Support for Children in Hardship Bill

I will just make it clear that this is debate on clauses 3 to 10 and the schedule. There are, I understand, Supplementary Order Papers 135, 136, and 137 that also relate to this part.

I am standing to speak in the Committee stage. Firstly, I just want to say that Labour does support the Support for Children in Hardship Bill but we have some major reservations that we will talk about in detail tonight. When we were weighing up whether or not we would support this bill, of course the primary factor that made it difficult is that there is a small offering being made to these families. It is an additional $25 per family per week. In the scheme of things it does very, very little to alleviate the poverty that many of our families are talking about, and we will go into more detail about that. But there are some areas in this bill that we do have major reservations about. We have been looking into them thoroughly, and we have been discussing them in detail with our stakeholders. I am going to talk to at least one of those areas in this speech right now. I guess our primary concern, when really digging down on what this bill does and looking for evidence, is that actually there was no evidence gathered by the National Government when pulling together this particular bill. I think it is very fair to say that this bill has seen a National Government blindly making legislation that is ideology-driven rather than evidence-driven. I think New Zealand should be really concerned about that.

One of the areas that we have reservations with is the fact that what this bill does is it changes the requirement for work obligations so that the sole parent has to return to work when their youngest child turns 3, rather than 5. Some may ask: “Why do you have concerns about that?”. The primary reason we have concerns about that is that there is no evidence to say that these families will be better off by doing that. In fact, when we looked for our own evidence and went and looked at international evidence around this, we found in so many countries, including in the US, where work obligations like this were imposed, and where women were pushed out into the workforce at earlier stages, like this bill requires, in many instances the research says they ended up worse off financially than when they were on welfare. The reason for that, in the research, is that, actually, many of them were forced to take on any work that they could get, any work that they could get into quickly, and more often than not it was poorly paid work. There are issues that have been raised with this particular part of the bill around the safety of children and the fact that these women—largely women; not always women, but largely women—who will be required to return to work when their youngest child turns 3, rather than 5, will have to look for childcare, for early childhood education. We had some concerns about that because we know as a country that recently in our media our academics have been discussing the fact that there are areas in this country where adequate levels of early childhood education are not available, let alone adequate levels of early childhood education that is deemed quality early childhood education. To force these parents back into the workforce when we know that this provision of early childhood education is a real issue is something that we should all be concerned about.

There are some Supplementary Order Papers that I have put up tonight. One of them is in relation to the age issue. We will not be supporting the drop from 5 years of age to 3 years of age. In fact, I think I will make it really clear from the outset, despite the fact that we do support this bill because we found it difficult not to because of that small financial offering that these families will be getting, we cannot support the whole of Part 1 and we will be voting against that when we get the opportunity to do so. Part 1 is the part of the bill where we see part-time work redefined from 15 hours a week to 20 hours a week and where we see clauses 4, 6, 7, and 8 reduce the age of children at which the work requirement kicks in for the parents from 5 years of age to 3 years of age. One of the Supplementary Order Papers that I have put up, Supplementary Order Paper 136, deals with those two particular issues. We will not be supporting the drop from 5 years of age to 3 years of age. We are supported by almost all of the submitters in relation to that decision because many of them pointed out the fact that not only is there no evidence to support the fact these families will be better off if they return to work at that point but also there were real concerns that the Government does not support the important role of parenting in this country. We had this discussion at the select committee. Many of the National Government MPs seemed to also not realise that we are not necessarily talking about sole parent households with one or two children, sometimes we are talking about a sole parent who has been left to raise and look after three children, four children, or five children. While I am on that subject I am just going to say how awesome those parents are who make the decision to stick around and look after their children when in all too many cases they have been left by themselves to do that. I think the other side of the Committee fails to grasp that.

