Income Tax (FamilyBoost) Amendment Bill

Members, we now come to clause 2, which is the debate on commencement. The question is that clause 2 stand part.

This bill comes into force on 1 July 2025—so that’s backwards-looking from today’s date, which is 17 September. Now, in a sense, that makes a certain kind of sense because this childcare rebate is claimed in arrears. People have to pay the childcare fees up front and collect the receipts from their early childhood education provider and submit those to Inland Revenue, who will pay out the rebate. Even though people are eligible for it from 1 July 2025, they won’t actually have the receipts or make the claim until the end of this quarter. In a sense, going retrospective there is not such an issue.

However, the more interesting thing to consider is: why not make the commencement date for this bill 1 July 2024? Now, there is a tabled amendment putting this in place, in my colleague the Hon Barbara Edmonds’ name, and it’s a very simple one: just replace “2025” with “2024”. It means that the changes in the bill would take effect from 1 July 2024.

The Minister of Finance, when she has been asked questions about this in the committee—I’m referring there to the pressure that my colleague the Hon Dr Verrall has referenced in her speech—has made much of the point that families don’t lose the capacity to claim for their childcare just because the quarter has passed. They can save up their receipts and claim them all in one lump, if they like, at the end of the year or at any time that actually suits them. The point of filing them every quarter is just that that’s how often a family may do it—they are not required to do it every quarter. In fact, I think the Minister of Finance has, at times, said that, in fact, families could claim in three or four years’ time if they wanted to, as long as they had saved the receipts. It was not necessary to claim on any particularly time-bound basis, except for that up to four years.

She has also said that, really, one of the reasons—well, she hasn’t really said it this way—that we are here debating this is that, quite simply, FamilyBoost wasn’t paying out enough. There weren’t enough people claiming it. The settings were wrong. It seems that not everyone who could claim it was claiming it; that not enough people were aware of it; that the only reason that FamilyBoost hasn’t paid out as much as the Minister had hoped was because of some of those issues around not understanding it and so on.

It really does beg the question: if we want to subsidise families more—if we want to cover more of the cost of childcare—why not go back to 1 July 2024? Those receipts are already in. It would be quite straightforward for Inland Revenue to go back and pay out the additional subsidy to those families who had already been there. Why not go back? The idea was to get the settings of FamilyBoost right to ensure that the amount of money that the Government had budgeted for it was actually getting paid out, but, in order to do that, I think it behoves this Government to go back to 1 July 2024.

There will be families who have got receipts sitting there who would probably like to claim them now. Perhaps they might be able to do that if this went back to 1 July 2024. I’d ask the Minister to consider whether or not it would be reasonable to go back to that date on the grounds that that would then get more of the payout that that Government promised to families actually into families’ hands on a reasonably timely basis. So some explanation around that commencement date, please, Minister.

I do want to speak to my amendment which addresses a similar query, and I guess we’re looking to the Minister in the chair for some response on that. My amendment also states the commencement date should go back to 1 July 2024 when FamilyBoost was first introduced, because noting that the date 1 July 2025 is already retrospective, there’s no reason for us to go back even further. Based on what we’re seeing in terms of regulatory impact statement, it also doesn’t specifically highlight, at least from a cursory reading, the reason for that particular retrospective date—I understand it is the beginning of a quarter; that does make sense.

The commencement date also introduces, I guess, a recommendation but also a question for the Minister. I guess the recommendation is: noting that the commencement date is retrospective to 1 July 2025, would the Minister, then, consider streamlining the process of rather than having people reapply for that period if they have already made application, just simply letting IRD, who already have that data on file, proactively give the money to the families and with a difference based on the commencement date. That might be something—just checking. Yeah, that is something I’m not seeing in the bill as providing any clarification. Would the Minister be able to clarify?

My other question to the Minister is: what does the date 1 July 2025 imply? Does it imply the date of service, as in that a family is able to apply for the reimbursement and get the higher rate from 1 July 2025, or is this the date of the application to IRD for reimbursement?

