Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSocial Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11574. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment BillSecond ReadingHon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): I move That the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. We made a commitment in our 2014 election manifesto to extend the Youth Service to a broader group of young beneficiaries. This bill fulfils that commitment. We want more young people to access the Youth Service because it makes a meaningful difference in young New Zealanders’ lives. It also aligns with the Government’s social investment approach which is focused on making upfront investment in vulnerable New Zealanders to help them lead successful and fulfilling lives. The Youth Service provides young people with the support they need to build life skills engage in educational training and prepare for employment. Evidence shows that young people under 20 are likely to remain on benefit long term if they do not receive the support they need at this early age.The bill requires all 19-year-old parents to access the Youth Service including having a supportive relationship with a youth coach parenting and budgeting courses and support to engage in educational training. Making sure that these young parents have access to the support they need throughout their teen years will support positive outcomes for both them and their children. It also makes sense as many will have been engaged in the Youth Service when aged 18 or younger so it allows continuation of support.The bill also enables 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries who are also at risk of long-term welfare dependency to be referred to the Youth Service. This is a diverse group with varying needs. Therefore only those who are at significant risk and most in need of support will be targeted. This target group will be identified through risk modelling undertaken by the Ministry of Social Development. Those referred will remain on their existing benefit and their youth coach will provide them with case management to meet their work obligations. But like other young people in the Youth Service they will also receive help with working towards life goals budgeting and money management.The bill also includes two changes that improve the existing Youth Service. For young people who finish their studies in December the bill extends the exit date from the Youth Service from 31 December to 31 March. This recognises that young people often need continued support over the summer period when schools and universities are on a summer break and it can be a difficult time to find work. The bill also allows young partners of specified beneficiaries who are engaged in the Youth Service to receive incentive payments.The bill clarifies three matters in the Social Security Act. Firstly people will only have review and appeal rights in relation to decisions about their own financial assistance not somebody else’s. The second amendment allows the Ministry of Social Development to continue the practice of paying terminal benefit into a deceased person’s bank account unless their partner or their child’s carer applies to receive it. Finally the bill clarifies that the ministry can pay the remaining credit held on a young person’s payment card to them directly when they are no longer money-managed.I would like to commend the Social Services Committee for its efforts in considering this bill. The committee considered views from 10 written submissions and heard three oral hearings on the bill. Overall submitters supported the bill’s intent to provide more assistance to young people and acknowledged the wraparound support that the Youth Service provides. Concerns raised by submitters related to provisions around money management and risk modelling being extended to an older group of teenagers. Money management is a key part of the Youth Service and helps young people to gain financial skills and learn to make good choices with their money. They can move off money management as soon as they have demonstrated those good financial skills.Submitters also sought more clarity around the risk model used to refer at-risk 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries to the Youth Service particularly the lack of consultation with young people and what risk factors would be used in the model. The risk model is important to make sure young people receive the right service support and amendments have been made to the bill in response to the Social Services Committee’s recommendations—firstly a requirement to consult those at-risk 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries on their referral to the Youth Service. We have added that in and that means that once they have been identified as at risk providers will consult with the young people and give them an opportunity to comment and to provide any extra information about themselves. This conversation will then help their youth coach understand the wider circumstances of the young person’s life which might suggest a different level of support. The Ministry of Social Development can consider recommendations from providers that a young person does not need the Youth Service and their referral to the Youth Service can be withdrawn if appropriate. The amendment makes this consultation with young people a clear requirement in the legislation.Another improvement to the bill that responds to submitters’ concerns relates to factors considered in the risk model which are currently not transparent in the legislation. The risk model will likely consider factors such as young people’s education levels whether they have had contact with Child Youth and Family or the justice system and their reasons for leaving school. It is in everyone’s interest to know what information is being considered in risk modelling to determine who receives service support but it is also important to have flexibility to adjust the factors used to assess the risk to ensure that the model remains up to date and fit for purpose as new data-streams or risk-modelling techniques become available. The bill has been amended so risk factors that may be used in the model will be set by ministerial direction. This provides a balance between the desire for transparency and the desire for flexibility.Six minor technical amendments have been made to the bill that correct minor drafting omissions and support alignment of the bill with policy intent and practice. Two amendments have been made to ensure young partners or spouses of specified beneficiaries in the Youth Service are treated the same as their peers—firstly that money management be extended to young partners and secondly that the date that young partners exit the Youth Service should match that of other Youth Service clients. An amendment clarifies that the Youth Service is able to work with young people who are in but are at risk of leaving education training and employment. The definition of a specified beneficiary has been amended so that youth activity obligations would not be extended to a young spouse or partner of a young beneficiary who is caring for a patient. This is appropriate because no additional amount is paid for that spouse or partner.For ease of operation and to avoid confusion for clients when they apply for a benefit an amendment has been made so that 19-year-old parents who apply for a benefit after the bill comes into force will receive a young parent payment. Those who apply before the bill comes into force will receive a different benefit. Lastly an amendment is made to maintain the existing agreement between the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Education which enables information sharing through an amendment to the Privacy Act.This Government is committed to supporting young New Zealanders who need more support to meet their education and employment goals in their transition to adulthood. Extending the Youth Service is an opportunity to assist more young beneficiaries to get on to a better life pathway and to reduce the future liability to New Zealand taxpayers. I commend the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill to the House.CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): We continue at this stage to support this bill but we do have major reservations. I am signalling now to the Government that at the Committee stage we will have amendments that we want made and it is likely that our support at the third reading will be contingent on those amendments. I want to talk to the reasons why we do have some level of support for this bill but also why we have such strong reservations.We know that the bill amends the Social Security Act 1964 to extend the existing Youth Service to all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children and 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children who are considered at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency based on how the Government is choosing to measure the risk of long-term welfare dependency.Labour does support the extension of provisions for young people who