Chhour KarenKAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Well I'd just like to let you know I have had the lived experience of growing up in a benefit household and also a household where when it first started we were working and I can tell you that being in a benefit-dependent household is not all it's cracked up to be. I'm not saying single parents and people on a benefit are bad parents; I'm just saying it's a lot harder on a benefit to raise a child. So when you're having a child on a benefit yes it is hard. It is lower than the wage you get when you're working and it's never going to be the same as a wage when you're working. We are living in a time now when child poverty is a major problem in this country. We have a Government talking about how we want to solve child poverty and one of the biggest causes of child poverty is being born into it. So why are we focusing on making it a priority to create ways to keep people dependent on the State instead of helping them gain their self-esteem gain their sense of independence and gain some skills to get out in the workforce? It's like it's shameful to want to go out to work. It's like you're telling working parents they're neglectful for going out to work because they're missing out on their kids' first thousand days. What's the difference between a working parent and a parent on a benefit? Shouldn't they both have the same chances to be with their children? A working parent gets 12 months; a beneficiary parent gets 12 months with this—it brought it equal. When they first brought this in in 2012 they tried to make it so that the beneficiaries and the working parents had 12 months at home with their children. Working parents would love to stay home for three years but sometimes they can't and they feel forced to go back to work. Are we now saying they shouldn't go back to work? Are we saying that they should feel bad for going to work and leaving their children and not spending the first thousand days with their kids? And why should one have more than the other? I think the balance of 12 months for beneficiaries and 12 months for working parents made it kind of fair and I was glad that they still allowed for those 12 months. It's not until they're three years old they have to go look for part-time work obligations and I know it's tough at the moment with COVID. I know it's really hard to go out there and find a job and there are lots of parents going through that at the moment. We must understand that the longer we are out of work the harder it is to get back into the workforce. We feel like we don't deserve to be back in the workforce. Our self-esteem gets lower and lower—and I've been there myself—and then it's really hard to get yourself out of that funk. So part-time work obligations I think are a good stepping stone to get back out in the workforce get your confidence and gain the skills that you are going to need when you have to go into full-time work. Solo parents are not bad parents—they are some of the best parents out there. They provide for a mother and a father or we have solo fathers that become mothers as well. I'm not saying solo parents are bad parents. I'm just saying we need to be helping these people to get back into the workforce gain the skills gain the self-esteem and get their independence back and it's not kind to keep creating situations where we're keeping people dependent on the State. It is hard to get out of that mind-set and it's hard to get back into the workforce the longer you wait. I just would like to see more effort going into helping these people get the skills they need to better themselves and to better the lives of their children. Thank you.