Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to speak on the Social Security (Stopping Benefit Payments for Offenders who Repeatedly Fail to Comply with Community Sentences) Amendment Bill. The Green Party wholeheartedly opposes this bill and I share the sentiments of my Labour colleague Carmel Sepuloni about what a waste of this House's time this bill is. The issues facing the Social Services Committee—this should not be taking up our time. Like so much legislation introduced by this Government this bill is more about image than it is about content and certainly more than it is about care.This bill promises to give the Department of Corrections the power to instruct the Ministry of Social Development to stop benefits to people who have been sentenced to community-based sentences who may have failed to comply with the terms of that sentence—Alastair Scott: Who may have? Who have failed.JAN LOGIE: —or who have failed—but it will be determined by a parole officer whether there are reasonable or unreasonable grounds according to this legislation when it would otherwise be decided by a judge. This puts court decisions in the hands of parole officers. It is changing the basis of the way our legal system works I would argue. It also puts in place a double sentence so that somebody who fails to comply who is in paid work will not get their paid work taken away from them but for people who are beneficiaries it will take away their ability to feed themselves.I really want to just address how misnamed this bill is as a social security bill. We have to recognise that the point of social security is that we have a safety net through which no one can fall. We are not living in Victorian times when there was a concept that only the deserving were able to have an income. We have learnt as a society that when we have those basics provided only to people whom we believe deserve them we all suffer. We end up with people committing crimes to be able to feed themselves. We end up with more people on the street. What this bill does is another deep attack on our social security system. It is bringing back Victorian values into our society. It is completely unworthy of this House and of our time.I really want to recognise as well that there was a comment made before of Well these are people who have offended. They have committed crimes." I want to point out that other people who have committed crimes and offended who are put in prison are given a warm roof over their head and three meals a day because we recognise as a society that it would be inhumane for that not to happen. We have prison inspectorate systems set up to try to enforce that because we recognise that as a society all of us are less human when other people are treated inhumanely in our care. Well why should those who are sent to prison be given more protections than these people? When we take away people's right to an income we put every single thing in their life at risk. We force them into places where they have no other choices and that destabilises our entire society.The Green Party wants no part of this. I would recognise that this a Government that has characterised beneficiaries as work-shy baby factories bad parents drug takers and criminals—even this Government would not support this bill as its own. That is how bad this piece of legislation is. I am very sorry Mark Mitchell. I quite liked you but this bill is rubbish and the Greens will not be supporting it."