Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. This weekend just gone our leader, Andrew Little, gave an incredible speech—in Palmerston North, a wonderful place that this side of the House recognises as a wonderful place, unlike the other side of the House. In that speech he said that under his leadership the Labour Party has three priorities: jobs, jobs, and jobs. Under Andrew Little, Labour is the party of work in this country. We are the party of a stronger economy and of economic opportunity for everyone, with a chance for everyone to live for the Kiwi dream.

Unfortunately, National is the party that is sticking up for those already doing well, and throwing up barriers that stop other people from getting ahead. I remember really clearly that before the 2008 election National was running that message of aspiration. Well, what we have come to realise on this side of the House—and a lot of New Zealanders are now recognising this as well—is that National is aspirational only for those who are already there. It is not aspirational for those who are just trying to get ahead and need a little bit of help with that journey. My bill is about jobs. It is about opportunity. It is about smashing the barriers that stop people from finding work and cut them off from the opportunity to get ahead.

We all know that under National the economy is struggling. Unemployment is rising. In fact, we have lost 11,000 jobs in just the last 3 months. We only need to look at the Government’s attempts to try to get people off benefits into employment, and we can see very clearly that it has been failing abysmally. If we look at the number of people participating in the Ministry of Social Development’s employment programmes, we see that that has dropped by 60 percent since 2011-12. We can see that the number of people returning to a main benefit 8 weeks after the end of an employment contract has increased from 15 percent to 23 percent—more people ending their employment contract and going back to benefits. For the year ending September 2015, less than half of job seekers’ benefits were cancelled for the reason of having obtained work. People are not leaving benefits and going on to work, yet that Government would have us believe that they are.

We have seen other trials. There are employment trials for sole parents. There are employment trials for mental health consumers. All of those employment trials, all of these schemes, are failing under National. This bill helps get people on benefits a pathway back into full-time work by raising the number of hours they can work part-time without having their benefits cut. Actually, I want to mention that when I met with the Minister for Social Development, Anne Tolley, she said to me—her exact words were something along the lines of “Oh, if we put more money in these people’s pockets, or if we give them a financial incentive, then it would be a disincentive for them to go back to work.” Just like all of the National Party’s policies, what she was saying made no sense. If we incentivise the opportunity to go back to work financially, then more people are going to want to take up the opportunity to go back to work.

When we look at the abatement rate threshold, it has barely been lifted in at least the last 17 years—I think since I was on a benefit back in the 90s. In fact, for the jobseeker support beneficiaries it is still set at $80 before you start getting penalised. For sole parent support beneficiaries it is still set at $100, and when you start earning $100 you start being penalised. Those thresholds are too low. They are not even a full day’s work for someone on the minimum wage. What this bill does is it raises the threshold so that those people can go out and earn a little bit more money without having their benefit penalised. They can earn up to $150 without having any money deducted from their benefit. What is wrong with that, National Government?

Right now this Government is actually penalising people who want to find more work. That is right—it is taking money out of the pockets of people trying to get into work. It is backing rules that mean it pays better to be on the benefit rather than to find work, and it is wrong. We can do better. In fact, in many ways this bill is not only a new policy but also playing policy catch-up because of the fact that those thresholds have barely been lifted—at least over the last 17 years, if not longer. Under this bill people will have a pathway back into work. They will have a chance to get work experience and get a stable job. It makes sense to us. It makes sense to most employers. It makes sense to the many benefit advocates and social services that I have been out there talking to. Why would we not encourage people to get out there and, where possible, take up a full day’s work? That is a pathway back into work. That is a pathway towards full-time work, and that is what we want to see.

