Ardern Jacinda: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Jacinda: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 17 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3590. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is my absolute pleasure to be able to clarify some of the friendly banter that has been happening between this side of the Chamber and in particular my colleagues from the select committee process. I want to point out that some of the frustration on this side of the Chamber comes from the assumption that I have heard made by members that somehow this Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill embodies the investment approach that the Minister in the chair the Minister for Social Development espouses when it comes to welfare reform. The simple point that we wish to raise is that if you are on Government support and are older than the age of 19 the only thing this bill does for you is introduce more work testing. Let us be clear. We have not ignored that this bill does change youth services that it puts in additional child support for teen parents and that it has got incentive payments attached for those on a youth payment card and a teen parent card. But those are all measures that will affect only those who are under the age of 19 years. So for the 112000 on the DPB over 90000 of whom are sole parents for the almost 50000 on an unemployment benefit and for the tens of thousands on invalid or sickness benefit this bill either does absolutely nothing or it introduces increased work testing. 
Let us be clear. We are not talking about rhetoric on this side of the Chamber; we are debating the bill that the Government has put in front of us. I think it is absolutely legitimate to question the rhetoric around an investment approach when this bill affects the roughly 3000 young people who are currently drawing down Government support. I accept that there are another 11 that you will put services in for but that is whom you are targeting. I also do not question that it has purposely been done by the Government because of the statistics around trying to discourage young people from staying on a benefit in the longer term. There we just dispute whether or not this is the most effective way to do it and that is a legitimate argument to have. But please do not test this side of the Chamber with rhetoric around investment for the majority of people on a benefit when that is not what this bill does. 
Now that we have clarified that point I am happy to come back to Part 1 of this bill and continue with this discussion. I want first though to come back to what the Minister raised around her goal of ensuring that young people are in education. Again we do not dispute the importance of education as a foundation for our young people in securing their future. Our concern is that by narrowing the incentive around a goal that may be quite a distance from where a young person’s starting point is we may create a disincentive for a youth provider to work with that young person. Our argument has been that the existing Youth Transition Service framework gave more discretion to youth providers than this framework does. If the Minister can prove to me that that is not the case that the way that the contracts were structured before did not constrain in the way that you are purporting they were constrained I would be very interested to hear that because that is not what youth providers are telling members in this House. We heard a very different story from what the Minister is purporting. 
We are not saying let us not have these services; we are trying to aim for some of the same goals that the Government is. But we believe that the Government is spending more working with fewer young people and potentially getting a worse result and I think that is a very legitimate point to make. 
I want to come back to the youth support payment—we have not discussed that yet—in particular the fundamental change around the way that young people who are currently on an independent youth benefit or who are currently on a domestic purposes benefit will now if they are under 19 transition to a teen parent payment system. We heard from Government members that their purpose in moving to this youth support payment which would be underpinned by a card system and would affect roughly 1000 independent youth benefit kids—roughly 1500 teen parents—was to try to encourage greater financial management by these young people. The way the Government wanted to do that was move them on to a card system. This essentially means that they automatically have some of their bills paid out and then they get a small discretionary amount on a card.