may be at risk of long-term welfare dependency as the Government has put it and supporting them toward a better future through the Youth Service which offers assistance with educational aspirations employment opportunities budgeting and parenting support. Our concern is that the framework in which this has been placed is faulty and we have real concerns with the Government’s social investment approach or what it calls the social investment approach. We have real concerns with the predictive risk modelling and real concerns with the platform on which this so-called support for young people has been built.We have got concerns around the success of the Youth Service given that it is a relatively new intervention and comprehensive analysis is yet to be completed. We have asked for reports and evaluations on the existing Youth Service and have been given very little. So to think the Government is expecting this House to support further investment when we do not know whether or not it has been successful so far is a little bit presumptuous I think of the Government. Rather than being solely focused on employment outcomes for young people we think the Government needs to be equally supportive and encouraging of educational achievement and higher-level education for New Zealand youth especially in light of the expected decrease in tertiary student numbers forecast in the Budget. We are just really concerned that there are low expectations and a lack of aspiration from that side of the House for our young people.If we look at this bill the only expectation the Government has is that young people will achieve National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 and after that there is no support for them to go on to further education. It is all about work obligations once NCEA level 2 has been achieved. We know that in this world that is not enough actually. If these young people have further education aspirations then they should be supported through the legislation to be able to go on and achieve higher than level 2 NCEA. So it is disappointing that that is not the case as it stands at the moment.Again I just want to reflect back on the social investment approach. Social investment should not just be about moving people off benefits in the short term. It should be about the long-term outcomes for these young people and the children they have or are going on to have. It should be about investing in them so that down the track their life their opportunities their life achievements—Hon Anne Tolley: That’s exactly what it is.CARMEL SEPULONI: —are going to be much greater because of the investment that a responsible Government makes up front. The Minister for Social Development is rolling her eyes at me but the bill supports education for these young people to only level 2 and after that it is work obligations that take precedence and we cannot support that on this side of the House.For those youth who are looking for paid employment there need to be the jobs for them to go into and the Government ignores the fact that actually it has failed to take responsibility in that department. It has not been creating jobs and it has not been creating job opportunities for these young people. In fact we have recently heard the Deputy Prime Minister Bill English talk about the fact that these people are “pretty damned hopeless” actually. He went on to say they are illiterate. He went on to say they are unemployable and then he went on to say that because of this the Government has made the immigration process or system a little bit more permissive. It has made it more permissive to make up for the fact this new generation of workers according to Bill English and the National Government is unemployable. I just think: where is the social investment approach in that when the expectations on these young people are so incredibly low? Where is the hope for those young people when they have got a Government that does not back them?Of further concern is the rising number of young persons—15 to 24-year-olds—not in education training or employment which is now at 87200. That is 87200 young people who are not in education or employment. That is over 26500 more than when National took office. So of course we on this side of the House are going to question that Government’s attempt to address this situation because it has been unsuccessful so far. There has been an increase of 26500 young people not in education or employment and the Government is telling us that its Youth Service to date has been successful. It is asking us in the House today to support a bill to extend the provisions of that Youth Service when clearly it has not been successful with a further 26500 young people not in employment or education under that National Government since it took office.There are rising concerns about the ability of the Government to support youth into quality stable employment given the failure of this Government to facilitate benefit-to-work transitions for main benefits. That is based on the March 2016 figures which have only 19730 of the 49907 benefit cancellations actually going into work. When we look at the number of beneficiaries overall who have had positive outcomes—if we are measuring positive outcomes in terms of employment outcomes—then we can see that a large number of the people who have gone off the benefit have not actually gone into work. So our concern for these young people is that success is going to be based solely on whether they go off the benefit rather than on whether or not they go on to anything better for them.Even when we look at the Better Public Services target that the Government has set in relation to this it is not about improved outcomes for those individuals or their families. All it is about is reducing risk of long-term welfare dependency not that they actually go on to anything else. I think that as a country we should be concerned that we have a whole lot of people going off the benefit who are not necessarily going into work who potentially not only do not get an income from a benefit but also have no income from employment and are potentially living off nothing. I think many of us can see that every day in the increase in numbers of people whom we see begging outside our shops and homeless thanks to the National Government.Labour supports the amendment that came out of the Social Services Committee’s report requiring consultation with the 18 or 19-year-olds in question about their referral to the Youth Service. However given the punitive culture of Work and Income with heavy-handed use of sanctions Labour must call into question what this consultation will look like. Labour therefore urges that youth are consulted in a way that ensures they feel empowered and understand both their obligations and their rights because even young people who have to access welfare have rights and I think we need to remind the National Government of that.Finally the other concern that I want to point out is my concern Labour’s concern about the discrimination really against young parents in this bill. Actually what we are doing is we are pushing them into work even sooner than is required for parents who are on sole parent support. This could have negative implications for their children’s well-being. This bill would require young parents to be in full-time education training or work-based learning from when their child is only 1 year old rather than 3 years old under sole parent support and it can be even earlier depending on whether there is a teen parent unit in that area.Of course we support young people to get education and training and to be supported to go back into work but young parents deserve the same rights as older parents to be able to stay home and care for their children if that is in the best interests of their children. We are concerned about the discrimination there. As I have said we will be putting up a number of Supplementary Order Papers at the Committee stage. At this stage after discussions with my colleagues I think it is unlikely that we are going to be able to support this bill at the third reading unless there is some support for the amendments that we make at the Committee stage. Thank you very much.