Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill

I take a short call on behalf of New Zealand First and my colleague Darroch Ball on the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will be opposing this bill. Up until this point New Zealand First has supported this bill with reservations, but we can no longer support it. I take on board the comments of Carmel Sepuloni, the speaker who just resumed her seat. New Zealand First is concerned about many of the same issues that the speaker from the Labour Party has just articulated.

We see the risk analysis, which is very interestingly wrapped up in what is called the investment approach, is predominantly just a narrowing of the circumstances by which a young person can actually gain assistance, and we do not see that as constructive. We would also point out that the Ministry of Social Development, in its own departmental disclosure statement, said: “The risk model for the youth services extension is still in development and will be finalised prior to the implementation of the Youth Service in August 2016.” So if it is still in development, we do not understand how success can be claimed. If it has not truly been used yet, we do not understand how the Government can go forward and say that this is an answer for this age group.

We have also already expressed our concerns—and it was in other legislation—about the use of the national student number to track “neets” numbers. This Government is putting in place more and more tracking devices for citizens of New Zealand, particularly young citizens of New Zealand, and using data from multi sources to create what it believes is the picture for this risk analysis.

It is not a transparent risk analysis. It is not something that, for example, under a privacy Act, under a file, you can actually request your file and say: “Excuse me, but that’s not right. My mother is not a drug addict.” Just because somebody wrote it down somewhere does not make it so. Unfortunately, this is not a transparent risk analysis that we are aware of. This is something that inter-agencies will cross-credit their data with and come up with a picture of a human being by tick-box. We find that distasteful.

We can appreciate that there needs to be an extension of support, probably through to age 24 or 25, for young New Zealanders trying to make their way in what is today’s employment and educational environment. We can appreciate that there certainly needs to be a change to some of the funding and modelling that is going on, but we cannot support the bill in its current form because we do not believe that it actually provides the answers for these young people.

We have just seen some positive reinforcement models—and the Minister was just there, actually—at the Vodafone World of Difference foundation. That is the sort of positive trust of young people, to come up with these solutions that with the right support and the right environment—just coming back from Careerforce, where they connect industry with young people and put through apprentices inside the health industry, having visited ETCO and looked at other models around there of creating apprentices, and so on. These are all positive ways to interact with young people, rather than assessing their family history and deciding that they are a risk of being a burden to us as a country.

Our young people can never be considered a burden to us as a country; they must be considered as what is possible for our future. So on that basis New Zealand First cannot support this bill.

I just want to make a couple of points in response to Tracey Martin, the speaker who has just resumed her seat. First of all, I think it is fair to point out that the Social Services Committee made what I consider to be a very sensible change in that those 18 and 19-year-olds are perfectly entitled to ask to have a look at their risk analysis and be consulted on it. It is not a tick box that is just putting a person into a category. As I say, I think the select committee made a very good change to the bill to ensure that these young people are consulted and that they have the ability to discuss that analysis and to correct anything that is wrong.

The second thing I would say is that I really would hate for the Committee to go on thinking that the liability model has anything to do with, in any way, labelling young people as a burden to the community. In fact, it is quite the opposite. This Government has high aspirations for all of our young people, and the young ones that this Youth Service is designed to—[Interruption] Well, you know, the trouble is that if you spray a whole lot of money around, what we know is that the ones who really need it are the ones who are least likely to access it, so the investment approach is actually about making sure that those who are most in need get the help that they need when they need it.

What we know from the liability valuation that was done is that if a young person under the age of 20 goes on to a benefit, their likelihood of staying on that benefit is much, much greater than if we had got them into work or kept them in education until they were beyond that age of 20. Why that is important is their life outcomes. We know that a life dependent on the taxpayers’ benevolence through the benefit system is not a great life for those young people or for their families. If you look at the outcomes for young people, it is not a pretty picture.

We have high aspirations for them because they have those talents, and they need some extra help in order to develop those talents. The Youth Service is designed to do that. It is a service that is based on relationship-building between the providers and the young people. We are trying all sorts of ways to engage those young people and keep them in training or in education, or get them into some form of sustainable employment. That is the aspiration that we want, but these young people do need that extra help, and if that means we have to do a risk analysis on them—as I say, they are perfectly able to have a look at that risk analysis and discuss it—we want to be putting those extra resources and services and support around those who need it. Most young people do not need that. They are quite capable of getting on with their own lives, with the support and resilience that they have in their own lives. But these are the most vulnerable young people in our communities, and these are the ones who very much deserve the best support that we can wrap around them.

There were so many contradictions in what Minister Anne Tolley just presented to the Committee around this amendment bill. I want to go through some of them, because if this is genuinely about offering a service to those young people who need it and if it is genuinely about reducing their future liability—I hate that term; I would rather see us focusing on the potential of these young people—why not offer the service to any young people who wish to access it? If it is genuinely going to have that positive turn-round in that young person’s life, if it is genuinely going to reduce the liability and the cost to the State in the long term, why would we allow it to be only on the State’s terms? If the State determines that the young person is a risk, if the State decides the young person is going to cost the Crown money in the future, why, if this is as good a programme and an approach as the Minister has outlined, would we not want to open it up?

I have to hark back, because I was one of the critics of the Youth Service approach. I am very open about that. When we first debated this in the House, we had some real concerns. We had some concerns that we would change the relationship for youth workers, who might predominantly offer this programme, because they have some powers over the resources that young people would be able to access. That would usually be taken from a Work and Income perspective and it would be handed to someone who is actually meant to maintain a relationship, day to day. That was one of our concerns.

The other concern we had was that it took a deficit approach, and everyone, carte blanche, was put on payment cards, rather than the reverse approach of only those who need it most, at a point when it is identified they need it. I continue to maintain that I see young people—particularly young mothers—budget like no one else. I would really rival anyone to demonstrate how they could do what some of these young people do.

So we did have concerns—we did have concerns—but I went into conversations with Youth Service providers and Youth Service recipients of services with an open mind once it was implemented, and asked them what their view of those services was. In some areas there were young people who relayed to me that they were having a positive experience. They had qualms with the way the payment card operated, the limitations of it—all of those valid—but in terms of the one-on-one service they were receiving, some of them said: “Actually, we’d like a bit more time.” So on that front, I acknowledge, Minister, that this actually was a debate worth having, but what I wanted to hear was a really clear message on why we should default back to this risk-identifying model. I have fundamental issues with the fact the Government keeps leaning on it, because we are excluding young people as a result.

This started when we got rid of the Youth Transition Services. We used to have a service that said to any young person—roughly, under the age of 24, actually—that if you needed support and if you were not in employment, education, or training, regardless of your circumstances, regardless of where you lived, regardless of whether or you were on a benefit or not—you might have been being supported by friends, couch surfing, or whatever. We knew how difficult it was in those days—and it continues to be—to get the unsupported living benefit. It was terribly difficult. You could be in a violent situation and not be able to receive it.

No matter where your resource was coming from, you could access that service, and instead we got rid of it and we narrowed the focus into these high-risk, high-liability young people. Look at what the numbers have done since then. From that time, we are now in a situation where the number of young people not in education, training, or employment—as much as the Government says we are through the global financial crisis and we have got rosy times ahead—is at 87,200 young people. So, actually, it has not worked. We have got 26,500 more “neets” now than when National took office and fundamentally changed the environment of support for those young people.

Targeting in that manner has failed, Minister. It has failed. So why would we entrench it further if you believe, Minister, in the findings that were presented in 2014—so the very early days—in the Youth Service evaluation report, which found the Youth Service had a positive impact on assisting young people to increase their education levels and be independent of welfare and support? I am reading here from some of information provided to the select committee. It found that “Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of YP participants increased the number of NCEA credits they held in their first 12 months of participating …”. At the end of March 2014, 30 percent transitioned to a working-age benefit, whereas it was 38 percent of the comparison group—so a difference of about 8 percent.

