Corrections (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill Customs and Excise (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Corrections (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill Customs and Excise (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
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Corrections (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill 
Customs and Excise (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill 
Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill 
Third Readings 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I move  
That the Corrections (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill the Customs and Excise (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill and the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. These three bills were introduced to the House as the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill. The measures that these bills introduce will increase the efficiency of the existing information matches between the Ministry of Social Development and three other Government agencies—the Department of Corrections the New Zealand Customs Service and the Accident Compensation Corporation. I will explain the relevance of those three Government agencies over the next little while. 
The three bills amend the provisions relating to the use of data supplied by those three agencies. The amendments will allow the Ministry of Social Development to use that data firstly to prevent unnecessary debt by allowing benefit payments to be stopped in a timely way if a beneficiary enters prison; secondly to be more effective in the recovery of Crown debts; and thirdly to assist in identifying claims for student allowances and the living component of student loans from people who are in prison and not entitled to this assistance. 
Labour is committed to preventing the overpayment of benefits and the misuse of these benefits. We are committed to a modern welfare system and a modern social security system. These bills help to modernise that welfare system thereby making the most effective use of the tools we have available. 
We introduced this legislation to improve the efficiency of current administrative procedures and to enhance confidence and trust in the social assistance system. I have been pleased with the support that the legislation has received from other parties in its previous stages through the House. It is good to see that so many parties can agree on straightforward measures to improve efficiency and to prevent unnecessary benefit debt. 
I acknowledge the work of the Social Services Committee where I understand the conversations and deliberations were extremely constructive. The select committee proposed a minor change that has improved the clarity of the legislation and it did so as a result of a submission. Committee members expressed concern at the potential for the wrong benefit to be suspended. The committee was informed that benefits are paid a week in arrears so in most cases people will still be entitled to receive and will receive some benefit payment after entering prison and will get the notification of suspension up to a week before the benefit is suspended. Work and Income will reinstate payments overnight and if needed will make emergency assistance available immediately in cases where payments are suspended in error. Those two points alleviated the committee’s concerns. 
Committee members were also anxious to ensure that processes were in place to assist the family members of people entering prison. The committee was informed that for the small percentage of prisoners with dependent family members telephone contact would be made with those prisoners’ partners in order to ensure that continuing assistance was provided when needed. The committee has suggested that Work and Income consider placing representatives at major courts to adjust benefits immediately and to assist family members. I have asked the ministry to consider the practicality of doing that and if it is not feasible to consider what other action could be taken to assist people in this situation. The amendments contained in the Corrections (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill will allow benefits to be stopped immediately when a person enters prison thereby reducing any overpayment of benefit and subsequent debt. 
The bill will also allow information currently supplied when a person enters prison to continue to be supplied as long as that person remains in prison. This will allow the Ministry of Social Development to identify when a prisoner applies for a benefit or for the living costs component of a student loan or student allowance. Prisoners will still be able to access assistance for their study costs but will be prevented from receiving assistance for their living costs because quite clearly those costs are met by the corrections system while the person is in prison. 
The amendments contained in all three bills will also allow data to be used to locate people who have benefit debt but who are no longer receiving a benefit. When people are off a benefit they are more likely to be in a good position to repay any benefit debt. The amendment will allow data matching to be used replacing to a large extent the existing paper processes currently used between the ministry and the three agencies to locate benefit debtors. It will enable the ministry to contact people about their benefit debt more effectively and efficiently. 
These bills make sound economic sense as well as social sense. They represent the efficient and effective use of technology time and money. As I said earlier in my contribution Labour is committed to preventing the overpayment of benefits and the misuse of any benefit. We are committed to a modern welfare system and these bills help to modernise our welfare system as it is currently thereby making the most effective use of the tools that are available. I commend these bills to the House. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the third reading of these three bills—the Corrections (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill the Customs and Excise (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill and the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill—which have resulted from the division of the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention Minimisation) Amendment Bill. This legislation is intended to enable the Ministry of Social Development to prevent and recover debts and to detect more readily the misuse of the social security system the student allowance system and the student loan system by broadening the data-matching provisions. 
National members are very pleased to be able to support these bills. We have enjoyed working in the Social Services Committee on a pretty much bipartisan arrangement with regard to this particularly highly constructive and worthwhile legislation. 
