Moroney Sue: Child Support Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Child Support Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8289. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise—actually it is a pleasure to rise in opposition to Part 1 of the Child Support Amendment Bill because in standing in opposition to this the Labour Party is standing up for those families who are most vulnerable and those children who are most vulnerable. There is no coat of whitewash—like white papers on vulnerable children—on this side of the House but actually a really deep concern about a piece of legislation that is going to adversely affect children who live in poverty in this country. 
The mechanism for this is in Part 1 of this bill. It arises in two main ways in Part 1. The first is the absolute opposition from the Government to actually include the fundamental idea that the object of this bill should be to protect the interests of those children first and foremost—first and foremost. That was not just overlooked by the Government but it absolutely refused to do that. It was asked by a number of submitters to do that. 
Of course the Labour Party led the charge on this. It was back in 2011—no 2010 in fact—when Labour Party members said we were going to put children at the heart of all of our policy development. That has been backed up by the submissions on this bill by the Children’s Commissioner by the Auckland Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children by the Human Rights Commission by the Families Commission by the New Zealand Law Society—you name it they said it. They came in behind the Labour Party to say that children should be at the core of this. Children clearly are not because of the situation that David Parker just described where this part of the bill actually reinvents the idea of shared care. It lowers the threshold of what “shared care” actually means. It means that a parent who takes a child over the weekend now qualifies for a financial incentive to do so. My contention is that if we really had children at the heart of this we would want— 
Alfred Ngaro 
: What’s wrong with that? 
SUE MORONEY 
: Well the member Alfred Ngaro says: “What’s wrong with that?”. Here is what is wrong with that Mr Ngaro: I want to know that there is a commitment to shared care from that parent because they want to be a good parent not because they get a financial incentive to do so. That is what is so wrong with it. 
I know that the Government believes in the market model of parenting because that is exactly what it is exhibiting right now. It believes in the market model of parenting—that if you give them the financial incentive they will suddenly become good parents. Well on this side of the Chamber we do not believe in the market model of parenting. We believe in commitment to parenting—commitment because a parent cares. That is what is important and that is what should be pursued through legislation like this. 
It gets worse than that though because not only is the weekend parent the 2-day-a-week parent getting a financial incentive to be so but also the 5-day-a-week parent the primary carer the primary parent—I am not going to call them a carer; they are a parent—actually suffers a financial loss as a result. How is it in that vulnerable child’s best interest—or vulnerable children as there may be multiple children involved—that the person they rely mostly on for their care and their security is actually at a financial disadvantage? How is that in their interests? It cannot be. 
That is the main reason why the Labour Party is opposing this bill: it is all about Part 1 and the provisions contained in this part. We know that those women—and yes they are predominantly women—who are in that primary care role for those children are not living the sweet life. They are not living a wonderful existence where they have got money to come and go on. Most of those families are struggling to get by a on day-to-day basis and along comes this miserable Government and makes it even harder for them. It makes it even harder for them and it is not hearing the cries from our community up and down the country to fix child poverty.