Turei Metiria: Child Support Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Child Support Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9162. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): Similarly to my colleague Jacinda Ardern from the Labour Party the Greens are very concerned about this legislation the Child Support Amendment Bill and we will continue to oppose it. Our view as has been said is that if this legislation is supposed to be about the well-being of children—Mike Sabin: No it’s not.METIRIA TUREI: —and their future care well then why not have in the legislation that that is the paramount principle? But I guess National is just confirming that actually it is not. This legislation is not about children at all. It is about tax take and it is about punishment. So we had Peter Dunne here earlier today thumping the table declaring that the most important thing in his view was the fact that parents should put their children first above all else and yet his colleagues in the National Party are saying: “Nah it’s not about kids at all actually. It’s got nothing to do with them.” No wonder this legislation is such a mess. No wonder the legislation is such a mess where a significant set of provisions about the financial care that impacts not just on the financial relationship between parents concerning their children but also actually on the familial relationships of parents and their children is so confused so complex and in large part irrational. We think there have been some changes around the edges that we agree with but it is so complex now and it misses the point so badly about the needs of children and families that we simply cannot support it.I do wonder actually—and I will not be the only parent in this House who has had some dealings with the child support system in some form. And I really do appreciate the comments made by Jacinda Ardern about women on the DPB for example for whom these relationships are very complex and very much about how to maintain some kind of financial stability for their children and effective relationships for their children when they are in a situation of break-up. They are a sole parent caring for their kids having to manage often a tricky relationship or a tricky break-up with a partner and in the financial circumstances that are involved. Of course you know for all that Peter Dunne said that this legislation is about providing financially for the children—not that National agrees—in fact for a significant proportion of families who are in the most need of the greatest financial support they benefit nothing from this legislation because nothing in this legislation gives them the money. So the money goes from the other parent to the State and the State in its largesse as we heard earlier today provides a benefit to care for these kids but certainly not enough money to care for these kids well and it poses absolutely grotesque obligations on that family to make it even more difficult for them to have financial stability.I do not know whether this is still the case but it certainly was in my time many decades ago now it seems—actually it is in truth decades ago. When I was on the domestic purposes benefit the requirement was that if you did not name or could not name the father of your child and you were seeking a domestic purposes benefit you would take a financial hit. You would lose $20 a week out of your benefit because there would be nobody for the State to try to get more money from through the child support system. If that still occurs now—and I am not sure whether it does; I assume it does because there has been no indication of any change—and it certainly did then I knew of women who would take that financial hit every week. The poorest women in this country would take that financial hit because for them the most important thing was their children. They wanted their kids to have a good relationship with their father and with their father’s family. They wanted their kids to have an easy relationship where the other parent could come and they could meet and the child could go for visits and go for visits with the family and money was not an issue between them. This was especially the case when both parents were very poor where either both of them were on a benefit or one of them—the father in particular—was working on a very low income where money was an issue and was always going to be an issue.So this legislation—does that do anything? Does this help those women who are the most vulnerable and those kids who are in the least financially stable situation? No. It does not do anything because the one major recommendation that came from theChildren’s Commissioner as to how this legislation could and should be amended to increase the amount of repayments from non-custodial parents and to improve the lives of the children who need it most has been ignored. And that is the pass-on so that the State guarantees that the kids will benefit. But that is why National does not and will not put children at the heart of this legislation. That is why it will not put the well-being of children as a core principle of this legislation. It is because it does not want to have to make sure that those kids do OK. It washes its hands of the kids who need it the most and that is clearly laid out in this legislation which fails those children. We oppose this bill. Thank you.