Social Security Amendment Bill

Hon RUTH DYSON (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment (CYF)) Link to this

I move, That the Social Security Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I will move that the bill be referred to the Social Services Committee, and that the committee report back to the House finally on or before 30 April 2007. This bill amends the Social Security Act 1964, an Act whose genesis is in the historic legislation of 1938 that was passed by the first Labour Government. It represents another step in our Government’s active approach to social support and highlights the importance of work in people’s lives.

Our Government recognises that work is the cornerstone of people’s independence and social and economic well-being. Over the coming months the services offered by Work and Income will be further enhanced so that intensive work-focused support will be provided to every person who is receiving a benefit and able to work. This reform is about providing services on the basis of need, not benefit category. It takes us a significant way forward in our programme to fully align the benefit system around work-focused services for everyone who is able to work.

In the last 7 years our Government has reduced unemployment benefit numbers from around 160,000 to under 40,000. We have made excellent progress in providing stronger support for people who face particular barriers to work. The current high labour force participation rate of nearly 68.5 percent, and the low unemployment rate of 3.8 percent, are clear indicators of our success. We now have the resources to work intensively with people who are able to work, have told us they want to work, and need the right support to move into work. Alongside this activity we will continue to support people who are not able to work.

Significant changes to service delivery are already under way. These changes are aimed at providing work-focused services and support for people, right from the start. Enhancements are being made to employment and training assistance to improve flexibility and responsiveness, so that assistance better meets individual needs. This will see real benefits for all people of working age who are seeking to work. In particular, increased support for people receiving the sickness benefit or invalids benefit will help to ensure that those who are able to work receive the right support. The emphasis of the current initiatives is on getting the right services and support in place for people, but legislative change is necessary to support those changes and simplify the system. This bill introduces those changes.

The changes have a significant focus on youth. The shared Government and Mayors Task Force for Jobs goal is to have all 15-year-olds to 19-year-olds engaged in appropriate employment, training, or education activities. Enhancement through this legislation will contribute to this goal. From September next year a number of new requirements will be placed on people who are receiving financial support from the Government. Those applying for the unemployment benefit will be required to undertake a specific work or training-related activity or activities in the period between their first contact with Work and Income for assistance and their benefit commencing. They will be required to look for and accept any offer of suitable work during that time. This will mean that Work and Income will be able to direct a person to a work-related activity immediately, and not have to wait until after the benefit has commenced. Additional activity requirements for people who are receiving the unemployment benefit will also be introduced. They may be asked to plan or undertake a specific activity that will improve their prospects for employment.

The changes are designed to provide Work and Income with the flexibility to tailor the job search service to best meet the needs of the individual—in the current environment many jobs are no longer based on a Monday to Friday working week—to reflect the changes in workforce participation. The work test may, where a person’s circumstances make it possible and appropriate, be applied over 7 days. Many people on the sickness benefit or invalids benefit say they want to work or to develop skills that will help them to get work in the future. More actively working with these people and providing them with the right services and support to participate in the labour market will have long-term benefits for everyone. From September next year people receiving the sickness benefit or invalids benefit who may be able to work at some future point will be asked to plan for that eventual return, and to undertake activities to help them develop the skills to do so. There is no intention to force people into work when they are clearly unable to work at all. Our Government recognises, as it always has, that work is not appropriate or possible for everyone, and, where that is the case, we will continue to provide financial support.

I mentioned earlier the specific focus on young people, especially those 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds who no longer have the support of their parents. It is infinitely preferable for young people to be engaged in education or training than it is for them to be doing nothing. Missing out on those activities, and the opportunities they offer, can have a profoundly negative effect on a young person’s future circumstances, including his or her ability to get a job. We know that young people who are inactive for long periods of time have a much greater risk of poor outcomes. Keeping young people actively engaged in training and education will motivate them to set and achieve positive goals. It will help towards addressing isolation and disconnection from society, which can lead to negative outcomes, and it can also lead to success in employment, the pathway from poverty and into economic independence. Our aim is to work actively with young people who need our support, and to encourage them to return to or continue with their education. From September next year 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds receiving an independent youth benefit will be required to actively seek work or participate in training or education activities for 30 to 40 hours a week. This will be a first and important step towards improving their current and future opportunities to work.

