Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment: I present a legislative statement on the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

First of all, I’d like to acknowledge Minister Carmel Sepuloni, who, because of alert level 4, couldn’t be here to read this herself. The Government has committed to overhauling the welfare system, following years of neglect by the previous National Government. Our vision for the welfare system is that it ensures that people have an adequate income and standard of living, are treated with and can live in dignity, and are able to participate meaningfully in their communities.

In November 2019, Cabinet endorsed the long-term welfare overhaul work programme to build towards that vision. As part of the welfare overhaul work programme, we committed to continue to explore the removal of ineffective obligations and sanctions that were recommended by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. The short-term focus of that work is on the sanctions that impact children and their families and whānau. Initial progress on this review of obligations and sanctions has included the repeal of section 192 of the Social Security Act 2018 in April of 2020, which previously sanctioned sole parent beneficiaries who did not identify the other parent of their child.

The subsequent child policy was also identified by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group as an ineffective sanction and one of many aspects of a system that does not support women’s role as carers. The previous National Government introduced the policy because they were focused on requiring parents to return to work as early as possible after having a subsequent child. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the policy has reduced time on benefits or improved financial or social outcomes. In fact, it disproportionately impacts Māori and women, and it has contributed to increased complexity in the welfare system and reduced flexibility for parents to spend time with their child or children.

This bill will achieve the removal of the subsequent child policy, which was recommended for removal alongside other obligations and sanctions in the welfare system. The removal of the subsequent child policy through this bill builds on the Government’s work to make the welfare system fairer. By 1 April 2022, 109,000 families and whānau with children will also be, on average, $175 a week better off as a result of all the Government’s changes to income support since 2017. Homai te pakipaki. This includes the benefit increases through Budget 2021, the Families Package, the $25 lift to benefit rates as part of the initial COVID-19 response, and the indexation of main benefits to average wage increases in the last two years.

So what does this bill do? If a caregiver has a dependent child and becomes the caregiver of an additional dependent child whilst receiving a relevant main benefit, the additional child is deemed to be a subsequent child under the current policy. A client’s eligibility for sole parent support and work or work preparation obligations are generally based on the age of their youngest dependent child. Under the current policy, when a client has a subsequent child while receiving a main benefit, that child’s age is only considered for the purposes of benefit entitlements and work or work preparation obligations until they reach the age of one. Work or work preparation obligations and eligibility for sole parent support are then generally based upon the age of a parent’s youngest non-subsequent child. This means that subsequent children are treated differently compared to non-subsequent children in the welfare system. In some instances, it means part-time or full-time work obligations are applied to parents from their subsequent child’s first birthday.

Part 1 of the bill will remove the subsequent child policy from the Social Security Act 2018 and Social Security Regulations 2018 on 8 November 2021. This change is intended to have a positive impact on the cohort affected by the policy, including increased flexibility to spend time at home with children if that is the best option for the family, increased equity and simplicity in the welfare system, and a likely reduction in stress for clients, which may positively impact mental health and wellbeing, through the setting of work obligations that recognise the age of all dependent children in the family.

Part 2 of the bill sets out transitional provisions to improve the client experience and comes into force on 11 October 2021. This allows for a 28-day transition period prior to the policy’s removal, which will improve the client experience of clients with a benefit application or a change in circumstances around the time of the policy’s removal by preventing multiple changes to their benefit type and/or work or work preparation obligations within a short period of time. The transition period also extends 28 days after the policy’s removal. The dates of application, decision by the Ministry of Social Development, and benefit commencement can be spread across several weeks. A broad window is therefore required to ensure equitable treatment across a range of situations within the transition period and to ensure a streamlined process for clients.

