O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I look forward to contributing to this debate as part of one of the more enlightened parts of the O'Connor clan which happens as you go further south. Saying that I do acknowledge that today we were very fortunate at select committee at the quite professional select committee the Social Services and Community Committee who behaved quite professionally today I might say. I commend the members opposite who are members of the Social Services and Community Committee for their behaviour today. Other committees could learn from them.However I would like to point out as we go to Part 1 of the Act one of the important things here is that section 3(c) is going to be removed as set out in clause 4 of the bill. One of the actions of the board has been to promote the benefits of registration of social workers and now that is obviously going to be repealed because registration will now become mandatory. I think that's quite an important clause in that because now we actually focus on what this bill is about. Part 1 is very much about summing up that if you want to call yourself a social worker you have to be a social worker. Certainly in Part 1 it makes it quite clear. And of course we've already heard much discussion about scope of practice. Well scope of practice—there's not really much point having a profession if anybody can go and do it and that's really what it comes down to. People come to this House from various paths: they come as lawyers they come as accountants and they come from a variety of professions a variety of occupations. In their preliminary speeches here they'll stand up and announce and relate what their journey to this House was and almost invariably they'll talk about what they did what their speciality was and it has become quite clear. What this bill does is put social work really into that category because up until now really there was no sanction for anyone calling themselves a social worker and as I look going back to Part 1 of this bill it really does talk about this especially new Part 1A with the scope of practice.Now scope of practice": if we don't define what it is that a social worker does then really we could have social workers—I wouldn't go so far as to say they might be handing out the drugs in a hospital; however if it suited an employer and there was no real restriction on it it may well be that they could include that in the job description. This bill ensures that when someone does speak of—and I heard my colleague Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki speak of that very thing: her social work as she went through the transitions she was making. So she now has as a very proud social worker left the profession to take on this profession the scope of which I might say is very clearly defined. We know—anyone looking in this Chamber does know—who is a member of Parliament and who is not. We know there are a lot of people here who are far more important than us do a lot more work and are far more important for the running of this place. However it doesn't matter what they do they will not be able to call themselves a member of Parliament.So it goes back to Part 1 of this bill. It just really makes sure that we are now focusing on what a social worker does. That's why the scope of practice becomes incredibly important in what we do and so I commend the Minister for ensuring that we are now able to focus on this here. I sat through the select committee. This was brought up by most of the submitters and in fact really the debate was around whether there should be a scope of practice or not. And I believe that while the difficulties certainly of defining the work were apparent there was a clear understanding certainly by myself that we do need a scope of practice because as I've said before otherwise anybody—in fact one of the things mentioned was that there's also about 8000 people in the last census who called themselves social workers. Very quickly if we aren't careful that might be down to about 2000 because while we will define the practice what we could do is say "Right you are no longer a 'social worker'."—just simply change the title but expect people to do the same work which again would be against not only the spirit of this bill but also the whole purpose of ensuring social work takes its rightful place as the profession that it deserves to be. So I certainly will be saying that this is something the Minister has clarified well."