Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to be talking on the Child Support Amendment Bill third reading. This is one of these occasions in the House where the House comes together to try and achieve a better outcome. I think it's good to remind ourselves that this bill is about protecting young children who are in broken homes where we're looking at the financial arrangements between the parents or the partners who have subsequently broken up their partnership and of course the biggest casualty of that is the young children involved in that process. So from that perspective this is much more about achieving good social outcomes. I know this bill is very much around changing financial arrangements but I think it's very important that we're mindful of that objective which is we want to see that the children who are subject to a broken home can grow up in the best that can be made from that situation. In this case not only is that a nurturing loving relationship but one where there is adequate financial compensation from one parent or partner who is no longer fully providing for their upbringing and therefore needs to enter into an arrangement to pay compensation to the carer parent. So I think the Minister's done a pretty good job on summarising the key aspects of this bill. We had some concerns. We covered them quite substantially during the committee of the whole House. I think the big issue we've got is we believe that all the penalties that are incurred in one parent not paying their adequate compensation the penalty should go to the caregiver parent. At the moment what happens is we've got a debt of about $2.2 billion of which $500 million is a core debt and part of the purpose of this bill is trying to reduce that core debt of $500 million so people can pay and they've got adequate time to enter into arrangements. But the second thing I think we should be trying to do is reduce the penalty arrangements. At the moment there's roughly $1.7 billion compared to the $500 million of core debt so this is a massive figure. So what we'd like to see is that the penalty actually goes to the benefit of the caring parent because effectively what the penalty is is a late payment free from the parent to the caregiver—they don't pay the bill on time. We just believe it's a good thing. I put up a Supplementary Order Paper on this matter and I'm glad that the ACT member on the bill thought it was such a great idea they also put up one. But that for us was a crucial aspect but unfortunately the Minister was not open to that possibility and not even open to the contemplation of that opportunity which I think is disappointing. The other thing I just want to note is there's a continual requirement that is imposed on businesses to be the collecting agent for the IRD and I did make the point during the committee of the whole House and actually during the other parts of the debate that there's this assumption that businesses should always be collecting tax on behalf of the taxpayer or in this case the IRD. I can understand the logic to that but there's no recompense and there's no recognition. I just want to say for the matter of the record that we were concerned about this issue. We did speak to a number of the business chambers and Business New Zealand about this issue but for all those small businesses who are going to have to take on a little bit more of an obligation to collect this money and account for it I would say thank you for that because you are doing the work of the IRD and the Government. Just finally I want to acknowledge all the committee members. I don't normally sit on this committee but it was good working alongside the committee members on the select committee and of course I want to acknowledge the officials who helped us during this process. I think it's a good bill. It will go some way to improving—I think we will be back to make some further changes in time but it's a great outcome for those young vulnerable children who are living in broken homes.