I note that the bill is narrow in scope, focusing only on the subsequent child policy itself. This will return clients with a subsequent child to the status quo of the usual work and work preparation obligations framework, rather than treating them differently based on their child being considered to be a subsequent child. As of 30 April 2021, approximately 11,400 clients are impacted by the policy. We are continuing our work to review wider obligations and sanctions in the welfare system, including the usual work and work preparation obligations framework, as part of the medium-term welfare overhaul work programme.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Social Services and Community Committee for its consideration of the bill and to thank Angie Warren-Clark, the chair of it. The committee has recommended by majority that the bill be passed with four minor and technical amendments. I welcome the committee’s recommended minor and technical amendments, which are in line with the policy intent of the removal of the subsequent child policy, and improve the workability of the bill. I’ve provided further details on these amendments in the legislative statement that I presented to the House in advance of this second reading.

I’d also like to acknowledge the individual organisations and the independent Crown entity who took time to consider and to submit on the bill. The select committee received 31 submissions on the bill, and, of those who provided written submissions, 13 submitters gave oral presentations to the committee. It was encouraging to see that the majority of submitters were in support of the bill. Of the 31 submissions received, 25 supported the bill, four opposed the bill, and the remaining two submissions did not explicitly indicate their position on the bill. Many submitters drew from personal or anecdotal experiences within the welfare system and made it clear that the current subsequent child policy has a negative impact on the parents or caregivers and the children that it affects. I’m proud to progress this bill—I should say: on behalf of Minister Sepuloni. She’s proud to progress this bill with their support to remove this policy.

A few themes of support for the bill raised by submitters. They align and support our intent for this bill, which is ultimately to improve equity. Removing the policy will align the treatment of a subsequent child with that of a non-subsequent child in the setting of work or work preparation obligations in determining eligibility for sole parent support. Submitters in support of the bill highlighted specific concerns that the current subsequent child policy impacts child development, does not reflect parents’ caring responsibilities, has caused stress and impacts mental health, disproportionately impacts Māori and women, has created inequities in the welfare system, has not achieved its intended purpose, puts pressure on low-income families to have fewer children, and contributes to hardship and poverty. This bill aims to address many of these issues raised by submitters in the simplest possible way: by removing the subsequent child policy.

In conclusion, Madam Chair—Madam Speaker, sorry—this Government’s vision for the welfare system is to ensure that people—oh, sorry, Mr Speaker!—have an adequate income and standard of living, are treated—

💬 Greg O’Connor: Blimmin masks!

—with and can live in dignity—yeah, ha, ha!—and are able to participate meaningfully in their communities. This bill is a key part of the welfare overhaul work programme to build towards this vision. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I stand in opposition tonight to the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill. The National Party has made no secret that it was not going to support the bill, and simply because it was one that was introduced by the fifth National Government, under the Hon Paula Bennett, as part of the significant amount of welfare reforms that went on there. I take note of one of the comments that the previous speaker, the Hon Kelvin Davis, has just made regarding the effect of some of the National Party’s policies in the previous National-led Government. They were world-renowned welfare reforms, and I pay great tribute to the Hon Bill English for his visionary stand in terms of the social investment approach that a lot of those policies were guided by. It’s a shame to see legislation now unwinding some of that work. The reason that we are opposing this bill is because it simply makes it easier for people who have multiple children, on benefit, to stay on benefit, and that ultimately punishes those children—and I’ll get into that in a little bit more time.

Basically, what this bill does is it reverses the subsequent child policy that was introduced in 2012, and what it does is it, basically, takes away any obligation and any commitment and the sanctions that were imposed under that previous amount of legislation. The Government says that the purpose of removing it is to reduce the stress on parents and increase the time that parents have to interact with their children and support their early development. That is great if you have that ability to do that when you are paid by the State, but the reason it was brought in to align with the one-year age bracket was because that is what people in paid employment get in terms of parental leave. So if people who are at work get 12 months parental leave so that they can spend time with their children, then it was seen as a perfect alignment that people on benefit would have that same time frame.

Why we brought in that policy in the beginning, the subsequent child policy, was because we always felt, and still do, that the welfare system—and one thing that New Zealand can be very proud of adopting back in the early days—provided a safety net. It is a safety net for those people who really needed it, but it was never designed as a lifestyle choice. We know that the subsequent child policy, when we introduced it, went alongside a whole lot of other support, and that went along with employment support, preparation for employment, extra education, and some sort of workforce training, so that people could become ready to re-enter the workforce. So that subsequent child policy did not stand alone; it stood as part of a suite of initiatives that wrapped around those and provided support to those most at risk. The point of it was that it did not, then, risk that long-term benefit dependency, because you are reducing that risk and engaging people in the workforce earlier. The best way—we know this and I know the Minister that has just spoken said that it has not worked, but the reality is that the research is clear that in order to escape hardship and poverty, the best avenue out is to be in paid employment. It’s not only about being paid for that employment; it is about the increase in confidence that it gives people, it is about the support networks that they get from being in a workplace, increased social mobility, but it also interrupts that intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. They are great reasons to have that subsequent child policy in place.

We also have evidence about why that policy did work. I go back to the 2010 and 2011 Welfare Working Group’s work and have a couple of comments out of their report: “ – the level of support and general expectation to be looking for work in the benefit system – makes an important difference in how long someone stays on a benefit.” That’s a very good incentive. There is also quoted in the report: “There is growing consensus that joblessness is particularly harmful to mental and physical health. There is increasing evidence that long-term benefit receipt has harmful effects on confidence, skills and future employability.” But, most of all, it says that “Children raised in long-term benefit dependent families are likely to suffer adverse health effects, poorer educational achievement and reduced aspiration.” We are starting to see that with the truancy levels in this country going up, the slide in our educational achievement, especially in our high schools. If we can do anything to reverse those trends, we should be.

I move on to the submissions—and the Minister has mentioned some of those submissions. There were only 31, which is probably not surprising, but we did have some top-quality submitters to the select committee, and some that we would expect and hope to hear from in that process, like Barnardos New Zealand; the Child Poverty Action Group; the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, of course—Judge Andrew Becroft was a passionate submitter—and the Salvation Army, of course. But one of them was a young person called Ali Haidari—I hope I’ve said that right—and part of that submission I will read. It was quite inspiring coming from a young person: “it will stop parents or a sole parent to get into the workforce as they now have an extra child that they need to look after. Especially for families who rely on the government benefit which is simply not enough for them to raise more kids and if they do have another kid, then they do not have enough financial support or they are sitting on a government benefit which just isn’t enough for them to raise more kids. That’s where the child ends up in poverty because the parents cannot financially support them and they are facing hardship.” And that, I think, out of the mouth of babes. The Prime Minister herself put herself in charge of child poverty, and that has been an appalling failure up until now.

We look at the cost of implementing this policy, this piece of legislation, and it is very minimal. In fact, the cost estimate in the August 2020 departmental report put it at about $4.01 million, and, of that, $3.966 million was for the Ministry of Social Development and Work and Income IT support and changes for training and for comms. So, basically, not very much of it—some small change, in fact—is actually the financial advantage to any of the people that it is targeted at.

So there is very little to support in removing this benefit. I think it does a disservice to the people who it is ultimately targeted at. In fact, if we look at the benefit assistance numbers now sitting at 365,937, you can see that this Government has taken us in the wrong direction.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to stand and talk about the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill. I’m really delighted to do that because this is a bill that, essentially, was predicated on an assumption that I feel is wrong. That assumption is that people who are on benefits have children to stay on benefits. That is not the case. We know that people have more wishes, hopes, and dreams for their families than living on benefits.

We heard from 31 submitters: 17 individuals, 13 organisations, and one Crown entity—81 percent of those submitters were in support of the removal of this policy. I want to read very quickly from the Child Poverty Action Group, “We must acknowledge and support women in their unpaid labour as child carers. Raising children has long been undervalued despite its crucial contribution to society. Children’s experiences in their early years are a strong determinant of their social and health outcomes later in life, highlighting the importance of parenting both for the children themselves and for society at large.” This piece of legislation gives the opportunity and the choice for those beneficiaries, those people on benefits, to stay at home with their children when they need to, but it also gives them the choice to go out to work just like everyone else in this country. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to take a call on this at rather short notice, but it just happens to be coincidental that on the weekend—little did I know that I’d be speaking on such an issue—I was reflecting with whanaunga Dame Tari back home. We were sitting on the porch in the sun like two old kuia, reflecting on how our old people used to deal with these issues. We were talking about how our people—New Zealanders and Māori also—have become locked in to this mentality of welfarism and State dependency and the loss of mana motuhake. Literally, the mana is the dignity that our people have and had, and the motuhake; the ability to stand upright and independent in the most trying and hardship of times. Here I am before the House, addressing, those who are listening in, the second reading of the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill.

