Robertson Grant: Taxation (Annual Rates for 2015-16 Research and Development and Remedial Matters) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Taxation (Annual Rates for 2015-16 Research and Development and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 November 2015. Volume:709;Page:7663. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Thank you Mr Chair and I take on board your words that Part 1 is indeed an important part of an important bill. In my earlier contribution I set what I guess was the context of Part 1 which is the review of the child support system. I raised a number of questions. I have been in the Chamber as members of the Labour Party and other parties have raised questions and I do want to just note at the start of my contribution my disappointment at the lack of any substantive replies. These have been genuine questions about a very complex area of law.As I said in my first contribution everybody in this Chamber understands that there is a need to review child support arrangements that there are inequities and that there is unfairness. What we are asking of the Government is whether or not the proposals here in Part 1 actually deal with those inequities and that unfairness or do they in fact create potentially new inequities. It is very very disappointing that we will inevitably reach the end of Part 1 without a substantive contribution from a Government member on these questions which have been genuine questions.But I will forge on and ask two or three questions about elements contained mostly in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 77 on this bill. Actually the first one will not be on that—I will come to those in a moment. The first question is one that has not been raised so far and that is in clause 4(3) and (4) around the amendment of the definition of “social security benefit” in the Child Support Act. The goal here is to exclude full-time students who are receiving jobseeker support on the grounds of student hardship between academic years. The effect of that for sole parent students who are on a form of student hardship benefit during the summer break would be to be treated as being off benefit for child support purposes.I can understand the logic of that particular situation and I do know for people who intend to continue being full-time students who are parents that the period of time outside of when they are eligible for student allowances can cause them financial issues and difficulty because you go from a relatively generous student allowance as a parent—because it takes into account the number of children you have—to transitioning to other types of benefits. Most recently a payment has been available for those parents over the summer break where they had the intention of returning to study the next year which is called the student hardship support effectively.What I think these clauses are doing is allowing a person to be said to be earning sufficient income to be still meeting their responsibilities for child support payments but I am actually not sure about that in all honesty looking at the definition. It is a change that we did not dwell on in the select committee. It would be fair to say that most of the select committee’s time was spent on other parts of this bill so I would like some clarification that the effect of this change will not be to penalise those parents. That is the main point that we need to make sure we are being clear about here.Administratively I can see that it would make sense but we do need some assurance that parents who are in that situation who are potentially having slightly shifting levels of income are actually now going to be treated more fairly more sensitively as a result of this change. I just do not know reading it the way that it is written here. It is partly because it is a definitional question within that part of the bill rather than a substantive one but it was not something we covered but it does get a mention in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper.The other matter in that Supplementary Order Paper that I am looking for some further answers on—and other members have raised this point; I acknowledge that but we have not had an answer—is the question of the change from it being the commissioner defining whether or not there should be relief on the grounds of efficiency of use of resources versus the commissioner now having a wider set of criteria to judge whether there should be relief from payments; in particular the question of serious hardship. I have several questions on this front. “Serious hardship” sounds like a term beyond “hardship”. I do not think there is anyone in this Chamber who would want to see children in hardship as a result of a decision that we were to make in this Committee. So putting the word “serious” in front of the word “hardship” in these changes is pushing out where the commissioner could intervene and say “Actually no I want some relief from penalties for this family because the children of this family will suffer if that parent is in hardship.”