Menéndez March Ricardo; Sepuloni CarmelRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. So just to traverse through a few issues that affect our communities within the annual review I wanted to point to the paper released by Project Gender and Ngāti Kahungunu around Mako Mama - Mangopare take time to swim which details some of the challenges that our single parents experience. For the purposes of the period we're reviewing I think one of the things that they raised that is salient to what I'm about to ask is the challenges that sole parents face within the benefit system particularly how our relationship rules impact sole parents. One of the key recommendations in this paper was to overhaul those rules. So I wanted to get an understanding of whether the Minister is aware of the number of sole parents who may have lost their benefit entitlements because they were deemed to be in a relationship in the nature of marriage—whether the Minister is comfortable with the current relationships settings and if not what work is under way to change those or review those in the processes that we review. I also wanted to touch on issues around benefit sanctions. I know that we have traversed this topic many many times. I know that she's been on the record as not supporting things like the warrant or a sanction but I guess I wanted to get a sense about whether she agrees with advice that she has previously received around the benefits of the removal of the sanction which included freeing up administrative resources for the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) the fact that clients can continue to receive assistance from MSD despite having a warrant to arrest and therefore—a key point—meet their basic needs and some reflections on some of the issues that were raised regarding the removal of the sanction; for example public perception risk. If the obligation and sanction were removed completely MSD would continue paying benefits to those with unresolved warrants to arrest—whether she thinks that the fact that public perception is one of the key risks identified is good enough to continue having that policy and whether during the period that we reviewed people could have been left without the ability to meet their basic needs as a result of that. I guess why I'm asking this is that we know that when people are left without enough kai on the table to feed their families that actually pushes them into criminalisation. We've seen figures of how actually the number of people who are a risk to public safety is actually tiny—like ridiculously tiny. And so the argument that this is actually protecting members of the public or serving actually some greater purpose when it comes to public safety doesn't seem to stand. So I wanted to get her reflections on the sanctions that were applied to people having a warrant to arrest during the period that we are overseeing. Finally I wanted to get the Minister's comments on the fitness for purpose of the amounts that are provided by hardship grants and therefore the civil defence payments. We've obviously seen recent severe weather events—and actually we may be seeing some in the coming days—and I wanted to get an understanding of the Minister's view of whether those have kept up with actually the cost of living and whether if they haven't that's contributing to people ending up going to loan companies to seek support and getting into more debt or the impact that it is having therefore on for example the Government's goals of reducing child poverty.Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): The member covered a lot of different areas in that particular ask of me so I am going to try and address all of them; apologies if I miss something. Firstly the member asked about sole parents in relationships and whether or not I have the figures on who has lost their benefit because they are in a relationship. I do not have those figures. The member asked whether or not I was looking at or considering any changes to eligibility based on relationship status for those accessing benefits. Not at this time. However I was very clear in the welfare overhaul paper that went to Cabinet that we will be looking at that in the one- to three-year work programme and exploring that particular issue. The member asked about sanctions. I do want to note that there has been a 78 percent drop in the number of sanctions applied to a household with dependent children since March 2018 and that we prioritised the removal of two sanctions that really did have the most detrimental impact on children. That was the repeal of section 192 and also the subsequent child policy. There is more work to come in the sanctions space. I think we need to continue to look at sanctions. As Minister I've never said that we would get rid of all work obligations or potential sanctions that are in place but I'm certainly keen to keep looking at these and looking at where we could make changes. I have said to the member and to the House in the past that we do need to prioritise our work programme because our public sector agencies only have so much capacity. And so it is one of those things that has been pushed out in favour of other work streams but it is something that is still on the cards to look at in the future. Then also the member asked about support to those that were impacted by the weather events. With specific reference to the civil defence payment I think the numbers are about $100 million went to about 64000 people from memory. And if I've got that wrong then I will correct that. It's $64 million—sorry I got the numbers around the wrong way—I think to 100000 people; thank you very much. There were some people that needed to apply for a civil defence payment to support them more than once. That was possible depending on their circumstances. So obviously it's been another area that MSD has been very much focused on. They've been working effectively alongside our NGOs and our social service sector. We've been providing support to the social service sector as well because they are on the ground often supporting whānau and so there has been the investment that we put into supporting them. I think it was around $14 million that was committed in that space. Much if not all of that has been spent to support them with their efforts for whānau and communities during this difficult time.