KEY POINTS:
Conservative groups are warning the National Party to be "flexible" about making sole parents go back to work, allowing for sick children and school holidays.
Family First director Bob McCoskrie, an invited guest at the policy launch, said making parents work part-time made sense, but only if implemented with discretion.
"We'd want to make sure that the work requirements are within school hours and not within the school holidays. Otherwise we are going to have a lot of unsupervised kids."
Another guest, Mercy Mission founder Barbara Stone, said she agreed with the work requirement "as long as it's in school time and there is someone at home for the children for the rest of the time". She said it was hard to get jobs for sole parents, who often had low self-esteem.
Housing Lobby spokeswoman Sue Henry said she was upset that John Key had "regurgitated" the work requirement policy that National implemented in the 1990s. "Quite frankly, latch-key kids and youth gangs and transience are a direct byproduct of taking the stick to beneficiary families [in the 1990s]," she said.
But Parenting Council chairwoman Lesley Max said the requirement for sole parents to work 15 hours a week was "consistent with the norm that exists across society as a whole".
