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 legislative 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 third time.

We are pleased to see that the majority of the House here today is committed to supporting parents and their children in the welfare system by removing the subsequent child policy from the Social Security Act 2018 and the Social Security Regulations 2018. I would like to thank the committee of the whole House for considering this bill. This is an important piece of legislation that will reduce inequity in the welfare system and progress our welfare overhaul work programme, and I would like to take the opportunity to thank and support and acknowledge the Minister for Social Development and Employment, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, for shepherding this bill through and the huge amount of work that she and her officials have done to bring this bill to this stage. I would also like to take this opportunity on her behalf to thank all the members of the Social Services and Community Committee and those who made submissions to the select committee on the bill.

I’d also like to acknowledge the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG), who recommended the removal of the subsequent child policy in their advice to the Government in February 2019. The WEAG’s report on how to best give effect to the Government’s vision for the future direction of the social welfare system remains an important piece of advice for our welfare overhaul work programme.

The Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill will remove the subsequent child policy from the Social Security Act 2018 and associated Social Security Regulations on 8 November 2021. This will mean that a child who would have been deemed to be a subsequent child under the current policy will be treated in the same way as a non-subsequent child for the purposes of setting their parents’ work or work preparation obligations and determining eligibility for sole parent support. The practical impacts of this change are that parents will have more flexibility to spend time with their children, and the welfare system will be simpler and fairer for groups who are disproportionately impacted by the policy, such as Māori and women.

The bill also sets out transitional provisions related to the removal of the policy, which come into force on 11 October 2021. This will improve the client experience for clients with a benefit application or change in circumstances around the time of the policy’s removal by preventing multiple changes to their benefit type and work or work preparation obligations within a short period of time.

The subsequent child policy was introduced in 2012 by the then National Government and was intended to address the concern that families who have a subsequent child or children while on benefit were at an increased risk of long-term welfare dependence due to detachment from the labour market for long periods of time. Where the subsequent child policy applies, the client will have work preparation obligations only until the subsequent child’s first birthday, after which their obligations will be based on the next-youngest non-subsequent child. This means in some instances parents of subsequent children have full-time work obligations from their youngest child’s first birthday. Since amendments to the system of the main benefits in 2013, the subsequent child policy has also impacted eligibility for sole parent support. From a subsequent child’s first birthday, the client’s eligibility for sole parent support is determined based on the client’s next-youngest non-subsequent child.

Ensuring that work obligations were not reset beyond the subsequent child’s first year was intended to afford clients earlier support and assistance to secure paid work and the social, financial, and developmental advantages this provides to the family. It is important to note, however, that the policy has not achieved its intended purpose. The Ministry of Social Development’s modelling on the cohort affected by the policy has found no strong evidence to suggest that the policy has been effective in reducing time on benefit or improving financial or social outcomes. In fact, we know that there are a large number of factors at play as to whether a person is actually able to work, or to work all the hours of the work test. This includes, for example, their support network to help with their caring responsibilities, their level of training and experience to enter employment, and the availability of suitable work at the time of their access to employment-focused case management.

As at 30 April 2021, approximately 11,400 clients are impacted by the policy. For those people, the subsequent child policy is resulting in inequity between subsequent and non-subsequent children and a lack of flexibility to spend time with children in their early years, and is disproportionately impacting on Māori and women. Removing the policy will have a number of positive impacts on whānau and children. We know that parents’ fundamental caring responsibilities and the needs of their children remain consistent, regardless of whether a child is subsequent or non-subsequent. The policy’s removal will increase equity in the welfare system by returning families with the subsequent children to the usual work and work preparation obligations, treating them the same as any other whānau.

New Zealand’s welfare system must adequately support employment and training and also recognise the value of unpaid work such as caring and volunteering. The consideration of an additional child’s age when setting work preparation or work obligations will afford parents the flexibility to determine what is best for their family and prioritise either returning to work or caring for their child. We know that the first thousand days of a child’s life are critical for their long-term development. Whilst there are benefits to moving into sustainable employment that may make an earlier return to work the best option for some parents with a subsequent child, other families may benefit more from the parent being at home with their subsequent child. This Government respects that choice. For parents of subsequent children who do want to return to work earlier, they will still have access to employment support and be supported to transition to the workforce.

Removing the subsequent child policy will lead to better alignment between work obligations and Government-funded early childhood education, which is available for up to 20 hours per week from the time a child turns three. The removal of the subsequent child policy will therefore ensure that childcare support is available to parents when their part-time work obligations commence from their youngest child’s third birthday.

The setting of work or work preparation obligations that recognise the age of all dependent children in the family is likely to reduce stress for the affected whānau, which may also have positive impacts for mental health and wellbeing. This was a strong theme raised by submitters to the select committee, and we as a Government are proud that this bill will address their concerns.

