Prasad Rajen: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Prasad Rajen: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8900. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I am talking to Part 1 of the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill which really contains the nub of the Government’s arguments and the bulk of the provisions that this side of the Chamber has major difficulties with. When one considers those sanctions in particular and what Part 1 does one has to start asking some very very deliberate questions about the morality and the ethics of this approach to the most vulnerable in our society. This Minister for Social Development and this Government have taken a particularly punitive approach in the provisions in Part 1 of this bill. They are trying to couch that in the language of caring and the language of backing our most vulnerable. But in fact that does not wash with us at all. Underneath that what this Minister and this bill produce is a far more complex system and far more hoops for our vulnerable to go through in order for them just to get enough resources to live by until their situation improves. I think that that is the centre of our criticism of this particular approach—the ethics and the morality that are contained in these particular provisions. 
The Government had other ways of doing this. These are the people who are excluded in our society by and large. What the Government is doing with its social sanctions is precluding them even more from participating in our society preparing for work in our society and preparing to lead their lives. That is objectionable. It is objectionable to us. Again ethically and morally it has got holes in it. But what is also worrying is how we got to this point. How did this Minister make the argument—how did this Government make the argument—that this is what society needed? There certainly are no big savings from the bottom line of the Government’s budget in these provisions. I think it makes about a $20 million difference in the initial period in its budget. So it does not save a lot of money. 
There is this promise that the Minister has talked about that indeed in time it will produce great wealth for our society. But it will not. Again how much are we prepared to put our vulnerable through in order for them to receive the kind of assistance that our decent society ought to be giving our most vulnerable? The Government started by overstating the case for dependency. The Government has a view against those who rely on benefits for a period of time. So by overstating the case designing its task forces to look at the dependency regime it actually overstates it. It overstates welfare dependency to such an extent that it has created in our society this huge problem which the provisions of Part 1 are now designed to help us get over. So the case for dependency has not been made. Yes there are cases. Yes there are a small number of cases of those who have gamed the system. But as many people in this Chamber know there are many many more cases of people accessing the resources and the services provided under our benefit system that have given them the opportunity to get ahead with their lives to look after their children and to become great citizens of our society. There are many many more examples of that and yet by overstating the case we develop a punitive system. 
That is again what the provisions of Part 1 are talking about. They are punitive. There will be I predict over time a whole army of people in Work and Income who will design a whole series of steps to monitor the small group of people who will learn even harder ways even more entrenched ways of gaming the system. That is where the game will be played out and the most vulnerable will be caught in that. If the Government wanted to be sincere about addressing the needs of our most vulnerable then it would actually develop a far more productive approach to what it considers to be the need to provide for our most vulnerable a pathway out of welfare and into work and preparing for life independent of assistance from the State. 
The other thing that the provisions of this bill do is underplay the complexities of our modern world and the complexities of what our vulnerable have to go through. Life is not easy for many of these mums in particular bringing up children. On top of that what some of the sanctions do is make that life for them that much harder. Once children arrive in families once children are there there is not much point in being moralistic about how they got there. There are mums and dads who have to bring up these children and provide the best example possible. Yet what we find for those who rely on assistance from the State in doing that job which is a service to our society—I mean these are our children. There are many leaders of our society who started life dependent on the State as children of sole parents. We ought to be supporting them better but the provisions of Part 1 of this bill will actually make it more difficult for them. Even if the parents were the best people in the world to provide care for their children between 3 and 5 this bill says: “You’re not allowed to do that. You’ve got to be work-ready. You can’t do it on a full-time basis. You’ve got to go out and find at least a certain number of hours of work because that is good for you.” If you happen to be living as a couple where you are not dependent on the State you have all the rights in the world to bring up your children in that way but the provisions of Part 1 of this bill when it comes to those sanctions around the compulsory use of childcare actually are a travesty of that right that parents ought to have. We do not give up our rights to bring up our children in the way we want to provided it meets certain basic standards because the State tells us to do something else. So there is an absolute nanny State type of flavour to the provisions in this particular bill and I personally object to this. 
I know many of the people who have relied on the State to bring up children and I object to this notion of tarring them all with the same brush because there are some cases of those who might not have used the resources particularly well. Life is complex enough for these families yet these provisions will make it even more difficult for them. 
So what are the provisions of Part 1 actually addressing? They are addressing some kind of bigotry that does exist in our society towards this group and you hear talkback shows and talkback hosts particularly in Auckland pumping this up all the time—that here we are these are the people who are taking away from us as taxpayers our wealth so to speak and therefore must be punished. We know enough from history that the pattern will repeat itself because this is a punitive approach. This enables us to be negative towards our neighbours because they draw their income from some other place. To then impose that on the most vulnerable I think is what is most objectionable in this particular bill and the provisions in this particular part because we do know that if we did give them a decent opportunity to get started in life things would be better. 
I am convinced myself that there are enough provisions in the social security system at the moment to use a different approach—an approach that encourages people to prepare for work to meet their childcare responsibilities and to be guided to the extent that they need to be guided to provide the best environment. Yet here we are; we are maligning a whole group of people. We firstly malign them then we subject them to denigration we then call them bludgers and then we put in place a punitive system. Later on in the calls I will take I will talk more about those whom we respect in our society who have come to the select committee and very very unequivocally said that this is not the way to do things because by doing it in this particular way we will create an even worse environment down the road. If Governments think of just a short period of time then we will come back and talk about those—