Turei Metiria: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turei Metiria: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8730. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to stand on behalf of the Green Party and particularly on behalf of Jan Logie who is the Green MP who has seen this Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill through the Social Services Committee and heard the submissions on the select committee. Jan is not able to be here but she has prepared a speech for me to deliver today. 
In this speech she describes her real sadness and disappointment about this bill being returned to the House. She describes how hard it is in New Zealand at the moment to talk about the needs of people receiving income support and their families. It seems as if just the word “beneficiary” has become synonymous with a drain on society with vitriolic attacks on families and beneficiaries. These are people who are injured and unable to get accident compensation; people with cancer; people with physical mental or neurological impairment which sadly most workplaces do not accommodate; people who are sick; sole parents leaving violent relationships; sole parents caring for children with disabilities; sole parents through no choice of their own; people caring for parents who may be dying; and of course people who lost their jobs when factories and public services shut down or moved out of our smaller cities and towns. 
These are people who because benefit levels are so low are surviving on incomes that mean many of them need to choose between adequate heating in winter and food have to save in order to go to the doctor ask for more money to replace their children’s shoes when they get holes in them cannot afford to take their children to the movies or for whom paying the school donation means sacrificing school trips for their children. 
All these examples these stories that she heard at the select committee simply deepen her concern and distress that this bill will continue those attacks on people suffering from financial vulnerability. But it infuriates me. I am infuriated because this Minister and the heartless Government of which she is a part know that children will suffer as a result of this bill. They know that fewer children will access health care. They know that fewer children will get medicine. They know that more children will present at emergency departments when their chronic bronchitis or their asthma or their rheumatic fever gets so bad it puts their lives at risk. This Minister knows that she puts the health of children at risk if this Government passes these reforms and they still do not care. 
What is an example? I have described a few today. The Ministry of Health says that making Well Child checks compulsory under the threat of losing the benefit will put children at risk of worsening health and more presentations at the emergency department. The Ministry of Health said to the Ministry of Social Development that “There are risks to the Well Child programme if the checks are seen as a punishment or a sanction. One of the valuable traits of Well Child”—they say—“has been that it is non-threatening and has a high degree of public and family acceptability.” The risks to the Well Child programme are very real because the intention of Paula Bennett is to misuse this programme as a punishment. 
As an example of what the intention is how Draconian the intention from the Ministry of Social Development was in July 2012 the Ministry of Health asked the Ministry of Social Development to amend the wording of a paper that was going to Cabinet. The Ministry of Health said this: “Please remove the word ‘surveillance’. The Well Child programme is not designed or intended as a mechanism for surveillance of beneficiary families or indeed any families. It is a health promotion child development programme that works from a basis of partnership and engagement between the practitioner and the parent and child.” 
This shows what the intention of Paula Bennett was then and is still now. Paula Bennett intends to use the Well Child programme to investigate families simply because those families have to rely on a benefit to pay their rent and put food on the table. It is a deliberate attack on poorer families the families who are desperate for work whom this Minister ignores. Ultimately the problem is that this Minister does not start from the position of looking at what is best for the child. If she did she would have listened to the Ministry of Health advice that said: “Don’t make Well Child checks compulsory. Don’t impose financial sanctions on beneficiaries.” If she did she would not make early childhood education compulsory for beneficiary families either because while increasing access to good quality early childhood education is a good idea the sector itself has told this Government that the best way to achieve that is to provide early childhood education where it is needed first. This Government has gone about the whole process in completely the wrong way. 
 The fact is that not all parents want their 3-year-olds to spend 15 hours—that is nearly 3 school days—at the local early childhood education centre at the creche at the local kindy or even as is now revealed with the lady down the road who might be employed as a home carer looking after kids of her own. Let us just think about what this means. I would have been forced when I was a sole parent on the benefit to send my child off to another home into the home care of another woman down the road because there was no other early childhood education centre that I could choose or that was appropriate who has even more children to take care of including her own. Yet I would not be allowed under this regime to prioritise the care of my child in the best interests of my child. That is what this Government is removing from parents—ordinary New Zealand parents—the right to decide themselves what is in the best interests of their child and to make decisions about the best interests of their child. 
This Government removes that right from parents just because they are poorer and just because they do not have a job and therefore have to rely on a benefit to pay the rent and put food on the table. It is saying to these beneficiaries: “You are not trusted and if you don’t do what the Government says the Government will hold to ransom what you value the most in this world. The Government will cut off the support that you need to feed and raise your child if you don’t do what the Government says.”—just because you are poor. 
It is clear that the current situation and the hopelessness and the hardship that people are experiencing are unacceptable. So the question for the House becomes what we can do to make it better because it is clear that the Government’s approach is a deficit approach and it seems to start from the belief that no one wants to work—we have heard some of this before—and people will do everything they can to avoid work. 
Nicky Wagner 
: From Labour. 
METIRIA TUREI 
: Well this is National’s position. It believes that no one wants to work. National believes that people will do anything they can to avoid work unless they are placed under so many obligations that it makes it impossible for them to make any decisions about their own lives or National will force people into such a position of low self-esteem that they are not able to take the opportunities that might be offered around them. This is a time of such high unemployment that the Minister for Social Development is compelled to send out a press release about the creation of 16 census jobs. This is the employment environment we are in—16 census jobs and the Minister for Social Development is crowing about how great that is and in the meantime punishing parents who want to take care of their kids and do what is in the best interests of their children. 
Well the submitters did have solutions. This Government has none but the submitters certainly did. They talked about job creation the definition of “employment” and “suitable employment” the minimum wage exemption additional funding and resources to support disabled people into work and the availability of services and supports for people with disabilities. Submitters talked about a universal basic income the rates of benefit payments such that people can survive with some decency income adequacy and extending Working for Families so that we eliminate the abuse that beneficiary families suffer as a result of the Working for Families rules. They offered solutions around the abatement rates and discretion to disregard income for the purposes of calculating income so that beneficiary families could save so that there could be some more flexibility for beneficiary families in the system but all of these options were ruled out of scope by the Social Services Committee. That just highlights the opportunities that have been missed in this wave of punitive reforms. Opportunities to improve access to remove barriers and to eliminate poverty have all been sacrificed for the sake of increased work-testing increased assessment social obligations drug testing and sanctions that will ultimately cause families and especially their children harm. 
This bill is a terrible failure for families in the most need. It is blind to the real work people are engaging in and wilfully ignores the structural barriers to employment. Thank you.