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is an honour and a pleasure to rise in support of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. Can I just start off by pointing out some of the facts about some young people in New Zealand. We know when we look at the future liability of welfare dependency in New Zealand that 70 percent of those people on the benefit went on it before the age of 20. For those 18 and 19-year-olds who go on the jobseeker allowance the average time they will spend on that benefit is 13 years. So we know that this bill is much needed. We need to extend the entitlement and the provision to more young vulnerable people in New Zealand.It is not all that bad. We know that if those young people can get into jobs employment and training they will go on to be productive members of New Zealand. We know that in the jobseeker allowance space around 70 percent of young people are able to go on to employment education or training within 6 months. We need to capture what works well for some young people and support what is not working well for a smaller amount of young people.When we link this to the Budget last week—there was quite a big announcement around social investment. The Minister of Finance announced $652 million into the social investment package. Of that $61 million was specifically for this Youth Service package to get vulnerable young people into employment or into training giving them skills to go on and get employment and be productive members of New Zealand. This Government takes this very seriously with our Better Public Services target of reducing dependency on welfare by 25 percent and a future liability of over $13 billion to New Zealand taxpayers.Can I just take some time to not only talk about what this new service will look like but also touch on some of the value and impact of the submissions to the Social Services Committee and the amendments that the select committee made to this bill which I think make it a better bill. It is coming back from the first reading through the select committee process to its second reading a lot better for having been through that process. We know that this Youth Service will have very definable outcomes of reducing young people’s risk of long-term dependency. They will need to gain National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 and go on to have better social outcomes—not only for themselves; a lot of these young people have children themselves.When we talk about these young people I think we have got to take a step back and appreciate how vulnerable these young people are and why it is that these wraparound youth services are required. They are intensive and they are active wraparound services because a lot of these young people are dealing with very complex and challenging issues. When the select committee looked at the cohort of young people in the Youth Service 38 percent of them had been victims of domestic violence 76 percent of them had been victims of emotional neglect 5 percent had been either homeless or victims of sexual abuse and most of them had disengaged from mainstream education. That is why we need to expand these services through this bill and give further entitlement for a greater population of young people to be able to access these intensive and active wraparound services because we know it works.When the Youth Service was reviewed four out of five had gone on to get into education training or full-time or part-time employment and research on the Youth Service showed that every dollar put in was returned through reducing future liability by $2.53. That is a great social investment: a dollar put in and future liability reduced by $2.53. Really what it did was it gave this group of vulnerable young New Zealanders hope that they were engaging in a framework of services in which people were listening to them understanding their needs and providing effective services that would allow them to go on and get the training and the education and they would be productive members of New Zealand society.I just want to touch on some of the amendments through the select committee process. We had 10 submissions; three of them were heard orally. One of the main themes that came out was the lack of transparency about talking to young people when they had been picked up on this risk assessment matrix and also about their referral into young people’s services. I think most of the committee felt it was not right to be referring young people without their knowledge. When you look at the great work the Hon Anne Tolley is doing around the Child Youth and Family review it is going to be children-centred young people - centred and that is exactly what this amendment to this bill will do. Now young people will have more involvement in their care which will lead to better outcomes. Ultimately these will be wraparound services and they will be young people - friendly.I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Malo lava le soifua Le Fofoga Fetalai. It is my pleasure to take a call on this the second reading of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill as Labour’s youth spokesperson. I have not had much to do with the passage of this particular piece of legislation but obviously I am incredibly interested in it. What I have done is take the time just to read through as much of the material as possible and to simplify it. I am going to share it with the House.This piece of legislation is about amending the Social Security Act 1964 and extending the Youth Service. It is going to apply to all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children and 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children who are considered to be at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency. They are the “who” but the “who” is incredibly important if you look at two particular submissions to the Social Services Committee. I would like to quote from those submissions.The first was from the Salvation Army which says that “In general The Salvation Army opposes the intent and much of the content of the Bill. The principle [sic] reason for this opposition is that the Army believes that is both paternalistic and somewhat contradictory to treat 18 and 19 year olds in the same way as 16 and 17 year olds. The Army believes that it is important to respect individuals’ legal and civil rights ahead of particular policy objectives which may in themselves be of questionable value. It is the Army’s opinion that the proposed extension of ‘young persons services’ and the associated obligations and sanctions to 18 and 19 year olds is a clear example of the State placing its policy objectives ahead of the legitimate rights of citizens and that as a practice this is unwise and unfair.”I would now like to quote from the Human Rights Commission submission. I found it interesting that “The Attorney-General’s report on the Bill’s consistency with the NZBORA notes that the Bill discriminates against young beneficiary parents and ‘at risk’ 18 and 19 year olds on the grounds of age”. I find it really interesting that in terms of the “who” in terms of who will be impacted most by this piece of legislation we have had two organisations say that actually this legislation is discriminatory and it should not be taking choices away from that cohort.A previous bill that we discussed in this House was the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill—and I am glad that my colleague the Hon Annette King is here because on 11 May this year in the Committee stage there were lots of debate about whether we should ban sunbeds. National’s position in that debate was that no we should not. We should protect children—that is fair enough; those who are up to the age of 18—but if you are over 18 you are an adult and so we should not take away your rights. That was the philosophical position in that particular debate of both the Minister of Health Dr Jonathan Coleman and Simon O’Connor who is chair of the Health Committee. So I wanted to highlight the “who”.In terms of the “why”—actually the “why” is very clear. The “why” is all about the money. The Better Public Services framework I suppose has an objective to reduce long-term welfare dependency which actually is about reducing beneficiary numbers by 25 percent and the overall cost—not investment everybody—by $13 billion. That is actually the driver of this piece of legislation. The Government can talk about investment and about valuing young people but actually at the end of the day its primary objective is to save money. So let us just put that on the table. That is the “why”.So then we look at the “what”. How the Government plans to do all this is through the Youth Service. I took the time to download the report. The Youth Service was established in August 2012 to address the extremely high risk of long-term benefit dependency. The Youth Service was established with the objective of helping a group of vulnerable young people. There was a report that was produced after the first 18 months of the service and I have that particular evaluation. What I would like to highlight from that evaluation is this which is at the bottom of page 1: “Many young people who enter Youth Service have serious or complex issues that require intensive support. For example a review of Youth Payment grants by Work and Income found that 38 per cent of applicants were victims of domestic violence 76 per cent suffered emotional neglect and 5 per cent were homeless or victims of sexual abuse.”I think for me the most important aspect of that analysis is to ask how we support the young people who through no fault of their own are living in those circumstances. If the underlying intent of this piece of legislation is to put in the services and support so that this group of vulnerable young people can have their needs met then actually I think we would support that 100 percent. One of the other aspects of this piece of legislation is around risk assessment and risk modelling. How are we going to find these young people whom actually we are going to treat as children? How do we find them?I would like to acknowledge that the Greens wrote a minority report within the select committee report; they are opposing the bill. They are opposing it on solid grounds. But one of the things that they highlighted was the risks—who knows what they will be? They may be about whether they have been with Child Youth and Family (CYF). They may be based on gender. I think the Minister has alluded that educational outcomes and the reason for leaving school were some of the reasons. But what we do know is that from 2013 the Government has been working quite seriously on this issue. For example there is a Government data project. It was looking at four indicators. It was about whether or not children had engaged with CYF and there was a finding of abuse or neglect whether or not there were long-term dependency issues in those families whether or not a parent had a corrective sentence and whether or not the mother had a formal qualification.But the interesting thing to note about that data project was that it looked at different cohorts of children. It looked at the zero to 5 cohort the 6 to 14 cohort and the 15 to 24 cohort. I wonder based on all that information why the project is not dealing with the zero to 5 cohort. Why is there not a whole lot of investment going into those children really early on in their lives—making sure they have a house to live in making sure they have a roof over their heads and kai in their puku; and making sure that mum is well supported so that yes she is getting support to be a better parent through budgeting advice so that we are going to make it easier for her to get further education and make their lives so much better? But no this Government would rather wait until they are 18 and 19-year-olds and it will use a big hammer on these kids. That is part of the issue that we have with this piece of legislation.The other key thing I would like to highlight is from the Greens minority report but it was also one of the concerns raised by Kay Breerton I think of the National Beneficiary Advocacy Consultation Group.Carmel Sepuloni: Great woman.LOUISA WALL: What is her name sorry?Carmel Sepuloni: Kay Brereton.LOUISA WALL: Kay Brereton—yes. What she said or what is written here is that they support wraparound services but expressed the view that making young people’s income dependent on meeting certain obligations fundamentally changed for the worse the relationship between the young people and the people in a position to help them. So basically what that means is that telling young people what to do is going to have the opposite effect from what we want it to have. So that is a fundamental flaw in this piece of legislation.I hope the Minister has been listening to my contribution given I have taken the time to read through everything and to contribute to the second reading debate. But I do want to reiterate what my colleague and lead on the Social Services Committee and in the social development portfolio Carmel Sepuloni said. We will be proposing a number of amendments to this piece of legislation. I think we are really clear that if the Government does not want to listen and will not support some of the amendments we have proposed based on quotes from people like Kay then we will not support this piece of legislation. We do not believe that it is in the best interests of young people. Kia ora.JONO NAYLOR (National): Talofa lava Mr Speaker. This is a very good piece of legislation and I rise in absolute support of it.In 2012 the Government moved to improve the outlook for young people particularly vulnerable young people who were beneficiaries. There has been a bit of a look at this over the years to see how effective it can be and I think what we are starting to see are some good results for those young people who initially went on it: those who were single parents young parents and those who were at high risk of long-term welfare dependency.I just think it is really important for us to clarify that when we talk about young people being “at risk of long-term welfare dependency” this is not a judgment call—this is not a way of us looking down on them in any way shape or form. What I can tell you is that if the Government is having to spend a lot of money supporting you over a long period of time it is probably because you are not having good outcomes in life. Generally for people who need that level of input things are not going well for them.We are absolutely aspirational for these young people in that we want the very best for them. We want them to be able to get beyond simply being a welfare beneficiary long term. We want them to be able to have education. We want them to be able to be in work. That is why over this period that they are involved with the Youth Service and receiving these payments for the 16 to 17-year-olds—absolutely—education is the focus. NCEA level 2 is the absolute minimum that we want these young people to achieve educationally.But it does not have to end there and if they want to go further they will be supported to go further. And yes for 18 and 19-year-olds the focus is work. We do not want these young people to be trapped out of study or out of work or without qualifications. We want them to have the tools that will be useful for them to be able to achieve the kinds of goals that they want to achieve.I have been privileged over the last year or so to speak with some young people who have been involved with the Youth Service and I have been—I have to say—pretty excited by the kinds of things they have said to me. They do have aspirations they are setting goals for themselves; they do not want to just settle for second-best. They want to get better educated. They want more for their children as they go forward. I think that is great and I think it is important that we continue as we seek to expand the service through this legislation to another group of young people—to some slightly older ones—to ensure that they too will receive the mentoring. And to ensure that they too will receive the budgeting advice and the money management advice and increase their skills to be able to give them an even better footing for life and an even better start for their children as they go forward.We received 10 written submissions and three people presented oral submissions. For me when I look at that over my experience of being involved in putting things out when you get a low number of submissions it is generally because people think it is a good idea. People do not tend to submit when they support things they tend to submit only when they think it is a bad idea. So I see the low turnout of submissions that we had as highly positive. I think that we are going to see some really good results for young people going forward.I do not want to see young people languishing any longer than they have to. I want to provide the best that we can for them through the mentoring programmes and the wraparound services from Youth Service—for the number of extra people who are going to benefit from this going forward. I think we are going to see some really incredible results. We are going to see empowered young people ready to take on the world and move forward. With that I will conclude. Fa’afetai manuia le afiafi.JAN LOGIE (Green): Talofa lava Mr Speaker. The Green Party is voting against the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill.I just heard from the previous speaker Jono Naylor that the National Government has aspirations for young people yet it seems to believe they are incapable of having aspirations or achieving them themselves. I have to point out that its actions do not match its words. This is the Government that removed the training incentive allowance for higher-level courses which means that most sole parents who had aspirations to be able to get into well-paid jobs and to have a career that will support them properly and support their children are now stuck in lower-level education that is funnelling them into low-wage jobs that it will be very hard for them to get out of. That is not what I call aspiration.We are opposing this bill for many reasons. It is the flagship of the Government’s investment approach to everything which is increasingly being critiqued by a wide range of organisations from the Morgan Foundation to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions to child advocacy organisations.I would like to comment on some of the analysis from the Morgan Foundation where it talked about what makes a data analytics or predictive risk modelling approach work—because that is what we are talking about. The Government uses the language “investment approach” but actually this is predictive risk modelling. Whether it will work depends on three things: whether the people running it can recognise the data that matters; whether the programmes that they then funnel people into are effective; and finally whether the outcomes that it is all driving towards are the right ones.The Green Party is concerned that this model effectively entrenches this predictive risk modelling with criteria that are open to change. This model will be used to decide which young people will have more obligations put on them and exceptional scrutiny and supervision by the State. We have been told that the modelling is likely to consider educational outcomes prior contact with the Department of Child Youth and Family gender and reasons for leaving school. And we do know that although ethnicity is not a criterion 58 percent of young people who are in Child Youth and Family care are Māori. We know there is a bias against Māori in policing and there is definite evidence to suggest a bias within Child Youth and Family. The Green Party is deeply concerned that existing biases within the system will be exacerbated by this initiative and that young people who have in all likelihood already had very negative experiences of the State will feel further marginalised.I raised this with an official during the Social Services Committee’s consideration of this bill: acknowledging that clearly they could not identify Māori as being a risk factor—because obviously that would be perceived as being racist—and asked whether they were concerned that the effect of using contact with Child Youth and Family as a risk factor might still target Māori. The official said: “Don’t worry we’ll get them anyway.” This did not inspire confidence in me. And considering the very negative experiences of Māori with State services real efforts need to be made to acknowledge the needs of Māori and address racism within the systems before creating another system that will channel Māori identify them as risks and increase the State’s supervision of them. On this basis alone the Green Party cannot support this bill.Further this risk modelling requires increased information sharing between education services Child Youth and Family and Work and Income and potentially other core social services in the future. Although health information is currently not included it could be in the future without parliamentary oversight in that decision-making process. We are concerned at this level of information sharing for the purpose of placing increased restrictions and supervision on to certain groups of people—particularly when the policy is yet to be proven effective. We are starting to hear more and more stories of people not going to Work and Income for housing or other help because they are worried that their personal information is going to be shared with other people—their employers or other agencies—and that that fear is stopping people from getting the help that they need. This initiative potentially increases that fear and the risk that people will not have confidence in the system and will not get the help that they are entitled to and that they need.This was all about the data going into the system. We also need to consider the effectiveness of these interventions. The first thing to consider is that we know that the numbers of young people who are not in employment education or training have gone up under this Government under this type of model and that the Youth Service is still a relatively new intervention and comprehensive data is not yet available to establish whether the service is even effective or not. That is not the time to be extending it to people who are actually considered adults in our law. When this Government says that it is all about the data it should apply that principle to its policy making and make sure it has the data before it extends any legislation.The Green Party shares the view of the Salvation Army that “the proposed extension of ‘young persons services’ and the associated obligation and sanctions to 18 and 19 year olds is a clear example of the State placing its policy objectives ahead of the legitimate rights of citizens and that as a practice this is unwise and unfair.” That is a very considered and measured commentary on what this is doing.Concerns were also raised by Kay Brereton on behalf of the National Beneficiary Advocacy Group about how the service currently operates. Clearly we all support wraparound services that are strength based for young people but she pointed out that making young people’s incomes dependent on meeting certain obligations fundamentally changed for worse the relationship between young people and the people who are supposed to be in the position of helping them. Community organisations and the people who are running these programmes have always been there traditionally alongside young people focusing on their strengths and helping them to build those strengths to move forward and achieve their aspirations. This bill puts those organisations into the role of police with the requirement to cut those young people’s incomes if they do not meet their obligations. That is absolutely changing the structure of our society for the worse.Increasing international evidence shows that interventions that work best are less targeted are unconditional and involve extra cash. So we do not support a measure that uses our precious resources to increase targeting and conditions. It is strongly risk based rather than strength based.Finally of course the usefulness of all of this modelling depends on what outcomes you are driving towards. This Government has set up a system where the goal of it all is to move people off benefits to save Government money. It is not about increasing skills in our society. It is not about even giving people access to higher-paid jobs or achieving their aspirations or even—in a very limited sense in terms of looking at children—access to quality accessible childcare. No it is only about reducing the future financial liability to this Government.That is not a society. That is not how we look after each other. In this country how you move ahead is by actually taking responsibility and making sure that people have the resources to participate and achieve their aspirations. We absolutely oppose this bill.There is one more aspect of this bill that is deeply offensive which is that it removes a right of appeal and limits the right of appeal in review to decisions about people only to the person involved. This has quite a significant impact when there are shared custody arrangements. In 2012 the Social Security Appeal Authority heard the case of a mother whose child was granted an unsupported child’s benefit payable to another caregiver and ruled that the law allowed affected people to appeal. This bill reverses and removes that right of appeal; it gives people only the right to judicial appeal which requires legal aid. And that is an offence to the rights of natural justice.DARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill at this stage because New Zealand First fundamentally agrees with the purpose the aim and the intent of the bill. I do not think that there is any question from anybody including the submitters or any other Opposition party that we all support the intent purpose and aim of the bill because what it means fundamentally is that youth in need are getting more support.We do have some concerns that I will be going over but the concerns are not with the “what”. The “what” is the fact that the extension of the Youth Service aims to improve the educational and social outcomes for young beneficiaries. When that occurs they will be getting some wraparound support including youth coaching services such as budgeting help and parenting courses which are all good things and New Zealand First supports that. We also support the fact that there are some obligations put on to beneficiaries because this is not a handout; it is a hand up in a time of need. New Zealand First understands that it is a social contract and as with any contract there are obligations and New Zealand First supports those. We are talking about positive obligations for the outcomes of the youth especially things like them being subjected to money management.But like I said it is not about the “what”—the “what” is good—but it is about the “how” and “why”. So if we look at the heart of what the legislation is trying to change which is the extension of the Youth Service to all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children that is the “what”—we agree with that. The problem that New Zealand First fundamentally has with that is that all it is doing is increasing the number or the size of the ambulances at the bottom of the cliff. That is all that it is. Actually it is an indirect admission by the Government after 8 years of being in Government that the system is failing. If the system was working and if the investment approach the Government was taking was working then there would be no need to extend the new service. The new service would be working—apparently it is already by the Government’s standard. But how can that be if it needs to extend it? It does not make sense.The issue is that the Government is refusing to address the actual reasons why youth get on to the benefit in the first place. So we talk about the fact that the youth who are on the benefit are doing well and the Youth Service according to National is doing well so we need to expand it. But where was the talk about why the youth were put on the benefit in the first place? Where are the preventative measures—the legislation