Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I move, That the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This is a significant day for sole parent families and whānau in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is a day on which the Government is righting a wrong in our welfare system that for many years has seen vulnerable New Zealanders and their children worse off.

Firstly, I wish to start by thanking the Social Services and Community Committee for their hard work and careful consideration of this bill, and the submitters who took the time to give their views on this legislation. This bill is a complex one, and the work of the committee has ensured that the bill is as robust as possible.

This bill contains important amendments that will pass on child support to parents on a sole parent rate of benefit. It will remove a discriminatory policy that has withheld child support from some of our most vulnerable sole parents and, in doing so, deliver on the Government’s commitment to put dignity and fairness back in the welfare system.

As a Government, we are focused on the bread and butter issues and the things that matter most to New Zealanders, like tackling the cost of living. This change will also ensure that approximately 41,550 sole parent families will have an average of $47 more in their pockets per week, with a median gain of $20 per week after abatement of income-tested financial assistance. This additional income will provide critical support to whānau and see up to 14,000 children lifted out of poverty by 2023-24.

Currently, child support payments are retained by the Government rather than passed on to sole parent beneficiaries to support their children. However, this is not the case for other beneficiaries who have their child support passed on, such as those on a couple’s rate of benefit or those only receiving supplementary assistance. This bill fixes this inequity by passing on child support administered by Inland Revenue directly to sole parent beneficiaries, as is currently done for other parents. This child support will then be treated as income by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) for benefits and other assistance.

These changes respond to the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s recommendation to pass on child support. They are another example of this Government’s commitment to deliver on our welfare overhaul work programme, put dignity in the welfare system, and make it fairer for individuals, families, and whānau. They build on our many achievements for sole parents and whānau to date. We implemented the Families Package, which helped around 330,000 families in its first year—more than half of all families with children in New Zealand. We have made record increases to main benefits, including further investment through Budget 2023 that saw sole parents receive an extra $31.83 per week from 1 April this year.

As a first step of the review of Working for Families, we have implemented changes that mean 346,000 families will be better off by an average of $20 per week, and an estimated 6,000 children will be lifted out of poverty. We have indexed childcare assistance income thresholds to average wage growth so that income thresholds will continue to increase each year, with a further one-off increase in 2023 to make up for the thresholds being frozen in 2010. And we have increased dental grants from $300 to $1,000—to name just a few.

We are continuing to invest in support for families and whānau, including our sole parent families. Alongside the significant investments through Budget 2023 to provide 20 hours’ free early childhood education to whānau with two-year-olds from April 2024, we are expanding eligibility criteria, extending the duration period, and increasing the rates of flexible childcare assistance. Around 540 families are expected to be supported by these changes in 2024-2025. Aligning the guaranteed childcare assistance payment rate with the highest childcare assistance subsidy rate and indexing it to inflation in April 2024, it is estimated that there will be 150 children for whom guaranteed childcare assistance payment is paid.

As well as providing additional financial support to sole parent families and whānau, the bill removes the requirement for sole parents on a benefit to apply for a formula assessment of child support through Inland Revenue. This means that these parents will be able to make arrangements that better suit their circumstances, such as formula assessment, voluntary, or private agreements. Research suggests that passing on child support will increase the incentive for liable parents to meet their child support obligations. This is likely because liable parents are more willing to pay child support when they know that their child will receive their financial support.

This bill will also reduce the burden on clients to declare child support paid to them. Inland Revenue will share child support information with MSD so that MSD can charge this income more accurately. MSD will automate how child support applies to clients’ assistance to charge the income forwards over the period it is intended to support the child and will reduce the administrative burden on parents. These changes won’t just give parents and whānau more time and energy to spend with their children; they are important safeguards to minimise the potential for debt to be incurred by families.

This bill will come into force on 1 July 2023, which means parents will be able to receive the benefits of child support in the coming months. Our prioritisation of these changes highlights how the Government is focused on addressing the cost of living pressures by putting more money in the pockets of low-income families. Passing on child support to parents on a sole parent rate of benefit is the right thing to do. We want to ensure that sole parent families get the full benefit of their child support payments and that they have more in their pockets. This bill does that. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am pleased to take the first call on behalf of the National Party in the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. I want to just put some context into this debate so those who are following the debate in the third reading can just understand a few things. The first thing is that we’ve seen a 21 percent increase in the number of sole parents on benefit in the last five and a half years; that’s a 21 percent increase. And none of my questions on the earlier stages of the bill have given me any confidence that this piece of legislation won’t add to that number.

The reason that’s concerning is a couple of fold: firstly, we see that there are, today, approximately 36,000 more children being raised in benefit-dependent homes than when Labour came into office in 2017—36,000. Now, I think many New Zealanders would be shocked to know that one in five New Zealand children are being raised in benefit-dependent homes today, so that is why National is concerned about the 21 percent increase of the numbers receiving sole parent benefit. So I do want to just address that concern from the start, because National’s view very clearly is that the social contract exists and actually some of the Ministry of Social Development’s own documentation talks about the fact—and actually I quoted it in an earlier reading in this debate from the regulatory impact statement. It basically says where someone and their family can provide for themselves, the expectation is that they do. In this instance, if there is a liable parent, then the expectation is that they provide for their children and that funding goes to the receiving parent. On the surface of it, that should be agnostic between whether or not the receiving parent is on a benefit or not. Except in this instance, when the receiving parent is on a benefit purely and only for the reason of being a sole parent, then the child support payment, first and foremost, should cover those costs. That’s why, very clearly in the law, there is a difference between how sole parents are treated in this way and why those on other benefits are treated.

