Upston Louise; Parker DavidHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Chair and I appreciate the Minister's attempt to answer the question but I think with that answer it's created more confusion than more clarity. So I do think when legislation is being jammed through the House in urgency it is going to be really important with Part 2 that everybody has a clear understanding exactly of what we're doing.So my first question in terms of the Minister's contribution was the reference to the Child Support Amendment Act 2021 when I understood that Part 2 was amending the Child Support Act 1991 which is how I'm reading it and the first grey scale is exactly what is in the 1991 Act and it's not clear to the members opposite whether that's remaining as it is or the second grey scale which is also 8(2) is being included.Simeon Brown: It's black and white!Hon LOUISE UPSTON: It is black and white! It's definitely not black and white. So it is really important that these are fixed because at the end of the day with the Child Support Amendment Bill the select committee that I serve on actually spent a lot of time working through amendments to the Child Support Act 1991 and some of it is incredibly complicated. The intent behind it was to support more parents to fulfil their obligations and to make sure that they actually didn't get into debt and the recognition that debt to Inland Revenue can be incredibly distressing and when it is related to child support can also be intensely damaging for a family.So hopefully I've filled in a bit of time. I do in all seriousness want the answer to both things because it's not clear from the legislative statement. The legislative statement of anything that we now provide in the House should be the simplest way for the House to understand what is occurring. So I do want clarification on that and I hate to point but when we're looking at this version of the bill are we replacing it with the top grey scale which is exactly as is drafted in the '91 Act or is it the intention that this one the second one on the page is what it really should be? And therefore what is the status of this because it appears to be inaccurate?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): I don't think it is inaccurate but I'll attempt to explain it and I thank the member for her question. I accept that she understands these issues well because she was involved in them. The intent of the changes to the underlying policy is the removal of the $5 rule which was an additional $5 penalty which as the member has noted is distressing and unnecessary. The other change that was also for the benefit of people making their child support payments was to give 27 days' grace instead of seven days' grace in respect of the first breach. That policy intention remains. The mistake that was made in the drafting of the legislation that was passed was to give effect to that from 1 April 2021 rather than from 1 April 2022 by which time the Business Transformation project can do it. Until then and it might be a wee bit earlier than that—that's why we've given ourselves the Order in Council right to bring it forward a bit earlier than that if we can do it earlier—until that time we have to restore the $5 rule from 1 April until the date the computer system in the Business Transformation project can handle it; and similarly for the change from the 27-day rule to the seven-day rule. So the policy intention remains the same. It was always intended to be done around 1 April 2022; it's just that in the statute as it was passed it was done from 1 April 2021. So what this does is reinstate the old rule until the computer systems are able to implement the new.Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Chair. I thank the Minister for making those points because it definitely makes it clearer. I would just put on notice for the committee that when there is legislation that is before the Parliament that is going to be rushed through all stages under urgency legislative statements are clearer than this one is because where the difficulty is is clearly that those two dates aren't included in the legislation. And so I want to be crystal clear with the Minister that the changes that were made in the Child Support Amendment Act 2021 are now being reversed. So the changes that were made in the Child Support Amendment Act 2021 are being reversed so that the existing manual system can cope with what was the previous rule because the Business Transformation system can't cope with it? And if that is so which of these 134(2)'s will be in the legislation or is there intention that we have to change this law again?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): The date is actually in this amendment bill and those dates are found in clause 2 of the bill as I've previously read out; so they have to be read together in order to make sense. What's essentially happening here is the law is being restored to where it was and then is changed again for the future from that 1 April 2022 date or such earlier date as is brought into effect by Order in Council. The only alternative to that would have put at risk the Business Transformation changes because they would have been rushed or the alternative would have been complex changes to the old legacy systems that we don't really want to have to change because they're old and out of date and we weren't trying to do it through the legacy system; we were trying to do it through the new system. So once this passes we do as was as I understand it consulted upon and intended. We just fixed the drafting error.