Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to give National's final speech on this Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. As previous colleagues in the National caucus have said National supports this bill but our support is not without some significant reservations. There is no doubt that this bill goes some way to resolving some inconsistencies in that it passes on or makes payment of any child support payments through IRD directly to beneficiaries receiving the sole parent rate of main benefit.My colleague the Hon Louise Upston recalled that the genesis of this bill comes from many of the aspects that were brought through in the Welfare Expert Advisory Group report. I think we should remember that that report was released four years ago this month. Four years ago in May 2019 that report was released and yet now at this stage we have the frustration of looking at a truncated process that has been rushed through. The public have not had the opportunity to look at what is a complex bill.I listened carefully to one of the Government speakers saying how important that $20 a week is to beneficiary families and she's quite right: $20 is an important amount. But my golly it would have been even more important four years ago if $20 had been going into their pockets because the cost of living crisis and the inflation has well and truly over four years eaten that $20 a week up and more. So those families are not going to be better off than they would have if this bill had been acted on four years ago. Let's be very clear about that.The bill introduces the new income-charging rules that are specific to the child support payments and the automated charging of child support payments as income. What this means is that the child support payments will not be deducted against the taxpayer payment. The child support from the liable parent will not be offset against the taxpayer contribution. Now a lot on the other side have been terribly enthusiastic about this bill and quite rightly—that pragmatic side of us says that yes we should be doing this for those children. But we should not lose sight of the fact that this is $354 million that is taxpayer money. It's very easy to be generous with other people's money.Will there be more child support payments collected? Well like my ACT colleague Karen Chhour we are hopeful that there will be more money coming from those liable parents because similarly I have had particularly fathers come into my electorate office saying that they resent the money not going to their children. We will be looking carefully at the evaluations to see if in fact there is greater collection of the support payments.But of concern to us all should be that the number of individuals receiving sole parent support has increased by 21 percent since Labour has been in Government. Despite the comments of our Green colleague Ricardo Menéndez March about benefit dependency we do not see benefit dependency as success we do not see benefit dependency as being kind and we do not see benefit dependency as being caring as some of the other speakers have somehow concluded that it is. I can say from my years in vocational education there was nothing more satisfying than seeing women particularly coming to second-chance education and seeing their self-esteem grow and seeing their sense of worthiness grow with gaining a qualification and seeing themselves as being able to enter into the workforce.We want to see fewer children in poverty but we are never going to get children out of poverty through taking taxpayer money and putting it towards them. The only way we will see fewer children in poverty is if we support those women particularly to get into employment.So we are supporting this as a pragmatic change but we do not see it as the solution. This Government should be concerned about the impact that $20 is going to have on these families because they have absolutely eroded the worth of that $20 through the inflation and the cost of living crisis that has come about through their actions and through the inactions of this Government. This Government seems incapable of joining the dots between their reckless spending and inflation and the impact that has on fixed income families and particularly on beneficiaries. Just putting taxpayer money out there does not solve the problem. There has to be discipline brought to Government spending to also solve the problem.Yes we will support this but it is not a solution. It is a stopgap and we must be putting much more effort—and we would have been much happier had we seen parallel effort from this Government with a focus to reduce the number of children in benefit-dependent homes but we certainly have not seen that. However National certainly has a policy of welfare that works that will see young job seekers receiving proper needs assessments plans to address barriers to work job coaching from community organisations and where it's needed rewards and sanctions approaches so that there is more than just throwing taxpayer money at a problem. It would be useful if this Government could see that parallel action needs to take place.So we are supporting it but certainly with significant reservations with a sense of frustration and concern that four years after the initial Welfare Expert Advisory Group report we are now rushing this bill through. And certainly we are concerned at how this has eroded the support that is going to be received by the sole parent families from this. Thank you Madam Speaker.