Logie Jan: Child Support Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Logie Jan: Child Support Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 08 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2036. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JAN LOGIE (Green) 
: 
 As stated by my colleague Holly Walker the Green Party will not be supporting the Child Support Amendment Bill. I will now just talk in a little bit more detail about some of our concerns which relate for me anyway primarily to the context that child support operates within. Child support is undoubtedly an important issue for women and children in New Zealand. The most recent estimates are that around one in two mothers have spent some time as a sole parent by the time they reach 50 and that a third of children have lived with a sole mother for some time by the time they are 17.  
According to the Families Commission research we know that for many receiving parents the amount they receive is considered to be too little to meet the needs of their child. In 2009 90 percent of sole parent families had incomes below the median household income for all households with or without children. This bill sadly although closing some loopholes which will hopefully increase payments to some primary caregivers and their children also opens others that will actually further reduce incomes to a significant number and this for us is completely unacceptable. If child support payments reflected the high cost of child rearing were paid regularly and frequently and were in a context of acknowledging power dynamics in relationships they could help to reduce child poverty. Sadly this bill does not do that.  
I will again just mention the decrease as noted by my colleague Holly for a father who currently might pay $7400 per annum who under this regime would be required to pay only $2600 per annum—a massive reduction of 64 percent in child support liability. That is a reduction in child support going to that child. Reducing the threshold for time spent parenting also does not take into account that the primary financial burden for health care costs education uniform costs sports activities and extracurricular activities usually remains with the primary caregiver. A parent having the child for the weekend usually will not be responsible for those costs.  
I also have to address in this speech that New Zealand fathers—and this is backed up by evidence—have a long history of not paying child support paying too little and paying erratically. This bill seems to support in part at least the view that child support should be less onerous because liable parents resent paying it. This rationale appears to have neglected the unavoidable fact that child support is for the support of the child and that reducing payments will increase child poverty. The culture of avoiding paying child support needs to be challenged directly.  
Again—and I am going to be a broken record in this House—this bill also ignores the context of domestic violence in this country. A women’s safety survey conducted in 1996 found that 70 percent of separated women had experienced some form of domestic violence. We know that our courts and custody are used as a tool of abuse. We have New Zealand research that shows that although custody applications based on assertions of parental rights appear to be accepted at face value by our courts it is too well documented that Family Courts often treat applications concerned with violence abuse and coercive control with a degree of scepticism that is unwarranted leaving children and their mothers in highly dangerous situations. Auckland University research has shown that women sometimes feel fearful and under pressure to agree to care arrangements that they do not believe are in their children’s best interests.  
This bill as it stands increases the opportunity for abusive fathers to use the law against their ex-partner. I really would just say to Labour and National that if we are relying on the select committee process we are not recognising the difficulty of speaking to that experience of abuse. It is much easier for the father to talk about his outrage than it is for a woman who has been a victim of violence. We would suggest at least that the review of the Family Court be responded to before this bill goes further.