Let’s say certain families who are have applied, maybe proactively before that day, let’s say for the first quarter or for the second quarter—probably in this case more for the first quarter—would not be eligible for the new threshold, whereas families who are applying for the first quarter potentially after the 1 July date then would be eligible for the higher threshold.

So I’d like a clarification from the Minister as to whether 1 July implies the date of service, as seen when a child is at early childhood education and therefore they are eligible for it, or the date of application for reimbursement. Thank you.

Thanks, members, for those questions. In regard to the question on the ability for people to reapply, people will not need to reapply for claims open on 1 October 2025 for early childhood education fees from the 1 July 2025 to 30 September 2025.

In regard to the question around retrospectivity in the amendments, we will not be accepting those amendments. We’ve had 240,000 applications. To have to go back and reopen every one of those 240,000 applications, re-evaluate, and make that is simply not a practical reality—hence the practical pathway that’s been outlined.

This really is the “show me the money” moment for the Government. The Opposition is trying to support the Government to ensure that it meets the purposes of the bill, which is to increase the number of recipients eligible for this payment, to increase the payment amounts, and to maintain the fiscal envelope, but what we’ve just heard from the Minister in the chair is that he does not believe that this should be retrospective back to 1 July 2024, which is covered within the amendment by Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan and also my tabled amendment.

My question to the Minister is: if the Minister of Finance has continually said that families have up to four years to be able to be entitled to this and to lodge their claims for FamilyBoost, why can’t this go back, then, the full four years in which the FamilyBoost payment came into force, which is 1 July 2024? It meets all the purposes of this bill, which the Government has brought to the House because of its failure of this policy. Why, therefore, can they not show families the money that they’re entitled to and take it back from when it first began? The Minister, in his response to an earlier question, just said that October of 2025 is when they’ll be able to apply, but it goes back to payments from 1 July 2025. That makes total sense. Because this is backward-looking, take it all the way back from when FamilyBoost started.

Is the real reason why the Government won’t support those amendments by both Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan and myself because they don’t want to pay out that money to families? They’ve had to come to the House today to change their policy, to fix their policy failure. They’re getting good-faith support from the Labour Party to be able to do so. Why, therefore, can’t they take it all the way back to when FamilyBoost started, which is only an additional year?

To the Minister’s point that they’ll have to go and reopen 240,000 claims, that is still fewer than actually what was first proposed. If the committee can remember, this Government promised that 130,000 families would be eligible for FamilyBoost when they campaigned on it. Instead, we have less than 70,000 families who’ve got FamilyBoost. I think it’s worth the effort, given you’ve got 95 fulltime-equivalents at IRD having to process this. You’re spending 20 percent of this particular policy on the administration. I think you have the resources available to be able to support those 240,000 claims to be able to take them back. If you can do it for the full four-year period, why can’t you do it for a one-year period?

I think this is really the “show me the money” moment for the Government. They’ve come here, they’re fixing their policy failure. They’re saying, “Well, we want more people to be entitled to FamilyBoost.”, but they don’t want to take it back to the very first day that FamilyBoost was in. I don’t think I’ve heard a clear reason other than reopening 240,000 claims. You’ve got the resources, you’re spending 20 percent of the money on the administration, you want people to be entitled to their entitlements—definitely the Prime Minister wants the people to be entitled to their entitlements—so do the right thing by Kiwi families and take this back one year to when you first introduced this policy. We will ensure, as we’ve said, we’ll support you with your policy-failure fix.

Take it back to 1 July 2024. Otherwise, I don’t understand why the Minister is concerned about the 240,000 when the Minister of Finance has said that it can look back past the four years. I’d like a response from the Minister on those particular comments. You’ve got the money because it’s been underspent, you’ve got the bureaucracy set up, and you’ve got the actual information. I don’t understand why you can’t just go back to 2024 other than because it doesn’t meet the fiscals. If it doesn’t meet the fiscals, then it just shows how much more of a failure this policy is in the first place.

