Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill

I move, That the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 24 May 2023 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

Shortening select committee and reporting back to the House by 24 May means that we can have the bill in place by 1 July and get money into the pockets of sole parents quicker. The reason we have not been able to introduce this bill earlier is due to the complexities in reconciling issues between how the child support and welfare systems are administered. For example, the policy design has required separate income charging rules to be developed to account for child support being paid over a forward-looking period while ensuring this aligned with the broader income charging system under the Social Security Act 2018.

The legislative design and drafting must be prescriptive and contain limited discretion to allow for child support via the information share to be automatically charged. This requires clearly and tightly defining what is child support income.

A number of options were considered to manage this complexity, but, ultimately, the best option to accomplish our objectives was to push forward and implement the core features on 1 July 2023 in order for sole parents to get extra money in their pockets as soon as possible.

Because of this approach, some additional income charging rules for rarer cases will be considered as part of phase two. This reflects that it is important the Government get these changes in place and ensure that sole parent families can start benefiting from their child support being passed on as soon as possible. In the current economic climate and with the effects of recent weather-related events, any extra financial resources for sole parent families could not be more important.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

As I said, this is the seventh time this Minister has introduced legislation in this House with insufficient scrutiny by the public—the seventh time—and that is outrageous; absolutely outrageous. She’s just said this is a complex change—oh, so the officials get all the time, but the public don’t. The public don’t have the right to be consulted, to have time to submit, to consider the issues. So whether it’s a tax specialist, whether it is the Child Poverty Action Group, whether it is Save the Children, whether it is beneficiary advocates, whether is it the Children’s Commissioner—no, none of them get the opportunity to submit on this legislation.

I’ll tell you why—I will tell the House why. So this was a recommendation in May 2019, in the Welfare Expert Advisory Group; one of the proposals I have to say that the National Party in principle agreed with. But why is it that five years later, in the final kind of run, all of a sudden there’s a rush? Oh, guess what! Oh, it’s called an election, and this is a Labour Government that’s been criticised for not delivering, for failing to deliver to lift 100,000 children out of poverty. So what do we do? Here we have another shortened report-back—another process where the people that are compromised are the public, and yet they will say, “Oh, it’s about getting the money out the door. It’s got to be done by 1 July.” Well, there’s been five years to do that. So why is it now just a run in the final—oh, it might have something to do with the fact that the child poverty statistics came out last week, and there was no change in the last year. Oh, and I think the other thing it’s probably got to do with is that former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is about to exit the building, and they want her reputation to be intact when, actually, she’s failed to deliver on child poverty.

So the fact that five years after this policy was agreed to by the Government—five years later—

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: Hurry up, but slow down.

—we have two months—less than two months—yep, and there’s a Minister who doesn’t care about the public, doesn’t care about democracy, doesn’t care about the ability of submitters to look at complex pieces of legislation, to offer their views. If it was so urgent and it was about getting the money out the door, why aren’t the unsupported children involved? Why is the unsupported child benefit not included? No, because there’s an election round the corner and Labour are desperate to say they’ve done something, and that is all it is. So the public are the ones that are sacrificed because they don’t get to have a say in this legislation. So it is absolutely outrageous. Five years after the decision was made, but eight weeks—eight weeks—for the public.

But this is the Minister, who’s actually now the Deputy Prime Minister, who has a common level of behaviour, which is to ram legislation through this House. Where is the planning; where is the execution? “Oh, no, no. We just ram it through in the final hurdle.” And because there’s an election coming up, they’re desperate to say they’ve delivered, and that Minister is desperate to say they’ve done something, because the Child Poverty Action Group come out time and time again and say, “Of the 42 Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommendations, how many have been delivered?” Zero—zero.

So this is another example. One of the recommendations that this Minister is desperate to jam over the line—and it’s a failure in process; it is a failure to respect the public and to respect the sector. Harete Hipango and I have met many of the children’s sector over the last couple of weeks. They will be disgusted at this; they will be disgusted that they will not have the opportunity. Many of them have small organisations; they don’t have lots of staff ready to go—the same with charitable organisations who will want to submit, that I know that my colleague Maureen Pugh has been talking to. To get a bill like this that is so complex landed on them with a shortened submission time frame and a shortened report-back is, quite frankly, insulting to the very, very important work that they do on our behalf each and every day. It is an insult to them that this Minister is jamming a piece of legislation through again—this is number seven; number seven—without the ability for the public to scrutinise, when she herself says it’s a very complex piece of legislation. That is a disgrace. It’s simply not good enough.

Here we are again having a debate about a Government that is shortening due process and has zero regard for the public in their views and the sector. Even on an absolutely critical issue on measures that we all agree—we all want to see child poverty being reduced—but, actually, we want it done in a meaningful way. We want legislation that is accurate; we want legislation that we know will work, and, actually, we want the sector who was so involved with this, who is so invested in improving the lives of New Zealand children—oh but, no, they don’t have the opportunity. They are dismissed. They are patronised with a Government who continues to say and think they know best, and that they don’t seek or give the opportunity for input from the public, whether it’s those who are working on the front line, those in charitable organisations, those in the children’s sector. No, their voices don’t count.