Clause 4, which changes the definition of part-time work to 20 hours—so it goes from 15 hours to 20 hours—is not supported by us as well. One of the reasons for that—there are a few reasons—is that, actually, in this country at the moment for 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds we have, supposedly, 20 hours’ worth of free early childhood education per week. If you take into consideration the amount of time that a parent needs to travel to the early childhood education provider, then to work and back to pick their children up, then, actually, if you are saying 20 hours is the amount of time they have to be in work, then there is a fair enough assumption that the travel time and those 20 hours is going to be 22 hours, maybe 23 hours, and if you are in Auckland it could get even more out of control than that. These parents are being pressured back into work but the early childhood education that their children are being provided with is not fully subsidised. When I say “fully” I mean free like the 20 hours that we were talking about. That is an issue. The other issue with pushing part-time up from 15 hours to 20 hours is that the moment we know there are currently 58,000 New Zealanders looking for part-time work. The fact is that we just do not have that work available for them so it is an unrealistic expectation to think that we can expect these parents to go from looking for 15 hours of work to looking for 20 hours of work a week.

Also, I am going to go back to the fact that all too often what it felt like when we were considering this bill was that people were neglecting to realise that, actually, we were talking in some instances about multiple children. It seemed like everyone thought these were single-child households that we were talking about, and that juggling that one child would not be so much of an issue. But we know, actually, the more children you have the harder that is to juggle, but at no point was that ever taken into consideration. Those are the two areas I wanted to talk about at this stage. I know that my colleagues have a lot of other areas they want to talk about, and I am going to stand and talk about some other parts of this bill and my thoughts on those when we get a chance. But I want to make it really clear that Labour does not support reducing the age in terms of work obligations from 5 years of age to 3 years of age for that youngest child, I have laid out really clearly why, and we will not be supporting the increase of hours, in terms of part time, going from 15 hours a week to 20 hours a week. Thank you.

I appreciate the context that Carmel Sepuloni has given on this bill, both as our social development spokesperson and also as a member of the Social Services Committee. I think she has rightfully acknowledged a number of really important people, and not least those who are raising children in these circumstances. But I think we should also acknowledge the fact that this bill has come to the House and acknowledge groups like Unicef, Child Poverty Action Group, and the Children’s Commissioner because they have changed the environment in which we are considering child poverty issues.

That leads me to then look at the context of this bill and ask, in Part 1, are we addressing what has been identified as the key issue around child hardship, because it is, of course, called the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. It is called that for a very specific reason, and I just want to talk about that a little bit.

There are 305,000 children in poverty, based on an income measure, but that is not whom this bill targets. We can see that by looking at Part 1 of the bill and clause 3, the “Principal Act”, which states: “This Part amends the Social Security Act 1964.” We are here amending only the Social Security Act rather than amending broader tax credit legislation, for instance, that may affect a wider bracket of children. So of the 305,000 children we know who are in income poverty, we know that two out of five of those children are from families who are in paid work, so they are not necessarily solely dependent on the Social Security Act. We know also that some of those children, however, will be, and they might be picked up. But in fact this bill, if I recall correctly, targets roughly—what is it, Minister Tolley—10,000 children of a much broader bracket of children.

Looking at some of the regulatory impact statements to try to get a sense of, if based on information from the Children’s Commissioner, we know that there are—and this is incorrect now; it is higher—305,000 in income poverty, where in this definition the bill was targeted. The Government was quite clear that it wanted to target material deprivation, and that is what is then translated into hardship material deprivation, which in New Zealand is roughly about 180,000 of those children. Those children are ones who, based on a scorecard, are determined to have a certain number of enforced lack—things that families cannot afford to purchase in order to make sure that their lives reach a certain standard of living. That is where the Government said it wanted to hone in. How then did we end up with amending just the Social Security Act in order to target material hardship? Well, we can see a little bit as to why that is, in the regulatory impact statement.

One of the first bullet points in the regulatory impact statement states: “The fiscal envelope available for the package”—that this bill is set around amending social security—“was based on Ministerial considerations of New Zealand’s current fiscal position and other competing priorities. The Government indicated scalable options should be developed within a fiscal range for the package of up to $1 billion over four years ($250m per year). Because the Government’s overall objective was to take more immediate action to reduce material hardship amongst children, Ministers signalled an interest in options that would relatively quickly improve the material resources available to a family through the package.”

