Chhour KarenKAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to stand on behalf of ACT to speak to the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. We too will be supporting this bill but with reservations as well on some of the provisions within this bill. Child poverty reduction is a really important issue and I don't think any party within this House wants to see any child living in deprivation and poverty. So anything that we can do to help with that we will be supporting. The issues we have though are very similar to those of previous speakers where this process of such a complicated bill—it was very complex. It was done in such a shortened period of time with a shortened report-back date which meant that many people who may have submitted and who may have given some advice on how we could have made this bill better wouldn't have had the time to come in front of us and give their points of view. A good example of this is that we had around 13 submitters and we had quite a few changes due to their submissions and changes that were proposed by these submitters during the select committee process and that was from just 13 submitters. Imagine if we'd gone through the whole proper process and had more come before us? They may have found more issues within this bill so we won't be coming back again to fix the problems that may be within this bill. Many of them were quite technical changes that I'm really happy that we picked up on because they've made a bit of a difference including an income extension for child support relating to when the assistance is backdated. I mean imagine if we'd missed that and that had come across and somebody was backdated a whole lot of child support and then they would have ended up having that classed as income which would have meant that they may have lost their whole benefit payment that month. So these were issues that came up within the select committee process from submitters that may not have been picked up without their input. Having that shortened process meant that we had less people who have the skills and who have the experience in this area to give us advice on where we may have been able to improve this bill. We also had changes around clarifying the derivation of income provisions for recipients of the unsupported child's benefit because the unsupported child's benefit wasn't actually included within this bill but some of the provisions would have affected the unsupported child's benefit. So we had to clarify that they weren't included in that and these were the things that were picked up in the select committee process. So that's why I think it's really important that we stop making these processes shortened because we're not getting the advice and the skills from the people within the industries to create good law. Rushed law is bad law. We end up coming back to this House to fix things that could have been fixed in the first place and it tends to affect the most vulnerable which is the children that we're trying to help within this bill. So the first thing I'd like to talk about really is the unsupported child's benefit. This is another piece of legislation that tends to separate children out depending on what household they live in. So on one side you've got unsupported children who may be living with family or grandparents that are taking care of them that won't be able to claim this child support. What's the difference between a sole parent claiming child support to put towards a child in their care for the things they need and a grandparent or a sister or a cousin that is taking care of a family member's child that needs that child support payment as well? You've got two classes of children there and to say that we've got work going on with Oranga Tamariki that will deal with that—when will that work come across the desk? When are we going to deal with that and how much longer do the unsupported children have to be the second-class citizens to other children? We've seen this in a few bills where children aren't seen as equal but they're separated into whether they're Oranga Tamariki kids an unsupported child or living with a sole parent. We've got different rights for children and I just don't see that as being OK. So I really think that the unsupported child's benefit should have been included within this bill and that's where it also becomes an issue of shortening the select committee process. We had submitters that came in to our select committee to talk about how great it was that unsupported children would be getting this. They hadn't had time to go through the actual bill properly to understand that they were excluded so some submitters didn't even understand the bill that they were submitting on because that process was shortened and they didn't have time to actually read through the bill and make sure that they understood it very well themselves. That just proves that we need to be very careful with how we're dealing with these bills and we need to be making sure that we're giving them the time that they deserve to be scrutinised. The other issue that ACT has with this bill is similar to what the previous speaker the Hon Louise Upston said about enabling liable parents who have the cost as a temporary additional support to 3 help pay their assessed child support. Taxpayers should not be subsidising this. It is the responsibility of a parent to pay their child support. If you have a child you know it is your obligation to be supporting your child and it's up to you to make sure that you are doing that and that you can. I just feel that allowing it to be a cost for temporary additional support is something that we're a little bit concerned about. So we will support this because I do feel that we have had a lot of people over the years speaking about having resented paying their child support and knowing that it wasn't going directly to their children. I hope this does give parents a bit more faith in the system knowing that the money will go directly to the children or to the parent that they're paying for the children and we'll see if it improves on the amount of parents that actually are going to pay this. It may also encourage people to step up and actually name the father of their baby so that they can get child support from the parent that should be supporting the child that they've brought into this world. So we do support this bill but we do have some reservations and we hope to speak to those more in the committee of the whole House. Thank you Madam Speaker.