Thank you, Mr Chair. This is my first opportunity to speak on this bill, and I wanted to follow up on questions in relationship to the commencement date. I notice that the clock is not moving on me—we can start at five minutes. Thank you very much.

In relationship to the questions that have already been asked, this is something we could have unpacked at the select committee stage. I want it to be noted that we are debating this in urgency. Some of the questions that I think could have arisen at the select committee stage—and, certainly, some of us would have lodged parliamentary written questions to try and ascertain this—is whether, at all, at any point during the development of this bill, the Minister of Finance sought advice on the costings that would have been involved should this have been made retrospective to 1 July 2024.

Did the Minister, at any given time, seek advice in relationship to making it retrospective to the 1 July 2024 date which, as others have canvassed, has an amendment on the Table in relationship to it? If the Minister did indeed seek advice in relationship to exploring options to that date, did officials provide any potential costings that would have involved having this bill with a commencement date of 1 July 2024; if that was the case, what were those costings?

I think the questions that my colleagues have raised are incredibly valid because I think the current commencement date does not seem to meet the intent of the bill as publicly stated by the Government, which is to have more families access this payment. So I’m curious to know as to whether the Minister even bothered exploring this option.

In the regulatory impact statement (RIS) that we’ve been provided, there were four options that were given to the Minister, but we don’t have much detail in terms of whether, at all, the option of having the commencement date on the 2024 date was explored, whatsoever. Following from that, if the Minister did explore having the commencement date in the development of this bill being the 1  July 2024 date, I wonder whether he also asked for a distributional impact analysis, particularly because of the changes in incomes and job losses that we’ve experienced over the past 12 months. I can see that the profiles of people who may have been eligible between the 1 July 2024 date, as proposed by my colleagues, and 1 July 2025 would have changed. Did the Minister seek any advice around the sort of profile of people who could have been eligible for what it is in this bill and 1 July 2024, compared to now?

This is quite important, I think, because the Government talks a lot about the state of the books and I think it would have been quite negligent to not have sought advice of what moving this to 1 July 2024 would have looked like. I think, because we did not have a select committee process, it’s really critical that the Government is upfront with exactly what the initial scoping was that would have been done to develop this bill. The RIS does note that there’s four options, but I’m sure that in the earlier discussions that he would have been having with officials—we could have found out through parliamentary written questions or a select committee process, should this bill have not been brought under urgency, as to whether this date of 1 July 2024 was explored all together.

Just to recap—the questions are: whether, if at all, the Minister of Finance sought advice on an earlier commencement date; if not, why not? If she did ask for the advice, did she get given any costings as to the implications of moving this to 1 July 2024, and whether a distributional impact assessment would have been done if the Minister had explored, at all—in discussions with officials or colleagues—moving this date or exploring having the date beginning 1 July 2024 as opposed to 1 July 2025?

Once again, this is all stuff we could have explored in the select committee stage, which the Government chose not to have, despite knowing for quite a few months that not many families were accessing the full amounts that this policy was intended to provide.

Thank you for the contribution. As part of the policy development process, the Government received a wide range of advice. The four specific options that were considered in the context of this bill are, as the member noted, outlined in the regulatory impact statement, and I refer the member to look at those bullet points which outline the key considerations that were given to this policy.

I appreciate that some members in the Chamber might find it ironic that sometimes you need to stay within appropriations that you set in a Budget—OK? On the opposite side of the Chamber, that doesn’t really mean anything, where it’s just spend money like there’s no tomorrow, fire-hosing the money around, hoping it hits a target, and it never does. I’m glad those days are over, OK? We’ve got sensible, balanced people who actually understand the economy in charge of this place.

We’ve got an appropriation, and the changes in the context of this bill ensure that we meet those requirements.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I would like to point out to the Minister in the chair that he makes a good point about staying within appropriations, but, of course, there has been an underspend in this appropriation—

Hon Barbara Edmonds: A massive underspend.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: In fact, a massive underspend, and that’s why we’re here, so I’m not sure that that quite answers the point that was being made.