On that side of the House over the last few years we have seen welfare reforms that have introduced work obligations, social obligations, a whole lot of obligations—a whole lot of stick, but, actually, very little carrot for these people. This bill is actually a carrot. We need to bring a little bit more balance back into our welfare system, actually, because that side of the House has created a completely imbalanced system that stigmatises beneficiaries and assumes—assumes—that these people who are in a position where they need to access welfare do not want to go out there and work. They do want to go out there and work. I have seen some research recently from the Growing Up in New Zealand study. They broke it down for me and they did a comparison of the parent who is parenting alone—so the sole parent—versus the parent who is in a relationship raising children. Actually, the findings are really interesting, and I think that side of the House needs to read them. Actually, the sole parent had more of a desire to go back to work than the parent who was in a relationship. Not just for financial reasons, so that they could provide for their family, but for the obvious reasons that many of us know of—things like wanting to be in the company of adults.

Members on that side of the House have always underestimated beneficiaries, and if they choose to vote against this bill then they will be continuing to underestimate beneficiaries, continuing to put the boot in and implement punitive measures—lots of stick but no carrot. This bill is a test for the Government: does it have the moral courage to do the right thing and help lift people out of poverty? Does it have what it takes to back job creation? Currently, we have 305,000 children living in poverty.

💬 Hon Member: We just create jobs.

Jono Naylor says: “What does that have to do with it?”. What that has to do with it, Mr Naylor, is that, actually, of those 305,000 children 60 percent of them come from households where a parent is not working—60 percent of them come from households where the parent is not working. So why would we not support the parents of these children to be able to get back into the workforce? Why would we not say: “Well, actually, take that first step and we will make sure that you are not penalised in the process of doing it.”?

With what we are proposing, those families of the 60 percent of the 305,000 children—so let us say 181,000 children—those parents could potentially be $50 better off than what they are currently. That is a lot more than the $25 that is being offered through the children in hardship package that the Government has proposed. Actually, that amount of money will go a lot further in lifting some of these children out of poverty than the $25 per family that that Government has proposed in its children in hardship package. If the Government votes against this bill I think Kiwis will see clearly that this is a Government that cannot be trusted to get people into jobs and that does not want to lift people out of poverty.

What we have seen recently is a Government that does not care. We have heard from the finance Minister, Bill English, his response to the worsening unemployment figures, saying that the Government does not intend to do anything specific to tackle that rising unemployment. The Government is negligent in not doing enough for this country in respect of creating job opportunities and offering incentives to get into work. I am not surprised, in some ways, that National is not supporting this bill. If recent events are anything to go by, it cannot be trusted to back New Zealanders. There are lots of different examples that I can use there. Labour has clear and practical plans to help Kiwis get ahead, to restore opportunity, and to rebuild the Kiwi dream. I am hoping that the other political parties in the House will see that and vote for this bill.

It is a surprise that that member Carmel Sepuloni would actually go back to the 2014 election, especially when the Labour Party had the worst result at 25 percent of the party vote—the worst result in 92 years. So for that member to turn round and talk about this Government and its policy—

💬 Hon Annette King: Remember 2002, Alfred? Worst result in your whole history.

That is right. Look. Hey, as Annette King said, 2002—we will own that.

💬 Hon Annette King: We owned ours.

We will own our history, but at the same time too you might want to talk to that member so that she owns her history as well—25 percent, 92 years, how about you own that as well? All right? I do not hear them saying that there.

So let us talk about this brighter future, but let us put the member out of her misery. The truth is the Government will not support the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill—all right? That is the truth of it. The Government will not support this bill and here are the reasons why we will not support this—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: No courage.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No, you cannot say that.

—bill. This bill is attempting to increase, obviously, the income threshold for those who are seeking to earn before their benefit rate is reduced by abatement rates, and this is the attempt by the member to so-called solve the issues and the problems of those in our communities—the poverty issues. For those who are struggling, this is not the silver bullet. This will not solve things and here are the reasons why. This is what this Government is doing. Under the welfare reforms we have reduced the future expected time on main benefits by an average of 1.2 years for sole parents and 2.8 years for youth beneficiaries. If we talk about the results of what this Government is doing to be able to decrease those who are benefit dependent, these are the things that we are doing. We are reducing the expected costs of supporting current beneficiaries over their lifetime by $7.5 billion a year. There are 42,500 fewer kids living in benefit dependent homes compared with 2012. That is right. Miss Annette King is on record as saying that when the children were in poverty in the 9 years of their time as a Labour Government it was a job unfinished.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is fascinating to hear the member talking about the previous Labour Government again, but I would like to hear about the bill.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Well, there was a bit of latitude with the mover of the bill, so I am listening carefully. [Interruption] Order! I am on my feet and I am listening very carefully.