Naturally we have to ask why it has taken 7 to 8 years—until the dying days of the Labour administration—before this Government finally got around to doing something about debt. The facts are that when the Labour Government came into office the debt owed by beneficiaries to the Ministry of Social Development was in the order of $320 million. It is now a whopping $760 million. As the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Social Development Peter Hughes said it has gone from 49 percent of beneficiaries who were in debt to Work and Income to 70 percent now. That is a huge— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: That’s incorrect. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: The Minister is saying that that is incorrect. Whatever it is it is a huge proportion and it is hugely worrying that beneficiaries have managed to get themselves so deeply into debt. 
The ministry officials themselves pointed out in their report the very significant concerns that happen when this level of debt goes on. They actually say that being over-indebted can also reduce the financial advantages of returning to work and that it may in fact act as a barrier to employment. We know that when beneficiaries incur debt it can act as a significant disincentive for them to enter the workforce as the level of repayment is often reduced by creditors while a person remains on a benefit. Once the debtor starts earning an income creditors often start seeking higher levels of debt repayment. This can substantially reduce the financial gains to be made from working. 
Here we have the Labour Government which has let this very concerning situation expand over the last 8 years to the point where we have in the order of 70 percent of beneficiaries being in debt to Work and Income. So it is appropriate that we the National Opposition do everything we can to hasten bringing in this legislation. 
I would just like to mention a couple of aspects of this legislation as we pass it through its third reading. One is the issue of overriding the Privacy Act. This posed a concern to officials from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner but they viewed it as being a reasonable thing to do because it is so important that tangible instruments are put in place to minimise this debt. But in doing so it is important to make sure that there are mitigating measures to ensure that the people involved are appropriately data matched. 
During the discussions in the select committee it was pointed out just how much technology has improved data matching over the last 5 to 10 years and how much more it will improve it over the next 5 to 10 years. However any data-matching system is fallible and there is a strong possibility that from time to time the systems will fail either technically or because of human error. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner said that it wants to give particular attention to the monitoring and reporting of matching this information in the future and I would make the plea that this does indeed occur. 
I understand that the Privacy Commissioner in fulfilling her role of reporting annually on all authorised information matches will be able to monitor any impacts that may result from the changes introduced by this legislation. I think it is very important that she makes it clear to Parliament and to the select committee what the effects of this legislation are because there are overriding principles to consider—the principles of natural justice. We should not just pass laws; we should also ensure that they are rigorously followed up in terms of monitoring. 
National is very pleased to be able to support these bills. We are very conscious of the fact that the Labour Government has let the situation of beneficiary debt get further and further out of hand over the last 8 to 9 years. 
We are very concerned that the Labour Government has not had efficient machinery within organisations such as the Ministry of Social Development. In fact I understand that over the last 8 years while the Ministry of Social Development has increased the number of front-line social workers by about 20 to 30 percent the bureaucracy in the ministry has increased by a whopping 106 percent. That again is the sort of thing we must be absolutely certain to not let drift on under a Labour Government. Taxpayers want their money to be spent well and beneficiaries in debt do not want to be in the situation where because of inefficiencies in the Government’s system their own benefits remain at a very low level. 
Beneficiary drift and a failure to contain beneficiaries’ debts has been a major problem in New Zealand. A future National Government is determined to ensure that the minimisation of this will be driven hard in the future. It is timely that this legislation is enacted and we support it. 
RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour) 
: 
 That was Dr Paul Hutchison who was an erstwhile member of the Social Services Committee which processed the legislation with all speed. I am delighted he is high in his praise of the need for the legislation. I am sad that I have missed part of his speech. I dare say it had parts that were critical of the Government because ex gratia comments like that are made all the time. But in substance he has to admit as do all members on the opposite side that there is a tide in the affairs of men that when taken at the flood leads on to fortune and in this case the Government has spent 8 years rebuilding the infrastructure so that legislation such as this can be introduced. Under the rather futile tax cut policy that National runs all the time which questions the morality of Government spending we would never be able to afford the infrastructure that enables via three pieces of legislation three Government departments to be pulled together to ease the stopping of a benefit when the need ceases because of an individual’s change of circumstances such as being taken into custody or leaving the country. What underlies this bill which is deceptively simple on its face are the keen issues. 
