Moroney Sue: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 The people who will be affected by the Social Assistance (New Work Tests Incentives and Obligations) Amendment Bill were promised a brighter future. They were promised a brighter future by National but they have no jobs; they have this bill. I ask how that is the brighter future they were promised. Well quite simply it is not the brighter future because that National Government has got it wrong. It sold the electorate a line and now it cannot deliver because it has no plan to create the jobs. Instead it will target those very people whom the Government have now put on the scrap heap. It is targeting them with this bill and it has got it very very wrong. 
I will speak about an issue that has not been well traversed yet in this debate and that is childcare. It all started here with this bill. This was the first time that we learnt that this Government was completely insincere when it said that childcare and early childhood education was a top priority. This bill was the first indication in writing that the Government was insincere. In this bill the Government has cut $57 million and transferred that cost on to families for childcare. 
Hon Nanaia Mahuta 
: How much? 
SUE MORONEY 
: The figure is $57 million which affects 11000 families. At that point it was called the Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill. Well the future focus for those 11000 families is that they will be out of pocket to the collective tune of $57 million. Treasury said that that is just the Government transferring the cost on to parents. It is transferring the costs on to parents all right. Those parents cannot afford it. They cannot afford the increase in GST that is coming up they cannot afford this $57 million and they certainly cannot afford the additional $295 million that this Government is cutting out of early childhood education and putting on those very same families as well. Is that a brighter future? I do not think so. This is absolutely not a brighter future. 
The Minister actually jumped the gun with this one. Here we are still in the Committee stage of this bill yet way back in April the Ministry of Education posted on its website how much the early childhood education sector would need to adjust its funding by. We have not even passed this bill in this Parliament and way back in April the sector was being informed officially by the Ministry of Education that $57 million was being cut and that it had better find a way to replace that money. I met with an early childhood educator last week who had a visit from the ministry to sit down and go through the figures for this cut of $57 million. What the sector commonly refers to as the “WINZ subsidy”—even though the department has been called Work and Income for some time now—has been cut. Even though this bill has not been passed ministry officials are going around the country as we speak working with owners of childcare centres and early childhood education facilities to tell them exactly what that cut will look like and to try to help them manage it. 
Mind you that is a little bit better than the Ministry of Education. It is completely keeping at arm’s length those very same providers and pretending that it has nothing to do with the $295 million that is coming out of that sector because of the funding cuts that were made to Vote Education at the same time. This is the cumulative effect of the things that this bill does with not only early childhood education but also out-of-school care. This cut in childcare subsidy also applies for children up to the age of 13 whose families access those subsidies to keep them in out-of-school care. They need that out-of-school care subsidy because by and large those parents are working. They are doing what the Government pretends it wants them to do. They are in paid employment and they are trying to keep their children in a safe environment while they are in paid employment. For that brighter future for those families this Government cuts the subsidy and reduces the income thresholds that this subsidy applies to. Of course they have no brighter future. What about women? They are once again unfairly targeted by this.