Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe Madam Assistant Speaker and thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Families Commission Act Repeal Bill. For the record I would also like to make some corrections to the previous speaker's comments because the narrative from the other side of the House continues to be that we somehow seem to prioritise the previous Government's bills. Well unlike the member Michael Woodhouse said we are not desperate for work at all because if you look at what we actually prioritised in the previous 100 days—maybe we should just repeat some of those. We had the first-year fees-free study; we had the healthy homes bill; we had the extension to parental leave; we had banning foreign speculators; we had stopping the State house sell-off; we had setting up the Tax Working Group and the inquiry into State care; we began our KiwiBuild; we passed the Families Package; we did the mental health inquiry; we restarted payments to the Superannuation Fund; we addressed child poverty. You asked what we prioritised and what we actually did so here is your list: medicinal cannabis we increased the minimum wage we did the Pike River Recovery Agency and we established the Employment Relations Amendment Bill.Hon Alfred Ngaro: Point of order Madam Assistant Speaker.MARJA LUBECK: I'll get to the bill right now if that was your point of order.Hon Alfred Ngaro: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I just want to bring to your attention that for the last two or three minutes the member has been speaking out of scope from the bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I thank the member for his intervention. I'd encourage the member to come back to the content of the bill.MARJA LUBECK: Absolutely. I just thought I wanted to get that off my chest. So what we're doing here as we've heard is we're repealing the Families Commission Act 2003. Pretty much from what I understand it is basically a tidy-up of the processes of transferring the Families Commission's function.The Families Commission was established in 2004 restructured in 2014 and has been operating as the social policy evaluation and research unit (SuPERU). Now it can be quite a challenging exercise to focus on improving the lives of families children and whānau because the diversity of the family forms nowadays has made it probably quite hard to target assistance where it's needed. So SuPERU has done a great job in that aspect. There are also plenty of really good examples of good literature reviews that have come out in social science research which have made it easier to make better decision-making. Minister Martin mentioned the Hub research database which will remain available. There's some really awesome stuff on there. So it's important work that they've done but there was significant doubling up and overlap with other Government agencies and it will be more efficient and effective to embed the functions of those agencies rather than having a stand-alone Crown entity.Some of the key functions have been taken over already by the Ministry of Justice Ministry of Social Development and the Social Investment Agency. Some of the examples we've heard were about the Family and Whānau Status Report putting whānau at the centre of policy making which has gone to the Ministry of Social Development and the management of the Growing Up in New Zealand study which I understand is the study to provide evidence about what actually shapes children's early development so that every child can have the best start in life. That hasn't stopped; it is now the responsibility of the Ministry of Social Development. Also the responsibility for managing the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse contract has transferred to the Ministry of Justice.Other key functions have been reallocated and this legislation will ensure that any remaining residual responsibilities liabilities duties debt and assets will be transferred to the Ministry of Social Development. Any information held by the commission will also go to that ministry. Any work that is not transferring to another agency will finish by the time this legislation is repealed likely around mid-2018. But again it is important to note that the important work at SuPERU will continue. It will just be done more efficiently without doubling up within Government agencies and it won't be doing it as a stand-alone unit.It's also really important to make a mention of several of the former SuPERU staff who have transferred to the ministry and will continue to be involved. I echo the sentiments of Minister Sepuloni regarding the professionalism of all the staff and of all the leadership that were involved.So lastly thank you members on the other side of the House for helping us tidy up yet another loose end and thank you for supporting this bill. I support it and commend it to the House. Thank you.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I call Simeon Brown. You have five minutes.