Moroney Sue: Child Support Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Child Support Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 26 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8184. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise and speak to the second reading of the Child Support Amendment Bill. The bill as many other speakers have said in this debate has been a long time coming. It is in fact more than 20 years since this issue was revisited. Of course we all right across the House do recognise the need to review particularly in situations like this where family relationships are complex matters and do move and change as society evolves and changes. That of course is precisely what has happened in this situation. It is 21 years since the child support legislation was revisited. Things have changed. We all acknowledge—certainly Labour voted for this legislation at its first reading because we wanted the opportunity to have a good close look at it in the Social Services Committee—the need to update this legislation but sadly in this instance we think that the Government has got it wrong. Actually we think that the Government has got it wrong at a very fundamental level—not just in some of the fine detail but actually at a very fundamental level. This piece of legislation that we are visiting here is called the Child Support Amendment Bill. It is about child support. It is Labour’s view that we would come up with a different set of conclusions in reviewing this legislation if the interests of the child were put solidly at the centre of every consideration that the Government and the select committee made about this piece of legislation. 
I want to refer to the speech from the member who spoke immediately before me Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga because I think he put it in a nutshell actually. He said that he had dealt with two cases recently where the outcomes would have been better for the parents if this piece of legislation had already been enacted. He said the outcome would have been better for the parents. He had no comment to make about whether the outcome would have been better for the children or not. That is the basic mistake that the Government is making because the whole point of this legislation is to ensure that in situations where there is a family relationship breakdown the children are taken care of. That is what this bill is about. It is not about serving the interests of the parents; it is first and foremost about serving the interests of the children. The National MP who just resumed his seat spelt it out loud and clear for us I think that the Government has got sidelined by getting involved in working out the whole thing about whether parents win or lose under this arrangement. That is where the Government has gone so badly wrong. This is not about the argy-bargy that goes on between parents. This legislation ought to be about putting children at the heart of it. 
I am not a permanent member of the select committee that led this legislation but I did have the opportunity to sit in on some of the deliberations and certainly some of the submissions during the course of the select committee deliberations on this bill. One of the days when I was present there was a debate about some wording changes that Labour was proposing to ensure that in the objectives of this amendment bill there would be a statement about the interests of the child and making that central to this piece of legislation. I was alarmed that the National members on that select committee were opposed to that concept. That was an alarm bell that went off for me because I could not understand why setting that out as a basic premise and objective for this amendment and this review would be opposed by Government members on that select committee. It seemed to me a very basic requirement that should be at the heart of this legislation. So it is not only that Government members have inadvertently overlooked this really fundamentally important part of this legislation; they deliberately opposed amending the objective of this piece of legislation to protecting the interests of children first and foremost. 
 I am Labour’s spokesperson on women’s affairs and I of course am interested in what the impacts of this change in legislation will be on women. The impacts I am sad to report to this House are not good. They are not favourable generally for women. As people have said individual family situations can be quite different from each other so there is by no means one silver bullet. But if we look across an average of what will happen in this legislation and accept that as it is still in New Zealand to this day most of the parents who are the main carers of children in this situation will be women and are in fact women—because that is what the statistics tell us—then we need to understand that there are gender implications with this legislation as well. The legislation does have significant implications for women because on average women earn less than men and as I have just said they are much more likely to be the primary caregivers. The overall effect of this bill is to apportion an even greater share of the cost of child rearing to women. Many women will be worse off as a result of this legislation. 
One of the main mechanisms for that effect is the reduced threshold for shared care. That reduced threshold for shared care actually puts in a financial incentive mainly for fathers who are the liable parent not the custodial parent in the main—not always but in the main. It puts in a financial incentive for them to want to get involved in the care of their children because it will cost them less—it will actually cost them less. 
Paul Goldsmith 
: That sounds good. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Well the member says that sounds good but if the member was to put the interests of the child at the heart of that situation would we really want fathers to get involved in shared care because there is a financial incentive for them to do so? Is that really what we want? I certainly do not think that is a good outcome. It is not a good outcome. The National MPs may think that is a good outcome but I do not. I want shared-care arrangements to be genuine. I want them to be in the best interests of children. I do not want them to be based on some accounting book exercise that a father does to work out how he can pay less in liable contributions because that is what this piece of legislation actually invites. If that was in the best interests of the child I would be the first to agree to it. But actually putting a financial incentive there to try to increase shared care is not necessarily in the interests of the child. 
What it does do actually is unfairly impact on women because we know that parents caring for a child 2 days a week are unlikely to share a proportionate responsibility for providing the basics of life. So although they might share food bills proportionately because they have got the child or the children for 2 days of the week they are really unlikely to be paying for the cost of school uniforms. They are quite unlikely to be sharing the proportionate costs of the clothing doctors’ appointments dental costs—all of those week-to-week day-to-day expenses in providing for children. It is under this mechanism that we know that on average there will be a shift. There will be a further burden of costs shifted on to women who are in the main the primary caregivers by that mechanism. 
My contention and what I want to put before this House is that we cannot afford to do that. That is why my colleagues have been talking about child poverty and its link to this bill. We already know that women who are sole parents are in this poverty trap and therefore their children for whom they have the primary caregiving role are in that poverty trap. That is the link with child poverty. It is not acceptable for this Government to be passing legislation that actually worsens child poverty when New Zealanders are calling out for it to do something about reducing poverty. I am pleased to say that Labour is opposing this bill because it is not necessarily in the best interests of children.