Sio William: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Social Security Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 17 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1635. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I want to join with others firstly to acknowledge the passing of Dr Apirana Mahuika as well as Celia Lashlie and others. I also want to acknowledge a local resident of my electorate Mrs Tavu’i a matriarch of the community who passed away last week. Her family service is tonight and she will be buried tomorrow. She has been around a long long time. She was a long-time teacher at Viscount School a founding member of the Presbyterian Church in Māngere and a staunch supporter of the Labour Party I might add. She has contributed significantly to our community and we will miss her. Ia manuia lau malaga Tavu’i.I want to say that this bill was introduced in November 2010 and given to the Social Services Committee to work on. That committee then reported back to the House with a one-page report right here—a one-page report with a recommendation in 2011 that this House pass this bill. There were no minority views expressed in that report and Labour said then that we would support it and we maintain that we will support it now. It was for a simple reason: the bill was minor with technical changes.There were just a couple of loopholes that the bill was intended to fix up. One was regarding the payment of ACC payments from the employer to ensure that those who were receiving ACC from the employer would be treated the same as those receiving ACC payments from ACC itself. The other loophole is to ensure that students eligible for assistance under the Student Allowances Regulations 1998 but who choose not to apply for that would also be excluded from receiving the accommodation supplement. That is what the bill is about and for those technical reasons we said we would support it and we maintain that we ought to support it as well.In the select committee there were two submitters. They did not give oral submissions but they gave two general submissions regarding what they considered as the issues of the adequacy of the accommodation assistance provided to students throughout the student support system. They expressed the view that the student accommodation rates are inequitable and we agree. The bill does not address that however. I agree with my colleagues in the Green Party and New Zealand First that those are issues that this Government should have focused on and should have at least included in another bill if not in this one.The bill was introduced in 2011 with a recommendation that Parliament pass it. It has taken 4 years. It is a simple minor bill that should have been put out of the way in order to allow this Government to focus on the more meaty issues that my colleagues have raised. I am angry about that because that is a sign that this Government is inadequate. You could say that it has been totally incompetent with the way it has arranged these particular bills. This bill now stays on the Order Paper after its second reading. We do not know when it will go through the Committee stage or when it will go through the third reading. There are more important issues that have been raised by my colleagues that this Government should have been focused on but instead it has been mired in these allegations of corruption surrounding its deals with Skycity.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Su’a WILLIAM SIO: I do not say that lightly.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! It is not appropriate to bring words like “corruption” into this debate. [Interruption] Order! I am on my feet. I ask the member to come back to the content of this debate. It is a very narrow debate and I ask the member to come back to it.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: The bill is very narrow. It focuses on those two loopholes that it was intended to fix up but the broader issues that I am raising were raised by submitters during the submissions process. Those broader issues are the ones that New Zealanders are asking about. They are asking why this piece of legislation minor small and technical as it is is languishing on the Order Paper when this Government should be focusing on the meatier and more important issues like jobs and incomes and addressing the national housing crisis that this Government is presiding over. And why is that? It is because of the incompetence of this Government.