Prasad Rajen: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16517. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour):I am pleased to take my last call in the Committee stage of this bill the Families Commission Amendment Bill but again still with a heavy heart. You would expect the title of a bill to give you some idea of what is in the bill. Simply calling it the Families Commission Amendment Bill tells us nothing so clearly the title is inappropriate because the bill does a number of things that ought to be reflected in the title. The one that comes to mind is that this is clearly actually the “Doing Away With the Families Commission Bill” because it effectively does away with it. The bill has got an organisation with board members run by a chief executive with one person called the Families Commissioner and there is nothing else in there that requires it to be in the form that it is. So the title of this bill would be far clearer if it was the “This is How We Get Rid of the Families Commission Bill”.We know that the Government has not liked the Families Commission—it did not want it established; it never supported it—but it is quite interesting why now it is forced into a position where it has to support the Families Commission but morphing it into its own image. It is only because of its coalition partner. So it could then be called the “Saving Our Coalition Arrangement and Using the Families Commission to Do It Bill” because there is no other reason for this particular bill. There is no problem it actually solves that is a problem in the Families Commission today except the ones that the Government and the Minister for Social Development have created. So this is saving the coalition. That is just all it is. It takes away really the opportunity to as my colleague Jacinda Ardern was saying really strengthen even further advocacy for our children and our families but it does not do that. It could easily be called the “Saving Our Coalition Partners Bill” or the “We Don’t Like It But We Have to Have It Amendment Bill”.But it does something far more serious than that. It actually takes away the most powerful function of the Families Commission. That was advocating for families through consulting with them; doing the research finding out what programmes there are and what is working and what is not working and what changes ought to occur; and then advising the Government and providing public education on those findings. That is what it was designed to do. But here we have a commission that although it has been given an advocacy function has actually been given the job of doing a Family Status Report. If you read the Family Status Report it is not a Family Status Report; it is a hash of things that have been written before around families. I invite listeners and members to read it because that is all it does. Everything that is there has already been said. So maybe it should just be called the “Doing a Family Status Report Bill” because it does nothing else. It does not add anything of value. The Ministry of Social Development is already producing a social report. It is only a small jump for it to tweak that to actually address families but it does not bring that in.But the other one is that it actually brings in is a social sciences expert panel. This is probably the real bite in this particular bill because here the Minister will appoint the social sciences expert panel. At the moment the Families Commission has access to all of the experts in the world all of the experts in the private sector all of the experts in our universities and all of the experts in our various agencies that deliver this. All of that is gone; this minimum of four people will now become the experts panel. They will provide advice on what work is to be done and they will monitor the quality of the reports coming out. What is this about? This is a sham. So it is the “Don’t Trust Anybody Bill” because it actually does away with the very intelligent resources that are already available that the commission has been using. But no the Minister plus one or two others will appoint four people who will be given this job.This is corralling the Families Commission which is why this is a cynical bill. That cynicism ought to be reflected in its title because here is a Government being as cynical as it can be trying to hide it in all kinds of lovely sounding terms. But in the end it is full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Maybe that is a good title as well. Thank you.