Well, you know that the truth hurts, and that is what is coming forward here. Why? Because we know when we are talking about this bill, a pathway to work; we know when the member was talking about 305,000 children in poverty; we know that Miss Annette King when talking about poverty in regard to a pathway to work and opportunity—her words were “a job unfinished”. But that is not the goal of this Government. The goal of this Government is to finish the job, to increase the opportunities that are there for our families who are dependent. There are 7.2 percent fewer single parent families dependent on welfare since this time last year—19,000 fewer compared with 3 years ago. That is right.

Here are the facts—I am just going to say them. They are hard to accept, I know. We are moving closer to the tougher, what you would call Better Public Services target of a 25 percent reduction of people receiving a benefit—that is, 295,000 people at June 2014 to 220,000 people at June 2018. These are the efforts. These are the reasons why, when we look at this bill, this bill will not support, we believe, those who are on benefits, those who are sole parents who are wanting to transit into part-time work and into full-time work—by increasing this threshold. We believe that we already have that provision there. If you are a job seeker, there is $80 that you can earn before the abatements actually come into place. If you are on sole parent support or supported living payment, it is $100. We know that is making a difference. I am going to summarise with just one example. If you are a 25-year-old and if you work 31 years on the minimum wage, you will still be eligible for a benefit and that is the reason why we believe that the threshold rates that we have are sufficient. They are balanced. We know that they make the difference. This bill, even by increasing the threshold to $150, does not meet what we believe are the targets for reform, for our families who are in need. We do not support this bill in the House.

Well, that was a poor effort indeed from Alfred Ngaro, and I suspect his heart is not in it. I suspect that the member actually sees the merit in this legislation. I am, frankly, surprised that the National Party is voting against this, for a couple of reasons. One is that it incentivises work. I do not know how many times I heard my opponent across the House saying during the election campaign that he believed that the way out of poverty and to prosperity was through work. Fair enough. I think we can all agree with that. But the question is: what is the Government actually going to do to incentivise work? This is absolutely a way of encouraging people who are on a benefit to pick up more work.

What is unreasonable—I ask the members opposite to explain—about a person being able to do 1 day’s work a week on the minimum wage and still retain their benefit? What is unreasonable about that? I want to hear an explanation from those members—

💬 Jono Naylor: It’s not all of it.

—because that is what this legislation will do. I am afraid, Jono Naylor, you are wrong. You cannot work a full day, even on the minimum wage, and retain your full benefit, currently. That is what this legislation would allow for.

The other reason why I am really surprised the National Party is not voting in favour of this legislation is that what it does is it reduces high effective marginal tax rates. I do not know how many times over the years I have heard National MPs railing against policies that create pockets of high effective marginal tax rates. I would have thought the ACT Party would be right in behind this bill because it actually reduces the marginal tax rate for people who are shifting from a benefit into work. Of course, what happens when you are in that transition—when you are picking up a few more hours and you are losing your benefit as you pick up work—is you are, effectively, being taxed at an incredibly high rate because you are losing income that you would have otherwise had. There is a long National Party tradition of railing against such things, and yet here is a bill that would reduce effective marginal tax rates for people on the lowest incomes, and the National Party is going to vote against it. I am surprised. I really am surprised—well, maybe I am not so surprised, because it is fine to rail against a high tax rate for people on high incomes, but it will not do anything about high tax rates for people on low incomes. That, fundamentally, is what the National Party is all about.

We heard from members opposite about what this Government is doing to create jobs and about how there are fewer people reliant on a benefit. Well, the fact is that less than half of the people on a job seeker’s benefit who had their job seeker’s benefit cancelled had it cancelled for the reason of obtaining work—less than half. So, actually, what the Government is doing is pushing people off benefits, into poverty, and down to the food bank. It is not putting them into work. This is a bill that would support people to get into work, and the Government is voting against it.