So we have got two indications there. They want it to be quick and they want it to be within a limited fiscal package. That is important because in this bill, in Part 1, instead of an amendment to the Social Security Act we could have been debating an amendment to the Working for Families framework. We could have actually been debating here tax legislation instead of benefit legislation. Why were we not? Well, when Bryan Perry came to the select committee, at his last appearance, I asked that question: “Why, Mr Perry, did the Government not amend the family tax credit instead of the Social Security Act?”. As this Committee will well know the family tax credit goes both to beneficiaries—which counters the Minister’s claim that this is the first time there has been an increase in income for beneficiaries; Working for Families did that too—and to low-income families. So it would not have targeted just the material hardship kids; it would have targeted the income poverty kids as well. That is an important difference to point out as we debate Part 1 of this bill, because it is still a grave disappointment to me that we are debating just the Social Security Act instead of tax legislation.

The second reason why it is a disappointment that we have narrowed the frame to the Social Security Act is that Jonathan Boston had done a considerable amount of analysis about what it would take not just to increase the incomes of families in hardship but to lift them over the poverty line. The Minister in the chair, the Hon Anne Tolley, knows as well as Labour knows how difficult it is to do that, and the reason we know that is that we did the analysis ourselves when we looked at the Best Start package.

Boosting a family not just up but out of poverty means getting them out of that 60 percent median income threshold, or maybe, if you are going to be a little tighter—because we know that there are two measures—there are 305,000 at 60 percent of the median income or less, but those at the hardest end of poverty are at 50 percent or less of the median income. Lifting those kids out, as Jonathan Boston modelled, would take a lot more than what this amendment to the Social Security Act does. We are looking at up to, in reality, not much more than 20 bucks, whereas on Jonathan Boston’s modelling it is more like $60 if you actually want to make a significant difference—and per child. An important point here is that this is not a per-child payment that we are debating in Part 1. We are debating a per-family payment. So we know that the amendment to the principal Act, the Social Security Act, is not substantive in that regard and will not necessarily make the difference to children in hardship that this bill purports to make.

We are also equally worried, as my colleague has pointed out, about some of the Part 1 changes in definition. Whilst the Government was chucking out this carrot it obviously decided it needed a stick. I find that really disappointing, because overwhelmingly this change was welcome. That stick was not only entirely unnecessary but was actually to the detriment of the families the Government was trying to help, and we see that in clause 4 with the change of definition of the term “part-time work”. It now means not less than 20 hours and in combination with that we have also seen a change in the definition of when a family would be work tested. At the moment it is age 5 because we make the assumption that the provision of State schooling kicks in at that point. The Government has dropped it down to age 3.

One assumes that makes an assumption around the provision of early childhood education, but we cannot assume access to early childhood education in great parts of New Zealand. In fact, in South Auckland, analysis has been done around the gaps in early childhood education. One simple way that this side of the Chamber and my colleagues Poto Williams and Carmel Sepuloni have put it to the select committee was creating a carve-out to say if you cannot access early childhood education then these clauses should not apply to you. Those tests as set out in clause 4 should not apply to you, because, simply, the assumption is that you are freed up from carer duties if you are able to have a 3-year-old in free early childhood education. That is problematic if that early childhood education is not available. Surely that is a fair and reasonable clause to put in here, and we tried this in past welfare bills. We have tried to say that we should create a few exemptions and give the discretion just in case.

The other point that I think is really important to make is that this bill is somewhat naive to the nature of part-time work. Let us be honest about where part-time work exists. Part-time work exists in retail, hospitality, service, and call centres—things that operate outside standard school hours. Yet we have seen before that the way Work and Income operates is that if work is available and it considers it to be fair and reasonable, you have to take it or your benefit is cut, even if it is totally inappropriate when stood up alongside the availability of early childhood education hours. That is another flaw in the bill.

In fact, the regulatory impact statement even acknowledges that in terms of work itself, which the Government is driving as being the sole answer to child poverty, you can still exist in poverty even when you are trying to cobble together work. I want to read out from the regulatory impact statement: “A key driver of child poverty for households with adults on lower wages is too few paid employment hours”. It acknowledges there are not enough paid employment hours, yet we are about to penalise people who cannot find ghost jobs. It is absolutely outrageous that as unemployment grows we are putting in place penalties for the most vulnerable people. Minister, you could have given this carrot without the stick and we would have applauded that.