So the Minister says the primary, sole purpose of making this change is to make the sole parent benefit line up with others. Well, National says actually it’s different, and it should be, because the sole parent is receiving money, and should be, from a liable parent so that parents—and, you know, the majority of them are fathers who are the liable parents—pay for their children, they pay for the costs associated with their family. So that is a clear view from the National Party: that if you have children, you should be responsible for them. So we don’t agree with the position that a sole parent receiving the sole parent benefit should be treated the same way as others. That’s the first point that I want to put on record in this debate. There is a social contract, and parents should provide for their children whether they are in the same household or not. When they’re not in the same household, the liable parent should pay. And if they are receiving a sole parent benefit, they are there because they are a parent—and the other parent, the liable parent should pay. It’s actually as simple as that.

It’s interesting, the Minister has finally admitted that this payment is necessary because of the cost of living crisis. Well, why hasn’t the Government focused on taking actual steps that would reduce the cost of living crisis instead of yet again finding a solution that means paying more money. But they don’t focus on that side and they don’t focus on how to reduce the number of people who are reliant on the sole parent benefit. And I think that’s the bit that continues to frustrate me in this debate on the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill, because actually, if you think about children being raised in benefit-dependent homes, we do know they are better off if a parent is in work. And so that’s the disappointment from this side. So now that the Minister has said the need for this is because of the cost of living crisis—actually, National believes they should have taken some steps to alleviate the cost of living crisis rather than finding more ways to push money out the door. What we do know is that for the children being raised in benefit-dependent homes, they are the ones that, financially, are the worst off. And so from a child poverty reduction perspective, National is keen on this because it will make a difference to those families—$20 a week doesn’t sound a lot, but in the cost of living crisis, that $20 a week will mean, for some sole parent households, standing still. So it is good from that perspective.

But the question I asked in the committee stage that I didn’t get a decent answer to was the $354 million that is the price tag of this particular policy change—I was interested to know what other options had been considered that would have had a more lasting impact on the children in those households. Because what we do believe is that’s where the focus should be, and that’s why the National Party’s focus is how do we actually support sole parents who are receiving the benefit into work, as opposed to just continuing to find another way to provide financial assistance. The financial assistance might help today or tomorrow—or actually it comes in on 1 July, so from 1 July. But longer term, we want to see more of those families with a parent in work, because we know in terms of lifelong outcomes that that’s what makes a difference for those children and that’s our focus.

So, yes, this legislation might go some way in terms of child poverty reduction; there were some estimates for that. What there weren’t estimates for, though, which is particularly frustrating given that the Minister mentioned it in this House this afternoon, was that there’s an expectation that more liable parents will pay. Well, not once have we seen numbers of how many more liable parents will pay. And if you can estimate how many children will be come out of poverty as a result, surely, I would have thought, they would be estimates, forecasts of how many more liable parents will pay. Because, equally, that is an important value that the National Party holds in terms of personal responsibility in that parents pay for their children. So it would be great as a part of the evaluation if we were able to see how many more liable parents will pay, because that will offset some of the $354 million this policy will cost. We haven’t seen that.

Again, the Minister said “This is about equality of different benefit types for the pass on of child support.” I suggest that’s just actually a ruse, because it hasn’t been applied to the unsupported child’s benefit. So you can’t say you’re fixing an inequity issue on one hand and then not do it for another classification of beneficiary, and so I actually don’t think that’s the real reason. I think the Government saw, with the cost of living crisis, that sole parents on benefit were doing it very tough—and they are. And that is actually because of the cost of living crisis. So the Minister wanted to find a way to get some money out the door to them, but actually didn’t bother about those on the unsupported child’s benefit, which actually this side of the House is particularly frustrated by. Because just as it makes a difference in a sole parent household, it would have made a big difference also to those unsupported receiving the unsupported child’s benefit.

So it is with some reluctance that the National Party supports—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Point of order, Camilla Belich. It must be important, to interrupt the speaker.

Camilla Belich: I just wanted to raise a point of order because the member in her speech referred to what the Government was doing as a “ruse”. And as you know, it’s contrary to Standing Orders to call or indicate that something is dishonest or a lie, and the definition of “ruse” is “the intention to deceive”.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I did hear that comment and I have given her the benefit of the doubt on that one, in the context. So I will allow that to carry on.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: So, as I say, it is with reluctance that National supports this bill, because unsupported children deserve to be supported. If the name of this game was all about equality—which clearly it’s not, but we do say that children living in benefit-dependent homes, if we are to lift children out of poverty, we must do that. That’s the reason we’re supporting this bill.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to stand and speak on the third reading of the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. A real pleasure because I think it’s a highly complex piece of legislation, and all of us in the Social Services Committee, I think, worked quite diligently. I have to acknowledge the fact that we don’t often have Inland Revenue come in and give us advice—tax matters are often quite complex—and so I want to just acknowledge the members, our officials, and also our clerks for organising this for us. The Minister for Social Development and Employment—I’m delighted she’s brought this bill to the House, and I’m delighted to be speaking on it. As I said, it is a complex bill, but at the heart of the matter it does create or does enable an inequity to be addressed.

Now, the member who just resumed her seat, Louise Upston, said that, actually, it’s much of a muchness; it’s all fear of fear. But actually, what this bill does is a little bit different to how that member explained it, in my understanding. So, for example, if a parent is re-partnered and on a benefit—so re-partnered, they are on a couples’ benefit—child support pass on occurs for them in the way that this bill is changing the law for sole parents. So sole parents currently do not get child support pass on. Now, that is when there is one parent in the household and they are not receiving this. If you’re re-partnered and in a form of relationship, you do get child support pass on. So that, in itself, is an inequity that I think needs to be addressed and changed, and that is quite simply what this bill is doing. I think it’s very important that we make it extremely clear that this bill takes that piece of discrimination away.

Now, there are other pieces of work to be done, and the member who resumed her seat has mentioned the UCB, the unsupported child’s benefit. This is a piece of work that is ongoing in another ministry, and this will be addressed. We do not disagree that that needs to occur. However, the best opportunity to fix this piece of legislation and this problem is what we have, in fact, done, so I’m delighted to stand here and speak on this bill.