In the last 3 months the number of people employed has reduced by 11,000. Unemployment has now hit 6 percent across the country. It is 7 percent in the Manawatū-Wanganui region and it is higher in other regions as well. That is what is going on under this Government. And here we have a bill that would encourage people to get into work, encourage people to pick up more work, give people the opportunity to work one full day a week to demonstrate to an employer that they are sound and reliable and capable of picking up extra work, to put themselves in a position where they could move from part-time to full-time work—all the things I hear the National members talking about. But when they get the opportunity to vote for something that would actually do it, they are going to vote against it.

And that is the truth of the National members. They are in here to support their rich mates, to support foreign corporations, to support big capital. When it comes to an opportunity to actually vote for something that would make a tangible difference for the people who are doing everything right and struggling to get ahead and create opportunities for themselves—when they have that opportunity, they vote against it. Ladies and gentlemen, the New Zealand National Party.

That was quite a theatrical flourish. I stand to oppose the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill this afternoon. I find it absolutely extraordinary just listening to some of the sentiment expressed in this debate thus far—when you compare it with the comments from the Labour Opposition only 24 hours ago, when we were talking about a bill that actually delivers a real increase to our beneficiaries for the first time in 43 years and the Labour members opposed it every step of the way.

When you look at the general policy statement that supports Carmel Sepuloni’s bill, the first two sentences are: “Part-time work is a proven way to transition from unemployment into full employment. Labour wants to promote pathways into full employment for all of those supported by social security, where the persons are capable of being employed full time.” That is from the same member who said 24 hours ago that part-time work takes away people’s choices and who said 24 hours ago that they oppose the Support for Children in Hardship Bill because it will end up with beneficiaries being worse off financially than when they were on welfare—so, therefore, they oppose it, and they opposed increasing 15 hours to 20 hours.

It is absolutely extraordinary that we have to listen to some of the comments that Carmel Sepuloni has delivered in support of her poorly thought through piece of legislation. In fact, Carmel, can I suggest that you look at the Productivity Commission’s report on more effective social services, where it says absolutely clearly that, fundamentally, it is not about the money. Fundamentally, it is not about putting more money in the system, because we have a higher percentage per GDP—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: He’s talking about social services and the amount of money we inject into social services, not into the pockets of human beings.

—in social services than the OECD. It is about system effectiveness. I think you will learn if you listen more. What this Government has is a track record of actually delivering for those who are beneficiaries, by providing the pathways to work—175,000 jobs in the last 3 years and 150,000 jobs over the next 3 years. It is an economy that is working.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: 6 percent unemployment.

To use your own words and philosophies back to you, part-time work is a proven way to transition from unemployment and poverty into employment and contributing effectively into society. I oppose this bill.

It is with pleasure I rise to speak on this bill, the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill, in the name of Carmel Sepuloni. Firstly, of course, I need to offer my congratulations to the member on getting this bill drawn. Every time, I stand with envy—I am still waiting. But it is always a good day when we get to debate and discuss ideas that offer positive solutions to genuine problems. I thank you for bringing that to this House.

Next, I would like to just address some of the points raised by the previous speaker, Todd Muller. He raised a criticism that some of us in this House have raised concerns about the misnamed Support for Children in Hardship Bill because that bill increases the requirement for sole parents to be seeking 20 hours of work a week, which pushes them off benefits and into a position of precariousness in relation to the tax system and their employer, and from the age when their child is only 3 years old.

The Green Party believes that parenting is a job. We believe it should be valued. We support those parents. There is, as Carmel Sepuloni raised, plenty of evidence that sole parents want to also be in the paid workforce and they are looking for those opportunities where that suits their family. A huge number of them are actively doing that.

Our opposition is to the Government taking the choices away from those families and, effectively, saying that if a parent recognises that their child has specific needs for them to be in the home, that choice is taken away. We absolutely do not support that. This bill actually supports those families where it is right for them and their family to be increasing their hours in the paid workforce, and that is worth supporting, because at the moment families are being penalised.