Clients who become eligible to receive sole parent support may also be able to access additional support not available to recipients of jobseeker support. This includes the work bonus, which is a payment that can be made to clients or partners on specific benefits who do not have either part-time or full-time work obligations and who cancel their benefits to move into employment. Clients on sole parent support with work preparation or part-time work obligations may also be able to study full-time through the Training Incentive Allowance, which this Government has brought back in.

We know that changes in the welfare system are required to ensure it is fair, accessible, and fit for purpose for all New Zealanders. The Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill forms part of our work to review ineffective obligations and sanctions in the welfare system, with an initial focus on those that impact children. This bill builds on our progress to date in the welfare overhaul work programme and supports our vision to ensure 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. This Government will continue to explore how we can best support earning, learning, caring, and volunteering in New Zealand. On behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In this third reading of the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill, we need to be very clear about the origins of this bill, what it does, and what it doesn’t do. So given that this is purely winding back a policy that was introduced by the previous National-led Government, I thought it was important just to actually put on record what was behind it so that the public who are watching this debate can choose for themselves: benefit or not.

So the focus of the National-led Government at that time was to support those on benefit to move off benefit where possible, so that they could have a better quality of life and a higher income and greater opportunities. It was about providing a focus on work and work preparation and making sure that connections to the labour market were carried out as early as possible.

New Zealanders, by and large, of course want to financially support themselves and want to have more choices available, and the National Party has a very strong track record of wanting to see New Zealanders have opportunities, instead of being trapped in a life with limited choices and being dependent on a benefit. We don’t want to see the life outcomes that often follow—and the evidence tells us this—of long-term benefit dependency such as, particularly for children, material hardship, poor educational achievement, and, often, poorer health outcomes.

Helping parents into work improves the social economic outcomes for themselves and their children. The OECD has this to say—and I quote—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.” So, of course, if we talk about subsequent children—as this policy is removing—that of course delays the move into paid work, and so let’s be clear that the Labour Party is very clearly, and with an ideologically-driven position, removing the ability for parents to get back into work of some shape or form at an earlier time frame.

Let’s just have a look at what that potentially means. So what the evidence tells us, particularly for a teen parent, is that if the teen parent that goes on a benefit under the age of 20, the lifetime that that young person is on benefit is 14 years. So I want you to think about—and I want this House to consider—the impact on the children in that household, because that’s what this is about. This is about, or it should be about, reducing the long-term harm and hardship and improving the long-term outcomes for those children, but no—Labour don’t want to consider that. They don’t want to consider the long-term outcomes.

It’s really interesting, because when we were going through these changes, I remember a constituent coming into my office in Tokoroa. She sat down in front of me and she said, “I’m a solo mum and I want you to take a message to Paula Bennett.”, and I thought, “Well, this will be interesting.” I braced myself—I did. I braced myself, and she said, “I want you to say thank you to her. I want you to say thank you to her, because the part-time job that I now have has made an enormous difference to me and my family.”

That is the difference that work makes, because she had significantly more income coming into her household, and—let’s be clear—it is bloody hard. I’m not the only person in this Chamber who has been through it. It is incredibly difficult—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Sorry for interrupting the member. I’d just ask the Government whip to keep it down. I find it difficult to hear the speaker when he’s got his back turned and—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: My apologies.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: —having a loud conversation. Sorry about that—the Hon Louise Upston.

Yeah, so the reality is the other side actually don’t care about the long-term outcomes of children in New Zealand, and they don’t care about the fact that real people share real experiences. They very deliberately turn their backs and don’t want to hear about the real opportunities, because this is what it’s about—this is what it’s about. It’s about the long-term impact on children in benefit-dependent homes.

So you want to talk about hardship. Where are the children that live in material hardship? They are in benefit-dependent homes. So, yep, you can lift benefits, and National did—first time in 40 years. We focused on the children in benefit-dependent homes. But what is the long-term impact of trapping a child in a household when the only income coming in is a benefit?

So what is this policy doing? It is going to remove the opportunity of parents getting ready for work, having discussions with their case manager about the sorts of things that are practical to support them—

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: Shameful!

—into employment. No, what is shameful is trapping thousands of children into material hardship. Do you want to know the numbers—do you want to know the numbers? Here we go. This record: 30,000 more children are living in benefit-dependent homes under your watch. In four years, 30,000 more children are living in material hardship because of that Government and your failures—failures to lift children and provide opportunities—[Interruption]

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! We’re getting a barrage of interjection, which is out of order. I apologise again—the Hon Louise Upston.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You can tell when you touch a nerve in this House, because the reality is—and I want these figures on the record—30,000 more children are living in benefit-dependent homes under this Government.