Two other changes impact on young people. From May next year we are extending the access young people have to the independent youth benefit by making it available to those released from the custody of Child, Youth and Family. This is a positive move. It means that young people who have been in a stable foster home may, if they wish, stay in their home and be in a position to contribute to household expenses. It recognises the need of the young person and the valuable support provided by foster parents. Changing the access that 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds will have to the domestic purposes benefit for the care of the sick and infirm, from May next year, is also included in this bill.

One of the Government’s objectives is to enable greater choices for parents and caregivers around work and parenting. From September next year spouses or partners of beneficiaries with a dependent child under 6 will have the same planning and activity requirements as a sole parent. The part-time work-test requirement will be extended until the youngest child is 18 years old. At present the full-time work test is applied when the youngest child turns 14. The change will allow parents a further 4 years before the full-time work test requirements are applied.

A number of people care for someone who needs full-time care. The people who do this are sacrificing the opportunity that paid work offers in order to provide a valuable service. Access to the domestic purposes benefit for the care of the sick and infirm has long been linked to the fact that the person being cared for would otherwise need hospital care. That is an outdated consideration. From May next year the full-time requirement is being widened to include community residential services, rest homes, and equivalent levels of care in the community.

If a person does not apply for a benefit because of an error on the part of the department, it is important that this can be rectified as quickly as possible. From July of next year the situation will change. The bill provides for the responsible Minister to consent to the payment of benefits starting earlier than the date of application, where a person did not apply for a benefit because of an error on the part of the ministry. This is a significant improvement.

Finally, the bill will insert purpose and principle provisions into the Social Security Act. Some parts of the Act have a purpose statement, but the Act has never had overarching purpose or principle provisions. A number of judgments from the Social Security Appeal Authority, the High Court, and the Court of Appeal have contained statements in relation to the purpose of the Act. Those have been taken into consideration in developing the bill.

In closing, I pay a tribute to the dedication and the professionalism of the staff and team led by Sue Mackwell in the Ministry of Social Development in bringing this large piece of work to such a constructive conclusion. I commend the bill to the House.

ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) Link to this

I thank the Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment Ruth Dyson for her very full explanation of what the Social Security Amendment Bill is intended to do. Having sat through and listened to all that, and having read through the bill this afternoon, I have to say that it is legislating for Work and Income to do what most New Zealanders already thought that it did—that is, to help people into work.

When the Minister for Social Development and Employment first talked about this bill and went through all the rah, rah of a big announcement, he claimed that this was the greatest reform of the welfare system in 50 years. Of course, that is ridiculous. When members read through the bill, they will see that that statement is typical of the spin from that Minister, and that it has little basis in reality.

It is typical of the Minister, and it is an indictment on this tired, old Government, that it has taken 7 long years before we see any attempt to provide incentives and assistance in getting sickness and invalids beneficiaries, particularly, back into work. The number of beneficiaries has been rising; in fact it has risen by 50 percent under Labour. There are now 125,000 people receiving sickness benefits and invalids benefits.

Every time we have questioned the Minister about this matter, he has quoted overseas countries with the same problem—never saying, of course, that those countries have rising unemployment figures as well, which is not what we have seen in New Zealand. Whenever we have questioned the Minister about the fact that many people have gone from the unemployment benefit on to a sickness benefit or an invalids benefit, he has denied the facts. He has denied them, despite the fact that the numbers of invalids and sickness beneficiaries have continued to rise inexorably. He has sat on his hands, watched those figures rise and those people moulder on a benefit, and he has done nothing.

In fact, the Minister has admitted that he knows that one in five potential sickness or invalids beneficiaries who are signed up by a doctor are actually fit for work. He has admitted that, yet even the great reform bill that has been tabled in the House today does nothing to tighten the assessment criteria for those potential beneficiaries. Twenty percent of them are getting a benefit almost fraudulently. The Minister knows it and the ministry knows it, yet nothing is being done in this legislation or by this Government to get those people back into work.

In the spin around this bill, the Minister tried to conceal the fact that sickness and invalids beneficiaries would have their benefits cut if they did not meet the proposed activity requirements. He said that meeting the requirements would be entirely voluntary. Fortunately, a closer reading of the bill shows this not to be true. It is just another example of this Government saying one thing to people and then going out and doing another.

National is supporting this bill going to the Social Services Committee. Why on earth would we not? We have been arguing for this for 7 years. Labour members should be ashamed that after 7 years they have to introduce legislation to do what they have talked about doing for so long. We want to see this bill in the select committee. We want to tighten up the provisions in this bill. This is basically just a wet dishrag of a bill, designed to make the Government look as if it is doing something, but it is not actually doing very much at all.