Currently. if you are on job seeker support you can earn only $80 a week on top of your benefit, which is the equivalent of about maybe 5 or 6 hours a week on the minimum wage, before you lose 70c from your benefit for every dollar you earn. The effective marginal tax rate of that is extraordinary. And, as was also mentioned by another speaker, we have heard quite a bit on this side of the House about how terrible these high effective marginal tax rates are, but, obviously, only if you are rich, not if you are poor.

So what this bill does is say that a job seeker can earn $150 a week before that abatement rate kicks in and they start losing that money. That is in recognition also, in part, that these abatement rates and thresholds were set at a time when most of the jobs that were in existence were full-time jobs. So the system was to encourage to be on a benefit or to be in full-time work.

Sadly, and significantly due to policies of preceding Governments, that is not the structure of our workforce any more. We have a huge number of part-time jobs and casualised jobs. We have 100,000 people in our workforce currently looking for more hours. So we need to actually acknowledge that this transition and this complexity exists and to support people to have decent wages and a decent income while they are doing the work that they are managing to get and support them in that.

If only a few hours are all that is available, actually let those people get the value of that work. Do not cut it out from under them because you are trying to incentivise them to be in full-time work that does not exist. That is the point at the heart of this bill and that is why it is a really good bill to be supporting.

I think that the Government has a wider problem in penalising work. I would like to draw the House’s attention to a really interesting article that was written by Simon Collins in the New Zealand Herald in August this year. It is titled “Counting the cost of going back to work”. He compared New Zealand’s abatement in tax rates and loss of subsidies for entering work with the OECD averages. New Zealanders are doing it hard in international terms. They are being unfairly penalised by the policies of this Government.

Firstly, I just want to acknowledge, because I want to give credit where credit is due, that the Labour Party can, from time to time, make a good decision—for example, last weekend they made a good decision. They came to Palmerston North on a beautiful, fine sunny day and had a good time. However, this bill is not one of their good decisions, and it is not going to achieve everything that they think it will. I agree that it is kind of well intentioned, but, actually, it is not really going to make the difference that people want it to make.

I am concerned about what I have heard from members on the other side of the House when referring to this bill today. I am concerned because, actually, they have been saying that all we need to do is offer people a bit more money and that will give them the incentive to go to work. If you think of the underlying premise of that, it is almost like saying that people will not bother to go to work unless they are absolutely going to make lots of money out of it. That is the underlying assumption that seems to come out of that, from what I have heard from the other side of the House. What we do know is that if people actually get themselves into work, they improve their own opportunities for further work and otherwise. That should be a good enough reason for anybody to want to get out and work.

Yes, we go to work to earn money. We receive benefits if we are unable to work. But simply to say that the only reason why people want to get into work, other than being on a benefit, is that the abatement rate is too high I think underestimates those very people who are on those benefits, who want to get into work, who want to be able to restore some pride to their families, who want to be able to get out and provide for their families and then contribute to society and contribute to their families, and also who want to be able to further their chances for ongoing work.

I am not going to support this bill. If I thought that it would achieve what it is setting out to do, then maybe I would. But it is ill-conceived, it is badly drafted, and it is not going to get us to where we want to go. We will not be supporting it.

It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill. First of all, congratulations to Carmel Sepuloni, who has been lucky enough to get another bill read, and congratulations on her work on this bill as well. As I stated, New Zealand First will be supporting this bill through to its next stage. What I want to concentrate on is the two different arguments that have been placed before the House today. They are the incentives versus the disincentives.

As Carmel Sepuloni has already mentioned, this bill is, at its basic level, a policy catch-up. For the most part, that is true. At the moment with the way that the welfare system has been set up, the current pathways into work are concentrating on the disincentive side, rather than on the incentive side. I have got an example of that. Funnily enough, there was an article that came out in the New Zealand Herald today. The title is “Part-time daycare worker better off getting benefit”. This is Jan Berry, who is around $40 a week worse off than if she was on the benefit. At $15.50 an hour, she earns $387 a week, or $331 after tax, and she also gets $107 a week in the accommodation supplement and disability allowance. But when her income rose after she increased her working hours, those extras were cut, leaving her around $40 a week worse off than she would have been on the benefit.

