Delahunty Catherine: Social Security (Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Social Security (Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17463. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker.Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I am very glad to have a chance to oppose the Social Security (Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery) Amendment Bill. It is a proud moment because the Green Party will not support bad law. No matter how much we do not like fraud by anybody we are not prepared to put our name against a bill that we know has got some incredibly bad provisions in it particularly around debt recovery.I would like to start with a little saying that occurred to my colleagues: not all taxpayers are hard-working but all beneficiaries pay tax. So let us lay the demon to rest about the bludgers and recognise that actually people at all levels of life can commit fraud and people at all levels of life can do good things. The majority of people are morally interested in being part of society. The hardest thing about being a beneficiary is dealing with the moral exclusion and the judgment and I have heard much of it in theHouse already today. The assumption is that they are probably fraudsters and they are probably ripping us off.The powers under the Social Security Act are already extensive and there has always been a benefit fraud unit. I have had the dubious pleasure of being exposed to its practices not all of them accurate. I would like to talk about some of them because the provisions of this bill are quite disturbing. As a beneficiary advocate I had firsthand experience of just how many people some of whom could not read or write were very confused by Work and Income. If you ring up the Work and Income hotline and ask whether you are in debt the people cannot tell you or they will say “You owe us $1000.” If you ring the next day they might say “Oh no we owe you $400.” This happens to people in my family on a regular basis. The Work and Income people cannot with any reliable accuracy tell a person whether they are in debt or whether fraud may have been committed by their partner. So how is it that we are creating a bill that will make people fraudsters when the department does not know on a daily basis whether they are or not because of policy changes because of staff changes and because of an inability to give clear information to beneficiaries?Who is going to suffer from that confusion? Beneficiaries are. So one day they are a fraudster; the next day the department is in debt to them and they are trying to figure out what to do. It is very interesting. Then some cases get chosen to be carried through as fraud. Certainly some of those processes have proven to be ugly and badly done.The Green Party does acknowledge that the Associate Minister for Social Development Chester Borrows had good intent in trying to hold the partners of beneficiaries when fraud has been committed to shared account. We understand his intent but unfortunately it is a lot more complicated and nuanced than this bill makes it out to be. The definition of being in a relationship as Jan Logie so eloquently described is a lot more complicated. So we do not have the luxury of saying that it is a simple matter of just making everybody accountable. We cannot even get the accounts from the department. Let us get real about that.The clause that we are really appalled by is clause 9 which amends section 86 of the Social Security Act by imposing a new obligation on the Ministry of Social Development to take “all reasonably practicable steps to recover a debt”. I thought that that was just for fraud debt but Jan has explained from the Social Services Committee’s perspective that it is not; it is for all debt. If you talk to most people on benefits at some time they have at some level been in debt to the department because they have run out of food or money. That is not happening because they are bad lazy bludgers on the State but because they cannot live on the amount of money they get.Christchurch where rents have gone up or doubled is a classic case. People cannot pay for food and power as well as rent. They have to make choices so they go along to Work and Income and say “Can I have an advance for food?”. They are allowed only a certain number and then they are in debt to the department. What does this mean? What will happen in terms of “all reasonably practicable steps to recover a debt”?My other favourite—I have not got much time to speak on this; I wish I had a long time because it is important—which no one else has mentioned is that this bill will introduce a new system for working with people who have been dishonest with the Ministry of Social Development in the past. I am really keen on a new system that will do something more important. What about people to whom Work and Income has been dishonest in the past? As somebody on the East Coast who had to force the department to tell people their full entitlement—and it took 5 years to actually change the statistics on that—I know that the department is not always honest with people and does not give them full recognition of their entitlement. So I think there is a real need for this bill to be holistic instead of targeting the people who are the most vulnerable.There are many other issues that are dubious about this bill. I think it was really interesting to see the Law Society and the Women’s Refuge having real concerns about it. The Women’s Refuge noted in its opposition that the bill does not include protections for women who are victims of domestic violence. So for all the talk on the one hand about violence we are not addressing it in this bill. Thank you.