If we were seeing outcomes in those other areas that were positive, why not allow anyone who wanted to access the service to access it? Why would you not? I still have not seen compelling evidence as to why that might be. I can see the rationale. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) has set it out. Its argument has been that the extension includes only 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency because not all 18 and 19-year-old beneficiaries need the wraparound support that the Youth Service provides.

Where is the evidence to demonstrate that? If you are an 18-year-old or a 19-year-old and you are not in employment, education, or training, I would say that you deserve some support. I would say they deserve some support. So what is the difference here that we have identified that says they do not need that support, and that, actually, they are just fine-transitioning back into the usual humdrum motions of Work and Income when they may choose to opt into a Youth Service approach?

Then I think we come to the real reason. The report states “because the Youth Service is a costly and intensive service.”—it is costly and intensive. So here we suddenly see the real reason why we are taking such a narrow focus. How many people are we actually talking about? Well, according to what I have seen from MSD, we are talking about a targeted approach, which is, roughly, going to mean about 2,000 young people—2,000 young people—when we have 87,000 who are not in employment, education, or training. Roughly 2,000 in that 18 to 19-year-old cohort will be eligible under this risk criterion that the Government has created. Those are the only ones who will be eligible for the intensive, wraparound support.

Well, actually, there is a pile of contradictions—and the Minister even articulated them—around the cost of this programme versus the cost savings. Again, here we see this really narrow view that says: “We’re spending too much on this, so we can offer it for only a narrow number of people. Yet, on the other hand, we’ll justify it by saying how much money we’ll save.”, so it cannot be both.

I found in the regulatory impact statement that it looks like around 14,000 young people are involved with the Youth Service and it costs $148 million over 4 years. There is not any discussion there about what element of that would have otherwise been offered by Work and Income, so it is hard to know whether that, on its own, is its own line item or whether, actually, that is a cost we would otherwise just have had within a Work and Income context. So we know that is the cost of it, but flip over to the other page of the regulatory impact statement and it states: “A very preliminary estimate is that for every dollar spent on the Youth Service, the liability”—again the world “liability”—“reduces by $2.53.” So for every dollar that we spend, apparently—remembering that we are talking about humans—in regard to the liability of those humans and the cost of them to us, we will save $2.53.

Putting aside the language, the argument, therefore, seems to be that if we spend $148 million, we then end up saving $374 million, based on that calculation. If that is true, why would we not open this up to more young people? You cannot have both. Either it is too expensive and does not work very well and so we will only do it for 2,000 people, or it is great—it is “Boy Wonder”, as it were—and we should actually be extending it to everyone.

Well, look, we are going to test the mantel on this one by putting up an amendment that does just that. That is what I want to just finish on. Carmel Sepuloni has an amendment in her name that would allow services to be extended to a greater range of young people, basically on an opt-in basis. We think that extension is right, because it was what we had with the old Youth Transition Services model. It was what the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs recommended through its youth connections model—the provision of service for any young person who needs it. In fact, I would say they should not have to be on a benefit, because we know how difficult it is to reach eligibility.

I want to finish on this reflection. When we did have the independent youth benefit, there was a one-tick box that could exclude you from accessing that benefit, and that was whether you answered the question in the positive. When asked “Could you live at home?”, if you said “Yes”, then you were out. Tick boxes exclude young people.

I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party in the Committee stage of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. I would like to start by responding to some of the points that were made by the Minister for Social Development, Anne Tolley. She made several points. Her first was in response to the New Zealand First MP Tracey Martin’s concerns about the predictive risk modelling aspect of this bill, where the Government is going to be taking Child, Youth and Family data, school-exiting information data, educational outcomes data, and information about the sex of young people and putting all of that information together to decide whether a young person is going to have a long-term financial liability on the State—not whether that person may have additional needs, but whether there is long-term financial liability on the State—as a result of those factors.

The Minister’s response to those concerns from that member was that “The select committee made a great change to the bill. Yes, it was a bit tough that the young person was never going to find out about that risk modelling, so the committee’s recommended that the young person can get that information and they are able to correct any inaccuracies.” We are talking about 18 and 19-year-olds. I need to restate that: we are talking about adults in this legislation. Although the Social Services Committee did make the recommendation to change the bill so that the young person will find out why they are considered to be such a risk, they will not have the ability to say: “Actually, that is your analysis. That does not match how I see myself, and I do not think that service that you are offering me will be useful.” So 18 and 19-year-olds—adults—will be given a phone call. The Ministry of Social Development officials did tell us that, yes, they did recognise that this would be a difficult phone call, and they had not quite worked out how they were going to have the conversation yet, but we should feel OK that they would work that out.

So I am imagining that I am an 18-year-old and I have been made unemployed from my workplace along with another mate who is the same age. We have gone into Work and Income together—or applied online, as we may be encouraged to do now—and I get this phone call. My mate does not. Work and Income says: “So your family had dealings with Child, Youth and Family, and you didn’t do so well at school. We think that you are a risk, so we want to offer you this service where you are going to be given a money card. You will have, maybe, $50 cash that you have control over; the rest we will have control over. You will have to tell us about all your financial data, any debts that you have, your rents, and all of those details of your life, and you are going to have to report to us often and regularly.”

I might come back to them and say: “Oh well, actually, despite the situation in my family, I had a really awesome auntie. Although things sucked at home and Child, Youth and Family got involved, I had this really strong relationship. I have already been in a job, and, actually, I do not think that you are describing me as who I am. I think that I have got some strengths to offer here.” That person on the other end of the phone might say “Oh, OK. Fair enough. You can go through the usual channels.”, but they might not. They might say: “Well, too bad.” That is the bill that we are passing here. It is legislation to remove the control of our young adults to be able to define themselves.

If we have this concern for our young people, then what we know in terms of all of the research around youth development is that what will make a difference to a young person who is disconnected or struggling is to connect with them on a human level, to focus on their strengths, and to help them develop their strengths. And the more you focus on their risks, or the things that have gone wrong in the past, the more present that becomes in their life, the more they are defined by that, and the more they are unable to escape that. The pathway for young people to be successful in life, and to be resilient and overcome challenges in their lives, is to focus on their strengths and build strong relationships with other people who can support them.

This piece of legislation has some fundamental flaws. Firstly, it focuses on risk. Secondly, it infantilises those young people and takes away their control. Thirdly, it just does not focus on what is possible. The Minister, previously, in her second point of rebuttal, was saying that this is not about a burden, this is not about being negative, and this is about having high aspirations. Well, the test of that is whether the Minister will support Carmel Sepuloni’s amendment to have this to National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 equivalent or higher, because this Government that is telling us it has aspirations is the same Government that got rid of the training incentive allowance, which actually enabled sole parents to be able to have a pathway into higher-paid jobs.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Pulling up the ladder.

Absolutely—keeping people stuck and, in fact, putting barriers in front of them being able to achieve more in their lives and support their families. That is not having higher aspirations. This legislation and the entire tenor of it are set on a level that just does not have confidence in people’s abilities for themselves and keeps putting barriers in their way, preventing them from being able to take control of their lives.

One of the other parts that I did want to mention again—in terms of that relationship building for young people, and what helps them if they are in a bad place—is a relationship of trust. This legislation also fundamentally alters that relationship of trust between the young person and the people in the community whom they previously could go to to be their sounding boards, the people whom they could rely on and process everything with. Those people have been turned into people who are given the role of reporting back to Work and Income. If the young person is not meeting their obligations, Work and Income has the ability to sanction their income, which threatens their entire ability to put a roof over their head. That is not a trust-based relationship.

I know some organisations are doing some great work within this model, despite it. I will acknowledge that. But we have heard from some young people in a service that we went to—where they closed the door so that the people running the service could not hear the conversation that they were having with us, because they did not think that that was safe—who quietly told us about people being sanctioned and whom they had never seen coming back to the course. For tangi or for very understandable reasons, people were absent, and then they were sanctioned. So this is not this perfect model. It was raised by the National Beneficiaries Advocacy Consultative Group, which had concerns that the lack of transparency in this model means that there are not the communication channels to people outside for those young people to know what their appeals right are—where, actually, they may be able to challenge things—and there is not the transparency for us to be able to find out what is happening in there, either.

