Sepuloni CarmelCARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I just want to refer to what the previous member Jono Naylor was just saying and that was that the Government is measuring success by the number of young people it can get off benefits. Well that is not and should not be a measure of success. The actual success is where these young people go on to but we are not getting the information from the Government to tell us that actually these people are going on to anything better. I was talking to my colleague Peeni Henare earlier tonight. We were having discussions about the fact that we were both teen parents—or perhaps I had mine at 20 pregnant at 19. We cannot even imagine the conditions that this Government is trying to impose on young people having been imposed on us. We were just talking about the fact that we do not even know any young people who around our age group stayed on a benefit for a long period of time after having a child as a teenager. In fact we heard Alfred Ngaro say that if a person has a child as a teenager they are more likely to stay on the benefit for something like 13 years. Bill English said the other day that if a young person goes on a benefit they are likely to stay on a benefit for an average of 18 years. Where is the Government getting these figures from? I put parliamentary questions in to try to find out where Bill English got that number from and that answer is now delayed. We have no response from that side of the House because the Government does not have any evidence to support the statements it is making and that is the problem. Going back to myself and Peeni and other people who had children when they were young and other people who had to rely on a benefit for a certain period of time—actually most of us have aspirations and most of us went on to get jobs. Most of us went on to continue studying or to get further education and we were not the exception actually National Government; we were the rule. So that side of the House is creating legislation around a very very small group of people and is saying that youth services should be available only to the very very very at-risk group that it has identified through its predictive risk modelling. That deficit base sets that programme up to fail and we know that. We know that in the classroom when you are teaching—with anything that you do—if you have a deficit base then you are setting it up to fail. So we do not support the model that that Government has come up with. It is not just us who do not support it because I do want to refer to some of the submissions that came through and the concerns that they expressed about this bill. The first one that I am going to refer to is the submission made by the Salvation Army. Quoting the Salvation Army In general The Salvation Army opposes the intent and much of the content of the Bill. The principle reason for this opposition is that the Army believes that it is [both] paternalistic and somewhat contradictory to treat 18 and 19 year olds in the same way as 16 and 17 year olds. The Army believes that it is important to respect individuals' legal and civil rights ahead of particular policy objectives which may in themselves be of questionable value. It is the Army's opinion that the proposed extension of 'young persons services' and the associated obligations and sanctions to 18 and 19 year olds is a clear example of the State placing its policy objectives ahead of the legitimate rights of citizens and that as a practice this is unwise and unfair." I value what the Salvation Army has to say actually. The Salvation Army has a lot to say of substance in this area so it is such a pity that the National Government has ignored what it has to say. It did mention the issue around sanctions here. I want to speak a little bit to that. There was a submission made by Kay Brereton on behalf of the National Beneficiary Advocacy Consultation Group and that speaks a little bit about the consequences of sanctions in this context. As a person who not only was a young parent and not only was on a benefit for a period of time—but did not stay on it for 18 years like Bill English said we do—I also worked with youth for a period of time. Jono Naylor says that he worked with young people and thinks he is the only one in the Chamber who has. The concern that I have as a person who worked for a youth service is that actually I think that the ability to sanction by these youth services compromises their ability to do the job properly. How can you form a trusting relationship with a young person when you at any time can contact Work and Income and have their benefit cancelled have them sanctioned in some way? What kind of motivation is it? What kind of motivation are you instilling in the young person when the only motivation that you are giving to them for actually staying in line doing the things they are supposed to be doing is actually that otherwise you will cut their benefit? What happens to the importance of a youth service and youth workers actually being about instilling in this young person a passion for getting out and getting further education a passion for getting into work that they are interested in? What about instilling life skills in a young person and walking alongside them so that actually you can give them hope that there may be something better out there for them? That should be the motivation not the motivation being "I will pull your benefit if you do not do what I tell you to do." We have got real issues with the fact that the Government is making the youth services do that. We have to remember that actually this really is in so many ways just a matter of the Government contracting out the case management of these clients. It is not really about trying to create decent youth service provisions. It is about the Government devolving responsibility for these young people to these service providers. So we have got issues with that. I have brought up earlier and my colleagues have brought up earlier that there were concerns raised by the Human Rights Commission in its submission that this discriminates against young people. Just because these are young people who find themselves in an undesirable situation where they have had to come for support to the State to go on a benefit and to get support through welfare that does not mean that they should have their rights—their human rights—taken away but that is what this bill does. It does that as a colleague of mine said earlier in the way of making a young parent return to work earlier than we would expect of any other parent. It is saying that actually if you are a young parent you have to go back to work or study when your child is 1 year old or 6 months old. Peeni Henare and I were talking about this—we actually did go straight back to study and to work. We did not stay home but we chose that. Actually in hindsight thinking about it one of my biggest regrets having been a young parent is not taking the time to enjoy being a parent. That is the pressure that gets put on people as if "You must do all of these things you must get back into study you must get into work straight away." If you want to that is great. But we have got to remember that the most important job any of us will do in our lifetime is parenting. As my colleague Louisa said—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!CARMEL SEPULONI: —it is important to remember that that bonding goes on—Louisa Wall said that that bonding in those first 3 years is so important. If we want to make sure that moving forward into the future we have a generation of citizens who are able to make a valuable contribution then we will make sure that we support their parents to be able to support them well now. I am going to leave it at that for now. Hopefully I will get an opportunity to take another call but there are so many reasons that we are not supporting this bill. Of course we support young people to go on and get education to go on into employment but the way in which the National Government is trying to do it will not be successful has not been successful and actually it is detrimental to our young people."