Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): I am going to take a short call. I know it's been a long day and I just had to sit through that member's whole entire speech about what messages we are sending our children. Well when you continue to punish mothers and their children with a cruel sanction that is not a good message. So I want to talk about a story because the Greens are supporting this legislation which includes changes to increase benefit rates to the same rates as average wage increases to changing abatement amounts so that you can hold on to more of your income in part-time work and lastly removing a cruel and callous sanction where the mother will lose an amount of money if she is not able to name and does not name the father. I want to talk about why that is so important in a particular story of a mother who is close to me—is all I will say—whose son is 18 years old now. She and her son were both sanctioned with this very sanction. They were not included in any exemptions. She desperately would have liked to have held on to that extra bit of money which would have helped her to live in her tiny little flat that she could afford and was doing the utmost in to be a good mother. But the father of the baby refused to put his name on the birth certificate. She had to take him to court; she had to go through an entire court process—expensive shameful stigma-associated—where a judge there then had to order a paternity test which was another whole and expensive process. Yes for this father. That's what she had to go through just to be able to afford an extra bottle of milk in her fridge that week. That is callous. That is a message that we should all be ashamed of in this House. So that Opposition would rather punish mothers and babies—they would rather punish mothers and babies—on some notion of a sanction which doesn't even do what they think it is supposed to do which is to encourage healthy and enduring relationships. Sanctions don't do that. The evidence has been very clear that imposing this punitive sanction is not the way to encourage enduring sustainable loving relationships between children and their parents. The evidence from here from around the world has been very very clear. We all in this House want to encourage good healthy relationships between children and their close loved ones but sanctions are not the way to do that. I'm trying to control myself here because I'm pretty frustrated about the ongoing rhetoric that has come from that side of the House. We are supporting this bill because people just want to be able to live decent lives and most people are doing their darnedest best to achieve this. The Greens want to re-establish a social contract that supports all people and families to be able to live decent lives not extravagant lives my goodness; decent low-emission lives actually to be able to support all people and families to be able to thrive not just those fortunate enough but for the grace of—who happened to be OK right at this moment but could end up not being OK at any other moment. The Welfare Expert Advisory Group report Whakamana Tāngata was very very clear that incomes are inadequate. So while we support the indexing of income increases to the growth of average wages we know that that can only be a first—a vital but a first—step. We expect to change the fact that too many New Zealanders lead desperate lives with seriously inadequate incomes. I just wanted to respond to something that I think the previous member Agnes Loheni talked about: We don't see welfare as wellbeing". Well what do you call entrenched generational poverty then? What do you see that as? Instead see this as an understanding that people will go through different phases of their lives and at some point will need some support and that those who are so-called successful did not get there on their own backs. They just did not. In actual fact many of those the few—the one percent—have actually achieved that wealth by exploiting low-income communities and families in low-wage exploitative jobs. Those very low-wage jobs are a big part of the reason why we need a strong social security system because people are going in and out of low-paid employment and needing benefit advice even if it's purely an accommodation supplement and other support if not a whole core benefit—SPEAKER: Order! Back to the bill. MARAMA DAVIDSON: Back to the bill.It was hard sitting through a lot of Opposition rhetoric today I have to say. What a callous view of our society and communities and people who are just trying to do their best. What a cruel and inhumane logic of families and people who are just trying to do their best. It is downright nasty—it always has been. They are making a decision to sit on that rhetoric once again while on this side of the House we are very clear that we need to uphold a social security contract that allows for everyone to live in dignity to be able to have the support when times are tough. We have faith in people actually wanting to do their best whatever their best means in their particular lives whatever living a life with dignity might mean for them. We on this side understand that living a life with dignity includes not always being in paid employment—that there are dignified contributions happening for people who are not being paid to do it; that it is a dignified life if you are unable to be in paid employment because of say—SPEAKER: Order! The member has strayed away from the bill yet again—last warning. MARAMA DAVIDSON: Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm happy to support this legislation and a vision for a much-improved social security contract. Thank you."