JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) Link to this
The National Party has supported this bill all the way through because it does not want to see beneficiaries—who are the poorest people, economically, in the country—in a situation where they are unnecessarily put into debt because nobody has turned off the taps for their benefits in the situation where they have been put into prison or are not able to qualify any more for a particular social assistance.
We think this bill has been quite a long time coming. We say that not just because there has been almost 9 long years of a Labour Government but because, in this time, the debt owed by beneficiaries to Work and Income has more than doubled. That shows why there is a massive need for this legislation. We now have about $760 million worth of debt owed by beneficiaries and former beneficiaries to Work and Income. Although some portion of that debt is the result of fraud, a lot of it is because there has been an overpayment for a week, 2 weeks, or a few months. There have also been situations where a beneficiary has not contacted Work and Income to let it know of his or her change in circumstances. There have been instances where a person been paid his or her benefit after going into prison, for instance. The fact is, if a person is in prison, I am sure it is not the first thing on his or her mind to contact Work and Income and tell it to cut the benefit. There are probably other things on a person’s mind. I think the best thing we could do is to actually have a mechanism to stop people from getting into debt.
Hone HarawiraWell, I think Mr Harawira is quite right—that person is not in a position to contact Work and Income. Of course, we could ask: “What about their families?”. Well, in many cases people’s families in those situations are going through a very difficult time—an extremely difficult time—and the first thing on their minds is not to contact Work and Income and say that if there is a benefit still to be paid, it is a different sort, and it is to different people within the family.
It is very important to have this legislation to allow better data-matching not only between, say, the Department of Corrections and Work and Income but also between Work and Income and other agencies. But this legislation is not being passed for just that purpose; it is also being passed because we need to have some integrity in our benefit system. It is absolutely not acceptable to the taxpayers of New Zealand that people continue to be wrongly paid benefits at various times. Just today in the Social Services Committee we heard about a massive benefit fraud—the Patterson fraud of $3.2 million. Although this legislation might or might not have helped in that situation—
No, I do not think that was a fraud. Although the Patterson fraud might or might not have been detected by this legislation, the fact is that technology is being changed and updated constantly. Those who would defraud the benefit system are getting themselves into a position of using technology to do so. We are finding that the Government technology cannot keep up with the technology of fraudsters. That is because people who really want to defraud the system are sitting all day and thinking of ways to do it, while the rest of us are getting on and doing our work. It is incredibly important that we do not allow this to happen without trying to do something.
I do not know, though, how this legislation is going to help deal with the current benefit debt. I do not know how it will deal with the three-quarters of a billion dollars owed by beneficiaries and former beneficiaries. I do not know how this will keep beneficiaries as a whole from getting into further debt other than to try to stop new people getting into debt.
I think it is a real shame that, after all the Government’s opportunities to deal with the problem, it really has not pushed budgeting services like it should have. It took away the compulsory budgeting service that National brought into place for beneficiaries when they were getting into debt. It took that away and made it voluntary. The problem with making it voluntary is that many people in these situations just want the money now. It is very difficult to talk to them about budgetary services, because the very names of those services imply that people will have to put some limits on things. By the time people end up in a budgetary service it is often just too late. In my Papakura budgetary service, which does a great job, we have had instances where the debt has been $30,000.
KATRINA SHANKS (National) Link to this
It is my pleasure tonight to speak to the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill. This is a very sensible bill that addresses an anomaly in the system. In the past, people who were sentenced and entered prison could volunteer whether they were receiving a State benefit, a student allowance, or accident compensation. More times than not, they did not volunteer this information, and there was a delay in the matching process between the Department of Corrections and other organisations. As soon as people are sentenced and enter prison they cannot receive any form of benefit, whatsoever. This bill will start matching data from the Department of Corrections with all these other organisations, so if someone is receiving a benefit, that information will be matched off daily, so no debt will occur.
In the past there has been a delay, although systems have been in place. In the Social Services Committee a big concern was whether a person could be mistakenly matched and the benefit stopped. There may be two people of the same name and both receiving a benefit. One goes into prison and a benefit is stopped, but the wrong benefit has been stopped. There would be hardship associated with that. There were provisions in the legislation that allowed for people to be given written notice that their benefit would be cut because they were in prison, and they could contest it. There was about a 21-day process, before the benefit could be stopped.