One of the other points that the Minister made was that she was saying: “We care about the life outcomes of these young people, and it is not just about the money. It is not—really.” Well then, again, my challenge back to the Minister is to change the Better Public Services targets to make them about the well-being of young people—about proven earning potential, or just well-being, mental health, or any of those things that actually matter—rather than a reduction in the financial liability for welfare. That is not having aspirations for our young people. If you say you care, and you care about their life outcomes, then change your Better Public Services target and we might believe you. This legislation sits within a context of investing in a whole lot of bureaucracy rather than what I see in terms of the day-to-day life of these young people. That is money that could otherwise have been spent in our communities, building relationships with those people that would last for an entire lifetime, that would be strength-based, and that would enable them to have the skills themselves.

I take the call on this bill, the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services Remedias Matters) Amendment Bill, in the Committee stage.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Remedial.

Well, it is good hear that you are listening—remedial matters. The joy of being in Opposition is that it is all risk, no responsibility. That is what it is. It is easy for those members to turn round and say, almost like the ad about the moss removal: “Spray and walk away.” In other words, how about we just pay and walk away? You have heard Opposition members in regard to this bill. What they want to say is: “Let’s just pay and walk away.” When they turn round and talk about the responsibility of this Government, they only need to look back at the 9 years of a Labour-Greens Government. Let us talk about your track record. Let us talk about paid parental leave. Did it happen when the opportunity was there? No, it did not. Let us talk about housing—warm and dry. Did it happen under a Labour-Greens Government? No. That is right.

💬 Hon Member: Yes, it did.

Fifty thousand houses in 9 years? Come on. That is not exactly a track record you can be proud of. Why? Because you supposedly took responsibility, so it is a bit rich to turn round, to be sanctimonious, and to say: “Guess what? It’s not about the cost.” When you are in Opposition, it is all risk, no responsibility—pay and walk away.

💬 Fletcher Tabuteau: This is Committee stage.

These guys want to hear about the Committee stage, so let us do a bit of research. Let us see if these people have done their homework. The Productivity Commission in 2011 talked about the social investment approach. I guarantee there would not be many who have read that report. If you take the time to read the report, what does it say? This is what it talks about. There are four things that are really important that it talks about that are high risk for those who are inside our welfare system. In that report it says this: “No. 1, intervention needs to happen early.” That is right—we would all agree with that, right? The second thing it said was: “You need to target your approach.”

So what is this bill doing? No. 1, the intervention is early. It is extending the age of eligibility to 18 and 19-year-olds. Why? It is doing that because the Productivity Commission said that if you want to make the greatest difference, go early, not late. That is what this Government is doing. The second thing the Productivity Commission said in its report was this: “Target your focus and your resources to make the greatest difference.” You will not know that because you have not read it, but that is exactly what it is saying.

If we, as the Government, were to say that to be responsible for the resources that we have we go early and we target where it is most needed—that is what is making the difference. For 18 and 19-year-olds who are vulnerable, who are at risk, why would we not turn round and say that we are going to be responsible for this? I will tell you the reasons why. In the 9 years of the Labour Government, when I was working in the community and had experience, this is what it did: pay and walk away. In other words, it did not take responsibility to ask the hard questions. This Government is doing this. We are not afraid to face up to ask the hard questions.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: It’s worse under National.

That is right—you are going to get up and you are going to say: “This is what we have done.” This is what this Government is doing: it is asking the hard questions, and this is what we are doing.

When we are talking about predictive profiling, it is asking questions like this: if you are at risk, if you are a young teenager and a young parent, what does the research show us? It shows us this: if you go early, you stay longer. In other words, the question is this: on average, if you are an 18-year-old and you are a young teenage parent and you go into the welfare system, how long do you stay in it? Oh, that is right—you do not know. It is 13 years—that is, on average. If you are 20 years old and you go into the welfare system, how long does the research say? That is right—you have not read the research. It is 20 years.

💬 Jacinda Ardern: I have read it.

If you had read it, if you had understood it, you would be able to stand up and give a reasonable rebuttal.

💬 Peeni Henare: Hey, I lived it—I lived it.

OK, well, then stand up and let us hear the speech, because guaranteed you have not done your homework. You stand up, sanctimonious about what we are doing, but guess what—guess what? We are making a difference. Work really counts for these young 18 and 19-year-olds. If they are vulnerable, they deserve to get the support that they need to make sure that, No. 1, they go into eligibility for work opportunities and for training. This is what this bill is doing. It is interesting that those members can stand up, they can talk about all of this, but what this Government is doing is investing in the right places for young people. There is a little bit of—

💬 Jacinda Ardern: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I understand it is a wide-ranging and robust debate, but the member has not spoken once about anything substantive in the bill during his contribution.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): The Committee stage is to review the evidence that was brought before the select committee. The member has referred several times to papers that were brought before the select committee. [Interruption] Do not talk while I am on my feet. You know the rules. The member is actually doing exactly what he is called to do within the Committee stage, and actually he sat through a number of speeches where a number of allegations were made. I am not surprised that the member quite vociferously hits the ball back over the net. I also notice that members on the other side of the Chamber are not giving to the Government member the courtesy that was extended to them. So, you know, he has got another 33 seconds—unless he wants another call.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Yes, as I have said about the bill, eligibility for 18 and 19-year-olds—if the member was listening, she would realise that too.

What is important is the wraparound support of a youth coach, parenting and budgeting services, and support to engage in education and training. How many teen parent units have those members been to? How many young people have they walked alongside, to see that they would make a difference? I will tell you what. I guarantee that if you put your hand on heart, I am not sure there would be many. Why? This is what this Government is doing. We are the party for the people.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill at the Committee stage. What a lot of bluff and bluster we have just heard from that previous speaker, Alfred Ngaro.

On this side of the Chamber, particularly the Labour Party members, we like to base our decisions on the research and the evidence. We are not like the Government—not like that party opposite—which is now going to extend a programme that demonstrably does not work. It demonstrably does not work because the number of young people not in education, employment, or training has risen, under that Government. So its plans demonstrably have not worked. Furthermore, this programme is so new that it has not been evaluated. Mr Ngaro—he has gone quiet now, has he not? What he knows is that what I have just said is absolutely true.

💬 Alfred Ngaro: What research have you got?

I am talking about the research and the evidence, Mr Ngaro. Can you please table—I invite the member to table the analysis and the evaluation of the Youth Service and that programme. I invite him to table it right now—the research and the evaluation that shows us that it works. Well, there is silence. There is silence. The programme has not been evaluated, it has not been researched, and yet there is Alfred Ngaro having the cheek to get up in this Chamber and say that it is all based on research and evidence. Well, that is demonstrably untrue.

The outcome for our young people under this Government is that the numbers not in employment, education, or training keep growing. That is the outcome of the Government’s lack of ability to actually connect with young people, to work with them, and to make them feel like a really valued part of our community, so that they can engage and participate and be educated and be employed and be involved in training. Under that Government they just get told that they are pretty damned hopeless. That is what they get told. The Minister of Finance has told every single young person in this country that they are pretty damned hopeless. It is no wonder—

💬 Jono Naylor: The member is making it up.

The member is not making it up.

💬 Alfred Ngaro: Yes she is.

The member is not making it up because I can table, if the Chair would indulge me, the evidence of Bill English saying that about young people. [Interruption] They have got noisy again, have they not? The truth is that the Government’s programmes are not working, because if they were working we would see a reduction in the number of young people not in employment, education, or training. The opposite, in fact, is happening.

