Lees-Galloway Iain: Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:7920. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Well that was a poor effort indeed from Alfred Ngaro and I suspect his heart is not in it. I suspect that the member actually sees the merit in this legislation. I am frankly surprised that the National Party is voting against this for a couple of reasons. One is that it incentivises work. I do not know how many times I heard my opponent across the House saying during the election campaign that he believed that the way out of poverty and to prosperity was through work. Fair enough. I think we can all agree with that. But the question is: what is the Government actually going to do to incentivise work? This is absolutely a way of encouraging people who are on a benefit to pick up more work.What is unreasonable—I ask the members opposite to explain—about a person being able to do 1 day’s work a week on the minimum wage and still retain their benefit? What is unreasonable about that? I want to hear an explanation from those members—Jono Naylor: It’s not all of it.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —because that is what this legislation will do. I am afraid Jono Naylor you are wrong. You cannot work a full day even on the minimum wage and retain your full benefit currently. That is what this legislation would allow for.The other reason why I am really surprised the National Party is not voting in favour of this legislation is that what it does is it reduces high effective marginal tax rates. I do not know how many times over the years I have heard National MPs railing against policies that create pockets of high effective marginal tax rates. I would have thought the ACT Party would be right in behind this bill because it actually reduces the marginal tax rate for people who are shifting from a benefit into work. Of course what happens when you are in that transition—when you are picking up a few more hours and you are losing your benefit as you pick up work—is you are effectively being taxed at an incredibly high rate because you are losing income that you would have otherwise had. There is a long National Party tradition of railing against such things and yet here is a bill that would reduce effective marginal tax rates for people on the lowest incomes and the National Party is going to vote against it. I am surprised. I really am surprised—well maybe I am not so surprised because it is fine to rail against a high tax rate for people on high incomes but it will not do anything about high tax rates for people on low incomes. That fundamentally is what the National Party is all about.We heard from members opposite about what this Government is doing to create jobs and about how there are fewer people reliant on a benefit. Well the fact is that less than half of the people on a job seeker’s benefit who had their job seeker’s benefit cancelled had it cancelled for the reason of obtaining work—less than half. So actually what the Government is doing is pushing people off benefits into poverty and down to the food bank. It is not putting them into work. This is a bill that would support people to get into work and the Government is voting against it.In the last 3 months the number of people employed has reduced by 11000. Unemployment has now hit 6 percent across the country. It is 7 percent in the Manawatū-Wanganui region and it is higher in other regions as well. That is what is going on under this Government. And here we have a bill that would encourage people to get into work encourage people to pick up more work give people the opportunity to work one full day a week to demonstrate to an employer that they are sound and reliable and capable of picking up extra work to put themselves in a position where they could move from part-time to full-time work—all the things I hear the National members talking about. But when they get the opportunity to vote for something that would actually do it they are going to vote against it.And that is the truth of the National members. They are in here to support their rich mates to support foreign corporations to support big capital. When it comes to an opportunity to actually vote for something that would make a tangible difference for the people who are doing everything right and struggling to get ahead and create opportunities for themselves—when they have that opportunity they vote against it. Ladies and gentlemen the New Zealand National Party.