Children in poverty? Prime Minister Ardern says this is her reason for being—this is her reason for being in politics. In September 2017, she said Labour would reduce the number of children in poverty by 100,000. She specifically said that this was measured by the number of children living in households earning less than 50 percent of the median income. Oh, guess what? There are 1,500 more children living in child poverty on her measure, the measure that she said was the most important, instead of the reduction of 100,000. So I ask the question: in this policy, are you harming children or are you helping them? Their long-term opportunities will be damaged by this policy.

So let’s be very clear about that: this is not a pathway to work; this is not a pathway to opportunity. If you have been out of work and disconnected from a job for a long period of time, it is incredibly difficult to get back into work, and this very policy is forcing that upon more families, and more children in those families will be harmed as a result.

As I said, it is incredibly challenging making that transition, and that’s why the intent of the policies that were changed under National was not just about the obligations. They were very practical, sensible changes around childcare, around transport, and around additional financial assistance, and about being creative in terms of how you actually supported parents into suitable work.

I think back to the constituent, the woman who sat in my office in Tokoroa and said “Thank you.”, because the opportunity for her to have more income coming into her family, and the opportunity for her to have hope and to see a path forward where one day she would be off a benefit, she would be in a better job—not just a job, actually. She was really ambitious in terms of where her career was going to go. Isn’t that what we want? Isn’t that what we want for every parent and any person who’s on a benefit? Don’t we want practical measures that support them to stand on their own two feet and to have children who are raised in households of aspiration? No, clearly it’s not.

This is an ideologically-driven bill—that is all. It is virtue signalling. It does nothing. It will harm and hurt children and their long-term futures, and Labour should be ashamed of bringing this bill into the House. That’s why National strongly opposes it.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you. I rise to speak against failed policy and to say thank you to the Hon Carmel Sepuloni for ensuring that policy is right, for her passion, for her drive, and for her commitment to ensure that our welfare system is affirming of all people, offering a hand up, offering options for the future. That’s why this bill is so important.

Currently, the policy is discriminatory, based on judgmental and stigmatising attitudes towards predominantly solo mums. Currently, the policy is disproportionate. It impacts Māori by 56 percent. It impacts women by 86 percent.

We on this side of the House believe in solo mothers. We believe in their potential. We want to support their aspirations so that solo mums and their whānau can get ahead. We’re about investing in our solo parents: supporting, upskilling, training. That’s why we’ve reinstated the training incentive allowance, enabling—enabling—not punishing solo parents who have children. I want to thank the Hon Carmel Sepuloni for your drive to overhaul the welfare system, and I commit, and commend, this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Quite an emotive start to the debate on this third reading of the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill.

There have been some very articulately put points made by my colleague the Hon Louise Upston, and I take heed of what she says, because she comes from a wealth of experience in this area. She has been here long enough to have seen the patterns over time and to have seen the policies that have worked and those that don’t work, and I just refer to the comment that the member across the House made about this being a hand up for people on benefit. This is a handout, and what happens when you increase money is that you increase dependency.

But of course we all want people to live out of poverty, so I challenge the Government: why aren’t they giving even more money to people on benefit if that is the answer? At the moment, people who are dependent on the State for their income are going backwards. They’re going backwards on the measures that the Prime Minister herself put in place. Material hardship is getting worse, and, as a consequence, the impact on children is getting worse, and their long-term outlook is looking poorer.

Now, we don’t want our children to be locked into the benefit dependency cycle, because the evidence around the world is absolutely clear that the longer people stay trapped as a dependant of the State, the worse their outcomes are and it’s interesting to go back to the different advisory groups that have been around advising policy development. I look at the Welfare Working Group that advised the policy that the National Government brought in in 2010, and then compare it, less than 10 years later, to the advice that has advised this policy direction.

There is no one going to argue that people at the lowest socio-economic levels in this country need more money—absolutely. But one of the best ways that they can increase their incomes is by being in work, either full-time or part-time. I have my own lived experience of that with my two children, living on benefit. It wasn’t until I started working part-time that I actually started to break out of that cycle.

The analysis that was used when developing the existing policy was very clear about the numbers of children in this country living in a benefit-dependent home, and at that stage, we had one in five children who spent seven years of their childhood, up to the age of 14, living in benefit-dependent homes. Now, that is not only a huge burden on those families to be struggling in that way but it’s also a huge burden on the State. As we heard from the Hon Louise Upston, we now have 30,000 more children in benefit-dependent homes in the last four years, and I think that’s a terrible testimony to the policy direction and the economic direction that this country is heading in.

