Dunne Peter: Child Support Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dunne Peter: Child Support Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 26 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8167. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Revenue) 
: 
 I move  
That the Child Support Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. The Child Support Amendment Bill is the culmination of a process that I began during the term of the previous Government to review and modernise the operation of the child support system. It follows a Government discussion document to which there was a wide response and it represents the most fundamental set of changes to the child support system since its introduction in 1992. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! Would members leaving the Chamber please do so and show some courtesy to Mr Dunne who is trying to address and inform the rest of us. Please. 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: The changes in this bill are about futureproofing our child support system and recognising also the profound social changes that have occurred in New Zealand in the last 20 years. The bill proposes two main areas of change: first a new child support calculation formula which takes a greater account of shared parenting both parents’ income and the latest estimates of the cost of raising children; and second improvements to the payment penalty and debt rules for child support. These proposed changes are required for one very simple reason: the well-being of the 210000 children and families who are currently involved in this system. 
For the benefit of the debate I want to briefly clarify what child support is and what it is not. Firstly child support is not in itself a means of tackling child poverty. To engineer that is well beyond the scope of this bill. It has been suggested that where the responsible parent is in receipt of a benefit child support payments should be passed on directly to that parent instead of being used to offset benefit payments. But the role of the child support system is not to decide what should be paid as a Government benefit. What the child support system does do is encourage paying parents to take responsibility for their children’s welfare by paying their liabilities in time and in full. The Government believes that this has to be the most beneficial way of assisting the families involved. 
But I want to say this: the child support system is and always has been a backstop for families when parents no longer living together cannot themselves come together for an arrangement for the support of the children. Child support was never intended to be the automatic default position and nor should it be that. My strong preference is that when relationships break up parents should be encouraged to make their own arrangements for the maintenance of their children but I equally recognise that that is not always going to be fair or feasible in a number of cases. So it therefore is the aim of the child support system to ensure financial support for those children for whom those reasonable arrangements cannot be reached on a voluntary basis. To do this efficiently and accurately in today’s context it is important that the scheme be updated. So the changes that are provided for in this bill make for a child support system where child support payments take account of a greater range of individual circumstances and the capacities of parents to pay and take those into much better account. 
This is important because if the formula used to calculate child support does not fairly reflect today’s circumstances it ends up affecting the very children that the scheme is meant to be there to financially support. In my view the current formula is too blunt an instrument which fails to take proper account of the particular circumstances of families. It can for example often leave non-custodial parents in a difficult financial position often unable to provide the same level of comfort during access visits that a custodial parent can. It fails to acknowledge also that the custodial parent may be in full or part-time employment of their own—something that is far more common today than it was when the legislation was put in place 20 years ago. 
Although it would be impossible to design a system to meet every circumstance this bill does introduce a far more flexible system than that which we have currently. On the issue of calculating payments I want to make the point that one thing this bill does not do is change the fact that families themselves are not expected to calculate the payments. That has always been the responsibility of the Inland Revenue Department which will provide a calculator that will allow parents to check the amounts involved. So I can put members’ minds at ease—no one is going to be required to hire an accountant in order to calculate child support payments under the formula introduced in this bill. 
The bill also introduces changes to the rules relating to the payment of child support the imposition of penalties and the writing off of penalties to encourage parents to meet their obligations on time. They are the main features of the bill but I want to make members aware that I intend to release a Supplementary Order Paper to this bill at the Committee of the whole House stage. That Supplementary Order Paper will introduce a practical measure that will allow a more accurate determination of parents’ income by broadening the time frame or the window during which an assessment of income is made. It will also contain a number of changes of a consequential or remedial nature to ensure that the legislation operates as intended. 
In its consideration of the bill the Social Services Committee recommended that the introduction of the main measures be deferred by 1 year originally intended to be 1 April 2013 to 1 April 2014. I fully appreciate the anxiety that this delay will cause affected families. I know how keen they are for the legislation to take effect as soon as possible but I do consider that the select committee’s recommendation is a pragmatic one which takes into account the legislative pressures involved and the time frame that the Inland Revenue Department will need to implement the changes contained in the bill and therefore I propose accepting that recommendation. At this point I want to acknowledge the work that the select committee did and I want to acknowledge also the broad sweep of the recommendations that it made to further improve the content of the bill. I think that those changes carried forward now into the legislation make a difference to the bill and in turn will make a positive difference to the lives of the families and the children who are covered by the child support legislation. 
So I am very proud to stand here today and once again commend this Child Support Amendment Bill to the House and I look forward to its passage relatively soon so that we can begin the work of reforming our system in a major way for the first time in 20 years and making sure it is robust to meet the challenges of the future.