Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I want to start by acknowledging Dr Emily Henderson and your contribution particularly about the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that I brought to the House the other night in the committee of the whole House stage—and I will address that later in this speech. I also want to address the fact that there are evidently different theories of change here in this House in terms of how we approach how we go about legislating how we go about funding certain programmes and in turn what we have here in this law as outlined actually by Maureen Pugh a National Party speaker is that there is support across the House for this law. It was a process that was initiated by the former National Government and has been picked up by the Labour-led Government. In turn we have something that everybody appears to agree with. I've had that confirmed by my ACT Party colleagues sat next to me and everybody broadly seems to be on board with that. The interesting thing about that is that it doesn't end up being all too controversial and therefore is relatively representative of a form of incrementalism. I guess to that point I just refer to a quote that I was literally just googling just now about incrementalism because I was trying to conceive of that in terms of the types of theories of change that all of us in Parliament as representatives of our respective communities bring to this place. And that is by Seth Godin and states and I quote Incrementalism ceases to be a good strategy when there's a cliff on the route." That is effectively I guess the kaupapa and the perception that the Greens are bringing to this debate: that it is incredibly important of course that we are doing these things with regard to harm minimisation but there was an opportunity to do much more—much more—with this piece of law change as evidenced by that committee of the whole House stage and the SOPs that were brought before the House. But nonetheless the Greens will of course be supporting this because it is a good step in the right direction. But if I can just again put on record at this third and final reading there is a fundamental anomaly in the Child Support Act I believe of 1991 and that is that it's I believe the only piece of legislation that references children or says that it's about them but actually doesn't centre them nor their voices in it. And I think that that's not only evidenced by the purpose statements but also manifest in the different machinery that it enables. You know this law becomes about the transfer of money and the penalties that the State places on non-custodial parents and the facilitation of those funds to the custodial parent. I have to again reference the point as raised by the Children's Commissioner in the select committee stage of this bill who stated that this was an opportune time to centre the voice and the experiences of children but in turn to actually implement the Government's own commissioned report from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. That's recommendation 27 that states and I quote that we should "Pass on all child support collected to receiving carers including for recipients of Unsupported Child's Benefit." Just for those who may only be tuning in to the third reading of this law I'll give you a little rundown of what currently happens in case you missed out on the committee of the whole House or the second reading stage. But right now the process that occurs if the custodial parent is a beneficiary and that child lives in a beneficiary household is that the custodial parent has no choice but to enter into an arrangement with the IRD to collect child support from the non-custodial parent. The non-custodial parent pays that child support. The IRD holds on to that child support calculating the cost to the State of the custodial parent's benefit and only gives to the custodial parent the amount of money from that child support that is over and above the cost of that benefit to the State. That's the fundamental flaw that we have with this law at present. It's fundamentally ironically of course less money for the non-custodial parent but also less money for the child for the custodial household which in turn reduces the resources that are available to improve the quality of life for that child and in turn compounds inequality which of course was raised in that Welfare Expert Advisory Group's advice but also in the submission of the Children's Commissioner. I know that this is an issue which is presently out there—so again gutted that we didn't take that opportunity. But with all of that said we have to recognise that there has been some progress here and it is awesome that we do have the consensus of the House on it. I just would far prefer that we were tackling the cliff the inequality head on in dealing with something that we have you know written in stone as an opportunity to really delve into and fix these issues of inequality so fundamentally. But the Greens support this bill through its third reading and hope in the words of my colleagues and all sides of the Chamber that this is in fact only the beginning because it is the case that it takes a really long time for laws and amendments to them to come before this place. So I hope that with the commitment that we've heard in the speeches so far this afternoon that there is a meaningful intention to continue progressing this kaupapa to end poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand. Kia ora."