Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Madam Speaker and I too will make a short contribution about this bill but I just thought I would elaborate a little bit on the background behind it. This bill was developed first back in 1991 so it is quite outdated but the administration system of course has been quite clunky over the last few years. And it's because of the investment that was made by the former National Government that has enabled the technology now to introduce a lot more of these efficiencies into the IRD. We've heard about the penalties that have accrued for some of the people who are liable parents and there is a huge amount of debt being carried in terms of these outstanding penalties: $2.2 billion is the figure that is currently outstanding. But of that $1.7 billion is actually penalties that are owed to IRD. And of course what happens when a liable parent falls behind on payments is that the penalties keep accruing and so the ability to catch up gets further and further out of reach. In some cases—we heard through the submission process—some parents actually find it easier to escape and some even leave the country and don't return because the penalties make it so unworkable. So this new system is actually a lot more user-friendly and it is a lot kinder to liable parents in terms of the penalties. One of the things that was raised by submitters around those penalties going forward is that if there are penalties that a liable parent owes to the caring parent the penalties actually need to go to the carer because they relate to the child but unfortunately that was something that was outside of the scope of this bill. Other submitters talked to us about the shared-care arrangements where there were 50:50 shared-care arrangements in place. So in that case there were some strong arguments put forward that there should be no liable parent if the custody arrangements were shared 50:50—but again that was something that was outside of the scope of this bill.The taxable income that is now going to be replaced with net income is I think a lot fairer too. We heard from several submitters about the ability for the liable parent to hide income in terms of that taxable income which set the rate of the child payments. This bill fixes that discrepancy so that it's not quite so easy to run yourself at a loss or your business at a loss so that you keep your child payments to the absolute minimum. As we've heard from many speakers this afternoon the main focus is always the care of the children to make sure that those children are taken care of. I guess for me the best way to avoid child support payments is contraception. And outside of that there is a real obligation on parents to make their contribution to the upkeep and the raising of their own children.I'd just like to talk a little bit about the penalty times as well. In the past and in the current regime we've got penalties that are paid. So there's eight days of payment and if they haven't paid within eight days then they have to pay 8 percent. But of course in eight days there has been no time for IRD to make contact with a liable parent and so between you know such a short amount of time—and even today to get New Zealand Post to deliver you a letter in eight days is doing really well. So those penalty times are also being adjusted and it's stretching it out so that liable parents actually have enough time to make those arrangements. There's also a new grace period for people who are new to making child payments. That grace period is now out to 60 days. There will be no penalties while they get their new payment arrangements in place. They work out the budgets and they get those under way. One of the things that the National Party had concerns with in terms of implementing this bill was the fact that it was again asking employers to be the collector of this and manage the collection of funds to pass on to the IRD. We felt that that was an extra burden on business that was not warranted. But given the tax system and the technology that we have it has been decided through the Social Services and Community Committee that this is the most efficient way of receiving those payments from liable parents and paying them over to the carer. So my contribution today—I commend this bill to the House in its second reading and look forward to further progressing it. Thank you.