It’s one of those things that, I think, people may say it’s a very small change. But materially, about 41,000 families will be positively affected by this. It means that the children who live in these households with sole parents will have the same entitlement to have their liable parent receive income as a child whose parent has re-partnered and gets that money. That’s plainly and simply the way that it should be. It’s plainly and simply the way that we should have legislation operating in this country.

I also want to just address the concept that somehow by us ensuring that this small piece of discrimination that affects 41,000 families will suddenly open the floodgates for single parents to suddenly all want to be on a benefit. Nobody wants to be a sole parent on a benefit. It is not the lifestyle of the rich and famous. I’ve been there; I’ve done that. In fact, the Hon Louise Upston has been there and done that. The Hon Carmel Sepuloni has been there and done that. I think it’s very, very clear from our experiences, but from what we hear across the country, that living on a benefit is not a lifestyle choice. I think it is incredibly, incredibly important to state that in this House. We are not seeing an increase of beneficiaries who are sole parents because suddenly they are receiving $20 more, on average, a week, or will be on 1 July. It’s about our society currently. It’s about the fact that we’ve been through a whole pile of things. It’s about the choice and the decision of families to break up when it’s not safe to be there in the same relationship. I don’t think the two can be conflated, and I think it is not appropriate for us to try and balance those out.

So with that, I just want to say that I think this is a good piece of legislation. It’s an important piece of legislation, and I utterly commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have the responsibility to take a third reading call for the National Party on the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. Before I turn to address the House, if I may acknowledge Judge Dugald Matheson, Family Court Judge of W’anganui, who has presided on the bench there for the last 12 years. Judge Dugald Matheson is retiring from the bench. He was appointed in 2011 whilst I was still serving as a Family Court Judge, and I had the distinct pleasure and honour to appear before His Honour, Judge Dugald Matheson, who is now retiring after many years’ service as a Family Court lawyer and many years of welcomed and treasured service on the bench in W’anganui.

When Judge Matheson was on the bench and I appeared before him in the Family Court, I often had child clients who were the children of sole parents and were also the subject of liable parents who often forfeited their responsibility to financially contribute and contribute in other meaningful ways in their child’s or their children’s lives. This Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendments Bill has been supported by the National Party, with reservations that have been outlined by my colleague the Hon Louise Upston. The reservation that the National Party has expressed about this legislation is that the onus of responsibility—not the right of the parent but the onus of responsibility—of a liable parent is to support their child. Regrettably, Government policy in legislation has actually been reinforced, in ways that have locked many people into an oppressive sense of dependency on State welfarism.

I heard my colleague across the House say that this is not a lifestyle choice. Reality check: regrettably, I’ve represented a number of parents that, through generations, have become locked into State welfare dependency, which had, through the course of generations, become something of an oppressive dependent welfarism. So reality check: I come from communities rich in culture but poor in terms of some of those values around mana motuhake, which I’ve often talked about in this House. In mana motuhake, to explain to people who don’t really understand what that concept is, mana is about the inherent dignity and the inherent essence of being able to stand with support; motuhake is the dependent community that you are reliant on and that you come from. Mana motuhake is what I often talk about, and that starts in the whānau; it is not a State welfare responsibility. State welfarism is not something that should be a right of entitlement. On child support, I’ve talked in this House again where this bill has focused on the sole parent rights. I come from a generation where we weren’t premised—I wasn’t nurtured in the values and principles of rights. It was about duty, loyalty, service, and responsibility. And somehow over the course of time, particularly with State welfare policies locking in a dependency that shifted from a responsibilities premise back to a rights premise.

So back to the bill. This is about child support. This should be about what goes directly to, as I’ve said in an earlier speech in this House, the mouths of our babes. The whole focus of this legislation is about rights, entitlements of sole parents, supported by the State, who has collected from the taxpayer, and liable parents—those who contribute but those who don’t and have shirked their responsibility as a liable parent fiscally and in many other ways. It’s the State, it’s the taxpayer, that has supplemented the contribution to the sole parent to provide and to feed the very mouths of those babes that I talk about.

A lot of people may not understand what this legislation is about, and I’ve heard colleagues in the House say—and the Minister who opened the debate today—that this is a complex piece of legislation. Yes, and that was my very point right at the first reading. Because of the complexity of this, why was this introduced under urgency? Why has this been brushed through in the space of some four weeks, when there have been thousands of submitters—thousands—who have implored the Government: “Actually, let’s not just focus on the children who are in the care of the sole parents, and who the liable parent is responsible for.” There are many children of two parents—a mother and a father, be they sole benefit or liable parents—who are not in the care of either of those parents; they are in the care of caregivers, and that is what the unsupported child’s benefit is about, which this Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill totally disregards—

Angie Warren-Clark: We’re working on it.

HARETE HIPANGO: Totally disregards. And whilst we’re working on it, how long does it take this Government to realise and recognise this has been introduced under urgency and has totally dispensed with that bulk number of children? And I posed questions at the committee of the whole House to the Minister: how many of our children are not receiving the benefit of this from the liable parent, because they’re not in the care of either one or the other or both of the biological parents but are with a caregiver? And I can share with this House that many of those caregivers, who I represented, again, in my role in the Family Court, are nannies, grandmothers—in the main, grandmothers—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ms Hipango, we’ve been pretty tolerant. Let’s get back to the bill—not what might be in the bill.

HARETE HIPANGO: So back to the bill, Mr Speaker: it’s identified that the recipients, the caregivers, of the unsupported child’s benefit do not directly benefit from this. And that’s the concern, and those were valid questions that were raised and presented to the Minister—to be told that this is a piece of work that’s under review and Oranga Tamariki are looking at it.

