Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. So I rise to speak in support of the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill in this its first reading and I listened carefully to the Hon doctor Carmel Sepuloni in her introduction of the bill and also to the Hon Louise Upston in her response because it's important to listen carefully to people who have got significant experience and knowledge in this area.As a number of people have said the bill changes the way child support is paid to sole parent beneficiaries and it's being considered today under urgency. We've heard much about the 87 years that this has been in place and of course the bill removes that different treatment for most sole parent beneficiaries.The current law as we've talked about creates this inequity and inconsistency between how beneficiaries receiving a sole parent rate may benefit and other beneficiaries are treated in the welfare system. So the key change is the child support income is treated as income. I noted the Minister said that she felt this would increase the motivation for liable parents to pay and I would say I hope this does occur and from the reasonable regularity that I have constituents coming through with complaints in my electorate office about this I'm hopeful that that may well indeed occur.I also listened to the Minister saying it is such a complex matter and the Hon Louise Upston dealt with those complexities a little further. Obviously there is significant technical support needed to enable this to happen and a phased change does seem appropriate. I also listened to what has been described as a rousing speech by Emily Henderson and it was indeed a rousing speech about how pleased she was to be able to spend taxpayers' money. I think that it's important for us to just remind ourselves when some of the speakers on the other side get terribly excited about what they are doing and what Labour is doing—it's actually taxpayers that are doing this. So it is taxpayers' money that is going on this. So let's not get too excited about what we are doing individually.The other point that I do note is that this is only part of the solution. So yes 41500 sole parent families will receive additional support—a median gain of $24 a week—and following the abatement of income test and financial assistance that medium gain will be $20 a week. That's certainly not to be sniffed at; it is an important amount of money and it will be a small step towards reducing child poverty. But we all know the big step in reducing child poverty is to support parents—sole parents—into employment. That is the main way in which we are going to decrease child poverty. So let's not think that we've put the final piece in the puzzle by ensuring that $20 to $24 extra is going to those sole parents a week.It cannot go past without being noted that the number of individuals receiving the sole parent support has increased under the watch of this Government by 21 percent—21 percent; that's an additional 13000 people receiving sole parent support. So that should be of major concern because that is not lifting children out of poverty. So we have been dealing with an uneven playing field between different beneficiaries and we need to be improving the efficiency of administering social security. We all want to see fewer children in poverty. I hope there is no one in this House that does not want to see fewer children in poverty and so this is a sensible change a small change but we also want to see a focus by the Government to reduce the number of children in benefit-dependent homes. That is where a real difference will be made. We want to ensure that children are getting out of that welfare trap and that is where we would like to see greater emphasis by this Government.This Government has had a lot of rhetoric about how they care but often their actions have fallen well short of that rhetoric. So let's not get too rousing in speeches about what good this has done when there is far far more work that needs to be done. Thank you Mr Speaker.