I rise to speak to Part 1 of the misnamed Support for Children in Hardship Bill. This part of the bill does several things. It lowers the child’s age at which parents are required to seek work—it is now from the time their child is 3—and it requires parents to look for 20 hours of work per week rather than the current 15.

I do want to talk to several points around this, and I will start with a rather beautiful quote from the National Council of Women during the select committee process. The council noted that it thought it was a form of insanity that perfectly capable parents are forced into low-paid work while a more expensive worker without necessarily better skills is paid to care for a child. That is what this bill does. It takes away parents’ choices in parenting. It pushes them into what is most likely to be precarious, low-paid work that is—the evidence we had from the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions was that most of the jobs that are available and that many of these parents are likely to be eligible for are night-time and evening jobs. So we are removing parents from their ability to parent and forcing them into unstable jobs that actually lower their chances of increasing their education so they can get to a point of being more likely to be in higher-paid jobs with better conditions that may offer them and their children better life opportunities.

I think that the words of the Salvation Army were also quite telling on this point. It also noted that this bill is forcing parents into work where there is an effective marginal tax rate of 80 percent. It noted, in a way that I found so compelling, that, really, we are risking children of 3 and 4 years of age for such small return. In the Salvation Army’s mind that was irresponsible. The Green Party agrees—that is irresponsible. That is not in our best interests as a society and it is not in the best interests of those children.

I want to go back to another point, about the way this has often been discussed—that the increase in hours from 15 to 20 is just another 5 hours a week and it is no particular big deal, necessarily, in people’s minds—except that the fact is that, as has already been pointed out, there is the additional travel time on top of that, particularly for those families in Auckland. But the key part for me is that 20 hours a week is the threshold that moves you off the benefit. It moves you into dealing with the Inland Revenue Department and not Work and Income.

Many, many parents have had the experience of being encouraged into these jobs and then finding out that their employer actually is not so great when their child gets sick or when they get sick more than the 5 days a year that they may be eligible for, and that they cannot actually manage their needs, the needs of their employer, and the needs of their child, and they need to leave that job. In the existing system, somebody wanting to transition back into the workforce maintains that attachment with Work and Income so that if it goes awry they can go back to their case manager and have that conversation. It is much easier to get that sorted out, whereas now they are off the benefit and they are dealing only with the Inland Revenue Department and their employer. Then they have to go back and reapply. That sets up a whole degree of instability beyond what we have now, and that is incredibly risky. What this also sets up is more potential for sanctions, because there are more requirements from the time the child is 3—this requirement to be looking for 20 hours’ work a week.

We hear from the Government that if the work is not available—and the point that has been made here previously by Labour speakers is that these jobs are not available. I have heard the Government reply to that with: “Well, you know, if the jobs aren’t available, then that’s fine. They just need to be looking. This is about encouraging them and getting into the jobs.” But there are sanctions that kick in at that intermediary point that would not kick in without this bill, for families when their youngest is 3 years old. That is a big risk when we know that, over a 14-month period, 88,000 people have had their benefit sanctioned—that is 44,000 children in this country who have had their family’s income cut by half because of sanctions put in place by this kind of legislation.

The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services pointed out that, I think, two-thirds of those sanctions were because somebody had missed an appointment. We know that sometimes that is happening because somebody’s bus is late. We know that is sometimes happening because somebody has been to a tangi or a funeral and has not been in the position where they are able and thinking to contact their caseworker, or able to get through, and that caseworkers have caseloads of, like, 150 people. So I am certainly not blaming the workers in this equation. It is about the system that we have set up.

The heart of what I am saying is that we are risking the well-being of our children with these provisions. For what gain? Very, very little—locking their parents into chances of lives of low-paid, precarious work with little financial return. I also want to point out that it has also been noted that currently over 100,000 workers in this country are trying to increase their hours of work. That was evidence from the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. There are people in this country who have a job and are wanting more hours. Do we really, really believe that parenting is so valueless that we should take the parents’ choice away on how to parent, and be able to push them into that environment and take away the chances of other workers who are trying to increase their hours by saying: “Well, you know, these parents, they should be doing that more than the other workers, even when they could be parenting.”?