There are members in the House who sat on the select committee, and the process was that this amendment bill was referred to the committee on 6 April 2021. The Minister, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, was invited to give an initial briefing, which she did on 2 June 2021. The closing date for submissions was 19 May. Thirty-one submissions were made and oral evidence heard from 11 submitters. And here I am standing before the House, just reflecting on the kōrero that I had with one of our old people, our kuia, and we were reflecting on the advice and kōrero and the mātauranga, the knowledge base of our old people. Our old people were not welfare dependent, were not locked in to the mentality that in order to get by, we needed the State to provide and support.

It’s accepted that there is a time and there is a place for the State to provide. But, really, the question that we should answer is: do we continue to perpetuate that welfare dependency? In my submission: regrettably, this does. And I say “regrettably” because this is an area that I’ve given service, working in areas of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in my community, in our community. I have seen the intergenerational dysfunction of welfare dependency and the perpetuation of the State saying our people can’t do and can’t get by, cannot stand upright without the State telling us: “This is what you need. You need the State to keep giving you the pūtea.”, to keep giving you the poverty of a sense of loss of spirit and dignity.

I do not go into the detail of this bill other than to say that it proposes to move a policy that had been introduced in 2012 by the National Government, recognising the importance of uplifting and elevating and helping our people out of that sense of a poverty of existence, but, importantly, the kōrero that I had back home on the weekend—the greatest poverty that we have as a nation is that of spirit. We have a State welfare system that perpetuates that poverty by telling our people: “You can’t get out of this locked-in level of dependency.” That is the greatest depression that we have in the country: the reliance on a welfare system that our people become so locked in in mentality and spirit that it is oppressive. That the level of dependency in this country is keeping our people suppressed from being elevated up into what we once knew as a proud nation of mana motuhake. I do not support this bill, along with the National Party.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I rise in support of this piece of legislation, and I want to thank the Hon Carmel Sepuloni for her work in ensuring that our welfare system, our people, are well cared for.

Now, a previous speaker—thank you for reminiscing about the weekend with your kuia friend on the porch. This piece of legislation as it stands disproportionately impacts Māori, by around 56 percent. This piece of legislation disproportionately impacts on women, by around 86 percent. So I hope that that conversation on that porch over the weekend was around that disparity.

As a member of the Social Services and Community Committee, and listening, the Ministry of Social Development did modelling on this legislation, which was brought in in 2012, and they found no strong evidence to suggest that this policy has been effective in reducing time on the benefit. Therefore, I support this piece of legislation and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party to offer our support for the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill at this, the second reading. I do, first up, in contrast to some of the previous speakers, want to start my speech by acknowledging the amazing parents we have in our country who leave everything they’ve got on the floor for the wellbeing of their kids and for us as a society.

I really want to acknowledge just how unique every child is and how the process of family building after the birth of the child for parents, as well as children, is different after every single birth. Actually, the mental wellbeing, the physical wellbeing of the birthing parent may be quite different. It’s not always the same. We need, as a society, to be looking after our birthing parents, our mums, and our kids as best we can, because it is the most important—and some have said the most difficult—job in the world. There is no guidebook on how to do it right.

I think part of what I’ve found so offensive with this piece of legislation that we’re overturning today is the sense of you can create one rule for all, and just the disconnect between that and how different all of our kids are and how different their needs are and how different circumstances are after the birth of every child and there’s a difference that we’re setting up for the treatment between different kids, like the State is picking favourites. I was always taught that parents should lie and say they don’t have a favourite. I think it’s really wrong that our legislation has been picking favourites for kids. I’m saying that the older ones get more time with their parents than the younger ones if they happen to be born into a family where a parent is receiving a benefit.