Those processes were in place, but the current bill changes that. Instead of having to wait for 2 weeks, the identification is done daily. It is much quicker to identify the people whose benefit must be stopped because they have gone into prison. That is actually unfair, because people in prison have families. In the select committee we were very concerned about the hardship they would face because they had lost income into the home. We made very helpful suggestions in terms of putting Work and Income people in the courts, and then once these sentences were passed, they could liaise with the families in the courthouse, work out where they could go forward, the impact on their income, and whether they needed any additional assistance. The last thing we want for our vulnerable families is to have their income reduced instantly, when they have debts and commitments. We need things in place for those families, and especially for the children in those families. That was really important to our select committee, so we always had that issue at the front of our minds.
The select committee worked as a great team, I thought, and that is why National supports this bill. National thinks it is a very, very good bill. The unfortunate thing is that it took so long to get the bill introduced into the House. This issue is not new; beneficiaries who go to prison have been incurring debts for a long time, due to the slowness in the matching system. In that time a lot of debt has come about, because it has taken so long to get this legislation before the House and have it passed so it can be implemented. When we look at the statistics about debt, current beneficiaries owe $337 million, and former beneficiaries owe $426 million. That is a lot of debt, but the select committee was really concerned about how much of that debt was owed by people who were in prison and who also had families.
The statistics are actually very low for those who are in prison. We were told that 12 percent of them admit they are on a benefit; a very small proportion volunteered: “Yes, I’m getting a benefit, and it needs to be stopped instantly, otherwise I’ll have debt outstanding.” The bill provides for daily matching and that will be much better, and make the net much tighter. Of all those in prison who had their benefit cut, only 3 percent were matched to a benefit. Of that number, 115 had spouses and 5,185 were without spouses. That was a really interesting statistic.
I think the officials have just come into the Chamber to listen to this debate. I would like to recognise the work they did with the select committee; they gave us some fantastic advice.
Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for Social Development and Employment) Link to this
I take the opportunity to take a brief call in the Committee stage of the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill, and to speak to Part 1, which deals with clauses 3 to 7. I first of all acknowledge the work of the Social Services Committee, and, in fact, all parties in the Chamber who have indicated support for the principle of this measure, which is to prevent unnecessary debt from being incurred by beneficiaries.
The part that we are dealing with is primarily in relation to the Department of Corrections, but the other two organisations that the legislation deals with are the New Zealand Customs Service and the Accident Compensation Corporation. The aim is to ensure that the information matches between those three organisations—the Department of Corrections, the New Zealand Customs Service, the Accident Compensation Corporation, and, of course, the Ministry of Social Development—have increased efficiency. The point of the part that we are debating at the present time is primarily to prevent debt being incurred by people in receipt of a benefit who go into prison. As the two previous speakers have indicated, the timeliness of the information exchange is critical in ensuring that that person does not get into debt unnecessarily.
The second point I want to make is that legislation like this has a principled purpose. It is good to see that all parties are supporting that purpose of ensuring that beneficiaries are not incurring debt that could be avoided. But I have to say that behind the principle, the legislation, and the procedure that has gone through the select committee and is now before the Chamber are a lot of very hard-working public servants, officials, and people who have been on the receiving end of a lot of very unfortunate attacks, over recent times. So I take the opportunity to thank not just the select committee for its work, and the other parties in the Chamber for being so conscientious in ensuring that, where they do agree on the principle of legislation, they put their petty party politicking to one side and support it constructively, as they certainly have with this legislation. I also hope those parties might take the opportunity to thank the public servants, who have no opportunity ever to respond to the attacks that they come under—in particular, from the National Party and the first speaker in this debate, Judith Collins.
I want to refer to Supplementary Order Paper 184 in my name, which is a technical Supplementary Order Paper. In case members have not had the opportunity to read it, I point out that it simplifies references to sentences of imprisonment; it omits references to corrective training, which was removed by the Sentencing Act of 2002; and it corrects a cross-reference that was made in error. With those brief comments, I commend the progress of this bill to the Committee.
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) Link to this
I must say that the Social Services Committee worked very well over the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill, and I would like to mention particularly my colleague Judith Collins, who made a strong representation on the issue of minimising hardship. I would also point out that my excellent colleague Katrina Shanks mentioned the great work done by the Department of Corrections. I think that the general spirit that the select committee worked with on this bill was excellent, and it shows how well Parliament can work when it sees that there is common sense to be followed.
