Moroney Sue: Social Security (Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Social Security (Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:16951. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):Thank you for the opportunity to speak on Part 2 “Consequential amendments and application savings and transitional provisions”. The intent of this part of course is to go about the implementation of the clauses that we have just been debating. So this is the part of the Social Security (Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery) Amendment Bill that will bring about what we on this side of the Chamber think is quite a precedent-setting issue around not having that high bar of proving criminal liability when it comes to being involved in social security fraud or being involved in the part payment of debt that has come about from someone being in receipt of a benefit.I think as some of my colleagues quite rightly pointed out that actually the fraud and the debt parts should be treated quite separately. I thank Jan Logie for raising that in the Part 1 discussion. Obviously when it comes to social security debt can actually and often does—and this is something I am hearing about on a daily basis now—come about because of a mistake that has been made by the department itself by Work and Income. Quite frequently that is the case that I am certainly hearing about on a daily basis now in my role as the spokesperson for social development for the Labour Party.So these consequential amendments and the transitional provisions are actually very important because we are transitioning to a situation that is unprecedented. I heard what the Associate Minister for Social Development Chester Borrows said in his contribution to the Part 1 debate. He does not believe that there is a great precedent being set here but that certainly was not the view of the New Zealand Law Society. I think it was quite right in bringing forward its concerns about how these amendments to a range of other Acts of Parliament and these transitional provisions are actually a departure from what we have had before. Its concern in particular was the departure brought about in these consequential amendments to other Acts of Parliament that will for the first time—so the society thought and we agreed with it—lower the bar of proof that a person was actively engaged in committing the fraud or accumulating the debt because remember this bill deals with both.When Work and Income does overpay someone that person may not know about it. Can we really expect the person in a relationship with them to know about a mistake made by the department? That is what this bill is actually saying we ought to transition to under Part 2. The transitional provisions will actually transition to a place where the partner of the person who has been overpaid because of a mistake made by Work and Income does not even have to know. We would not even have to prove that they knew there had been an overpayment as the fact that they have benefited from that overpayment would be enough with regard to their criminal liability. That I think is quite a departure.So we are transitioning in Part 2 to deal with issues of welfare fraud and welfare debt but the Government despite its protestations is not taking a consistent approach when it comes to tax fraud. I think that is completely wrong. It is completely wrong that we have got a Government that is prepared to—Hon Paula Bennett: You can’t keep saying that.SUE MORONEY: Well Minister I can keep saying it because it is the truth. The truth is that these measures here in this bill are not being taken with regard to tax.Hon Paula Bennett: That’s not the truth.SUE MORONEY: Where is the bill? Where is the bill that actually takes these same measures against people who commit corporate tax fraud?Hon Paula Bennett: Considerably more is spent collecting tax than it is doing this.SUE MORONEY: Well all the Minister can talk about is how much this Government spends. I would rather that Minister spoke about how much work this Government is doing on finding jobs for these beneficiaries instead of actually attacking them all the time. That is what the Government should be spending its time doing and should actually be focusing on. I would welcome much more transitional provisions that were actually transitioning beneficiaries into jobs. That would be real relief actually. Unfortunately what is happening is the opposite. This Government instead of focusing on getting people off benefits and into jobs and actually helping to create those jobs is instead putting all its energy into trying to deal with welfare fraud as if that is the big issue—as if that is the big issue.Of course none of us accept any level of fraud particularly when it is fraud that is against the taxpayer—and that is both tax fraud and welfare fraud by the way. Both of those measures are fraud against the taxpayer. No one in this House accepts that that is OK. But I would much rather that this Government and that Minister put their energy into actual social development because that is what the name of the portfolio is and into developing people’s opportunity to be socially engaged and were not spending all their energy on this area here which is all about proving that people who are welfare dependent are actually the bad guys—that they are the bad guys and the job of the Government is to catch them out. Well look that is a small part of what the Government should be doing but the big part of what the Government should be doing is actually helping people get off benefits and into work. Sadly not enough effort is being put into that area but an awful lot of effort is being put into blaming beneficiaries and an awful lot of effort is being put into trying to make it seem as if welfare fraud is the big bogey that this country faces. This is not the big bogey that this country faces.However I want to put it on record again that the Labour Party is supporting this bill because we do not accept that fraud against the taxpayer at any level is acceptable whether it be tax fraud or whether it be welfare fraud. So we are supporting it on that basis. We were also very much swayed as I said when I spoke on Part 1 by what women’s organisations had to say about the gender impacts of welfare fraud. Having heard the submissions we think and we do strongly believe that this will actually make it more equitable where there is relationship fraud that is being committed. Part 2 deals with the amendments to other legislation that will help to bring this about. It should be that if two people have been benefiting from that fraud then there should be more equality in what they pay in restitution towards that. So we absolutely agree with that. We think that that should be more equitable. We believe that women who are in these situations—which as we said before could very well be violent situations—should be protected as well. That is important and this bill does go some way towards that.But let us not imagine for a minute that this bill addresses the big problems that this country faces the big problems that could have been resolved if this Government had been working in the interests of beneficiaries rather than just trying to trip them up and attack them at every opportunity.If this Government really had the interests of beneficiaries at heart then we would not have largely immigrant labour rebuilding Christchurch at the moment for example. That is something that the Government should have had its eye on. It should have been training people and it did not. It failed to do that. It would rather focus on the fraud measures in debt recovery from beneficiaries instead.I am going to conclude this speech by saying that the Labour Party will support the provisions in Part 2 as we did in Part 1 but we urge the Government to not just take the simple way out with this. The Government may feel that it is OK to attack beneficiaries and actually put these measures on them but we want to see some equity in this. We want to see the provisions in Part 2 and Part 1 applied to tax fraud and particularly to corporate tax fraud as well. Thank you.