Sio William: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sio William: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 18 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3655. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Su’a 
 WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Mangere) 
: 
Malo le soifua. I just want to address Part 3 clause 29 of the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. Clause 29 amends some definitions in section 3 of the Social Security Act and brings changes to introduce work availability expectation essentially work testing. It provides the range of 10 to 20 hours a week for part-time work or the range of 20 to 40 hours a week for full-time work. Sole parents must now after their youngest child reaches the age of 5 find work within those ranges of hours. I want to ask the Minister in the chair the Minister for Social Development whether she believes that a sole parent working 10 hours part-time would be able to sustain that sole parent’s family on working those hours. You see I have a problem with that. I maintain that families who are on the benefit want to work and they want to work in a job where the pay enables them to sustain their families. And that is not what we are getting. I reiterate the report from the Inland Revenue Department yesterday which said that 66 percent of women are looking for work but cannot find work that enables them to receive a pay that sustains their families. So when a range of working hours of 20 to 40 hours is regarded as full-time work that causes me concern and would cause many sole parents concern because 20 hours at the minimum wage at the moment just would not be able to help that family meet their obligations with rent and electricity—and we all know that the increase in electricity prices is at the point where families are just not able to meet them.  
The other concern I have is the number of employers out there who are prepared to provide that so-called flexibility to enable sole parents to be able to work those flexible hours. I suppose the question has to be—and this is a question that came from many submitters—whether the Government if it is going to obligate those sole parents to find work in order to sustain themselves should be obligated to guarantee those jobs and to guarantee an income to enable a parent to sustain themselves.  
You know I suspiciously think despite the Minister’s sincerity that we have heard that the focus on this small group of people just begs the question of dog-whistle politics again. When you make a comparison of the costs that surround sole parents with the cost of superannuation you see that superannuation takes about 50 percent of the total social spending whereas the domestic purposes benefit takes only about 7.9 percent of social spending. So the Minister’s Government is deciding to turn a blind eye to the increasing superannuation costs and is instead focusing on the cost of solo parents—and by the way in December 2011 only 2.8 percent of those receiving the domestic purposes benefit were under 20 years of age so the argument about more and more young people going on the domestic purposes benefit just does not fit for the many submitters who have made submissions.  
But I come back to clause 29. The number of hours that sole parents would be required to work just does not make me confident that a sole parent working 20 or 30 hours a week is going to be able to sustain that particular family when you recognise the high cost of rent the high cost of electricity petrol costs and the number of available jobs.