Social Security (Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Social Security (Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. And under urgency as provided by Standing Order 57.

I am pleased to see that this House is committed to ensuring eligible New Zealanders can pay for their rent and board or cover the cost of owning a home. This bill seeks to amend the Social Security Act 2018 and the Social Security Regulations 2018, aligning legislation to longstanding policy and practice.

The bill recognises community partners as single when it comes to assessing their eligible benefit rates related to the accommodation supplement. By making current practice lawful, we will be able to ensure that the approximately 260 community partners—the majority of whom are older people receiving New Zealand superannuation or the veteran’s pension—do not experience reduction in their accommodation supplement, and can continue to receive the support that was intended.

Technical consequential amendments to the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001 and the Veterans’ Support Act 2014 also are included in the bill. It confirms that a community partner would not be subject to abatement of accommodation supplement in respect of any income that was included as part of their partner in care’s financial means assessment.

The accommodation supplement provides essential support for low-income New Zealanders to help with housing costs. Through this bill, we can continue to ensure people who have partners in care can receive this essential support with no disruption. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In taking this call, it’s the only call from the National Party at this third reading. Acknowledging Madam Speaker in the Chair—it’s the first time that I’ve had the opportunity to do so. So congratulations.

Minister, thank you for the contribution and the recognition that this is aligning policy with what the law has required. But there is some serious concern, and that needs to be noted on the record that the bill before the House is amending, in an Act, an Act of 2018, where the law has clearly stated what must be adhered to. To suggest for a moment that policy takes precedence is inappropriate. The law is the law and must be complied with. The purpose of this amendment bill is to adjust the law so that it reflects what the policy practice has been. In fact, it should have been the other way around. There’s been a juxtaposition of what the priorities are.

With this bill, also, it is recognising the importance that our pensioners who are in need of additional support from the State at a prime time of their life, after having provided service either by way of tax or services throughout the course of their lifetime—that there is the appropriate accommodation benefit supplement adjustment. And this law will do that. It also indicates, too, that over the last five years—and as has been emphasised in this House, particularly over the last 12 to 18 months—there is a cost of living crisis. So, appropriately, the law being adjusted to fit and meet the needs of our pensioners is done so with this adjustment.

I indicated that there may be members in this House who do have family members, and I do have a parent-in-law who is living in aged care, whose partner spouse is living independently and would benefit from this adjustment in law befitting the policy intent and statement. So, on that note, indicating that we have many thousands—in fact, I did say 871,002—pensioners in Aotearoa New Zealand, and a total of 47,562 of those who will benefit with the lawful amendment to ensure that they do lawfully receive the accommodation supplement. On that note, the National Party supports this amendment bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to take a brief and final call on this bill, the Social Security (Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill, because I think it’s really important to ensure that those that find themselves living alone with a partner in care have the support that they need that reflects their circumstances. This bill ensures that that can continue to occur, and I’m very happy to commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As we finish this process, I want to make a handful of reflections. As has been noted, the whole House supports people who have partners in care to receive their full entitlements from Work and Income. The Greens do not believe that these entitlements are enough to guarantee a life of dignity, so while I recap the comments from the Minister that there had to be resources allocated to respond to the pandemic, the reality is that we still have a cumbersome income support system that is difficult to navigate, where people struggle to understand what they’re able to get. I urge the Minister that, as this legislation passes, there is some priority work to simplify the welfare system and to guarantee that people have livable incomes so that the accommodation supplement doesn’t become just this growing, ballooning cost and burden, actually, on the people that receive it. People are getting it because they cannot make ends meet based on their benefit, superannuation, or wages.

I do hope as well that we come out of this process with some clarity about how we can better improve the transparency and the knowledge of the general public and legislators whose role it is to hold the executive to account when misalignments are happening so that we are able to identify these early as well so that we can provide constructive feedback. My understanding of when the Minister reached out to my co-leaders, for example, is that we didn’t know at the time that there had been those interactions with the Office of the Auditor-General. And while that may have not changed how we feel about it, for me it’s about ensuring that we set a good precedent, because, as has been noted and as I mentioned, the welfare system is complex. There is always the risk that there could be a much greater misalignment. So it’s not good enough, in my view, to have a process where those of us who sit either on a committee or who are now holding the executive to account don’t feel like we are reaching this debate with all the information required to make constructive contributions.

But, once again, we commend the Minister for finally getting to the point where we’re able to fix it so that these partners are able to get the support they need. And I urge the Minister to implement the rest of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommendations, as I believe this is well overdue and something that should be done anyway. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Yeah, I’d just like to repeat what we’ve been saying all along—that it is important that we look after our vulnerable. It is important that we’re making sure that the stress is not added on to somebody who is going through a tough time already. Many who may not have lived alone before, many who may not even know how to budget alone—having a partner leaving and having their income changing would make a huge impact on their lives. So I think it’s important that this issue is resolved.

My concern is, as a citizen that came here—and I thought the law is the law. I thought abiding by the law is the most important thing and that under no circumstance is there a reasonable explanation to be able to continue unlawful practice once you know it’s unlawful, because you’re intentionally breaking the law. That’s my understanding, and I’m just concerned that—we heard about it not too long ago and it is being fixed, but is this happening elsewhere and are there other misalignments that have been found that we don’t know about?

So I’m just really concerned about the whole process of how this has come about, how this has been brought before us, and that the scrutiny of this bill is probably not as great as it could have been, being done under urgency like this. But I do understand that we need to make sure that none of those 260 people will have a deduction in their accommodation allowance—and $62 a week under the current pressures of the cost of living at the moment would be a huge loss. No party in this House would want to be responsible for causing that kind of harm in a household.

So ACT will support this bill, but I just want to put on record that we really do have concerns at the process that has happened here and the level of scrutiny that is not as good as it could have been. Hopefully, in the future, we can be a little bit better with our scrutiny when it comes to things like this. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.