The member opposite brought into this debate the issue of paid parental leave. I need to respond on that issue because, in fact, Labour introduced—increased paid parental leave by 14 weeks while it was in Government, and, in fact, extended the coverage of paid parental leave on three occasions while it was in Government. The latest extension to paid parental leave was in 2007. In 2008 we were no longer the Government—and I say that as if we left voluntarily; we, of course, did not—but the truth is that since 2007 that Government has done nothing about extending paid parental leave that it was not put under pressure to from this side of this House. If that member is genuine about early intervention, then he will be voting for extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks when it comes before the House in a few weeks’ time.

Back to the bill. I want to talk about the sanctions part of this bill. I want to address the issue about what sort of a callous Government it would be that would introduce a tough measure like sanctions and not evaluate or do any research into what happens to the young people who have those sanctions taken out against them. As the member Jan Logie said before, it might sound like they are getting a little bit of a telling off, with this idea of sanctions. In fact, what a sanction is doing is taking away their livelihood. A sanction takes away their incomes.

Is it any wonder that we have increasing numbers of families sleeping in cars? Is it any wonder that we have increasing numbers of families and their children sleeping in garages? Is it any wonder that we have more than one family living in two- and three-bedroom homes, when this Government has prided itself on taking sanctions out against some of the most vulnerable people in our community? Not only has the Government undertaken that measure to put in these sanctions against these people, to take their livelihoods away from them for sometimes quite minor misdemeanours, but it does not care enough to even find out what is happening to those people whom sanctions have been taken out against.

Under this bill, that Minister in the chair, Anne Tolley, will not be able to tell us what happens to people after they have had sanctions taken out against them. She will refuse to tell the House, and refuse to tell the country, what happens to these young people if they have these sanctions taken out against them. Why do I raise this? It is because it is important to know, when that Government makes these substantial policy changes, what the impact is on our community. What is the impact on children? I want to say to the Minister that for the Labour Party, the key question here, in this bill, is what the impact is on children. What is the impact on children of these sanctions? We know that far too many of them are ending up in inadequate housing and accommodation, partially due to the impact of this bill, but also partially due to the inability of that Government to actually address the housing crisis or even admit that one exists.

What is the impact on the child when the teen parent is required to go into full-time work or full-time education when that child is just 6 months old? What is the impact on children when their teen parent is required to go to a teen parent unit, when they do not really want to be there? What is the impact on those children when at the age of 6 months, they are required to be in early childhood education, rather than being at home, developing that close bond and development with their parent? That is the key question—the key policy question that needs to be asked here.

The previous speaker talked about sanctimony. Well, I just want to put that one right back in the Government’s court, because the sanctimony of putting these measures in without any desire to find out what the impact of those measures is, is the ultimate sanctimony. That is the ultimate sanctimony. It is creating social problems for our country—the sorts of social problems that I hoped never to see in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is these types of measures, these types of bills that are unmeasured, that are not researched, and that have no evidence base that sits behind them, that create the sort of social problem that we should not see here in the land of plenty. But we are seeing it.

The final point that I want to raise here in this debate is about the teen parent units. Yes, they were created and put in place by a Labour Government, and, yes, they are a wonderful way of empowering young parents. Rather than being punitive, they are empowering them. They are not sanctions, but they offer the opportunity of education. Under this bill, that offer of the opportunity for education becomes an obligation. It becomes something that is a requirement. It becomes something that the State is going to come and do to you if you do something not right in your life—the State is going to require you to undertake education. One of the reasons why these teen parent units work so well—having visited a number of them and as the teachers in those teen parent units tell me—is that the young parents who are in those units are motivated. They want to be there. They have chosen—because of this new little person in their life; it has motivated them—to improve themselves and to seek more education.

So I want to urge the Government to adopt and vote for the proposed amendment that has been put forward by Carmel Sepuloni, which asks to please not limit them and their ambitions to just level 2 National Certificate of Educational Achievement. Please allow them to dream. Please allow them to see education as an opportunity and as something that is going to improve their lives. For many of these young people, having a child at a young age is the very motivation that turns their lives round and makes them understand that they are now responsible for another life, and they want to improve themselves.

I thought I would take just a short call and just correct a few things. I think it is important to remember that this bill is actually seeking to increase the youth services, which currently are focused on 16 and 17-year-olds, to be able to work with 18 and 19-year-olds. So we have not got a whole lot of people with families; these are mainly young, 18 and 19-year-old New Zealanders without children who are deemed to be at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency. That is the purpose of this bill, and how we got on to sleeping in cars and children, etc., is another wonder of the Opposition, but however.

I think it is important, when we are talking about numbers of young people, to get our facts right. It is actually 82,000, I think, that the latest household labour force survey talked about, in that range from 15 to 24, who are described as “neets”.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Does that make it better?

That actually describes—and that has increased, I admit that. I accept that. But that actually describes what people are not doing; it does not describe what they are doing. Of course, we know that in that age group people are doing a whole lot of things—they might be on a gap year, they could be travelling, they could be living with their parents quite happily, they could have a partner who is supporting them—and, for whatever reason, they are not in employment, not in education, and not in training. More importantly, we should be focusing on the number of young people in that age group who are on a benefit. Those numbers are dropping, and that is as a result of greater economic activity and the growth in jobs. In some part, we are working with the Youth Service to enable young people to get the education and skills that they need by extending it through to 18 and 19-year-olds to help them to develop some of those employable skills and go on into employment. It is really important that we do not confuse this with the many, many thousands of young people who are perfectly capable of looking after themselves—and are doing so, but they just do not happen to be in education, employment, or training—and focus on those who are reliant on a benefit in order to survive. So that is the first point.

In actual fact, we are seeing the lowest number of what we describe, from an education point of view, as “neets”—that is, those 15 and 16-year-olds. We are seeing the lowest number of those that we have seen in decades. It is really important that we understand what is going on. They are staying at school longer, actually. They are staying in school longer, and the youth services are picking up those who are falling out of the school system or who are at risk of falling out of the school system, developing the relationship—it is all about relationships. So the conversation—the member talking about a telephone call laying all this out was just stupid, because no one would form a relationship in that form with a young person who has very difficult life anyway. I am sure that none of our providers are doing that.

The other thing that was mentioned was the consequences of sanctions. I ask you to think about what the consequences are of saying to a young person that if you are receiving support from the taxpayer at a time in your life when you need it, then we want you, if you are a young parent, to have your child enrolled with a GP, we want you to have your immunisation up to date, and either we want your child in early childhood education, of which we provide 20 hours—the taxpayer subsidises—or we want to be sure that your young child is attending school. They are not difficult obligations to ask of someone whom the taxpayer is supporting. You have to have a process of consequence if people are taking on the one hand but not keeping up with their obligations on the other. However, I have to say the process that our providers go through have sanctions as a very last resort, for the very reasons that the member who resumed her seat before me, Sue Moroney, outlined—that without the benefit they have no way to support themselves. So it has to be an absolutely last resort. In fact, the providers that I have talked to do everything in their power to ensure that they keep those young people compliant.

Finally, I just want to make the point that when we announced this policy one of the supporters for it was Dr Lance O’Sullivan. I remember the comments that he had to make—he was New Zealander of the Year. One of the comments that he made was that the children of some of these young parents—because of their youth, because of their inexperience, their children are probably the ones who would benefit the most from time in early childhood centres. They are the ones who would benefit from the social development, cognitive development, and emotional development that high-quality early childhood services provide. The evidence is very clear to back this sort of policy.

The other thing that I would say in closing is that I think that the Opposition is making a reasonable point that this is a fairly new policy and it is still in the process of being evaluated, and it will be some time—I am as frustrated as anyone else that we do not have a better evaluation earlier. But this is a long process with these young people, and we are constantly adjusting, with the providers, the ways of addressing and developing those relationships. But these young people are worth that investment over a long period of time. We know—the evidence tells us—that you cannot go in once, do a job, and then walk away. These are not the young people whom you can leave to try to support themselves. They are going to need a lot of support over a long period of time, and the full evaluation could take 4 to 5 years before we get a really good picture—and I am probably even cutting it short from the research scientists, who would like to see it out over a longer period of time. But we do know, from the providers and from the young people, that both in the young parents and for some of those 16 and 17-year-olds currently in the service, to have an artificial line of age, when they are receiving good support and they are starting to succeed, is a stupid thing to do, and we should not cut them off from that support when they need it.

