Ardern Jacinda: Child Support Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Child Support Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9160. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): First of all before I begin I just want to put on record that I think it was unfair and perhaps misleading of the chair of the Social Services Committee Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga to make those remarks knowing full well that at the time this bill the Child Support Amendment Bill was discussed at the select committee Labour had a different revenue spokesperson from whom it has now and that the spokesperson subbed in and contributed significantly to every debate and discussion on this bill. Now we have a different spokesperson. I could talk at great length about what happens in reshuffles in Government ranks which Mr Lotu-Iiga might not want me to reflect on because not everyone is served well in such reshuffles but I will not. But I think it is unfair of the chair to try to claim that the member does not have the right to speak on a bill when it is within their remit regardless of when they took it on.I have to also point out that I was a member of the select committee that considered this bill yet I would struggle to suggest to the House the origin of how we came to some parts of this formula because even now I continue to question whether it is the right thing to do. You would not have heard that member the chair stand up and give the origin. You did not even hear him explain the formula. In fact I am yet to hear any National Party member explain the child support formula in this House. The reason for that and I will come back to this is that it is extremely complicated.Some of the members in this House did traverse the intricacies of the formula during the earlier parts of this debate. I was one of them so I will not go through that again butI will highlight that if it is that complicated it has the potential to give rise to issues further down the track. Actually just today I flagged on social media that this bill was going to be debated and someone said to me: “Can you explain to me how the new formula will work?”. I pointed her to the first reading speeches; I am not sure that that was the right thing necessarily to do. But it does demonstrate something quite key.What I can say is not included in this bill is the issue despite Mr Lotu-Iiga talking about the fact that this was not a bill that was meant to be about preserving child welfare that it is not unusual in international jurisdictions to embed basic principles around the paramountcy principle the importance of child welfare into any law that has some kind of jurisdiction over Family Court matters—and things like child support payments you could legitimately put under that umbrella. So it is not fair to paint this notion as fanciful. It is being used in other jurisdictions.All that we asked just to be clear was that we put a specific provision in the bill that referred to the well-being of the child. In fact even the Children’s Commissioner stated quite clearly giving a suggestion that we add a new section 4(a) “to affirm the right of children to be maintained by their parents and the promotion of their on-going well-being and healthy development following parental separation” and a new section 4(l) “to require that in all decisions and actions made under the Act the welfare and best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration”. That is the notion of the paramountcy principle. If some member on that side of the House would like to explain to me how that is going to completely undermine what a child support bill is intended to do I would really like to hear that. For what purpose does it exist if it is not to ensure that the ongoing financial support and obligations and responsibilities are met by non-custodial parents? If that is not about the child what is that about? The fact is that when we raised this in the select committee we had advice given to us by those involved in the drafting that it could potentially undermine what the bill was trying to do and that suggested to me that perhaps we had started from the wrong starting point. So that is a point that I think it is only fair that we make.I want to traverse some of the other significant issues that were raised during the process of formulating the bill and its being in front of the select committee. One was ensuring payments are made. I would wager that everyone in this House wants to make sure that we encourage and assert that child support payments must be made by non-custodial parents or those who have shared custody if you will. It is an obligation that I do not think anyone here would dispute. If we can use the system to encourage and ensure that we remove the barriers to that obligation being met then that is a good thing. That means that we had to consider whether or not reducing the backlog of penalty payments was the right thing to do. On this side of the House we were firmly of the view that it was. Actually these penalty payments were not going to the child; they were penalty payments incurred to the Crown. If they stood in the way of a child receiving future payments then we should think about whether or not there were ways to strike the balance between fairness and ensuring an ongoing uptake of someone’s responsibilities. Judith Collins it is fair to note has not always been of that view. In fact she has been quite strident in her view that we should not have any kind of write-off of back payments. It is good to see that the Government though has taken a more open mind on this over time.But I am upset that what was not considered or even discussed and a view was not even put forward by Government members was just some response to what the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty has proposed and that is around child support pass-on. We do not know what side of that argument the Government would have come down on and I am not asserting here that it should have taken one position or the other. But I would have thought that it could be discussed at the time we werediscussing child support and the general principle that—and many people will not be aware of this—where a parent who might have primary care responsibilities for a child is in receipt of Government support for instance being on the DPB they will not receive any form of child support even if the non-custodial parent is paying that child support. It will be recouped by the Crown. The notion of pass-on is simply the idea that no longer do you have the Government standing in the middle taking in those payments but instead those payments go directly to the child.The Government may have a particular view on that but we simply do not know and yet when the Children’s Commissioner is standing out there and saying that there is merit to this and there is merit to this because it encourages payment—it encourages parents as instead of just saying “I’m not going to bother paying because it’s just going to the Crown.” they know that the only person who will miss out is the child—I would have liked to hear the Government’s view on that no matter what it was. I think that would have been the time for the Government to express its view particularly given the international evidence that exists.When it comes to penalty payments I am also disappointed that there was very little discussion and movement around the idea of to what degree we are pursuing payments when they are not made. In other jurisdictions you will often see that a Government will come in and make a payment itself and will then pursue the person in question who is meant to have made the payment so that no one misses out from the fact that the person has not shown responsibility. That is what happens in other countries not in our own. But I have cases coming across my desk where for instance a non-custodial parent is living in Australia and has not been paying their child support the Inland Revenue Department has not been able to track them and ensure they do we find out that they are coming into New Zealand and the Inland Revenue Department sits on its hands and does nothing. Why are we not pursuing that non-paying parent in the same way we would an unpaid fine at the border? Surely not paying for the upkeep and the care of your own child should be pursued with as much rigour as for instance a fine would be by the Crown.There are many other issues that I could have traversed. I hope my colleagues will pick up the complexity issue which is borne out by the fact that there will be a 15 percent increase in the need for staff time spent on this issue. There will be a $91 million operating cost and a contingency of $28 million and there is a fear that the Inland Revenue Department system might actually fall over under the weight of these changes and that is something for everyone in this House to be concerned about. This is not about just child support; this is about our ability to administer our tax system in New Zealand.But the one thing I want to finish on is the impact on women. The thresholds through this formula change where the primary caregiver has the amount they receive discounted starts as soon as the non-custodial parent picks up 28 percent of the care. That does not mean that that parent picks up 28 percent of the cost that does not mean that they have 28 percent of their life impacted in terms of their ability to take on full-time employment and yet that is the point at which their child support starts to decrease. This will impact the most on women. We felt like their voice was not heard nearly strongly enough and I feel disappointed and let down by the amount we heard from the Minister of Women’s Affairs on this issue. Because of the children and because of the unfair impact we believe on women Labour does not support this bill.