But, of course, the big worry about this bill is what the Labour Government has been doing over the 8 years prior to bringing in this bill. I think that the statistics are fairly clear, and they show that Labour has dawdled over a very, very serious problem. It is a problem for which National is happy to be able to support a solution, but the facts of the matter are that when the Labour Government took office in 1999, this debt was $320 million, and by last year it was $760 million. That is a huge debt. In the words of, I think, Peter Hughes, a few years ago 49 percent of beneficiaries were in debt to Work and Income and now the figure is around 70 percent. That is a horrendously high number of Work and Income clients—beneficiaries who are in debt and who are particularly vulnerable to all sorts of challenges that may cause them to compromise their position and their families. To have a bill like this is over timely, and we are very happy to support it.
As the Minister pointed out, this bill will enable data sharing between the Ministry of Social Development, which administers the social security system and the student allowance system, and the Accident Compensation Corporation. These agencies are critical parts of the factor. The purpose in Part 1, which we are addressing, is to amend the Corrections Act, which is the principal Act in this part. It will make the appropriate amendments through the Social Security Act, the Education Act, the Student Allowances Regulations, etc.
We certainly know, as well, that during these last 4 or 5 years particularly, student debt has mounted enormously. Once again, that is a major problem. Under this Labour Government we have seen not only beneficiary debt mount to an extraordinary level but also student debt mount. I would have thought that the Labour Government would be much more interested in being assiduous to ensure that this sort of corrective legislation was put into place much earlier.
Clause 5 substitutes section 180 of the Corrections Act with a new section 180, “Purpose of section 180A”. The new section provides: “(1) The purpose of section 180A is to facilitate the disclosure of information, by the chief executive to the requesting department, for the purposes of the operation of all or any of” a variety of provisions. I think those provisions are pretty well covered. Previous speakers have made the point about minimising hardship, because there is no doubt that if prisoner suddenly find themselves in that position, and their families are not catered for and are penalised, then it can reflect pretty badly on them. We would want to be sure that the Labour Government is able to respond through this legislative mechanism to ensure that it does come about for families that are very dependent on a rapid response to this sort of legislation.
I remember that in the second reading of this bill we had Russell Fairbrother, the excellent chairman of the select committee, saying how efficient this Government is. Well, everything about this bill and this Government is, in actual fact, inefficient.
RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour) Link to this
Picking up on the point of my friend across the Chamber, I must say that I am an excellent select committee chair only because I am so lazy and let the committee members do what they want. We get through the work quite quickly as a result, but I do not take credit for anything else.
The argument that Dr Hutchison is reduced to running in this Committee amuses me somewhat. It is a shame when a man with great professional practice is reduced to running oxymoronic arguments. He said it has taken 8 years for the Labour Government to get around to bringing in this legislation, the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill. Well, let us think back. In 1999, when Labour came into power, the National Government had been in power for 9 years, and not once did it bring forward a bill such as this. So we could say of the last 17 years that the National Government did absolutely nothing for most of it.
The real truth—and it is hard to find; the officials do not know the real answer either—is probably a mixture of two things. First, when this inspired Government came into office in 1999 it met a run-down Public Service—the Public Service had been under attack through cost cutting, as had the beneficiaries—and the money was not there for the infrastructure development. It has taken this Government a long time to get the Public Service back on track, and it is not being helped by the current rhetoric and vague promises from the Leader of the Opposition, who says that he will bash the public servants and reduce their number, and all of those sorts of things that are endearing him highly to the public servants in Wellington. The public servants in Napier whom I speak to are just throwing up their hands in horror, because they work very, very hard. Not one of them believes that they put in less than a 10-hour day. They are worried about that rhetoric, which has no substance.
I will get back to the bill. The real truth in that complaint by Dr Hutchison is simply that it takes time for good things to evolve. It is accepted that this is a good bill. I do not really buy too much into grandiloquent arguments that there is some great moral cause in saving beneficiaries from accumulating debt, because I must say that in the 25 or 28 years I acted for many beneficiaries going to jail, I do not recall one of them worrying about the debt they had accumulated from doubling up on the system.
The really important part of this bill is that it is morally neutral but takes away the privacy rights of people who, for example, are going to prison or leaving the country. They forgo that privacy because the new section 180 enables the department that controls these individuals to disclose what is otherwise privileged and private information. But the price of doing that is greater efficiency so that debts are not being accumulated that must be recovered later on, which is always a more painful process. It makes for more efficient administering of our benefits system.
