Cunliffe David: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8227. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I wish to spend a few minutes going through the departmental disclosure statement. This is a very unusual disclosure statement for people watching—unusual because of its thoroughness or lack thereof. Here is the first page and here is the second page—they are mainly blank. There is a very pro forma series of tables thereafter in which there are only two substantive paragraphs. So the departmental disclosure statement which is really the only piece of analysis attached to the draft bill is only two paragraphs long. It replaces the normal release of Cabinet documents and the normal regulatory impact statement from Treasury.Let me then turn to the two paragraphs concerned. The first one attempts to answer the question “Does this Bill affect rights freedoms or impose obligations retrospectively?”. It answers truthfully that yes of course it does because these rights to the extra day’s benefit have been deprived since 1998.The bill attempts to retrospectively squash what is legitimately owed under the current law to beneficiaries. It might be that the current Government thinks beneficiaries are subhuman or that they do not deserve normal legal rights. It is here extinguishing 17 years’ worth of rights minus a 1-year exemption literally with a stroke of a pen under urgency and denying people the opportunity for the normal select committee process and with barely a fig leaf to hide its modesty. This departmental disclosure statement is the fig leaf and it is a pretty small one. It is pretty thin. It goes on—I think this is really interesting. Retrospective provisions are not normally allowed of course because that takes away people’s rights if Parliament is coming over the top and squashing rights that existed in the past. It says however that exceptions are “justified to ensure: the Government policy intent is upheld”. Well how on earth would we know what the Government’s policy intent is because there is no evidence of it from either 1998 or 2014 provided to the House or the public.My colleague Grant Robertson has gone to the extent of pulling out the old Hansard from 1998 and that made the point that it was a jolly rushed process and the mistake was made because the Government of the day another National Government acted with undue haste. But surely it cannot be sufficient justification simply that an undescribed and unvalidated policy intent—call that what you will—is upheld? If you accept that argument then the Government could intend anything and upholding any intention could by that argument be validation for retrospective law.Second dot-point—“practice and understanding that has been previously applied …”. Well you know that is simply saying that if you made the mistake consistently it is OK to keep making it. That cannot be a sufficient justification.Third dot-point—and this I think is the most telling of the lot—“financial costs to the Crown that were not anticipated are avoided.” Well there we are. That is what this all comes down to: financial costs that were not anticipated are avoided. But if the Government is going to override legal and constitutional rights on the basis of avoiding un-forecast financial costs then the least—the very least—that it can do is to make clear what those costs are. This arrogant out-of-touch Government does not even deign to tell the public of New Zealand what the costs are that it is overriding people’s legal rights for 17 years to fix. It does not care. The Government members do not even bother to take to their feet. I challenge the Minister in the chair Nicky Wagner: show us you care by taking a call and telling people what the cost is and telling them why it is justified to override a court-ordered right.The justification such that it is says that certain decisions of the Ministry of Social Development’s Social Security Appeal Authority are protected from retrospective validation. Well you can say that again. They are protected by a Government that is arrogant.