We do not want to be tough and mean to people who are down on their luck. The reason that we want to make some tightening-up changes in this bill is not because we want to be tough on those people who are down on their luck or who are suffering long-term illnesses, but because welfare dependency is like a cancer that eats away at people’s self-esteem, their mana, and their ability to look after themselves and their families. Only work—even part-time work—can lift their spirits, lift their aspirations, and, ultimately, lift their standard of living. The Government has a responsibility to support people into work and to assist them to take their lives back into their own hands, rather than allowing them to languish on a benefit.

Finally, I have to say to the Minister that we have talked for almost 20 years about a single core benefit. Is this bill as close as we are going to get to it? Where is it? Why does the Government not just come clean and say that it is too hard, that it cannot do it, and that this bill is about as close as we are going to get. We need aspirational change to free people from the welfare trap. This bill just does not cut it, but we will make it right in the select committee. Thank you.

BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) Link to this

On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to support the Social Security Amendment Bill. For many years in this House we have heard about the need to refocus the whole social security system on work and employment. This legislation is an excellent opportunity to do exactly that.

New Zealand First believes that social welfare must never become a trap for recipients that keeps recipients dependent on the State. The welfare state is a safety net, a helping hand when it is most needed, and not a lifestyle choice—and everyone in this House would agree. All of the research shows that families most thrive when adults are actively employed in the workforce. I think back to the numerous speeches that I heard from Dr Muriel Newman on this very issue when she was in the last Parliament. New Zealand First is very aware that the numbers of people on the unemployment benefit have steadily dropped, and we must acknowledge the efforts of the Government in this particular area.

There has been an increase of people on the invalids benefit and the sickness benefit; the numbers there have increased. Although we know that we have an ageing population, one must wonder whether this increase is, in part, a result of decreased personal expectations, the actual stress from not being employed, and the lack of social interactions that results from unemployment. As has always been the case, people with a terminal illness and people with a very severe disability or ill health on the invalids benefit are exempt from the planning or the activity requirements that are outlined in this particular bill.

The emphasis in this bill is about getting the right services and the right support in place so that people’s opportunities for work are increased. We must applaud that direction. This is what is needed. People who are able to work, should work. If they need additional support for a period of time, it is far less expensive to provide that support than it is to provide the unemployment benefit for them. It means, too, that solo parents caring for their children can plan ahead for employment in the future. The longer one is out of work, the harder it is to secure work. People should be assisted to ensure that they can develop work skills and be supported towards finding and holding down a job. Working adults are the basis of every society.

I was interested to read the “sanctions” part of the bill. It is very clear that when people fail to meet requirements without good reason, a sanction will be imposed. I believe that some training in this area may be necessary—even for some of those people employed by Work and Income. Last week I was approached by a young man who had gone into his local Work and Income office, accompanied by his father, to sign up for an unemployment benefit. He was just in ordinary working clothes and was, he believed, untidy. For the first time ever that he had gone into the office, he was told that he had a job interview in the neighbouring city in 1 hour’s time.

The young person believed that he was inappropriately dressed for the interview and he wanted to go home to change into more suitable clothes and to gather his thoughts. He thought that if he did that, he would have a far better chance of making a good impression at the interview and getting the job—because he wanted a job. The young man’s request was considered basically to be a refusal to attend an interview. He was told he would have to stand down and was going to have a sanction applied against him. He was quite shattered, and that was not quite the treatment that either he or his father believed was reasonable. It was the first time that he had ever applied for a benefit. However, he went out and eventually found a job for himself, so that he was not dependent on a benefit.

In this bill there appear to be some changes to the services offered to 16 and 17-year-olds on the independent youth benefit. We must acknowledge that young people today face a far more complex and challenging social environment than past generations have faced. It is far more preferable for young people to be engaged in education and training, so that they can obtain and hold sustainable employment, rather than receiving a benefit at this point in their young lives. Any initiatives—all initiatives, we should say—to ensure that these young people can be engaged in activities that will further their opportunities to hold down jobs are welcomed. Young people cannot be inactive for long periods of time, and we are all very aware of the negative outcomes that eventuate from inactivity—mental ill health, substance abuse, criminal activity, etc. Those are not things that we want to condone.

Success in employment, education, and training is the most important way out of poverty for young people. This is a very important bill and it has some far-reaching changes. New Zealand First looks forward to hearing further discussion at the select committee. We support this bill.

