Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I'm very happy to make just a quick contribution on this debate—a debate that has been rightly described previously as an amendment to an amendment a fix up to a fix up. We're here to fix a situation where there were some drafting errors in the legislation that led to 25000 people receiving unlawful illegal payments that were not authorised by this Parliament. The intent was that they should have received these payments but the legislation didn't match the intent. It's been really fun tonight to watch the Minister Carmel Sepuloni and her backbenchers get up and squirm and try and tell us that Oh look it was just a mistake. It was a drafting error. These things happen. It happens all the time. Don't worry about it."I tell you what—it's not normally nice to put the boot in when these things happen when mistakes happen because we all know that these things happen. From time to time they happen—Hon Members: Ask Simon.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member. If you're interjecting I think you still need to use the member's correct title.Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Ask Simon Bridges.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you. Please carry on.ERICA STANFORD: From time to time we need to pass legislation—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Just make them witty please will you?ERICA STANFORD: I don't know if that member's capable of wit but we'll see eh?Look on occasion we have to pass some fix-up legislation. Despite the fullness of process and the closeness of scrutiny things slip by—these things happen. But this is not one of those times. This is not simply as the Minister puts it a small technical drafting error that slipped by—giving an example of how it happened previously once in 1998 as if to exonerate her ineptitude. This bill is borne out of firstly arrogance—the arrogance of the Minister who politicised a rewrite bill that did not need politicising then dropped a 500-page Supplementary Order Paper on the Table at the last minute. This bill is borne out of a lack of process. Those 500-page amendments were delivered so late that we didn't have time to scrutinise them and New Zealanders didn't have the time to have a proper process—there was no select committee. Perhaps if there was some of those seniors heading overseas could have pointed out the 28-day anomaly. Perhaps it would have been pointed out that there were some issues around the residential care problem. This bill is borne out of an unwillingness to listen because at the committee stage for hours—and I'm sure Mr Dan Bidois sitting beside me got up in the committee stage and pointed some of these issues out. We did so for hours but we were ignored.This bill is not fixing up an unintended consequence or mistake that was just simply overlooked. We are here today with this bill because this was always going to happen. It's what happens when they rush; it's what happens when they don't follow proper process.For Jenny Marcroft to come up here tonight with her very theatrical "Oh they're so cold and we're so warm." How about: "You're so inept and we're so capable."? I don't know the Te Reo words. Maybe Nuk Korako could come up here and tell me what they are. But I tell you what: [Gestures to Government benches] inept; [Gestures to Opposition benches] capable. I can't do it as theatrically as Ms Marcroft and I am not concerned about putting the boot in.From here the question has to be: "Will they learn their lesson?" This bill tells us they're not going to learn their lesson because here we are again doing exactly the same thing—they're rushing legislation again and they're not listening. Here we are rushing through this bill at breakneck speed even though they knew in June last year that they had this mistake. The Office of the Auditor-General told them in October last year—plenty of time to bring the bill to the House in a timely manner yet here we are racing it through again.Furthermore here we are in Opposition once again warning the Minister of problems that are still not sorted by this bill. It's been traversed earlier and in previous speeches that there will be seniors who are living in residential care who are fully funded by the Government and yet here they will still be receiving the winter energy payment—the poor taxpayer effectively paying twice even though the intent of this bill is for those receiving residential support subsidies to be ineligible for the winter energy payment for this very reason: the taxpayer shouldn't pay twice. But this Minister is not listening to us and is once again making excuses tonight: "Oh it's all a bit difficult."I just can't understand that. This is from an extraordinary Minister with such great successes as putting water in Work and Income New Zealand! How could she not come up with a solution to this? So here we are fixing up a totally avoidable error had we followed correct process and had they listened to us. And here we are again with retrospective legislation that when they were in Opposition they rallied against. How things have changed. We oppose this amendment bill and we oppose this amendment to the amendment. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker."