King Annette: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8401. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): This is my first speech on this bill. First of all can I say that I welcome any improvement that can be afforded to families living in hardship. So I say to the Government thank you for recognising that there is a problem but then I will go on to say that it is only partial recognition of that problem.I think it is beholden on a Government to listen to the very best advice that it can receive when making policy and there has been some extremely good advice proffered to this Government on the state of families and children living in hardship in this country. I would reference the Children’s Commissioner. The Children’s Commissioner is a very highly regarded man. He was chosen by this Government to be the Children’s Commissioner. He has decades of experience as a paediatrician. He was chosen because of his experience and we supported the appointment of Dr Russell Wills as the Children’s Commissioner. He is independent—probably more independent than many Children’s Commissioners we have had in the past. He has been advising the Government on a number of issues and he has certainly made it clear to this Government that the changes it is making in this bill mean there will be small average gains for a family. He says that it will not incentivise parents to leave a benefit given that the high cost of quality childcare is a barrier for many families entering employment.So I wonder why the Government has not listened to some of those who live and work in the community every day with children who live in hardship. The fundamental issue here is the problem that the Government is having grappling with the meaning of hardship. It has danced on the head of a pin on the meaning of poverty and hardship for years now. “Poverty” is a word that is not allowed to be said. You can use any other word but do not use “poverty”; so the word that is used is “hardship” and these families are living in hardship. From the Minister’s own figures we are told that the number of children living in poverty—in other words in hardship—has increased to 305000 children. But the Minister’s bill assists only 18000 families with children a smidgen of the 305000 children living in poverty. I wonder why the Government does not want to have a comprehensive approach to lift all children out of poverty/hardship. Why has it decided to choose such a small number? Do those other children not count when it comes to this bill?When I look at what the increase is going to be how much these 18000 families get it is around $23.10 per family per week. Not per parent and not per child but per family; so it could be a family with six kids or it could be a family with one. I know that the Minister for Social Development is a very practical woman. She does her own shopping she prepares her own meals and she must know that a block of cheese in New Zealand costs $10 a dozen eggs are $4.86 2 litres of milk is close to $5 and 2 litres of petrol is close to $4. So when I add that up that is what a family can look forward to from the increase that is being provided to a family. The Minister will know that is not going to make a huge difference to a family depending on its size. Maybe it would make a difference if you were a single person but if you are a family with children and particularly if you have got some growing teenagers and they happen to be boys then you know that they would probably eat the block of cheese in a couple of days. Those of us who have had teenagers know that a loaf of bread would be lucky to last for 1 dayafter school.I have watched and listened as Government members in speech after speech have crowed about how it is the first Government in 40 years to increase benefits.Jono Naylor: Because it’s true.Hon ANNETTE KING: But I say that they have got—yes it is true but they have got very selective memories I say to the member Jono Naylor and maybe I could remind you.Jono Naylor: Please do.Hon ANNETTE KING: The first Government I remind the member in 40 years to cut the benefit was a National Government. Some of us can remember the benefit being cut and this increase in the benefit does not even restore it to what it was. So when the crowing is finished just take a hard look at the fact that benefits were cut by the very same Government.We set about to help restore some of that through Working for Families something that National called “communism by stealth” but has not got rid of. We went about supporting families with income-related rents and a number of other issues to help lift those families out of poverty and those members crow about how they lifted the benefits—the very benefits that they cut. So I say to the members opposite: get that in the head. Remember that because that is the truth.I have to say that I support the Supplementary Order Paper put up by my colleague Carmel Sepuloni. This is Supplementary Order Paper 136 where she is saying that she would like to ensure by deleting clauses 4 6 7 and 8 that “parents of children under 5 are able to care for them full time if appropriate and affordable early childhood education is not available to them.” Many members opposite live in provincial and rural New Zealand and full-time affordable and appropriate early childhood education is not always available. Why would we not choose to have parents—whether it is a sole father or a sole mother—looking after their children in those first 5 years? Is that not the gold standard that we would all like? How many of us had our mums at home for the first 5 years of our lives? Everybody in this room mostly I would think.Then there were others of us myself included who were sole parents. I went back to work when my daughter was 3 years old. I would have liked to have had 5 years at home. It was not possible but that to me is the gold standard—that you give children the best start in life by giving them as much care as possible by their parents whether it is one or two parents. So I wonder why the Minister would not accept what I think is a very good suggestion in this Supplementary Order Paper: ensuring if there is not affordable and appropriate early childhood education available that parents of children under 5 can stay at home and look after them and care for them. You see I have always thought of that as real work. It is not a “nice-to-have” or something that is just done; it is real work and valuable work. It is unpaid work—work that if we had to pay for we could not afford. So I say to the Minister why not consider this Supplementary Order Paper?I also think that the definition of “part-time work” should be 15 hours a week which is in Ms Sepuloni’s Supplementary Order Paper 135—not 20 hours a week; 15 hours a week—because who is going to be at home when children get home from school at 3 o’clock in the afternoon? If parents are not home there is criticism of them for not caring for their children and not taking enough account of their children’s needs. Why not 15 hours a week? It is a great start for them and as their children get older and they can move into more employment because they have got a foot in the door—well and good. So I say to the Minister why this 20 hours a week? If the Minister looks at reality out there and what really happens to families the Minister would know that 20 hours a week makes it incredibly difficult to be a parent particularly a parent on your own—a good parent doing the best job possible but—