I have to say that I was going to raise a point of order at 2 o’clock today when Parliament started because I thought the Minister of Statistics would be called upon to give a speech on his 30th birthday. However I was intimidated; I knew he was nervous about approaching this event and he has tried to do so as anonymously and quietly as possible. He is not one for fanfare when it comes to minor milestones like reaching 30 and I did not want to raise publicity. 
I return to the bill and I have to say that it covers the danger of excursion into the privacy of individuals. We must value the privacy of all individuals whether or not they are serving a term of imprisonment. It is equally important for all of us. If we treat lightly the excursion into the privacy of one class of individual then we will likely do so for other classes of individuals. So this bill had to balance the need for efficient payment of benefits with the right of individuals to privacy some of whom have no control over their circumstances because they are serving a custodial term. This bill tightly constrains the circumstances in which there can be data matching between the Department of Corrections and the Ministry of Social Development. This data matching is set about in tightly constrained parameters so that when a circumstance arises the computer systems automatically identify the change of circumstance and bring to an end the payment of the benefit in circumstances when individuals can be excused for not turning their minds to such mundane matters as receipt of the weekly income because the emotional turmoil at being sentenced to a term of imprisonment is their supervening and dominant thought. 
Of course the select committee was concerned as has been remarked on already in this House about the need to ensure that prisoners and particularly their families were aware that their income status would change. The report of the Social Services Committee contained a recommendation that at times of sentencing and remands in custody courthouses be manned with officials from the Ministry of Social Development so that they could speak with families and advise them that there would be an automatic change in the right to a benefit. That way individuals who might be affected by a change could be aware of that at what is really a most traumatic time for any family caught up in the cycle of our criminal justice system. It is probably too much to expect that this wish of the committee will be carried out. It probably was included to salve our concerns about the incursion on liberty and privacy but it is a recommendation and it is one that I note will have no hope of being fulfilled if the rampant tax cuts advocated by the members opposite are ever put in place. It is constructive human interventions such as this—which are supported from the public purse and which make the cogency of society so successful—that are damaged and in fact rendered impotent by thoughtless tax cuts for a few who may gain an extra few dollars a week. 
I stand here proud that this legislation achieves what it sets out to achieve. I am very pleased that it will be read into law hopefully today. The legislation tidies up the position of those people who lose their freedom and it means that there is an adjustment of benefit on an automatic basis but hopefully and with all seriousness it is intended not to disturb the right of entitlement of any dependants they had at the time of their change of status in respect of their freedom. 
This legislation in my view has benefited from the work of the select committee. I dealt with that during the second reading debate. Amendments were made by agreement of all parties on the select committee and they have survived the Committee stage. I think this legislation will rest on the statute book without much challenge in the courts because it is purely infrastructural legislation and it minimises the unnecessary excursions into an individual’s situation so there appears to be no need for it to be challenged in our courts of law. But if that ever did occur I think there is a degree of elegance in the drafting of the legislation that will survive even the closest judicial scrutiny and it will remain on our statute book for a long time or at least for as long as this country can afford to have a public service that is adequately funded and can fulfil its responsibilities to each and every individual in our community to make good the services of the Government. 
These are the entitlements of every individual out there which we should not take lightly and all of us should resist stoutly the cry of a few for the immediate benefit of a tax cut. At the end of the day a responsible tax cut is one thing but excessive tax cuts are another and this legislation is a great example as Dr Paul Hutchison will recognise of what can be done when we have a properly funded Government and of what we could not do if we had a Government that lived on a very tight and an insufficient budget. 
I am not one to delay the passing of this legislation by addressing issues that have no relevance to it and I do not wish to have unnecessary verbiage on a matter that is as straightforward as this. But I feel that those few passing wise remarks will be well-received by my friends opposite—Dr Hutchison and Katrina Shanks—both of whom I see take great comfort as they sit alongside each other from listening to the words I have uttered today. I thank them for their splendid cooperative support during the select committee stage. But to get to the point of the matter I really want to commend this legislation to the House. 
