Social Security Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Social Security Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: I move, That the Social Security Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Our Government believes people are better off in work. We have already taken steps to strengthen the welfare system’s focus on supporting people off benefit and into employment, and our approach is working. During the first month of the traffic light system, obligation failures decreased by 9 percent. Between January and March this year, over 23,000 people cancelled their benefit because they found work. This is an 11 percent increase on the same period from 2024.

This bill seeks to amend the Social Security Act and the social security regulations to expand and enhance welfare settings to continue supporting people off welfare and into work. The welfare system will always be available to support people when they need it, but as this Government has said from the start: people who can work need to meet their obligations to look for a job and be held accountable when they don’t.

I want to quickly outline the key policy proposals in the bill. Quite simply, this bill introduces non-financial sanctions to expand the Ministry of Social Development’s (MSD) tool kit. Non-financial sanctions provide an alternative option to reducing someone’s benefit, which is a financial sanction, when responding to a person’s first work-related or social obligation failure. They will only be an option for a person in active case management and/or a person with dependent children. Money management and community work experience are the first two non-financial sanctions implemented from 26 May.

The bill also extends the period over which an obligation failure counts against people from 12 to 24 months, with the exception of youth clients, increasing the likelihood that those who are repeatedly refusing to comply with their obligations will have their benefit cancelled if they remain on the benefit for more than a year.

The bill will require new applicants for certain benefits with work-related obligations to have a completed job seeker profile before their benefit is granted, and this change will encourage work-focused conversations from the earliest possible opportunity and help MSD to better match people to suitable job vacancies.

The bill will also reduce the amount of time someone who is on jobseeker support has before they reapply for the benefit from 52 to 26 weeks. This means that clients will have more frequent engagements with MSD about employment.

As this bill goes through its third reading, I would like to thank the Social Services and Community Committee for its considered recommendations to improve the bill and, in particular, their recommendation to include two further non-financial sanctions: report job search and upskilling. These additional non-financial sanctions will be available by October. I want to put on record my thanks to the officials who worked hard on this very important piece of legislation and the MSD staff that get up each and every day to support New Zealanders into employment. I also want to thank the members of the public and organisations who provided both written and oral submissions on the bill.

Once more, I want to remind members of this House and the public that the non-financial sanctions proposed in this bill will only affect those who are not complying with their obligations. Most people on benefit are doing the right thing, and these changes will have no effect on them.

The bill represents another step forward in refocusing our welfare system, creating a more transparent, accountable, and work-focused environment for job seekers. MSD front-line staff do an amazing job, actively engaging with job seekers, informing them of their obligations and responsibilities and the consequences when they don’t through the traffic light system. But they also provide incredible support to help New Zealanders find work. This matters because work is more than about money. It also gives people a sense of purpose, independence, and connectedness, leading to a better future and helping families to break out of the cycle of intergenerational welfare dependence.

Simply put, our Government believes that people and families are better off in work, our economy is better off when people are in work, and our Government is committed to making this a reality. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s very sad to hear that type of kōrero from the Minister for Social Development and Employment because the reality is that this bill makes life hard again for beneficiaries, who feel they’re very much under attack from this Government. We’re talking about some of the most vulnerable members of our society, and we would like to think the Government would be working a bit closer with them. We have opposed this bill all the way through. We think it’s grossly unfair and far too punitive—is certainly the position that we, as Opposition, have taken up, certainly the Labour Party position.

It’s grossly unfair to Māori who make up—we’re talking 15 percent of the population, yet Māori account for 36 percent of all main beneficiary recipients. The miserly bill doubles the period—and that’s the problem here; we were certainly tested when we were in Government over this—during which obligation failures are counted against someone, adds non-financial sanctions for first failures, and forces beneficiaries to reapply for their benefits every 26 weeks. That is very, very tough on whānau who are already struggling—already struggling at ground level, already struggling in the community. You’re talking about a devastating effect, perhaps, on families who don’t deserve to be going down that track. So it’s not a bill about supporting people; this is a bill about punishing people, which, sadly, is how this Government is being perceived out there in the communities.

It’s another attempt by the Government to blame beneficiaries instead of taking responsibility for their policy that has spiked unemployment numbers. Why punish the unemployed for an unemployment problem that this Government has surely created? While they’ll say that there is no major increase in terms of unemployment figures, the unemployment figures are still at an unacceptable level. Māori unemployment is up to 10.5 percent, with an increase in terms of 7,000 more people going on to benefits.

We’re particularly disappointed because when we were in Government, and when I was an employment Minister, Māori affairs Minister, Māori development Minister, there was a focus in terms of targeted programmes—targeted programmes in terms of women, targeted programmes in terms of Māori, targeted programmes in terms of Pasifika. These now are programmes that this Government is withdrawing from. They’re not seeing the benefits of a targeted and focused programme. Benefit and jobseeker numbers have risen significantly under this Government as a result of worsening economic conditions—I think we understand that—but this Government needs to take some responsibility for the consequences of their actions instead of blaming the unemployed for being unemployed.

The Government has all but given up trying to get beneficiaries into work and now it’s trying to, essentially, force people away by making accessing the benefits they are entitled to increasingly difficult. This is something that we traversed through the committee stage, the difficulties that some people have in managing this and working with AI and working with computers. You’re talking about sometimes people with multiple problems, difficulties just trying to survive, and then all of a sudden, they have to reapply for a benefit. Doubling the amount of time a failed obligation counts for does nothing but further punish job seekers. It certainly doesn’t help them find employment and it is a disproportionate punishment, especially if they’re caregivers. Again, the Government is not showing enough empathy, sympathy, and aroha in that direction.