I do not see this legislation as necessarily having closed in on any great moral compass or on any great moral imperatives; it is really a sensible piece of infrastructural legislation that pulls together what has been 8 years of this Government building a sound and competent infrastructure of civil servants, public servants, and techniques such as computerised systems, which can work together.
The bill really says to the public of New Zealand that this Government is able to bring everything together to move us forward so that those people on benefits get their full and due entitlement—I do not see it as charity; I see it as a citizen’s right to receive a benefit in a time of need—and so that when their benefit time ceases there is less for them to worry about because, in return for forgoing their right to privacy, the system will pick up the time they cease the right to entitlement, and the benefit will stop there and then.
This is a reflection of a very good Government that has built infrastructure that will support a bill that on the face of it is as simple as this is. The complex issues are the release of privacy, and each beneficiary is effectively caught by the new section 180. But the price of that is that there is no further embarrassment down the road of collecting moneys wrongfully paid.
This is a good bill; it reflects a very good Government and a very, very good Minister who has brought this bill forward.
Nathan GuyRUSSELL FAIRBROTHER Link to this
The member obviously could not recognise quality if he fell over it, but we on this side of the Chamber appreciate the very good Minister—and her predecessor, who also did an excellent job in this field. This is a very good bill; we recommend it. It says to the public of New Zealand that this is the sort of thing they can expect from a very efficient, organised administration that cares for the populace of New Zealand but is also careful to make sure that the taxpayer dollar is spent wisely and prudently. It is coherent and cogent legislation. I recommend Part 1 to the Committee accordingly.
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) Link to this
I rise to take a brief call on the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill, particularly in regard to the purpose of the bill, which is the sharing of information between departments. I see here that the proposal is to share information between the Ministry of Social Development, the Department of Corrections, the New Zealand Customs Service, and the Accident Compensation Corporation. This is a fine purpose, and is the reason why National is supporting this particular bill and getting right behind it.
The point I particularly take up is the Minister Ruth Dyson’s call about National petty politicking around civil servants and the job they do. On the one hand, I agree with the Minister—the civil servants out there, in the large, do an amazing job. But these civil servants often have to cope with a very difficult system. The system has particularly let them down in the Hawke’s Bay over recent years. There are two cases I would like to highlight. The first one was a very difficult case of a young child sex offender who had committed a number of very serious crimes as a young man and had ended up back in Napier, being cared for by two minders and a supervisor. A constituent of mine came to me about it. This gentleman ended up climbing the fence some 14 times and putting at risk my constituent and her young daughter.
The fact of the matter was that no information had been shared—no information had been shared with the local police or within Child, Youth and Family between the Auckland division and the local department. So when this young lady found this gentleman over her fence, wondered what he was doing there, and subsequently found out he was a child sex offender, she became extremely concerned. When the lack of information sharing was subsequently found out, one had to ask whether there had been a breakdown in the system. On the other side of the coin, the civil servants were most concerned about this, and wanted to make sure that things were put right.
Another case is before us right now concerning a young man—an 11-year-old child—in my constituency, who has been difficult. He is in the guardianship of Child, Youth and Family as we speak. He went into its guardianship at the age of 8. He is a very difficult young man, and I am not going to stand up here and pretend he is an easy case to deal with, by any stretch. He was given a 3-month supervisory term up in the Auckland childcare facility, and after 3 months was released back to foster care in Wairoa. Within 4 hours this young child had moved on—had escaped. I guess that is what it was; he was put into foster care but escaped. That young man has largely been on the run—can members believe this—for some 3 months now. He actually hitchhiked to Hamilton. I put this in my own perspective. I look at my own 11-year-old boy and wonder how my 11-year-old boy could manage to hitchhike up to Hamilton. This young man did so and he ended up with the mob. He ended up back down in Wairoa, again with the mob, and ultimately ended up back with his parents. He committed a significant number of crimes and was taken back in by police. But he is now on the run again and has been committing a significant number of crimes again.
But I want to make the point here that in this case information sharing between the departments was not happening.
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs) Link to this
It is a stretch of this legislation—not quite in this bill—but carry on.
