Upston Louise; Russell DeborahHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): So just exploring that further in terms of the liable parent they pay child support to pay to support their children and that's where this $350 million bill—to now assume the responsibility of that and not offset—creates a dilemma. So I still want to put that on record. My colleagues on this side of the Chamber wouldn't forgive me for not putting that figure on the record because it is really important. Every Government has choices and if the choice is to support the children in those households of sole parents there are a number of ways to do that. And that's why I labour the point and I'm kind of disappointed actually that the main objective of this bill isn't about lifting children out of poverty.So then the second part of it is—and I appreciate your attempt at the answer around the temporary additional support and I'm grateful for this the numbers that you've provided in answers to other questions—how many recipients are expected to get temporary additional support? So I'm interested in the number of beneficiaries and I'm interested on average what that amount of temporary additional support is because that is another cost to the taxpayer. And every dollar spent of taxpayer money in this inflationary environment has an impact on interest rates and the costs of New Zealanders—hard-working New Zealanders—all over the country. So we must treat the $350 million with respect and dignity in scrutinising the costs.And I appreciate that the interaction between Inland Revenue and the Ministry of Social Development and benefit payments is complex. I know that some of the submitters raised—as the colleague from the Green Party raised—concern about flow-on impacts to assistance that those on sole parent benefit may be receiving that will be impacted by the child support pass-on. And I am interested to know in the numbers of those that will have reductions in other areas of support.The other piece that I'm interested in because the Minister in the chair the Hon Dr Deborah Russell has referred to it a couple of times—and I do want to acknowledge the Government for doing this for funding an evaluation. I'd like to see every piece of legislation with funding for post-implementation evaluation to be included. So if the Minister could provide detail about when that evaluation will occur and exactly what the measures of success of this policy would be measured on.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Minister of Statistics): In terms of the number of people receiving temporary additional support there's about 81000 people who receive temporary additional support at the moment. Of those 81000 people we think there's about 6450 liable parents who will benefit from their child support being an allowable cost. We think it will benefit them to the average of about $21 a week so that's the amount there. Obviously that's not the whole $345 million; it's just a small portion of it.In terms of the evaluation of this piece of legislation we've been allowed—I think 450000 has been allowed to evaluate it in the two years following implementation. Inland Revenue will undertake a process evaluation to measure the effectiveness of the initiative and they will be monitoring some of those key metrics like changes to the number of child support applications the amount of child support received and also the amount of child support arrears. We know that liable parents often end up in arrears and of course often they're not very incentivised to pay because they think the money isn't going to their kids. So this should help to change that figure.Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to come back to a line of questioning that my colleague Tama Potaka raised and that is looking at—and I'm hoping it will be included in part of the evaluation—the number of those receiving the sole parent benefit and whether or not the additional funding that will go into that household will mean greater access for sole parent benefit recipients—the majority by far and away are women—and whether we see as a result of additional financial support into the household that there will be greater numbers of sole parent benefit recipients commencing work part-time or training and if so what those numbers are.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Minister of Statistics): Thank you the Hon Louise Upston and Tama Potaka for that question which I didn't answer before—sorry I lost track of that one. Will there be more sole parents as a result of the additional support going into training or into paid employment? Of course if sole parents go into paid employment it depends how much there is how much they take on because of course if they go into sufficient they go off benefit anyway so the pass-through question becomes irrelevant.In terms of people going into training I suspect that the Training Incentive Allowance will have a much better impact on whether or not people can access training. It is worth remembering that there is extra money going into sole parent households because of this. On average we think it's about $47 a week but the median is only $20.Hon Louise Upston: Yeah 20.Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: 20. The median is only $20 a week. We know it helps. We know how many loaves of bread that buys and things like how many pints of milk. Although it will all help I don't think it's going to make a sufficient difference—or it may do but you know that's possibly not enough to make that difference. Which brings us back really to the point that this was to correct the anomaly and that being the overall objective of this. We do think it will help lift some children out of poverty but actually the real objective of this legislation is to correct the anomaly between sole parent - receiving carers and coupled or partnered - receiving carers.