Nash Stuart: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8412. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): That was quite an interesting speech. I mean I have got four children and I would not say I ever trained my kids—Hon Member: Or chained.STUART NASH: —or chained—certainly before the age of 3. I think I understood what the member was saying but I am not too sure.I would like to speak to the amendment to the Education Act 1989 that is found in Part 2. One of the reasons I decided to jump up about this is that I am passionate about education. I actually think education provides opportunities for people where opportunities would not exist if they were not educated. I have a poster in my office. It is a quote from Malcolm X and it says: “Without education you’re not going anywhere in this world.” He said that in 1963 and I think that is truer today than it certainly was a generation or two ago when the Minister was just starting out in work.The other thing I would also like to say is that we know the cost to society of someone who is on the unemployment benefit versus the contribution that that person makes when they are working. But the cost and the contribution are not necessarily measured just in financial terms; they are also measured in societal terms. Let me give you an indication of this. There is a whole lot of research out there that indicates that when parents are working in meaningful jobs—or in any job I should say—the impact that has on the children is significant in terms of role models in terms of quality of life and in terms of all the things that children actually need in order to have the opportunity to be high-functioning adults as they mature.I would argue that not only should there not be any differentiation between the unemployment benefit versus the student allowance but I believe there should be a significant benefit for people who have children and who have decided to go back to study. It is a massive—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am now going to interrupt this member and say that this is quite a narrow part of the bill. He is making a really interesting speech as have previous speakers that could almost be applied to the second reading but it might even be out of order at that point. So I ask the member to come back to this part of the bill.STUART NASH: Thank you Mr Chair. I suppose what I was trying to do was paint a picture.This part of the bill talks about Consumers Price Index increases and how the Education Act must be amended to put this bill into force to allow that to happen. If you look at section 303(3B) of the Education Act the amendment in clause 12 is inserted after section 303(3B) of the Education Act and new section 303(6) says: “Subsection (3BA) is repealed on 30 April 2016 and this subsection is repealed immediately after.” But I suppose what I was attempting to do was highlight the importance of education to society and just say that any changes made under any legislation whether it be the Support for Children in Hardship Bill or any other piece of legislation before the House should I believe take into account the overall benefits—not just the fiscal costs but the overall benefits—to society and to those children in hardship.We are talking about student allowances here. We are talking about Consumers Price Index adjustments and it is not a major amendment in this bill. It is not as if we are taking the Education Act 1989 which is in essence a very large piece of legislation that has been amended many times and overhauling it. What we are in effect doing is taking just a little subsection of this to make sure that we do address the issues of support for children in hardship.I do not think—and I think it is agreed by everyone—that there is a greater challenge in society today than supporting children who are in hardship. We had the Children’s Commissioner address some of the caucus members earlier on today. We all know that he is doing a fantastic job in terms of highlighting the issues of children in poverty and child poverty and doing what absolutely needs to be done to raise awareness and lift these children out of that. Education is a way to do that and certainly education of the parents is vital in creating work habits that will lead these children to you know create work habits themselves I suppose.So I would have liked to see greater amendments being made to the Education Act 1989 to be honest. I would have liked to see the Government go a lot further. I would have liked to see a much higher incentive between the unemployment benefit and the student allowance for parents with children. The reason for that—