Call for Submissions on Child Support Amendment Bill ( No. 4) – Your Children Need You!
Submissions to the Social Services Comitte on the Child Support Amendment Bill (no. 4) close on the 27 Feb (see here) I know how busy people are, so below is a one page submission for you to use.
Send your submission to
Clerk of the Committee
Social Services Select Committee
Select Committee Office
Parliament Buildings
Wellington
by 27 Feb
Please take the time send a submission. The more submissions the better! Get your friends and family to send one. Get as many people as you can to send a submission.
If the committee received 1000 of these submissions !
Submission to
To the Social Services Select Committee
Relating to the Child Support Amendment Bill (No 4)
Yet again the Child Support Act 1991 is back before this committee for consideration of amendments to the Act.
The Child Support Act 1991 is unique in its ability to fail paying and receiving parents and their children. The focus of the Act is collecting a one size fits all formula assessment, designed with the focus on benefit recovery and not the best interest of Kiwi Kids.
The Act is a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation that no amount of tinkering can fix. This amendment will create even greater injustice for paying and receiving parents and their children.
The time has come for the members of this select committee to show political courage and return this Bill to Parliament with the recommendation that it does not proceed and that a complete public review is undertaken of the current child support regime and its administration.
Therefore I ask that this committee recommend that this bill does not proceed and that a complete public review be undertaken of the child support law and administration.
I remind the committee members that the financial future of hundreds of thousand of children is in their hands. Members have the opportunity to make a real difference in the financial security of Kiwi Kids or you can remain locked in the failing and flawed officials advice .
Submitted by
Address
Phone ( )
I do / do not wish to appear before the Committee to speak to this submission.
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Just cut the submission text out,paste it into a word processor and print it, fill in the contact details and put it in an envelople. Address the envelope, put on a stamp and post it.
You can make a difference, send a submission !
Scrap_The_CSA
A very timely call to arms. The select committee needs to hear from as many of you and you all need to be saying “we disagree with the proposed amendment”.
Remember that you and all of your family members can each send in an individual submission to the select committee.
Talk to your friends and see if they and their family/friends will each send in a submission too.
Now is the time to show this is an issue that is important to us because it affects all of our children.
If you still feel ambivalent about making a submission and you are a party to the current child tax regime consider that, under the proposed amendment, the Commissioner of Inland Revenue will:
* Be able to undertake an administrative review of your child tax liability without requiring an application from you or your ex. The outcome will still be binding on the both of you.
* No longer require a judgement from the Family Court as proof of debt and will be able to seize assets to recover any [unproven] debt.
* Be able to appeal to the Family Court if you succeed in lowering your child tax liability through an administrative review. This is especially pertinent if your child tax is taken as “benefit recovery”. If the appeal fails, the Commissioner can always start another review.
* No longer be able to write off the initial 10% late payment penalty. Any write-off of the 2% cumulative “remains unpaid” penalty will be in accordance with stringent requirements set down in the proposed amendment.
Send in a submission against the proposed amendment or be prepared for the child tax regime here in New Zealand to become very much harsher. Speak to all of your family and friends – ask them to send in a submission as a personal favour to you.
Mark Shipman
National President
Parents for Children
Comment by Mark Shipman — Mon 13th February 2006 @ 10:17 pm
These people have never been interested in anything we have to say. They have always refused to listen to our case and oppressed and abused us and our children. It’s time to face the reality of who we are dealing with here (for a normal human it’s difficult to accept that there could be peolple this sick however you only have to learn from history just what humans are capable of). I always thought that by taking the moral high ground I would eventually appeal to their humanity. Unfortunately, this just made me an easy victim.
Comment by The Punisher — Tue 14th February 2006 @ 11:43 am
Punisher,
I would urge you to make a submission. Yes Politicians dont care about parents and children, we have to make them care.
I do not believe that the select committee will do anything but rubber stamp the status quo, but that doesnot stop me saying and demanding change.
One day there will be shared parenting and fair and reasonable CS. These submissions are one small step on the way.
Comment by Scrap_The_CSA — Tue 14th February 2006 @ 12:47 pm
I sent my submission off today:
Comment by JohnP — Wed 15th February 2006 @ 10:46 am
I have sent off my submission today. Thanks for the encouragement from this site to get involved – it’s so important to speak up on this issue. I know that cotributors and readers on this site may sometimes have a low opinion of psychologists and those like me who work in the social service field, but actually many of us are interested in protecting and promoting the value and dignity of fatherhood.
I hope my submission isn’t too long winded – it’s the first time I’ve written one.
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I am a psychotherapist working in Auckland with troubled teenagers and their families. Time and again in my work I find that an experience common to the lives of so many of the emotionally and behaviourally disturbed young people I see is an absent father. Indeed the link between fatherlessness and specific mental health problems in children and adolescents is now well proven by psychological science.
In my experience, both personal and professional, a child’s loss of close relationship with one or other parent after there has been a divorce or separation is often strongly contributed to by the current structure of the child support act. This is because of the way the current system concentrates power in the hands of one parent while marginalizing the other. Most often the loss of relationship is between the child and their father.
My concern with the proposals for changes to the act now before the committee is that they seem entirely focussed on revenue collection and debt recovery rather than on the wellbeing of children. To me this seems a naïve and short-sighted approach to a problem that is causing much long-term suffering. It is also worth remembering that in the long run the problem of fatherlessness is also creating a burden for the taxpayer in the form of a very large bill for social, correctional and mental health services.
Rather than merely adjusting aspects of the current act which relate to debt recovery, I recommend that thought be given to making more basic changes; changes that would support the equal and shared parenting of children and strong parent-child relationships in separated families.
I ask that this committee recommend that this bill does not proceed and that a complete public review be undertaken of the child support law and administration.
Comment by Paul — Wed 22nd February 2006 @ 12:30 am