So in that way the whole system is revolving around the disincentive pathway, and to ensure that it is concentrating on the incentive pathway, there needs to be a lot more done. Carmel Sepuloni’s bill does go some way towards doing that, but not completely.

I did some quick calculations, and hopefully Carmel will be able to correct me if I am wrong on these. Up to the $150 mark, currently, if someone works the number of hours up to being able to earn $150, they will receive only $129 of that, due to the abatement rates. Carmel wants to change that to $150. That is working for around 10 hours a week extra, so that is $21. If you go further, to the higher abatement rates—up to $200, which is around 13 hours’ extra work a week—instead of the $185 that you would be earning under Carmel’s bill, currently it is $164.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Can I just interrupt. The member must always use the full name—

Sorry—Carmel Sepuloni’s bill.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): —as opposed to just the first name.

I will say “the member” from now on—the member’s bill. It is currently $164. The third amount is $179, instead of $220. So, over the week, working up to around about 17 hours a week is an extra $41. Like Carmel Sepuloni said, that is a policy catch-up. It is the bare minimum at where we need to be.

But if we are looking at turning it into an incentive, we need to start looking at a pathway that is multi-pronged and multifaceted, and it needs to be a framework rather than one-off policies. I did a bit of research today and had a look online. There was a Pathways to Work Government policy statement from Ireland in 2014. Ireland had similar issues, and it wanted to look at taking a better approach to how the State actually engages with and supports the unemployed back into work. So there were five strands that it had. They were “more regular and on-going engagement with people who are unemployed; greater targeting of activation places and opportunities; incentivising the take-up of opportunities; incentivising employers to provide more jobs … and reforming institutions to deliver better services to people who are unemployed.”

Like I said, we will be supporting this bill through to the next stage, and hopefully it gets there. But this is the potential for the start of a more multifaceted framework for a pathway into work by concentrating on the incentives, rather than what it is now, which is more the disincentives. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill, in the name of Carmel Sepuloni. I am taking this call to oppose this bill. I am opposing this bill because I believe that it is not going to do what it claims to do. Instead, it will do the opposite. If we look at our welfare system, it is working fine because of the National Government’s welfare reforms. It is giving us results. Our focus is to get people off benefits and into work. There are clear obligations for people on benefits. We have intensive management of teens on benefits, because we know that if people go on benefits at a younger age, then they are more likely to stay on them for a longer time. Benefit numbers are falling. The number of sole parents on benefits is also reducing, and thousands fewer children are now in benefit-dependent families. Actually, the benefit numbers are dropping for all main benefit types.

To me, this bill is saying that people should stay on benefit while there is work available. This does not make any sense to me. Actually, our focus should be on children in low-income families, and that is why this National Government has allocated $790 million in Budget 2015 to help children in low-income families. We are also strengthening the work obligations for sole parents. If we look at the labour market data, it shows continued job growth, wages are rising faster than inflation, and for people on benefits to move into jobs, they need jobs. This National Government is creating the environment that helps to create more jobs, by signing free-trade agreements with, for example, Korea and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. These businesses are going to invest more and create more jobs. New Zealanders are working hard, the system is working fine, and people are working hard to get off benefits and into work. I do not see that this bill is going to do what it claims to do. I oppose this bill. Thank you.

I start by commending the member Carmel Sepuloni, who is passionate about the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill and its objectives, for bringing a substantive member’s bill to the House. I was lucky to have a discussion with her about the objectives of the bill and about how it might work, and I am afraid I cannot say I can support it. Very briefly, I think the reason for that is that we all agree we would like to give more money to the poorest people in New Zealand, yet the question is—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: No, we want them to be able to earn more money, David—earn more money.