Similarly, making job seekers reapply every 26 week is only designed to make being on jobseeker support an increasingly frustrating experience. It’s just to force people off regardless of whether they’re going into employment. Enforcing money management as a non-financial sanction could lead to a variety of issues, especially if beneficiaries spend more than half of their entitlements on rents and bills such as water and power.

This malicious and spiteful legislation is nothing more than whipping the poor and then charging them for the beating. The Government is, essentially, admitting it would rather punch down on our most vulnerable rather than do anything to help them materially improve their lives.

Not only are these suggested changes cruel and counterproductive, they’re also unfeasible. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) has admitted—again, we traversed this through the committee stage, and we also had feedback from MSD—during scrutiny week that they’re already under huge pressure as their front-line operational capacity has remained broadly unchanged. But they have had 700 cuts in terms of their backroom staff. So how do you ask an agency already under huge pressure to roll out the Government strategy and programme? It is next to impossible. Don’t get me wrong, there are good people at MSD. They worked with us, and they worked with the Government, but they are not social workers. They are not social workers. But they are also not robots and they’re not machines. They can’t roll out a Government strategy when they’re undermanned and having to do multiple things. So 700 cuts to the backroom staff would make it near impossible to roll out a tight programme that the Government wants.

The rise in main benefit recipients now mean they must serve an additional 30,000 more people. We’ve already seen a decline in accurate assessment with a quarter of beneficiaries not receiving their full entitlements. Now the Government has heaped more pressure on MSD’s operational capacity, essentially doubling the amount of jobseeker applications MSD must process in any given year, notwithstanding the forecast rise in job seeker numbers.

This is on top of other requests that the Government has heaped on them, such as implementing the traffic light system—a very controversial system—and increasing the amount of job seekers eligible for case management, increasing the amount of sanctions imposed on beneficiaries, increasing the amount of meetings the job seekers must attend. It’s not always possible to attend all these meetings. As I said, some of these people are struggling as it is. Miss the meeting, miss their allowance. Miss their allowance, miss their pūtea, the money owing to them, the whānau suffers.

Government has to look at this. The Government has to be more understanding that sometimes it’s not about a second warning and it’s out; sometimes it’s about a third, fourth, or fifth warning. I know that’s hard for some on the other side to understand, but when you give up on them, you have to understand the consequences in terms of that family and in terms of that community. I know that people on the other side do work at the coalface with some of these people, but understand some of the difficulties that they have to go through.

The regulatory impact statement (RIS) alone shows the Government should not have proceeded with these changes. Clear as a bell, the RIS for this bill highlights one of the consequences—and this is what I’m saying—may be that MSD will have to direct more resources towards compliance and, therefore, away from employment initiatives. They will literally have to put less resources into helping beneficiaries to work. Surely, the principle of this is to get them into work, but it’s going to have the opposite and adverse effect. Research cited in the RIS highlights that sanctions may increase mental and physical health problems, including substance abuse and poverty. The RIS highlights that previous work on reapplication showed that cancellations of the benefit as part of the reapplication process often led to a new application, suggesting procedural denials rather than ineligibility. The RIS also highlighted that focusing on those close to return to work via case management was almost certainly to the detriment of long-term beneficiaries.

In summary, this welfare policy will hurt people, not help them. I denounce this policy. We in Labour absolutely denounce this policy. It is the wrong policy. It is too punitive. It’s about punishing people all the time. We need to take another way. We need to look at things a different way, a more embracing way, a more aroha way. That is the view of Labour, and we will stick by that and put that again in place when we’re back in Government. Kia ora.

The Government has outlined their formula to get us back on track to grow poverty, grow inequality, grow the number of people living in their cars, and this formula includes cutting benefit increases, keeping benefit levels below the poverty line, then increasing unemployment, followed by increasing benefit sanctions. And just watch as more people experience material hardship and food insecurity, and as UNICEF reports that Aotearoa continues to be one of the worst countries for children’s wellbeing in the developed world.

The Minister should be ashamed to even refer to this bill as supporting people into employment, because there’s nothing in this bill that does this—absolutely nothing. She either did not read the bill or is just choosing to omit the bits of this bill, the majority of this bill, that will simply push people further into poverty. The so-called non-financial sanctions—and that is, I think, an inaccurate description of what they do—will push people further into poverty. I think calling them “non-financial sanctions” is simply incorrect, because let’s outline the benefit sanctions that are in this bill, and what they do.

Compulsory money management will put 50 percent of someone’s income in a payment card that then they won’t be able to use to pay their rent, to pay their bills, or for other basic essentials, when we know that most people on the benefit are already paying 50 percent of their income on rent. We know that this benefit sanction, deemed “non-financial”, will literally leave people unable to keep a roof over their head. There’s a financial impact in here.

Then let’s look at community work experience. Most organisations who were consulted reported that they were not so keen to participate in this because it actually destroys the purpose of volunteering and it burdens those volunteer organisations. That benefit sanction will do nothing to adequately support people to engage and to be part of their communities. And what’s worse, people subjected to the sanction as well as others will be unable to access things like hardship grants. For those who don’t know, people on the benefit, many of them, rely on hardship grants on a sometimes regular basis, sometimes even weekly basis, just to survive. How can we call these sanctions “non-financial” when they strip away people’s ability to access the very assistance that allows them to sometimes have food on the table?

