Ngaro Alfred; Williams PotoHon ALFRED NGARO (National): Madam Chair thank you. I stand to rise and as National has indicated in its first and second reading we will be supporting throughout the committee stage this bill.National has always supported the lifting of children out of poverty. It's fair to say that in its own nine years previously of Government it's shown that in the last five years it managed to reduce the number of children that were in material hardship by 85000. In the previous six years it also managed to reduce the number of children who were in benefit-dependent families by 80000. That goes to prove that there were a number of policies and directions under the previous Government and hence the reason why we support this bill and its direction as well. I know that the Prime Minister the Minister has put in two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs). We want to indicate early on with those—I know that's not part of this part but we're just indicating too in support of this.Part 1 clearly indicates in clause 3 where in paragraph (b) it talks about to facilitate political accountability" and "published targets". Previously under the National Government we had Better Public Services (BPS) and I suppose that was part of our contribution to see how we could hold a level of accountability. So we agree with this clause. We think that clause is important. Obviously we're taking slightly different tacks as to how we do that but we're all trying to get there in the same direction and the same way. We felt that BPS targets were a way of holding those Government departments to account. We're doing this differently. I think the reports that would come back in the Budget are important to that as well and that's going to be an indication around that.I suppose the only part that I would start to comment on—when we are holding levels of accountability—is whether we can get to the drivers of deprivation. As the Minister has already alluded to although the measures aren't particularly in this part of the bill in this Part 1 what will be important while we have the measures of both income in and income out and also too around material hardship—the biggest challenge I believe to all of this will be around accountability of the drivers towards deprivation and we think that will continue to be a challenge even for this Government into the future as well. And so we believe that that's really important. We again support the fact—and thank the Minister for including two of our SOPs which were around child poverty - related indicators. We think that they are really important to have them. It is that level of accountability that we've indicated there. Obviously we would have gone a little bit further but that's part of negotiating our way forward and we'll see. What I take heart in is that in this there is the opportunity at the discretion of the Minister so I'm hopeful that actually if there's a requirement that we actually extend the level of indicators that allow us to be able to ensure that we meet the target then there'll be flexibility to be able to do that as well. And I think actually in this part of the bill it indicates that there's an opportunity to be able to do that. Also too in the overview of this it goes and alludes to the aspect of SOP 157 which is in regard to the bill being in two parts and especially in relation to the fact that one is on child poverty reduction and the other is on the Children's Amendment Bill as well. We support that because actually as it says in clause 4 of this Part 1 of the bill—it's the overview of this part as well. My comments will be brief at this stage because I will have some other comments I'd like to make in Part 2 to this bill so I'm going to keep them brief now so that it gives me an opportunity to speak a little bit further on. But I support this Part 1 of the bill. Thank you.CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I call Marama Davidson. I'm sorry. I apologise to the member. I was a little confused earlier. Thank you."