Ardern Jacinda: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Jacinda: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 18 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3667. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise and give a contribution on the title and commencement clauses of this bill the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. As you called for speeches on this I was actually just making some notes on the commencement clause. I have some questions for the Minister in the chair the Minister for Social Development on the commencement date in particular. We have seen movement around the commencement date for the provisions that relate to youth services in particular. My understanding is that now the commencement date is for late August for those provisions. I know that the Minister has made brief references in parts of this debate—or at least she did in question time—around why the commencement date has shifted for the youth services measures of the bill. I would be interested in a slightly more fulsome answer because I have received conflicting advice from the Ministry of Education around whether or not the schools are indeed ready to pick up the provisions set out in Part 1 of this bill in particular because of course this bill will require greater information sharing from schools to the Ministry of Social Development. 
My understanding is that the Ministry of Education at this point says that there are two management systems that might be used to get information either ENROL or the student management system. They are quite different systems. ENROL it is my understanding does not capture all of the information that the Ministry of Social Development would require in order for it to carry out the basics of for instance contacting a school leaver to find out whether they require youth services in order to place them into further education training or work. I ask the Minister to give assurances to the Committee that the commencement date for this bill is realistic and that the Ministry of Education is liaising appropriately with the Ministry of Social Development to ensure that the right IT systems are in place—and I believe that up to $17 million has been spent on those IT systems. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: How much? 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: It is a significant piece of work. I believe $17 million has been spent on IT for this bill. So if there has been movement in the commencement date I assume that is because things are not quite as rosy as they would need to be in order to kick off. If there is some explanation around that I would welcome the Minister sharing that with us because a substantial amount of taxpayer money has gone into that part of the bill and what I have seen out of the Ministry of Education suggests that it is not exactly clear what is going to be happening with its information flows into the Ministry of Social Development.  
I also note that the commencement date for the provisions that relate to work testing kicks in in October. I would be interested in the Minister sharing the rationale for how much time is required for Work and Income to make such significant policy changes. I assume that this is based on advice from officials that October gives relevant time to advise case managers of how the new system will operate. If indeed that is the case what is the difference between a substantial change around work testing and the probably more substantial change of Work and Income no longer dealing with anyone under the age of 19? Youth services with no prior training in this area will have to pick up that work and they are getting substantially less time from the commencement of this bill to establish the right training and policies in their organisations having never worked in this area before than Work and Income gets. Youth services get to kick off in August when the rubber hits the road for whole new practices whereas Work and Income is getting right through to October even though it is much more its bread and butter. So I would be interested in the differences around commencement dates there.  
I come then to the title of this bill. The current title is the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill. Some listeners out there who may have been observing the debate around this bill may be confused that actually the title is quite a narrow title: “Youth Support and Work Focus”. To be fair actually that title probably captures what this bill does. It is heavily focused on those under the age of 19 many of whom are not actually drawing down on any Government support at present. We have had that discussion: roughly 1000 young people are on the independent youth benefit and roughly 1500 are on what will become a teen parent payment. That is the focus: those who are on Government support who are being targeted by this bill predominantly. They are the ones who will experience the most change in the way that they are dealt with as a consequence of this bill.  
For the remainder the “Work Focus” part of this title is then the reference point for the remainder of this bill. As anyone who listened to the debate around Part 3 of this bill will know for the remainder—the 112000 on the domestic purposes benefit the almost 50000 on the unemployment benefit and the tens of thousands on the invalids benefit and sickness benefit; actually it is even narrower than that it is mostly just for the DPB and widows etc.—the only change they will see as a consequence of this bill is additional work testing. So when you break it down it is the “Social Security (Youth Support)” which is 2500 people “(and Work Focus)” which is the rest. That actually probably is not a bad descriptor. But you would not have garnered that from the debate that you have heard in this Chamber which I think to be fair overstated the impact this bill would have for the majority of people on Government support currently.  
So perhaps it would be more appropriate—maybe we could say the “Predominantly Youth Support Social Security Bill” or the “Narrow Target - Based Youth Support Bill”. I guess the reason I would throw in the “Narrow Target” is that that I think encapsulates the significant debate that has happened around what is happening to our Youth Transition Services. At the moment we have a very broad-based community-based delivery model that is coming into a more narrowly focused—and the Minister as she said makes no apology for this—attempt to work with roughly 14000 young people. As we have continued to point out there are over 80000 young people not in employment education or training. Our preference has always been to build on the existing community-based Youth Transition Services that are already out there. It would have been cheaper it would have picked up more young people and it would not have just locked in on 16 and 17-year-olds; it would have been 16 and 17 plus. That has been our contention through this debate.  
But also if we were to be slightly more realistic about the “Work Focus” part of the title of this bill it would be the “Work Focus (Without the Work) Bill”. This is not just rhetoric. I mean this is fact. I can see the chair of the Social Services Committee is getting agitated by my use of evidence. I know it is a pesky thing! Facts—never let them get in the way of some useful rhetoric! But almost 18000 people were drawing down an unemployment benefit at the time that the Government came in. Granted a recession kicked in; we have always acknowledged that. We are now sitting at closer to roughly 50000. But to bring in a bill that is so heavily focused on work testing when the environment has changed—and the Government acknowledges the environment has changed. In fact it has been its excuse for the unemployment figures that we have. On the one hand it is acceptable to use the recession as an excuse for the Government’s record on the unemployment benefit and the unemployment rate but it is not an excuse for people to say: “I can’t find a job.” So we have always had this complete contradiction throughout this bill. I think it is important that perhaps we look at the title acknowledging that the “Work Focus (Without the Work) Bill”.  
Finally there is one other title I wish to consider. At the very beginning of course it is the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill because all of this is based on the original Social Security Act that came in in the 1930s. But as has been raised in this debate by my colleague Su’a William Sio I think it is timely to go back to what the roots of social security were in New Zealand. It has been pointed out that Michael Joseph Savage never intended for it simply to be a subsistence payment that did not acknowledge the wider context in which the person existed. He always said that social security should exist alongside appropriate health education and a pension scheme. That was always the context in which he referred to this. We have lost the context. We now focus so heavily on the payment realm of this—the existence on social security—that we forget that actually it should be used as a springboard to try to get people into a better life. That means sustainable work. 
Mike Sabin 
: That’s what the bill’s all about. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: Mr Sabin explain to me how work testing does anything other than say to someone: “Go out with a booklet come back at the end of the week and show me 100 signatures that show you asked 100 people for a job.” What if that person does not have the skills? What if that person has not been in the workforce for 5 years and has no job skills to get into further employment? The welfare system should not be static—