It was fantastic to see how much support there was for this legislation. As I think it’s been mentioned, like 81 percent of the submissions were in support. The reasons that they gave—there were six kind of core reasons that reflected the Green Party reasons for supporting this. I’d like to go through some of those. So (1) that the policy is forcing parents back into looking for work, usually, often, in this case, when their kid’s only like a year old, is harmful to children’s development, and it fails to prioritise the first 1,000 years—first 1,000 days. Ha, ha! That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Which we all know, and I think I remember hearing from the National Party heading into the last election, the importance of the first 1,000 days a few times. Yet they can’t seem to bring that thinking to this piece of legislation. But surprise, it’s not unfamiliar for the inconsistency on that side. That first 1,000 days is absolutely vital for the emotional and physical wellbeing of children and their attachment to parents and caregivers, and we should not be forcing that detachment at that time, because that has lifelong consequences for those children.

The second reason that submitters were supporting overturning this horrible rule was that it doesn’t reflect parents’ caring responsibility, and it makes it harder for parents to stay home with a subsequent child, and devalues parenting as unpaid work. Like, it’s peak capitalism at its worst, I think, to just say, “It doesn’t matter what job you’re doing, as long as you’re being paid. We don’t care about your kids, because that’s going to matter more.”, and the sense that the poverty that we are fighting can only be solved through paid work, rather than us coming together as a community and ensuring people have enough to be able to look after themselves. Ultimately—

💬 Hon Member: Where does the money come from?

—it doesn’t serve anyone. It comes from all of us. Ideally, it would come from a wealth tax. You know, actually, there’s some people who are doing pretty well these days and they wouldn’t hurt to be sharing a little bit to ensure that everybody and all of our children are able to thrive.

The third reason that people said they supported it was that this subsequent child policy, as it has existed, has a really negative effect on the mental health and wellbeing of parents and caregivers, as well as their kids. It’s that sense of stress and being under surveillance and losing that dignity that we heard about from the last speaker. It’s not the having been supported by your society to look after your kids and the acknowledgment of the importance of your role of caregiver that is stigmatising and takes dignity from people; it’s the surveillance and the sense of the message that that policy conveyed that you have no ability to make choices for yourself that are good, that the State has to force parents to make those decisions for themselves. That does not reflect reality. That is just purely stigmatising.

So the fourth reason that submitters supported the overturning of this was that it’s actually racist and discriminatory, and the Greens, we would say misogynist, quite clearly, in terms of the other forms of discrimination. That this policy has impacted—56 percent of the people affected by it have been Māori and 86 percent have been women. That is embedding and reinforcing existing discrimination in our society, and really outdated views that are in contrast to the human right to be able to choose if and when to have children, and the spacing of those children—fundamental human rights acknowledged through a lot of the United Nations human rights instruments. That was in contrast to this piece of legislation, I would say.

The fifth reason was that it creates inequities and suggests subsequent children need less parenting time and care than their older siblings, which there is no grounds, there is no research to say that children that come along later have less need to be parented. That is just not based in facts.

And the sixth point was that it adds complexity to the welfare system, and that’s expensive to administer and that takes up people’s time that could otherwise be put to caring for their kids, or, if they were getting to the point where the best for their family was that the parent be in paid work, actually looking for that work, rather than having to go to appointments or being able to prove their case to this institution that does not seem to understand or care about them.

Now, we’ve heard from the Opposition that this policy addresses poverty and reduces independence. Let me say very clearly that the evidence does not support that hot take at all. International research has shown that sanctions don’t lead to positive long-term results. Close to home, the Australian Journal of Social Issues found work obligations do not support people into paid work. And the Ministry of Social Development’s own modelling hasn’t shown that the policy supports people into paid work. So even if you do privilege paid work over the more important, I would say, work of parenting, then, actually, the policy is a failure on that ground alone.

But if you want to actually have a society where you value caring, you put the wellbeing of our children and our families first, then, actually, you wouldn’t be asking that question; you’d be saying, “How can we support people in terms of being able to do the best for their kids in those first few years of life?” The analogy that’s made about, well, this is just lining it up with paid parental leave, which is often a situation where people are in relationships, I think the Opposition fails to recognise the distinction and the challenge of sole parenting several children, and that, actually, sometimes paid work is just not an option. It is just not what is going to work for your children, for you to be able to get your kids to school; to health appointments, if they have those needs; or if they’ve got attachment issues; or if they’re healing from trauma—any number of things, it will not work for them. We need to ensure that, as a society, we honour the choices for good parenting, based on the judgment of those parents.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party to oppose the second reading of the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill. I’d like to thank Karen Chhour, our social development spokesperson, for her help, and wish her well in her Auckland lockdown.

In a time when child poverty and hardship has been in the spotlight as a major issue in this country, removing policies that were put in place to help tackle this seems to go against what this Parliament is trying to achieve. ACT believes we are sending the wrong message. We have a Government talking about wanting to solve child poverty, and one of the biggest causes of child poverty is being born into it. Why are we focusing on making it a priority to create ways to keep people dependent on the State, instead of helping them gain their self-esteem, gain their sense of independence, gain some skills to get out into the workforce, and help them drive our economy?

Working parents get 12 months’ leave and have to go back to work, but Government want to pay beneficiaries three years looking for work. This seems to me unfair. Many who choose to have these children in families don’t necessarily have the choice to stay at home, either. Many couples wanting to start these families, in order to ensure they can afford to feed, clothe, house, and support these children—nope. That’s a lot of sacrifice that a lot of the lower-paid income people are doing, and this Government wants, now, to give beneficiaries more of an opportunity and a hand up than what hard-working people are. For many couples, they have chosen when they have another child, as well, because of the affordability, where this, by taking this substantive piece out of this bill, gives women, mostly—that, of course, have babies—the opportunity to have another one, quite quickly, in some cases, where a lot of families cannot do that. They cannot afford it because of their wages.

There should always be a safety net, but welfare dependency should never become a lifestyle choice. This bill argues that these parents should be chosen to stay home for, like, the first three years, which is what the rules currently are, but if you have another child—you are on the benefit—the subsequent child defaults to the time of one year. Well, it’s a bit confusing here, because, as you can guess, it’s not my area, but—

💬 Hon Member: It hasn’t worked, so it’s not confusing.

It is very confusing, because many, as I know, employed women and husbands, or some solo mums that were under circumstances, weren’t necessarily able to have that choice of whether or not they could stay at home and look after their child. They did not want to go on benefits; they wanted to work. They wanted to prove to their children that working hard is a way forward for anyone that is in financial difficulty.

One out of every 10 children is born on to an existing benefit. One in five babies is living in benefit-led households by their first babies. This is not helping our poverty problem if we are continuing to have children being born in these houses. These children face a bleaker future than children born to parents in work. They face worse outcomes on nearly every social indicator. We think that those who select to continue to rear children while receiving a benefit should be considering the welfare of their children first and foremost. ACT has a policy that puts the welfare of the child at the front and centre, introducing the electronic income management card, which would help to ensure Government benefits are supporting the family in the right places at the right times. We can’t afford to keep going down having more children stuck in this poverty gap, not being able to afford the basic needs, if people are continuing to have children while they’re on this benefit.

We have made very good progress. The other side of the House would say that it has not made great progress, but we have reduced the number of children being brought into dependent households. However, that seems to be, now, rising again, which is very sad. We should not be encouraging more. It is very sad that there are many people that this occurs to. However, we shouldn’t be rewarding one side of the coin without the other, where many families who struggle to have children, and put them off for many years, cannot afford to have multiple children. Why should we then take this subsequent policy away and allow beneficiaries to do it? I oppose this bill.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I have never heard such a lot of pernicious, vile, utterly foundless tripe. That comes straight out of 1970s neocon. The idea that people go out there baby farming so that they can live off the back of the State is not only false; it’s possibly been disproved, and I cannot believe that in New Zealand today there’s a political party, even that far-right political party, that would repeat that absolute nonsense. It’s vile, it’s false, and it’s misogynistic—

💬 Hon David Parker: It’s Victorian.

