Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker; I did realise that. I have pleasure in standing in support of the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill in its first reading here today. The National Party is supporting it to select committee with some reservations that I will traverse as we go through this short reading.The key messages that we would like to talk to—and I take the point that the previous speaker Dr Henderson raised about it taking 87 years to get to this point. The reality is that this was a recommendation from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group four years ago and it has taken four years to finally get to this point. But after investing four years of preparation we are now faced with a very shortened select committee process and as the previous speaker has mentioned this is complex and it has taken some time to get here. Yet the community and the public don't have the courtesy of having enough time to give it due consideration through the submission process. In fact if we have a look at the sitting schedule for Parliament before the report-back date for this bill which is 24 May basically we have four sitting weeks ahead of us once this has moved on to the select committee. So the Government may be very cocky about finally getting it here but it's a shame that the public isn't going to enjoy the similar respect due to it in having an opportunity to work their way through the complexities.The bill is complex but National is supporting it because we know that at the end of the day it is going to benefit the children of single parents but we are also the party that wishes to see fewer children living in poverty. We see this as a step in the right direction but the problem we have is the former Prime Minister made herself the Minister for Child Poverty Reduction and she has fallen short by about 81500 children in her goal of something like 100000 children lifted out of poverty by 2020. So while the Government is crowing about its success in getting this little piece of legislation through the bigger picture is still a complete failure.We also need to put it in the context of other sole parents as well because if we look at the stats for sole parent support in December 2022 who had been on benefit for over a year—and we know because the data tells us this—the longer people are on benefit the harder it is to re-enter the workplace. There are now 14000 more people on sole parent support in 2022—that's 59000 people. So this is not a proud day for the Government. In fact it is band-aid over a poor-performing Government over many years. But I'd also like to remind the Government that when we're talking about the benefit of child support payments going through the Inland Revenue Department directly to the other parent we are taking the money that was going into the Government's coffers to subsidise the benefit of those people on a sole parent support payment. So that was the responsible parent paying for their children by subsidising the taxpayers of New Zealand who are supporting their children. So we are taking that money off the taxpayers and we are talking a figure of $350 million over four years that once sat subsidising the taxpayer support. That is no longer going to be there and this is a cost to the country. Thank you.