Then we also have two benefit sanctions that were added later in the piece—terrible lawmaking process, because the Minister outlined in the Cabinet paper that she intended to do this and didn’t let anyone in the public know until later in the select committee stage, stripping away people’s ability to submit on these two other so-called non-financial sanctions. If the Minister was so confident about the process that she was following in her policies, she would have let people know of her intentions so that these sanctions could be adequately scrutinised.

Let’s talk about the so-called job-search report, which will then force people to apply for three jobs each week, but then those people won’t even be able to access the assistance that then allows them to enter into employment—so, for example, financial assistance that allows them to have access to uniforms, that have access to transport, that have access to a vehicle that allows them to get into that very same job. Literally, what the Government is doing is making it harder to get into employment, and no matter how much evidence we present to the Minister over how benefit sanctions do not work—they simply push people further into poverty—the Minister seems to not care, but I actually think that it’s beyond the Minister not caring.

The Minister always intended to increase poverty in this country, because I cannot see anything in this legislation that does otherwise, and we’ve already seen the impacts of Government policies. For example, there is the stripping away of subsidies that allow people to access basic essentials, such as prescriptions and such as public transport, and that number is growing—the number of children who don’t have the bare essentials. like food at the table, to just be well.

It’s really clear to me that there’s nothing in this bill that will support children to thrive and parents to find employment. It’s also clear to all of us—it doesn’t take anyone doing an economics paper to know this—that there are not enough jobs out there for every unemployed person on the benefit. Those are facts. This means that the Government has not just relied on increasing unemployment—they haven’t created enough jobs to actually ensure that everyone who’s unemployed has an opportunity to get into work—they gutted benefit increases only to then increase financial sanctions.

But I want to also believe that a different future is absolutely within our grasp, because, under the last National Government, I was privileged enough to actually take part in a campaign to get rid of a benefit sanction affecting solo parents. At the time, around 2017, there were 17,000 solo mums who were affected by the sanction for simply not naming the other parent of their child, being stripped away of income support. The National Party then did not care. They did not care about the fact that solo parents were being pushed deeper into poverty as a result of this benefit sanction. They had no evidence of working. They constantly opposed repealing it.

But we changed the Government and we got rid of the sanction, and if it were up to the Greens, we would not only get rid of the sanctions imposed in this piece of legislation but all benefit sanctions, because it’s actually the Government’s responsibility to show us and demonstrate that their policies are working as intended. So far they haven’t. They’ve gone off vibes; they’ve gone off cruelty; lack of empathy. But we should not expect anything else from a Prime Minister that called people on the benefit, during the campaign trail, “bottom trawlers”. This is the kind of attitude that the Government members take when it comes to the people living in poverty—using names, conjuring beneficiaries who they’ve never met to simply try to make ideological points and punch on those that are literally sometimes sleeping in their cars, often many of them receiving income support, working to make ends meet.

What’s worse is that in this piece of legislation, the Government also narrowed the definition of what we call “work gap”, which is the definition that allows people to then apply for a benefit by narrowing who is considered to have a work gap. Effectively, what the Government is doing is limiting who can access income support. This is to get them on track for their target of 50,000 less people on the benefit. It is not about getting those 50,000 people into work; it’s simply to strip 50,000 people of income support. The Government has admitted that they don’t care where those people go when they are not on the benefit. They simply want to get 50,000 people off income support.

For what? To pay for tax cuts for landlords. That’s basically their motive. They’re taking away resources from the poorest people in our country to give money to the landlords. It shows that this Government is reheating their nachos by bringing back policies from the 1980s: having massively increased unemployment and inequality simply to give bucks to the wealthy few.

I want us to commit—and I commit everyone on this side of the House, at least from the Green Party—to fighting back against this piece of legislation. We commit to listening to the voices of people on the benefit, and we bring them with us in our campaigns to change this Government and have an income support that allows people to live with dignity. In fact, I would say that caregivers form a large part of who is on income support. It’s the work that is actually the most under-appreciated by this Government, because if this Government appreciated caregiving, raising children, they would not have income support for those that are raising children, and are focusing on raising children as a primary task, below the poverty line. This Government has decided to treat caregiving obligations as not worthy of livable incomes.

I want to mihi to everyone out there doing their best to access income support under our Government, that is making it harder for them to do so at a time where even Work and Income staffers are telling us that their phone line is “oversubscribed” because of the policies that this Government has introduced. We even have the case managers telling us that they don’t have the capacity to help people and continue with programmes to prevent homelessness because of shameless and terrible, cruel policies that simply increase poverty. We know that something is terribly, terribly wrong. No matter how much the Government members on the other side may try to spin this as a positive thing to help people get into unemployment, the facts speak for themselves: this bill will increase inequality, poverty, homelessness, and will not support people into employment. No matter what the Government member says, it doesn’t actually match the facts that are in all the reports, all the evidence, all the research—because they don’t care. All they’ve cared about, as they’ve indicated to us, is calling beneficiaries “bottom trawlers”, punching down on those who need help the most, and increasing unemployment. This isn’t a Government that is here to serve the many; simply to serve their wealthy few mates.

We will fight for an economy that works for everyone and to repeal this terrible and shameful piece of legislation as soon as we get back into power. Let’s make this a one-term Government.