I really have to remind this Committee, again, of the fact that there is international research, which indicative research in New Zealand backs up, that 70 percent of these sole parents are likely to be leaving violent relationships. I have worked in refuges and I have worked with the children who are coming out of violent relationships, and one of the things that I have seen time and time again in that situation is the children having different ways of responding. One of the ways is to be really, really angry with their mum and to be keeping on pushing back and pushing back because they have taken on the messages from their dad. The time that is required to break that, to actually re-establish the trust, and to be able to give that child a chance of having a future not determined by that violence is considerable. It is not going to be fixed within the 12 weeks of the work-test exemption that is in place for domestic violence.

One of the other things that I have seen is where children do not want to leave the side of their mother. Every time she leaves the room, even to go to the toilet, they are worried. They are worried that somehow she is not going to come back. When we are saying that these women, who are trying to re-establish their lives and provide for their children in that situation, have to stop and leave their children and put them into childcare and go into a low-paid job, we are not taking domestic violence seriously. We are not. We are not creating the conditions for us as a society to deal with what is an epidemic of domestic violence. We are doing an absolute discredit to ourselves and our children, and so many other initiatives will actually fail—

I want to take a call on Part 1 of this bill. I am concerned that despite the intent of the bill, which we can see in its title, the Support for Children in Hardship Bill, it will actually have the reverse effect. I think that Minister in the chair, the Hon Paula Bennett, should take a couple of moments to reflect on many of the statements that have been made so far, but I would like her to answer a few questions, because the parents of the children this bill purports to help require some answers.

One of the questions I have is around the reduction of age for work readiness from 5 to 3. What evidence did the Minister rely on to support a uniform measure such as this? In fact, the member Jan Logie made a comment about attachment issues for children. Usually between 2 to 3—and I am sure the Minister will know, because she understands this as a woman—there are attachment issues, and it is difficult for women, particularly, to leave the home if there are not some strong, key relationships within the household. So what was the evidence to show that reducing the age from 5 to 3 in terms of a mother being tested for work readiness would actually be in the best interests of the child? That is question No. 1. I think it is a fair question that should be asked.

The other thing about the reduction in age is that we know, from practical experience—and I know that members throughout the House will relate to this—that often between the age of 1 to 5 is when you are experiencing a number of challenges with the general health of your child. There are numerous situations where unexpectedly you are taking your child to the doctor because of a cough that developed in the night or because they have got eczema. There are all sorts of medical issues that will require you to actually understand your child as they are growing in the most critical stages of their lives. This is often from the age of 1 to 3, but more likely you are getting a grip on it from age 1 to 5. Again, this comes back to the evidence that the Minister relied on that it was in the best interests of the child to drop the age from 5 years to 3 in terms of parents being work-ready and tested for that.

The other part of that question is that even if a parent was able to be work-tested when their child is at age 3, if they are living in small communities there are often scarce pickings for jobs. That is a reality. It is not just a statement; it is a reality. So in that instance people might need to travel further afield from their own local community for the prospect of a job. I have heard time and time again—and it is funny that when you are a mother of young children you tend to hear types of stories about children of the same ages as yours—that the demoralising part of going into Work and Income for your work-readiness test is having to tell your story again and again and again and being told that there are no jobs available for a particular period of time. That does not do anything for your self-esteem.

One story I heard was of a young mother who wanted to do the best by her child and was helping out at the local kōhanga, doing things like driving the van, helping to make the kai, and things like that. Then she got notified by her Work and Income case worker that she had to go in for a test, and then she had to really start being active around looking for a job. She saw me at her kōhanga and she asked me: “Isn’t helping my child at the kōhanga, and helping the kōhanga out, a better thing for me and my child and my community?”. I looked her straight in the eye, and I said: “Yes, it is. In fact, 15 more hours spent with your child is much better for your child and that kōhanga community than you going out to work and constantly worrying—constantly worrying—about the care of your child. ”

There are other circumstances that put her own views about the safety of her child in another category, but the point, Minister, is that often there are not jobs, and the whole process of going to Work and Income can be demoralising if you are constantly being told that there are no jobs. The issues of travel are very real, especially when you are in a small community. But again, what evidence did you, Minister, rely on to give you an assurance that it was in the best interests of the child to reduce the age from 5 to 3 for work readiness?

