Prasad Rajen: Child Support Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Prasad Rajen: Child Support Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 26 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8181. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I am also pleased to speak on the second reading of this important bill or rather a bill that could have been much more important in its effects than what it is going to be. The title of the bill is the Child Support Amendment Bill and the question has to be asked: does it actually support children in the way that modern society expects our children to be supported? The answer has to be no. I think that the last speaker Mike Sabin actually did confirm that the purpose of this bill was not child support. What the last speaker was saying was that it is really just a technical bill and that really it is about the technical transfer of moneys. Maybe that is the problem with how the Government members have seen this bill. This side of the House—ourselves together with the Greens—will not support this bill because we do not think the bill achieves the objectives it started off trying to achieve. 
Those objectives are well worth reading. The bill was “To improve the fairness of the child support scheme” and to reflect the social changes that are taking place in our society. On this side of the House we do not think that it actually does improve the fairness of the scheme when you look at it from the point of view of children. The second objective was “To promote the welfare of children in particular by recognising that children are disadvantaged when child support is not paid”. The point I am making here is that children will be more disadvantaged by this particular bill. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: That’s not true. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: The chair of the Social Services Committee does not accept that but if the member wants to listen to the arguments then I am sure the member will get there in terms of what the purpose of the bill is and what it does not achieve. 
Child support through the Inland Revenue Department is usually an indication that the family has not been able to work it out that couples have not been able to work out that separating parents have not managed to arrive at any amicable arrangement. If they did Melissa Lee is right they would not have been part of this system. So it is right from the beginning that it is fraught with difficulties. The scheme was designed in 1991 so it is an old scheme. Although it has had amendments since then it is still now trying to deliver to a very different set of circumstances amongst our families. The idea of the review and the promise of the review was something we supported and it has been going on for some time. Our family form today is very different from what it was in 1971 and the family arrangements today are very very different. We now have more blended families. We now have more reconstituted families. We now have families living in all kinds of different arrangements and therefore those arrangements now require different systems for income and for support of children. Clearly then the arrangements the bill currently reflects are needing significant reform and it is not surprising that it has taken some time to get there. 
But the bill was also a major opportunity for the Government to address longstanding issues about children. Members from the Government side who have spoken about this have separated that out. Somehow it is simply a technical transfer of funds from one parent to the other in a formulaic way. Well it is never that simple and it is always more than that. It is no wonder that the arrangements around children around child support are some of the most difficult negotiations filled with the angst and what have you that most of us are familiar with. I say that the Government has not taken the opportunity to also look at the life experiences of many of these children and it could have done so with this particular bill. The provisions that this bill could have come up with are very similar to what exists in overseas jurisdictions. But there is this blank wall. There is a refusal to look at it in that particular way. 
There are 270000 children living in poverty in New Zealand and 133000 of those live in sole-parent families. Why is the Government so reluctant to address child poverty? By every indication over the past 4 years it is reluctant to do that. The Government is well aware of the impact of poverty on children and what it does. It essentially excludes them from society. It excludes those families and excludes those children. Although income maintenance is an important aspect of coming back into being included in society when it comes to our most vulnerable this Government is not taking those opportunities. Somehow it is just too difficult or ideologically it is opposed to it. It wants to keep the gap that exists between those who are well off and those who are strugglers. Here was an opportunity the Government did not take for itself. 
The submitters on the bill were very very thoughtful. One of the things they wondered about was that the effect of these changes will fall disproportionately on those who will be least able to withstand a reduction in income. The regulatory impact statement shows that there will be a reduction for quite a sizable number of families bringing up children. So there will be a reduction and it falls disproportionately. It arises because of the formula of using 28 percent as the threshold. If you are providing 2 nights’ care out of seven then you are entitled to a reduction. In fact the cost to the mum—assuming it is the mum—bringing up those children is no less. It does not go any less and yet they will have to manage their children on a reduced income. How does that work? How is it better? How does it not keep people in poverty if you like and in sub-optimal conditions as well? That is a major difficulty. 
There were many of our major institutions—the Families Commission the Children’s Commissioner—that suggested a pathway to addressing poverty through these particular provisions. It was the pass-on provisions. The pass-on provisions are simply that the income provided the money provided by one parent passes to the caring parent and that immediately in one stroke I say to members opposite would have addressed poverty for those 133000 people many of whom are in this particular group. That would have addressed that but somehow the Government was reluctant to address child poverty questions. It did not want to look at it. It simply saw as the last speaker said this as a technical exercise. But when does a Government take responsibility for the most vulnerable in our society? It spends billions of dollars looking at the impact of poverty and the impact on our children. It is happy to do that whether it is in health in housing or in education etc. It is happy to test them in schools simply because they are not achieving in those schools. Yet when it comes to spending what in comparative terms is modest income a modest amount of money to address that it did not take this opportunity. There is no response. The Government the members opposite did not address that so far. 
There are just so many things wrong with this particular bill that even though we support like the Greens do the object of this particular bill to create a fairer system that supports children this bill fails in its provisions. So for those reasons we will not be supporting this bill. Thank you.