and the policy and the principles and the ethos and the values—from the Government that would stop our youth getting on to the benefit in the first place? It has been mentioned before but we are talking about the fact that New Zealand has a very very high youth unemployment rate.We have just seen from Statistics New Zealand that in the last quarter unemployment has actually risen overall but especially for the youth and especially for the regions. We are talking about Northland: 8.5 percent. We are talking about Gisborne: 8.5 percent. Wanganui and the Manawatū is at 7.7 percent which is now the second-highest rate in the country. The highest increase in unemployment has been on the West Coast which is at about 1.5 percent.We have heard about the “neet” rates. We have got 87000 youth who are disengaged with society. They are not just out of employment or education but actually disengaged with everything in society. That is over 12 percent close to 13 percent and as has been mentioned it has never been below pre-2008 levels. So apparently that is a success for the Government. The Government cannot be talking about “Well we’ve gone through a rough period of the GFC and the earthquake.” because apparently the global financial crisis according to Bill English ended in 2012. So what has this Government been doing? That is not success. We are talking about the issues—social issues with the youth jobs issues education issues and health issues—and the Government has not done anything to solve those problems in 8 years.That is the same approach that we have just heard in the last week or two from the social housing Minister announcing we have got some more funding for emergency houses—that is not a good thing. That is not a positive announcement because what it is doing is demonstrably showing that the safety net has failed. This Government is supposed to have a social obligation to ensure that safety net is strong and can catch people. People are falling through it and becoming homeless. To come out and announce that the Government is going to invest more money into emergency housing is an admission of failure. It is an admission of failure and it is the same approach that this Government is taking with this piece of legislation.I would like to use an analogy about what this Government is doing to solve the youth unemployment issue and the issues with youth and “neets”. It is taking the approach of emptying a sink full of water with a teaspoon without turning the tap off first. That is what is happening. What it is doing by trying to increase the wraparound Youth Service to include 19-year-olds is changing the teaspoon to a tablespoon—that is all that is going to happen. It is not going to solve any of the issues. It is not going to solve any of the issues. It will continue just like the previous 8 years.The other main thing this legislation concerns is 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children who are considered to be at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency. I know that we have heard it previously from a few of the other members talking today but that brings into discussion the risk predictive models that the Government is using. The bill’s commentary states: “Some submitters asked how the risk of long-term welfare dependency would be assessed.” We have got an issue with the way the risk predictive models are being utilised to assess the youth. On the face of things Joe and Jane Bloggs would look at a risk predictive model and an investment approach and think that sounds logical. But if I could use an analogy—if we for example were trying to target millionaires and the predictive model said that all people who drive red cars are millionaires the indicator we would be looking for would be red cars but if all people who drive red cars are millionaires that does not necessarily mean that all millionaires drive red cars.What that means is we are going to use a predictive model we are going to use a criterion and we are going to use a tick box to try to predict how these youth—and they are not just youth but they are adults; 18 and 19-year-olds—will be a long-term financial liability on the State. This has all got to do with the investment approach and the Government has had legislation go through just recently about putting the investment approach in the entire purpose of the rewrite of the Social Security Act. Everything including this legislation—and this is a demonstrable fact of that—has to relate back to the investment approach.These are the Ministry of Social Development’s own comments in the departmental disclosure statement in regards to risk modelling: “The risk model for the Youth Service extension is still in development and will be finalised prior to implementation of the Youth Service in August 2016.” So first of all it is still in development. I am not sure what the backbenchers of the Government are talking about or what the Minister is talking about when they say they are happy with the development of their risk modelling and that they know it works.The worst thing is the fact the existing model used for the Youth Service is based on how the Government assesses the “neets” and we have just heard that in the last 8 years it has never been lower than pre-2008 levels. We have had a record increase in the last quarter of young unemployed males. It is going up. It is not being solved by this Government and yet this Government wants to use that same predictive model that it uses for “neets” for this legislation. So it is still being developed and it has demonstrably failed in the existing model.There are a number of issues that New Zealand First has with this legislation but we do agree with the intent and that is why we will be supporting it at this stage. I think that the Committee stage and third reading will be an interesting discussion and hopefully we can get some resolution for the concerns that New Zealand First has but we will be supporting it at this stage. Thanks.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): I am taking this call to support the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill in the second reading. As a member of the Social Services Committee I want to thank each and every submitter. Looking at the number of submissions we received 10 submissions and I would say that was reasonable for this bill. Each and every submission was given thorough consideration and as a result this bill has come back with some good amendments.This bill addresses a very serious social issue and that is long-term welfare dependency. We know that when people go on a benefit at a young age they tend to stay on a benefit for a very long time. It is very important to engage youth in education—it could be just simple coaching like budgeting courses or parenting courses—and it is important to help them get into employment because that is the best thing we can do to help them. The Youth Service is aimed at improving social and educational outcomes for young beneficiaries and this bill is to extend the Youth Service to 19-year-old beneficiaries with children and 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children but who are considered to be at a significant risk of staying on benefit for a long term.This bill is about extending the support to a bigger group that is at risk of staying on benefit for a long term by helping them get into education training or employment. It is really important to engage youth and it is not an easy task to engage youth in education especially youth who are dependent on a benefit. This Government is fully committed to helping our young people. With the commitment that we have from the Government and with the support of the community and families we can definitely make the change that we want to see. The member from the Greens spoke about the investment approach and she was critical of the investment approach which is not just for the wider economic good but it is going to be good for them as individuals too.Extending the Youth Service to 19-year-old beneficiaries with children and 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children—those who are considered to be at high risk of staying on benefit—is a good step. The Youth Service programme was set up in 2012—yes I heard that members are saying it is a new programme but it is not that new. It was set up in 2012 and it has been successful.Louisa Wall: Where’s the evaluation report?Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: There has been some evaluation done. An evaluation was done in 2014 and the evaluation showed that the programme is making a very positive impact on the lives of young beneficiaries. One evaluation that was done in March 2014 showed that for a number of people—young beneficiaries those who were on a youth payment—when they moved to a work-age benefit the numbers reduced by 8 percent. The numbers dropped from 38 percent to 30 percent so it is definitely giving us positive outcomes.The overall aim of this bill is to have fewer people relying on benefits. We know that employment is the best way of getting out of poverty and that is why we are focused on this. We have recently also done welfare reforms. That was also to help people get into employment and as a result we have thousands fewer children in benefit-dependent families. That is a very positive outcome. This bill is to help more and more young people have better opportunities in their lives. I support this bill and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Denise Roche—5 minutes.DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take a short call for the Greens. As my colleague Jan Logie said earlier the Greens will be opposing this bill. We have some very grave concerns about it and they are basically outlined in the report that came back from the Social Services Committee. I want to touch on a few of them and quote from some of the submissions that were made to the committee which highlighted some really pertinent points that I think this House should be considering particularly when we come to the Committee of the whole House stage.One of our concerns is that essentially this issue is not about the welfare of young people; it is about getting them off and out of the welfare system. It is not about ensuring that they have positive outcomes and the ability to be able to move from very low-paid work and poverty through to a much better-paid existence through tertiary education—that is not part of the deal. What is part of the focus here is getting these young people into low-paid jobs because the only type of education that they will be aspiring to is National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 and that is not an aspirational way to approach the future of our young people.We support wraparound services for vulnerable young people—we absolutely do support that—but we have serious doubts that this is the way to go about it. We are worried that the Youth Service as it has been outlined in this bill and as it has been playing out since it was introduced is really around the privatisation of core services from the Government which is actually counter-productive to young people.I take on board the comments that were made by a Brereton from the National Beneficiary Advocacy Consultation Group. It had a very coherent submission. It basically said: “This service does not provide wraparound support and guidance but contracted out case management where Youth Providers are given the power to recommend sanctions to enforce the obligations imposed by W&I. Youth are not able to form trusting supportive relationships where they can discuss their fears and failures as their ‘mentor’ is their case manager and might sanction them for their mistake.”I think that is an absolutely crucial point that we should be taking on board. How do you empower a young person to change their life when they are afraid to talk to the person who is supposed to be helping them because that person has the potential to sanction them to make them poorer and to take them further down from where they are at the moment? I think further on in that submission Kay Brereton points to international research that shows that in this type of situation where it has played out in other countries the case managers “cease to be mentors and become enforcers teaching the rules to the unwilling.” That is what we are concerned about.We share the concerns of the Privacy Commissioner as well who believes that young people should be informed about their risk rating. What it says in this bill is that essentially young people can correct mistakes in information but they will not actually be able to appeal and that I think is a breach of human rights.We are concerned that the risk criteria captures Māori above every other type of person and my colleague Jan Logie outlined the bias that exists within Government departments which is basically racist and we do not want to see that continue either.Carmel Sepuloni: That’s just putting it bluntly.DENISE ROCHE: Ha ha! Well you know—we support a strengths-based approach and this is not it. This is actually a model that will undermine the autonomy of young people and it is not what we want to see our Government supporting. We will be opposing this bill.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Marama Fox—5 minutes.MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Kai te pīrangi au ki te whāriki i ngā whakaaro o Te Pāti Māori e pā ana ki tēnei pire. Kāre e kore he āwangawanga kai roto i te pire nei heoi anō kai te tautoko i tēnei wā i runga i te whakaaetanga o Te Minita kai te hiahia ia ki te noho ki te tīni wētahi wāhanga kai roto.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to lay out the views of the Māori Party in regard to this bill. Without a doubt there are concerns in this bill and accordingly we support it at this point in time on the basis that the Minister has agreed that he wants to sit down and amend parts in it.]We in the Māori Party have grave concerns about a number of issues in this piece of legislation. Up until maybe a few hours ago we were prepared to not give support to this because we had tried to get some changes through and we were unable to do so. We have since then had some ongoing discussions and have had some guarantees from the Minister that we can continue to make some changes through the Committee stage to address the issues that we have. So with that we will be supporting this bill in the second reading and we look forward to those ongoing conversations around the issues that we have.I am just going to articulate some of those issues with a couple of little anecdotes if I might. I have five sons. No. 5 son struggled at school for a number of different reasons. At one school he went to they said: “This boy knows nothing about maths. In fact he’s so far behind we don’t think he is ever going to be able to catch up.” They identified issues of his language barrier because he had come from a Māori-medium school. So we changed schools because we thought: “We don’t want to be underserved by you any more thank you very much.” At the next school he came to he was in a maths class and I asked: “How’s he doing?”. I got told by the teacher who was long-term relieving: “Your son is a predator.” I was like: “Excuse me?”. The teacher said: “The young little boy who sits next to him in class is so scared of your son that he will not even look at him. I watched your son steal things from his bag and he did nothing about it.” I said: “Did you tell him off?”. The teacher said: “I’m telling you.”So I go: “Son what the heck?”. My son said to me: “Mum we were playing touch at lunchtime. I put my stuff in my mate’s bag. He’s on his way to class. That’s my good friend. I came in late from playing touch and got straight to work. Instead of disturbing the class that was already working I just grabbed my books out and sat down.”If we are going to be information sharing from school to State based on a whole lot of litany of underserving our tamariki in our schooling system by prejudices that are being held by people who do not deserve to be standing in front of those students—some of them because that is not all the teaching profession by any means. But this is an example and I could point to a hundred of them where prejudices against young people have inhibited their learning where they have fallen out of the system and have then gone on to be those people who would be targeted under this model. Why? Because of the risk profile that they are presented with. We do not think that that is the way to target young people. Yes we understand targeted services we ask for them all the time—we get that. But you cannot blanketly say to a group of people that just because you walk like a duck and talk like a duck you must be a duck.We also have some grave reservations about the three strikes and the sanctions to young people. Three strikes—you do not turn up you miss an appointment something does not happen and you are off the benefit. How does that then support that young person? The results of that are sleeping on Lambton Quay right now. That is what the results of that policy do.So we have had some discussions with the Minister. I am pleased the Minister has recognised that actually there are other ways that we can do this. So if you are removed off the benefit does your support stop or does the money stop? Is someone obligated to come and find you and see that you are OK? All of those questions we will continue to have discussions on. We will continue to come to this House and hopefully we will get those changes at the Committee stage.MAUREEN PUGH (National): It is my pleasure to take a short call on the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill in its second reading today. As we have heard today from my learned colleagues Mrs Parmar and Mr Doocey the numbers are scary. For 18 to 19-year-olds on jobseeker support they will spend on average a whopping 13 years on welfare. To consign these young people to the scrapheap and simply keep throwing more and more money at them without wrapping the support around them is simply not acceptable. It is a bad investment. It is not affordable for us as a country financially but what is more it is not affordable for us socially. It is soul-destroying to be on