The other aspect of this is that in terms of the travel components, if the parent does not have access to their own transport and public transport is not available, the very real challenges of getting to and from a place of work become stressful. If you are a sole parent looking after your children, and you get called at your part-time job and told that you have to come to pick up your child because of an illness or something that has happened at your early childhood centre, it may not be that simple to just go back and get your child. There could be costs. There could be, again, public transport issues that prevent that, and that creates more stress for the parent. It does not help either the parent or the child have a positive environment for the child’s upbringing.

Here is another question, Minister. If the reality was that the best that a parent could do is find maybe 10 hours of cleaning, and then maybe 5 hours making up for it by driving the kōhanga van—but they are doing something purposeful—is there enough flexibility in the system for that type of situation to be accommodated? I suspect not, but the question needs to be asked, because we are talking about real people, real kids, and opportunities that are actually the only opportunities available.

I know that the Minister is dying to get on to her feet and answer some of these very valid questions because they are important, but here is the final point that I would like to make. It is really around the voluntary contribution of parents in respect of assisting in the child’s environment, especially in early childhood education. What we know specifically for Māori and Pacific families is that lifting the rate of participation in early childhood education is a challenge in and of itself. If there is broader scope to ensure that the contribution of parents in this voluntary way to support their early childhood centre or their kōhanga or puna reo, will this ever be recognised as a valuable contribution to the raising of children and the building of community?

I think it is about time that we did do that, because for far too long we have negated the importance of children’s early years and the value of the contribution of the parent. I agree with most of the sentiments that have been made on this side of the House. Lifting household incomes will make a fundamental difference to alleviating the pressure on some of the most vulnerable families.

The question that I have around this bill is about the fact that it does not take account of some of the realities that families are living with on a day-to-day basis, or the valuable contribution that parents can make in those early years by being with their children and not being forced out to work. But, more important, if there is no work, let us get real, Minister. There has to be enough flexibility and scope within the intent of this bill to account for the voluntary contribution that parents can make to raising their child in their community, and spending time with their child, so that there is actually a stronger and more resilient individual coming through the “pipeline”, in terms of bureau-speak.

I am concerned about one other aspect, and that is the way in which poverty is being referred to as “material hardship”. You know, poverty is poverty. There is no gradient about it. It is unacceptable in New Zealand that we do not have a target to actually try to assure ourselves that across all policy areas reducing poverty can be measured in a very consistent way across a range of policies. Minister, I know that you know that these are difficult and challenging issues. What the Ministry of Social Development does cannot be divorced from what happens in housing, what happens in health, and what happens in employment. But if we had a consistent measure around child poverty and how the combination of policies actually impacts on alleviating the pressures for the most vulnerable—our children—in our society, then we would be going a long way towards making a difference.

I fear that this bill will not achieve its intent. It will not support children in hardship; it will actually make things much more difficult. That is the concern. I support the amendments that have been proposed by my colleague Carmel Sepuloni in terms of ensuring that the age reverts back to 5. It needs to happen

I am going to call Poto Williams, but as I do that I think I should explain to members that in deciding who gets the call, members of a select committee tend to get some preference, but Ms Williams has been calling now for over half an hour, which is much longer than any other person who is seeking the call.

Kia ora. Tēnā koe, Mr Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this bill in the Committee stage. In this contribution, one of many I hope to take over the course of this Committee stage, I too want to keep my comments specific to subclauses (2) and (3) of clause 4, which are specific to the age your child will be when you are work tested to seek part-time work.

There are many aspects of this that concern me. As with many people in this House, I too was a single parent of a young child and I know the difficulties that anyone—whether you are parenting, whether you are co-parenting, or whether you are parenting alone—has with young children when you are required to go out to work, and what happens with your child. What concerns me about the lowering of the age at which your child is when you are work tested is that there does not appear to be any evidence given that justifies that that is actually in the best interests of the child. None of the submitters to the Social Services Committee could provide any evidence at all that lowering the age of your child at which you are required to be work tested for part-time work from 5 years old to 3 years old is actually in the best interests of your child.