The issue and the concern, and it’s directly relevant—the pass on is about the pass on of the contribution from the liable parent, which previously has been supplemented by the State. It’s not going to the very children who would benefit from this. And this is called the child support amendment bill, not the sole parent or the sole parent beneficiary bill. That’s my point. So it’s a pass on, but, actually, it’s a knock-on by this Government, and the knock-on is that there’s been a penalty overlooking the relevance and the significance of our children. And I am a child advocate, and I’m the children’s spokesperson for the National Party. But the thousands of children who do not benefit from this legislation—this is about tweaking the process for the collection of funds from a liable parent that’s previously been supplemented by the State, when now, under this legislation, there’s no longer the requirement for a sole parent to have to apply for a formula assessment to the Inland Revenue Department that has collected and accumulated the taxpayer fund. What’s of note, and interest too—and this is where the public will be interested—is there’s a news article report dated 27 March 2023: the Government keeps about $150 million each year of child support payments, which would otherwise go to sole parents who rely on benefits. However, this legislation, to be effective as from July, will now let those parents receive their child support payments directly from the contributing liable parent.

So that’s what this legislation is about. But the relevant fact that I make—and the Minister and Government did not respond—is how many children are missing out because the Government is taking its time with the review under Oranga Tamariki; the Government didn’t take its time on introducing this legislation under urgency to rush it through the House for it to be implemented and effective as of July.

So that’s the very point: the oversight, the knock-on effect that this has on those children who should also be entitled. A responsible Government has dropped the ball on this one.

Thank you, e te Mana Whakawā. It’s an honour and a privilege to speak on this bill, the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. I need to respond to the last speaker, Harete Hipango. She asked a question about the onus of responsibility to support their child, in terms of the liable parent, and she also asked a question: why is it introduced under urgency? The Minister for Social Development and Employment, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, has said that this will lift up to 14,000 children out of poverty—14,000 children out of poverty. And that is the response to the question raised by that member.

I was somewhat confused listening to that last member, so I think I need to actually quote the legislative statement tabled by the Minister today, because I think that will actually clear up some confusion. So I want to quote—Mr Speaker, if you can please allow me this—“This Bill proposes amendments to ensure that beneficiaries receiving a sole parent rate of main benefit are not treated differently from other beneficiaries.” It proposes that, from 1 July 2023, child support collected by Inland Revenue would no longer be retained and would instead be paid to those beneficiaries. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) would then treat these payments as income when determining entitlements to a rate of a benefit or any other assistance.

So that basically means that, before, a sole parent who was receiving the sole parent benefit needed to apply to Inland Revenue to be assessed to receive child support from Inland Revenue. Then, Inland Revenue informs MSD of what needs to be paid separately. This would make it a lot clearer—a one-step process. It will allow Inland Revenue to—instead of having 12 months—spread the payments out on to 52 weeks, making it simpler. It means an extra $20 a week for a sole parent. For a sole parent, $20 a week would mean—I don’t know—10 loaves of bread, because we’re always saying that this Budget is supporting for today; building for the future. It would allow 10 $2 loaves of bread. It would allow how many litres of milk? It would allow for that—$20.

I want to get back to the question that was asked by that member Harete Hipango: why is it introduced under urgency? The answer to that is that this will lift up to 14,000 more children out of poverty. Can I remind the House that the objectives of the Budget have been, since it was called a Wellbeing Budget, five objectives. One of those objectives was about child wellbeing—lifting children out of poverty. We’ll lift 14,000 children out of poverty.

Also, I have been a person who has been a liable parent, and I have been paying liable parent to my mother when I didn’t have my children in my care, because she was the other custodian of my two older children. It felt somewhat unfair to me that I’m paying child support to Inland Revenue and they didn’t pass that on to the parent—to my mother—who was caring for my children at the time. So this would incentivise liable parents to actually pay their liable parent contribution because they know it’s going to end up in the household where their children live. This is evidenced by research that it will incentivise liable parents to pay their liable parent contribution. And, might I say, I did pay my liable parent contribution; I didn’t have anyone chasing after me.

Again, I have said in my speech previously that the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill will lift 14,000 children out of poverty. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand on behalf of ACT to speak on the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. I stand in support of this bill, but with reservations as well. Past speakers have spoken about some of those reservations, and ACT has a similar view when it comes to some of the issues that have been brought to the House today.

So this is about making sure that children are getting the money that is paid by a liable parent, and it goes directly to a sole parent in order to help with the costs of raising their child. We do believe that parents should be financially responsible for their children. This does not stop just because a relationship does. We have to make sure that the kids are getting looked after by the liable parent also, not just the parent that has custody of the children at the time.

But I, too, also have concerns around the speed that this bill went through the process under urgency, where there were many questions that, really, I don’t think were answered around the unsupported child’s benefit—allowing the amount of submissions that I think we could have got if we had extended that time frame instead of doing this under urgency. Because there could have been ways that we may have changed this bill to enable us to also include the unsupported children while the process of Oranga Tamariki was going on in the meantime. But these are the children that are going to be missing out on something that the Government across the House has said is so vital to make sure that we are looking after children in need, we are looking after children that are often the most vulnerable because of this fact, and they’re going to be missing out on this. I struggle with that because I know many grandparents, sisters, aunts, and uncles who have taken on that responsibility are also under financial strain themselves. So that’s the reason why I was really concerned at the speed at which this bill went through, as we couldn’t have proper consultation around that.

I also have concerns around the fact that we are also extending greater assistance to liable parents who are on benefits to help them to pay their child support in a way that I feel may have added a little bit more extra pressure and burden on the taxpayer for the liable parent. I was kind of concerned about that. But at the end of the day, if the money is getting to the children and is getting directed straight to those children who need food in their tummy and a roof over their head, ACT will always support a process that helps kids that are in need.

But really, next time, with the work that is in progress that we are talking about in the future of Oranga Tamariki, can we have a robust process where we make sure we get this right, so that there isn’t a double system when it comes to some children get it and some children don’t? I feel that is a reasonable request. So ACT will support this process, but with reservations that there will be many children who are in need that should have been included in this bill that weren’t. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

It’s a pleasure to be supporting the third reading of the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill, just reflecting on how much, throughout the different stages of the bill, the discussions have been on political choices. We’ve built an income support system—and successive Governments have chosen to create an income support system—that has kept our families in poverty. We’ve created an income support system with sanctions that have penalised families, and yet, throughout the passage of this bill, we’ve also seen the choice of language by the National Party that, despite knowing that they’ve contributed to creating an income support system that has kept our children in poverty, they now talk about their so-called concerns about families in benefit-dependent households and the poor outcomes that people in benefit-dependent households experience. They’re pretending that those poor outcomes have nothing to do with the decisions that successive Governments have made to keep people locked in poverty.

It should come as no surprise that of course families in poverty experience poor outcomes because of the decisions that Governments have made, and today we’re finally moving a bill through that will mend some of those mistakes that have been made before, which was to create a system that has forced families into a traditional Western-style, Victorian-era family structure that simply does not reflect families of today or traditional family structures of the past. The Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill will go some way towards alleviating poverty and ensuring that households receive the money that is supposed to be going to the child—rather than creating a system that pretends to create some form of responsibilities for the so-called liable parent, they’re actually seeing material differences for the children in the first place.

I want to acknowledge there were comments, around the passage of this bill, when it came to the time frames and urgency. It is true it could have had a more robust exchange regarding the potential for further alleviating poverty if the child support pass on hadn’t been treated as income for the purposes of determining someone’s benefit entitlements, but the truth is that this bill will go some way towards alleviating poverty, and the Greens support this as a result. I do think we’ll need to have more conversations, though, about the child support system more broadly, because, at the end of the day, what we are retaining is a system that still puts a child’s ability to be in a household that thrives dependent on the family structure rather than on all of us rallying to say that a child’s wellbeing should be unconditional and it should not be dependent on people’s family arrangements—and, again, this outdated idea that it is only the biological parents who have responsibility to raise a child. We all have a collective responsibility to our children in Aotearoa. It takes a whole village—a whole country—to raise healthy, thriving children.

So the Greens will be supporting this third reading. We want to thank submitters—people who shared their lived experiences of receiving child support and who clearly communicated to us the need to have a more fair system. Again, it was indeed a missed opportunity to have not done modelling to assess the child poverty reduction impacts when it came to treating that income as a potential abatement for benefit entitlement, but that is all stuff we can continue exploring, and I want to urge my Labour colleagues to set more aspirational goals, to not just reduce child poverty but to fully eliminate it. We need to actually meet the challenges of today with the ambition that it requires. Twenty dollars’ net gain for those families will help, but is it enough? Of course it is not. The question is: what else will be coming from the Labour Party to ensure that no child is locked in poverty? We look forward to seeing future legislation from this Government to end poverty once and for all.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to speak on the third and final reading of this bill, the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. This bill is really important because, as we’ve heard, it removes that discriminatory policy that sees parents receiving a sole parent rate of benefit treated differently to those receiving other benefits with respect to their child support.

To illustrate the unfairness of the current situation, I just want to take you through a hypothetical example. If you’ve got a sole parent managing childcare, managing work, and taking care of their two children and then, through no fault of their own, they lose their job and become reliant on the sole parent rate of the benefit, what that means is that they have to go to Inland Revenue Department (IRD) for a formula assessment of child support. But once that’s done, what they find out is that all of the child support that would then be paid through to them actually gets retained by the Government, gets retained to the point until all the funds that went towards their benefit have been recouped, and only then can whatever’s leftover be passed on to them.

Now, just imagine this person then going and having a bit of a chat to the neighbour and finding out that the neighbour is now living with their new partner and together they’re receiving the couple’s rate of the benefit. But what the person then finds out is that their neighbour has all their child support being passed on to them, and so none of that is being retained. The only issue is that the neighbour then has to just let Ministry of Social Development know that that’s what they’re receiving in child support, because then it can be taken into account as income.

So what this bill will do is actually remove that discriminatory policy. What it does is it removes the requirement for those on sole parent rate of benefit to apply for an IRD formula assessment. It also ensures that all of their child support payments are passed on to them. It will be treated as income, but if you look at it, on balance what we end up with is thousands of children being lifted out of poverty, and what it means is that, once all of those abatements are taken into account, people will be, on average, $20 a week better off. That’s a huge amount of money for many families in the context of current cost of living issues.

One of the things that submitters raised during the select committee process was just a concern that because some parents may be receiving variable amounts of child support, there was a concern that we didn’t want to see extra benefit debt accruing as a result. What I was really encouraged by was the amount of work in the policy development phase that had gone into making sure that income-sharing arrangements could mean that this wouldn’t happen, because it was a very accurate assessment of what somebody was receiving in child support and what the implications would be for any other assistance.

This is a very important bill that will, as I’ve said, lift thousands of children out of poverty. But it’s not in isolation; it actually builds on a lot of the other work that the Government has been doing in terms of increasing family incomes—things like increasing the benefit, but also removing the financial penalty for sole parent beneficiaries who didn’t name the other parent of their child and then applied for child support. So that was something else that works in tandem with this. But also things like increasing family incomes in terms of the winter energy payment for those many families who will be receiving the winter energy payment right now—particularly down our way, it is particularly cold. So that is something that many, many people are really appreciative of. We’ve also changed the abatement threshold so that, again, people can actually go out, earn more income, and then retain more of that income to support their family.

So there’s a lot of things that this Government has done to increase family incomes, and this is a further step in that direction. I’m very happy to commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on behalf of the National Party on the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill in this, its third reading. National will support this bill, but it’s very pragmatic support and it’s certainly not without reservations. A number of those reservations have been expressed already by my colleagues, but I do note that, in particular, this bill contains many aspects from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group report that was released back on 3 May 2009—so that’s just over four years ago.

I note that one of the speakers from the Government side spoke absolutely passionately about how the reason for urgency behind this bill was it was going to lift 14,000 children out of poverty. I would have thought that that would have been a very good reason to have been looking at this bill four years ago, not under urgency now after a frustrating and truncated process. If there was genuine urgency to it, surely four years ago would have been a good time to be exercising that urgency.

Another contextual element of this bill was discussed by my colleague the Hon Louise Upston when she said that there had been a 21 percent increase in sole parent support since Labour had come into Government. When that reads as one in five children in a benefit-dependent home, again, we would have thought that maybe some urgency would also be given to ensuring that those on benefits were given that parallel support to get off benefits, because we know that benefit dependency is not a successful outcome for these children. And so, urgency four years ago might have been good—if indeed it is that urgent to contribute, obviously, to assisting 14,000 children out of poverty—but, equally, some parallel action to assist people off benefit so that one in five children are not being raised in a benefit-dependent home.

The Minister also talked about how necessary this was in this time of high inflation and cost of living crisis, and that speaks of plugging holes and not treating the cause. Again, we would have expected to see parallel action to stem inflation and to stem the cost of living crisis, rather than having to constantly pour money into plugging holes. So it does feel like a lot of the reasons behind this legislation and the reasons behind the urgency have come about because of the situation this Government has found itself in, in terms of the inflation and cost of living crisis it has brought about under its term.

A number of speakers speak as if there is no financial impact for the taxpayer on this piece of legislation. In fact, it is not insignificant: $354 million that the taxpayer will be picking up in terms of that support payment not being taken off the amount that the taxpayer contributes. So it’s very much easier for us to be kind with other people’s money, and in fact, that $354 million does come not from members of this House but from taxpayers in our country. So, it would be very useful for us to remember things like that when—

The member’s time is up.

Kia ora. It’s my pleasure to take this split call on the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. We pass a lot of legislation through this House, but few things are as important as increasing the wellbeing of our tamariki and, in particular, lifting them out of poverty. And this bill does just that; it removes that discriminatory policy that withheld child support payments from parents receiving a sole parent rate of main benefit, and their children. In practice, this will mean that child support will be passed on to parents receiving the sole parent rate of main benefit and be treated as income against their benefit. You know, child support pass on rates—it’s going to benefit around 41,550 sole parent families. They’ll be better off as a result of this policy. It will raise the median weekly income about $20 per week after abatement of the benefit and other assistance, and this will lift around about 14,000 more children out of poverty.

This bill continues this Government’s work to create a fairer welfare system that upholds people’s dignity. And that’s what this Government is about; easing the cost of living and raising our tamariki out of poverty. The problem around, you know, beneficiaries is they’re on that sole parent rate of benefit and they do not receive that child support, which differs from other beneficiaries who do, which is discriminatory—plain discriminatory. And this is why we need this bill.

Passing on the child support was recommended by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group back in 2009, and this change will build on earlier policy changes made in 2020 to remove the financial penalty for sole parent beneficiaries who do not name the other parent of their child and apply for child support, which was also recommended by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group back in 2019. So this is a good thing and it complements the other ranges of initiatives that this Government is doing. You know, we’re focused on the bread and butter issues and the things that matter most to New Zealanders like tackling the cost of living. And this change will also ensure that over 41,000 sole parent families will have an average of $47 more in their pockets per week, with a median gain of around about $20 per week after their abatement of income-tested and financial assistance. So it is extremely important that this legislation is passed. It adds to our overall efforts into easing the cost of living and for the people that are doing it tough out there.

So, as the Minister stated earlier, this bill is about righting a wrong in our welfare system that for many years has seen vulnerable New Zealanders and their children worse off. And I want to finish by thanking the Social Services and Community Committee for their hard work and careful consideration of this bill and the submitters who took the time to give their views on this important bit of legislation. As mentioned earlier, this bill is a complex one and the work of the committee has ensured that this bill is as robust as possible. So I commend this bill to the House.

I’m pleased to take a call on the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill; this is the third reading. Firstly, given it is the third reading, I’d like to acknowledge the Minister, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, the Social Services and Community Committee, officials, staff, submitters, and all those involved in progressing this to its third reading.

This is my first call on this bill, and when I look at this bill it reminds me of my upbringing and the struggles of a single parent. In my case, raised by a mother widowed very young with five children to raise, who struggled. Every cent mattered, albeit in this case there was no child support. Nevertheless, it is relevant because it’s about poverty. Notwithstanding, I too know the impacts of a time when I had to resort to Government support, at a time where I was left as a solo mum, and I too can say every single cent mattered. I’m also reminded of the whakataukī—the proverb—“te pani me te rawakore”. I just want to acknowledge my colleague Emily, who has quoted this already in the House before me, and I want to just share with you the meaning of it. It is a kupu o te māngai rāua Piri Wiri Tua—the many followers of the Rātana movement, or mōrehu, will understand what this means. It is about the poor, the struggling, the destitute, including the widow and the orphan. This bill puts dignity and fairness back into the system and helps those many māmā or pāpā who find themselves raising their child or children single-handed, support their children, and reduce that burden of raising them.

This policy has been around since 1936. It is a policy that has complex pieces of legislation. It is a policy that has been identified as discriminatory, and needs to change. It has been viewed as too difficult to change, left in the too-hard basket by others—former Governments. We—this Government—are doing something about it.

Living on a benefit is not ideal—of course it’s not. Who wants to do that? If you’ve got no choice, then you’ve got nothing else. There are those who have no choice. The Training Incentive Allowance provides opportunity for parents to change their circumstances, and we know that there are a lot of examples of that in this world today, in Aotearoa, and for those former members of Parliament that have been and gone—and those here today.