Kia ora, Mr Chair. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to this Committee stage debate of the Social Security (Extension of Young Persons Services and Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill. I specifically want to speak to my colleague Carmel Sepuloni’s proposed amendment, which wants to amend section 170 through proposed new clause 27A to, essentially, ensure that parents are able to stay at home with their child until that child is 3 years of age. Currently when a young person is receiving the youth support payment the obligation for that young person is to be enrolled in, or available for, a full-time course of secondary or tertiary or approved work-based learning from when their child is 6 months old. So the proposition my colleague Carmel Sepuloni is bringing to the Committee is that, actually, that requirement should be on that young person receiving a youth support payment only when their baby is 3 years old.

Our rationale for that particular age is, actually, really clear and based on evidence. That evidence comes from Unicef, where research was clear about under 3-year-olds benefiting from being looked after at home. Why is it important for our babies to be looked after at home? Well, it is really important for our babies to form an attachment with a particular person. That particular person is, normally, the mum. What that attachment does for that young child is it enables them to manage their emotions, their feelings, their bodies, and it also enables them to cope with stress, which enables them to manage themselves and actually form the resiliency that that young child needs to take throughout life.

The irony of this particular piece of legislation is that this is all about young parents, but in the process of forcing young parents back into further education, training, or work, we are actually disadvantaging their children. What we should be looking at is how best to look after our most vulnerable, smallest, and most tender members of society, and they are actually the children of young people who find themselves in a circumstance where they need the support of the State.

I am asking the Minister for Social Development to specifically address the issue in the current Social Security Act that says that when your child is 6 months old you have to look for a full-time course of secondary, tertiary, or approved work-based learning. Where is the evidence that, actually, that is going to benefit the child of the young person? From our perspective, that should be one of the critical factors in this legislation.

If we really want to help that young person, it is to help that young person to get into the best position possible to look after their children. We would contend that the best support we should be giving that young parent is to be the best parent they can be. To be the best parent you can be means actually staying at home with your child until they are 3 years of age so they are taught skills about how to be a good parent. A lot of people do not know. This is not just teenaged parents; actually, this is all parents. How do you become a good parent? How do you read to your children? How do you interact with your child? How do you bathe them? It is, we believe, those skills and opportunities this Government and our Government should be facilitating for our young parents, as opposed to forcing them back into education away from their child. I think it is really narrow-minded and punitive to force those young parents into a situation where they are not with their children and actually doing what we believe they should be doing, which is bonding with their children.

This is reinforced by a piece of research titled Children’s elevated cortisol levels at daycare: A review and meta-analysis. It is a piece of research that came out in 2006 by Vermeer and van IJzendoorn. This is another piece of research where they collected research from a whole lot of people who had looked at the cost-benefit to the child of children being in a day care setting and not with their parent. The context of this research actually speaks to modern living. There are a lot of parents today who, for a number of reasons, actually do have to go back to work. We understand that—that ultimately it then becomes a choice for parents, in certain circumstances, to use day care as a means for them to integrate back into the workforce.

The interesting thing, if we look at some from research from the UK is that in 1981 24 percent of women were back at work within a year of childbirth. In 2001 that figure had increased to 67 percent of women who were back at work within a year. That increased to 76 percent of women who were back at work when the child was aged between 12 and 18 months. Day care does have a place in our society, but I guess the context of the research has highlighted that the effect of day care attendance on cortisol excretion was especially notable in children younger than 36 months. It actually said, because of their stressful interactions in a group setting—which makes it all the more vital to ensure that our children, our most precious babies, the building blocks of any society, actually have an opportunity to spend the first 3 years of their lives bonding with their primary caregiver, their parent.

I would ask the Minister to seriously consider this amendment by my colleague Carmel Sepuloni. I think it is based around an age where there is very good evidence about how we best support young mothers from disadvantaged backgrounds. The other part of the evidence from the research I quoted earlier was that, actually, children from middle-class families do benefit from going to day care. We are not talking about children from middle-class families; we are talking about children of parents who are receiving the youth support payment and the obligations the State wants to place on those young parents—to go back to education full-time and I believe it is at the expense of their children. I would have thought we should be prioritising those children and doing as much as possible to ensure, as the Minister said, that they are enrolled with a primary health organisation, that they are enrolled or on a pathway to ensuring that they are meeting all the developmental steps through Plunket, and that we are supporting those parents to be the best parents they can be. What I see from this piece of legislation is that is incredibly narrow-minded and is not even looking at the next generation of New Zealand children.

I would hope the debate we are having in the Committee is not actually falling on deaf ears; that it is actually falling on ears that want to do what is best not only for the young people who find themselves as parents early in life, but also the children of those young parents. We would do everything in our power to make sure that they are not going to be the next generation of beneficiaries. I implore this Committee to further debate the merits of my colleague Carmel Sepuloni’s amendment. I think a lot of thought was put into the amendment. The ages have not been plucked out of nowhere. I think the evidence is really clear, and I think this is a real test of the commitment this Government has to young people. Otherwise, it just ends up being about, like everyone else has said previously, the money, about saving money—about, I guess, limiting the liability on the State.

It is not about investment, which we have heard so much about, particularly from my colleague Alfred Ngaro tonight. I would have thought an investment approach would have ensured that we are concerned about the children of young parents and we would be doing everything we can to make sure they have a secure attachment with their parent and that their parent is in the best position to be the best parent they can be.

There is nothing that attracts more robust debate than when we are debating issues around social welfare, social development, and our children. Today’s Committee stage of this particular bill has been no exception. We have heard some very interesting calls come from across the other side of the Chamber.

There are a couple of points I want to make, particularly with regard to evaluation and evidence. We have heard that the Youth Service has had no significant evaluation. We do know that young people, particularly young people who have had difficult backgrounds and need some intervention to ensure that they can become better parents and much more fully contributory to society in general, do need some help. With regard to this particular bill and this particular service, what we have not heard is the evidence that this bill—that this plan—is actually going to make the kind of difference that the Minister for Social Development claims it is going to make. That is where we do not have sufficient evidence, because there has been no evaluation, and yet we are going down the line of more resource and more support into a service. We have no idea that it actually makes the kind of difference that the Minister is claiming.

Pilot programmes, we know, are resourced to succeed. And this is one such case—where this programme has been resourced to succeed. When we get to fully rolling out this programme—when the resources actually do fall away—that is when the wheels start falling off these types of things. When a pilot programme has been resourced to succeed and we have done no evaluation around whether it will continue to succeed when it is fully implemented, why are we subjecting our young people to this?

My colleagues have made some very useful contributions on this. How does it impact on the children? For me particularly, one of the most abhorrent aspects of our current social welfare system is the process of sanctions where money is taken out of the households of parents of young children. We have had lots of discussion—Mr Ngaro was quite vociferous about this point—but I challenge Mr Ngaro to go into a house where a beneficiary has been sanctioned and watch the impacts of halving that person’s income on their children. I challenge any member on the other side of the Chamber to actually look at the impacts that sanctions have on our children. It is completely abhorrent that we would use that as a mechanism to try to “encourage young people to be better parents”—where they watch their children actually having to starve. I do not normally get emotional about things, but this policy is wrong, it is bad, and it should never happen.