I would just like to go through some of the criteria that was in place, or is still in place, until this bill goes through—for people on benefit to prepare themselves to work. The first one is to “be available for and take reasonable steps to get a suitable [part-time] job.” The second one is to “take any offer of suitable … part-time or temporary work, or work that is seasonal or subsidised”, to “attend and take part in any suitable job interviews we ask you to”, to “take and pass any drug test potential employers or training providers [might] require”, to “attend and take part in interviews with [the Ministry of Social Development] as required”, to “work with us to plan how you’ll find a suitable job”, or to “take part in any other activities that we refer you to, such as attend any job training courses, seminars, work experience or work assessments … that will improve your work readiness or help you get [ready for] work”.

They are not onerous obligations on someone who is receiving a benefit, I would argue. It is actually quite reasonable because what we want for people is for them to be able to return to the workforce, because we know when they do, their children’s opportunities are greatly increased.

I was so impressed with a submission to the select committee, I read it in my second reading speech, and I’d like to go back to it because I want to have it on the Hansard for Ali Haidari. He made a submission as a young person, and I was so impressed with his objectivity around this. Part of his submission said, in talking about this bill, that “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.” So I think that pretty well sums it up from a young person looking from the outside in, and I hope that Ali goes on to have a very successful and productive career.

We all know that the welfare system in this country is a safety net and we need that safety net in this country, but that’s what it needs to remain. But we also need increased and improved employment support for those that are on benefit.

So I ask the Government what is replacing those obligations for starting to think about work, for the training opportunities, for the work-readiness that they may have to participate in, because if you remove those obligations and you remove the time frame that you have for someone on benefit to begin thinking about their future and begin thinking about re-entering the workforce, then you also stop them from actively thinking about what they need to be able to provide in terms of training for themselves to get back into that workforce. So they need to be thinking about the types of work that they might want to go into, and then what kind of training or additional education, or even the childcare that they may require, the travel expenses, etc., etc. Without that obligation to think about a time limit, then they don’t have to think about how they retrain and re-enter the workforce.

The point of the subsequent child policy was actually to reduce the risk of long-term welfare dependency. We want our children to have hope for the future. We want their parents to be actively contributing. We know that when they go to work, their self-confidence increases, their social interaction improves, they work to a routine and so their children live with a routine, and the outcome in the long term is much improved. Anyone can give a child a lolly and they will survive for a short time on a sugar rush, but after the sugar rush comes the crash, and that’s what we want to try, on this side of the House, to prevent from happening.

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Xiexie e te Māngai o te Whare. I rise to speak very briefly. I find it very difficult to hear the comments from across the House. Maureen Pugh, the speaker opposite, has just commented that the point of the law that they introduced just under 10 years ago was to reduce long-term benefit dependency. Well, if it had done that, we wouldn’t need to remove it. There is absolutely not a skerrick of empirical evidence that this law does anything other than put women and children under intense stress, and we heard that from all of the experts who came to see us.

I am very proud to commend this bill to the House, and I do it in the name of Jenny Kirk, the Birkenhead MP from the late 1980s, who died this morning. Moe mai rā, Jenny. You were a great advocate for women and for children.

Jenny was a solo mother when she campaigned in Birkenhead. She told me how she wore the same shirt every day because it was the only good one had. She knew about the struggles of women and children. She knew that that law was an appalling one, and we have done the right thing. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of Green Party in support of this bill—wholeheartedly in support of this bill—that removes the punitive, discriminatory subsequent child policy.

The Green Party believes that everyone deserves enough to live with dignity, to support their family’s wellbeing, and to participate in their community. Income support can alleviate poverty and encourage all people to participate in a free and fair society to their maximum potential. We’ve long advocated for benefit levels to be set at levels that enable people to meet their own basic needs without having to resort to charity or begging, or more appointments, going through the details of their life and their bank accounts. We’ve also long been clear in our view that benefits should not be reduced or sanctioned as behaviour control tools. We do not believe that precariousness helps build good citizens, good community, or good family members.

I’d like to take a moment—with your indulgence, Mr Speaker—to plot the recent political history of this bill, as a different story has been told from this further right side of this House. So in 2017, our confidence and supply agreement with the Labour Party going into Government confirmed that we both—Labour and Greens—wished to overhaul the welfare system to ensure access to entitlements and to remove excessive sanctions, and to review Working for Families as well, so that everyone in this country would have a standard of living and income that enabled them to live in dignity and participate in their communities and that lifted children and their families out of poverty. It’s something that I feel really proud of in terms of that commitment.

As a result of this agreement, the Government set up the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG) to provide an evidence-based road map for welfare reform. The Welfare Expert Advisory Group was led by Governor-General designate Dame Cindy Kiro and was made up of a really wide-ranging group of people from academics, health, community organisations, professionals, and business people, to people with lived experience of the welfare system. In their report, they noted that “Agreement is near universal that the benefit and tax credit systems are unmanageably complex. The level of financial support is now so low that too many New Zealanders are living in desperate situations. Urgent and fundamental change is needed.”