I do want to raise a particular issue—it’s an administrative issue—and I hope that the Minister has talked this over with his officials and that he can provide some reassurance on this because the Minister is not going to backdate this policy to 1 July 2024, but he is going to backdate it to 1 July 2025, and because, as we’ve been told frequently by the Minister of Finance, it’s perfectly possible for people to save up their receipts from their early childhood education provider and submit them in lumps.

I’m thinking of a scenario, Minister, where perhaps a family that hasn’t claimed previously—but, thanks to this bill, is now aware of it because we’ve had to come into the House and fix up these mistakes—would have a whole swag of early childhood education receipts, say, from March this year, or whatever, from April, May, June, July, August this year. Actually, August wouldn’t matter, but last year as well.

Of course, those are receipts that would be eligible for the rebate up to 1 July 2025. I’m thinking of the receipts from 1 July 2024 through till 30 June 2025, for childcare in those periods. Those receipts are eligible for the original rebate—the failed rebate, the one that was simply not paying out enough—and, of course, the receipts from 1 July 2025 onwards are going to get the new refreshed and revised rebate, which will get paid at a higher amount.

That is going to mean a bit of work, and I want to know where this work is going to fall, because there will be families who submit receipts that go over that 1 July 2025 threshold—some from the lower rebate, some from the higher rebate. I want to know if Inland Revenue is adjusting the way it is going to set up the rebate claims process.

Now, my children are in their twenties, so I have not had to do this for myself—I haven’t been able to go in and go through the rebate process myself. I don’t know exactly how it works, but is it going to be the case that people are going to have to put in the date for each set of receipts and that then triggers the amount of rebate that is available to them? That’s an extra compliance cost for the person claiming the receipt. Or is it going to be the case that Inland Revenue officials are going to have to, for the next however many years—and it could be up to four years—go through each set of receipts that is uploaded, and work out whether they are eligible for the earlier, lower rebate or the later, higher rebate? Of course, that’s a processing cost for Inland Revenue.

We know that there are 95 fulltime-equivalent employees engaged in administering this rebate, It’s a lot of people engaged when, typically, we manage our tax system so that things flow pretty seamlessly. I want to know if Inland Revenue is anticipating having to hire any more people because of this change in the rebate. In fact, the Minister has talked about the work involved in going—if we shifted the application date back to 1 July 2024—back and reprocessing receipts and claims for people who have claimed up until now. I want to know if there is any work being done on how much work is going to need to be done, wherever it’s done, to work out how many of the receipts get the lower rebate and how many of them get the higher rebate, and what checking is going on.

It just seems to me there’s two sets of work involved here, and I’d like to know what analysis was carried out on it and whether this influenced the particular start date that has been chosen for this policy, given the fact that the appropriation has been underspent. The actual appropriation is not an issue, but what might be an issue is the work involved.

As the member the Hon Dr Deborah Russell will recall from her time as the Associate Minister of Revenue, the aspect or the point that’s being noted is from 1 July 2025 onwards, families who are claiming the rebate will be eligible for the new rate which we are putting through today. In the circumstance where a family has not made any claims to date in regards to any periods, they will still be able to make a claim; however, their claim, again, will be relative to the period from the start on 1 July 2024 through to 30 June 2025 at 25 percent, and then beyond that at the new rate. That is the way in which it will be calculated. It is a clear-cut point in time of which the rate has changed. From a practical implementation point of view, that allows the department to do what it will do. There is no intent for the department to increase resourcing as a result of these changes. They will be able to deliver that through baseline, because they are a very effective department.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Mr Chair. One of the questions that I’m still seeking adequate engagement on, because the answer that I got is “I sought a range of advice”—but I specifically asked the Minister of Revenue as to whether he sought advice on the commencement date being made on 1 July 2024, and, if so, whether he sought any costings? Because we didn’t have a select committee process, I don’t think it’s good enough to just say “I sought a range of advice.” I think the Minister should honour the fact that this is a process that has been led by urgency.

