Naylor Jono: Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNaylor Jono: Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10911. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONO NAYLOR (National): I too just want to pause at the beginning of my contribution on this bill to acknowledge Merv Hancock QSO. Merv as has been said was a city councillor in Palmerston North but is most widely known across New Zealand as the pioneer of modern social work. He was instrumental in setting up the Bachelor of Social Work degree at Massey University in 1975 and beyond that throughout the community of Palmerston North he was also instrumental in establishing Methodist Social Services Birthright Marriage Guidance Parents Centres the National Society on Alcohol and Drug Dependence and many many others.There was I think something about the man who was incredibly humble and incredibly approachable. I know he was always prepared to give me some wise advice from time to time but his humility was incredible and in fact when the community house was named after him in Palmerston North I remember taking a considerable amount of time to actually have to talk him into it. He was a great man who will be well remembered for many years to come. Ā ki tōku hoa haere haere haere atu rā![And so to my friend depart farewell and journey on.]This Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill is a pretty substantial kind of a document considering all 700 pages of it are sitting in front of me. I have not had the chance to read all of it just yet. Is it 700 pages? Oh it is 446 pages sorry. I have not had the chance to read it all yet. I am looking forward to it as we go through it. If this is the simplified version you can only be quite grateful that we are simplifying it down from what we did have before. We have had a number of speakers talk about the gazillion different versions there have been and amendments over time so it is important for us to do. A rewrite was clearly needed and on the cards and so that is what has been done.In my brief contribution I just want to pick up on a couple of the provisions that have been highlighted at least in the Bills Digest if not from me being able to digest the whole bill as such yet. In particular I want to focus firstly on the renaming of the emergency benefit to the exceptional circumstances benefit. Although people ask what is in words I think there is something incredibly important about that because if you find yourself in exceptional circumstances and you start to become accustomed unfortunately to those exceptional circumstances you may not see it as an emergency. I think it is really important that for those people who are desperately—sorry Mr Assistant Speaker I do not mean to refer to you. If people were to find themselves in exceptional circumstances we want to make sure that we can break down some of those barriers for them to be able to access the things they are entitled to. I think this is a really good initiative. Just that little tweak of a word is I think clearly really really important.I do want to touch on how the last couple of speakers have been very critical of the investment approach which is again one of the underlying principles that is going into this rewrite of the social security legislation. I find it quite bizarre there has been this opposition to an investment approach because if you look at the fact that 18 and 19-year-olds—what we know is that when somebody under the age of 20 is going on a benefit in New Zealand the average time at the moment that they can expect to be on that benefit is 13 years. I do not know about you but I reckon it is worth investing in some of those young people and not just simply so the taxpayers can save some money over time by not paying them benefits for 13 years. Let us actually invest in them to ensure that they get the best possible outcomes.We have seen that with the young person’s benefit the young parents payment that is being paid the work that is being done with the Youth Service and investing in those young people—we are going to see some really good results over time. If we do not actually take that investment approach we are clearly just going to say: “We’re just prepared to sit back and see what happens.”These are some good principles that are involved in this bill. I am quite convinced we are going to see more positive things happen for people in New Zealand. It was overdue to get the Social Security Act rewritten clearly. That is what has been done. I am looking forward to the bill coming to the select committee so we can discuss some of these things in greater detail but at the first reading I am clearly happy to support it. I think we will see some great results in years to come. Thank you.