a benefit and to be beholden to the State for everything. We owe it to these young people to invest in them so that they can be successful so that they can be independent and so that they can be proud. More importantly they need to be meaningful contributors to society as a whole but I guess the highest priority for me is that they become meaningful contributors to their families and their children. Breaking the cycle of dependency and wrapping all possible support around these young people is an absolute necessity.We believe in them. We know that when they find their way into work into training and into education everyone wins—the downward spiral is broken. More of the same will deliver more of the same. We will wrap support around these young people each and every one of them individually and help them achieve. We must do something to ensure that these young people are better equipped to better their own prospects and I am confident that the work that the Hon Anne Tolley is doing in this field is making a real difference. I have great pleasure in commending this bill to the House.POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Talofa lava Mr Assistant Speaker. I have a couple of issues I would like to address about this particular bill. I think my underlying theme is going to be that actually the Government needs to get a dose of reality. It needs to do a reality check when it is developing legislation because—we are supporting this legislation’s second reading but we have some grave reservations.The first reservation we have is about the effectiveness of this Youth Service. Mrs Parmar talked about the analysis that had been done and said that it is proving to be a really good service. Well we would like to see that analysis thank you very much. We would actually like to see the evidence rather than putting some more resource into a service when we have no idea whether it is effective.Matt Doocey: You didn’t listen to my speech obviously.POTO WILLIAMS: Here is a dose of reality Mr Doocey: there are more young people who are not in education who are not in work and who are not in training. How is this bill going to address that? How are we going to address the reality for our young people when we cannot get the figures out of the Government? Give us the evidence please—give us the evidence.Meka Whaitiri: A mirage.POTO WILLIAMS: It is a mirage. The intention of this is to reduce welfare dependency—that is what it says in the purpose of the bill. Actually it is not. The intention of this is to get people off the Government’s books in terms of benefits but it is not about getting them into work. It is not about the focus into work because we have no idea whether this service is effective in the first place at putting those wraparound services around young people. Is it increasing their educational standards? Is it increasing their ability to obtain work? Is it increasing their ability to parent well? Well show us the figures—show us the figures—before you make commitments like this. Where is this evidence? Where is the evidence because there is no doubt that young people in this situation actually need the support to increase their ability not only to get work but to find work that is actually going to pay them a decent wage so that they can then live a fulfilling life and take care of the needs of their children.There is a focus on getting people into work but not just any job and not jobs that actually cost them to go to. What does it cost a young person to put their child into childcare to access transport—what does it cost for them to do that and has this been factored into supporting these young people to get what they need to get off benefit and into jobs? And tell me one other thing: where are the jobs? Where are the jobs for these young people and where is the Government’s evidence that when people come off benefits they are actually going into work? Where are they going? Show me where they are going because I do not see any evidence that people coming off benefits are actually going into work and actually making a—[Interruption] Where is it? Where is the evidence? I have had a little pipe-up there from the Minister. Show me where it is that you can track people off benefits into work because I do not see any evidence of that.I want to refer to something that has been canvassed in this House which is the effect of sanctions on people. How is it that you can actually cut somebody’s benefit when they cannot turn up for an appointment at Work and Income? Each and every one of us electorate MPs has had queries from people who have said to us: “We couldn’t make it because we’ve had to pay our power bill. We didn’t have enough money to hop on the bus to go to our Work and Income appointment. They’ve cut our benefit in half.” We are talking about people with children—half. How is that a responsible Government approach? How is that a responsible Government—Carmel Sepuloni: They’re laughing.POTO WILLIAMS: They are laughing—they are laughing. Let me quote one of the submitters about sanctioning young people which is actually abhorrent. This is abhorrent—OK. “The sanctions in place currently resemble a three strike policy approach to welfare distribution. The first time an obligation is not met 50% of the welfare recipient’s benefit will be cut the second time their benefit is suspended and the third time means a full cancellation of their benefit”—excuse me? Excuse me?Chris Bishop: You’re voting for this.POTO WILLIAMS: Because we want some changes made here. This Government is scared of the “p” word. The “p” word is poverty and yet with this bill it is throwing young people on the scrap heap and right into the face of poverty.The relationship that young people are supposed to have with the person at Work and Income is supposed to be mutually equal and they are supposed to have rights and obligations and then what do they get faced with? The possibility of having their benefit cancelled. How is that an equal relationship? When I worked in family violence we talked about the cycle of violence and the power wheel.Hon Member: Abusive relationships.POTO WILLIAMS: It is—it is completely an abusive relationship. There is a huge power imbalance when a young person who finds it difficult to operate in the world anyway has to negotiate and cajole and work with people at Work and Income. It is absolutely absolutely abhorrent.Let us then look at the predictive risk model shall we? How much evidence has been put into this predictive risk model? I recall being on the Social Services Committee and hearing what was going to go into the predictive risk model. Let us see what the factors are that the Government is going to use to determine whether the young person is from a family that has had previous welfare issues—be it race their age. The predictive risk model is about what? It is about determining what we already know. It is about determining what we already know and actually we need to find different solutions and cutting benefits is certainly not a solution that I would be recommending.I really tautoko what the Green Party has been saying in its minority view because—what did it say OK. The modelling is about considering “educational outcomes prior contact with Child Youth and Family gender and reasons for leaving school.” That is supposed to be the predictive risk model to determine someone’s long-term dependency on welfare. Where is the aspiration in this? Where is the aspiration for these young people? Where is the support for these young people to actually get off welfare and into decent-paying jobs?Jono Naylor: That’s what the bill’s about. Read the bill.POTO WILLIAMS: OK tell me where the jobs are. Tell me how these young people are going to transition into work. The Government cannot tell us how it is tracking where these young people are going. We have no idea where these young people are going. They are certainly not going into work because the rates for young people not in education not in training and not in work are going up. So you cannot tell me that they are actually getting into work.The last point I want to make is about the right of appeal. The right of appeal—we should always have the ability to appeal and review a decision whether that is as a beneficiary or as any other person in our society. We slide down a slippery slope when we start taking those rights away from people and especially people who are in a position of diminished power such as a beneficiary. To me this is one of the most significant aspects of the bill which we should really give full consideration to at the Committee stage. Everyone should have the right to appeal a decision that impacts on their ability to actually live a decent life and in this case the ability to actually have any income. There will be some vigorous debates in the Committee stage on this bill I have no doubt but thank you very much for the opportunity to make my contribution.A party vote was called for on the question That the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.Ayes 107New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 14Green Party 14.Bill read a second time.