It is appropriate for a member in a debate to raise points that are of a debating nature. It’s not appropriate to use language that is attributed as a quote when it is out of context. So it’s an interesting contribution to the House, but a contestable one.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Social Security Amendment Bill. It’s great to see that this bill has come for the third reading and, after the third reading—hopefully, it will be going through the House today—that the changes that this bill intends to bring will be implemented.

On this side, we really want to encourage people to get into employment, but listening to that contribution from the Green member Ricardo Menéndez March, it seemed like people who go out to work are doing something wrong, and that people who are sitting on a benefit are actually doing something right and that they should be supported to stay on a benefit. On this side, we want to see that those who are on a benefit—I know there are some circumstances because of which people end up on the jobseeker benefit—are supported so that they can get back into employment. There are some people who are always actively looking for employment, but there can be a small fraction of people, those who are on the jobseeker benefit, who get demotivated after some time and then become too relaxed, staying on a benefit. We want to make sure that they understand that if they continue to stay on a benefit, it’s not going to help them, it’s not going to help their family, it’s not going to help anybody, and it’s better that they continue to look for employment. For that, we are putting several mechanisms in place in our welfare system.

The existing traffic light system: I don’t understand why the Labour member said that the traffic light system is controversial; it’s actually quite a transparent system. It makes it very, very clear where people sit when it comes to their compliance. The other thing that the Green member has, I think, missed seeing is that these sanctions are only for people who are not complying. If people are complying, there are no sanctions. If they don’t comply with their first obligation, if they miss that, there is this money management sanction, which the ACT Party campaigned on, and we are really happy to see that this is being implemented through this legislation. Fifty percent of their funds will be put on a card. They will be able to use this money for essential goods, so it’s a non-financial sanction. Money is still there, but it’s the form they get money in that is going to be different.

Community work: how could a member criticise the requirement of community work? This is just five hours per week for four weeks. Community work will give these members the opportunity—those who are on the jobseeker benefit—to go out and interact with different organisations, meet with different people, and maybe that is how they will find their new opportunity, their new job: upskilling. Why would people not want to upskill when they are on a benefit? Of course people would like to see that they are being upskilled—they get that opportunity.

Reporting on a job search: if they are on the jobseeker benefit, I don’t think there should be any hesitation reporting on a job search. But somehow the speeches that I’ve heard from the Green member and from the Labour member are kind of stigmatising job-searching. On this side, we want to see that people are actually going out and actively looking for opportunities, because we want to see that everybody is able to flourish. All these changes that this bill brings are actually good changes. We want to see that these changes are actually helping people, motivating people. These changes are to remind people that their circumstances can change, and that’s why the Government is putting these kinds of changes in place: so that we can support people to get back into employment, to do well for themselves, and do well for the community as well.

I would end by saying that the Labour member and the Green member, the contributions that I heard from them, were basically indicating that it’s totally fine to be dependent. On this side, we want to encourage empowerment; on that side, they want to encourage dependency. It’s very clear from their contributions, and it’s very clear from our contributions what we are advocating for. We really want to see people being successful in their lives, and that’s why we support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Social Security Amendment Bill. I’ll stick to the facts. I heard a lot in the previous contributions about this not being a caring Government. The facts are we are a caring Government. Anybody who goes into public service has a heart for caring, and sometimes caring has a different look. Our way of caring is encouraging people to get out there and make their lives better, and sometimes that is giving someone a hand up, rather than a handout. That’s what caring looks like. New Zealand First is very much about taking responsibility for our lives. It means helping people who need help, but also helping those who want to get out and make a better life for themselves. We see that the introduction of some of these processes and controls not only makes the system more efficient and effective but it also gives people a reason and an opportunity to step up in their lives. So that is why New Zealand First will support the bill.

I’d also like to make a mention to all of the people who work at the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). Whilst they’re not social workers, I hear and have had feedback that many people have had extraordinary service from them. I just want to acknowledge them, because every single person that they help, they never quite know, maybe, where they’ve gone in their lives, but every now and then you’d get a phone call from someone and say, “Do you remember? You helped me once upon a time.” So I just want to acknowledge all of the MSD people out there who are working hard in service to the people of New Zealand. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I stand on behalf of Te Pāti Māori this afternoon to express our unequivocal opposition to the Social Security Amendment Bill. When I think about this bill, I think about a whakataukī that we serve by at our marae “Amohia ake te ora o te iwi, ka puta ki te whai ao”

[“Support the health of the people and they will achieve wellbeing”].

The health and wellbeing of our people is paramount, and we must do whatever it takes to ensure our people are well.

Seventy percent of Māori are under the age of 40, one in three Māori is under the age of 25, 30 percent of our people are on the benefit, and 35 percent of our people are the working poor. The unemployment rate is skyrocketing to 10 percent. It’s unacceptable. This legislation is under the guise of promoting employment and reducing welfare dependency, which threatens to exaggerate poverty, undermine human rights, and disproportionately harm Māori communities. We’ve been hearing from both sides of the House this afternoon about what’s not working, what should be working, how it should happen. I want to share my experiences out in the community, front-lining with people.

Hon Member: Urgh.

TAKUTAI TARSH KEMP: Yes, here we go again. You know why? Because I tell you a real story, a real story from people I sit with and have sat with, to hear their stories of struggle. Of course, “Pōhara Street” is alive and kicking.