I will bring this speech to an end so that we can get the legislation passed. I ask the House to go forward and take the vote on it and to proceed to the next major piece of business on the Order Paper which I daresay will be equally as elegant and important as is this legislation. 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to stand to take a short call in support of this legislation. Unlike Mr Fairbrother I cannot stand here for 10 minutes and look at one little spot on my desk and ramble on. At one stage I was unsure whether he actually knew which bill he was talking to because the barbs were so good that I thought maybe he was talking to the next bill. But as he is leaving the House he obviously was not talking on that bill. He intended talking on this legislation which he occasionally touched on in the 10 minutes of his brief speech today. 
Sue Moroney 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The member knows very well that she cannot refer to a member exiting the Chamber and she did so in the course of her speech. I know she is a new member but I wonder whether you could give some instruction to that new member on that issue. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I think she will take on board what you have said. She certainly knows now. Thank you. 
KATRINA SHANKS 
: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I apologise because he was leaving and was not absent— 
Colin King 
: And he should stay! 
KATRINA SHANKS 
: And he should stay and add a contribution to the House. Getting back to the legislation though firstly I would like to acknowledge the officials who are sitting in the Chamber today. It is great because these officials always come to the Social Services Committee when there is a bill that is related to their area. We appreciate that they put a lot of effort into our select committee that they come and listen to the consideration of the bill and also that they listen to the debate. 
I listened to the Minister talking on the legislation. National supports this legislation and I agree with everything she said about it. I think she was spot on when she said that this is good legislation to put forward. It is moving New Zealand and beneficiaries forward. Over the last 8 years the debt level of beneficiaries has increased significantly. This legislation will address that and help to stop some of the debt that beneficiaries owe. It affects only a small number of beneficiaries and students—it relates to student loans—who when they enter prison are not entitled to any benefit payments accident compensation payments or student loans. The legislation prevents them from receiving those benefits which they would then owe because they are not entitled to them. 
The legislation prevents detects and increases the recovery of debts and misuse of social security and student allowances in the student loan system. So it is actually very important especially when we are talking about beneficiaries because they are the most vulnerable people in our society. We can do better for them so that they if they go to prison they do not come out of it to find they have a debt owing because a benefit was not cut off or matched off correctly. The job of the Government is to help these people and this legislation goes towards helping them in their lives especially when they come out of prison. They can start with a clean slate and not have a debt to the country hanging over their head. 
I have taken only a short call today to say that we support this legislation. It was good to be on the select committee and to hear the submissions. The Social Services Committee had concerns of its own about mismatching and other issues but the officials addressed those very well for us and gave us some ease. Some recommendations were made as to maybe having an official at the courts to talk to families about the system that is in place the matching and whether they have any hardship especially when a weekend is coming along. I thank the officials. I am pleased that we are supporting this bill today. 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to support the third readings of the bills from the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill. It is relatively rare for legislation to go through the House with the support of almost all parties and when this widespread support occurs it is very obvious that the legislation is addressing a problem that is widely recognised. It is a real pleasure to support this legislation. 
As the commentary states this legislation amends the legislation affecting data sharing between a whole number of agencies: the Ministry of Social Development the Department of Corrections the New Zealand Customs Service and the Accident Compensation Corporation. This is important and highly constructive legislation because it focuses on minimising hardship and debt when a person is on a benefit and his or her circumstances change specifically when he or she enters the criminal justice system. Greater sharing of all the information between these organisations would prevent the hardship that occurs. 
I think it is very realistic to say that people are not in a position to contact Work and Income when they are in prison or entering prison. I would say that it would not be one of the things that they would even be thinking about at that time—and neither would their families—yet this can be the very time when this debt starts to build. Overpayment on a benefit can be extremely difficult to pay back when one is on a fixed income and we have heard various figures bandied about in this House tonight about the level of debt of beneficiaries—the number of beneficiaries who have actually fallen into debt. Any changes such as this legislation that help to prevent overpayments and help to reduce debt need to be implemented and to be implemented quite rapidly. 
We in New Zealand First had some concerns about incorrect data matches but with the safeguards that the Ministry of Social Development has in place to ensure that if this happens there is minimal impact on the person concerned we were reassured. These safeguards will actually give people the opportunity to have their benefit reinstated before a payment is missed. The transferring of money overnight into a person’s bank account when a payment has been stopped wrongly is a very positive step forward. As previous speakers have said the data matching will be important and it will need to be carefully monitored. 
We in this House all know—and we have had people come to see us who have unmanageable debts—that debt can become totally unmanageable when one is on a limited income and unfortunately it does not take very long for that situation to occur. Unfortunately too it takes a very long time to pay back any debts that are owed. These are the people who often fall prey to the unscrupulous moneylenders as they attempt to find a quick way to get rid of a debt only to find themselves with a far larger problem in the long run. It is difficult enough to manage on a fixed income and on a benefit and with the rises in the costs of living to have to repay a debt at $10 or $15 a week is an added struggle and a big stress for those families—many of whom we have to recognise live from week to week. To ensure that debt is not incurred in the first place is absolutely imperative. Being in debt of course can also reduce the financial advantages of finding a job and returning to work as levels of repayments are often reduced while a person remains on the benefit. 
New Zealand First wholeheartedly supports this legislation. We believe that any measure that stops beneficiaries from getting into debt unnecessarily wrongly or fraudulently is very worthy of support. 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Green Party and my colleague Sue Bradford who is away on select committee business in opposing this legislation. The Green Party will be voting against this legislation—the three bills that have been split from the original Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill. We originally offered our support for that bill on the basis that one of its key goals was to prevent beneficiaries who are in prison from having their benefits overpaid. In itself that has merit as an idea but there are some surrounding contextual issues that have caused us to change our position since the original bill had its first reading in August last year. 
This legislation is geared to enable the Ministry of Social Development the Department of Corrections the Customs Service and the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) to share more information between them in order to stop people receiving benefits accident compensation or student loans while they are in prison. This is to be done by data matching personal details held by the ministry against those held by other departments. A secondary purpose of the legislation is to provide the ministry with information held by the Customs Service and ACC so that Work and Income can more easily and readily locate debtors who are no longer in the country or who are on accident compensation. 
What the Green Party finds particularly offensive about this legislation is that its whole thrust is actually about the machinery of the State grinding down into the lives of some of our most vulnerable people in more and more detail in a way that people who have never been on a benefit or even worse in prison would find hard to imagine. In itself improving the efficiency of the administration of the welfare system is fine. However the Green Party would find this legislation a whole lot more palatable were it accompanied at the same time by legislation and other policy measures that improved the welfare system. For example we would find it heaps easier to support these changes if the Government was to reintroduce a third-tier discretionary allowance like the old special benefit so that people on very low incomes who just cannot make ends meet have a final safety net. With the introduction of temporary additional support several years ago that safety net for our most vulnerable people has been lost. 
The Government should be doing more to ensure that people who apply for benefits receive their full entitlements from the time that they are eligible for them and that front-line staff at all offices are trained to understand it is not their money they are giving away but is actually income support to which citizens of this country are legally entitled. People like the sole parents of young children and invalids beneficiaries should not be subject to constant harassment by the State to get off the benefit by any means possible. Above all benefits should be restored to their pre-1991 levels. On Tuesday benefit rates went up just slightly in line with CPI increases but it was by nowhere near enough to match true rises in the real cost of living or to recover what was lost in 1991. 
On top of that as the Wellington People’s Centre pointed out the accommodation supplement which many beneficiaries rely on to help with their housing costs will drop for almost everyone who receives it as a result of the benefit rate increases. For those who are on income-related rents their rents will increase because of their increased income—and they are not eligible for the accommodation supplement at all. The Wellington People’s Centre considers that the real increase in benefit rates on Tuesday was around 1.5 percent to 2 percent for many beneficiaries. That is a very far cry from what is really needed at a time when the costs of transport housing heating and food are going through the roof. Many beneficiaries are sinking further and further into debt just to survive. One might consider the introduction of online Lotto gambling where one has to use a credit card—debt—in order to gamble as an example of this Government’s ridiculous policies on managing and assisting low-income people to get out of the poverty trap. However I digress. 
Beneficiaries and prisoners and their families continue to be disproportionately Maori. All this matters in relation to the collection of small bills we are discussing today because the Government’s legislative efforts are symbolic of its priorities. If legislation such as that put forward today was linked to any or all of those other measures or to some of the many other positive reforms that could and should be made to our welfare system then the Green Party would have a very different attitude. But what we see is the Government being focused on making sure that the very last dollar is extracted from the maximum number of beneficiaries accident compensation recipients and students while completely failing to extend any generosity or respect from the State in the opposite direction to them. 
