Social Security (Child Benefit) Amendment Bill - First Reading
Mr Speaker, I move that the Social Security (Child Benefit) Amendment Bill 2003 is now read a first time.
Mr Speaker,
At the appropriate time I would have liked to move that the Social Services Select Committee consider this Bill. However, I understand that Dr Cullen and his Labour Government have decided to place a fiscal veto on it which means the Bill's first reading will also be its last.
I know that other political parties in the House tonight, and a large number of church and community organisations and trade unions, will be as disappointed as I am that Labour will not even consider allowing this Bill to go to Select Committee for consideration.
The intention of my Bill is simply to restore the Family Benefit which we lost as recently as 1991. That is hardly a radical demand, and one which many, many people support as one step towards improving the situation in which our country finds itself at present. Despite economic growth and comparatively low unemployment, nearly a third of our children still live in poverty, Everyone here has now been well and truly alerted to the situation of families like the one quoted in the 'Sunday Star Times' last weekend who still struggle to survive on what appear to be reasonably high incomes.
Even if Labour had decided to vote against this Bill in the long run, they could have at least had the decency to allow it to go to Select Committee for consideration, in the context of reforms I believe Dr Cullen and Steve Maharey are planning to make in the Budget. Surely the idea of restoring the equivalent of the former Family Benefit at the very low level of $15 a week for the first child and $10 a week for subsequent children is not so out of hand that the public submission and Select Committee consideration process could have been permitted to occur.
In putting forward the introduction of a Universal Child Benefit as a Private Member's Bill the Green Party is restating one of it's major policy demands - that Aotearoa New Zealand should start putting children first.
For far too long we've had an economy and a culture that act in a way that, both in theory and in practice mean that children don't count. We would very much like to turn that around, and I'm sure there are many other MPs in the House who feel the same way - but it's what we do about it that matters, not the sentimental verbiage which tends to be churned out on anything to do with children and families.
The Green Party sees the Universal Child Benefit as one small step that we could take as a country towards eliminating child poverty. Of its own it will not do it, of course; and we do not want to negate other measures - like reforming family assistance and family support, improving abatement regimes, and/or increasing subsidies for childcare. However, apart from anything else, we believe it is high time that children were accorded the same economic respect we accord our older generation.
If we can provide a universal benefit in the form of national superannuation to everyone aged 65 and over at hundreds of dollars per week I fail completely to understand why we cannot afford to provide a universal benefit to all children under 18 at a level of $15 and $10 a week. We have costed the Universal Child Benefit proposed in this Bill at roughly $650 million a year, but when this is put up against the overall cost of national superannuation, the Cullen superannuation fund and within the context of current budget surpluses, this pales into significance. We believe it would be a small price to pay to get serious about how we treat children and parents.
Some people say, as this Government may, that in a modern society like ours it is archaic to think we can afford such a measure of social equity. However, I point out that even in the UK a universal family benefit has been retained to this very day at the much higher rate of around $47 a week for the first child, even after all the years of Thatcherism and a right-wing Labour Government.
Why does New Zealand continue to lag so far behind in the way we view the coming generation, who, after all, will be the ones who work to pay the taxes that will help pay the superannuation for people like many of us in this House tonight when we reach 65?
All children deserve the best possible start in life. Even the very low amounts I am proposing in this Bill would make a huge difference in terms of what parents in low income families can offer their children. For example, the primary caregiver of a two child family would get an extra $25 a week in the hand, and the poorer the family the more proportionally they would be assisted. So $25 a week is a lot of money to a family whose budget provides, for example, nothing for clothes, nothing for presents or school fees, and nowhere near enough for a good diet. We have to start somewhere in redressing the balance between the universality we offer the over 65s through national superannuation, and the very inequitable and targeted assistance we offer to families with children.
We should also be getting beyond this ridiculous differentiation between families where the parent or parents are in work and those in which the parent or parents are out of work. One of the biggest injustices implicit in our current welfare and tax regime is that both National and Labour seem to support giving more to working families, totally ignoring the gross innate inequity of making children suffer because of their parents' unemployment, sickness, or long-term disability.
Universal provision of benefits like the one proposed here, is one simple way to get beyond the constant dilemmas and contradictions posed by the infinite gradations and degradations of targeting.
Targeted systems create poverty traps, where, for some, increases to parents' incomes are less than the subsidies and benefits lost. In some families, even comparatively well off ones, the small amount of money paid through a Universal Child Benefit could well be the only discretionary income that primary caregivers have to spend on themselves and their children.
I am sure some people will remember, like me, the way in which, in the good old days of the family benefit, for some mothers, even in quite high income families, this was the only money they had control of to spend as they wished on their children. Some may also remember the way in which so many people in my generation and earlier were only able to afford to buy their first home because they could capitalise the family benefit for a deposit. Such a scheme would be a wonderful boom as we live through yet another ongoing housing crisis, where the lack of affordability and access to deposits prevents many families from even dreaming of owning their own home.
When this Bill was drawn from the ballot last year I immediately wrote to many groups and people in the community asking for their support. The response was very positive especially from groups whose focus lies with children, women, parents and low-income families. I shall quote from a few of the many organisations that wrote back.
The National Council of Women sees this Bill as, 'an ideal and appropriate vehicle for …replacing the Child Tax Credit with a universal benefit for children indexed to the Consumer Price Index' - going rather further than I have — and urges Labour to vote in favour of the Bill.
The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services 'supports the Bill being taken to Select Committee stage, so that there can be meaningful discussion about how to improve family support measures' and notes that if Family Support had been indexed to inflation it would now be worth $74 a week for one child instead of $47, and says the complete inadequacy of the system must be addressed.
The Public Health Association says it is crucial that this Bill makes it through the Select Committee process as part of the development of real discussion and action on a comprehensive strategy to end child poverty.
These are just a few examples of the comments that have come in, and I am aware that many more similar ones have been sent to Labour members and Ministers.
I am looking forward with interest to see how the Government votes tonight, and I continue to hope that Labour members will see their way clear, along with at least one or two other parties in this House, to supporting this Bill through to Select Committee. I am also looking forward with interest to what this month's Budget will bring to children and families. I know that Dr Cullen and the Hon Steve Maharey are promising handsome handouts to families. I hope they are right. I also hope that what they are bringing in will help alleviate poverty and deprivation across all families, not just those lucky, educated, skilled and/or healthy enough to be in paid employment.