Draft transcript - Thursday 23 July 2015First draft - subject to correction.Draft transcript - Thursday 23 July 2015Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment BillSpeech - CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston)CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): We had much discussion about this bill in our caucus. It is with some major reservations that we will be supporting the bill’s referral to a select committee but we will be raising those concerns at the select committee and today I will highlight with the Minister for Social Development and with the National Government some of those very serious concerns that we have. I am going to start by saying why we will support this bill or the aspects of the bill that we can support. Really that starts with the fact that 19-year-olds will have access to the Youth Service and all the wraparound supports that come with that Youth Service. We support the idea that we put measures in place to ensure that our young people—and all beneficiaries actually should have access to this—have access to going on to higher level education and have access and support to get into work. We do not disagree with the fact that our youth who are beneficiaries should have access to not only education but budgeting support and if they are young parents parenting programmes. We support that. We support the fact that in here there is a very small monetary incentive but at least it is a monetary incentive—a $10-a-week incentive payment—for those who meet their obligations. It is good to see a little bit of carrot rather than the stick that we have constantly seen from the National Government. But some of the concerns we have—I am going to start with the fact that even in the purpose of the bill these young people are deemed as being at risk of long-term welfare dependency. I want to say how can the Government assess these young people from such a young age as being at risk of welfare dependency? It is a stigma that the Government has already attached to them and actually it is part of the National Government and the Ministry of Social Development’s predictive risk model framework for risk of long-term welfare dependency that actually we are a little bit uncomfortable with. The reason we are uncomfortable with this predictive risk model is the fact that no beneficiary is informed that they are being rated in any way as being at long medium or high risk of welfare dependency. They are not being told that they are being rated. They are not being told what they are being rated for or what the measures are that they being rated against; they are just being assessed. They are actually being used in some ways as research guinea pigs and they do not even realise that this has happened.[Continuation line: I have got real concern]CARMEL SEPULONII have got real concerns that that is a breach of their privacy because when you are being ranked or rated by a Government department for anything you at least should have the right to know what you are being rated and ranked for and what measures are in place for that. We have got real concerns about the general culture of Work and Income  and in some ways that is why we will support this bill because our young people are getting support from the Youth Service rather than the Work and Income offices which are providing very poor support actually under the National Government not because there are not good people in there wanting to do a good job but because they are working under a framework of a toxic culture that has been created by that National Government. That is one of the reasons why we have to support this bill. If it takes our young people out of that toxic culture of Work and Income and provides them with the wraparound services and support that Work and Income actually should be offering then we have no choice but to support that. We have got real concerns in general about the way beneficiaries are being treated and that actually includes our young people here. When we are talking about the $10 incentive that these young people are going to get—as I said it is good to see a little bit of a carrot—that is not going to go far. When we look at what this bill is asking it is actually saying that these young people—19-year-old parents—will be required to go into full-time study or work in some instances when their child is 6 months old. I am not opposed to young people being put into study or being encouraged to go into study or work but there has got to be some discretion in terms of people’s different circumstances. I am unsure of whether or not Work and Income or Youth Service or the Government for that matter are able to discern or use their discretion to decide when that should be or should not be used. We saw on the website when looking this up that they will be required if there is a teen parenting unit to go into full-time study or work when the child is 6 months old. If there is no teen parenting unit within their area it will be when that child is a year old. So there is a little bit of a difference here—well actually a huge difference—between the way in which these young parents are going to be treated compared with the 20-year-old or older sole parent who actually does not have to go into part-time work or study until at the moment their youngest child turns 5—but we know that the Government is looking at shifting that to 3—unless because the Government implemented this other measure they have a subsequent child while on a benefit and then have to go into part-time work or study when that child turns 1. So there is a differentiation here between the way young parents are being treated compared with the way that parents who are 20 years old or older are being treated. We in this House all know whether or not we are in this situation ourselves that it is a really hard task not just being a sole parent but being a young parent. I want to have faith in the National Government that it will provide the supports that these young people these young parents need but how can I have faith given some of the things that we have seen recently? The Minister says that she wants to have a focus on making sure that they are in education that they are in employment and that the National Government is focused on ensuring that their aspirations are met but the reality is from what we have seen with people on the jobseeker support  that it has not been about helping people realise their aspirations; it has been about getting them off benefits regardless of whether or not they are going into work. We saw that recently actually with the Minister’s own numbers