Well, the member is right, actually. They are not mutually exclusive, you see. Thank you for that, but the fact is that whether or not you have good intentions, the real issue is whether this policy is the best use of available resources. All tax and transfer schemes face a trade-off between the amount of income someone receives at zero market income, the abatement rate—the reduction in how much they receive as their market income increases—and the level of market income where they no longer receive the tax or transfer.

This bill, essentially, just shifts part of that line and shifts the effective marginal tax rates at their highest further up the market income scale. It is not obvious why that is better than what we have now. Unfortunately, the member has not demonstrated why this particular area of expenditure is better than any other possible options. So for that reason I cannot support it, and as a final indication of why this bill may be misguided, the best person the member’s party could come up with to speak second was a King’s College old boy who probably thinks poverty is having the old shape of Beemer. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Carmel Sepuloni—5 minutes in reply.

I really do want to thank the parties that have spoken in support of the Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill and I want to just acknowledge all the speakers for their contributions, even if I strongly disagree with some of the contributions that were made. I just want to reflect on some of the contributions and use this as an opportunity as a right of reply, I guess, just to finish off the debate on this bill.

The previous speaker to me was the ACT Party MP, David Seymour. Thank you for meeting with me, David Seymour. Thank you for showing me a graph and talking to me about—I am not really sure, actually, what you were talking to me about when I came to your office, so I am not going to pretend that I did. But I will say this: the ACT Party member says that I have not demonstrated why this is a good use of expenditure. I just want to say that every welfare reform that that Government has put through is not backed up by any evidence whatsoever. We have asked that Government and we have asked the Ministry of Social Development on numerous occasions what evidence they have to support the welfare reforms and the decisions they have made and the response we get back is: “There is no evidence.” So please do not question whether or not this is a good use of expenditure—whether or not putting money into the pockets of the poorest New Zealanders is a good use of expenditure.

We had Parmjeet Parmar reaffirming a previous line that was run by National MPs—that is, that money is not an incentive to work. I do not know whether any New Zealander would listen to that and think: “This is a Government I can have confidence in.” Of course money is an incentive to work. Money is the biggest incentive to work. That member also said that this bill is a disincentive to work; by giving more money to go out to work it is a disincentive. In the same speech that person had the audacity to then turn round and say the focus should be on children. So here we are talking about putting money in the pockets of some of the poorest New Zealanders, some of the poorest New Zealanders who are looking after 60 percent of the 305,000 children living in poverty, and that member still says that the focus should be on children, but they will not support my bill.

We had Todd Miller launching an attack on me for my opposition to the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. But Todd Miller, we are supporting the Support for Children in Hardship Bill; we just disagree with certain aspects of the bill—aspects like the fact that with no evidence that Government is saying you must go back to work when your youngest turns 3, rather than 5. There is no evidence to support that. We also disagree with things like the fact that the Government is pushing the part-time work obligation from 15 hours a week to 20 hours a week, when there is no evidence to support that that is a good thing for those parents or those children. Those are the elements of the bill that we are not supporting, but Todd Miller, we are voting for—

💬 Hon Members: Muller.

Muller, sorry. Mr Todd Muller, we are voting for the Support for Children in Hardship Bill. We are just voicing our concern about elements of that bill.

We had Jono Naylor—again a line that was repeated by Parmjeet Parmar; she really needs to learn whom to take advice from—saying that money is not an incentive to work. That is coming from a man who claimed two salaries for a number of months as he transitioned into work in this place—lest we forget—and he is not one of the lower-income earners in this country. So it is OK for the National Government to support certain members of society—certain members of society—to have tax cuts, tax breaks, and yet here we are considering a piece of legislation that would provide a break to some of the poorest New Zealanders, that would provide some incentive to go out and work, and it has the potential to have an impact on the 305,000 children who are living in poverty.

I think the National Government members should be ashamed of themselves for not supporting this bill. I say this one more time: I do hope that the other parties in the House will have a little more sense and will at least support this bill to select committee so that we can have the debate and discussion there.