Yule LawrenceLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to speak to Part 4 of this bill and to ask the Minister some questions.Hon Member: Get on with it!LAWRENCE YULE: I am getting on with it. While this is not necessarily an area of great expertise for me this part of the bill—and I particularly refer to clause 176 and the new clause 177—is specifically about identifying the other parent. It's specifically about that. Under the previous legislation if you could not identify the other parent or identify who is in law the other parent; had not applied for a formula assessment of child support as required by section 9 of the Child Support Act; or had not given in evidence in proceedings under the Child Support Act 1991 all information that is required of a parent as a compellable witness under section 122 of the Act then effectively some of your benefit was taken away.So this is not policy-neutral this part. This is a new policy that is being brought in by this Government under this legislation and clause 176(3) seeks to replace subclause (2) with a new clause 177. I agree with some of the subclauses in clause 177 which say that (1) MSD must not reduce a benefit under section 176(2) if MSD is satisfied …" of effectively five conditions. Two of them I completely agree with. They are "(c) the beneficiary or any of the beneficiary's children would be at risk of violence if the beneficiary did or took steps to do [anything that changes things]" and "(d) [a] child [that] was conceived as a result of incest or sexual violation;". However clause 177(1)(a) (b) and (c) are open to interpretation.My contribution seeks to ask the Minister to explain to this committee how the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is going to be satisfied of those three conditions the first one being that "(a) there is insufficient evidence available to establish who … in law [is] the other parent;". How exactly are they going to do that—simply by saying that they don't know they're not sure they can't remember or there were a series of potential other parents? How is MSD actually going to be satisfied when that person says there is insufficient evidence? The second point is "(b) the beneficiary is taking active steps to identify who … in law [is] the other parent;". What does that mean Minister? Does that mean they are asking around? Can they remember? Was it at that party? You know those are all the things that actually we're asking MSD to identify and I actually think the members on the other side are placing a big onus on these people. Then the third one is "(e) [is there] some other compelling circumstance for the beneficiary's failure or refusal to do any of the things referred to in section 176(2) and in any event"—this is where it gets really good—"there is no real likelihood of [parent] support being collected in the foreseeable future from the other parent or the other parent's estate."All those things are judgments. They are absolutely judgments made by MSD largely—Andrew Bayly: And who is judge and jury?LAWRENCE YULE: Absolutely Mr Bayly—largely at whatever the parent said happened: their recollection of the event their recollection of the relationship their recollection of "Actually we don't know." The reason I bring this up—and it relates to a further clause which is in this bill clause 186 which actually affects benefit maintenance claims—is that in my short while as a member of Parliament I have had a significant number of constituents come to me and say that actually they are being rorted by their partner using tax rorts and a whole lot of other things and they're not getting maintenance. So in this clause we say "MSD may refuse or cancel [benefits] for [the] failure to take reasonable steps to obtain maintenance."Now even that in itself for the parent is an extremely difficult thing for them to do sometimes—extremely difficult. And when you put all those things together I think while this is not policy-neutral and you may not have preferred the policy of the National Government you are putting MSD in an invidious—sorry the Government is putting MSD in an invidious position—Madam Chair I apologise—of actually asking MSD to make all these decisions."