Sepuloni Carmel: Social Security Amendment Bill Education Amendment Bill Taxation (Support for Children in Hardship) Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Social Security Amendment Bill Education Amendment Bill Taxation (Support for Children in Hardship) Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 03 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8579. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I am going to start by just acknowledging the common ground that we have in the House. I acknowledge that that side of the House and this side of the House recognise we have a problem in respect of too many children living in poverty in New Zealand. Both sides of the House recognise a need to address this problem and both sides of the House actually want to support people to be able to go into work. But there are differences in those common themes.Although we recognise that we have a problem with poverty what we on this side of the House recognise is that actually there are 305000 children living in poverty in this country and that is based on the household income measure that the Government chooses not to use. Instead what we have is a Government that has selected a measure that would give them a figure of 60000 to 100000 children living in poverty. I think it is shameful that the Government would understate the issue that we have here with children living in poverty. It based the package that it provided through this Budget on that lower figure rather than using the household income measure that gives us a clear indication that we have about 305000 children living in poverty and we need to acknowledge that in the House.Anne Tolley the Minister for Social Development has said that the Government is attempting to address the issue of child poverty here in New Zealand. Well actually this legislation is not money that goes directly to children. Let us acknowledge that these children do not go out and work for themselves. They belong to families. They have caregivers. They have parents who are looking after them and this legislation is about those parents who are looking after them. We need to acknowledge that because actually if we do not support those people who are looking after the children then there is no way we can address the children living in hardship issue because they live within families.We support the idea of people needing to go out into work—we have always done that. Labour lifted the number of people who were in employment over the 9 years that we were in Government in the years 1999 to 2008. Under Labour the unemployment rate dropped to all-time records. But what we have is an issue with the way in which the Government is attempting to push people out into work. It is a method that is based on stigma that judges these parents and also that does not take seriously their roles and responsibilities as parents as well. So we are disappointed there.We tried to make changes through the Committee stage and I want to talk about some of those changes. I want to discuss our disappointment with the National Government for not supporting those changes. We talked about the need to actually define “suitable work”. When we are saying that these parents need to go out into work when their youngest child turns 3 we need to say what suitable work is for that parent and for that child. And actually the definition for “suitable work” should be based on work that works for children.We have heard so many stories out on the hustings out with our constituents of people being pushed into work that is unsuitable—work that is outside standard working hours work where they do not have access to early childhood education. We have had it raised time and time again this year through the media and through reports that access to early childhood education is still an issue. Access to quality early childhood education is even more of an issue. So we wanted to include in this legislation a section that actually stipulated that it had to be suitable work for children and we wanted that defined. Part of that would have been ensuring that those parents had access to quality early childhood education before they would have that expectation on them to go out into work. I do not think that is unreasonable. I do not think that is unreasonable because what we do not want as a society is our kids being left in dangerous circumstances because they do not have access to quality care.One of the other changes that we actually tried to make because of the fact that we value the importance of upskilling and training these sole parents as well was to include study alongside part-time work obligations as another option. The reason we tried to include that is that it is all good saying that these parents need to go out to work but as the Minister said it should be about sustainable long-term employment. We want to support these parents to be able to get into sustainable long-term employment. For some of them that means being given the opportunity to upskill train and increase their level of qualification so that when they actually go out into the workforce they not only increase their earning capacity but also increase their chances of being able to obtain more secure work. That is important for them and that is also important for their children.So much of the evidence that we have seen shows that when you actually impose these types of work obligations what ends up happening is that these parents end up taking up minimum wage jobs and in some instances end up being worse off employed than they were on welfare in the first place. We saw that in studies in the UK and the US. Yet the Government ignores that evidence and just continues to push sole parents out into the lowest-paid jobs and at the end of the day that is not actually long term and sustainable for them and their families.That study component that we tried to add is important not only in terms of the parents’ ability to provide long term but also just in terms of the research of role modelling education to children. For children particularly when their mothers achieve academically all the research shows that that has a huge impact on the academic achievements of them. It is disappointing because so many times we have heard from the National Government that it is aspirational for New Zealanders. Well actually it is not aspirational for the New Zealanders who we are talking about here today. It is not aspirational for the parents of the children who are living in hardship whom we are talking about here today. So really this legislation unfortunately is going to do very little to change the circumstances of these families. As I said that is disappointing.There are so many things that are being implemented through this legislation where there is no evidence to support them. I asked the Ministry of Social Development through written questions what evidence it has to support the recommendation that a parent goes back to work when their youngest turns 3 rather than 5 and the response I got was abysmal. The response was that the Ministry of Social Development has no evidence to support the recommendation that the age change goes from 5 years to 3 years. That is disgusting—that you would force a parent to go back to work based on some ideological belief rather than any evidence. That side of the House and some submitters made the point that actually many parents do go back to work when their children turn 3. That is good but actually everyone’s circumstances are different and this change in legislation does not take that into account.The other issue that we had with the legislation was that there was an expectation that work obligations would increase from 15 hours a week to 20 hours a week. The reason we said “Hang on a second that’s not going work.” is that actually these parents have access to only 20 hours of free early childhood education a week and it does not take into consideration the travel time it would take to get those children to early childhood education then to go to work and then to come back to get them. That side says “Well actually they’ll have access to a childcare subsidy.” but as we have seen this year through other parliamentary questions I have put through very few parents who are off the benefit are actually accessing the childcare subsidy.We are supporting this legislation. The only reason we are supporting this legislation is that it puts a little bit more money into the pockets of some of our poorest families. But it is not enough money. It is $25 per family and there are issues with that because it is not per child so the bigger your family the more disadvantaged you are. We have to support it though because those families are struggling so much that any little bit of money any little crumb that the Government can throw out to them we have to support. We have so many issues with this legislation and we are disappointed about the lack of evidence that the Government has to support it but we are in a difficult position. We will be voting for the legislation but with very major reservations that I hope I have made clear today.