Given this bill is called the Support for Children in Hardship Bill, surely the care of your child, as its mother or father or the significant adult in its life, takes some primacy, but there has been nowhere—in the select committee process, none of the submitters were able to provide that evidence. I ask the Minister, please, whether she would take a call and explain to the Committee why the decision was made to lower the age to 3. And why 3? Why not 4? Why not 2½? Why not 3½? Why the age of 3? The only reason I could find for the justification for that age was a comment that the Children’s Commissioner made, which was that, on average, when parents return to the workforce after the birth of their child, that child is usually around the age of 3. That is the only evidence that has been submitted to the select committee as the reason why the age should be dropped to 3. There is no other evidence that shows that it is in the best interests of your children—none.

All of the select committee submitters disagreed with lowering the age. There was not a single one who said they were in favour of lowering the age, so that should be evidence enough to say that this is not a good move and it is not in the interests of the child. Let us quote some of the submitters.

The New Zealand Nurses Organisation—not only was it concerned for the well-being of parents, but it was also concerned about many aspects of the health of the children—the health and well-being. They say “the stricter work testing obligations and punitive sanctions regime”—because let us face it, if for some reason you do not meet the obligations that are required you could face sanctions. There were 80,000 sanctions that happened in the last year alone, and they impacted 44,000 children. When a family is sanctioned it means that money is taken out of their pockets and the children are impacted by that. So the New Zealand Nurses Organisation says that “the stricter work testing obligations and punitive sanctions regime—i.e. requiring parents to be available when their youngest child turns three rather than five as at present—is arbitrary and ignores child developmental and differences in family circumstances.”—arbitrary meaning there is no good reason. It is not acting in the best interests of the child.

They also said: “The health of both parents and children is a significant consideration in parents’ ability to work outside the home. Nearly a quarter of Aotearoa New Zealand’s children are affected by asthma, for example, and are particularly vulnerable in their preschool years. It is a well-known cause of low and interrupted attendance at school and at work. Parents should not be pressured into leaving young children; if a parent is negatively stressed at work the impact on the children is likely to be negative”.

Some of the contributors have already spoken about the difficulties in entering into childcare services for their children. Many of us know that if your children become sick they cannot attend childcare. If your child cannot attend childcare you cannot attend work. If you cannot attend work, does that mean that your family will have a sanction imposed?

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: The only other option is leaving them at home by themselves.

That is right. So it leaves very few options. Particularly for people who parent alone it leaves very few options, and it is not acting in the best interests of the children.

Young children, particularly in the ages 2 to 3, do get sick often, and when they are sick, as I say, they cannot go to childcare. Where are the services to be set up to support that parent to have some other form of childcare that does not involve going to a public childcare service, such as private in-home carers—is that going to be available? Where is the support from the employer when parents have sick children? We know that many of these parents are in precarious, low-paid employment where employers can get another worker at a moment’s notice. So if they have any sense of unreliability about them, particularly if they have children who are sick and they have to stay home and care for them, they are likely to not be employee of the month and to potentially lose their jobs. How is that in the best interests of their children? Minister Tolley, I really, really urge you to stand and take a call on this.

Let us see—what else have we got here? Oh, yes, I do want to talk about the Council of Trade Unions, because it spoke not only of the 58,000 people seeking part-time work but of the 100,000 part-time workers who are currently looking for more hours. So we are going to require these parents to seek work. We all agree that being in work is beneficial—well-paid work, secure work—but balance that against the pressure that they come under to find work when there are 100,000 part-time workers seeking more hours, diminishing the pool of part-time work available.

It also says—this is the Council of Trade Unions submission—that “Single mothers in particular face a range of economic penalties as well as social difficulties. They are more likely to find only unpredictable, part-time work, making it hard for them to access the childcare and other support they need in order for work to be feasible.” Childcare is not universally available across the country at a time that is suitable for when you may or may not be required to work. We know that many of these parents will be in roles that may be shift work. They may be outside of the normal hours of childcare arrangements. What then? What then? Are they to be—how are they to be in a position where they can find part-time work—

I regret interrupting the member, but the time has come for me to report progress.

Progress to be reported presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill without amendment, the Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill without amendment, progress on the Support for Children in Hardship Bill, and no progress on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.