The social security system needs to recognise that most New Zealanders are willing to engage, participate, contribute, and do their fair share for their communities. That is the starting point of this discussion. It is that people want the best for themselves and their families without the requirement of having to wait for the National Party to tell them what to do.

They further noted that “The current system is based on conditionality including sanctions and is tightly targeted, with inadequate support to meet even basic needs. The experience of using the system is unsatisfactory and damaging for too many of the highest need and poorest people.” They heard overwhelmingly in consultations right across the country that “the system diminishes trust, causes anger and resentment, and contributes to toxic levels of stress.” That does not support our families. That does not support our children. That does not support us in our shared effort as a country to have the best outcomes for all of us.

So now we’re two years on from the WEAG report and two Budgets on, and this is the second piece of legislation and the second sanction to be removed. It’s fair to say the Green Party would have liked to have seen a bit more progress and for things to have happened faster, because this is urgent. That sense of trust between people and Government and security in our communities, we see it through the pandemic: we need each other, and to be able to rely on each other, we need to have confidence in our systems and in each other. Punitive, paternalistic, and, I would say, violent—in the extent that it does ignore the humanness of people—policies undermine that collective effort.

When I’ve heard some of the speeches from the National Party today, honestly, it has really—I’ve found it a struggle to listen to. Some of the comments about looking at the evidence of this being in the long-term best interests—they are completely refusing to acknowledge that the evidence does not support this policy having any positive benefit whatsoever. So the rhetoric in the face of the evidence is just deeply, deeply jarring to me, particularly when they talk about supporting people into work and say that this policy—which is being overturned, thankfully, in the legislation today—is essential for supporting people into work. The evidence says no.

But it’s also the complete disconnection from the fact that many people want to work, and they will do that themselves when it’s the right time for them, but there is no belief in people. It’s just a sense of “These are people that cannot do anything for themselves until we tell them what they have to do”. There’s some deep problems with that, and I really think they need to analyse, particularly when it’s in contrast to the reality that the National Party oversaw the diminishment of employment services within our Work and Income. So they spoke about supporting people into work while they actually oversaw the taking away of supports to help people who wanted to get into work to be able to get into work and good jobs. Those things do not go together, and actually show to me the lie of what this was about. It was about forcing people into low-paid jobs and stigmatising people, and that did not serve us as a country.

The previous speaker Maureen Pugh went through and said, “Well, these are the obligations. That’s not really particularly onerous, is it? I think that’s fine.” I’d just like the House to imagine a scenario that I think is fairly typical. So Tina—she’s got three kids: a six-year-old who’s just started school, and it’s about 2 kilometres away; a three-year-old, who is both clingy and hyperactive all at the same time; and a one-year-old, who often gets sick, probably because of the cold, damp houses that they’ve been moving around in between. Tina is a sole parent, not by choice, but by circumstance, and she is grieving for her lost relationship and sense of her own future and is battling depression. She lives in a low-income area, is disconnected from family and friends, and is struggling to pay her bills, and to get her child to school and back and get her three-year-old to childcare, as required by Work and Income, in another place altogether while meeting her bubba’s needs and staying afloat. I think that that should rightly be considered an achievement for pretty much any of us if we were in that situation.

This scenario is not an unusual one and there are many variations to it, and the response from my perspective to that situation is “How can we help, Tina? What can we do to make your life easier to be able to support yourself and your kids?” But, actually, the policy we’re getting rid of today, instead of saying “How can we help?”, it said, “What more obligations can we put on you, Tina? Well, we’re going to make you go to a work preparation course, we’re going to make you prove that you’re looking for work, and we’re going to force you into a low-paid, part-time job, if we consider it suitable.”

That is not a policy that is affirming of family or children. That is a punitive, discriminatory policy that I am pleased to see the back of.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT and Karen Chhour, our spokesperson for this, to take a short call on the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill.

ACT opposes this bill and it’s certainly not because we don’t care about mums and dads and kids, but, in fact, it’s because of the opposite—we really do care. We all want the best for our children and the people who surround them, who look after them and love them and who are role models for them. It’s the way that we do this that sets us apart—the left and the right. The difference in our philosophies is pretty obvious in most bills that come across this House, but none more so than in this particular bill.

The Government believes that every person is entitled to be looked after by the State, no questions asked, to a degree that gives them the dignity and the fulfilment which is equal to someone who gets up, organises their children in whatever way they see fit, and then goes to work and pays taxes. ACT believes people should be looked after when necessary—a safety net available to anyone in real need—but we also believe that people who accept being looked after also have a responsibility to the society that pays for that assistance.

I heard over the last week that this particular policy affects Māori more than others, which could be so. But Sir Apirana Ngata, a great man often described as the foremost Māori politician to have ever served in Parliament, once said that his people should never be given welfare. He could see the danger, and it’s certainly not a race issue. This should be a discussion that we’re all open to having, putting forward ideas, opinions, and anecdotes, looking at the facts and statistics, however irritating they may be to our personal ideas—all of those things that a society with free speech can openly express without being condemned for having a different view. It is very unfortunate that this isn’t the case in the current environment.