I have a couple of other questions. Again, these are issues that we would have canvassed at the select committee stage. I think this is quite related to the commencement date anyway, so I may as well use the time right now that I have—it seems amazing that I’ve still got five minutes left—so I appreciate the additional time.

Going on to the issue of how this impacts children, and specifically on the current commencement date we’ve got in front of us, I wanted to ask as to—and I think it’s important for the Minister to put it on the record and in the Hansard—whether a child impact assessment has been done in relation to the bill in front of us. We know that this affects families with children. In a select committee process, ordinarily, members are able to ask for a child impact assessment to be produced by officials. In my view, this is one of those bills where, because it so explicitly affects children, I would like to know as to whether the Minister sought for that to be produced; if that is the case, would he mind tabling the child impact assessment or maybe talk about the findings if one was made? If not, I would like to know as to why that didn’t happen.

If there wasn’t a child impact assessment being done on this bill, I think that’s deeply problematic. Particularly, as other colleagues have noted specifically on the commencement date, we know that additional families could have benefited should the commencement date be brought forward to 2024. Therefore, in terms of the child impact assessment, it would have been useful for the Government to front up and actually give us some more detailed analysis as to what that would have looked like in more detail. That’s one of the things that could have been useful as well.

It would also be useful for the Minister, in relation to the commencement date, to say as to whether he had a discussion with the Children’s Commissioner at all on this issue. I think that’s a really important entity that should be consulted as part of this, particularly, as others have noted—in terms of showing the money to the families that could benefit from this—whether there was any feedback from the Children’s Commissioner in relation to making sure that families could have been captured if the commencement date was brought earlier.

I think this is important because the Minister may have talked about sticking to the appropriations, but the bill in front of us is due to bad policy design by this Government. It’s been brought forward to us because the Government did not design this policy the right way—we’re seeing it in the number of families that are receiving it. Therefore, I think it’s important to get more robust answers in relation to the full scope of advice that the Minister would have commissioned, particularly in the earlier stages of this bill. I think the Minister should talk in more detail about this rather than say “I sought a range of advice.”

The other thing I wanted to ask—and, again, I don’t know if there’s a specific part of the bill in which this would have better fitted, but I think, because this is brought under urgency, this would have come up in the select committee stage as well—is as to whether the Minister sought any advice in relation to whether this bill contributed in any way to the Government’s child poverty reduction targets. I think, probably, the impact would be minimal if there was to be any. I think this is quite important to note because the current projections—the Minister talked about appropriations—that we have in front of us when it comes to child poverty is that material hardship is projected to continue to rise as a result of Government decisions. I think it would be curious if no advice was sought in relation to meeting child poverty reduction targets.

Again, this would have been such a simple question that we could have asked of officials should there had been a select committee stage, or the Minister himself once he stood in front of us. Even though the scope of the bill will likely benefit families that are doing better off, it is important that we get the Minister’s comments on this issue because of the concerning statistics in relation to material hardship.

Additionally, there would have been families that would have lost their jobs between 1 July 2024 and now, who now may be in poverty and may not have benefited with this bill, and would have actually, maybe, received more support if we moved to 2024 while they may still have a higher income due to them still having a job.

To recap, I’m curious to know as to whether a child impact assessment was produced, whether the Minister has got comments on this issue as to whether there was any analysis being done on meeting child poverty reduction targets, and, if not, why not? I’d like to ask as to whether any advice was sought as to changes in potential incomes, and therefore eligibility for families that, for example, would have lost their jobs between the 2024 date and now. As much as I note that backbenchers on the other side are complaining, they brought this under urgency; I think adequate scrutiny is well overdue.

