Bradford Sue: Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Bradford Sue: Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:624;Page:19581] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 In speaking in the debate on this part of the bill I would like to suggest that during the select committee process the part that received the most attention from submitters to the Social Services Committee was indeed clause 7 which allows the rate of benefit for sole parents to be further reduced should they fail or refuse to name the fathers of their children. Almost all submitters on that topic felt as the Green Party does that it is totally unacceptable to further penalise single parents—mostly mothers—who are in that situation. At the moment such beneficiaries already lose $22 a week per child from their benefits. Once this new bill becomes law that sum will go up by a further $6 a week. Although that may not sound like a lot of money to people on MPs’ salaries such as the members who are speaking here today to families that are surviving on the domestic purposes benefit every dollar counts. According to the Ministry of Social Development’s own research and according to every other study I have seen in recent years single-parent families are indeed the worst off proportionately of all family groupings in our country. So what is the Labour Government doing in deliberately increasing family poverty even by that small amount? 
The Green Party does not find it at all surprising that this bill is being supported as we have heard today by the National New Zealand First and United Future parties and is opposed only by ACT the Greens and the Maori Party—albeit for quite opposing reasons. I find it quite disturbing that a Labour Government that prides itself on its commitment to social equity seems to feel constrained to put forward clauses like this in what would otherwise be perfectly fine if rather limited reforming legislation. If clause 7 were taken out the bill would be fine and we would have no problem in supporting it. Even better would be to have a bill that did away altogether with the penalties on sole parents. 
The solutions to the issue of a woman not being able or willing to name the father of her child or children are numerous just as are the reasons for not naming the father. The Ministry of Social Development has done some research on that and reported to the select committee that as a result of interviews it carried out with over 4000 single-parent beneficiaries it found that such reasons include the other parent denying paternity or disappearing when advised of the pregnancy the beneficiary not actually knowing who the other parent was and the sole parent trying to avoid the other parent having contact with or rights over the child. Those three reasons were the main reasons for people not naming the fathers. From my point of view I believe that at a human level they are all completely understandable and a number of the social service - type groups that submitted to us made that same point over and over again. A further reason for a very small percentage of respondents in the ministry’s study not naming fathers was that the custodial parent and the liable parent had made private financial arrangements. I had thought that that figure would be a lot higher than it is but the answer to that problem again is not an increase in the penalties but a reform of the child support legislation. 
The Green Party really questions what on earth the Government thinks it is doing by lifting the penalties under section 70A of the Social Security Act. The Government is certainly not addressing the causes of people not naming the fathers of their children as can be seen by a quick glance at the ministry’s research that I have just outlined. Indeed one of the reports we were given actually states: “Harsher policy measures would not be effective for the majority of this group.” I believe that we should take quite a different approach to this kind of problem not the approach of making poor families even poorer. Solutions lie in a whole range of areas including things like providing far better and more realistic education for children and young people about what becoming a parent actually means. I think we should have that kind of education right from the time children start school and not leave it till they are about to leave school when in some cases that is far too late. We do need reforms to the Child Support Act and we do need to provide more support—not less—to all sorts of single-parent families. 
Labour is doing some good things for single parents. It has removed the compulsory work testing of people on the domestic purposes benefit and put more resources into case work in order to help domestic purposes beneficiaries look ahead at their future in terms of their education training and employment needs. That was good legislation which the Green Party supported and it is hard to comprehend in that context why on earth the Government also has to take this retrogressive step. It is high time that the Government stopped taking a kind of moral stand because that is all it is. Six dollars is just a token deduction. It is a totally unnecessary and uncalled for and it is a great pity that this Government has to stoop as low as this bill.