All of that is at the macro level. At the micro level we still have other concerns about the impact of this legislation and what it will do to those most affected by it who are very vulnerable people: prisoners and their families. When the Social Services Committee discussed that the main concern of one of my colleagues Sue Bradford and of other committee members was the fact that it is often not just a prisoner who is affected by the immediate loss of his or her benefit but is also the prisoner’s partner and children who are affected as well. 
Although the committee received assurances from officials that families would receive plenty of notice of any benefit suspension or cut-off the Greens are not reassured on this point being far too aware that the benefit system in practice is very different from the benefit system in theory. Often mistakes are made by either Work and Income or beneficiaries or by both. Sometimes benefits are cut when they should not be; sometimes there are time delays in getting benefits put back on. At the moment the fact that there is a 9-day period before a benefit is suspended as currently permitted under section 103 of the Privacy Act means that there is some albeit small protection for affected individuals and their families. But that buffer will no longer exist once this legislation goes through. 
On balance the ill that this legislation seeks to correct—the issue of prisoner overpayments—is potentially less damaging than the very serious risk of the dependants of prisoners their families their partners and their children finding themselves suddenly without any income or of innocent people having their benefit cut because of errors in data matching. For all those reasons the Green Party has withdrawn its support for these bills. We look forward to the day when we can stand in this House and vote for some progressive and forward-thinking welfare legislation rather than for yet another bill with the primary purpose of further refining the level of State interference and harassment in beneficiaries’ lives. 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to support the third reading of this legislation which has now been separated into three bills. They will reduce and prevent the amount of debt accrued by beneficiaries. 
The point of this legislation is not to cut off at the knees people who are in receipt of a benefit. The point is that when circumstances arise such as someone serving a prison term a person’s benefit will need to be adjusted. Another example is when someone reliant on a benefit is to be cut off and the benefit reallocated to people who remain at home. 
Work and Income New Zealand has historically been slow to respond to these changing circumstances and beneficiaries have ended up accruing unacceptable levels of debt which is a weight around their necks. We understand that sizable numbers of New Zealand beneficiaries have enough debt as it is. The department will often help out with a loan when a large household item needs repairing or replacing and a beneficiary is unable to do that on his or her income. I know a number of beneficiaries who have $15 or $10 removed on a weekly basis to service that kind of debt. One then adds on to that the potential for debt to be accrued where for instance a partner has gone into prison the benefit was not cut off in a timely way and now that family is dealing with what debt it has plus additional debt. 
We had some really interesting submissions. I was just checking through one from the Law Society that pointed out to us that in the previous year there had been 23 discrepancies it knew of where the wrong person had had his or her benefit cancelled due to a name mix-up. I guess in any system one will always have to guard against that kind of inevitability. The point of this legislation is not about doing harm to families but making sure that they are protected from accruing unnecessary debt. 
As part of the work that the Social Services Committee did on this—and I want to reaffirm my thanks to the House for the collegial way in which the cross-party work proceeded on this bill—we made sure that when a benefit is going to be cut any family affected by that would be given proper notification before the cut-off date. A family would be notified and its members would be able to go into Work and Income explain their situation and reapply for the level of benefit that they were entitled to. A seamless transition would then be able to happen without debt accruing. It seems wrong to us that historically a large numbers of families often with a dad in prison have additional trauma added to their already loaded plate when they suddenly discover that they owe the department hundreds and hundreds of dollars in overpaid benefit. Often in the traumatic circumstances that family members find themselves in with a member sentenced to a prison term the last thing they are thinking about during the process of a court case sentencing and everything else is their income. They can be blindly dealing with the emotional baggage that goes with having a parent or family member sentenced to a prison term and forget that they have some income issues to consider. This legislation makes both the Department of Corrections and Work and Income responsible for sharing sufficient information with each other to proactively guide family members through this process for their own benefit. 
United Future is therefore happy to support these third readings. The legislation highlights something that I suspect may underpin some of the concerns that the Greens still have about this legislation. It is interesting. I have spent this morning at a conference at Te Papa for a group of people who represent the concerns about biometric information-sharing. Although this does not necessarily have direct relevance to this legislation we are seeing an increasing amount of legislation where Government departments are empowered to share information with each other in a way that can be helpful. I believe that the intention is to be helpful but we always need to be mindful of the fact that information gathered for one purpose that is used for another purpose starts to have what we call “function creep” occurring. I caution the House that I think we are currently making a lot of these provisions in a whole range of legislation and we do not have a broad ethical framework in place. I know that the Law Commission in cooperation with the Privacy Commissioner currently has as part of its work programmes some really good reviews around privacy issues to do with the law. I look forward to that being brought forth because it may have some implications for those kinds of provisions. 
