Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call at the third reading of this bill the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill and I do just need to pick up on the previous speaker Greg O'Connor and it's a point I've made previously about my discomfort with the discussion of the $20 a week per family when that is including the inflation adjustment that would have happened anyway and is not a result of Government decision-making—and that that is in real terms of what people can do with that money neutral because it's just adjusting to inflation. It doesn't enable—so three-quarters of that amount of money almost is actually just enabling people to keep up not do anything extra. And this policy what the regulatory impact statement tells us is that the average gain will be $8 a week. If I look at my local Pak 'N Save and I only look at the veggie section and I'm thinking what I'm going to be able to get in a week if I'm being really healthy and trying to do the best for my family I might be able to get a cauliflower and a couple of kilograms of kumara.Now that's not to sniffed at—that puts some substance into the belly—but if I've got a whole family in terms of feeding and we're struggling to pay our rent and buy the new shoes because the kids are growing really quickly and they've got holes in their clothes because they had a game down the park then it really doesn't go very far and we know that at the moment we've got 160000 kids in this country who are in severe poverty. This policy—this $5; actually $8 for 223000 people—is going to make a little difference but it's not going to provide stability; it's not going to address the negative harms of poverty for all of those kids. It's just going to make an incremental difference and to be honest that's bit gutting. We heard earlier from the Minister when he said that the Government could not support our Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to remove the increases to the abatement rate that would actually just mean that we were—the intent of our SOP was to make sure that we were actually just doing something good rather than doing something good and doing that at the expense of middle-income earners who are actually still also quite often struggling to be able to keep up with all the bills. And he said that he couldn't do that because that was going to be $90 million that the Government could have spent on other things.I just want to note: child poverty is one of the headline issues for this Government but $90 million in this context was deemed too much yet the Government has been able to find billions of dollars a fortnight for Auckland's lockdown. And the Greens aren't challenging that decision but we are putting it in comparison to looking after our kids—because we put this money into supporting our businesses through lockdown because we recognised the flow-on effects if we don't. Well there are flow-on effects if the parents or caregivers in the family are not able to support their kids and those flow-on effects are not short term; they can be lifelong because poverty deprives children of opportunity and we know that that gradient is incredibly difficult to reverse. So the Greens question the Government's priorities.And we've heard that this is again—like we really struggle with the measly-ness of this policy in the face of the struggle of our families that has been exacerbated through COVID. We know our social safety system was inadequate to begin with and we've seen that heightened through COVID and more families are going into more debt now. And that will reduce their actual spendable income—in terms of it being spent on repaying that debt—just to be able to cover the basics. That's how our system has been set up and we've got choices about that. We can change that and give families control of their incomes and choices in how they support themselves and their children. All of the national and international research shows us that they make good decisions when they are put in that position to make those choices themselves rather than being told what is right for them and their family.I think when we've heard from the Prime Minister that the desire is for New Zealand to be the best country in the world to bring up our kids then I just want to point to some recent Child Poverty Action Group research that showed that New Zealand's rate of poverty for children is 30 to 40 percent greater than Australia's—we don't usually look up to Australia and want to aspire to what they are doing—and that even with these changes a low-income family in Australia with four children aged five to 19 will be receiving $2600 more in tax credits than that same family in New Zealand. But if that family in New Zealand receives a benefit the gap is even wider—of around $7170 a year difference. And that's been a decision that that Government has made recognising that if they invest in their families then their society is better off. The Greens have really struggled with the paltriness of this but the fact that it's at the expense of—and the regulatory impact statement tells us—91000 families who are being expected to pay for this at an average loss of $6 a week.Middle income families are paying for this paltry $5 a week per child increase—that I know will make a difference but not the difference that is needed in the time that we are living in and for the future. The problem as well is the fact that these 91000 people who will be losing out it's because of the change to—when they start earning more the Government's pulling back more. Which is the increase in the abatement from 25 percent when you reach a certain earning threshold the Government will take 25 percent at the moment and this Government saying Well actually we're going to take 27 percent of that money that you're starting to earn." The problem with that is that that actually disincentivises families particularly two-parent families from having both people in work. And we know who is more likely then to end up in work and who's more likely to end up at home. It's women. So again this isn't consistent with the values that we've heard expressed from this Government the work that they've actually been doing around the empowerment of women much of which I've been really supportive of.So the Government also declined our SOP around the in-work tax credit and the rationale for that and that we see in the regulatory impact statement—apart from not wanting to spend the money—is that it's an incentive to get people to work. But actually the courts have told us it's discrimination against children whose parents are unable to work. The families whose kids need the most support and will benefit the most are blocked from getting it because the Government has a theory that actually that would mean that people would be less likely to go out to work. But actually that tax abatement rate which creates a really high effective marginal tax rate that's a pretty big disincentive for going to work. And really we would argue—in the Greens—that if you want to encourage people into work address that effective marginal tax rate and ensure people have the basics to be able to make the best choice for their families.We trust people in the Greens. And that's borne out by all of the evidence that if you give people the money to make the right choices then they will. Our kids will benefit from it and we will all benefit from it for generations and generations to come. So the Greens are supporting this for the 220000 who'll be eight bucks a week better off and the Auckland businesses—but to be honest it's a bit begrudging because we don't think this is really the way to do it."