Turei Metiria: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:13126] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 It has been pretty obvious that the Green Party position on the Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill is that it is abusive it degrades beneficiaries and it encourages the community to have a negative and very destructive attitude towards beneficiaries. We saw support for the Government’s position that beneficiaries are somehow inherently bad in the Welfare Working Group’s report which made all sorts of ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims about beneficiaries including mentioning the ridiculous figure of $50 billion which has largely been completely discredited even by fairly conservative media. 
We are working through the bill in the Committee stage and there are a number of amendments on the Table. The Green Party will be supporting the amendments that try to mitigate some of the damage that this legislation is doing. But it is clear that nothing in this bill will address the growing gap between the rich and the poor. The household expenditure and income survey came out yesterday. The Government has failed to make any comment about that. That survey shows that the gap between rich and poor is stagnant and that nothing that this Government has done will impact positively to close that gap. We also know from all of the research that has been done that it is the families on benefits who are at the very bottom. They are the ones on the very lowest incomes. The children of those families are the ones who suffer the worst from poverty. 
This Government argues that the “work first” ideology which is that any work no matter how demeaning no matter how inappropriate and no matter how poorly paid is somehow still good for people and particularly good for the children. That is the argument that this Government makes. But we know from all of the facts and the research that has been done and the experience in Australia for example that that is just not true. There is no evidence that any of the measures in this bill that will threaten sole parents and force them out into inappropriate employment will have any positive impact on them or on their children. In Australia the Government has retreated from the measures that are in this legislation. It has retreated from those measures because it knows that they have failed. Australia is working more towards educating sole parents and providing educational opportunities for those families so that they have a chance to get better work have better incomes and be better able to care for themselves and their families. 
Paula Bennett and I both come from similar situations. We were both sole parents. We both were educated while on the domestic purposes benefit. I am very proud to have been a beneficiary and to have had that support when I needed it. Paula Bennett says the same. But what this legislation does and what Paula Bennett’s policy and this Government’s policy does is take away those exact same opportunities that she and I had. Sole parents on the domestic purposes benefit will not have access to educational opportunities. In fact they will be forced out on threat of losing the very money that they need in order to pay their power bill to pay their rent and to get food on the table for their kids. On threat of losing that very desperately needed income they will be forced into taking inappropriate employment that is likely to be demeaning and not advantage them or the children in any way. That is the effect of what this Government is doing. That is what Paula Bennett is happy to promote as a woman who herself needed that support and received it. 
I still fail to understand why someone who was in exactly this situation which I have been in and which others in this Chamber have been in should take away from other sole parents those same opportunities when we know that by providing education and support particularly to sole parents when their children are young the chances are they will get a better job and a better-paid job once they come off the benefit. It is much better for sole parents and their children in the short and long term to provide support for them rather than threatening to strip them of their meagre income and forcing them into a market place where there just are not the jobs. It has already been discussed by my Labour colleague Annette King that there simply are not the jobs for people to go to. In fact by forcing sole parents out to work like this this legislation drives wages down. It worsens conditions for employees who are vulnerable and it makes it very difficult for employees in this situation to exercise any kind of control over their lives. Parenting is a full-time occupation. If one wants to do a good job of it one needs to be able to do it full time.