Henare PeeniPEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. It would be remiss of me not to heap praise upon you Mr Tisch as every other member of the House has done so I want to congratulate you and wish you well on all your—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I will stand.PEENI HENARE: —future endeavours. Ha ha! Excellent. Look I think it is fair to say and most members in the House will agree that a lot of praise must be heaped on the social workers on the front line in the face of ever-growing inequality and in the face of growing poverty in communities and working communities. These are challenges we have noticed in particular in Tāmaki-makau-rau—the good member Louisa Wall's electorate here in Manurewa and mine across Tāmaki Makaurau. And now sadly it has been reported in the regions that that growth of inequality and poverty is really hitting hard. A lot of praise must be heaped upon those actually at the front line doing the job that is too often not considered in many of the debates that take place here in this House. So I want to acknowledge all of the social workers across the country.When I went shopping recently I bumped into a relation of mine. She is a social worker and she talked about how because of the costs of living in Auckland social workers have all gone back to the regions. Kaitāia was the region she went home to—her birthplace. She says the region is now inundated with social workers—inundated. One of the sad things is that there is not an economy there that allows social workers to actually do a lot of the positive stuff. In fact in the end she described how they just seem to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. One of the other things she spoke to was the quality of service—the quality of service. I think that is an important point because when we make legislation in this House and we want to make sure that it is relevant and it makes a positive change out in the community we want to make sure that the accountability is there for those who are servicing our people on the front line but we also want to make sure—when we debate this particular bill and when this bill will progress in the next term of Parliament—that we actually give them the tools to do it. We want to make sure that we give them the tools to make sure that they are effective community social service providers. I think this bill actually does go some way to doing that. I do think however that there could be a lot more that we could do to make sure that social workers actually have the tools they need to get the job done.This bill is long overdue. They do say that plagiarism is what the greatest form of admiration and while Mr Ball was talking about his member's bill my colleague Carmel Sepuloni over here on this side in the Labour Party talked about how this is something that she had been pushing for for some time. So this bill is long overdue. There are numerous reports that have supported this. In 2012 and in 2013 over 80 percent of those who actually work in this field—in this sector—have encouraged this particular process to take place. So we are finally getting there. It is sad to say that we are getting there on the last sitting day of the 51st Parliament.One of the issues that we hope to tease out throughout the passage of this bill is of course the cost of registration—the actual cost. There are numbers floating around and I thought I would send off a quick message to my wife who is a teacher and ask her how much it costs for her registration—for her to register as a teacher. It costs her $170 for 3 years. I thought well we had better get a bigger sample size so I fired off a message to a cousin of mine who is a teacher somewhere else and he said his is $240 for 2 years. I think the second sample actually needs to have a look at his workplace because somebody is getting ripped off there. But what we are saying is that there is I guess a level or a flat fee for a teacher's registration—for teachers to be able to register and teach. We look at some of the figures and one of the figures here around the Social Workers Registration Board (Fees and Disciplinary Levy) Notice 2017"—we have a figure here of $345 which actually seems like quite a lot of money when you compare it with the teachers who do very important work just as a social worker does. We hope that throughout the course of this bill all of those who are affected by this bill and who have some positive input for this bill actually come in and share that detail with us—submit on this bill—to make sure that their voices are heard.One of the other provisions of this particular bill is that those who do register must be vetted by the police. I think that is an important step forward. I heard members who have contributed on this particular bill say that in order for them to work with our most vulnerable to effect positively the change that those vulnerable people and vulnerable communities require we must actually make sure that they are fit and capable and are able to do it without any of the kinds of results that were explained by the member who spoke before me—sorry not Mr McKelvie; the member prior to that Marama Davidson. She actually spoke about some of the ill harm that has come to families who have had social workers or those who have either pretended to be a social worker or practiced under the guise of being a social worker actually have a negative impact on them. That is something we want to avoid. I know that there will be costs involved with a police-vetting process but I am sure that it will be one of those provisions in the bill that will actually make it strong and make it so that when the public looks at the job that a social worker does it actually has confidence that those people are the right people to be working in our communities to be helping the most vulnerable and—back to the first point of my speech around the accountability—so that we can make sure that those who work in this sector are held accountable.I will not go on too much longer other than to say that this has been a long time coming. We are glad that the Minister for Social Development and this Government are taking a step in the right direction. We want to make sure that social workers have the tools that they need to do the job—the very important job—that they do not just in the peak centres but also like I mentioned earlier across the regions. Without further ado we want to commend this bill to the House. I hope that in the 52nd Parliament this bill will once again find a fast track and not be delayed like this particular one has been over the 3-year term. We commend this bill to the House."