Andersen GinnyHon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. Now sitting back and listening to both the debates in the first and now the second reading to sit back and take it all in I really have to ask myself what type of a society is this Government trying to build? What type of a country are we building in our future? The answer to that is a divided one. The argument for this bill which will reduce all main benefits—the only argument I have heard over the first and the second reading is that there's too many people on the benefit and we need to get them off. I have not heard how we will get more jobs; I have not heard how we will support more education and training; I have not heard how we will support parents to get better childcare to be able to start work when kids have been born; I have not heard about how there is a plan for young people to get them in training and employment and education. I have not heard any of these answers. Sadly what I have heard is that there are enough people on the benefit to fill a football stadium and then snicker and laughter. That is what makes me sick that this is some kind of a cruel joke to divide our society to say there's enough people on the benefit to fill a stadium and that's somehow a joke. That is a joke to this Government; that we have people who are struggling to pay for food who are struggling to feed their children. This is a Government who campaigned on addressing the cost of living crisis in New Zealand and they laugh at those people who are struggling to feed their own kids on a daily basis. That is why this Government represents let them eat cake" because they don't care. They do not care about those people who are doing it tough in New Zealand. They are duplicitous and they are two-faced and they front up and they say things like—Louise Upston says "But beneficiaries will be better off under our Government because we will be dealing with the cost of living crisis. We will be growing the economy to support more job opportunities as well as improving health and education." But also Louise Upston said on Newstalk ZB when asked "To be clear will beneficiaries be under the changes better off under the changes you've made and receive more or less money this time on the current projections than they would under the previous system?" The answer from the Minister was they are likely to get less marginally yep.Hon Louise Upston: Two dollars! Two dollars!Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): So the reason—$18 actually over a long-term projection. So when you've got a Government that is fronting up and telling New Zealanders that they are here to fix a cost of living crisis and they are saying that this is going to work but you've also got Ministers on the record admitting that under this bill the amount of money going to beneficiaries will decrease that is two-faced and that is duplicitous.So when we look back and see what we've got to do there's a problem in that there is no plan to address how we shift people off the unemployment benefit and how we provide them with dignity and meaningful employment. There is no plan in that space and that is what this Government is lacking. They have come in guns blazing and wiped out legislation like three waters like this again with no plan in place. There's no plan to fix the problems that we are still facing as a country and that is incredibly concerning. I really wonder sometimes whether some of the members opposite have actually dealt with people on the benefit or met them or engaged with them. The mum with three kids who is trying to—they want to cut that benefit. So how do we provide for the next generation of New Zealanders and provide them with the skills the training the education and the support? When we look at the regulatory impact statement from their own officials who have provided the information for this bill they say that changing the indexation will have a direct benefit and it will in fact disproportionately affect people who identify with population groups such as women Māori Pasifika and disabled people; people who are already overrepresented in the main benefit population. So we know for a fact that those people doing it tough are going to do it even tougher. Yet still this Government states that they are here to fix a cost of living crisis. I wonder whether their fiscal discipline that they have spouted their fiscal discipline which will save them $670 million from this legislative change in the House today—$670 million taken out of the pockets of those people struggling to feed their children—will be now carved off and put into tax cuts? Now if I ever saw reverse Robin Hood it's this bill. It's stealing from the poor and giving to the rich and it's disgusting. The fact that they can sit there and laugh about it draw a ring around those people and say that they can fill up a football stadium and find that amusing shows just how out of touch this Government is. I look forward to hearing what their solutions are to the problem of having enough people on the unemployment benefit to fill a football stadium because I think that there needs to be some more information provided by the Minister and by those members as to what the solution is to this problem. Just by as the New Zealand First member said you know firing up the economy and having a bit more excitement going on there that's somehow going to trickle down and give those people who can't feed their kids a bit more money in their pocket. Well we all know that's a failed experiment. We all lived through the 1980s and we all know that those people who saw that austerity delivered under Ruth Richardson and previous National Governments just made those at the bottom suffer even more.That's exactly what will happen again because there are no new ideas from this Government. They are simply repeating the same failed mistakes of previous National Governments. They simply look back over what was done and they do it all over again. What we're seeing is those people who do it tough those people who only get a 2 percent increase on the minimum wage those people who are on unemployment benefits those mums who are struggling to pay for childcare those people who want to get their free prescriptions; all those people do worse under National. So I look forward to seeing how they're going to pay for these promised tax cuts. We all look forward to this Budget to see what kind of disaster will be wreaked upon the rest of New Zealand what times of deep Public Service cuts we will see with a 6.5 to 7.5 percent cut right across all our public services. Again it will be those people struggling that will do the worst out of this. I'd like to close with a bit about what was done under Labour's track record because I think it's important that we put that on the record. Our families package helped 330000 Kiwi families in its first year increasing the accommodation supplement and through the family tax credit and by also introducing the Best Start payment and also the Winter Energy Payment. As a first step of the review of Working for Families we implemented changes that meant 346000 families were better off by an average of $20 a week. That's better off not worse off which is what this Government does. We made generational increases to the main benefits and indexed them to average wages ensuring that they increase over time and it's so sad to see that taken away and step backwards because the opposite is going to happen with this legislation: they will decrease over time. So those who are already doing it tough will be worse off in New Zealand in a cost of living crisis under a Government who promised to tackle a cost of living crisis and was elected on that basis. Duplicitous. We increased main benefit abatement thresholds to $160 a week boosting beneficiary incomes by ensuring they keep more of what they earn from part time work. And mark me this will probably be the next thing to go; we'll see abatement thresholds come down as a way of decreasing and getting more money carved off to the side to fund tax cuts that were unaffordable when they first did their numbers.This will be a scramble of a Budget for National. They will be looking at any way possible to carve off money from those who need it the most. I'm sad and dismayed not just by this bill but by the general attitude of not caring about what kind of a society we build in New Zealand. The absolute disregard they give to those people in our community who need support and assistance to do better for themselves and their children. If National hold themselves up as the party of opportunity and for everybody being able to make their way in the world then they completely go over and back on their word by putting through bills like this that simply cut Kiwis where it hurts the most during a cost of living crisis. I do not commend this bill to the House."