Prasad Rajen: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16811. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour):Bula vinaka Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take my final call in this long debate around the Families Commission. The Families Commission Amendment Bill restructures the commission and redraws its functions. Though we are passing this bill today almost all of these changes are already in place so we can look back and look at the results that the Families Commission has produced under the leadership of the Minister for Social Development. What we find is a train wreck. The Families Commission today is a train wreck. I want to go through why that is. It certainly is a train wreck in terms of its performance. It is not performing and it has not performed over this past year that it has just reported on to the Social Services Committee.The second aspect of the train wreck is that the commission is now riddled with political conflicts and there will be no way that this particular commission can actually resurrect itself to become the kind of commission it should be the kind of commission it was and the kind of commission it was designed to be. The other point is that the Minister herself has actually been donkey deep in this right from the time that she took over the ministership of this particular commission because she has set its functions and she has set its particular governance structure and it is a train wreck.I want to go through each one of those aspects of the commission that I have identified. The changes actually reduce the consultation functions and the advocacy role of the commission. They do it in a way by giving new functions to the commission that will keep it bogged down in the kinds of things that the Government wants it to produce rather than the kind of advocacy the commission was designed to deliver for the families of New Zealand. It actually increases its evaluation and management of those things that were Crown functions—functions of the Ministry of Social Development. One of its major functions now is the management of Government contracts—contracts of evaluation in the social sector. Those jobs and responsibilities were quite well handled by the Ministry of Social Development. By giving the commission those roles the Government has actually confounded restricted and reduced the ability of the commission to function well and to advocate for families.Although the Minister Anne Tolley who was just talking sings the praises of the new longitudinal study coming under the management of this particular commission there was no need for that. It will not be much management because that programme is run by the University of Auckland. It is a multimillion-dollar project that is doing very well. It is the new generation of longitudinal studies for families. It will produce the results. The Families Commission is now simply holding if you like in very small quotes the “management” of this particular thing. It is managing the Government aspects of that but none of the work takes place in the Families Commission. That particular function the longitudinal study cannot really be counted as a new function of this particular commission.Then the bill changes the board and the board’s functions. It is amazing that here we have a Families Commission and this bill now allows for any one of members of the board to be a Families Commissioner and the functions of that particular commissioner to be determined by himself or herself. So the Minister has no view on what the role of the Families Commissioner ought to be and the Minister’s focus was absolutely wrong when she said that this is how it is with the other commissions. Who is in any doubt about the role of the Children’s Commissioner the Privacy Commissioner or the Chief Human Rights Commissioner? It is all very clearly identified in the legislation. But here we have a hybrid structure that actually takes those kinds of things away and this particular structure is actually flawed.If you look at the results that it has produced I just want to take two things from its current annual report. When it comes to its influence on organisations working with families and whānau here are the results: in 2001 its actual performance rating was 83 percent; in 2011-12 it was 83 percent; and in 2012-13 the period of reform the target was 85 percent. What did it produce? It produced 59 percent. Well that is a huge reduction in anybody’s language. Then for the other one its own output indicator—“Impact of knowledge transfer activities on public awareness on those who influence policy and practice”—the target was 850; the actual performance was 115. These point to a big hole in what this particular commission is now doing so it is flawed.I want to come to talk about the conflicts of interest that are now endemic in this particular organisation. We now have the Chief Families Commissioner underperforming really at the last select committee when she could not see why it was the business of the select committee to ask questions about a conflict of interest with one of her commissioners. Here we have one of her commissioners campaigning with a National Party rosette on at the Pasifika Festival a week and a bit ago. So here is a deliberate political act by a commissioner. These commissioners are required to be independent and palpably so.What is more the Minister Paula Bennett knew about the politics of this particular commissioner. She said: “I have known Dr Parmar for several years and I am well aware of her political views …”. Despite that she appointed Dr Parmar to the Families Commission did no work in managing the potential conflicts that are emerging there and did no work to advise the Families Commission as to how that should be managed. Or did she? Was it a deliberate position of a National Party candidate – to – be? She has now come out and declared her candidacy for the Hunua seat. So right from the time when she was appointed this conflict was palpable yet it was not managed. Here Dr Parmar is campaigning with the Prime Minister.That is not the only conflict. When we look at the opinions expressed by the Chief Families Commissioner on her own website—that is the commission’s website—she takes the view amazingly so that in election year family violence does not need more money. Her reasoning is as follows: we have spent $60 million - odd over the last 10 years or so on family violence and the numbers have gone up. Therefore it is not working. Therefore money is not the answer. It is amazing. Anybody who knows the family violence area knows that the whole programme was designed to bring family violence out into the open. Therefore it would produce many more complaints and many more incidents would be brought to its notice. But here is this commissioner arguing in election year the Government’s agenda—that we do not need to throw money at this. I wonder why when the actual advocacy should be quite the opposite.She defends the conflict by saying that it is in tune with the State Services Commission’s requirements. Well it is not. The requirements of the State Services Commission are very very clear and there is a conflict because things that she is doing now will affect other things that she has been part of. That is a conflict. Declare it and deal with it. The guidelines of the Auditor-General are also very very clear. So how can this commission hide behind something that it has created for itself to say that the conflict is not there?In the end this is a compromised commission. Its very focus is now compromised. How can it be taken seriously? Everything is now internal. Its advice comes internally. It previously had the ability to go to anybody that it wanted to nationally and internationally to peer review its particular reports. Now it has got to be done internally. The advisory panel is internal. This is a reduction of the potential influence of this commission and it is fatal. The reforms are fatal and what this bill does is flawed. How the commission has been working has realised all of its risk. The responsibility for all of that lies with the present Minister for Social Development because it is under her leadership that she has restructured this commission in her own image. It has not performed and therefore now what we see is the destruction of an institution. The Labour Party will be honest about this—let us morph it into a Ministry for Children. Thank you.