The point I make is that National supports information sharing between departments. It is critical that information is shared so that children like that young 11-year-old—who is still on the run—can be helped. He needs to be under Child, Youth and Family guardianship. Information should be shared with the police so that they can help to capture him, and to allow some of these hard-working civil servants to do their jobs properly. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 184 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to Part 1 be agreed to.
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) Link to this
It is my privilege again to speak on the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill—in particular, on Part 2 and amendments to other Acts. Of course, this really deals with the fact that other Acts, including the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act, are to be amended, and also that the supply of arrival and departure information for benefit purposes is to be disclosed. We have had a very reasoned debate so far in the Committee tonight about the need for this, and I think that we have unanimously decided that it is good legislation to have.
I will address a few of the issues about the amendments to other Acts, in Part 2, and why it is that obviously it is now a lot easier to transfer information between various departments, and to collate it. I remind the Committee that is was not too long ago that we did not have mobile phones. When I first started practising law I remember when we got our first fax machine, and we thought that was really exciting. And I am not that old, at all, even though I may occasionally look like it.
The Minister is very kind. Of course, she would not; I would look so young compared with her. It is not that long ago when we got our first laptop computers, and it is not that long ago that we actually got computers in Government departments, where front-line staff could access information from them. So it is really very important that we constantly keep up with new technology.
Today when we heard from the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development about the Patterson $3.2 million fraud, one of the things he pointed out was the fact that it has been only in the last couple of years that the register of births has been computerised. That is because, basically, it has been a manual system ever since it has been kept. But the technology now exists so that this can be computerised and matching has become available. When the Department of Internal Affairs some years ago updated its passport system it went on to a computerised system, and I remember it was back in the 1990s that that happened.
Of course, we have changing technology, and this changing technology gives us all sorts of opportunities to detect and deal with fraud, and with identity fraud. It is also interesting to note that none of these instances we heard about today—which, as I recall, were about 124 different aliases—involved identity theft. Not one of them involved instances of this man Patterson going and looking in graveyards for the names of dead babies and stealing their identities, which are some of the instances we have heard of before in the last few years. So not only is technology moving on but so are the fraudsters. We will not just be able to pass this legislation and think “Well, that will be it; we don’t need to do any more.” We will have to come back to this as technology changes. Just because we cannot anticipate now what that technology, or its changes, will be, it does not mean to say that they will not happen.
So I think that it is incredibly important when we look, for instance, at the supply of arrival and departure information for benefit purposes, in Part 2, and at other amendments to Acts—those to the Customs and Excise Act, for instance—that we consider the fact that some people will set about making up their minds to cheat the benefit system, and to cheat the taxpayer. Those people are often extremely capable people. Certainly, Patterson showed himself to be extraordinarily capable in terms of technology and the use of it—so much so that the chief executive of the ministry has even written to Mr Patterson and suggested that the ministry can assist him to go straight after he comes out of prison. A letter on that matter was tabled today at the select committee, and I find that quite extraordinary. But of course this is a person with such talents, and it is amazing to think they have been misused in this way.
Certainly, when I was growing up we did not have the Internet. Many of us with children will say that if we have any new technology we get the kids to sort it out first, and then they can give us the dummies’ guide on how to operate it. I can see there is quite a bit of nodding around the Chamber. Some of us do not need to learn about it, because our children will do it for us, we think, but actually we should do it. We should embrace it and go with it. Unfortunately, this is what will happen—or we should say fortunately.
KATRINA SHANKS (National) Link to this
It is my pleasure to take a call on Part 2 of the Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill. Part 2 is not too dissimilar to Part 1, for it talks about amendments to the Customs and Excise Act 1996 in relation to locating debtors, and to the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act 2001, which concerns accident compensation. So Part 2 basically talks about matching the two agencies involved with those Acts.
I was listening to my colleague Judith Collins talk about technology. She has a great point. When I first came to work in the workplace, we had computers. They were not new technology to us; that is what we had gone through university with. We kind of forget that it takes a while for people who have not had them to catch up. It costs a lot of money for the infrastructure to put all these systems in place, and to get the technology, as it increases, to a point where it can interact with all the different systems through all the different departments. We see now in the departments’ financial reviews and budgets that they have huge amounts of money set aside for information technology development and software and hardware upgrades. It is absolutely true that the more information we get, the more it costs to have it and the more it costs to store it. We are getting to the stage now where the storage of the information we have uploaded is costing a huge amount to maintain, and, as technology changes and all the departments upgrade their software, those departments cannot read all the old information they have, because it is now in different technology and software. It is so important that we stay up to date. The matching of data in this bill is really the beginning of what we are seeing in this area of technology, and it will become a lot more complex, quicker, technical, and expensive, but at the same time it is the tool we are becoming more and more reliant on in the world we live in.
