Clark David: Child Support Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clark David: Child Support Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8271. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 The Child Support Amendment Bill represents a lost opportunity to address the well-being of children in vulnerable families. It is a real disappointment. Labour supported this bill’s referral to the Social Services Committee in the hope that it could be advanced that it could actually gather some focus and that the Government would be brave enough to step forward and say: “We want children to be a priority.” We know that Labour at the last election took a platform that involved having all policy filtered through the view of what it would mean for children and actually asking: “What is a difference we could make for vulnerable children with every policy? How can we make sure that no policy makes children worse off?”. 
Well this policy certainly does nothing positive for children. It is based on the presumption that we raise children particularly the vulnerable children in the same way that they are currently raised. The funding model for this formula that we have presented in the legislation is based on an understanding of what is currently in place. It is a lost opportunity. 
We know that 25 percent of New Zealand kids are raised in poverty—that is 270000 children are currently being raised in poverty. We also know that in this particular group of vulnerable families that proportion is likely to be much much higher. About 133000 children are dependent on families in difficult situations like this. So this is a missed opportunity. That is the first thing to say about this bill. And we have heard that of course from a large number of groups who represent the interests of children: the Auckland Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children the Child Poverty Action Group the Dunedin Community Law Centre the Families Commission the Human Rights Commission the New Zealand Law Society the Office of the Children’s Commissioner the Equal Justice Project and the Women’s Studies Association. 
This bill represents a lost opportunity to raise these vulnerable children in a situation where they are not battling the disadvantage of poverty and therefore Labour cannot in good conscience continue forward in support of this bill. In the select committee we raised concerns about this approach. We asked whether the legislation that New Zealand had signed up to in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child could be brought to bear on this whether we could honour the commitments we made there in this bill and whether the scope of the bill could be broadened. 
The advice that we received was that we could ask the Minister to broaden the Act to consider the rights of children and to consider children’s well-being in this formula more explicitly. So we put that to the select committee and that debate in the select committee was a lively one but ultimately the Government members voted down the opportunity to broaden the Act so that it did explicitly look at the welfare of children. I think that is to the Government’s shame. 
This legislation has been consulted on for a very long time. We see a Government that at least on the surface wanted to make a difference. It wanted to examine the shared-care arrangements that we currently have and find a fairer formula. That is the language that has been used. We dispute that we have actually got to that point. But that was the language used. It was a long process. We thought given the current Act that chugs along and given the view of many of those who submitted that this is no improvement we could have extended the period for this legislation in order to get it right. It seems a sensible thing to do when time in this Chamber is being used for the debate to make sure that we are looking after those vulnerable children and to make sure that the Act is as good as it can be to make sure that the well-being of those vulnerable children is prioritised. 
There was a second opportunity when some concerns were raised about the legality and the potential litigation that might arise from taking such a step to get some advice. So the select committee sought further advice on how we as a committee could reference the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child obligations to the objects of the legislation whilst preserving the integrity of the Child Support Act and making sure that there were no litigation opportunities. 
Again we put that to the vote and the Government members blocked it. They simply did not want the rights of children explicitly noted in this legislation—and you can check the select committee records. These were things that we had discussion on and these were things that were voted down on the select committee. I think that is very much to the Government’s shame. 
We in the Labour Party do think that children should be the priority. They represent the future of this country. Those children are the future of our country. They are the people who will earn wages that will pay into superannuation schemes that will keep all of us in our old age in the lifestyle to which we wish to become accustomed. If these children do not have the opportunities to maximise their potential they will grow up without realising their potential. That has an onflow to the rest of society and we cannot afford to have children in this country who do not reach their potential—quite aside from the social concerns that sit with this. 
This legislation let us remind ourselves is actually about those families who cannot reach a voluntary agreement as to how they are going to support their children. This legislation is about families who are in a difficult situation and are often vulnerable because they have had disagreements and they now find themselves in a situation where they are forced by the State to adopt a formula as to how that care arrangement will work. So we are talking about a group in society that is in a difficult position. 
I have already touched on the fact that 25 percent of New Zealand’s children are living in poverty and that this new formula is modelled on keeping that same proportion going forward. It should be noted also that taxpayer support here is actually going to those who are liable more. So what is happening is that this is also going to cost the taxpayer more even though the children do not get additional support. We think that in this bill there are a number of things that are wrong and that should be addressed. 
The Government did not take a view on a pass-on mechanism which many submitters recommended as a way of incentivising parents to meet their payments—to make sure that they know that their payments are going to be passed on directly to their children. The Government refused to express a view on that. It refused to really even consider that as an option. What we also know is that this bill has some real negative implications for women in our society. We know that most of the caring for children in these circumstances is done by women. They are usually the primary caregivers. The fathers more often than not are those who are the liable parents so they are making the financial contributions that support the children. We know that women in this vulnerable situation are often in situations of poverty and are forced to make trade-offs between buying school uniforms for the children or buying nutritious clothes power—food rather—or paying the power bill— 
Todd McClay 
: Nutritious power? 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: —for a warm house. The member at the back says “nutritious power” and mocks the issue. I think this is a very very serious issue. The fact that women in this vulnerable situation are likely to be worse off we understand from the modelling the officials have done is a tragedy and it is a shame. It could be done better. 
We think that the 28 percent shared-care threshold is too low. Those who have the children for 2 days a week do not bear the full proportion of the cost that that represents because during the week the children go to school they go to the dentist they go to the doctor and so on. So it is likely that the one who has them as the primary caregiver is meeting all of those bills. The one who has them for 2 days a week is actually not meeting the majority of costs. So having a reduction to 28 percent as is dictated in the formula seems an unfair way to go. It means that those women—largely—will be worse off. 
There is also a big concern on our part around the transparency of the new formula. The new formula is designed we are told by the Government to be fairer. It is a more complex formula. It takes more factors into consideration. On the surface that might appear to be a good thing. We agree that there is some need to take shared-care arrangements into account. We do not quibble with that. The legislation definitely needs updating. Any constituent MP will tell you that coming through their door some of the more difficult cases that they have to deal with are around the care of children. But the new formula is too complex. It is very difficult for affected parties to understand. The Inland Revenue Department itself has acknowledged this saying that it will have to retrain its staff. It is going to have to pour more of its own budget into that area just to train its own staff to use the formula that is expected to be used in the care of children. 
We cannot expect parents to understand it immediately. It is opaque. We on the committee spent many many hours under the chair’s guidance going over and over how the formula would work and how it would apply to different people. What we saw was that officials could not immediately answer the questions. They had to go back and they had to—