Sio Su'a William: Social Security (Benefit Review and Appeal Reform) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Sio Su'a William: Social Security (Benefit Review and Appeal Reform) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5733] 
SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Mangere) 
: 
 I join my colleagues in the Labour team in supporting this bill and I acknowledge the work of the Green Party member Sue Bradford in introducing the Social Security (Benefit Review and Appeal Reform) Bill. This bill reflects the desire by the Labour Party in support of the Greens to support working-class families as many of them struggle as they experience what members opposite term as the sharp edges of the economic recession. On average an additional 1100 people a week are signing up to the dole. It is a reflection of the fact that families throughout New Zealand are hurting. As more and more people sign up to the dole—some of whom are doing so for the first time after working 15 or 30 years in the same job—they find that they would like to appeal some decisions that they do not agree with. 
When the Government introduced its Budget on 28 May New Zealanders in general gravitated to the TV in anticipation of some kind of support for those New Zealanders who were feeling hardship as a result of the economic recession. There was high expectation that the Budget would be about job creation industry support investment in research and innovation and investment in skills development. It should have been a Budget that would enable people to meet their normal daily expenses of food rent mortgages petrol medical needs and the needs of schoolchildren. Unfortunately that was not the case. That is not what the Budget produced. In fact it resulted in families feeling the recession as they have never before. 
In my own constituency of Mangere there are many more examples today of families where sometimes for the very first time in their working life people have lost their jobs. Under Labour these people would have had meaningful jobs and earned good incomes. People had a strong sense of confidence then. They had little worry and could sleep well at night. Many of them were able to manage their financial affairs with both mum and dad working. There was food aplenty for the young children. In the past 3 months my electorate office in Mangere has had more and more dealings with people who have lost jobs. In the first week of July I was advised that one local company had had to lay off about 20 mainly Pacific workers. They all lost their job with only 1 week’s notice. They were not members of any union and there was no redundancy agreement. These people had been working for this particular company for many many years—some for about 4 years but others for about 25 years. The company could not keep these workers. These men wanted to work. They were scared for their families. These were grown men some of whom cried. They were desperate because they no longer had an income but their bills still needed to be paid. The household bills did not stop. 
I have had people from families come to me and say that while they were both working they could manage their financial affairs but now that one spouse has lost his or her job they were extremely stressed out. When rich people get stressed out they go on holiday to Hawaii—like some in this House—or to wherever their fancy takes them. When working-class people are stressed out by the onslaught of the economic recession with lay-offs and loss of income they generally go without some of the essentials. Some will turn to their families their church or the Salvation Army for support but mostly they go without. Believe it or not they go without breakfast and lunch and will have only the evening meal. The evening meal makes it easier for them to sleep during the night. They go without heaters and humidifiers to save on electricity costs. Some of them will get sick or catch the flu as a result. They go without medicine or visits to the doctor in order to save money. These are the lucky ones; others will turn to booze and drugs and it will take a long time before they come out of it. If one spouse is earning a high income the spouse who lost his or her job can get only minimal additional support from Work and Income. In one case it was only an additional $50 a fortnight. 
This is the kind of gut-wrenching experience that many families now face. One particular man was angry that after paying taxes for most of his life when he needed support from our welfare system for the first time his experience was far from good. That family felt as though it had done something wrong. It had no control of the business decisions made by Work and Income.