I think it’s a sad day in this House when there’s legislation that is predominantly supported in the House, and then to have an absolute sham process, with a report back in eight weeks’ time is disgusting—absolutely disgusting. They made this decision to do this five years ago. They didn’t decide last month or the month before that, or even a year ago. Actually, the Prime Minister announced it a year ago—or the then Prime Minister did. I would have thought if the Prime Minister announced something like that then, actually, as a Minister, you’d get a wriggle on and get the work done and get it delivered and into the House. But that obviously hasn’t happened in this instance.

So there is now a rush to the finish line to get this legislation done so that the Labour Government can say they’ve done something in this area and they might be in a position, come election day, to say they’ve delivered—fully implemented—one of the 42 Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommendations. Actually, I’m sure the members of the expert advisory group would really like the opportunity to submit, and I’m sure they’d like to have more than a week to consider it, given the months and months and months of work that they put into the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. So I would say they’ll be having a quiet word—or perhaps a not so quiet word—in the ear of the Minister for Social Development and now the Deputy Prime Minister, about how disgraceful this policy is—sorry, how disgraceful this process is—when their input, their considered work, is just treated so shabbily with a process like this.

As I say, five years ago the decision was made to support this. And, while there wouldn’t be any member of Parliament in this House who doesn’t support the need to reduce the number of children living in poverty—and many of us actually focus on lifting children out of benefit-dependent homes because that is the bigger indicator of their lifetimes—lack of opportunity, of which we have one in five children in a benefitdependent home. I’m sure our submitters would like the opportunity to contribute to this process to ensure we have good legislation instead of having a rushed process that does not take their views into consideration, and we, unfortunately, then have a rushed process at the end so the Government is able to say—and even in the press release, it’s an absolute disgrace in terms of the Parliament; they’ve already put it in the press release what date they are going to start doing this. The absolute arrogance of that in disregarding a parliamentary process doesn’t go unnoticed.

I think there are, unfortunately, too many members opposite who have forgotten this is a Parliament, this is a House of Representatives. We represent, for those of us in electorates, 60,000-odd people, and their views matter. They can sit there on the other side, and smile and sneer and laugh. Actually, I take that responsibility seriously and I want the opportunity for people that I represent to be able to have an input into legislation like this which, as members opposite have said, changes something that has been in place since the 1930s. Surely if you’re changing something that’s been in place since the 1930s, you actually take a bit of time, you get it right. But no, no, we just jam it through in the last piece of legislation in the final run to the election, and they disregard the public of New Zealand.

The time has come for me to leave the House for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The House is resumed. We are debating the instruction to the committee on the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. Karen Chhour.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d just like to also speak to the fact that I am also concerned about the processes that have been followed—not just in this bill but in many bills previous to this bill. And it just goes to show the things that I myself have been saying over and over again when it comes to legislation that’s going before this House: that efficient due process is not happening. We are not hearing from the people in a proper manner; we’re not giving people enough time to come forward and express their views around this particular issue. Even though most parties will stand here and say they agree with the premise of what’s going to happen within this bill, there still needs to be a proper process where we can sit down and make sure that we get this law right. By shortening this process, it’s actually insulting to all the groups and all the people that would’ve wanted to come and make a submission but may not be able to make the time to get here to make that submission. It’s not an easy process; it takes time—and some of these charities and groups are very small and don’t have the resources to be able to put together something like this in this short period of time, and I really think that this needs to stop.

This is from a bill that was suggested five years ago as an issue, but it’s been an issue for well before that. And what I’ve heard is that “This is a very complex issue” and “This is why it’s taken so long”. Well, if it is so complex and it has taken so long, doesn’t that prove it needs more scrutiny so that we can get it right, and so that we can hear from the right people who understand how this works so that we don’t get it wrong and we don’t end up back in the House fixing a law that wasn’t done properly in the first place? All that does is make the children that we’re trying to help suffer—because we’re changing it again and again and again. Let’s get it right the first time, and let’s stop skipping proper process and make laws that are good and sound, and that will not have to come back to this House to be fixed. So I oppose shortening the committee process.

I move, That the question be now put.

The question is that the motion be agreed to. Those of that opinion will say Aye, to the contrary No. The Ayes have it. A party vote is called for. Please conduct a party vote.

Sorry—point of order, Mr Speaker. Are we voting on the closure motion or the shortened report-back date?

No, no. I’ve gone straight—I waited to see if there was another speaker, and there wasn’t, so we’ve gone straight to the question. I’m not taking the closure motion, as you will have noted. As you will know, the closure motion was not in its correct form, anyway.

No, I’m not disagreeing with that, sorry. The last vote—was that for the closure motion or the shortened report-back?

No, the closure went for the shortened report-back.

Oh, OK.

Yeah, and fair enough—so, just to explain to the House, the closure motion was not in the correct form, so it was ignored. I then looked to see if there was another call, and there wasn’t, so we now go straight to the motion, which is the question. So that’s where we—if you’ll remind me where we are with that at the moment, I think it was that a party vote has been called for. Are you happy with that, Mr Doocey?

Thank you, Mr Speaker.