that came out at the end of March where there were 11696 benefit cancellations and of that 11696 benefit cancellations only 2410 of them were cancelled because they obtained work. What happened to the rest? Well actually the Minister does not care what happened to the rest. Actually the Minister said in the select committee during the estimates that it is not necessarily about going into employment; it is about going into independence. How independent can someone be if they are not only no longer in receipt of a benefit but not in paid employment? How independent can someone be? Did the Minister hear? No. Is the National Government collecting information on what happens to people when they go off benefits? No. Should we not therefore be concerned that the same behaviour the same actions the same process is potentially going to be rolled out here with our very vulnerable young people? Well yes we should be concerned and we are concerned and we will be monitoring this very closely when it goes to select committee to try to make sure that the same things do not happen with these young people. The Minister says she is aspirational for these young people who are on benefits. Well I simply just do not believe that. In fact I want to go back to the select committee where her own chief executive officer of the Ministry of Social Development said when asked “Aren’t you concerned about these people who have benefits cancelled but who have not gone on to work?”: “Well they have other means.” If someone is not in receipt of income from work or from a benefit then what does he mean by “other means”? The Minister sat there and she nodded her head like that was true. Well they have got no income coming in from work they have got no income coming in from benefits and the number of those who have gone on to further study is minute. The number of those who had benefits cancelled because of the fact that they had passed away or moved overseas or their marital status had changed was minute. What are the other means that the Minister’s official was talking about? To be completely honest we were left there gobsmacked going: “Well actually how could they make money if they are not getting any money from paid work or from a benefit?”. And the only answers we could come up with were crime possibly; begging on the street; or prostitution. Those are three examples of other means which are perhaps what the Minister is implying when they talk about independent from the State. Obviously it is independent from paid employment because there is no information to prove that they are going on to work. We have real reservations about this bill but we will be supporting it to select committee and we will be having robust discussion at that select committee to make sure we hold the Government to account on the way in which it treats our young people who are in receipt of a benefit. Thank you.[Continuation line: Alfred Ngaro]Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment BillSpeech - ALFRED NGARO (National)ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call in this first reading of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill . As the chairman of the Social Services Committee it is an honour to be able to receive this bill because again it is the vision and direction of this Government to ensure that we provide every opportunity for our youth our young people and particularly those who are vulnerable to I suppose achieve their dreams their moemoeās their sense of vision for the future. And so the previous speaker Carmel Sepuloni has continually talked about the concerns. What I want to put forward again constantly and continually is the sense of vision and intent of this bill which is to provide opportunities for the future of our young people especially those who are in a vulnerable state. One of the comments of the previous speaker talked about the fact is that—using the predictive assessment tool in a way to create a sense of judgment and looking at the I suppose long-term dependency rates and issues. I just want to make it really clear that the figures that are being used are actually by fact. They are taken as in a sense the average of those who are actually on long-term dependency on the benefit. So if we look at that here is what the figures say. If we look at the numbers 18 to 19-year-old youth on jobseeker support will spend on average almost 13 years on benefit. That is not a judgment; that is purely a fact. It clearly states here too that a 19-year-old sole parent on average is likely to and will spend almost 18 years on a benefit. The outlook for them and their children is not bright and this Government believes in them and wants them to succeed and recognises that some of them just need some support and extra help. Again that is not a judgment call; that is a fact. So the question that needs to be put there is this: in the previous Government all we saw was the benefit rates continue to increase and increase so what are we saying? The judgment upon the leadership of a Government of a nation is the fact is that how have we treated our young and our old? So in particular if we talk about our young when we saw that more and more of our young people were actually being dependent on benefit the initiative for us was to ask what we were about to do about this. And so this is what this bill is about. This bill is about saying simple things like this: you do not have to allow your circumstance to dictate or define your sense of destiny. In other words we all make mistakes; we all make choices. But just because we have an increase—and we have had a decrease as of late under the National Government—in teen parents we do not allow that to be something that will burden them and hold them back from achieving their dreams and their aspirations as well. So what this bill is clearly looking at is that we want to include that we make sure that those opportunities are available to them. Let us just talk about this. I just want to maybe highlight some areas of the bill that we believe head us in this direction as well. So 19-year-old parents will now be eligible for the young parent payment as the age of eligibility will now increase from 18 years to 19 years. Young parents receiving this payment will continue to have an educational focus. This is absolutely important. We have an indicator that we call “neets”—not in education employment or training. We know there are a number of our young people who are in this situation as with young teenage parents. So the goal and the focus is—we know that education is a key for their success as well. Not all 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children will be referred to the Youth Service.[Continuation line: In particular only 18 to 19 year olds who are considered]ALFRED NGAROIn particular only 18 to 19-year-olds who are considered at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency and who have work obligations will be referred. These young people will continue to have a work focus. However some will have a deferral from work obligations or exemptions from the work preparation and obligations to be able to study full-time where they do not have National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2. This part of the bill again makes recognition of the needs at times. It allows for variance. It allows for flexibility of the needs. Again the focus is an educational focus. The focus is to continue to have those building blocks to succeed in the future of our young people. This is different from youth payment recipients who will have an education focus. As with current youth services young people who are referred to the service will be required to undertake a budgeting course and have budgeting conversations with their youth coach. This is not just about the sense that people may feel we are micro-managing. Yes young people are able to—but there are young people who also have asked and requested that they have support. Those who are running our teen parenting units know that the need of having support around budgeting is absolutely important. We know that under the Commission for Financial Capability—and I attended and spoke at one of the summits there. The whole issue around financial literacy is an issue and a need right across New Zealand so it is no different here. This is not a judgment call. This is purely about saying that actually managing your affairs is something that all of us may need some support and help with and all this is doing is providing that wraparound support that is absolutely important to those young people in that regard as well. The second thing and part of the bill is also that parents will be required to undertake a parenting course and have other social obligations related to their child’s well-being. Again we have got a number of courses. There are courses like Parenting with Confidence. There is Roots of Empathy. They go right across. They are both mainstream and they are right across in other parts of our community. Again this is not a judgment call. Just because it comes under the aspect of social obligations it is around providing that wraparound support. Previously in the work that I have done actually in the community parenting is something that is absolutely critical and a need. People just assume that once you have a child you automatically become a parent. That is not the case. We know that we need lots of support. All of us have required advice support which comes along family members and friends and sometimes we have attended courses as well. So this is no different from us again providing parental support to those young parents. In particular if you think about it young teenagers who are 16 to 18 to 19 are at an age where often you would sort of say they are children having children. Therefore even more so there is a need to have parental support and guidance to help them along the way to be able to deal with these issues. We are dealing with young people often who are in a vulnerable state. Because of no fault of their own in many circumstances they have found themselves vulnerable because they do not have the support that wraps around them: family and whānau and aiga who could normally be there and friends who would normally be there. Again I want to reiterate that this is not to be put on as a burden but simply as a means of support for our young people for our rangatahi as well. So they will also be eligible for incentive payments of between $10 and $30 a week for meeting these obligations or for 6 months of participation in education and in training. We believe this is important. This is the same as for existing participants and it is expected that fewer young people will be on long-term welfare dependency. Again I want to reiterate our intent as the Government. We make no bones about that. We are unashamedly saying this.[Continuation Line: We want our young people to move off]ALFRED NGAROWe want our young people to move off that sense of dependency and into an opportunity where they can be self-determining for their future and for their direction as well. I want to make some comments around the Youth Service. This becomes quite important because although we talk about the social obligations the benefit wraparound support that we have we also want to talk about the initiative of the Youth Service. In 2014 the Youth Service evaluation showed that the Youth Service is having a positive impact on helping young people on a benefit to be independent of welfare support. It is also reducing benefit liability. At the end of March 2014 the number of youth payment recipients moving to a working-age benefit dropped eight percentage points compared to previous young beneficiaries from 38 percent to 30 percent. We see that this is a positive thing. I know that the previous speaker talked about how we track them and what we should do. We know that this has been a long-held tradition for many years and that this department’s role of responsibilities as stated in its statement of intent is very clear. It is to provide the opportunities to move off benefit and into some form of work. That is where its roles of responsibilities lie. We believe this is important. The last point I want to make is that the Youth Service has been very successful with 86.5 percent of participants engaged in education training or work-based learning at the end of March 2015. We look forward to this bill coming to the Social Services Committee. As the chair I look forward to also hearing the submissions. We think they are important. And yes we are up for the robust debate. But I want to reiterate very clearly the direction that both the Minister and this Government are taking. Our belief is this: the more that our young people who are both vulnerable and at risk stay on a benefit and are dependent on a benefit the less likely they are to achieve their dreams. The vision that is held by this Government and by the Minister and those of us who are part of the caucus is very clear. We want to provide every opportunity available so that a young person’s circumstances do not have to define their destiny but that they have the opportunity to achieve their dreams into the future. I commend this bill to the House.[Continuation line: MORONEY]