Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is an unexpected pleasure, can I say, to speak to the Child Support (Registration and Collection) Amendment Bill 2011. As my colleague, good friend and fellow Central Coast MP, the member for Robertson, has pointed out, this is a very important bill for our area. We are an area that has a lot of young families, a lot of families that have moved to the Central Coast, which will clearly benefit from this legislation. For that reason, it is an important piece of legislation for those of us who are from the Central Coast.

The bill proposes, firstly, to allow the Child Support Registrar to delegate certain powers and functions to individuals outside the Department of Human Services and, secondly, the bill amends several criminal penalty provisions to ensure that offences in those provisions can be prosecuted successfully. Successful prosecutions are difficult to obtain in relation to child support. This is a very important provision to make sure that these offences are prosecuted successfully so that the right outcomes are there. I think all MPs would have people come to their office with stories about particular hardships they have had to face and where essentially the issue has been about successfully prosecuting their case. This bill squarely faces that. More important is perhaps the philosophy behind this bill which is making sure that children are front and centre in terms of the decisions that are being made. All too often when we are in these difficult situations of assessing what is to happen, and how child support is to work and the like, these issues are not always front and centre. This is the case with this bill. While it was an unexpected pleasure to talk about this bill, it is nonetheless a contribution that I am very happy to make. I commend this bill to the House.

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