Bradford Sue: Social Security (Child Benefit) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Social Security (Child Benefit) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:617;Page:13103] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 First of all I would like to thank those parties—New Zealand First and United Future—that offered to support this bill to the select committee so that it could at least be considered in the context of Government measures to support families and children. I am very conscious that these parties do not on the whole support Green Party initiatives so I thank them for taking the time to really look at what I have been trying to achieve in putting this bill forward for public debate rather than just acting on prejudice. 
On the other hand we in the Green Party have been under no illusions about the likelihood ultimately of Labour support for my member’s bill to reintroduce a low but universal benefit for all children. All along I had a faint but real hope that the Government might at least see its way clear to supporting the bill past its first reading given that all it does is reinstitute the family benefit that was lost with so little fanfare way back in 1991. The family benefit seemed to sink without trace in the era of massive benefit cuts and the Employment Contracts Act yet the loss we experienced then of that pitiful yet significant $6 a week per child is still with us now and in some ways having an even greater impact. 
Just imagine if in 2004 we had a universal child benefit that families could capitalise on so that they could at least raise the minimum necessary to put the deposit on their first home. Just imagine if families who have to borrow money or go to the food bank most weeks just to put food on the table could at least buy another $25 or $35 worth of food to feed their children. Just imagine if we lived in a country that dared to treat our youngest and most vulnerable citizens with a fraction of the same respect that we afford our elderly through a universal benefit called superannuation. 
I hope that all those people who criticised this bill because it is universal and not targeted just to families that they identify as poor will take a moment to ponder even briefly the fact that most parties in this House are more than happy to support universal superannuation—paid to everyone 65 and over no matter what their income or assets—while some of these same parties say at the same time that we cannot afford to offer all children and their primary caregivers the dignity and support of a very tiny $15 a week for the first child and $10 a week for the second. I wonder what that says about our comparative attitudes to people who are equally citizens of our country one segment of which can vote but the other cannot. 
I feel really sad tonight that a Labour Party filled with all sorts of well-intentioned people like Steve Maharey Jill Pettis Taito Philip Field and David Parker who have all spoken interestingly in this debate cannot at a minimum allow us to take my bill to the Social Services Committee. If we had been given that opportunity we could have looked at it in the light of Budget changes to family assistance and the benefit system overall—which evidently Dr Cullen is about to announce—received submissions and opened up a whole public discourse in this area that would have been very useful and timely. 
However that is not to be. Neither Labour nor National have seen fit to support my bill and this will be the last speech on the subject for a while at least. Nevertheless I do not regret the priority that the Green Party has put on supporting me in putting this bill forward and on making the ending of child poverty one of our key electoral policy targets. 
I would like to finish by thanking all the community trade union and church organisations that have supported this bill and by promising that we in the Green Party will continue to campaign for a society and a tax and benefit system that puts children and families at the front of policy making and not at the rear and that works for equity and sufficiency for all our citizens even those who cannot vote in elections.