There is a lack of evidence around why it is that we are requiring young parents in the Youth Service to have work obligations when their youngest child is 1 year old, or—if there is a teen parenting programme—when that child is 6 months old. That is completely at odds with any other obligations for any other parent who has a benefit. Looking at the Support for Children in Hardship Bill, which was recently debated, the discussion was around reducing the age from 5 to 3—when your youngest was 3 years old, that would be when your work obligations would kick in if you were a beneficiary. When we heard the officials at the select committee, when that bill was being heard, there was no evidence provided to justify the age of 3. There was no evidence provided, except to say that that was the age where most parents returned to work—when their youngest child was aged 3. The obligation on most parents is a financial obligation; they need to go back to work so they can continue to pay their bills. There was no evidence provided by the Minister in that regard. There is no evidence provided by the Minister in this regard that forcing young parents—

Louisa Wall earlier this evening said she hoped that there are people listening across the Chamber. I have been listening intently to what has been said here this evening at this Committee stage of this bill, and, I have got to say, I have really been somewhat taken aback by what I have heard from the other side of the Chamber. If you follow through the logic of what has been said, there is almost a judgment on parents who would go back to work before their children have turned 3. Actually, there are parents who do that all the time and their children cope OK, but those people over there have, basically, said that that is a bad thing to do. “You shouldn’t go back to work until your child’s 3 because, developmentally, that’s not good for them.”—I have been quite surprised, I have got to say, to hear that coming from the other side of the Chamber. Personally, in our own household, that is exactly what we did do. We went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that one of us would be home with our kids when they were young. I spent a fair bit of time at home myself with our kids when they were little. That was what we valued doing.

But there are some absolutely definite reasons why, in this legislation, this policy is a beneficial thing for these young parents. Yes—guess what—there are some expectations that we are putting on some people. Yes, there are some requirements of things that we expect them to do. We want them to actually take some responsibility, and so there are some requirements for them to get back into learning and otherwise.

What has been asked by other members opposite me this evening is how it is going to benefit the children if a young mother is going back to school full-time. Well, I will tell you how it benefits the children. It benefits the children because if that parent is getting an education, their chances of providing for those children further down the track—spending less time simply relying on a Government benefit to get them through—will mean that those kids are going to be better off in the long term.

The beauty about the teen parent units—and the ones I have visited and had the opportunity to go and speak with young parents at—is that the parents are not just sitting at home isolated with their small young child, which they potentially will be if they are not involved in education, but are actually there mixing with other mothers. They are there mixing with their teachers, and have the opportunities, as the day goes through, to still actually have some connection with their children. The teen parenting unit, and the model for education that is being provided there, is not simply about a mother leaving their child behind, going away, and ignoring them. No—in what I have seen, in what I have experienced, and in the conversations that I have had with those mums who are there, they like the opportunity to be able to learn. They have aspirations for themselves, and I support them in that. The ones I have talked to want to go further, they want to do more, and they really appreciate the fact that, more often than not, their child is in a room just next door or a couple of doors down. They have the opportunity to see them, and to do feeds if they are still at the stage of feeding them. They can actually catch up with them at morning teatime, lunchtime, or whatever, and they are supported in that.

The other thing that has been questioned is where the proof is that this is working. I want to just make mention of what the main benefit client numbers for 18 to 24-year-olds are doing. In March of 2016 the number of 18 to 24-year-olds who were on the main benefit was 45,493. In March of 2014 that number was 50,000. There are roughly 5,000 fewer—or 10 percent less—young people aged 18 to 24 on benefits. Getting people off benefits and into work, into education, is going to be beneficial to them—absolutely beneficial to them—in the long term.

The other thing that has been said from across the Chamber tonight is that we are putting labels on, that we are painting young people into a corner, that we are not being aspirational for them. I have just got to say that that shows a complete lack of understanding of what it is to work with young people. To work with young people, you have got to identify which ones to start with, and there have to be assessment criteria. When I was working in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service—it was a tertiary mental health service—we did not have our doors wide open for everybody to come along. No, you had to be referred there either by a GP, a guidance counsellor, or by somebody else, and that was the form of assessment. Somebody had to meet certain criteria before that service would actually intervene.

Then, of course—as anybody who works with a young person knows—you do not stay in that place. You do not stay with identifying them and saying: “You’re a high-risk person, now I’m going to treat you like this.” No, you work with them on their strengths. A good mentor—and we have got some great mentors who are working through our youth services right now who are doing great work with our young people, working with them, identifying their strengths, and believing in them. But guess what—we are aspiring for them more. We are suggesting to them that they can actually take some responsibility in their own lives. We are giving that to them bit by bit, as they prove that they can manage on their own.

This is a good bill. It is going to ensure that more young people are going to go further, that more young parents are going to do better with their families, and that those children within those families will have a better shot at a better life within Aotearoa New Zealand. I am delighted to support this. I think it has been really well thought through. It is evidence-based. It is not about just sitting back and saying: “Actually, you know what? This is acceptable. We’re just going to leave things how they were.” It is really interesting—I have heard people say: “You know what? It’s getting worse. It’s getting worse, let’s do nothing.” Well, actually, we are not going to do nothing. We are going to do something. We are going to invest in these young people. We are going to provide them with good services, we are going to provide them with good support, and we are going to see great young New Zealanders come through as a result of this intervention.

Before I make the next call, I am just going to make a brief explanation for my reasoning behind making the call. Carmel Sepuloni took the initial two calls before leave was given to take Parts 1 and 2 together. I am ruling that since that leave was given, there is a new question, and therefore Ms Sepuloni’s earlier calls do not count against this question.

I just want to refer to what the previous member, Jono Naylor, was just saying, and that was that the Government is measuring success by the number of young people it can get off benefits. Well, that is not, and should not be, a measure of success. The actual success is where these young people go on to, but we are not getting the information from the Government to tell us that, actually, these people are going on to anything better.

I was talking to my colleague Peeni Henare earlier tonight. We were having discussions about the fact that we were both teen parents—or perhaps I had mine at 20, pregnant at 19. We cannot even imagine the conditions that this Government is trying to impose on young people having been imposed on us. We were just talking about the fact that we do not even know any young people who, around our age group, stayed on a benefit for a long period of time after having a child as a teenager. In fact, we heard Alfred Ngaro say that if a person has a child as a teenager, they are more likely to stay on the benefit for something like 13 years. Bill English said the other day that if a young person goes on a benefit, they are likely to stay on a benefit for an average of 18 years. Where is the Government getting these figures from? I put parliamentary questions in to try to find out where Bill English got that number from, and that answer is now delayed. We have no response from that side of the House, because the Government does not have any evidence to support the statements it is making, and that is the problem.

Going back to myself and Peeni and other people who had children when they were young and other people who had to rely on a benefit for a certain period of time—actually, most of us have aspirations and most of us went on to get jobs. Most of us went on to continue studying or to get further education, and we were not the exception, actually, National Government; we were the rule. So that side of the House is creating legislation around a very, very small group of people, and is saying that youth services should be available only to the very, very, very at-risk group that it has identified through its predictive risk modelling. That deficit base sets that programme up to fail, and we know that. We know that in the classroom when you are teaching—with anything that you do—if you have a deficit base then you are setting it up to fail. So we do not support the model that that Government has come up with.

It is not just us who do not support it, because I do want to refer to some of the submissions that came through and the concerns that they expressed about this bill. The first one that I am going to refer to is the submission made by the Salvation Army. Quoting the Salvation Army, “In general The Salvation Army opposes the intent and much of the content of the Bill. The principle reason for this opposition is that the Army believes that it is [both] paternalistic and somewhat contradictory to treat 18 and 19 year olds in the same way as 16 and 17 year olds. The Army believes that it is important to respect individuals’ legal and civil rights ahead of particular policy objectives which may in themselves be of questionable value. It is the Army’s opinion that the proposed extension of ‘young persons services’ and the associated obligations and sanctions to 18 and 19 year olds is a clear example of the State placing its policy objectives ahead of the legitimate rights of citizens and that as a practice this is unwise and unfair.” I value what the Salvation Army has to say, actually. The Salvation Army has a lot to say of substance in this area, so it is such a pity that the National Government has ignored what it has to say.

It did mention the issue around sanctions here. I want to speak a little bit to that. There was a submission made by Kay Brereton on behalf of the National Beneficiary Advocacy Consultation Group, and that speaks a little bit about the consequences of sanctions in this context. As a person who not only was a young parent, and not only was on a benefit for a period of time—but did not stay on it for 18 years like Bill English said we do—I also worked with youth for a period of time. Jono Naylor says that he worked with young people, and thinks he is the only one in the Chamber who has.