However I think that the intention of this legislation is for the good of the people it affects. It is not about people owing money to society when they are overpaid. That is the least of my concerns; my concern is about the burden that debt is to extremely low-income people on a benefit and about the need for a timely intervention to remind them that they need to go down to Work and Income and renegotiate the benefit that they are entitled to and all that goes with that when there has been a major change in their family circumstances. 
United Future feels that this legislation has been well considered. I thank the people who made submissions on the legislation. The information they provided us with was thought-provoking and I think we certainly responded very well as a committee to those suggestions. United Future is therefore very happy to support the third readings of this legislation. 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker for the opportunity to rise and speak to the last stage the third readings of these three bills. This legislation deals with an issue that many members have already outlined so I will take just a short call. A few issues were raised in the course of the debate that I feel need some response. Although the National Party and the Greens are taking quite different perspectives on this legislation—National is supporting these three bills and the Greens have informed the House that they are voting against them—they both raised the issue of the priorities of this Government. The National Party raised that issue by asking why it took so long for these three bills to be brought forward. I remind listeners and members opposite that the technical changes made in these bills to overcome this issue were never attempted during the course of the 9 years that National was the administration. So it is a little bit rich for the Opposition side of the House to ask why this has taken so long. 
The legislation has taken so long because the Government has had other priorities. Members should not forget that when this Government took office it had to undo an unholy mess that had been left behind by the previous regime. The National administration had left so many things for this Government to try to unravel and to turn around— 
Eric Roy 
: Like what? 
SUE MORONEY 
: —like getting rid of the dreadful Employment Contracts Act like getting some roads built in this country like driving up a savings culture in this country by bringing in KiwiSaver like targeting tax relief for families and like trying to do something about the 13000 State houses that National sold to its property developer mates over the course of the 1990s. Do members opposite want the whole list? I can keep going. This Government needed to do so much work and those were the priorities that we have been focusing on to date. They are wonderful priorities because they are about taking this country forward. The country was in such a mess and needed so many things done to it that I recall—and members might like to listen to this because this is part of the history of what occurred in this country—that the councils in towns like Cambridge and Morrinsville did not know how to plan for growth because they were so used to the politics of decline during the 1990s. 
David Bennett 
: Yeah yeah! 
SUE MORONEY 
: Members opposite do not seem to remember that; they have conveniently forgotten it. We had councils that did not even know how to go about planning new subdivisions because they were so used to the population declining in their areas. They were so used to the politics of decline to just trying to hold on to what they had that they did not have those processes in place. 
The members opposite have caused me to move away from this bill. I am simply trying to remind those members that yes we have taken some time to fix up that big mess and some of it still exists and we still have to do that. However the work of a good Government is never done and it continues on with these particular bills. 
I also make reference to the speech of Metiria Turei from the Green Party because she also raised the issue of priorities and asked whether this legislation should be the priority of this particular Government. Well yes we are getting to the point where we are fixing up this issue. It is largely a technicality about data matching that we are resolving to fix here. These three bills amend the provisions relating to the use of the data supplied by the Department of Corrections the Customs Service and the Accident Compensation Corporation. They will allow the Ministry of Social Development to use that data to prevent unnecessary debt by allowing benefit payments to be stopped in a timely way when a recipient enters jail and to be more effective in the recovery of Crown debts. They will assist in identifying claims for student allowances and for the cost of living component of student loans in relation to people who are in prison and so are not entitled to this assistance. 
I think those are very fine principles; those are very fine things to be achieving. I thank the vast majority of the parties in this House for recognising how timely this legislation is and for recognising how proper these bills are. I certainly commend the amendments in these three bills to the House and I also thank the select committee for their work on these bills. Thank you. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Corrections (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill the Customs and Excise (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill and the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 107 
New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand National 47; New Zealand First 7; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independent: Field. 
Noes 6 
Green Party 6. 
Bills read a third time.