In regards to the questions on a child impact assessment, all the analysis that the member is referring to is in the regulatory impact statement, and while no specific child impact assessment was undertaken, the reason, the rationale, why this is is because this is dealing with tax legislation around impacted family—family—income, and in that context it is not deemed appropriate. However, the broader considerations are outlined in the regulatory impact statement. If the member had read that, he would know.

I just want to speak to the tabled amendment by Camilla Belich that has actually just been tabled. It’s in relation to, or perhaps in response to, the Minister’s concerns about the backdating and reopening of 240,000 claims. I can see where Camilla Belich has been very clever to help the Minister. She’s actually thought to amend it—rather than 1 July 2025, she’s proposing that you move the date to 1 October 2024—so not 1 July 2024 but 1  October. Therefore, the 240,000 claims that have been reopened would be a bit less than that. If the Minister’s got any figures or can break down the 240,000 claims that would have to be reopened, we would really appreciate that. As the member from the Greens Ricardo Menéndez March has raised, we haven’t had an opportunity to take this through the select committee, and we haven’t had an opportunity to be able to actually analyse the bill and get some advice from officials to the additional questions, so I support the comments that he made.

Also, if you go to the 1 October 2024 date, perhaps that will fit the fiscal envelope or the appropriation that the Minister in the chair talked about, because, to Dr Deborah Russell’s point—and, again, I acknowledge her comment in relation to that—there is an underspend in this policy. The regulatory impact statement itself says the uptake is only 52 percent for this policy, so there’s clearly an underspend in the first year of this policy being enforced. I didn’t hear a response from the Minister to the Green Party member’s question—did the Minister seek any advice on a different commencement date, and, if he did, can he step through that advice, because, again, we haven’t had a select committee and we haven’t had the chance to ask that of officials ourselves—and if he did, what was that advice?

Therefore, we can be just as helpful and can keep recommending amendments to ensure that the maximum amount of families may have a chance—and I say only a chance, because it’s quite clear the uptake is so low at 52 percent, and we want to be able to make this as easy as possible for them, and the Government doesn’t want to put in any proposals to actually make the administration easier. Again, they’ve got the money, they’ve got the bureaucracy there, they’ve got the 20 percent that they spend on this, which is on administration costs for the department—I just want to understand from the Minister if he would consider a 1 October 2024 date, because I think that could help him in relation to the fiscal envelope, and, again, I’d really like a response, given this is going through under urgency, to the Green Party member’s questions around whether he actually sought an earlier date—and if he did seek the earlier date, what advice was he given?

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Mr Chair, thank you. I will keep this short, but I didn’t actually get an answer from the Minister in the chair in terms of the administrative load around this changed commencement date.

Now, the Minister made the very correct point that when you look at the receipt date, it’s quite straightforward in terms of how much people get in terms of a rebate. That’s really clearly defined by when the person received the childcare services and the receipts along it. Those dated for childcare before 1 July 2025 get the old rebate; those from 1 July 2025 onwards get the new rebate. That’s a really straightforward point—no worries there—and that was the Minister’s reply.

What I’m concerned about, though, is, actually, the administration of that. Are families going to have to upload extra information to Inland Revenue? Are they going to have to navigate their way through a website which makes them classify receipts into pre 1 July 2025 and post 1 July 2025? Or is Inland Revenue going to have to go through each set of receipts that is uploaded and have people actually checking the date on them and classifying them to ensure that the rebate that is applied to each receipt is the correct rebate? So it’s an actual workload processing issue there.

What I want to know is what analysis was done around that. The Minister has already said that they’re not intending to hire any more than the current 95 fulltime-equivalent employees that are engaged on processing FamilyBoost. But there is some extra workload somewhere in this, now that we’ve got a date that separates how much rebates are worth on one side of that date or the other. So if the Minister could speak to the actual workload, not the calculation.

There isn’t a significant increase in workload on the IRD team as a result of this policy change; it is simply a process change. For the individuals that work in IRD, they will apply that new process to the application. They already undertake quite a significant degree of integrity checking of the information received from parents to ensure that it complies with this law. That will not change in terms of their process, but in the context of the amounts being payable and based on the duration and the dates of the periods being applied for, that will change, but that is not going to have a material impact on staffing.