Anyone with kids knows that to build empathy, appreciation, good work ethic—all of those things—they should teach their children to work and save for themselves, put in some effort, and not just expect things to be given to them. They’ll treat a bike that they’ve saved for and bought much better than one that’s just given to them without any effort. That’s just human nature.

It’s the same flawed philosophy that the Government has shown in many other bills. For example, the increase in minimum wage: the belief that by paying people more they will work hard and appreciate their job, rather than by paying those people who work hard more. I love their optimism, but it shows an incredible naivety in how the world works.

Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, if possible, the need for welfare. It shouldn’t encourage dependency and discourage people from going out to work. As a business owner, I know this is a fact. I have numerous examples.

ACT’s principles of personal responsibility and freedom of choice are at the heart of this bill. Life isn’t easy, and it shouldn’t be an option just to opt out of the workforce and expect to be looked after. Many of you will be familiar with Alan Duff, of Once Were Warriors and Duffy Books in Homes fame, who wrote: “So much of what is wrong with the thinking created by welfarism, it says the world owes people a living. We need a voice to yell ‘We don’t want your handouts!’ We want, if anything, to be pointed in the right direction to help ourselves.” Maybe he’s wrong—what would he know? The real shame is that he wrote this book in 1993, and, because of poor policy, nothing has changed, and, in fact, it’s worse. In the book there is a chapter—a whole chapter—“The curse of welfare”.

While listening to previous debates on this bill, I heard an interjection that ACT’s position was like going back to the 1970s. You just have to wonder how they will describe the upcoming compulsory unionism or fair-pay agreements bill. But that’s for another day.

It amazes me that the teachers in the Government go along with this ideology. Getting the best out of students requires pushing them out of their comfort zones, knowing that success comes from the inside; and, once they get a taste, the only way is up. Or do we just give kids the answers and tell them “We’ll look after ya.”?

The great Thomas Sowell once said, “The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.” Although done with the best intentions, I think this is true. We oppose this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to stand in support of this bill, and in doing so, I’d like to acknowledge Minister Carmel Sepuloni for the work she’s done in bringing this bill to the House. This is a great moment, to see this bill get to third reading.

While I didn’t sit on the select committee that heard the submissions, I am very happy to support the bill because of the impact that it’s going to have on children’s lives, because if we’re removing subsequent child policy, what it means is that with respect to their parents’ work obligations, children will be treated equally in the welfare system irrespective of whether they’re a first or subsequent child. What that does is it means that parents have that choice returned to them in their children’s early years, about whether it is that they spend some time with their children in that crucial period of their children’s development, or whether it’s their own choice to go out into the workforce to earn income for their family. So it’s really, really important that that is being restored.

I just want to look back, and, as a Government, we have increased benefits, we have put the Best Start payment in for newborn babies, we have indexed benefits to the average wage, and so getting rid of ineffective and inefficient sanctions is a really important next step in making sure that our welfare system is fairer. So I’m very happy to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I, like my colleagues, rise in opposition to the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill. I’m the National Party spokesperson for women, and I want the women of New Zealand to thrive—not survive, but thrive. We on this side of the House are ambitious for women and especially for solo moms, especially young solo mums. But there have been a few cheap shots, I think, thrown around the House this morning—you know, words like stigmatism are being thrown around. We’re not here to stigmatise women. We’re here to advance them and their families and help them to see a way towards a better life for them and their kids.

I think it’s becoming clearer and clearer that never before has a Government that proclaims to be progressive been actually, in fact, incredibly regressive in the policy it brings in front of this House. You know, I’m just still a very new MP, but so often I find myself talking on social policy that is ideological and has well-intentioned, highfaluting intentions that will actually make things worse for the people it impacts in the long run. So today, sadly, this subsequent child policy removal amendment bill will, effectively, become law. It’s a bill that’s a result of a Labour Party campaign promise, and, as always, it was about the PR and not necessarily the policy.

I think, in passing this law, the Government needs to take into account that it was actually brought into law in the first place by the Hon Paula Bennett. Paula Bennett, as a teen mum on a benefit, she has experience—real, lived experience—in this space. She actually brings some credibility to this discussion—

💬 Hon Member: And Maureen.

—and I don’t think—and Maureen Pugh, and other colleagues on this side of the House as well.

💬 Hon Members: And Louise.

I could run through the list of names, but thank you. There are many. There are many women in this House, irrespective of the colour of the team they play for, who have this lived experience, and I think all of them would acknowledge that once they’re back in the workplace, once they’re earning money, and once they’re improving the wellness of their family and their own personal wellbeing, it is better for them and their sense of self in its entirety.

But this policy that Paula brought before the House was primarily about obliging women, once their youngest child turns one, to just start looking for work. Listening to some of the speeches here this morning, anyone would think we were tearing babies from breasts and forcing women into the workplace. That is simply not the case. The safety net has always and will always be in place, so much so that under the National policy, the CEO of the Ministry of Social Development was afforded powers to enable them to intervene at such time as they saw cases where women needed extra help. It is a flexible system designed to motivate mums back into work while still providing support for those with kids who might be older than one with more complex long-term needs.

Today, the House is being asked to reverse a policy that actually came into place alongside a suite of policies, and that has, conveniently, been forgotten in the arguments from the other side of the House. They were all about helping people off a benefit and back into either education or the workplace, or to just start looking for work. It is not the bogeyman that the Government tries to proclaim it is. It is about having children being able to grow up in a household that is ambitious and forward-looking. But today, this House, unfortunately, is going to throw that all out of the way and put in place a roadblock instead that will prevent people from being inspired and encouraged to enter the workplace. Because of that, I, along with my colleagues, oppose this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand and rise with great pride to support this piece of legislation, and I do so as a member of Parliament who has real, firsthand, lived experience as a sole parent on a benefit who had to rely on food banks, etc., to help feed my family.

The rhetoric and reckons that have come from the Opposition this morning that sole parents are perhaps uneducated and unmotivated is, quite frankly, revolting. There is no evidence that this piece of legislation will create dependency. There is only evidence that the previous policy has not worked.

I commend Minister Sepuloni for overturning what was a punitive, discriminatory, and, quite frankly, disgraceful piece of legislation brought into this House by that party opposite—the National Party. Shame on them.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure of mine today to speak in the House on the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill. I know that Minister Carmel Sepuloni is watching this on TV and I just want to say to her—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member cannot refer to people watching this on TV—

My apologies.

💬 SPEAKER: —or in the gallery or anything like that.

I just want to congratulate the Minister for bringing this bill to the House. It is one of many in a range of reforms that the Government is undertaking in helping fix the issues that were created by the last National Government. This bill fixes a lot of issues, but it corrects some of the intergenerational issues that arise from parents not being able to take care of their children because of a hole in the system that was created by National.

This bill is a step towards ensuring that the future generation is taken care of at an early age so that when they grow up, we can avoid a lot of the social challenges people do face at that point. So I would highly recommend this bill to the House, and I look forward to it being passed.

Eighty-four thousand—that is the number I want people to think about when they think about what this bill, the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill, is doing. Eighty-four thousand—that’s more than live in the city of Palmerston North, and that number is the number of additional New Zealanders who are dependent on a benefit under this Labour Government; 84,000 more New Zealanders not working, dependent on the Government for their income. And this in a time of low unemployment, in a time when our industries are crying out for workers, where the growers literally can’t find people to pick the fruit from the trees. And under Labour there are 84,000 more people dependent on a benefit.

Now, here’s the next number I want you to think about, because this number is the bit that shows the true, shallow nature of the compassion that members opposite talk about, and that number is 30,000. That is the number of additional children now living in households where mum and dad, or mum or dad, depend on a benefit for that family’s income. Thirty-thousand more children—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. I want to remind the member we are speaking to the third reading of a bill. It’s the bill as it has come out of the committee of the whole House stage. It’s a specific bill, and the member hasn’t even glanced in its direction yet. The member will, from now, speak to the bill if she wishes to continue.

What this bill does is remove work expectations from women who have children while they are on the benefit. It entrenches dependence on welfare for a significant group of parents, and it is in that context that I point to the crisis of dependence that is emerging under this Government.

I will take you to why it is that we want to encourage parents into work, because there is a view on the other side that it is somehow uncompassionate or unsympathetic to say to a mother, “Actually, we think it’s time you prepare for work. It’s time you make yourself available for part-time work. It’s time you make yourself, eventually, available for paid full-time work.” Because that is the status quo that this bill seeks to change. This bill takes away those requirements. And we say, on this side of the House, that actually, when you do that, what you are doing is you are removing the expectation that people will take the best known, the best walked path out of poverty. What is the biggest predictor of child poverty? What is the biggest predictor that a family will face material hardship? It is that that family remain dependent on the State for their income through welfare dependence, and this bill says that people will not need to face work tests when they have subsequent children on the benefit. This bill says that when a parent has a subsequent child on the benefit, the expectation will be that they can stay on that benefit until that child is 14.

Members opposite say that this is going to be good for children and it is going to be good for parents, and what we say, on this side of the House, is that what we think is a lot better for children and parents is where they face strong incentives—not just incentives but expectations—that they are capable of returning to paid employment, with all the benefits that that brings. The research into this is clear: people in paid employment have increased confidence, they broaden their networks of support, and they have more social interaction in the community. We know that when people enter paid employment, that disrupts intergenerational cycles of poverty. It enhances child development, because parents who are in the workforce demonstrate to their children what can be gained from work and pass that imprint on to their children. So what this bill shows is a poverty of ambition for mothers who have children on the benefit.

I want to point out, in response to some of the claims made by members opposite, the reality that faces working parents up and down New Zealand. I want to acknowledge and recognise the mothers and the fathers who do access, who do make the decision to balance paid work and caregiving responsibilities, because the claim made by members opposite and in the purpose statement of this bill is that, actually, it’s very terrible for children when parents return to work—it’s stressful for the family; it’s going to have all of these adverse consequences for children and for parents. That is one of the major claims made for this piece of legislation, and I think that that is disrespectful of the mothers and fathers up and down the country who make a decision, when their child is 12 months old, or six months old, or whenever they see fit, that it is in the best overall interests of their family that they return to paid employment.

And some mothers make that choice because they look at the pathway ahead for their children and they think, “I want to provide them more material security. I want to be able to meet the rent each week without being stressed out about it.” And they go and they do cleaning shifts, and they work in takeaway restaurants, and they return to all sorts of employment, not always because it feeds their ego or their status but because they believe it is the best thing for their family. And what members opposite would have you believe is that mothers only ever return to paid employment because nasty people make them do so. And they would prefer a situation where those who are dependent on the State for their income do not face incentives to return to work. And I say, well, that is disrespectful of the thousands of mums and dads across the country who make considerable sacrifice by leaving their young children at home, by dropping their young children into day care, because they have made a judgment that the best thing overall for their family and for the hopes of their children is to be in paid employment.

Why should we have a poverty of ambition for those who are currently on welfare? Well, actually, we should have the highest expectations for them, because it is really important that they have a way out of poverty, and we should not consign them to 14 years on the DPB, which is what this bill would allow for, and pretend that that’s compassion. Actually, on this side of the House, we have a lot of empathy for people who have limited incomes and who are working incredibly hard to raise their families. That is stressful and that is hard. But what we also have for those people is compassion that they need more money, and members opposite may think that there is a never-ending money tree at the end of the garden, but there isn’t. There will never be enough benefit lifts to equal the wealth that comes from paid employment and an aspiration for further promotion for bigger pay packets.

And I’ll tell you how that happens: it happens because you return to work part-time as a mother, as is actually required by our current law—you face an incentive that once you have that subsequent child, you have to make your absolute best efforts to return to work—and when you take that chance, you take that part-time work, and you build from there, you meet other people, you gain a sense of self, you establish a relationship with an employer, then in time you can get that promotion, then in time, when your child starts school and things are easier, you might be able to get full-time work, and suddenly you can put more on the table for your kids. You can give them a better future. That is the aspiration we have on this side of the House. So we will not be told by members opposite that this sort of legislation is somehow compassionate. It shows an absolute poverty of ambition.

Before I sit down, I want to acknowledge the Hon Paula Bennett, whose vision was to create a system in New Zealand where welfare was a safety net that encouraged people to be ambitious for themselves and what was possible for them. The subsequent child policy was a change she introduced. It was a great thing to do. It recognised that work is the greatest liberator, that increases choices and opportunities. Members opposite may not understand that, but they should think about the children they are consigning to poverty as a result.

I can assure you, sir, that this side of the House does understand that. That is why we have raised the minimum wage. That is why we have improved workers’ conditions, because we understand the benefits of work. That side of the House doesn’t have a monopoly on understanding that, but here’s a few facts for them—here’s a few facts for them that they have omitted in the debate for this bill, which all it does is it removes a provision that doesn’t work. That’s a fact: it just removes a provision that doesn’t work.

But here’s a few facts. The last Labour Government, before they were in, had a lower unemployment rate than National ever achieved. This Government has a lower unemployment rate before and after lockdown than National ever achieved. So they can throw around all the numbers they like, but it’s the investment in programmes like free apprenticeships and it’s the investment in programmes about skills training and the support schemes around getting into decent work with good conditions and good pay—that’s what makes the difference.

But here’s another fact: every single speaker on that side of the House has mentioned Paula Bennett. Paula Bennett got a degree, benefiting from the training incentive allowance. When she was the social development Minister, she took that allowance away from beneficiaries—

💬 Hon Member: Pulled the ladder up.

Pulled the ladder up behind her. I will not be thanking Paula Bennett, but I will be thanking the Hon Carmel Sepuloni for bringing that allowance back and giving hope to people. They don’t need these sorts of measures.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! I reminded members on the other side of the House to stick to the bill. This member will too.

Fair enough, I was going to wrap up anyway. I commend the bill to the House.