—because all it does is punish women. Absolutely, Mr Parker. It’s Victorian. So to suggest that to reduce child poverty, we deprive children of support absolutely defies logic.

This bill is getting rid of a punishment for having children—an effective financial sterilisation of a woman, and I’ll have no part of that. I’m proud to be part of a Government that’s getting rid of it and part of a Government that is making meaningful steps to address child poverty. I absolutely commend this bill to the House.

Nicola Grigg—a five-minute call.

I’m not sure where to start, but that was quite an extraordinary delivery from the good doctor on the other side of the House. I think, in my view, this is a classic example of good intentions having unintended consequences, and, in this case, long-lasting, damaging consequences.

Now, we’ve heard some very, very different ideological arguments from either side of the House this evening, and the word “dignity” has been mentioned several times. But we on this side of the House will argue that the intrinsic value of work and the dignity that that brings, you cannot put a value on.

On this side of the House, we are the first to agree that the safety net of social support is vital to the wellbeing of any society, and we are proudly the party that was the first in decades to raise the main benefit when we were last in Government. But this Government is unwinding what was an important change that was made to the welfare system in 2012. It’s disappointing to have heard comments from that side of the House which I thought were quite disparaging regarding the submission that my colleague Harete Hipango made in relaying a conversation that she had had with none other than Dame Tariana Turia on this very subject. Now, I would suggest to that side of the House that when Dame Tariana speaks up, boy, you should listen.

Despite what the Labour Party will have the public believe, the subsequent child policy in 2012 was about reducing long-term welfare dependency. The impacts of long-term welfare dependency, particularly on children, are deeply harmful—not even Dr Webb can argue that away. Of the thousands of children in New Zealand who live in material hardship, 60 percent of them are in benefit-dependent households, so to put measures in place to keep their parents dependent on benefits is a retrograde step.

The social problems that we have seen emerge under this Government are enormous, and the consequences of them are going to be long-lasting and deeply impactful. This Government has created a culture of dependency. There are almost 200,000 more New Zealanders on a benefit than in 2017. That is one in nine working-age Kiwis—one in nine—and before that side of the House runs and hides behind COVID, those numbers were ratcheting up long before we’d even heard of the word.

But the ripple effect of those numbers of people who are sole parents on their children is deeply concerning. Already, more children than ever are living in material deprivation. The safety net is in place for those who need it. We on this side of the House will never disagree that juggling parenting and work is incredibly difficult. Transitioning from being a sole parent on a benefit into work is incredibly difficult, but the core of this issue is about the wellbeing of children in the long term.

We know that if you go on to a benefit under the age of 20, you are likely to be on it for about 14 years. Repealing this provision will impact on about 11,000 people, but I couldn’t quite find the data to illustrate just how many kids that it will impact on. But what a worry that so many of them would be destined to a life of dependence from a Government that proclaims to be kind.

The Labour Party, in repealing this provision of subsequent children, is destining more Kiwi kids to a life of poverty and a life of hardship, poorer health, and social outcomes, and, because of that, we oppose it in its entirety.

I rise in the House, second time today, to speak on another fantastic bill by another fantastic Minister from the Labour Party. I just want to thank, first of all, Minister Carmel Sepuloni as well as the Social Services and Community Committee for considering this bill recently. It is my understanding that of all the submissions that came through the select committee, the majority were in favour of this bill, which helps reset a lot of the issues that came about when the National Party made a few amendments a few years ago.

The bill specifically addresses concerns around the current subsequent child policy, which affects child development. As my colleague Glen Bennett mentioned, it disproportionately affects Māori and our wāhine. What a great bill it is to help our wāhine to be able to look after their subsequent child the same way they can do with their primary or first child. So I would like to support this bill to move further in the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition to the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill. The bill proposes to remove the subsequent child policy, also known as the additional dependent child policy, from the Social Security Act. The reason I speak in opposition of this is very similar to my colleague Nicola Grigg, who talks about how it’s misplaced kindness. National, of course, believes that the welfare system must be a safety net. We believe that those without a job should get support and incentives to re-enter the workforce, and, of course, we believe that it’s absolutely important for parents to have time to develop strong bonds and connection with their children. It would be foolish of any of us to deny that.