Primarily, in a nutshell, this bill is about helping those sole parents get the same amount of money as any other beneficiary family. It addresses an inequity issue where other beneficiary family support is not treated in this way. As a result, as mentioned earlier on, over 41,000 sole parent families will have more in their pockets at a time, of course, when the cost of living is hiked by inflation, and that, in 2023-24, will see up to 14,000 children—yes, 14,000 children—lifted out of poverty. An extra $20 per week: it may seem like pittance to some, which I have said in this House before, but let me just say it goes a long way. It goes a long way to getting that extra loaf of bread, that extra litre of milk, that little bit of extra to help pay for the power, along with the subsidy that this Government has in place for those that are struggling out there seriously.

I hear the kōrero of some across the other side—clearly, many did not have the upbringing that some of us in this House and others had. Am I allowed to say that? Nevertheless, some privileged—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We’ll let you know when you’ve crossed a boundary.

SORAYA PEKE-MASON: —kia ora—some raised rich in te ao Māori, who forget there are many out there traumatised by colonisation, that struggle. We know what that means, we know what that’s about, and we know why they struggle particularly in Te Ao Māori. Some will take those struggles to their graves—te pani me te rawakore.

In summary, what I’d just like to say is to sum up what that actually means in this context. What it means is we are removing a discriminatory policy that withheld child support payments from parents receiving a sole parent rate of main benefit, and their children. The Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill seeks to ensure that beneficiaries receiving a sole parent rate of main benefit are treated—yes, are treated—the same as other beneficiaries in the welfare system. In practice, this will mean that child support will be passed on to parents receiving a sole parent rate of main benefit and be treated as income against their benefit. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia orana koutou kātoatoa. Mālō e lelei. I’ve got great pleasure in presenting on this bill at its third reading, and I honour the Hon Carmel Sepuloni moving this matter urgently. Now, like the majority of submitters on this bill, we support it, albeit with reservations. That sounds like my wife, actually, when I proposed marriage: “Tautoko, heoi taihoa e Tama”. [A great idea, but let’s have caution.]

National, like others here, is astonished and whakamā by the poverty that besets all Kiwis, young and old. We want to see fewer whānau and fewer tamariki in poverty. An extra $20 in the whare is, like my learned sister Soraya Peke-Mason has said, a bit more parāoa, a couple of huarākau, or some miraka a—ka pai hoki.

Now, the social numbers are facing a dramatic and unfortunate course, with 260,000 or so Kiwis on main benefits for a year or more in 2022. There has been an increase from 10.7 years to 12.8 years in the expected time an individual will be on the benefit during their working life since Labour came into Government, and, of course, there is the move from 60,000 Kiwis on sole parent support to 73,000 since December 2017 to today.

For children—tamariki—it’s even more urgent and galling, with 35,000 more kids waking up in benefit-dependent homes than five years ago—that’s sad—and 3,000 kids waking up in emergency housing and motels—sad. Actually, I met up with a young wāhine—Everest—and her tamariki recently, who are now living in transitional housing in New Zealand’s finest electorate Hamilton West after eight moves in two years in emergency homes in Hamilton, and, of course, there are 25,000 applicants on the social housing wait-list, which is up since 2017 from 5,000.

The Government’s ambitious target—ultimately misconstrued—to lift 100,000 children out of poverty by 2020 based on children living in homes receiving less than 50 percent of the median income has not been reached. It’s not even close, as it’s still about 80,000 children short. If this bill helps 14,000 children out of poverty—if it does, and there’s no assessment of the likelihood of this—we’ll get a little bit closer to 100,000, but that’s still well short of halfway to that target.

As you know, the numbers of Māori who fall into this welfare trap are disproportionate to our population demographic, but I bet that not one rangatira who signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840 thought that kāwanatanga was going to explode into the Government being an incomplete surrogate father or mother. But that is the tricky destination that this current Government seems to be leading us towards and charting for young Māori in benefit support and housing and, I wish we could say, in education, but 62 percent of Māori kids didn’t turn up to school regularly last term.

I’ve had a long read of the eight versions of the Treaty, including the one by Sir Hugh Kāwharu and his translation, and nowhere in those did I see that William Hobson or Queen Victoria guaranteed that the Government would repeatedly step in as a surrogate parent. My learned colleagues from Waiariki and Te Tai Hauāuru, who are not here today and who rely on original interpretations, may also share views in that regard—not cool, whānau, not cool.

Now, we’ve got a genuine concern that by allowing parents to have their child support paid for by the Government, taxpayers will become the responsible provider for these children. This cannot be the case in this Whare, in this city, or in this country. Once we go there, the mana motuhake of whānau and tamariki is turned into something more squishy. That is called big Government—a proliferation and a proselytization of big Government and the spin that goes with it.

Liable parents are just that—liable—and not liable until the taxpayers are surreptitiously used to fiscally fund whānau who are not turning up to deliver on their parental responsibilities. Now, National appreciates that this bill will tweak the way in which the relevant children receive income. This will help people in need during a cost of living crisis which is making it difficult for Kiwis—nearly all Kiwis—to remain committed to staying in this great country of ours.

It also proactively deals with the unequal playing field between different beneficiaries and improving the administration of social security. This is the right change and it is sensible—kei te mihi e te Minita.

We want to see fewer children in poverty and a focus by the Government on reducing the number of children in benefit-dependent homes, but the larger challenge, of course, remains the increased cost of living that the Government currently has us under. A lot of single parents have been doing it tough—we agree. The bill adjusts the way in which the children receive income, and this will help the people in need during the cost of living crisis. It might actually be better addressed by adjusting tax brackets, though, and enabling people to keep some of the moneys that they already earn.

We need to help our whānau emerge from the welfare trap, and the State is more responsible in the level of support it can provide. We are concerned that the Government is unable to state whether this bill will increase the overall costs for sole parents and/or benefit-dependent parents. E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe.

This has been a very interesting discussion over the last hour, and I do want to reflect upon it, because while this bill does what to some may seem to be a small thing—put an average of $20 into the pockets of about 41,000 solo mums; mostly mums, some dads—it has really touched some nerves in certain parts of this House and it has set off a really interesting ideological debate. So in my words to you today, I do want to go back over that debate, because I think it’s actually really important.

But let’s just start, for those who have just tuned into Parliament TV—and there are, of course, thousands of them, perhaps even 41,550, such as will be raised to the tune of $20 a week, or, as my friend Anahila Kanongata'a put it, 10 loaves of bread, or, as we might also say, four to five packs of Pams butter or six 2-litre bottles of milk a week better off. So even if I do have those 41,550 eager, eager watchers of Parliament TV, I think it’s worth just letting them know what we’re doing here. So this is the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. What it does is correct a discriminatory piece of legislation which allows us to not pass on child support to one group of people and one group of people only, and that’s solo parents, who are, of course—and I’m going to say this several times during this speech—mostly mums, and I think that is relevant to the ideological debate going on here today.

So child support, for those who don’t know it, is the money that a non-majority caregiving parent pays to the parent who is doing the majority of care for a child to contribute to that child or children’s upbringing. It depends on your income. It depends on which parent is earning what. In all cases, except that one vital case where it is a solo parent—and I mentioned mostly mums—it is always passed on. So you could be a re-partnered parent looking after your children and your ex-partner will pass the—you can be on the benefit as a re-partnered caregiving parent, and child support will still come to you. That’s OK, because you’ve established yourself in a nice nuclear family again, so perhaps you’re ticking some Victorian ideals there. But, conversely, if you have the temerity not to re-partner, if you are trying to raise your children solo, then, for some reason, up until now, the State has seen fit to keep that extra money from you. Why? I have absolutely no idea.

What we have heard from the other side is, again, a dearth of explanation, of policy reasons as to why we should maintain this. What they have said—while they’ve given us their support, and I am duly grateful for that, what we’ve heard is that somehow this is wrong, that somehow this is stopping parents taking responsibility for their children. It is also, apparently, going to encourage working solo parents—again, I’m going to say it, mostly mums—to throw out their working careers and throw themselves into the lap of luxury that is life on a solo parent benefit. It is fascinating that what seems to happen is that the idea is that it is only when you are a solo parent—which is to say, can I hear it again, mostly mums—you are suddenly in some way derelict in your duty if you cannot provide for your children. If you are, on the other hand, living up to the Victorian ideal and re-partnered, that’s fine. That’s fine; you are not in moral danger of dropping the ball.

So I really don’t understand what the argument is from the other side as to why we should not amend this discriminatory piece of legislation, which is going to—they have supported it, but I don’t understand why they consider it so difficult to do so. Why the moral scruples? I cannot understand it. On one hand, they say it’s taken us too long to do it. I don’t understand why they didn’t do it in their nine years or so, or however many times they’ve been in power since 1990 when this was brought in. On the other hand, they say we’ve rushed to judgment on this. I’m not sure about that either. It seems a little odd, but there you go.

But what I do want to say is that it has been a joy to stand here and listen to the people on this side of the House talk about real, lived experience, to have the courage to talk about their own experience as solo mums, including as solo mums who are paying child support. I think it speaks to a Government who has compassion for ordinary people who are currently on the bones of their bottom and who can bring that experience in here and who retain compassion and the sense of humility to recognise that when they have been able to haul themselves up off the bones of their bottom, they have not, in fact, done it by their own bootstraps; they have had State support constantly. They have social support. No mother is an island, and that is how we have managed to get so many of them in here, on this side of the House.

I want to say thank you and extend my pride and admiration to my sisters here today who have stood and spoken about their own experiences in support of this bill. One particular experience does speak to one of the objections raised on the other side of the House to this bill. It was said: how can we possibly suggest that this bill will, in any way, incentivise more parents to pay as liable parents? This is an issue. We recently had to do some work on this in terms of the number of mainly dads who do not pay their child support. But the answer came quite simply and directly from my colleague here, who stated that while she paid her child support when her mum was raising her children, she would have been far happier and more enthusiastic had she known that money was going directly to her children. That is the reason that we say this bill will not only raise 41,550 families by an average of six 2-litre bottles of milk, five Pams butter pats, or 10 loaves of bread, and raise 14,000 children out of poverty, but it will also incentivise more parents to actually pick up their responsibility and pay as they should.

Te pani me te rawakore—te pani me te rawakore. I want to thank my sister Soraya Peke-Mason, who was earlier mentioning that whakataukī. She was gracious enough to attribute and to reference my use of it in the previous reading on this. I want to put the credit back where it should be. She and I were in the back of this House, we were listening to this bill being discussed, and she turned to me and she said, “Te pani me te rawakore.” It is about the raising of those in need and compassion to those in need. That is what this Government is about. That is what we are seeing here, and I am very, very deeply proud.

If we take the other position—I was very impressed by my colleague Ricardo Menéndez March earlier. He said that this is an ideological debate, and it is. If we take the opposite position, if we go back to saying that for some reason solo parents are less worthy of support than re-partnered parents—remembering, always, that most solo parents, overwhelmingly, we are talking about solo mums—then we are taking the position that somehow the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children. This is the other point. Not only are we taking a highly judgmental position—a very traditionally judgmental position, if I may say so, against solo mums—but we are also taking a hugely Victorian, Dickensian position against children. If we are not to pass on child support, if we are to say, “No, parents should be penalised.”, then all we do is visit the sins of the father upon the children. I do not in any way see how that can be appropriate. If we are dealing, as we are in my home town of Whangārei, all across this country, with a population who do have some entrenched poverty, then it is our job to hold them up and to protect their children, until those children and until they are restored to dignity and able to support themselves. Te pani me te rawakore. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.