During Budget urgency, I spent long nights in Parliament helping stretch debate on these changes because they deserved far more scrutiny than the government was willing to allow.
Passed under urgency and with minimal public input, the government’s Social Security (Modernisation) Amendment Bill dramatically expands the use of automated decision-making in our welfare system.
They talk about efficiency and consistency.
But this legislation enables broader use of automated systems in decisions that affect people’s livelihoods and survival.
For nearly 90 years, New Zealand’s welfare system has recognised that human circumstances require human judgement.
A machine cannot understand family violence, mental illness, insecure housing, disability, caregiving responsibilities or sudden financial crisis.
A machine can process data.
It cannot exercise compassion.
To understand why this matters, we need to remember where our social security system began.
In 1938, under former prime minister Michael Joseph Savage, New Zealand passed the Social Security Act.
Its founding idea was simple but profound: any New Zealander, through no fault of their own, could fall on hard times.
The role of the state was to ensure they would not be abandoned.
The system existed first and foremost to provide assistance, while ensuring support went to those entitled to receive it.
Help came before suspicion.
My own family’s story reflects that vision.
In 1942, after my grandmother’s home burned down, my father moved into one of New Zealand’s first state houses.
Instead of growing up destitute, he had a secure roof over his head.
He studied hard, won a university scholarship and became a doctor.
The social safety net helped lift our family out of poverty and changed the course of our lives.
This government’s approach turns that philosophy on its head.
The timing could not be worse.
New Zealand is experiencing severe housing insecurity, rising homelessness and stubbornly high youth unemployment.
Thousands of families are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.
Yet instead of investing in people, the government is investing in systems that place greater distance between vulnerable New Zealanders and the support they need.
Disabled people will be particularly affected.
Many already face the exhausting burden of repeatedly proving lifelong conditions to access support.
Rather than reducing bureaucracy, the government is creating new hurdles and more scrutiny.
Critics have warned that expanding automated decision-making risks repeating mistakes seen overseas, including Australia’s Robodebt disaster.
Michael Joseph Savage understood that social security was not a privilege.
It was a covenant between New Zealanders.
When people fall, we help them up.
This legislation signals a very different philosophy: trust the algorithm first, and the person second.
That is not modernisation.
It is a betrayal of the values on which our social security system was built.
