Parker David: Child Support Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Parker David: Child Support Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8288. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I want to take a call in respect of Part 1 of this Child Support Amendment Bill and refer to some of the particular concerns that the Labour Party has in respect of this part of the bill. You will have heard from prior speakers in the Labour Party that we thought there were some general concerns relating to missing an opportunity to put in the issue of child well-being as being a core object of the Child Support Act which was raised by various submitters. I am not going to deal with that particular issue. I am not going to repeat that. I am going to raise a new issue and that is the effects of the new 28 percent shared-care threshold in the legislation. 
This legislation introduces a new threshold for the relative financial contributions between normally a separated couple—normally a man and a woman—where the most common consequence is that the woman has day-to-day child-rearing obligations. At the moment the percentage of time that the child is with the other parent is higher than 28 percent before there is a diminution in the contribution from the non - main custodial parent. What this bill does is it introduces a new threshold of 28 percent. So effectively if a parent has 2 days’ care of a child per week then there will be a different allocation of resource within that couple who are no longer together. As a consequence the amount of money that the primary caregiver who has the child for 5 days a week will decrease compared with the status quo. 
Sue Moroney 
: Mainly women. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: That was the very point I was going to make. That is quite so. This is normally going to adversely affect women more often than it will adversely affect men. We in this Committee are trying to achieve fairness between people. We should also be trying to preserve the interests of the child or giving primacy to the interests of the proper maintenance of the child who is the primary responsibility of the two biological parents in most cases. I am not convinced that this change does that because what it will do is it will in respect of some quite low-income people result in a reduction in the income that is going to the primary caregiver. 
 The primary caregiver has a higher proportion of the bills and more often than not is going to have to pick up all of those incidental costs which are essential as far as the well-being of the child is concerned but probably not viewed as essential by the authorities who count the numbers—things like school trips that are optional or the occasional participation in a group event by the child like going to the movies with their friends. Those are the sorts of things that are effectively a cost more often for the parent who has most of the care because they are the parent who has the main responsibility for keeping a decent balance in the household and making sure that they do their child-rearing to the best of their ability and in the interests of the child. 
Some of the examples that were given by the Labour Party in our minority report in respect of this included the fact that it is more likely that the primary caregiver will have more responsibility for dental medical and other treatments—especially dental. Medical treatment admittedly probably arises on more of an as-needed basis and that could be at any time of the week although having said that most people try to avoid the doctor at the weekend because it is too expensive to go at the weekend. It is more often the mother who will face those costs particularly in the case of dental treatment. This is also true of clothing costs of school costs and of school clothing costs like uniforms. So Labour is not convinced that these changes are wise in that regard. I would like to hear the Minister in the chair the Minister for Building and Construction respond to that issue and explain how it is that this is going to be implemented in practice to ensure fairness between parents in respect of children who qualify for support.