SUE BRADFORD (Green) Link to this

The Green Party will be voting against the Social Security Amendment Bill being read a first time. That is not to say there is nothing commendable about the bill. For example, the Green Party supports the reduction of the maximum income-related stand-down period from 10 weeks to 2 weeks—something I, along with others, have campaigned on for many years. Pre-benefit stand-down is one of the primary causes of hardship amongst beneficiaries, and it is ridiculous that people are forced into total poverty and debt because of the 10-week rule. Although we would have preferred to see the bill abolish the stand-down period completely, we commend the Government for at least having the courage to go as far as this.

The Green Party also supports the aligning of the ending of benefits for sole parents who cease caring for dependent children, and the development of consistent residential qualifications across the benefit system.

Unfortunately, other aspects of the bill do not demonstrate the same commitment to fairness, justice, consistency, and flexibility. For example, clause 23, which inserts “Purpose” and “Principles” sections into the Social Security Act, is nothing short of being parsimonious and miserable in its approach. It is those purpose and principles sections that will influence the interpretation of legislation by Ministry of Social Development staff and by the judiciary, in terms of the Act in its entirety.

In clause 23 we see the framework for a regulated, inflexible, and mean-spirited social security system that is designed not to help to eliminate poverty—which is what the Green Party believes should be the objective of the income support system in this country—but to alleviate hardship, and then only to the extent provided for by the Act. This approach removes the system’s ability to respond to individual circumstances, as exemplified by this Government’s earlier abolition of the discretionary special benefit and implementation of the regulated temporary additional support regime. Today that is carried forth by clause 23 into the interpretation of the entire Act.

The purpose of the New Zealand social security system, as embodied in the original 1938 Act and restated in 1972 by the Royal Commission on Social Security in New Zealand, has been to provide an income that allows beneficiaries to have a standard of living that enables them to participate in, and feel part of, their local communities. That principle was undermined by the very ungenerous approach to welfare of National-led Governments in the 1990s. These new purpose and principles sections are geared to finishing that unfinished business of Jenny Shipley. Even her modest safety net is left torn and tattered, and it will be the most vulnerable members of our society who fall through the holes.

I now turn to other parts of the bill with which we have major problems. The Green Party opposes the “work first” dictum set out in clause 16—that work in paid employment offers the best opportunity for people to achieve social and economic well-being, and that the priority for people of working age should be to find and retain work. Those principles have no regard at all for the valuable contribution to our society that is made by people who do voluntary work in their communities, or for people for whom caring for children, the sick, the elderly, or people with major impairments is actually their priority at that particular time in their lives. This bill establishes one standard for the wealthy, who have a choice about whether their children are cared for by an at-home parent, and a different standard for those who are ill or disabled, or who do not have a partner on a high income. The latter are expected to be working in paid employment, regardless of what they consider is best for their children.

Clause 4 provides that the definition of income for the purposes of the Act may, for people in self-employment, be subject to rules made by Order in Council. That is bad law. Any future Minister will be able to change what is called income and what is not, without reference to Parliament. Income is a concept that is fundamental to social security. As such, its definition should be set out clearly in the legislation, rather than be subject to the whim of the Minister. New section 132H, under which such rules will be made, permits rules that determine how a person’s income is to be determined, where he or she has used assets of a business or trade for no consideration or for inadequate consideration. That will have the effect of introducing a de facto asset test for main benefits, which is a new and dangerous precedent.

Clause 9 amends section 74 of the Act, relating to deprivation of income or property. This provision currently operates on a discretionary basis, and provides that where there has been a deprivation, the Ministry of Social Development may decline to pay, or may reduce the rate of, a benefit. Clause 9 makes that discretion subject to rules made by Order in Council. It is not possible to regulate for the whole range of human experience, and people will inevitably end up in hardship because of the operation of strict rules-based criteria. That is particularly pernicious in the context of deprivation of income or property, where people can be affected by what they did years before they ever think or imagine they might be applying for a benefit.

Clauses 12 and 24 are also of major concern to the Green Party. They will require all benefit applications to be put in writing and on the form provided by the ministry, and to be for a specific benefit. There will be no provision for backdating entitlements except with the specific approval of the Minister, and then only in circumstances where the ministry has acted in error. That issue of backdating an entitlement has been addressed by the High Court, and, in my view, addressed very sensibly, in the judgment Scoble v. These clauses will restrict the application of the Scoble judgment in a manner that puts the onus on benefit applicants to apply for the correct benefit.

