Ardern Jacinda: Child Support Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Jacinda: Child Support Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8310. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I want to speak to some elements of the commencement dates in the Child Support Amendment Bill at the beginning of what will be a short address. I do think that quite a bit of thought has gone into the transitional provisions and the commencement dates based on some of the factors that have already been pointed out by my colleagues around the additional burden on the Inland Revenue Department system that this new formula will provide. I think it is only right that we give the system time to creak under the weight of this new complex system. 
We as the Social Services Committee did recommend an amendment that would allow deferring the implementation of this child support formula from 1 April 2013 to 1 April 2014 and we suggested a movement of payment and penalty charges that saw it going out to April 2015. We very explicitly stated in the commentary on the bill that we consider this delay by 1 year necessary to accommodate the bill’s legislative time line because of course if we were implementing it in April 2014 that would not be a lot of time from the time that it will have its final reading. Also it was to allow the Inland Revenue Department sufficient time to prepare. I would say that was probably the weightier of the reasons. 
I am also interested based on these commencement dates in the amount of time the department needs to prepare. That will be computer systems but obviously in the bill we have also talked about the extra burden on staff—the 15 percent increase in the amount of time that staff will be spending on these new provisions. My question to the Minister of Revenue would be whether that will be coming out of baselines for the Inland Revenue Department or whether we will be seeing an extra investment into the department to enable it to deal with these changes because it is not like there is any capacity in many of our front-line services to take that extra strain. The Government has been very vigilant in its so-called value-for-money exercise. This basically means that the departments themselves are straining under the weight of continuing a full agenda of work be it policy development or just carrying out the requirements of day-to-day governance whilst also slashing back their ability to have any capacity to deal with extra things like this. 
So I would be really interested if the Minister could tell us given that we have needed to switch our commencement date by a year given that we know it will cost $91 million to implement and given that we know it will increase the strain on staff by 15 percent how we are dealing with that—and that $91 million. I have not yet asked a question on whether or not that has been budgeted for and in which budget we will be seeing those transitional provisions. 
I am also interested in speaking to the title of this bill. I am always aware that anyone listening to this part of a debate in the Committee will be somewhat confused by this tradition we have at the end of the debate on a bill of then suddenly talking about random separate names for titles for a bill. 
Mike Sabin 
: Suddenly waste time filibustering and belittling it. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: There is a very good purpose for it that Mr Sabin does not seem willing to accept at this point in the debate. It does enable us to try to capture the essence of what a bill should be about. It gives us a chance to say whether or not a bill has achieved what might be the expectations of the public—the bill’s objective. 
Mr Sabin is now making gagging faces. I do not know whether or not the camera has captured some of the facial expressions we seem to be receiving on this side of the Chamber. 
Speaking to the bill’s title gives us an opportunity to see whether or not we have actually achieved the objectives we set out to achieve. There was a bit of debate at the beginning as to whether or not if this bill is truly about the welfare of the child we are achieving that through this Child Support Amendment Bill. Unfortunately it is Labour’s contention that we do not believe we have achieved that. The focus despite the bill being called the Child Support Amendment Bill is very much on setting a mediation process that is based on a calculation regime for parents who are unable to resolve outside of the Inland Revenue Department their own payment system. 
As I have already said there is a greater level of satisfaction with arrangements that are able to be set up outside the department’s system. We know that from survey work that has been done. So is this really solely about child support? If it were we have already contended that we would have probably seen a paramountcy principle in this bill. In a sense then could we almost rename it the “Child Liability Bill” because that is how it feels like we have treated kids in this bill? It is more like they are a liability—that we must make an assessment on whom the greater liability sits with—rather than the bill being about the support of the child and the welfare of the child.