Prasad Rajen: Child Support Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Child Support Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9167. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): This is my final call on this bill the Child Support Amendment Bill. It has been a long journey. We have debated this in the House in the Social Services Committee back in the House for the second reading and through the Committee stage and now we have the third reading. What we on this side of the House have expressed is disappointment about how this bill has turned out. I have heard the arguments of members opposite on this third reading which are similar to the arguments they have made in all of the other stages.There is a fundamental difference that we have with the way in which the Government has gone about this particular bill. Any legislation ought to have certain principles that guide it. This is the Child Support Amendment Bill and therefore the principles that guide it ought to be around children. We ought at least to have taken the opportunity in this bill to design a system that actually does put the interests of the children centre stage and then to look at how it pans out.The disappointment that we have is that that is something that did not happen. In comment after comment tonight from Government members they have indeed said: “Well that was not the purpose of the bill.” That particular explanation falls very short. The purpose of the bill is child support. I guess the most objectionable comment tonight was from the chair of the Social Services Committee when he said that the bill was not going to be beholden to any United Nations—and what he meant was any United Nations convention around the rights of children. So it was not going to be beholden to any of that; it was going to be what was good for us here in New Zealand right now.I think the chair of the Social Services Committee actually misses a point there because I am sure he would not argue that New Zealand should abandon all of the conventions to which it has been a signatory because if we did that would be untenable. We would become a pariah in the Western World. Nobody would want to do that but Sam Lotu-Iiga was actually suggesting something like that. I certainly found that objectionable—objectionable more from the point of view that he as chair of the Social Services Committee did not express an intense and deep understanding of the notion of building a policy platform that places children right at the centre of it.I know that other members opposite have also said: “But this is a technical bill; it doesn’t do that.” But it ought to have done that. There has been no substantive rebuttal from members opposite to that argument although it is a very powerful argument. The best interests of the children should have been placed right at the centre of this consideration.We on this side of the House are not alone in taking that view as strongly as we do. Many reputable submitters advised of the importance of including a provision in the bill that stated very clearly that the interests of the children would be the central guiding principle. Those who submitted on this point were significant organisations. The Children’s Commissioner submitted a very thoughtful and detailed submission. The Human Rights Commission the New Zealand Law Society the Auckland Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children the Child Poverty Action Group and the Dunedin Community Law Centre were just some organisations that actually came and said that here was an opportunity to take that principle and put it centre stage.So the theme was consistent and the advocacy was powerful yet it was simply disregarded because here was a bill that was seen as an Inland Revenue Department - type bill because that is where the child support system is based and therefore it was just the formula that needed to be made right. It was a mistake that that happened. The Government flatly rejected the advice of those eminent organisations. I do wonder what this bill would have looked like if we actually did put the interests of children centre stage and really did get the best advice we could from around the country from around our experts. I wonder whether we would have a 21st century piece of legislation for this important aspect of our lives and the lives of our children. The Government was not interested and it proceeded with what it describes as I said as a technical piece of legislation and that view is reflected in the current manifestation of the bill. So the bill is disappointing for that reason.It would be useful for members opposite to realise that every piece of legislation is guided by a set of principles and those principles ought to be articulated. We do have a lot of advice on what those principles are. These are well-established principles in terms of philosophy and ethics as well as good science. If the principles were based on the needs of children putting their interests first then the consideration of their financial interests would have been quite different. But what we have here is just a consideration of financial interests—who pays and how much. Parenting is more than just that. Parenting is about how parents do participate far more palpably and powerfully in the lives of their children. So this bill then is reductionist. It has reduced a complex set ofrelationships between parents who are separated the needs of their children and who pays to just the question of dollars and percentage of care.This approach inevitably has unintended consequences for those who have the primary responsibility for the care of our children. For example there will be a loss of income for the primary caregiver. If 28 percent is 2 nights out of 7 and therefore the income you get is reduced accordingly the needs of the parents do not reduce but the amount of money does. Here there is some attempt—and I recognise it—to balance the cost to one parent of having a child 2 days a week and the other parent having it 5 days a week. But clearly those of us who have been parents those of us who have been around parents and others who have been around children and parents know what it takes to look after children—having full-time responsibility for them even if they go away for 2 nights and the costs do not come down proportionately. So there will be unintended consequences in that particular area. The focus on percentages can easily be gamed particularly by the contributing partner and if it is gamed then its effect will be quite negative.The second point I want to make is that we have had lots of comments in this Parliament and elsewhere about the scourge of child poverty in our country—270000 children live in poverty. That is immoral it is untenable it is unethical and it is almost criminal that we allow children to live in poverty. Quite a number of those are children of sole parents who are surviving on contributions from a partner through the child support system. So here was another opportunity.If children were placed at the centre then at least there would have been a far more robust discussion about how the child support system could be used to address poverty in that segment of our population who live on limited income. In fact what we have possibly done is make life more miserable for parents on very limited income and living on the breadline or in poverty.It actually makes it worse because the provision that was suggested to us by eminent organisations again was the pass-on mechanism which other countries are using as well. We know that the pass-on mechanism does actually encourage parents to meet their obligations to contribute. Yet there was no interest throughout the stages of this bill in looking at that provision seriously. It was simply put aside. We could get no traction in the select committee from the Government members on that.So I think here then was another lost opportunity and this is what happens when we do not develop strong principles—well-argued principles—and operate on that basis. This could have been a cross-Parliament approach to addressing this problem because we ought not to have as many differences as we do. Tonight we will debate other bills as well that reflect that kind of difference of opinion. So it is for those reasons that we will not be supporting this bill. Thank you.