Woods Megan: Social Assistance (Living Alone Payments) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Woods Megan: Social Assistance (Living Alone Payments) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8780. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) 
: 
 I am happy to take a short call on this bill the Social Assistance (Living Alone Payments) Amendment Bill. As my colleague Jacinda Ardern has very well outlined Labour is supporting this bill because it is a sensible bill and we are happy to support it to make sure that the issues addressed in it are no longer an issue for the elderly in our country. 
I want to talk specifically to one of the amendments that Labour has put up on this bill. Jacinda Ardern foreshadowed the part that I will be speaking on and the previous speaker Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor has alluded to the amendment as well. It is the amendment that harmonises this piece of legislation with the student allowance legislation—brings it into line with it. We think that it is a very sensible move to redefine the age of eligibility of students to 24 years old as they are classed as dependants in that student allowance legislation. We think that this is needed. 
Student support is an issue that we are facing as a country and we are facing it increasingly as a country. If we do want to be an innovation-led economy that bases our prosperity our future and our future economic development on having an educated skilled and trained workforce then how are we going to support our young people to gain these qualifications that are going to be of benefit to all of us in New Zealand? 
The previous speaker alluded to some comments that the Ministry of Social Development made in regard to some of these suggestions as they came up that perhaps tertiary students—those over the age of 18 who were engaged in tertiary education—could go and find part-time work and support themselves. Well this is a very interesting question at the moment because of course in the context of the youth rates legislation that we are also seeing going through this House we see that the Ministry of Education provided advice to StudyLink—the bit of the Ministry of Social Development that administers student allowances—that the $11-an-hour rate 80 percent of the full adult minimum wage that is proposed in that legislation actually does pose some threats in terms of our students being able to support themselves. So there are a whole lot of intersecting pieces of information that we have to take into account. That is why Labour has put up this very sensible amendment which would bring this piece of legislation in line with definitions that we have operating around that very important issue of student allowances. 
We think this is something that we do need to get right. We need to iron out some absurd situations that could come about. A situation that my colleague Jacinda Ardern outlined is about a tertiary student who has gone away to polytech or gone away to university in another part of the country and comes back over the long summer break to stay with their parents—as all parents want their students who go away for tertiary education to do. Then we have the situation of what happens in terms of the classification of dependency and how this would affect the payment. So let us just use this opportunity to make sure that this is a sensible piece of legislation and takes this into account. 
We think that there are many good elements to this legislation. We think that it will improve the lives of older New Zealanders by reducing their requirement to make additional applications to receive their full entitlement. We agree with many of the technical changes that it makes possible. One that I wanted to speak to was one that I saw around the 28-day period when the spouse of an elderly person passes away and when it is they make their application and when their eligibility for that kicks in. These are all things that we need to make as smooth and as easy as possible to reduce the amount of administrative burden that is on our elderly people while at the same time ensuring that they are receiving an income that they can survive on and that they can live alone on. Labour is happy to support this bill.