The concern that I have as a person who worked for a youth service is that, actually, I think that the ability to sanction by these youth services compromises their ability to do the job properly. How can you form a trusting relationship with a young person, when you, at any time, can contact Work and Income and have their benefit cancelled, have them sanctioned in some way? What kind of motivation is it? What kind of motivation are you instilling in the young person when the only motivation that you are giving to them for actually staying in line, doing the things they are supposed to be doing, is actually that otherwise you will cut their benefit?

What happens to the importance of a youth service and youth workers actually being about instilling in this young person a passion for getting out and getting further education, a passion for getting into work that they are interested in? What about instilling life skills in a young person and walking alongside them so that actually you can give them hope that there may be something better out there for them? That should be the motivation, not the motivation being “I will pull your benefit if you do not do what I tell you to do.” We have got real issues with the fact that the Government is making the youth services do that. We have to remember that, actually, this really is, in so many ways, just a matter of the Government contracting out the case management of these clients. It is not really about trying to create decent youth service provisions. It is about the Government devolving responsibility for these young people to these service providers. So we have got issues with that.

I have brought up earlier, and my colleagues have brought up earlier, that there were concerns raised by the Human Rights Commission in its submission that this discriminates against young people. Just because these are young people who find themselves in an undesirable situation, where they have had to come for support to the State to go on a benefit and to get support through welfare, that does not mean that they should have their rights—their human rights—taken away, but that is what this bill does. It does that, as a colleague of mine said earlier, in the way of making a young parent return to work earlier than we would expect of any other parent. It is saying that, actually, if you are a young parent, you have to go back to work or study when your child is 1 year old or 6 months old.

Peeni Henare and I were talking about this—we actually did go straight back to study and to work. We did not stay home, but we chose that. Actually, in hindsight, thinking about it, one of my biggest regrets, having been a young parent, is not taking the time to enjoy being a parent. That is the pressure that gets put on people, as if “You must do all of these things, you must get back into study, you must get into work straight away.” If you want to, that is great. But we have got to remember that the most important job any of us will do in our lifetime is parenting. As my colleague Louisa said—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

—it is important to remember that that bonding goes on—Louisa Wall said that that bonding in those first 3 years is so important. If we want to make sure that moving forward into the future we have a generation of citizens who are able to make a valuable contribution, then we will make sure that we support their parents to be able to support them well now.

I am going to leave it at that for now. Hopefully, I will get an opportunity to take another call, but there are so many reasons that we are not supporting this bill. Of course we support young people to go on and get education, to go on into employment, but the way in which the National Government is trying to do it will not be successful, has not been successful, and actually it is detrimental to our young people.

It is all very well to come into this Chamber and make fine speeches and sanctimonious—in fact, to take personal objections to what members on the other side of the Chamber have said; but, actually, the role of the Opposition is to do a bit of work. If the member cares to go into the Ministry of Social Development website, she will find her way to all the explanations of how the liability is worked out. It is all there; you just have to do a bit of homework.

The other thing I would say to the member who has just resumed her seat, Carmel Sepuloni, is that there is plenty of research—again, if she does her homework. I refer her to the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study—actually, she does not even have to go and do very much; there is a television programme currently showing that will actually tell you about some of the research that we are basing our work on that is well worthwhile having a look at—and to the Christchurch Health and Development Study that is freely available on the internet. That actual study found that teen parents, relative to a comparison group who were not mothers at age 21, were nine times more likely to have no qualifications and three times more likely to be receiving a benefit.

You see, the difficulty is that the member who has just resumed her seat does not understand what average means. Average means that there are some above and there are some below. So she may well have been a teen parent who went back to school. Unfortunately, the evidence that we have looking back at what has happened to teen parents is that if we do not get them back into education within 1 or 2 years of their leaving it their chances of not returning to education are many, many more times greater. That is why we want to get them back into education, in a supported manner, as quickly as possible.

I just have to say that it is pretty rich the Labour members taking credit for teen parent units because I, as Minister of Education, came in at the start of the global financial crisis to find a long list of teen parent unit applications that, despite years of massive surpluses, the previous Labour Government never funded—never funded. This National Government, even when times were really tough and money was really short, funded them, it supported them, and it expanded them. Those are the facts, and you know you are wrong. This Government understands that teen parent units support young mums back into education at the same time as they are able to give them parenting education; they get the socialisation, they have close contact with their children, and they are able to bond and continue breastfeeding. Those are the facts.

There are a few different points I would like to make in this contribution. I would like to go back to the Minister’s previous contribution, when she started her speech by saying “I don’t know what the Opposition are talking about when they are talking about children and families and cars. This has got nothing to do with sole parents.”, I think I remember her saying. Well, if you look at the front page of the bill and you look at the main purpose of it, that being to extend the Youth Service, “This bill would extend the existing Youth Service to: all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children; 18- and 19-year-old beneficiaries without children who are considered at significant risk of long-term welfare dependency.”

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: That’s what I said.

Ha, ha! No, Minister, that is not what came across in your speech. You were saying it was not about children, and so the concerns of people talking about children and families were irrelevant to this. But, actually, when it covers all 19-year-old beneficiaries with children, I think talking about families is relevant. When we talk about cars, that is relevant because this is extending the sanction regime, there are extended obligations, and there are more opportunities for sanctions to a larger group of people. So, therefore, when people have the ability for their income to be cut, it makes it harder to pay your rent and it makes it harder to keep a roof over your head. So it is not a long stretch to be talking about families and to be talking about cars.

The Minister also talked about how it was more important to focus on the benefit rates rather than “neets” because, for those young people who are not in employment, education, or training, well, that is just irrelevant because they might just be happy not to be in employment, education, or training. I still have not heard the argument about why the unemployment rates are more important than engaged young people who are either setting themselves up to further their education in order to participate in life, or to do so through employment. Why—why—is the unemployed receiving a benefit the critical factor? I still have not heard the argument for that.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Because they cost money.

Because—pardon? I just heard some mumbling over there. I could not quite work that out.

We also heard that the evidence is clear that this is the way to go forward, except, actually, the evidence is deeply contested. It is not clear. What we know is that what the Government has conceptualised as an investment approach is actually predictive risk modelling. The quality of the information that you put into that model will affect the outcome—sorry, Mr Chair, not you. The quality of the information that the Government puts in will affect the outcome, as well as the quality of the programme, as well as what you are driving all of this towards.

We know that the data that the Government is talking about at the moment, that it is going to put into this, is Child, Youth and Family contact, educational outcomes, and gender. We know that that data shows 58 percent of young people who are in contact on a care and protection basis with Child, Youth and Family are Māori. We heard very disturbing comments from officials regarding whether this may have significant consequences for Māori in terms of their alienation from the system, and whether it may be perceived that you could not put in race as one of those factors because that would be perceived as racist—fairly—but whether, actually, you may have the same result because of that sway through Child, Youth and Family, in terms of the data. Their response was “Don’t worry, we’ll get them anyway.” That is of concern to the Green Party.

There are so many stories that have been told in this House, and all of us know of people, in their experience at school, in their experiences with the police, and in their experiences with Child, Youth and Family who recognise racism is a problem in our country. If we are putting data into this model that is reliant on the results of institutionalised racism, then we are at risk of exacerbating the harm of that. We cannot allow that to happen. This legislation will do that.

Also, we do not have evidence that the programme, which is the middle stage of this whole process, is working. As we know, the number of young people not in education and training is increasing. The analysis of the success of this scheme is not comprehensive. We do not have comprehensive data for that yet. This Government, which continually tells us it is being data driven and it is all about the data, is not giving us the data to be able to prove and justify this. It has been happening and available for this group of people, and it is extending it to adults. That has been widely criticised by the Salvation Army, by the Family Violence Clearinghouse, and by other organisations that are very worried about this, and rightly so. We do not have the evidence as yet that this approach, and the programmes being provided, work.