Whānau talk about how hard it is. Whānau are struggling out there, on the daily. They can’t make ends meet, and these sanctions are taking away, for them, their livelihood, because the benefit, for some families, is the only option. Don’t get me wrong; there are whānau out there who don’t want to be on the benefit and they want to live a better life, but there are just some things that stop them from doing so.

Can I talk about the families who come off the street every day, at the marae. They actually ask for jobs. They want a job. They want help with a job. They can’t get one. Do you know why? Because they have backgrounds and pasts that the system doesn’t allow them to move past—their past. We’ve had whānau that have come off the streets that have come out of jail, they want jobs but they can’t get one; or there is an employer who wants to give them the opportunity to get that start, but when the police vetting comes back, they haven’t met the criteria, so they can’t get the job. So they’re back and they’re needing to be on a benefit. Do you know how that feels for those whānau? They feel shame. They feel whakamā. Therefore, the cycle continues.

There were programmes out there that were able to help these families actually get better employment options. They could put them through training. But those funding opportunities for providers have disappeared. Funding has disappeared, and our people are no longer able to seek opportunities to further benefit themselves. I tell you, being whakamā is one of the most horrible feelings to have as a whānau member, and Māori providers are always out there trying to ensure we do give our people a hand up. They don’t actually want a handout; they want a hand up.

I also want to say that we need solutions. There are solution. Whānau Ora is a solution. The Kaiārahi workforce is a solution. Bringing Ministry of Social Development workers out from behind their desks and into the communities, working alongside providers and partners, is a solution. But the bigger solution is that our whānau need to know how big their voices are, how important they are. A hundred thousand people marched. There were 307,000 submissions. We heard those voices, and we want to continue to listen to the voices of our people. The biggest voice for whānau, though, I can say, is that we need to ensure this Government is a one-term Government. Kia ora.

I rise on behalf of the Green Party to oppose this bill, not just in principle but with deep disappointment at the process and the policy. At every stage of this bill’s journey, the public, the experts, and the Minister’s own officials have told us clearly and consistently that this is going in the wrong direction. Community groups, disabled advocates, parents, young people—thousands of people took the time to engage with this legislation, and 97.5 percent of them opposed it, yet despite overwhelming evidence and lived experience, this House has chosen to pass this bill that will make life harder for those already doing it tough.

The Government has spoken often about responsibility, but this bill shirks its own by refusing to uphold the most basic responsibility of all to ensure that people can live in dignity. Let’s talk about what this legislation really does. It introduces sanctions that will prevent people from accessing hardship assistance—that is non-financial. That is missed meals, unpaid bills, and eviction notices. It is parents unable to get their children to the doctor. It is families being pushed further to the edge in a cost of living crisis.

We heard from CCS Disability Action that these sanctions would directly harm disabled people and their whānau. We heard from Save the Children about the financial strain of repeat medical assessments for people already fighting to access the correct benefit, and the truth is that many of these people shouldn’t be on the jobseeker benefit at all. Systemic barriers keep them from accessing the supported living payment. That is not a failure of an individual; it is a failure of the system, yet this bill compounds that failure by adding more penalties, more hoops, and more bureaucratic hurdles.

This House was told that 41 percent of benefit entitlements are being mis-assessed—41 percent—that most sanctions are overturned on review, and that front-line discretion is being increasingly inconsistently applied, and instead of fixing these failures, this Government is formulising them.

The Green Party is also deeply concerned about the lack of transparency shown throughout this process. At the select committee, MPs were prevented from asking officials basic questions. That is not just bad process; that is undemocratic. It leaves Parliament to vote on policy without the full picture. That is not how good law is made. If the goal here was employment, where is the investment in what works? Where are the policies for accessible transport, community-based training, or proper childcare support? If the goal was dignity, where is the commitment to raising benefits above the poverty line? Where is the plan to tackle homelessness, not worsen it? This bill answers none of those questions. Instead, it embeds deeper inequality, punishes people already let down by the system, and sets us on a pathway that will only increase social harm in the long term.

The Green Party believes in a welfare system that lifts people up, not locks them out. We believe in evidence-based policy. We stand today with the thousands who raised their voices, with the families who feel the weight of this law, and with the communities who deserve more than performative responsibility. They deserve justice and dignity.

This bill should never have made it this far. We urge the Government to stop, to listen, and to change course. You can still course-correct. We recommend that this bill be discharged and that this House turn its attention to what really matters: ending poverty, not entrenching it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Social Security Amendment Bill. This bill aims to make the welfare system fairer, more effective, with the aim to empower people rather than trap them in dependency. The majority of New Zealanders are in employment; there is a small number who are not. We help them—the taxpayers help pay to support those people. We want to give them a hand up; we don’t want to keep them in dependency, and that’s what this bill is about. For 15 years, the only option has been financial sanctions for people who don’t comply with their obligations. This is introducing non-financial sanctions to help empower those people. We want to lift individuals and families up. Fundamentally, we believe in New Zealanders and how much they are capable of, and that’s what this bill is about. It is a good step forward. We are here to support people, but people need to comply with their obligations—98 percent of beneficiaries do. For the small number who don’t, we will support them to develop the skills they need to get back into employment. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak on this bill. I want to contribute something a little bit different to this debate, but I think it’s absolutely where we should have our eye on the ball. This bill is a cynical distraction from a deliberate decision to create more unemployment in this country. One of the things I was proudest of as a backbencher in the last Government was that our unemployment rate fell to a level it hadn’t been at before, and it was very clear that we were moving people who had been in families where there had been what I would consider systemic, ingrained unemployment into employment for the first time.

