Sepuloni Carmel: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3531. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I just want to start by talking to some of the points made by the former speaker Alfred Ngaro. No one at all—at all—on this side of the House today has referred to or stigmatised Māori and Pacific with regard to poverty. It was he who decided to bring that up. In fact we are talking about children in poverty more widely. It does not matter what ethnicity they are. We are talking about children in poverty and the obligation and the responsibility that we have here not just the Government but the entire Parliament to make sure that we are responding to the needs of children in poverty. Even just looking at the title of this bill the Support for Children in Hardship Bill I cannot help but say we all need to remember that these children come from households with caregivers who are also experiencing hardship. When we talk about supporting these children we do need to be talking about how we can support the people who are looking after them to take them out of hardship. We of course support any measure that will put money into the pockets of New Zealanders experiencing hardship—New Zealanders who are our most vulnerable. However this bill does come with conditions that could have repercussions and those are the repercussions that I want to talk about today. Those are the things we need to think about and consider as we look to push this bill through.Labour is concerned about the implementation of the proposed work obligations on parents. It is not that we do not support parents going out into the workforce. It is not that we do not think that it is a good thing for parents to be out in the workforce. It is just that when you are saying to parents that no longer is it that when their children are 5 years old they have to go and look for part-time work it is at 3 years old then there are repercussions. We have heard widely in the media lately that there are real issues with things like accessibility to quality childcare arrangements accessibility to quality early childhood education. Unfortunately many of the areas where we have people living in hardship are the areas where those people have less access to quality early childhood education. When you put these parents in the position of having to being forced to go out to work when their child is only 3 then you are also forcing them possibly to put their children into substandard childcare arrangements into centres that they are not comfortable with into centres that they are not sure about the quality of and that is something that we should be concerned about. No parent should be forced to put their child into an early childcare centre if they are not sure about the quality that will be provided there to that child.The support that will be required for these particular parents particularly sole parents to actually get into the part-time work that will suit their circumstances is quite immense. These parents need part-time work that fits within particular hours because of the childcare arrangements that they have. They may have an older child who goes to school from 9 to 3. They may want to fit it into that time frame—it makes sense. They may need flexibility more flexibility in their work because of the fact that we know that the younger the child—any parent knows this—the more likely they are to get sick particularly when they are going to early childcare centres. Things just tend to float around. So they are going to need work that will give them that flexibility. They are going to need work that will hopefully be secure and give them the money that will ensure that they are actually going out of hardship. But what really concerns me is that here we have this move to push sole parents out into work increasing the obligations around work but at the same time what we see in this Budget is an actual $91 million cut to the job seeker budget. So here we have higher expectations on these parents but then a cut to the support that they will be getting from the State to actually get into the work that they are required to take up.I can only presume that the $91 million cut to jobseeker support which is in this Budget is because that Government thinks that the total number of beneficiaries is going down. But we have seen research around the future of work around the increasing issues we are going to have for security in work around the changes in the nature of jobs that are out there and the fact is that actually we may see more and more people going in and out of employment because of the changing nature of work. So to cut $91 million from the job seeker budget when the Government is extending the obligations on sole parents around working as well as the fact that we know that moving forward there are real issues with regard to the future of work and the security of work is actually a little bit negligent I think of that Government. To say that work is important to continually rattle off the importance of work for beneficiaries but to cut $91 million from the job seeker budget is a little bit irresponsible of that Government.We support the idea that an additional $25 will be going into the pockets of beneficiaries every week. It is not a lot of money to many people here in this House but to beneficiaries it will make a little bit of a difference. But we do need to refer back to the policy that we had leading into the last election where we actually had committed to putting in an additional $60 into the pockets of beneficiaries with children under the age of 3. That would have made much more of a difference. As my colleague Jacinda has said—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!CARMEL SEPULONI: —the $25 extra that these beneficiaries will be receiving will actually not even come close to taking them out of poverty. When Government members talk about addressing the hardship when they talk about addressing the poverty we actually need to see as the Children’s Commissioner has said a real plan not just a few sticky plasters. This is really what it is. It is not even a packet of sticky plasters. It is one sticky plaster that is going to come off the scab and then there is nothing to replace it and nothing is actually better.We acknowledge and are very glad with the Government’s announcement that National has finally acknowledged that Working for Families lifts incomes and it has continued with Labour’s sensible economic policy. What did they call it at the time? When we introduced Working for Families when we were in Government National referred to it as—Hon Members: Communism by stealth.CARMEL SEPULONI: Communism by stealth.Hon David Parker: John Key.CARMEL SEPULONI: John Key himself referred to Working for Families as communism by stealth. So it is heartening to know that eventually National has come round to the fact that it is Labour’s policies that are responsible that are effective and that actually are all about good economic management of this country.I just want to refer back to the fact that we are talking about parents being obligated to go out to work. So they will be required to put their children into early childhood education from the age of 3 so that they can take up that part-time work. I just want to say that when it comes to early childhood education when it comes to the arrangements around supporting sole parents it was Labour before the last election that proposed extending the subsidy for early childhood education to 25 hours a week. It was Labour that wanted to extend the provisions around parental leave. It was Labour that wanted to introduce a $60 a week Best Start payment for children under the age of 3.So I do want to acknowledge that yes it is a surprise as the Children’s Commissioner has said that National has done this that it has decided that $25 extra a week for a beneficiary is a good thing but as the Children’s Commissioner said this is a surprise but it is not a plan. As my colleague Jacinda has said—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!CARMEL SEPULONI: —Jacinda Ardern has said—this will not effectively address the issue that we face of child poverty. It will not necessarily address the issues that the 260000 children who are living in poverty in New Zealand are faced with every day.We will be supporting this bill. We have reservations about this bill particularly with regard to the obligations on sole parents to go out to work—not work in general but just the extension of the work obligations—but because of the fact that it does put a little bit more money into the pockets of beneficiaries we will be supporting this bill.