Mr Speaker; I forgot boys can be Speakers too in this House. I ask the House: when is income not income? And the High Court this week in the past couple of days has ruled: when it is debt that is not income.Ms F has challenged the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) for eight years—eight years of scrutinising and intrusive looking into her life and her financial transactions—to come to a common-sense outcome that debt is not income. Ms F—we protect her identity. I'm very glad about this in the public environment now on this news yet for eight years her privacy has not been protected at all. Five years of having every single financial transaction judged because MSD wanted to—they smelt blood and they were out to get her. And they kept moving the goalposts. Whenever it turned out that there was nothing to see here they moved on to something else and they kept doing this. And for eight years—living under a dark cloud of threat of crippling debt on top of debt that Ms F already had—MSD were trying to make her pay back over $100000 of debt.This is a hangover from nine years of a punitive National Government who directed public agencies to be punitive to hunt for scalps to search for blood. This is the outcome of a public agency spending a lot of time and money to go after one of our citizens where there was nothing to go after.Now we're going to change that. We are going to ensure that we overhaul that culture of Work and Income and of all of our public agencies and ensure that the public have faith and confidence in our Public Service organisations. We don't want to keep hearing consistently about decisions that have been made by our public agencies that have imposed hurt upon trauma and we need a system change and attitude change.I am very grateful to Ms F for even having the tenacity to put up with years and years of court to push it through. We know she wasn't just the tip of the iceberg of who this has happened to; she's the pin on top of the tip of the very large iceberg of who this has happened to. Many thousands of people over many years even at the threat of being taken to court have instead just said I will pay." Even when the payments have been unjust they have just had to give up and say "I will pay." So I have huge appreciation here today in this House for Ms F for beneficiary advocates for the work of We Are Beneficiaries for the work of Auckland Action Against Poverty for all advocates but most of all for people who have ever received a benefit at all in their lives—and that's a lot of us by the way in this whole country—who have put up with the dehumanising treatment for far too long led through by the previous punitive Government and have even managed to stay afloat at all.But I have faith in the Ministers and this Government to turn that around and I am so proud that the Green Party negotiated it in our agreement—to overhaul that very culture to remove the sanctions. And I am so proud to have Jan Logie pushing that through on behalf of all of us because our country needs this. Being cruel is not sustainable. Being cruel is not sustainable for people or communities or land or environment or our future and so this Government will pull its socks up and will overturn that culture that put harm on top of harm.What we want to hear about is a system that treats beneficiaries with respect and dignity—a system that is inclusive rather than trying to separate out beneficiaries as a separate group of New Zealanders. They're just us and many of us have been one at some point in our lives. But in actual fact the way that society operates is that we are all beneficiaries. We all benefit from the interconnected help and support that we give each other at some point in time. Not one of us stands alone independent in this life. Beneficiaries people who receive a benefit people on low incomes—they're just us and I am so thankful that the High Court made a common-sense decision and said debts are not income. Thank you."