The benefit system is exceedingly complex, as I am sure members will understand, and no beneficiary should be expected to understand it fully—I doubt that most members in this House can. These clauses will have a harmful effect on some benefit applicants who do not understand the application system or the rules well, and they may prevent them from gaining adequate benefit or redress. I am also concerned at the use of legislation to overturn the intent of court decisions, as this bill seems to be doing.

Clauses 28 to 32 amend the “personal development and employment plan” provisions of the Act to include sickness and invalids beneficiaries in the requirement to develop such plans. There is nothing wrong with that in itself; if sickness and invalids beneficiaries are medically capable of doing some work and want to work, they should be given every possible help and encouragement by the department. However, the amendments introduce an element of coercion into the content of personal development and employment plans. When those plans were first introduced, I worked closely with the Minister and the Government to ensure there was genuine negotiation in the plan development process, and that the content of the plans was agreed between the ministry and each beneficiary. That concept now appears to have been abandoned in favour of coercion. There is a real danger that zealous case managers, following the new “work first” principles in the Act, will force beneficiaries into totally inappropriate activities. The similarly coercive approach taken in clauses 38 and 39 to unemployed beneficiaries’ job seeker agreements is also opposed by the Green Party.

Clause 36 provides that unemployed beneficiaries may be required to undertake “pre-benefit activities”—for example, looking for work or attending job search seminars—before they become entitled to the benefit. Again, the Green Party sees nothing wrong with that in itself. However, the bill provides that the Ministry of Social Development does not have to process the benefit application until the activity has been completed, and that the requirement to undertake a pre-benefit activity can be oral or written. These provisions have the potential to cause significant delays in the processing of benefit applications, and consequent hardship for applicants.

Although this bill has some provisions that the Green Party supports, the overall thrust is one of inflexibility, insufficiency, and coercion. We will be seeking to move amendments at all possible stages of the parliamentary process, in an attempt to improve what is at the moment a bill that, overall, further undermines the ability of our welfare system to reduce poverty. It is a real pity that this Government appears, at a number of levels, to continue to see itself as being in a bidding war with National to see who can blame and harass beneficiaries the most, rather than being a party that stands up for fundamental principles of dignity, sufficiency, and equity, in its administration of the country’s social security system.

Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Social Security Amendment Bill has at its core a move by the Government to focus on beneficiaries by claiming the value—the absolute necessity—of people participating in the labour market and engaging in work as an appropriate outcome. At the same time, the bill states that the Government will continue to provide social and financial support for people with temporary or long-term barriers to work. It also appears to have as a consequential outcome a greater involvement by the State in the lives of vulnerable people. It does this under the guise of creating a more efficient support system to enable them to receive that to which they are entitled. We are very concerned about the increased surveillance of particular groups by the State in the face of increased freedom for others.

The bill contains a second clever move by the Government. In focusing on encouraging people to think of work—something the Māori Party would support—a critical question is not asked: what sort of work are we talking about? Is it the sort of work where people have to aspire to succeed in a low-wage economy, where people shift their sights from the peaks of the beneficiary mountain to the peaks of the mountains of the working poor? This is the working poor that the Minister of Māori Affairs frequently refers to as a positive outcome—the part-time, the seasonal, the low-paid workers, and the poor work conditions. “Get a job.” replaces “Have a life.”

What this bill, and many others introduced by the Government, fails to acknowledge is that every aspect of the economy is interrelated. On the one hand we sit by in this House today and watch $95.7 million being spent on reforming the social support system to supposedly create a work-focused system, and on the other hand we close our eyes to the fact that not one cent will go towards the creation of jobs that people want to get out of bed for—not one cent to enable the establishment of meaningful, adequately paid, secure employment.

This House must be alert to the fact that changes made in one area inevitably impact on others. The social security system is linked to the wage rates, is linked to tax exemptions, is linked to capital gains, and is linked to foreign exchange earnings. Not only do we have this Social Security Amendment Bill but yesterday we also had the first reading of the Appropriation (2005/06 Financial Review) Bill, and last evening the Taxation (Annual Rates, Savings Investment, and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill was sped through under urgency. All these bills are related. They are all part of the whakapapa—the genealogy—of economics. Our question asks whose whakapapa it is.