I have given the critique already about where this is driving. There is no explicit target about improving the well-being, opportunities, or life outcomes of our young people. It is solely about reducing welfare financial liability. That drives the work. That is not for the benefit of us in this society.

I also just want to pick up on the Government’s Supplementary Order Papers, and there is a fair stack of them that have been added, I think, in the last couple of days, that have not actually been considered by the select committee. A significant number of them are technical but not all of them. Some of them actually have substantive impact, and I would like to recognise the proposed new clause 27A on Supplementary Order Paper 182, which amends section 170 to require young people to provide details of accommodation costs, service costs, lawful debt, and liabilities. I recognise that they are already required to provide that information, but by moving that provision after section 170(1)(e), it clarifies that a failure to provide that information within 20 working days is an obligation failure and it may attract sanctions.

There are two points I want to make about this amendment, which has not been considered by the public and has not been considered by the Social Services Committee. I would suggest that the fact that the Government is moving this provision into the place that enables it to apply sanctions, and that time frame of 20 days, means that some young people are resisting providing that information. So these young people are not necessarily—despite what the Government would seem to suggest to us—loving this service and finding it fabulous and supportive and strength-based. Actually, some of these young people who have been put into this service are resisting it, and I can understand why they might, and further sanctions have been put in place to force them to provide very personal details to these people who are supposed to be changing their lives. I suggest that this is actually an indication of the failure of the system.

Another aspect that has been brought in in terms of these amendments, which have been brought to this House very late in the day, is a new provision extending the new sanctions regime to all young people on money management, effectively. It also provides that if a young spouse or partner of a specified beneficiary, who is not subject to money management, fails to comply with an obligation placed on the young person under that same section, that failure is, again, treated as failure to comply with the work test or with work preparation obligations, and it attracts relevant sanctions.

I think it is dodgy to bring amendments to the House that further extend the ability to apply sanctions without public scrutiny, without proper process, and without the consideration of the select committee. I really am quite concerned about what the Minister has brought to this House and I think people should be questioning the Government on that.

I would also like to bring up another point, which is not central—oh no, actually, I would like to go back to another point, when the Minister was talking about how great this is, and there was mention made of youth development. In our society we have an issue with violence. Many of these young people will have experienced violence in their childhood, and what that does—

I move, That the question be now put.

Given that this piece of legislation is going to have a great impact on a number of young Māori children—that, in fact, the majority of the people whom this is targeting will be Māori—you would like to think that a Government support party that is the Māori Party, which represents the aspirations of Māori people, would also support this legislation, and I wish I could say that that was the case. I truly do wish that that was the case because the intent of the bill we absolutely support. The intent of the investment model, we absolutely support. If this is to reduce the number of young people who are going to be long-term beneficiaries, we have no issue with that whatsoever, because we do want to have an aspiration where our people are not co-dependent on the Government.

But we are talking about the most at-risk group of young people. What we have done was we spoke with officials today to get some satisfaction around some of these sanctions, and I have to say I was happy with the majority of the answers, given that we were able to make a couple of suggestions, like having face-to-face contact. There is a remarkable idea—having face-to-face contact before someone is actually removed from the benefit. That would be good because prior to that it was three strikes, a phone call, and a letter. Well, I know that if I get a phone call to my cellphone that has an undisclosed number on it, I am not answering it any time soon because it probably means that there is something going on—some sort of trouble that I do not want to know about. I put it over there in a box. I know that that is what our young people do. And a letter, which may or may not go to the right address, which they may or may not see any time soon, and which they may or may not read, is how they are going to be notified that they are off benefit.

Then we asked what the follow-up was. So you kick someone off, and then what—nothing? “No. Actually, we will go and see them in 6 weeks.”—6 weeks when they have had no benefit. What are they going to do there? Well, they will fall into some more criminal behaviour, or into potentially criminal behaviour, to try and sustain themselves. If these are the most—most—at-risk people, I would think that it does not stop, and, in fact, we have now been given some satisfaction that within the 5 days we have asked for, that will be followed up, face to face, yet again.

So, actually, there are a number of things here that I support, but I cannot support the fact that we will hold a different yardstick up to these most at-risk, vulnerable people from the one we do to a 20-year-old who has a child. A 20-year-old does not have obligations to go back to work or into training until their child is 3 years old. Yes, Mr Jono Naylor has pointed out that he and his wife did everything they could to have one of the parents stay home with their children because they realised that that was important. Well, what a luxury that is. What a luxury that is. It is a luxury, but, actually, it is an investment, is it not? Mr Naylor would say that that was an investment in their children’s future to ensure that they had the best start. Well, why are we not offering these most at-risk young people the same opportunity to put that emotional investment of bonding into their child and give them the choice, not the yardstick, or not the beating stick that we will threaten them with—threaten them into compliance? Give them the choice. Have some real belief in their own aspirations. They may want to do that. But if they do not, why are we forcing them to go back to training at 6 months?

Some of the most hideous crimes committed against children in this country have been carried out by people who did not form a bond with their babies—who did not form a bond—and were under stress because of the impoverished conditions that they may have been in, from drug and alcohol abuse, or from a number of things. But when you have a young person who is already struggling and you add more struggle on top of them by forcing them to take their baby at 6 months old and do all the things they need to do, by themselves—to get to their course or to get to their job—it is hard and it hurts, and we struggle with that. The young people who are the most vulnerable in this country—we are holding them to a different standard, of more control and of more pressure.

I understand that the Youth Service wants to try to make the change in these young people’s lives, but if you are putting those young people, with those young children, under stress, the pressure will be heaped upon these young people, who now have to have a whole other standard, which they have to live up to or they will have portions of their benefit taken away from them. That is a threat and a stick, and it is not the way we raise our young people to ensure that they can care for and nurture their children and grow a bond where, in a moment of stress or a moment of panic, they do not turn round and inflict harm and violence on these young babies. We all know what it is like to go through sleepless nights while we raise and feed our children, and what if those mothers are feeding their children? Are they now going to have to go to the school toilet or somewhere else to express? Are they now going to have to do that in a public toilet if they are working? Or shall we just not bother to let them have the luxury—the luxury—of continuing to feed those children as they grow and strengthen and continue to build that bond?

We are missing something in this country when our young people are being slaughtered through child abuse, when our young children’s lives are being taken. We are missing something, and that is not about separating our children from their parents; it is about strengthening that relationship together. I understand that there are parenting courses and all of those sorts of things, but it is not just the parent who raises our children. For Māori communities, it has to be extended whānau who are involved. We need to think about the family unit as a whole and not the parent in isolation, yet that is what we are doing.

I wish—I do—that I could stand and support this bill, but for that reason alone, despite a number of other concerns that we have, I simply cannot. I find that quite distressing, considering that this is going to impact young Māori people more than any other group, that this is going to be targeted to young Māori parents more than any other group, and that these young Māori babies are going to be subjected to the stress of being hauled around from pillar to post. I know what that is like, like many of the others. It is hard, it is stressful, and I do not believe that this bill alleviates that stress. I believe that it is adding to that stress, and that reason, beyond a whole raft of others, is the simple reason why we cannot support this today. It goes against the very human rights of our country. Thank you.

Can I just say that I would normally go across the aisle to Jan Logie, but she has had four calls.

I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

The question is—well, is there any point? No one else went for the call. Do people mind if I just go on to putting the questions? OK. The normal thing is that no one else goes for the call, but I did see that one of her colleagues was—OK.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 182 in the name of the Hon Anne Tolley, and the following amendments in her name to clause 5 and clause 33(2) be agreed to:

in clause 5, replace “Social Security (Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery) Amendment Act 2014” with “Social Security Amendment Act (No 2) 2015”.

in clause 5, in the table item, replace “Part 4” with “Part 5”.

in clause 33(2), replace “Part 3” with “Part 4”.

in clause 33(2), heading to new Part 4 of schedule 32, replace “Part 4” with “Part 5”.