I think it is great that we are seeing this data matching beginning and happening through the different departments, but it is also important that we recognise that we have to invest in this technology all the time and keep at the cutting edge of it, because before we know it we will be able to match data with Australian databases, as well. This will come with time as we all become closer, because we are becoming much more global and more accepting of other people’s systems as we all get to the same playing field. New Zealand does have that distance and we have been a little behind compared with where things are in the United States and Australia. When I worked in London, the technology over there was a lot more advanced than it had been where I worked in New Zealand. That was a very good point that my colleague made.
This data matching is really important and I would like to tell members a little bit about it. I am reading the briefing paper that the Ministry of Social Development gave us, which is absolutely fantastic. Every time I get up to speak I always look at the ministry’s briefing notes, because we forget what the officials tell us. The briefing notes give us a lot of information when we are putting this type of legislation together. I would like to share a little bit on this aspect, because no one has touched on it so far in this debate. It is not that I want to read the briefing paper, because that is not a good thing to do, but I will tell members a little about what the ministry said about the Customs and Excise Act and how it currently does not allow the ministry to match data with the Customs Service for debt recovery purposes. This is not about identifying people and stopping the debt; this is about how the ministry matches data up once people have the debt, so the ministry is coming from a slightly different angle here.
I did not know this, but currently ministry staff issue individual notices manually under section 11 of the Social Security Act 1964, so it is still a very slow process. The number of notices issued by the ministry is significant. Currently it sends between 12,000 and 14,000 manual requests to the Customs Service per year. If members can just get their minds around how long it takes to process and match 12,000 to 14,000 manual requests—and to match them correctly—then they will realise that it all takes time and money. As we move forward in this process, it means that the information is often not able to be produced in an effective and timely manner, and the likelihood of debt repayment is also reduced. If somebody who owes a debt to the New Zealand Government comes into New Zealand from Australia, the manual process takes so long that the person’s 2-week holiday has come and gone before the information can be matched. The information on that person has only just been matched when he or she is on the flight back to Australia again. The ministry estimates that there are up to 20,000 people residing outside New Zealand who are no longer receiving a benefit and who owe approximately $70 million.
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) Link to this
I take this opportunity to speak on Part 2 of this Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill, and, as my colleague Katrina Shanks said, this part amends two specific areas: the Customs and Excise Act 1996 and the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act 2001.
I think that the points made about the huge changes in technology are absolutely relevant. For those familiar with Schumpeter’s curve, the logarithmic increase in knowledge that is happening on a minute-by-minute basis is an example of where data matching is likely to go over the next 5 or 10 years. I did notice in the regulatory impact statement that the most significant change proposed is the amendment to the Social Security Act to override section 103(1) of the Privacy Act. It was felt that this proposal carried some risks, including the low risk of a beneficiary being incorrectly identified as being in prison. However, strategies will be put in place to minimise such impacts.
Again, I would like to make the point that Katrina Shanks made, which was that the ministry was very helpful in collating its notes in this area and in summating the Privacy Commissioner’s views on this issue. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner said that it does not oppose this proposal to override section 103 of the Privacy Act, but it notes that this section provides a basic protection of the principles of natural justice when Government agencies operate automated information-matching programmes. The regulatory impact statement went on to say that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner recognises the social policy goals behind the proposed changes, but it is concerned that an amendment that overrides this fundamental protection is proposed. The ministry is introducing measures to mitigate these adverse effects, but the Office of the Privacy Commissioner believes that these can only reduce but not eliminate adverse effects from the proposed amendment, with some individuals having their benefits unjustifiably withdrawn.
As we know, whatever the data-matching system is, there will always be fallibility associated with it, whether it is a human failing or, as we all know, whether from time to time the computer crashes. I think that every one of us is familiar with that scenario, and I am sure that this will happen from time to time with this data-matching system, but we would also hope that within the next 5 to 10 years the technology will improve significantly.