Members should not get me wrong: we believe in the necessity of the safety net of the social security system, with its honourable intentions. We believe that it is right and proper that the State supports our most vulnerable citizens, to ensure that all New Zealanders have the right to enjoy quality of life. But, unfortunately, for too many of us it has had negative consequences, in that people have become entangled in that safety net. For some families that entanglement is now seen to be normal—indeed, almost a right. We in the Māori Party say that nobody has the right to be entangled in the welfare net of dependency or to see the entanglement as a right. And no society or Government has the right to promote such a view.

We need to have a very good look at what we are doing here. What has happened here in Aotearoa to our people, who are the constituents, is no different from what has happened to other indigenous people where the safety net has become a welfare trap. As a result, people have become alienated from contributing positively to their own economic health, wealth, and development. The values of the “I” and the “me” society have corrupted our traditional obligations to share resources and care. Is it the case in some families that our traditional values of sharing and caring become interpreted as “buying the booze for our teenagers”, “sharing the joint”, or “partying with the cuzzies” while the little ones are left to fend for themselves? This is an absolute corruption of what we for so long have considered to be our taonga tuku iho—those treasures handed down. This bill does nothing to address that situation.

We in the Māori Party have an acute interest in, and a commitment to, having our people actively involved in the real economy and being positive contributors to it, rather than being passive recipients and beneficiaries of the welfare State.

We will support this bill going to the Social Services Committee, but we say to the House that the debate on this bill is just as much about economic philosophy and direction as it is about social development and direction. The simple fact of the matter is that every economic relationship is also a social relationship, and we cannot continue to have the silo mentality of divorcing one from the other. Tēnā tātou.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) Link to this

I rise on behalf of United Future for the first reading of the Social Security Amendment Bill. We are certainly prepared to support what appears to be a substantial amendment to the Society Security Act. The bill also appears to contain some very interesting new provisions.

United Future would like to signal some issues of concern, and we look forward to hearing from submitters on them. Firstly, we will be interested to hear what people think about the new clarification and definition of what constitutes full-time employment. Secondly, we will be interested to hear from people regarding the decision to no longer allow people on the unemployment benefit to use community activities as employment interventions. I understand from briefing papers that there is evidence suggesting that such activities have demonstrated negative employment outcomes. If that is true, then so be it. But when people have been out of work for a considerable period of time, it is often very difficult for them to demonstrate a work ethic to prospective employers. I have personally seen folk who can turn up every morning as a volunteer to a community project finally get work due to a reference from project leaders who clarify their keenness to work and their reliability, even when they are not being paid. So I look forward to hearing evidence and being convinced that this is the right move.

I am interested to hear about how this amendment bill will work for self-employed people who struggle to take an income off a new and struggling business. I understand there are some provisions around that. I also note that there are provisions to better support those caring for other people’s children—and members will know that United Future has been the proverbial dripping tap in the Minister’s ear in advocating for kinship caregivers, particularly grandparents raising grandchildren. We are yet to have clarified by the ministry whether the provisions I just mentioned apply to this type of caregiver. We certainly hope that they do and that there is some improvement for people who take on those responsibilities.

The other area of interest for us relates to changes to the independent youth benefit. United Future has always been concerned about the early encouragement for young people to become beneficiaries. If a minor needs to be cared for outside of the home, then payment should be made to the carer, not to the young person. However, we accept the concerns that this amendment bill is trying to address regarding young people who are discharged from the care of Child, Youth and Family, often before they finish high school, and young people who at the age of 16 or 17 would like to stay with their caregivers, who would be keen to keep them but want some support to help them do that. That is a really important issue that needs further discussion, and I will be interested to hear submissions.

Reducing the stand-down provisions raises some questions about the practical realities of temporary assistance, as currently experienced by Work and Income staff, measured against concerns about encouraging people to recklessly move out of work, without serious consequence. Again, we look forward to hearing discussion on that matter.

We are pleased to see new provisions to backdate benefits where recipients have been given erroneous advice by the department. I personally have come across a number of people who were given the wrong advice, and there were some weeks when they would have been entitled to a benefit that they did not receive. So considering the bills and debts they often accrue during that time, it is very fair that there is some retrospective payment to cover those errors made by the department.

I look forward to hearing from officials about why parents who lose custody of a dependent child will still receive another 8 weeks of benefit. There may be some good reasons for that, but they are not clear to me yet. I am sure we will get explanations around that. United Future believes that the benefit system should be work-focused where that is appropriate, so we are very happy to support the first reading of the bill.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister for Economic Development) Link to this

I move, That the Social Security Amendment Bill be referred to the Social Services Committee referred to Social Services Committee