Bradford Sue: Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 This afternoon we have before us yet another piece in the jigsaw puzzle of never-ending amendments to the Social Security Act of 1964. That ramshackle piece of legislation is now 40 years old and it is high time some Government took the bull by the horns and gave us a whole new Act—one that simplified and clarified our social welfare system rather than redoing it and fragmenting it endlessly. With hundreds of policy analysts being currently employed within the Ministry of Social Development and a Minister who has at least some vision of how the system could be disentangled and streamlined I cannot quite understand why a second-term Labour Government has not yet been able to take that long-overdue step. But perhaps with some encouragement it may consider doing so next time round. 
The Social Security (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill we are considering today deals with three main areas. It extends eligibility for the accommodation supplement to residents of retirement villages who have “licence to occupy” tenure makes sure that people like seasonal workers are able to elect a 52-week rather than a 26-week income assessment period for the calculation of stand-downs and changes the rules around what happens to sole parent beneficiaries who refuse or fail to name the father of their child. 
 The Green Party has no quarrel with the first two measures. Indeed we have always supported the extension of the income assessment period for calculating benefit stand-downs as it has disadvantaged certain classes of worker for a very long time. Industries such as the meatworks and fruit and vegetable picking rely on a steady supply of willing labour and at a time of low unemployment and increasingly pressing labour shortages it is critical that such workers are encouraged to continue in their occupations rather than be discouraged by the rules governing stand-downs. Where we do have a problem with this bill is around the changes to section 70A of the principal Act and in particular the increasing of the penalty for not naming the father of a child by a further $6 per week. Twenty-two dollars is already deducted for that. Once this bill becomes law a mother on the domestic purposes benefit with one affected child will lose $28 a week from her benefit and a mother with two affected children will lose $50 a week. 
While to some people in this House and around the country losing $28 or $50 a week from their income may not seem like a particularly big deal for a family on a core domestic purposes benefit of $235 or $256 a week that is a very big deal indeed. I really question the Government’s motivation in further intensifying this sanctions regime against the poorest families in the country. Report after report tells us that single parent families are at the bottom of all socio-economic indicators yet Labour is deliberately increasing child and family poverty for some of those very same families. It is not even doing that by an amount that will make any real difference to the country’s finances which are booming anyway. What the Government is doing is taking a mainly symbolic but punitive step to try to win over those voters whose psychology unfortunately revolves around the idea that single parents who are bringing up children on a benefit must be harassed to the maximum extent possible—at least until they get a job or find a husband. I note with interest that the National Party is supporting this bill. 
Whom exactly is this bill punishing? It is not necessarily punishing absent or unaware fathers who will remain untouched but rather the children who will continue to pay an even greater price for the State’s moral vendetta against their parents. Increasing the deduction and extending its enforcement by Work and Income will only succeed in forcing families to fall back on food banks and on a ceaseless cycle of debt to both Work and Income and other bodies. The children in those families will continue to suffer from a lack of decent food and housing carrying with it the long-term negative educational and health impacts that have been exposed over and over again in so many studies of child poverty. There are no moves to lift core benefit levels alongside this bill. There are no announcements of a drastic increase in the provision of State housing which is needed to meet the real needs in many of our communities right now. Instead what this bill does do is to further calibrate and index degrees of deprivation so as to punish children for the so-called sins of their parents. 
I question the underlying assumption behind this shaming approach to benefit law—the assumption that somehow it is morally better to be dependent on a completely absent and uncaring father than on the State. As a society we should value all those who choose to bring children into this world and to raise them to the best of our ability. We are not suffering from an over-abundance of children in this country and each and every baby should be valued for the contribution that he or she will make in future just as the mothers of those babies should also be valued for the work that we all do as mothers in raising our children. In the end the moral argument around this issue comes down for me to quite a simple question: would all those people from whatever political party or church who support increasing the penalties against those single parents also support the State advising mothers to have abortions if they are not willing or able to name the father of their child? That after all would be the simple answer to the problem. If we are to blame and punish someone after her child is born because she does not wish or is unable to name the father the logical extreme is to ask her to consider not having the baby at all much earlier on in the piece. I doubt whether there are many people in our society who would in reality wish to go as far as that but I suggest that is the ugly but ultimate inference one can take from this debate. 
The Green Party has no problem with the Government doing more to encourage mothers to name the father where it is possible and desirable for them to do so. We obviously have no problem with another amendment to section 70A in this bill that will provide for an exemption from benefit reduction when the parent or children would be at risk of violence if the parent takes the steps of naming the father or applying for child support. What we do have a problem with is the extension of penalties against beneficiaries who are often already trying to cope with an inadequate income and a whole host of other problems and the lack of recognition of the concept that all children even the children of those whom some in society see as morally reprehensible deserve the best possible start in life not the worst. There are all sorts of reasons that mothers do not wish or are unable to name the father of their child. Sometimes it is because the contact was so fleeting that there is no connection and no reason why the mother would ever want to know or see the father again. Sometimes it is because she simply does not know who the father is. In other cases one of the more common reasons at present I suspect is likely to be that the custodial and non-custodial parents have come to an arrangement that means that an application for a child support assessment will not be made. 
The making of private arrangements like that is frequently a response to the inflexible nature of the Child Support Act in regard to the amount payable in shared custody and substantial non-custodial access situations. At the moment a liable parent is allowed to pay decreased child support only in a shared custody situation that is seen as substantially equal. That does not allow for the variations that happen in real life—for example when the mother may care for the child or children for 57 percent of the time and the father for 43 percent. In that situation the father would have to pay full child support payments despite caring for his offspring for 43 percent of the time and having a similar share of the costs associated with that care as the mother. Even if two parents in that situation decide to share care absolutely equally and both become subject to child support liability the percentage for each of them does not drop to 9 percent but rather to 12 percent. To compound the inequity there is a risk in a fifty-fifty custody arrangement that the mother will no longer be seen as the primary caregiver and may completely lose her entitlement to a sole parent rate of benefit. In those kinds of situations it is easy to see why some mothers take the step of not naming the father as a trade-off for maintaining some kind of equable relationship with him and for financial reasons. Surely the State would be better served in dealing with this particular issue by reforming child support alongside the welfare law rather than by increasing benefit deductions. In that way a far healthier outcome could well be achieved from all points of view in the long run. 
Without the provision that increases the penalties for sole parents who fail or refuse to meet the requirements of section 70A of the principal Act the Green Party would happily have supported this bill. However under the circumstances we are voting against this legislation and will continue to do so unless this part of the bill is chucked out. I believe that as with the no-go zone aspect of the Jobs Jolt package Labour is once again succumbing to pressure from parties on the right and is further penalising beneficiaries in a bid to win the votes of those who think beneficiaries—in this case solo mothers—should be demonised. It is a real pity that Labour thinks in that way and I hope in the future it will not feel obliged to include such nasty little attacks inside otherwise laudable legislation.