Corrections (Social Assistance) Amendment Bill

(Delivered by Metiria Turei MP in Sue Bradford's absence on Select Committee duty)

Madam Speaker,

The Green Party will be voting tonight against all three of the bills that have been split out from the original Social Assistance (Debt Prevention and Minimisation) Amendment Bill.

We originally offered our support to this bill on the basis that one of its key goals was to prevent beneficiaries who are in prison from having their benefits overpaid. In itself this has merit, but there are some surrounding contextual issues who have caused us to change our position since the original bill had its first reading in August last year.

The bill is geared to enabling the Ministry of Social Development, the Department of Corrections, the Customs Service and the Accident Compensation Corporation to share more information between them to stop people getting benefits, ACC, or student loads while they're in prison. This is to be done by data matching personal details held by MSD against those held by these other departments.

A secondary purpose of the bill is to provide MSD with information held by Customs and ACC so that Work and Income can more easily and readily locate debtors who are no longer in the country or who are on ACC.

What the Green Party finds particularly offensive about this bill is that its whole thrust is actually about the machinery of the state grinding down and into the lives of some of our most vulnerable people in more and more detail, in a way that people who have never been on a benefit, or even worse, in prison, would find hard to imagine.

In itself, improving the efficiency of the administration of the welfare system is fine. However, the Green Party would find this bill a whole lot more palatable if it was accompanied by legislation and other policy measures that improved the welfare system at the same time. For example we would find it heaps easier to support these changes if the Government were to, for example, reintroduce a third tier discretionary allowance like the old Special Benefit, so that people on very low incomes who just can't make ends meet have a final safety net. With the introduction of Temporary Additional Support (TAS) several years ago this safety net has been lost.

The Government should be doing more to ensure that people who apply for benefits get their full entitlements from the time they are eligible for them, and that front line staff at all offices are trained to understand that it is not their own money they're giving away, but actually income support to which citizens are legally entitled. People like sole parents of young children and invalids beneficiaries should not be subject to constant harassment by the state to get off the benefit by any means possible.

And above all, benefits should be restored to their pre-1991 levels. Today benefit rates went up just slightly in line with CPI increases, but nowhere near enough to match true rises in the real cost of living, or to recover what was lost in 1991. On top of this, as the Wellington Peoples Centre pointed out this afternoon, the Accommodation Supplement which so many beneficiaries rely on to help with their housing costs will drop for almost everyone who gets it as a result of the benefit rate increases.

And for those who get income related rents there will be rent increase because of increased income, and they are not eligible for the Accommodation Supplement at all. The Peoples Centre reckons the real increase today was around 1.5-2 % for many beneficiaries, a far cry from what's really needed at time when the costs of transport, housing, heating and food are going through the roof.

Many beneficiaries are sinking further and further into debt just to survive. Beneficiaries — prisoners and their families — continue to be disproportionately Maori.

Why all this matters in relation to this one small collection of bills, is that the Government's legislative efforts are symbolic of their priorities. If bills such as that being put forward tonight were linked to any or all of these other measures — or some of the many other positive reforms that could and should be made to our welfare system — the Green Party would have a very different attitude.

But what we see is a Government focused on making sure that the last dollar is extracted from the maximum number of beneficiaries, ACC recipients and students, whole not extending any corollary generosity or respect from the state in the opposite direction.

This is all at the macro level. At the micro, we still have other concerns about the impact this legislation will have on those most affected, prisoners and their families.

When we discussed this at Select Committee one of my — and other members' — main concerns was around the fact that it is often not just a prisoner who would be affected by the immediate loss of their benefit, but also their partner and children as well. While we received assurances from officials that families would receive plenty of notice of any benefit suspension or cut off, I am not totally reassured on this point, being all too aware that the benefit system in practice is often quite different than the benefit system in theory.

There are often mistakes make by either or both Work and Income and beneficiaries: - sometimes benefits are cut when they shouldn't be; sometimes there are time delays in getting benefits back on. At the moment, the fact that there is a 9 day period before a benefit is suspended as currently permitted under section 103 of the Privacy Act means there is some protection for affected individuals and their families.

This buffer will no longer exist once these bills go through. On balance, the ill that this bill seeks to correct — the issue of prisoner overpayments — is potentially less damaging than the risk of prisoners' dependents finding themselves suddenly without any income — or of innocent people having their benefit cut through errors in data matching.

For all these reasons the Green Party has withdrawn its support for these bills, and I look forward to the day when we can stand here in this House and vote for some progressive and forward thinking welfare legislation rather than yet another bill whose primary purpose is to further refine the level of state interference and harassment in beneficiaries' lives.