I’m just picking up on a comment the Minister in the chair made, and I appreciate he delivered it with quite a bit of sass, but, actually, he noted in his earlier comments in relation to my answer that a child impact assessment has been done and it was in the regulatory impact statement (RIS). Can the Minister point out exactly where in the regulatory impact statement there are comments relating to a child impact assessment? There doesn’t seem to be any. If he’s so confident that a child impact assessment was done as part of this bill, why isn’t it in front of us so we can evaluate its findings? This is important because the regulatory impact statement, for example, talks about quite limited consultation, mostly with the early childhood sector. The Children’s Commissioner doesn’t seem to have been consulted at all as part of this bill, and I’m curious as to why that was the case.

I’m also giving the Minister an opportunity to potentially correct himself, because he talked about the child impact assessment being mentioned in the RIS, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, although I’m happy to be proven wrong. Again, if he’s so confident that there was a child impact assessment produced, normally at the select committee stage, we would be given access to it. So why isn’t he presenting to us the robust analysis on the impact on children this bill would have?

This is about demanding that the Minister actually holds himself accountable for the advice that he has sought both in terms of the commencement date but also around the child impact assessment that he claims was done and was mentioned in the RIS.

Dana Kirkpatrick: Where’s the commencement?

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: I appreciate that Dana Kirkpatrick may be new to this place, and maybe she doesn’t know what a child impact assessment is, but it would be quite useful.

Hon Member: Write her a letter.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: If we had had a select committee process we would not be needing to ask questions. That would have been made clear at the select committee stage. I appreciate that these legislators are very new to this place, but I would appreciate that they understand why we’re asking these sorts of questions at this point in time—because they’re related to a select committee process that we have not had.

Anyway, other than the innocuous and useless barracking from the other side, I’ll recap my questions. Is the Minister confident that a child impact assessment was done—[Interruption]

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, I need to hear him. Could you quieten down a little bit.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: It’s fine; I’ll just recap my questions.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): But just to note for members, if we can relate this to the commencement clause, I would appreciate that.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: I appreciate that but I would like to seek some guidance from the Chair. Where would you like us to ask questions that we could have been able to ask in the select committee stage, including things like a child impact assessment, which is a completely fair thing to be asking at the select committee stage? If it is not now, where would you like us to ask it?

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): You can do it right now. If you relate it to the commencement date, it’s fine—and I do need to hear.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Going back to my questions, because I do think these deserve answers: is the Minister confident that a child impact assessment was done; if so, where in the RIS is this mentioned? Why wouldn’t he put forward the findings of the child impact assessment that was supposedly done, as he claimed, for the sake of transparency? Why was the Children’s Commissioner apparently not engaged with at all in the creation of this bill, and only the sector?

I would like, once again, answers to questions that have been asked multiple times—beyond just sort of general answers like, “Oh, I sought a range of advice.”—as to whether he actually sought any form of advice on an earlier commencement date. This is about robust lawmaking This is about genuinely presenting to members of the public—and members of the Opposition have a duty to scrutinise this bill—that enough analysis was done on this bill and adequate agencies and reports were commissioned in relationship to this bill.

I do think it’s quite fair for us to challenge the Minister when he makes claims that the child impact assessment is the regulatory impact statement, and for him to tell us where it is. So far, I’ve sought to find it with my colleagues, and we can’t see there at all. So if he’s so confident, tell us where, and if he’s so confident that a child impact assessment was done, table it so that we can look at what the findings were. I don’t think that’s a hard ask. Maybe the child impact assessment didn’t find anything controversial—and that’s fine—but, actually, we do deserve a level of transparency in relationship to the advice that was sought and the reports that were produced. The Minister seems to potentially be incorrect in the previous assertion he made where he said that the child impact assessment could be found in the regulatory impact statement.