The OECD makes a really important comment about employment and poverty. The OECD says paid work is the most effective way of reducing the risk of family poverty, enhancing child development, and generally giving children the best start in life—not “a” way, not possibly something that could be done, but the most effective way of reducing the risk of family poverty, enhancing child development, and generally giving children the best start in life. And if we believe that to be true, then we should all be moving heaven and earth to ensure that we assist parents to get into employment, because if we don’t, we are, in effect, saying we don’t care about family poverty, we don’t care about children’s development, and we don’t care about giving them the best start in life.

I spent a lot of my time, as you know, as the chief executive of the Southern Institute of Technology. The polytech sector is an absolutely amazing place for second-chance education—I have seen tens of thousands of, particularly, women wanting to return to the workforce after starting their family. And I have lost count of how many women would contact me at the end of their studies and say what a change it has made in their life. I watched many of those women come in tentatively, unsure of themselves, lacking confidence, and by the time they had got themselves on to a pathway for employment, they were completely different women. They knew that they were being role models for their family and how incredibly important that was for them and their family. But under Labour, what we are seeing is dependency.

Now, I listened carefully to Jan Logie of the Green Party talk about the kindness and what needs to be done for our parents and our young people. I think that she is saying those things with an absolute best of intent. This Labour Government has that sort of intent in so many different areas, that appearance of being kind. But, in fact, it is not kind to take away the dignity of a person. It is not kind to take away their self-determination. It is extremely unkind to ensure that that dependency and that lack of thinking of self-worth is there because of the policies and the structures that you put around our parents, particularly our sole parents.

I listened to my colleague talk earlier about elevating parents, of elevating mothers so that they are role models. And I would urge the other side of the House to think about that, to think about ensuring that our parents can have dignity and self-determination and be elevated—not oppressed, not to ensure that they are dependent, because that does not serve them well and certainly does not serve their children well.

I heard that there was a lot of talk about the National Party’s 2020 policy on the first thousand days. There is nothing inconsistent with our stance on this amendment and the first thousand days, wanting to see the first thousand days of a child’s life be a really important and supported part of their life. Of course, we want to see the wraparound support to ensure that a mother or the caregiver can get out and retrain and put themselves on a pathway to employment, as well as supporting them to be able to look after their child, as well as ensuring that good early childhood centres are available for them to put their child into, and as well as promoting the self-determination of that family to do good for themselves; not to be constantly looking at the State to look after them.

Now, this seems to be a theme that goes on through this Labour Government, of ensuring people are dependent and looking to the Government and looking to the State and thinking that the State will look after them. In the long term, that is not going to serve those people well. It is not going to serve those families well. It is not going to show them that they can be elevated. As my colleague said, it is not going to bring about the sort of things that this appearance of kindness says it’s going to. So the National Party certainly does not want to have a bar of this encouraging dependency and this crisis of dependency that we are starting to see and that is so favoured by this Government. National will always stand for people being able to get ahead themselves. Of course, we will always want to be there and give the assistance and give the support, but we want that self-determination and that movement up to come about by the people being able to take their own responsibility.

So, in conclusion, we cannot support this bill in that it removes one of—just one of—those policies and those steps and those structures that helps encourage people along their pathway. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise as the final speaker on the second reading of this bill. This bill is not about encouraging dependency; it’s about supporting children and whānau and families. It’s important that we take a long-term view of the full effects on a person’s life of those first 1,000 days. My wife and I had four children under five years, which I probably would not recommend to anyone in this House, but there you go. I see that Nicola Willis fits in that club as well. Look, we were fortunate in our case that my wife was able to stay home for around six or seven years. It was very tight on the income, but being able to do that had a significant impact on the start of our children’s lives. Now, I know that’s not possible for everyone, but I’d just like to share a personal story in terms of the importance of that first 1,000 days, and this bill supports that. I commend it to the House.