Ball DarrochDARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill. I will get into the main reason why in a second but I would just like to make it clear as I did in my first and second reading speeches that New Zealand First does agree with the intent and the purpose of this bill. The fact that the legislation aims to improve educational and social outcomes for young beneficiaries—of course New Zealand First supports that intent and purpose. It wants to provide youth coaching along with other services such as budgeting help and parenting courses. The two main things that this legislation wants to do is to extend the Youth Service to include all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children and also 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children who are considered to be at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency. New Zealand First agrees with all of that intent and purpose but what we have got to remember is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is what I am reminded of when I read this bill. Even though we do agree with the intent it is not the what" that is the intent and purpose; it is the "how" and the "why" that New Zealand First has some challenges with. The main issue that we have heard from Labour and the Greens and the entire Opposition is the one about the social investment approach. When we hear Government members talking about evidence and data and investment they fail to mention a whole heap of evidence that is available and has been available to the select committee about why the social investment approach does not work. I have got a stack of evidence here and I just hope I have got time to get through it all. Hopefully the National Party members and the Minister for Social Development can hear the reasons why New Zealand First and various Opposition parties oppose this bill. But first I would like to point out the fact that—this is the third reading but if we talk about the first reading the second reading and the Committee stage—we have got 5 hours of debate. Throughout that entire 5 hours of debate the number of times that members on the Government benches have mentioned the social investment approach is a grand total of twice—that is twice. In the entire first reading only Matt Doocey mentioned the social investment approach. Not even the Minister mentioned the social investment approach during the whole entire first reading. During the entire second reading it was mentioned only once and that was by the Minister. Funnily enough what the Minister said was exactly what she said in the third reading and it was word for word because I read it when she was reading it out. The problem with it is that they have got it entirely wrong unless they are mistaken or they are deliberately misleading on what the intention of the social investment approach is.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member cannot say that another member or members are deliberately misleading the House. As I indicated earlier if he believes that then the appropriate thing is to write a letter to the Speaker on the matter of a breach of privilege. But he has himself breached the Standing Orders and will withdraw.DARROCH BALL: I withdraw. What I would like to do is quote Mr Doocey—what he said in the first reading debate. He said: "If we take a social investment approach—and that is what this Government is doing—we know that if we can focus on the most vulnerable and give them the resources it will make them more productive later in life." The problem is that the social investment approach does not focus on the most vulnerable. All you have to do is take a look at the regulatory impact statement. The first sentence of the first paragraph which is about supporting the investment approach states that the investment approach applies a long-term liability perspective to the cost to the benefit system. That is what the social investment approach is about. It is about the long-term liability perspective to the cost of the benefit system not targeting the most vulnerable. Unfortunately that is what the Minister said that it is about talking about vulnerable New Zealanders—about targeting vulnerable New Zealanders. That is not true. The second thing that the Minister said in her second reading speech was that "Evidence shows that young people under 20 are likely to remain on benefit long term if they do not receive the support they need at this early age." What that implies is that the support they need at this early age is through the benefits and through this legislation to extend the young persons' services. However when you go and have a look at the evidence and what it says in the regulatory impact statement it states that "Ideally this regulatory impact analysis would have measured the Net Present Value of the predicted change in lifetime costs to the welfare system ... It is too early to accurately measure the reduction in average years on benefit … It is not possible at this stage to isolate the effects of the Youth Service interventions on the above factors … It is difficult at this stage to accurately predict how well the impact the Youth Service is having on those it currently serves will translate to other groups." This is in the regulatory impact statement and it has not been mentioned once by the Government. It also goes on to say that "It is not possible to apply a rigorous comparison of the expected changes in liability to the operational costs." So even if we take what it says in the regulatory impact statement—which I have quoted—which is that it is about the long-term liability to the benefit system according to this it does not even measure that. It does not even stack up to that. The regulatory impact statement says that it is not possible to apply a rigorous comparison. So I am not sure what the Government is talking about in regard to the evidence that all of this works. It states quite demonstrably that it does not. It does not have the evidence there to show that it does work. When we are talking about the social investment approach we are talking about targets. I have mentioned this ad nauseam through the first and second readings of this legislation. We are talking about Better Public Services targets data collection and issues with predictive models. We have heard previous speakers talk about the predictive models and the issues with them. But even if we go into the departmental disclosure statement the information that all of the Government backbenchers who have spoken today and spoken in the last few weeks had available to them the Ministry of Social Development says that the risk model for Youth Service extension is still in development—it is still in development—and will likely be finalised prior to implementation. The risk model that this Government is intending to use on this benefit is still being developed. It does not even know what risk modelling it is going to be using. The problem extends out to the fact that and this is the ministry's statement the model will be similar to the "neets" predictive model—the predictive model that is used for "neets". We have heard today that there are over 87000 "neets"—youth who are not in education employment or training. That is the highest it has been in 3 years—the highest it has been in 3 years. It has never been lower than it was before this Government came into power in 2008—it has never been lower than in 2008. It has always been on the upward trajectory. The Government wants to use this risk predictive model for this new piece of legislation. It is no wonder that New Zealand First and the rest of the Opposition are not supporting this bill. If we go on to Treasury Treasury when stating the social investment approach is talking about the fact that the social investment approach is about "improving the lives of New Zealanders by applying rigorous and evidence-based investment practices to social services."—rigorous and evidence-based investment practices to social services. However if you continue to read about this piece of legislation and the evidence and the advice that is given to it it is still too early to assess the impact of the service. Findings to date suggest that the service is effective in engaging young people in education and training—they suggest. But Treasury and the Government itself say that it is about applying rigorous and evidence-based investment practices. Obviously New Zealand First cannot be put into a position where we are going to support a piece of legislation where the evidence that the Government says exists literally does not exist—literally does not exist. Unfortunately I do not have time to go through all of the evidence that I have got here because there is a mountain of it but there are studies that have been conducted not only internationally but locally. I would like to mention just one briefly from the University of Otago by Emily Keddell about the ethics of predictive risk modelling in the New Zealand child welfare context. She states that the problem with it is that data exists in silos. We have got the issue where we can concentrate on the victim and not on the surrounding information—the surrounding data that creates the environment for them to be victims in the first place. She goes on to say that what this Government is doing is focusing on the needles in the haystack instead of on the haystack itself and not stopping the hay from turning into those needles in the first place. We have tried throughout the process of this bill from the first reading through to its third reading to get the Government to answer those concerns and address the evidence that we have got and present it and it has failed. The Government has mentioned the social investment approach twice throughout the entire three readings including the Committee stage. We are disappointed with that because the Government has not made any progress whatsoever. New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill."