Social Assistance Legislation (Accommodation Supplement and Income-related Rent) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Social Assistance Legislation (Accommodation Supplement and Income-related Rent) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill seeks to amend the Social Security Act 2018 and the Public and Community Housing Management Act 1992 and associated regulations to ensure that all board payments received are treated in a similar way to other forms of income, in particular rent payments received. The objectives have already been outlined to the House, so I won’t repeat them.

The bill seeks to recognise payments from boarders when assessing a person’s entitlement to housing subsidence and other forms of income assistance. It’s making sure that the Government is not subsidising the same accommodation costs more than once. By ensuring the housing subsidies and income assistance accurately reflects a person’s circumstances, it will return $150 million in net operating funding to the Government over four years. This directly contributes to easing the cost of living and inflation, and supports those who are paying tax.

Currently, payments received from a first and second boarder are disregarded, and only board payments received from the third and subsequent boarders impact a person’s income for the purpose of calculating entitlements. Also, currently for social housing tenants, only contributions received for the third and subsequent additional residents count towards assessable income when calculating the rate of income-related rent, unless the contributions received are the person’s main source of income.

This bill will ensure that all housing contributions received from all boarders are considered when calculating the rate of housing subsidies under the Social Security Act 2018, such as the accommodation supplement, and considered when calculating social housing tenants’ income-related rent. As I said, it will ensure the Government will no longer be subsidising the same accommodation costs more than once. It also ensures that when payments from boarders—and this is an important note that I think the Opposition missed—exceed the total allowable accommodation costs or the market rent for the social housing property, the excess is then considered as income and any other income-tested assistance that applies to the Social Security Act definition of income, such as income-tested main benefits. So what we’re saying here is that you could have boarders that provide income over and above the total allowable accommodation cost. The other side thinks that that’s fair and fair to taxpayers—crazy. These changes are based on common sense and fairness.

The bill also includes other amendments to ensure effective implementation of the policy proposals. This includes defining a boarder in the legislation and enabling a new disputes process; making the accommodation supplement no longer a discretionary payment; and specifying that the portion of a property that a person lives in, that is used for their business—which, again, makes sense—is excluded from the accommodation supplement. You shouldn’t be getting the accommodation supplement for parts of your house that are used for a business. And the opposite side also didn’t seem to understand that the changes in this bill will only affect those who receive board payments, not those who are boarders. They seem to have missed that point.

Housing subsidies and income assistance will always be available to those who need support and qualify for it, so most people who receive housing subsidies won’t be affected by this at all. But it will help our Government reach our goal of ensuring that public services are sustainable and continue to deliver assistance to those in need. These changes will lead to fairer outcomes for people who receive housing subsidies. I look forward to seeing this bill through the remaining stages of our process and commend it to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I’m glad the Government are really happy to have me talking today. I really enjoy their support. It’s really good. As Kieran McAnulty said, another mean-spirited, terrible initiative from this Government. The bottom line is, as Kieran McAnulty said—our homes spokesman—

Jamie Arbuckle: The next leader of the Labour Party!

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Says the man who will never get anywhere in New Zealand First. As Kieran McAnulty said: will this improve things in terms of where we are at the moment? Will the vulnerable again be exposed with this particular kaupapa? That’s our concern—that’s our concern. By forcing those who take a boarder to include the first and second boarder as income, will remove the incentive to have that boarder in the first place. And I think we’ve been quite explicit with that. It is such a worry that this attempt to hustle people who take in boarders might mean head tenants or people renting out a spare room no longer want to do it, and we could see a spike in boarders being pushed out.

What does that mean again? Again, we have a problem in terms of homelessness. Again, we have a problem in terms of emergency housing. Of course, we know that the Government likes playing around with numbers, and we wouldn’t have a clue in terms of what’s happening in that area, because they keep telling us that they are removing people and getting people out of emergency housing. The question remains, of course, is where are they going? And those are answers that Minister Potaka and Minister Bishop cannot give us. Constantly we ask them, what’s happening with the homeless? They wouldn’t have a clue. What we know is that homelessness has increased incredibly in this country over the last year or so.

This particular kaupapa could impact up to 20,000 people in New Zealand receiving house assistance who have a boarder. How will this make renting any easier? That’s the question that the Government have to ask themselves. When we have a cost of living crisis, many take in a boarder; to do so helps them offset the costs. The Government, sadly, thinks that there’s some sort of major scheme going on when people are taking in boarders, but this amendment only takes money from people who can least afford to have that money taken from them in the first place. The argument is the current system isn’t fair because the first and second boarders are not included in the accommodation assessment, but the incentive to take a boarder in while that exists ensures we have a ready supply of boarding homes. Closing this to make money is just mean-spirited. And when you consider these changes come alongside the new accommodation supplement changes in 2027, where people will be forced to pay 40 percent of their rent, up from the 30 percent, we see a pattern of legislation that is focused on screwing down and pushing down renters and those who require housing subsidy assistance.

That’s why this is another double whammy, so to speak, for Māori, for Pasifika, for the disabled, and for working people, because these are the ones inevitably impacted hardest by these changes. Pushing up rental thresholds and including boarders for accommodation assistance calculations is helping who, here? That’s the question. This will impact on all those who access the accommodation supplement; temporary additional support; grandparented widows benefit; student allowance; the accommodation benefit for sole parents, as calculated using the accommodation supplement rules; away from home allowance; and the income-related rent subsidy. You know, we’re continually asking the question from this side of the House: where are the concerns and the voices of support for people who will find themselves in the most stressful circumstances because of this type of legislation?

We have an obligation on this side of the House to voice those concerns, and that’s what this side is doing today. It seems that anyone weaker than this Government is in the firing line. It’s all cumulative. On its own, including the first and second boarder might be acceptable, but when you include all of the punitive measures and clawbacks and nasty fish-hooks that this Government has passed recently, it becomes just so overwhelming, and you can see why so many whānau, so many people are heading off to Australia.

My fear with this is that it will become as bureaucratic as the Government’s deeply flawed Best Start programme and cause people to turn away a boarder because of the extra complexity. Is that where we want to be? Now they’re going to turn away boarders. As I keep saying, they do not take on boarders to get rich; they take on boarders because of the cost of living, to pay the rent. If you come to Auckland, you’ll see couples renting two-room places, $600 per week. I mean, the minimum, if they’re lucky—$800 per week is not out of the ordinary. Young couples or older couples will inevitably take on flatmates to help with the financial situation.

This feels like the Government is just totally desperate, reaching behind the couch to see if there’s any more loose change to fund their Budget. I mean, we’ve seen the sacrifice. They’ve sacrificed New Zealand women. How many New Zealand women was it, Megan Woods?

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Too many.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Too many. Hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands of—

Hon Dr Megan Woods: 180,000.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: 180,000—180,000 New Zealand women sacrificed for the Budget. But it goes on, and this is another example of it. The exemption of the first two boarders was to encourage better utilisation of State housing and encourage beneficiary households, particularly sole parent beneficiaries living in large State houses, to take on a boarder or boarders to offset some of some of their costs. What this Government now wants to do is bash that infrastructure and take money directly out of the pockets of beneficiaries and sole parents, at the same time as this Government announces more punitive welfare sanctions. That’s the problem. It’s not just one thing, everybody—“Oh, it’s not a big problem.” Oh yeah, that’s right, but then there’s all these other things.

It’s like their Budget. It’s like their Māori budget. You know, they’ve taken all the money away from Māori. I know I’m going off the subject here, but it’s disturbing us that they’ve taken $1 billion out of the Māori budget. But they say, “Oh, no, it’s all there,” but they’ve transferred it across to a general fund. Shocking, really, but always robbing Peter to pay Paul seems to be the strategy of this Government.

Tangi Utikere: Robbing Mary to pay Paul.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Robbing Mary to pay? Ha, ha! This is a constant war on the poor and it’s good that former Minister Sepuloni is here. She knows better than anyone, having overseen our strategy in past years, the way we were going as a Government, more embracing and more understanding of our poorer people who are struggling, struggling with different complexities. Knowing I always salute our former Minister for Social Development and Employment here because she opened up things. It was a more aroha-type approach in terms of what was happening with people at the coalface. But this is a constant war on the poor. After witnessing them taking $12 billion from the pay parity pockets of working women and men so they could give $6 billion to the bosses, it helps explain how they can then target those on welfare who have taken in a boarder.

And that’s the problem. We’ve got a Budget. This is all Budget-related. Everything is about trying to pay for a Budget that they could never afford. But they can afford it if they turn their attention and if they focus on taking from groups who can least expect it. Women have been at the forefront of this sacrifice and this Government will pay for what they have done over the last couple of weeks. This will hurt the poorest hardest, which seems to be, as I said, the main threshold for social policy from this Government. It’s petty, it’s mean-spirited, and, once again, it’s taking from the poorest to pay the rich. The Government claimed they will save $150 million from these changes. But let’s examine the word “save”. What the Government means is that they will take $150 million from the poorest renters. That’s where they will save this money, by taking it from the poorest. That’s not a solution. This is a trickle-up economics where the poor subsidise the wealthy, and that sums up this Government well. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise today to speak on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to strongly oppose this bill, a bill that might just look like a tidy administrative change, but, in reality, is a cut—a cut to the incomes of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, some of the most vulnerable people in Aotearoa. This will affect children. This will affect disabled people. This will affect beneficiaries and our older people. It is a cut to those who rely on housing assistance to survive.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of why this legislation is so shoddy and really harmful—and an actual embarrassment to the country that we live in—I want to talk about the use of urgency. It is outrageous—

Francisco Hernandez: Outrageous!

KAHURANGI CARTER: —absolutely outrageous—that this horrid bill is being pushed through under urgency. I know the communities I serve: our disability communities and our disabled people, my Christchurch community, our low-income whānau, and the people who advocate for these communities would have wanted to have a say on this bill, because they are the ones with lived experience. They are the ones out there supporting these communities. Instead, it is being rushed through without this very important feedback and scrutiny from the public and from the people that this bill most affects.

This bill changes the way that the accommodation supplement and the income-related rents are calculated for people who take in one or two boarders—building community, building whānau, helping each other, sharing. Sharing is caring; that’s what my mum always said.

Francisco Hernandez: She’s right.

KAHURANGI CARTER: That’s right; she was right. Right now, those board payments are not counted as income, because they aren’t truly income. They’re cost-sharing arrangements. They help whānau survive. This bill will change that and, in doing so, it will make life harder for thousands of low-income houses already on the edge—already who do not have the means to pay for the things that we all need to live a good life.

Since 1992, the Governments have rightly recognised that small board payments, particularly from one or two people, shouldn’t be treated as income. The policy was simple and fair: it enabled people to open their homes, reduce their costs, and ease pressure on the housing system. We hear the Government side of the House say over and over that there is a housing crisis that needs to be fixed. This is one of the things that helps people stay in homes.

This bill flips that sharing on its head, and that ability to ease the pressure from the housing system. It treats cost-sharing as profit and it punishes people who are doing exactly what we ask of them: finding ways to make housing affordable within their communities. This is not smart policy; this is penny-pinching from those with the least. Let’s remember who is affected here: solo parents, disabled people, people on superannuation, low-wage workers, and beneficiaries. These are people who are already not making ends meet. The rising cost of food, rent, transport, and electricity is pushing families to breaking point, and I invite the other side of the House to try and walk a mile in these people’s shoes, to live with their budgets and see if they could do it for a week, for a month, for six months, for six years—see if you could make those ends meet.

All of this is happening in the exact same week that we saw the release of the Budget’s Child Poverty Report 2025, a report that confirmed our deepest fears. This Government’s decisions are not only failing to reduce child poverty; they are making it worse. The report stated clearly that this Budget will have no meaningful impact on child poverty rates—none. And despite having the tools, the data, and the mandate, the Government has chosen to stand still while children fall deeper and deeper into hardship. Worse still, the decision to means test the Best Start payment will rip vital income from 62,000 new parents, and for 55,000 of them it means receiving nothing in their baby’s crucial first year of life.

As Alicia Sudden of the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services put it, and I quote, “This Budget will leave thousands of children in poverty.” Let that sink in—thousands more children in poverty while the Government chips away at housing assistance, benefits, and support for new parents. This bill, in that context, is not neutral; it is cruel. And the fact that we are pushing it through under urgency without hearing from those parents, without hearing from disabled people, without hearing from our kaumātua—it makes me shake my head in shame that this is the country we live in. We are a modern country, we are a modern society, and we need laws that reflect that, and caring for our tamariki should be at the centre of everything we do.

The Green Party believes in a welfare system grounded in dignity, fairness, and mana-enhancing support. We believe in a Government that upholds its duty of care, especially to children and to whānau struggling in poverty—whānau in crisis. If we want to ensure public housing is used effectively, efficiently, let’s build more of it. Let’s regulate the private rental market. Let’s ensure every person has a safe, stable, and affordable place to live. But let’s not do what this bill proposes to do: clawing back income from low-income people just to hit a Budget target. Some things are more important than the bottom line, and our tamariki and people in our country are more important.

So the Green Party opposes the bill in the strongest possible terms. This bill punishes people sharing their homes, building community, doing the thing that my mum instilled in me when I was a child. Sharing is caring, living is giving, and I think that maybe that would be a great slogan for the next election. Let’s care for the people in our communities.

Francisco Hernandez: What would the Green Budget do?

KAHURANGI CARTER: The Green Budget would be amazing. This bill cuts income from people who are already living in poverty, and it does so at a time when the Government’s own Budget report confirms that thousands more children will be left in hardship. This is not the Aotearoa that I believe in; this is not the Aotearoa that we believe in at the Greens. We stand for a country where everyone has what they need to thrive, where every child grows up free from poverty—[Interruption]—yeah, let’s have children grow up free from poverty; I don’t know why you’re laughing about that—and where Government policy lifts people up, not pushes them down. We urge, in this House, to do the right thing: vote against this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of the ACT Party to support the second reading of the Social Assistance Legislation (Accommodation Supplement and Income-related Rent) Amendment Bill. This bill doesn’t stop anybody from sharing their State house. People can still have boarders in the house if they have space to keep boarders. But what the bill does is it stops the double subsidy for the same accommodation. It makes it fairer for everybody, even for those who are in State houses because there are some people, those in bigger State houses, who can have boarders, but there might be some people who are not in those kinds of big houses where they can have boarders.

It is about levelling the opportunity that is available to everybody as well as making sure that taxpayers are not subsidising the same accommodation twice through a double subsidy—one to the boarder and one to the person who has the boarder at their place.

This bill also sets a process if there is a conflict in the information that is provided by the boarder and the person who is having the boarder there. This actually is a very thought-through bill to ensure that the system brings fairness and accountability, and the member who spoke before me, Kahurangi Carter, said they like fairness, and that is exactly what this bill does. It is about fairness. It is not just about the money that is spent but also about people who are in different types of State houses. And that is why we support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call in the second reading of the Social Assistance Legislation (Accommodation Supplement and Income-related Rent) Amendment Bill.

This piece of legislation applies the fairness rule. It does that because it aims to prevent accommodation costs being subsidised more than once. It ensures fairness by ensuring that people who receive board payments are treated the same as those who receive rent payments—so that’s the fairness rule applied there—when calculating their eligibility for the accommodation supplement. I commend this bill to the House.

Ricardo Menéndez March. And the Green Party have indicated in writing that you can have their five minutes as well.

Oh, yeah—Te Pāti Māori.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Te Pāti Māori—sorry.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Thank you, Mr Speaker. We just heard a lot from the previous member, Jenny Marcroft, in their very brief—and, quite frankly, lacking in substance—contribution around fairness. It seems to me that fairness, according to the Government members, is stripping away support from people in public housing, low-income people. Fairness seems to be, for the Government, pushing people into needing hardship assistance and temporary accommodation, because that is exactly what this bill does, and either the previous member did not read the advice from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) or actually talk to people experiencing hardship, or she just doesn’t care. I think it’s probably a combination of both, because what this bill is, effectively, doing is stripping away critical support for people who are living with boarders, and, often, the large, vast majority of these people are not the Government’s wealthy mates. They’re people who were either living in emergency housing prior to entering into public housing or they were people facing unaffordable rents, because most people are unlikely to be looking for boarders unless they actually needed that additional support.

The policy that we had prior to this piece of legislation, where you could have boarders without losing then your accommodation supplement and income-related subsidy, was designed to support the people who were often in hardship from being able to have those support networks. I find it rich and at the same time cruel that the Government members completely ignore the material consequences of this bill—the negative material consequences—that will push people deeper into poverty and deeper into hardship. The reality is that this bill disproportionately impacts Māori, Pacific people, and older people—and I also think it is really rich that New Zealand First claims that they support senior citizens a lot, and yet they’re quite happy to push a bill through that actually disproportionately impacts our older community as well as disabled people and young people.

Young people are really getting the double whammy at the moment in the Budget. Not only is their ability to access income support being stripped away but now we have a bill that will disproportionately affect them. Young people—often those that are leaving family violence or who may have experienced youth homelessness—are often some of the people that will most likely be needing to board, and they’re people who are often seeking to live with members of their extended family or people who they’ve found along the way for support. The Government seems to be extremely comfortable with stripping away one of the few supplementary assistances that exist that allows people to retain housing.

The reality of this bill is that it will also criminalise people doing it tough. As we’ve heard from the ministry itself, one of the likely impacts of this bill is that people will be then pushed into a situation where they will be encouraged, in some ways, to literally lie to MSD about their accommodation circumstances in order to not face a hike in the rent. To me, this speaks of an approach from this Government of neglect in criminalising the poor in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy few. This is all in the document entitled Including Boarders’ Contributions in the Calculations of Housing Subsidies: Supplementary Analysis Report, and the fact that this analysis itself identifies that people are more likely going to be committing fraud and not reporting their boarders is pretty concerning.

This bill also acknowledges that the so-called savings that the Government is making in this piece of legislation are going to be passed on to other parts of the system. For example, if you lose your accommodation supplement and you lose your income-related subsidies, you’re far more likely to then be needing things like hardship grants. That’s a cost that is then being passed from one part of the system on to MSD, which is why the ministry itself acknowledged that the Government overestimated the savings that they would be making as part of this piece of legislation.

Not only is the Government happy to put the boot down on people who need support the most but they’re being fiscally illiterate and irresponsible by not acknowledging that the so-called savings that they are making on the accommodation supplement and income-related rent subsidy costs are being passed on to other parts of the Ministry of Social Development. At a time when we have heard from the Minister of social development that their front line is oversubscribed, it begs the question of whether the Government is completely out of touch with the front line, which is supposed to be helping individuals rather than punishing them, as the Government is doing.

I acknowledge that this bill has another component around automated decision-making. I think the Government has been not very transparent when it comes to its intentions to use automated decision-making. We had the Social Security Amendment Act passed not that long ago, which broadened the use of automated decision-making. This, in laymen’s terms, is actually the ability for computer systems to be, effectively, making decisions instead of the front line, which could have more discretion in its use of decisions.

I can see the potential for that to lead to more accurate decision-making, but I do think the Government is pushing this in the context of under-resourcing the front line and the humans who can then support people in forming those connections to assist them, not just in calculating their eligibility for things like the accommodation supplement but other support systems, as well. Effectively, what the Government is doing is passing the support systems that exist from the Ministry of Social Development—away from human interactions—on to computers, on to automated systems, which then strips away the more tailored support we can provide to people who are facing housing insecurity.

If we look at the analysis from MSD, what we can also find is the average increase in the cost of living that people affected by this bill will face, and this is on page 21 of the supplementary analysis report. What we can see around the financial impacts of the policy changes is that, for example, somebody who has one boarder will see an increase in the cost of living of $92 a week, somebody who has two boarders will see an increase of $148 a week, and somebody who has three boarders is facing an additional $202 a week.

I don’t think that this is a Government that is seriously addressing the cost of living crisis, and they’re pushing in legislation that will literally make it worse for the almost 8,000 people that this bill is estimated to be affecting. If anything, what it will do is it will incentivise people to instead seek temporary accommodation, or to be in emergency housing, if they’re lucky—because we have seen reports of our social services saying that most people are being rejected from emergency housing—and it will encourage people to not disclose that they have boarders. This is in the report itself, and I think people will be waking up and realising that there will be creative ways, unfortunately, that they will use to get around this bill, effectively, to not disclose who are the people they’ve been living with in order to get away with actually not facing, for example, in some cases, an additional $202 a week in accommodation costs.

Particularly for those that received income-related rent subsidies, this will push them and their households to be, effectively, receiving market rate rents. For example, right now, if you’re living in a Kāinga Ora home and you receive the income-related rent subsidy, you could be paying just 25 percent of your income on rent. That’s amazing—that’s something that I actually hope one day we can achieve for absolutely everyone. But, instead, people could be subjected to market rates. This is because once you’re deemed to be receiving a specific amount of income, you lose that subsidy. If you have a Kāinga Ora home in a neighbourhood where the market rate rents are really high, that hike could push you out of your home and into the streets. At a time when we’re seeing record homelessness and people doing it rough, it feels callous, cruel, and intellectually dishonest for a Government to be saying that they’re addressing the cost of living crisis, and yet pushing through a bill that will do exactly the very opposite of that.

I hope that those members, when they start seeing the hardship they’re creating, swallow their words of fairness and see the truth behind what this bill is promoting, which is actually an increase in poverty, an increase in inequality, an increase in homelessness, and people living in public and private rentals facing humungous increases in their living costs. We look forward to the committee of the whole House stage to scrutinise this bill, as it deserves, for the harm that the Government is causing for some of our most vulnerable communities out there in the community. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Again, I’ll just clarify what this bill does. There’s one room in a house—currently, the Government, under the existing law, will subsidise that room via the landowner or the person who was renting the house, and then they’ll also subsidise the boarder who’s using that room. So it’s subsidised twice. This changes that.

This is a Government that respects and fights for the workers of New Zealand, unlike those members opposite. That Opposition, in the last Government, took debt from $57 billion to $175 billion, and they brought this country to a very difficult place. We are fixing this. We respect the money that taxpayers earn. We want to help people. We want to give them a hand up, got a handout.

I know what poverty tastes like, smells like, and looks like, unlike those champagne socialists on the other side. We want to help New Zealanders. I commend this bill to the House.

It’s interesting to hear the sanctimony come from the other side in the situation because earlier I was thinking about one of the heckles, which was, “There’s no magic money tree.” I agree there is no magic money tree. But last year, this Government got into Parliament saying it would give people tax cuts. It could not afford them. There was no magic money tree. As a result, now people like women in this country who expected to get equal pay, and people like the people impacted in this piece of legislation, they are the people who will pay the price because there was no magic money tree.

Before anybody suggests that people on this side of the House do not understand poverty, I would like to suggest that if this had been to a select committee, if people had been able to come to Parliament and tell their story and say how this piece of legislation was going to affect them, then the Government would be in a position where they might be able to say they listened. But right now, the Government has insulated itself from that process because we are in a bubble today.

We are not hearing from the people this will hurt, and the people out there are hurting. This Government promised it was going to address the needs of people in a cost of living crisis. It said, “We’re going to give you a tax cut.” Those people have received so little. Today, a lot of those people, they lose $132. Now, that’s not an insignificant amount of money for anyone. If you’re on the kind of money that these families are on, that is a huge amount of money. That kind of disruption to people’s lives causes incredible harm.

Now, some of the people that have picked up in this change—and I remind the House, this is something that was OK to do. Nobody snuck around. They’ve actually been able to have a boarder, to have up to two boarders and to be able to keep that money. That’s been OK. But tomorrow it’s not going to be OK any more. What is going to happen when that happens is the impact of not having that money in our poorest families is going to ripple through our society. It’s going to cause problems.

Let’s talk about some of the people who are impacted by this piece of legislation. I’m sure there will be comments from people who are specialist portfolio holders on this later, but right now I just want to talk about two of them. The first group that I want to talk about is the elderly. We have more and more elderly who rely on an accommodation supplement in their older years. Those people will be impacted over this. There’s actually a lot of them.

Then we’ve got the youth issue, which is raised in the report which my colleague from the Greens also talked about. It’s this one here, the supplementary analysis report. It’s raised specifically by impartial people who say there’s a problem here because what happens with youth is they find that they need to board quite often, and they find it extremely hard to find other accommodation because there’s a discrimination that occurs with youth. So you’ve got a shrinking issue with boarding being available and it’s going to have huge impact on youth and you’re cutting that out from them. They’re cutting that option out because people will no longer take boarders. It talks about the impact on that group. It’s particularly worrying. They are not alone.

It talks about the impact on Māori, and it talks about the impact on Pacific peoples as particularly extreme. These are all the groups we know are at our lowest socio-economic levels. They are the ones that need the helping hand. That’s what I would say to my colleague on the other side of the House who suggests that we know nothing about poverty and that people just need a hand up. What’s a hand up? This was a hand up. This was a capacity that people had to take in a boarder or two and be able to keep the money with the Government’s consent. That was what was going on and not—

Grant McCallum: Your Government’s consent.

HELEN WHITE: No. The heckler suggests that in this case it was something that the Labour Government had done. That is just not accurate. This has been going since 1992. Every Government since has come down on the side of this being still a good idea. When you’re earning a pitiful amount, when you actually don’t have enough, even though you’re working, and you need an accommodation supplement, or you’re in a situation where you’re on a benefit—maybe you’re disabled, maybe you’re older, maybe you are in those groups—then you actually need a helping hand, and this was one. It was one where if you decided to get a boarder or two, then you were OK. You could keep the money. It’s not a lot of money, let’s face it, but it’s something. So today what we do is we absolutely rip the guts out of those families. Let’s just face it: $132. That’s what’s going to happen, $132 less for a lot of those families.

I’d like to just look at the kinds of numbers we are talking about because, again, the supplementary analysis report says that there are 8,200 households who have a boarder in this position, and that 7,000 of those households will have a reduction, the average reduction being $100. The Government today takes $100 off 7,000 New Zealand families just for accommodation supplement. Then in addition to that, you’ve got people who have got income-related rent—6,200 of them will lose $132 a week. It’s a lot of money. Let’s just take that and think about it for a second.

What we are told is that this will save money for the Government. According to the projections, it will save—and there are real question marks about the projections in the independent analysis—about $150 million over four years. That’s the possible saving. But the question marks over that money are extremely real. It’s not just wishful thinking. It’s not the Opposition making it up. The question marks are in that report. The question marks are based on things like we don’t actually know how many people there are out there with these situations, so we’re actually guessing. We don’t know what they’re going to do when they can’t receive this money and they’re going to be punished in this way. They might stop having boarders. They might disappear from that system. They might not report them. All those things mean that there’s a huge question mark about whether the Government will save that kind of money.

Now, I just want to turn for the last little part of my speech to the issue of the automated decision-making system. That is part and parcel of this. We will—after this bill—face another bill in urgency, which is about that too. That’s about people having to turn up, and they’re going to have to turn up once a year to do a review of their benefit. The sole reason for that is because you can’t find out how many boarders there are unless you make people turn up for a review. A whole lot of people who are permanently injured, for example, they’re going to have to turn up for a review so that the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) can gather the information and match it. That’s how they’re going to get that information. So we have another whole piece of legislation which relates to this.

Part of what’s going on in both pieces of the Acts that are before us today is that we are looking at an automated system, because the MSD, when they looked at the system, they just couldn’t do it with people. They didn’t have the staff. That’s because we’ve cut huge amounts of staff everywhere we can and so MSD just couldn’t do this, so we’ve moved to an automated system. That’s what we’ve done in this country. I take the point of my colleague that it’s not us; it’s the Government that’s done it. I think it’s really important that it is understood that that’s what has happened in this country. We simply don’t have the staff to do this and so now we’re bringing in an impersonal system to do it instead. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill is an effort by a fiscally prudent and responsible Government to look at the situation where a person who receives boarder payments himself applies for housing subsidies, to take that situation into consideration when assessing his entitlement to and the rate of the housing subsidy that he himself is applying for. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a Government that describes itself as fiscally prudent. Is it fiscally prudent to push thousands of young New Zealanders into debt? This is a Budget which has penny-pinched out of young people’s pockets; 18- to 19-year-olds are not only being cut off from the emergency benefit, which will now be means tested—and when I say emergency benefit, I mean homelessness, urgent dental work; urgent things that young people need and for which they will now be asked whether their parents can help them with. Then, further, this bill makes a change to make it harder for any adults in their lives who will stand up for them—to have them living in their homes.

This is a bill which will see youth homelessness rising in the middle of a youth homelessness crisis. If this Government cared about young people, it would make the kinds of changes that we need in order to see young people properly supported. But what does it do instead? It makes it harder for young people to access emergency accommodation. It makes it harder for young people to access emergency benefits. And it makes it harder for them to live in the homes with the adults who care for them—$202 for a mum with adult children, three of them living in her home. That’s how much it will cost her now to have those adult children living with her every week. This is taking money out of the pockets of people who can least afford it—7,000 households.

You know why this hasn’t been a policy choice that has been made by prior National Governments? Because, under the leadership of John Key and Bill English, it didn’t seem like a good idea to take 7,000 of the lowest income and most vulnerable households and make $150 million back for the Government. This pushes young people into debt. It pushes working families into further debt. It might be debt off the Government’s book, but it certainly is a debt off New Zealanders’ books.

When we think about the intergenerational cost of this, we have to ask ourselves: is this a useful intervention in the housing market, with a Government that is focused, it says, on increasing supply of housing? Absolutely not. It is a change which will result in a higher demand for housing because we will have the most vulnerable people competing even harder for the few rentals that are available now in the kind of price range that they can afford. What will that do? It will drive up the price of rentals for these people. Young people will experience further competition and further increases in the rents they pay because the number of rentals available to them will be lower. Or is that not a fiscal risk that the Government has identified? Actually, what will happen is these young people will be faced with not being able to get accommodation at all.

This is a Government that has overseen the giving out of grants for tents; overseen more and more people sleeping in their cars down at the local park. Every electorate MP in this House will have seen it. Everyone will know that homelessness in our town centres is growing and the people who are experiencing that homelessness are young. This is not like the global financial crisis. This is not like the crises that we have been through as a country in my lifetime, where those people living in their cars were older people. This is people who are 18, 19, and 20.

I met with a young woman in my electorate recently. Her name is KJ. For the first time this year, she slept at a bus shelter. She is 16 years old. She should be able to access the emergency benefit without having any reference to her parents. But this Government has taken that support away from her and it will now be means tested with a reference to her parents’ incomes. This callous change in this bill means that it will be harder for her to board because her supplements will be counted against the other supplements in her house. The official advice in this paper recognises that it will hurt people like her the most; that marginalised groups, young people, and Māori and Pasifika will be most impacted by this change; that the people who can least afford it will be punished for these savings to be made.

This is a Government which has made all the wrong choices and they are on display in this bill. This affects the working people who elected them. This affects everyone in our communities. This affects 54,000 young people who receive the accommodation supplement. It is the wrong change and it is cruel.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill is simply making some minor changes that bring in fairness to a system that seems strange that it’s been allowed to exist for the last 30-odd years. This has been a situation where, under the last Government, they actually changed some of those thresholds for accommodation subsidies as well, so that people could use that money to pay for their mortgages. This only is affecting those people who both get an accommodation supplement and have boarders who are also getting an accommodation supplement. This is not for the workers out there who have spare rooms, who are also paying for their rent and paying for their mortgages, paying for all of their costs; those people hadn’t been getting assistance and subsidies from the Government. This is a clearing, making it a much more fair system. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Let’s make no bones about this. This is a cold, callous, and cruel bill by a cold Government that is taking New Zealand backwards, by punching down on those who can least afford it.

Joseph Mooney: I can see the hot air rising—hot air rising!

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: And this is part of their pattern. We’ve seen it in their “austerity Budget”.

Joseph Mooney: Ha, ha!

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: We’ve seen it because they’ve taken money away from women’s pay by cancelling 33 active pay equity claims.

Joseph Mooney: Better take some of those math lessons!

Shanan Halbert: They don’t like that one.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: No, they don’t like that one, do they, Shanan, because there’s a lot of chat coming from Joseph Mooney, who’s been laughing throughout this particular debate, when we talk about some of the most vulnerable in New Zealand, who are being made worse off by his Government and his vote directly.

What are they taking away? KiwiSaver contributions. They’re taking away money from 61,000 families through their “austerity Budget”—61,000 families who will now be worse off by an average of $43 per fortnight. Unemployment, scheduled to rise. Nobody can find the families they promised the $250 per fortnight to during their campaign—a campaign on reducing the cost of living for New Zealanders. What did their leaders say? “Everyone’s going to get $250 a fortnight!”—it was like Oprah on the campaign trail. Who gets it now? Hardly anyone. The only increase that some families are getting: $7 a week. That’s what this Government is crowing about. This bill takes us backwards even more.

Now, what have we heard from members opposite? The Minister for Social Development and Employment said that this will only impact the boarder. Who are these boarders? Single mothers, young people, disabled people. The person who’s got the boarders, that’s what the Minister said. They’re often disabled people. And this is the Minister for Disability Issues as well who’s punching down again on disabled people. Minister, read the advice in your own papers, because Whaikaha themselves have said that this is a bad idea. Whaikaha themselves have said that disabled people have limited options and many of them rely on boarding arrangements with their caregivers. So who is being penalised by this? Disabled people, young people, old people, Pacific people. They are all going to be worse off on average by $100; those in social housing, on average by $132 a week.

So 51,459 people on a supported living payment also receive the accommodation supplement. There are, in addition to that, 15,6245 people on supported living payments who are also in social housing. All of them, potentially, could be impacted by this. We don’t know a huge amount of detail, though, because they’re rushing this through under urgency and their own analysis from their officials tell us that there’s been limited time to engage with people who would be—but that, again, seems to be typical of this Government, as we’ve seen.

What are we going to see? Now, again, members opposite have stood up and said, “This is just fixing a discrepancy.” They’ve said they’re being fiscally prudent by taking $150 million off those who can least afford it. They’ve said, “This is a common-sense fix and it’s fair.” Fair for whom? Who are the people? What was this policy intended for back in 1992? It was intended to encourage those in State housing to be able to use their space for others who might need assistance when it comes to housing and it was also intended to ensure that they could offset their costs. This isn’t some sort of a rort that’s been happening for 30-odd years; it’s been an incentive to ensure that people have a roof over their heads and that people can actually meet the costs of living. That is what this cold, callous, cruel Government is stripping away from those who can least afford it. It was an incentive that is taken away. Oh, now they’re all looking down—now they’re all looking down. Why? Suddenly it’s not an issue any more for you. Oh, well, there they are laughing again. Well, there we go. Anyway, $100 to $132 a week from people cannot afford it. That is their fiscal prudence, unfortunately.

What happens then? The analysis of this bill tells us that it’s likely to lead to increasing homelessness because, if you’re going to be penalised for opening up your home and taking on a couple of boarders—and that’s why it wasn’t the first and second boarder that was caught up in the change; it was only third boarder onwards. Now, what they’re doing is ensuring that they’re penalised for taking on anyone as a boarder, when boarding costs are meant to help offset the living costs of the person who’s taking them on. But now, they will be penalised for it. Do they then think that people who can’t afford it will then take on boarders? No. Where are they going to go? Some might say emergency housing and emergency accommodation. And yet, this Government has cut $1 billion from the emergency housing budget through their “austerity Budget”, which is why we’re all here today, on the false pretence that homelessness, that demand for housing, is reducing.

Is it reducing? Perhaps, because they’re chucking everyone out because they don’t want to pay for emergency housing. So what are we actually seeing here? People who are being squeezed from every which direction, cost of living increasing, unemployment on the rise. Members opposite laughing again when we talk about those in hardship who are going to be doing it even tougher because of decisions that each one of their gloating faces has voted for. Make no mistake: when you stand up at events and at your electorates and you crow about the work that you’ve done, what are they doing? Mocking us and laughing, because—

Joseph Mooney: We stand up for workers, unlike those socialists.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: You stand up for workers. Who do you think you’re slamming down on through this legislation and every other thing that you’ve done in your “austerity Budget”? Many of them, newsflash, are working. But they have to work multiple jobs because of the decisions you’ve made, because they cannot make ends meet. And yet you laugh. Shocking. Absolutely shameless behaviour from this Government.

I never thought that I’d be standing here, thinking that previous National Governments past were actually better than this lot. But this is a particular breed of cold callousness that we’ve seen crowing from that side of the House. Homelessness is increasing at unprecedented levels. We’ve seen that before, because when you increase cost of living and you do nothing to reduce that, and then you clamp down on the paltry support that you actually give people, and then you chuck them out of housing and you cut money for emergency housing, where will people go?

Joseph Mooney: How come kids aren’t sleeping in cars any more?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Tents and cars, Joseph Mooney—that’s exactly what they’re doing.

You can yell at me from the other side of the House. I can’t even hear what you’re saying, by the way, but I can see the smugness on your face. But this is what you’re doing. You are actually allowing grants for people to live in tents and in cars. I hope you’re proud of that. I hope this Government’s proud of that. Because, on this side of the House, we’re not. Increasingly people outside are not either. You might dress up your “austerity Budget” as being fiscally prudent. Taking money off the lowest-paid women who are underpaid and undervalued, and you’re underpaying them and undervaluing them even more. You might be pleased with that, but increasingly people see through your window dressing of fiscal prudence, and they see it for what it is: austerity measures, getting worse with bills like this—bills that make it even harder for those who are struggling and doing the work that you undervalue.

This is a bill that we cannot support, because while they try to say that it’s just a little tweak that makes things fairer, it absolutely does not. So $100 for people who are getting a couple of hundred a week makes a massive difference. It may not for members opposite, and that may be why they’re laughing and crowing, but they’ve lost touch with reality. I suggest that members opposite actually get out there and talk to people whose lives they’re making worse under urgency, all stages, with bills that cannot be properly scrutinised, that don’t have the analysis that they need because they’re rushing it through and wanting to bring it in by next year. That is absolutely shocking. We do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is great to be the final speaker of the second reading of this, the Social Assistance Legislation (Accommodation Supplement and Income-related Rent) Amendment Bill. We are a fiscally responsible Government, and we are focused on making things fair so that people don’t double-dip, effectively. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Social Assistance Legislation (Accommodation Supplement and Income-related Rent) Amendment Bill.

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Social Security Act 2018