Roche Denise: Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11587. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take a short call for the Greens. As my colleague Jan Logie said earlier the Greens will be opposing this bill. We have some very grave concerns about it and they are basically outlined in the report that came back from the Social Services Committee. I want to touch on a few of them and quote from some of the submissions that were made to the committee which highlighted some really pertinent points that I think this House should be considering particularly when we come to the Committee of the whole House stage.One of our concerns is that essentially this issue is not about the welfare of young people; it is about getting them off and out of the welfare system. It is not about ensuring that they have positive outcomes and the ability to be able to move from very low-paid work and poverty through to a much better-paid existence through tertiary education—that is not part of the deal. What is part of the focus here is getting these young people into low-paid jobs because the only type of education that they will be aspiring to is National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 and that is not an aspirational way to approach the future of our young people.We support wraparound services for vulnerable young people—we absolutely do support that—but we have serious doubts that this is the way to go about it. We are worried that the Youth Service as it has been outlined in this bill and as it has been playing out since it was introduced is really around the privatisation of core services from the Government which is actually counter-productive to young people.I take on board the comments that were made by a Brereton from the National Beneficiary Advocacy Consultation Group. It had a very coherent submission. It basically said: “This service does not provide wraparound support and guidance but contracted out case management where Youth Providers are given the power to recommend sanctions to enforce the obligations imposed by W&I. Youth are not able to form trusting supportive relationships where they can discuss their fears and failures as their ‘mentor’ is their case manager and might sanction them for their mistake.”I think that is an absolutely crucial point that we should be taking on board. How do you empower a young person to change their life when they are afraid to talk to the person who is supposed to be helping them because that person has the potential to sanction them to make them poorer and to take them further down from where they are at the moment? I think further on in that submission Kay Brereton points to international research that shows that in this type of situation where it has played out in other countries the case managers “cease to be mentors and become enforcers teaching the rules to the unwilling.” That is what we are concerned about.We share the concerns of the Privacy Commissioner as well who believes that young people should be informed about their risk rating. What it says in this bill is that essentially young people can correct mistakes in information but they will not actually be able to appeal and that I think is a breach of human rights.We are concerned that the risk criteria captures Māori above every other type of person and my colleague Jan Logie outlined the bias that exists within Government departments which is basically racist and we do not want to see that continue either.Carmel Sepuloni: That’s just putting it bluntly.DENISE ROCHE: Ha ha! Well you know—we support a strengths-based approach and this is not it. This is actually a model that will undermine the autonomy of young people and it is not what we want to see our Government supporting. We will be opposing this bill.