Heatley Phil: Child Support Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHeatley Phil: Child Support Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9166. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): I happily rise to support the Child Support Amendment Bill because of the considerable thought that has gone into this piece of legislation. Of course when the first piece of legislation was passed those many years ago the intent was clear. It was to ensure that children were raised in homes where they were encouraged to receive the benefit of the financial and social input of both parents. So although the current child support scheme provided a relatively straightforward way of ensuring that that happened particularly in the way of calculating the support that the absentee parent if you like had to give financially—andwhen I say “absentee” I do not mean that they were not in the child’s life of course. What I mean is that they were not the caregiver with whom the child spent most of their time. The liability I guess of that parent was worked out and it was fairly straightforward.Of course the primary assumption back then was that the paying parent was the income earner and the recipient parent was the main care provider. But of course the way that parents raise their children these days in situations where a marriage or a relationship might have split up is quite quite different. There are probably two major changes. First of all more parents are in work and usually both are in work whereas back in 1992 when this was first legislated for one of the parents might have been the key money winner if you like. The second major change is that more often than not both parents now are involved in if you like day-to-day or week-to-week parenting. So you no longer get that sort of split which was often along gender lines where you had the main income earner not necessarily being the main caregiver and the main caregiver not necessarily being the main income earner. That is what happened historically.This initiative is to deal with a recognition that times have changed that more parents are in work—often both parents—and that most parents are involved in their children’s lives whether that parent is the chief caregiver or not. That is why in the new formula for child support payments we have essentially three changes. One is a wider recognition of shared care. That is why we have made sure that there is an opportunity there concerning expenditure for raising children. It is recognised there that when the level of care of one parent reaches 28 percent it is actually significant and it is marked in legislation. Previously it was only from 40 percent that it was recognised. Traditionally of course you might perhaps get a child staying with one parent 100 percent of the time or in situations that are negotiated and have worked really well 50 percent of the time—50-50. But now where 28 percent of the child’s time is spent with the parent who is not the chief caregiver—where that parent spends that amount of time with the child—that is recognised.The total income of both parents is recognised now and the provision of expenditure on children has been updated. That recognises the number of children who are involved and also their age because of course costs change. Anyone who has been involved in raising teenagers from when they were little or who has observed that in their wider family will recognise that the costs of raising young children compared with those of raising teenagers are quite different.I commend this bill to the House. I am pleased and I look forward to it being passed this evening because it does update what were good intentions in 1992—they still are today—and of course it brings things up to the modern era. I support this bill.