I recall Russell Fairbrother, the chairman of the Social Services Committee, talking for a moment or two about the efficiency of this Government. I will read out a little bit of a letter that I received just a couple of days ago from a young lady who said: “Back in January of this year I decided that because of certain incentives created by the Government, I would be able to come off the DPB.” She said that she had been running a small website design business on a part-time basis to make ends meet, and felt the time was ripe to pursue this full time and leave the benefit behind. She had calculated: “With a $60 a week in-work payment, the family support, the accommodation supplement, and the child support coming directly to me,”—all very complicated—“I would be in a similar position to what I was currently in, being on the DPB. I would then be able to build up the business and start to move ahead.” But then she said that this was where things started to go drastically wrong. She said: “I had decided to put my trust in a Government department, only to be treated with absolutely no regard. My financial situation was of no concern to the many people I spoke to at IRD. Sure, they spoke to me, reassured me that all was well, then sat on their backsides and did nothing.”
I think it is important and relevant that although the chairman of the select committee suggests that the Government is efficient, we are getting letters like this on a daily basis as constituent MPs. It really is worrying when the departments that are involved in this bill—the Ministry of Social Development, the Accident Compensation Corporation, and the Inland Revenue Department—are all associated with huge inefficiencies and concerns expressed by people out there, all over New Zealand.
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) Link to this
As National members have stated tonight, we support this bill. We support clauses 1 and 2. We are of the view that this is good legislation. It is not often that we say that, but we do so with regard to this bill because absolutely amongst our core beliefs is the belief that the benefit system should be efficient and fair. People should be able to properly access benefits when they are in need, but they should do so for themselves and not for people who are either dead or not actually in existence. We are particularly concerned about making sure—and we have canvassed this rather fully tonight—that when benefits are paid, they are paid to the right people, they are paid for exactly the right amount of time, and they are not overpaid.
I stress that, not to be mean to people who receive benefits for a week or 2 weeks longer than they should. I say that because if someone is overpaid a week’s wages or a week’s benefit, that is normally quite a lot of money for that person. Whether someone is paid $500, $300, or $200 a week, a whole week’s wages is a lot of money. For the people we are talking about—people who are absolutely on the breadline, people who are very much in that situation—1 week’s pay is a huge amount of money. They are not people generally with savings; they are not people generally with credit cards they can just whisk up. If they have to go and pay back money they often end up with a loan shark, which is a situation we do not want to see them in. Certainly, it is incredibly important that with a great big Government department, a department that looks after $18 billion of taxpayer money—I said “looks after” but I meant “pays out”; the amount has actually gone up under this Government, not down—it is absolutely incumbent on that bureaucracy, with its staffing, to be able to cope with the benefits system. It is incredibly important that it does so.
I note that one of the things we recommended in the select committee—we certainly talked about it—was the need for some sort of assistance to be available in courts, and for representatives in the major courts to be able to adjust benefits immediately when a recipient is imprisoned. We said that to prevent a situation when someone is imprisoned on, say, a Friday, a weekend, or some time like that when the benefit system does not really work, yet still receives the benefit. We want to make sure that that person’s benefit is immediately adjusted to avoid the very situation we are trying to prevent, which is that of people going into prison and then receiving benefits.
I think it is also worth noting that it was not that long ago when there was a bit of a scandal about people in prison accessing student loans. It caused a great deal of embarrassment to the Government—hence the need for student loans to be mentioned specifically in this legislation. There was a situation where a fraud was going on—a matter of only a couple of years ago—with hundreds of people accessing student loans from prison, when of course that was not necessary. Even with the technology that was available then, the technology was still not being properly used. That is why it is incredibly important that we have this legislation.
I do not believe that the public of New Zealand see a lot of difference between one Government department knowing information and another Government department knowing that information. Most would have thought that it was just a matter of course that the Department of Corrections, when it received a prisoner listed as being on the sickness benefit, the invalids benefit, or the unemployment benefit, would actually be checking to make sure that Work and Income knew about it. But of course under the incredible political correctness that has absolutely permeated this country for the last few years, it is almost unthinkable that one Government department would talk to another unless it had permission to do so. I understand there may be legislation put in place to stop them from doing that; I do not know why there would be such legislation. I understand that most people think back to the days when people in the Public Service felt free to be able to express their views and felt free to talk to each other without being frightened of reactions.
The Committee divided the bill into the Corrections (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill, the Customs and Excise (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill, and the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill, divided into Corrections (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill| Customs and Excise (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill| Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and the Compensation (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill| pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper185.