I’d encourage the member to look at the Hansard of my response to his question, and if he had listened to my response, the answer would be within that.

Just to give more guidance to the committee, clauses 4 and 5 implement the substantive policy, so that could be a good place to probe more deeply on things like child assessment policies and other issues as well—

Ricardo Menéndez March: Child impact assessments.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Child impact assessments as well. So there is an opportunity in clauses 4 and 5. But if we could keep stuff to the commencement date, the committee would appreciate that.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I find it really interesting how much the Government members are interjecting and trying to take calls to close down this debate given, again, we’re in urgency. We’ve spent less than three hours on this bill—less than three hours on this bill. Look at the date of the regulatory impact statement: it’s 25 June 2025. The question is: why did the Minister not attach this to his August taxation bill, which also has a FamilyBoost amendment in it, so that it could have gone through a select committee process? I find the interjections and the calling for the closure of this debate quite interesting, particularly because what they’re trying to close down are amendments from the Opposition that actually increase the number of people that can actually get the greater entitlements in this bill.

“OK, yes, we need more people to get FamilyBoost because it failed. OK, let’s change the bill. Let’s put in new rates, and let’s increase the abatement threshold.” But, then, when we actually say, “Take it back to when it first started.”, the Government members just want to shut down the debate. I think the real reason is, as the Minister said, the fiscal appropriation, but, as the regulatory impact statement, which is dated June 2025, showed, there’s only been a 52 percent uptake of this.

On the commencement date, there is another tabled amendment, in the name of Camilla Belich, to help the Minister, again, try and get more families into the greater entitlements that this bill introduces with a higher rate, a higher threshold. Camilla Belich has recommended that the committee agree to a proposed amendment for clause 2, the commencement date, to change it from 1 July 2025 to 1 January 2025. Again, it might deal with the processing issue that the Minister spoke about, which is why we haven’t gone all the way back to 1 July 2024. It might actually deal with the fiscal underspend or the fiscal issue because it’s actually 1 January 2025. You might have less people applying for it and less pressure on the appropriation. Or, again, are we just going to hear a response from the Government members to shut down any helpful amendments that would mean that more families can actually be entitled to FamilyBoost in the new changes that come in?

I don’t understand why the Government members would not support any of the numerous commencement date amendments. If you don’t like 1 July 2024, how about 1 October 2024? If you don’t like 1 October, why not 1 January? We’re just trying to help the Government out to improve it even more. The Government members laugh. I know you’re laughing at your own policy failures. It’s quite clear that this policy has been a failure, which is why the committee’s time has been taken up with trying to fix this bill. It doesn’t matter how much the Government members interject. Again, we’re trying to help you out by increasing the number of people that are entitled to it.

This is the Government’s “show me the money” moment because we’ve given them different options for a commencement date. We’ve given them different options for a commencement date, and if they’re going to vote down those commencement date amendments, it quite clearly shows that the Government doesn’t want more families entitled to this; if they did, they would have taken it all the way back to when FamilyBoost started.

Dr Hamish Campbell: Ha, ha!

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: You can laugh, you can heckle—even the chairperson who I’ve got a lot of time for now, even though I still believe that Nancy Lu should have been the chairperson of that select committee. We still have a lot of support for you, Nancy Lu, the only female Government member on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. This is seriously awkward. However, we are trying to help the Government increase this to more families.

We understand that the Government is embarrassed to have to bring this bill to the House to try and increase the entitlement for families. We’re supporting it because we know families are doing it tough right now. Actually, go a little bit further because you’ve got the money and you’ve got the process set up. Go all the way back—if not to 1 July 2024, then at least, maybe, to 1 January 2025.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Hon Barbara Edmonds’ tabled amendment to clause 2 replacing “2025” with “2024” be agreed to.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 2 replacing “2025” with “2024” is ruled out of order as being the same in substance as a previous amendment.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 2 replacing “1 July 2025” with “1 October 2024” be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 2 replacing “1 July 2025” with “1 January 2025” be agreed to.