We are back to levels of unemployment I am concerned about, and it isn’t by accident. I was in this House when we reversed the law that meant that the Reserve Bank Governor, when they were making decisions about their monetary policy which has a huge impact on employment, had taken away from them that they should be mindful of maximising sustainable employment. We were told that this was because they couldn’t possibly do two things at once.

Well, actually, I would say that maximising sustainable employment is absolutely the core to the same thing that the Minister got up today and said. She said, “We all want people in work”. I agree. We all want people in work. We want to maximise the people in work. But what I’ve heard—and it’s like listening to your drunk uncle. I hear from some of the people in the Chamber things like “People are sitting on the benefit.” Well, there might be people who need to have strong sanctions and obligations, and they were already there. They have always been there. There have always been sanctions for that little group. Most of the people who find themselves unemployed this year who were not unemployed last year, the reason that they are unemployed is because this Government chose to have a policy where it prioritised other parts of the economy.

Maximum sustainable employment means the level of employment where, if you have more, it puts pressure on the economy and inflation goes up. There’s an interesting irony there. It’s, basically, saying that those people who are unemployed are doing everyone else a favour because they’re keeping the pressure on wages down. So it’s one of those ironic things. We actually rely in our conceptual thinking on having a group of people who are unemployed so that wages don’t go up, and when there are less people than maximally sustainably employed—when we have less people employed than that—wages tend to go up. Well, good luck. I’d love them to go up. Yes, our economy might need to be readjusted, and our thinking might need be readjusted in other ways, but we need people in this country employed, because I agree with the Minister that it’s absolutely paramount that we focus on everybody being employed and wages going up in this country.

There is too much of a divide between people. I know that often lots of us will be a part of circles of people where people are earning enormous amounts of money in this country. I’d like to remind the public when they’re thinking about sanctioning those who are unemployed and talking about people who sit around on the couch—first of all, I’d like to remind them just how much those benefits are. It’s about $353, I think, if I became unemployed tomorrow. Now, butter in this country has gone up. It’s gone up about from about $4.50 earlier this year to $7.50, I think, on average. Actually, if you googled this, you’d find that the amount that butter is is something like $11, quite often. So if you find a $7.50 butter, you’re lucky, and we’re talking about $350. Toothpaste would be about $5 for one of the economy brands. So take the $300 that we’re talking about here and think about what happens if you’re suddenly unemployed tomorrow.

We pride ourselves on having a safety net, but it’s not the best safety net in the world. It’s not one, really, that you’d want to sit around for a long time on, waiting or lolling out on the couch, which is the myth that has been proliferated here and is proliferated by this piece of legislation. It’s just not a very nice lifestyle choice, is it?

Most people would rather work, and I am absolutely in favour of that, and I do want to bust the myth that there is no support on this side of the House for having a level of obligation and sanction, if that becomes necessary. But what we’re being asked to do today is focus on and demonise a group of people whose numbers have gone up in the last year because of a deliberate decision by this Government to create more unemployment because it wanted inflation down, and we’re being told, “Focus on them. Don’t look over here—it’s not us; it’s them. They’re just sitting around on the couch. They’re just behaving badly.”

Let’s just talk about one of those groups: the youth. They’re a really problematic group, and it’s really easy if you’re old to think that the youth are lolling around on the couch. You may even be able to find a few in your own family who are capable of such things. But, actually, if we look at the numbers, the youth in this country are facing an unprecedented crisis in terms of unemployment. Between the ages of 15 and 19, we have rates of unemployment that are 24 percent. That’s almost a quarter of people in that age group who have not got a job, and if we visit it on them and we say that it’s all their fault and that we just need to sanction them and kick them a little bit—if we take away their benefits, if we manage their money, and if we take away any level of respect for those people that all those things imply, what are we saying?

I have a lot of faith in that group of people. They have been through really hard times when the rest of us, when we were looking at unemployment due to the possibility of a pandemic—when that happened to us, we created a wage subsidy. The unemployment benefit wasn’t good enough for us. People who came into sudden unemployment were given more than the group we’re talking about now, because that wasn’t good enough for those who were suddenly going to be unemployed because it was a group we identified with and whom we knew had mortgages and obligations—and we didn’t find them at fault.

It is very easy to think about the people in that situation—that 5.1 percent right now. Those workers at Kinleith, that group of youth—it is very easy and tempting to demonise them. But we actually treated ourselves a lot better when, in fact, it was our turn to be suddenly unemployed, and, actually, that was the right thing. To reach out and support people in that situation, to support them more realistically, and to get them through that crisis was something that the Labour Government did proudly.

All the barking on that goes on about all the wastage and the waste of spending and the debt—I remember the National Party clamouring for further subsidies. Further subsidies for their mates who—[Interruption] That’s what was going on. They were actually clamouring for more spending at the time, and now they’re sanctimoniously not doing so.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Can we come back to this bill—come back to the bill.

HELEN WHITE: Thank you, Madam Speaker, I will. I am simply responding to the heckling I’m getting because I’ve obviously touched a nerve.

To return to this bill, I think the point of this bill is to distract New Zealanders. I think it is that kind of approach that is so easy in politics. Find yourself an easy victim, an easy enemy, one that makes it attractive to people. Talk about people sitting around on the couch, when in fact it’s not that people have sat around on the couch because they weren’t sitting around on the couch in the Labour Government; there were record amounts of employment and that is something that actually changes the game for people. That’s a game-changer.

So I am proud to be part of a party that thinks about people in a very different way, and values our youth and values our potential. It is time for New Zealand to think very carefully about the next 20 years and what it wants, because, with silly little bills like this that are trivial and petty and cruel and are actually just blaming and distracting, this Government has things to learn.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I seek leave to correct a statement I made in the House during slot No. 3 of this debate.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Thank you. During my speech, I used the term “bottom trawlers” to refer to statements that the Prime Minister has made in the past. I was referring to “bottom feeders”, which was in the context of quotes where he said “bottom feeding” in relation to welfare in 2023, during the election campaign.

Noted.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Social Security Amendment Bill is aimed at enabling beneficiaries to get back on their feet by getting back into work. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a bill that punishes young people, and I have four points to make about how it does so. But, first, I want to talk about a young woman that I met in my electorate of Manurewa recently. I’ll call her “KJ”—a really cool young person just trying to get ahead, recently enrolled in a course about building and construction, and getting back on her feet. She lives in one of the amazing youth facilities for homeless youth. For the first time this year, she experienced sleeping at a bus shelter. She was 16 at the time. She was living with her nan and a number of her cousins before that. She was working in a warehouse after school, packing groceries. She left her school for that job, which then fell through for her when she moved in with her boyfriend and it, ultimately, wasn’t a safe environment for her.

There are many young people like her who experience homelessness in our communities in South Auckland. These are young people with no adult in their corner, nobody who is looking out for them, and nobody who is making sure that they are going to school fed, clothed, warm, and dry. Nobody in her life who is able to provide her with some guidance and some support to get back into her education—until she was one of the people lucky enough to find her feet with a social housing organisation like the one that she is in now. But that social housing organisation has a waiting list of 300 young people between the ages of 15 and 19, and that has increased 200 percent since last year.

There are more and more young people who are facing not only homelessness but joblessness and a lack of education opportunities. They are the people we are considering today when we pass a piece of legislation like this, which introduces new sanctions that can be novelly and uniquely applied to young people. These are sanctions that other jurisdictions we like to compare ourselves to do not use against young people, because young people are the most vulnerable people when it comes to the burden of meeting the requirements of something like this. Young people who experience a situation like KJ’s deserve our help, our support, and all of the resources of the State to get them back on track. This bill does exactly the opposite of that and will punish people like KJ, who have had a bit of a break.

It’s a real shame to look at this kind of bill, which ignores the reality of youth unemployment, when this is also a Government that is crushing the industries that employ young people—14,000 construction jobs gone since the day this Government took office; a major employer of young men in the electorate of Manurewa, almost one in 10 young men employed in the construction sector. That industry is on its knees because this Government will not invest in a pipeline of public infrastructure builds and housing builds which we desperate need. Youth unemployment is not about sitting at home and languishing away; it is about a lack of opportunities, not a lack of motivation. Young people in New Zealand are hopeful for their futures, but when they don’t have jobs to go to because of the economic choices taken by a Cabinet that ignores their needs, they are being deeply let down by the people who are meant to represent them—many of them too young to even have a say in the democratic process.

It’s young people like KJ who are going into an employment market now where they will be systematically disadvantaged, because it is these years when they need to get their start. The National Government says that they want to get young people into employment opportunities. Well, it’s people like her who are competing against 35-year-olds because those 35-year-olds have been let go. It’s the same experience I had in the global financial crisis, when young people like me were competing for jobs with people who were much older and more experienced than us, because the total size of the number of jobs in our economy drastically shrank. This Government is overseeing a steeper economic decline, and a steeper decline in industries, like building and construction, which generally employ young people.

Punitive sanctions like this also increase the reapplication frequencies and, therefore, punish instability. People, like KJ, who don’t have general access to a car or general access to transport, who face burdens to actually get into the office, let alone the technological burdens of being available online or through the phone, are also then disadvantaged by having extra sanctions placed on them.

This bill also extends periods where one mistake will be recorded on their record. If KJ gets something wrong, it will be on her record for two years. She’s only 17; she will muck this up. Other people will too. This is a bill which actively stops young people getting ahead. This is a Government that has made choices to make it harder for young people. This is a Government that should be ashamed of that record.

People who can work should work. People deserve to be more independent, on their own, and have a life away from welfare. People also deserve to have a Government that is fiscally responsible and that will help those who need help to be on their own two feet and enjoy a better life. So, therefore, I fully commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Glen Bennett.

Hon Member: Oh no, not this guy!

It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s hilarious. It is really funny, as we stand in this House this afternoon, and as we criticise our most vulnerable, that it is a joke.

So, as I stand here, controlling my anger and my distaste for—as I stand in this place, which is so artificial. This place has no natural light. This place has no natural air flowing through. This place is in many ways a cocoon that protects us from the outside world and from what is reality.

I think this is what this bill actually is about. It’s the disconnection from the grassroots. It’s the disconnection from the light and from the air of humanity that we need to address and talk about this afternoon. There’re laughs and there’re jeers, and I’m fine with that because I don’t expect anything better from the Government side of the House. The last time I spoke on this bill, I was mocked.

Joseph Mooney: Somebody’s in a fantasy world.

GLEN BENNETT: I was accused of being in a fantasy world—and, again, this afternoon—and I do not live in a fantasy world, because I live in the real world. I live in a community. I have been at the grassroots and continue to live in that community where this means something for them tomorrow.

This means something for them tomorrow because the journey they have been on, the experiences they have lived, are the reason many of them unwillingly sit on a benefit, who unwillingly have to go into the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) office, and have to go there not under their own will or choice, not happily or with delight, but with shame, but with embarrassment. I’ve sat in the MSD office in Wellington, I’ve sat in the MSD office in New Plymouth countless times with people who are embarrassed, are ashamed that they can’t pay their own rent, that they can’t fix their own car, that they can’t feed their own family. Yes, we say we need to be punitive: “They can just go out and get a job. It’s all good. Fine with them.” We always have to come back to circumstances. The problem with this artificial room with no natural light is the fact that we actually can’t see because it’s so within the small box of legislation. You have to look out beyond that box and you have to look—

Joseph Mooney: Do you want to speak to the bill a little bit?

GLEN BENNETT: I am talking to this bill. You have to look out of the box of this room, Mr Mooney.

Mr Mooney said that National is about being fairer, National is about being more effective with our money—that’s what he said. He said they’re all about a hand up. We agree that it’s about a hand up, but we don’t think it’s about a boot in the guts. We do not believe in that. We believe in a hand up and we believe and know that our communities are better, our communities are richer, our communities are more prosperous when everyone has a hand up. We are with that, and we are on that kaupapa, and we want to make sure it happens. As I stand in this box that is so sterile, I think we need to reflect on those who we are talking about and we actually need to be talking with them.

This legislation does a number of things. I don’t really need to go into it because it’s been addressed several times already in the third reading, but I think we need to look at, actually, the reality of what it does out there. Does this fix the problem of unemployment? No. Does this lift people’s mana? No. Does this lift our society and our communities of people who aren’t able to find work? It does not. All it is is a kick in the guts, and it’s unfair.

We look at the unemployment numbers for our NEET community—our young people who aren’t in employment, education, and training. In the March quarter, there was just over 12 percent of our young people who are aged 15 to 24—it was almost 13 percent, actually—who are not in education, not in employment. We as a community need to stand up for them and make sure that they have every opportunity they have. I look at the community and the young people I have walked alongside for many years—

Joseph Mooney: I’m hearing nothing about this bill.

GLEN BENNETT: I say to that member who is shouting out at me, if they walked at least a week in their shoes alongside them, they’d understand there are challenges that are there and we need to step up for the sake of a hand up. This is not a hand up; this is a boot in the guts. This will push people down.

The other thing in this legislation I want to address is the capacity of MSD. During scrutiny week last year, MSD admitted that they are pushed beyond capacity. This is just more paperwork, red tape—have we heard of that before? This is more sanctions that MSD staff have to work on and have to deal with. We look at the rise in terms of those on the main benefit. We look at the fact that jobs in the backroom of MSD are going backwards by at least 700, and we wonder how, not only from a practical level but a humane level, we can actually agree to legislation like this in the House this afternoon.

Now, the Social Security Amendment Bill is something that we will never agree on—we will never agree on.

Joseph Mooney: You don’t understand it. You haven’t read.

GLEN BENNETT: Thank you. Do you want to have a chat or a yarn, Mr Mooney?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): No, no one’s going to have a chat across the House, thanks.

GLEN BENNETT: I just think it is disrespectful and it is rude and it is arrogant—it is arrogant—that this member would just continue to barrage myself in terms of what we’re doing and what we’re standing up for today.

I have a young person who is in my life, and the circumstances of their life I don’t need to even go into in this House. But I remember about two years ago, he came to me and said, “I need to get a job. I’m struggling and I need to get a job.” And I said, “Great. Let’s figure this out. Let’s figure out a CV for you. Let’s put it together.” So we sat down and it was not easy to write a CV for this young person who, through circumstances not of their fault, they had never been in work since dropping out of school—circumstances not of their doing but in terms of family circumstances that caused trauma and serious harm to this young person. Is that an excuse that he sits on the dole? No, it’s not an excuse, but it’s the reality of why he’s there. So I helped with this one-page CV, which was very limited to name, contact details, what they like, their personal statement about who they are as a person. We put that one-page CV together, and then proceeded to go around New Plymouth to every tradie, every small shop, every business we could think of to give him a chance to get a job.

It didn’t work. He had no experience. He had been given no opportunities whatsoever. There was nothing that anyone wanted to touch this young man with because of experiences that had gone through his life which were not of his doing. Then, of course, the fact that there was no proven record. So he had to go back into the Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ) office. He had to go back and continue to be on the dole. I remember sitting with him in the WINZ office that afternoon, after we’d spent probably three months just popping CVs in and around. The fact that he was actually so whakamā that I had to talk for him because he’d tried but he gave up—he thought, “Why would I bother?” It’s why would you bother when the door gets closed on you time and time again. I stand with him and I still stand with him, and I hope and I pray that he will get a job one day. But all I can do is stand beside him until that day comes.

This legislation isn’t fair. This legislation doesn’t pick people up, and I am opposed.

The Opposition can talk all day about the unemployment rate and how people struggle daily, but words are meaningless without action. On this side of the House, we focus on delivery. That’s why, last month, I organised a job fair with the Auckland Business Chamber to help people in Mt Roskill to get back to work, because we believe that employment is the key to break the cycle of poverty. I commend this bill to the House.