Social Security (Jobseeker Support and Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Social Security (Jobseeker Support and Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill. I heard the impassioned speech from the member from the Green Party, and I understand what you’re talking about, but just to back up to what the member Parmjeet Parmar was talking about in terms of the parental assistance test, the median wage in New Zealand is $74,000, so the anecdote that you gave me is probably a little bit on the extreme, but, OK, I heard you.

On the jobseeker support, New Zealand First supports the fact that young people get into work, training, or education. As for the accommodation supplement, we’re very pleased that superannuitants and veterans are not impacted by these changes. Thank you, Madam Speaker. We commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Celia Wade-Brown. This is the second of the split call.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak at the third reading of this bill. This Government believes that we need to target support to those most in need. This Government also knows that young people under the age of 25 on a benefit will spend up to 20 years of their lifetime on a benefit. We believe 18- and 19-year-olds need to be either in training, in education, or in employment. The Opposition has focused just on the employment in most of their speeches. If they’re not in employment, they need to be in education or training. This will set them up for a lifetime. I support this bill, I commend it to the House.

Thank you Madam Speaker. I’m also on the Social Services and Community Committee, and I accept that there is a real issue with just ignoring submissions that you don’t like the sound of, and it was resounding that the submitters did not like this bill.

Now, I just want to take the average New Zealander through what we’re doing here tonight, because they were promised something by the people who are now in Government. They were promised there was going to be a reduction in the costs they faced out there. They were promised this—meanwhile, this Government shelled out money to landlords, and it shelled out money to tobacco companies, and it has to pay for it somehow. This is who’s paying for it.

A family that has an 18-year-old who might just want to go into work. “What’s wrong with that?”, we’d say. It’s a good thing—isn’t it?—that they want to go into work. They don’t want to go into study; they want to go into work. There might be reasons for that, but they also just might want to go into work, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to want—isn’t it?—and, in fact, where we’re supposed to be going. That family with that kid, they might have applied for a number of jobs, and given that there’s record high unemployment in this country for that group—30-year record high for unemployment—it’s not actually that easy to do. That mother or father, or both, that are on a combined income of just over $62,000 gross a year, they are now going to be responsible for their kid for the next couple of years while they try and find work.

Let’s just think about how many families are affected in New Zealand. When they did the analysis on this, they said that 68.8 percent of the people impacted by this piece of legislation were families. They were going to be our families. They might have lots of kids, they might have four kids—we actually need more children in this country. We are going to have a huge problem if we don’t have more children, but, apparently, we get punished for that right now. If you’ve got four children and you’re trying to divide your $62,000 and you’ve got an 18-year-old to support in that circumstance, there’s no help for you. If you own your own home, you’re in really big trouble then, because what you’re expected to do is go out there and use your choices—this is what the Minister called it tonight. Your choices are things like, refinancing your mortgage, etc.

What, again, the experts said when they were criticising and talking about this bill—they were critiquing it, they were trying to give us decent feedback. They said that’s not really good, that’s not a great thing because those families just simply—we’re not taking into account the fact that they’ve got, actually, a lot of bills to pay. I think we all know that, and I keep on being told off for mentioning the cost of butter, but it is actually a big deal in most New Zealand families.

We can be excited for the community that are making money out of that, which is the farming community, but it’s not actually that good if you are in Mt Albert on $62,000, and you have four kids, and you have an 18-year-old. It doesn’t help. You’ve still got to buy the butter, and it’s gone up considerably. Those families, well, they now have to pay. They’re going to be $42 worse off a week. Whereas, a group without children, with the same issue over that second part of the legislation, it’s only $37. So we’re actually, again, punishing our families. They are now much worse off than they were.

What this is, is a combined issue. That’s pointed out again by the experts, they say to take these two things together—the fact that you’ve got an 18-year-old, and you’ve got this issue over your support of your accommodation supplement being less. Take those two together and it’s pretty crushing. It causes real harm, and they call it financial stress—they say it’s a lot of financial stress. Well, it is—it’s a lot of financial stress.

This Government that promised people that they were going to help with the cost of living crisis, they’ve made the lives of the very families they should be looking after much worse tonight. That’s what we’re doing tonight: we’re making their lives harder—big money-harder.

Now, I know that if we look at that amount, it probably isn’t much for some of the people on the other side of the House, but it is for a lot of people in my area of Mt Albert. That’s going to really hurt them. I am not proud of this legislation and I do not commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I haven’t even managed to write her name down it was that fast! The Hon Willie Jackson.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s always good to stand in this House and speak to the community that I live in and the realities that many people are facing. The previous member, Dan Bidois, just said that this is a bill that is strengthening social welfare. That is a ridiculous statement, because it does not do anything such as that. The reality of this is that this bill is really about a cost-savings exercise or a cut for this Government. They are taking money out of the system that currently supports 18- and 19-year-olds, young people in this country, who tend to be the most vulnerable throughout our communities across Aotearoa New Zealand.

One would say that “no, absolutely, we don’t want young people on benefits”. The statistics are correct to say that if a young person goes on a benefit, then yes, they are more likely to stay on there for longer. However, the reality is that there has to be an alternative and I believe absolutely, as Labour’s tertiary education spokesperson, that we have to have those alternatives in place. But I challenge that, as well, because under this Government and this particular Minister, putting this bill in front of us tonight, is a massive cut to things like the Apprenticeship Boost scheme. We’ve seen 17,000 less apprentices be active on the job since this Government took office—17,000. We’ve seen the highest unemployment rate that we’ve seen in decades at 5.5 percent, and the highest for young people in 30 years. If we look at young people not engaged in education, employment, or training, that has peaked under this Government at almost 100,000—100,000 young people aren’t engaged in employment, education, or training.

That’s where this bill does not make sense, because if this Government had a genuine commitment to training young people, then there wouldn’t be the cuts to the tertiary education sector or to initiatives that actually support young people into work or into training to get the qualifications that they need. The qualification, of course, is important because that leads to job security, that leads to higher wages, and that sets them up for a good life. And so my question, when we look at this particular legislation before the House, is I just don’t understand why—what’s the motivation for this Government to actually take away support, financial support, to our most vulnerable young people in this country? It does not make any sense whatsoever. I’ve never met anyone indoors, out on the street, or in my community that says, “You must take away the support to 17- and 18-year-olds because we want to get nephews off the couch”. That is not real. That is not a real statement. It’s not a real statement in Northcote, it’s not a real statement in Napier, it is not a real statement in Northland, and it’s not a real statement in Whanganui. Because New Zealanders believe that we should be investing in young people and supporting them into the right pathways.

I absolutely believe that those pathways are training pathways, they are educational pathways.

💬 Dr Vanessa Weenink: Good. We agree, then.

💬 SHANAN HALBERT: But that is not, Vanessa Weenink, what this Government is providing. You have to be responsible for the choices that your Government has made. That equates to 17,000 less apprentices in this country than three years ago; 100,000 young people are not engaged in education, employment, or training—that includes in Christchurch. That’s 35,000 young people more, under your watch, under a National - New Zealand First - ACT Government. And here you are tonight putting forward legislation that creates a worse outcome for young people and their families. And if you want to heckle me tonight, I’ve got statistic after statistic after statistic to actually tell you that the choices that you’re making, you’re going to be responsible for.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The Speaker’s not making them.

💬 SHANAN HALBERT: Actually, the fact, tonight, that all of you sit there—laugh, heckle, mock—speaks to the arrogance of this Government. It absolutely reeks of the arrogance of this Government, because I believe you would never, ever walk into a panel in your own communities and say that you should be taking away the support that supports young people, no matter where you live. You wouldn’t do that. You do that here because you live in a bubble, you’re out of touch, and that’s why New Zealanders actually believe that you are one of the worst Governments that New Zealand has ever seen, with one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers that this country has ever had.

💬 Hon James Meager: How’s yours going?

💬 SHANAN HALBERT: Well, mine’s going good because the polls are much higher on my side. If we look back—

💬 Hon Member: What about the apples? What happened to the apples?

💬 SHANAN HALBERT: —two weeks and, Madam Speaker, they’re encouraging me so I can absolutely go there: while you were all distracted by changing your leadership in a failed coup—

💬 Hon Member: Oh, look at him go.

💬 SHANAN HALBERT: —and not focused on the needs of New Zealanders—yes, you, Mr Chief Whip—for the second time. So let’s get back to reality.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Let’s get back to the bill.

💬 SHANAN HALBERT: I’m focused on the bill, because the reality is New Zealanders want us to be focused on the cost of living. They want us to support our most vulnerable; they want us to create jobs, and to be in employment, but that is not what this Government has done. If we’re talking to the bill, I go back to my opening argument: the narrative that this bill sets is that young people are doing nothing, that families should pay for their children, all of those things, and that would be a great narrative if there were actually training programmes in place for them, but the reality is that this Government has cut them, too. They’re cutting benefits, they’re taking away opportunities for young people, and that is why we’re seeing people go offshore. They’re leaving New Zealand and losing hope in New Zealand. We are going backwards in this country under this Government, and New Zealanders cannot afford another three years of this National Government.

I commend the bill to the House.

💬 Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Point of order—point of order.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I am actually in the middle of something and I will deal to the point of order in a second.

💬 Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Point of order, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan.