Williams Poto: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16509. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):It is actually a great honour for me to be able to speak on the Families Commission Amendment Bill. I share my colleague Dr Prasad’s sadness in our getting to the point where we are looking at the demise of the Families Commission and of lots of the exciting and wonderful work it has done over time and I commend you Dr Prasad for your work in your time at the Families Commission. In a former life if there is any such thing prior to coming to Parliament I worked for many years in the family violence sector. I have to say that the Families Commission as it was particularly under Dr Prasad’s watch was a strong advocate for the work that we were doing in the family violence sector.One of the things that I particularly lament is what is likely to happen to the White Ribbon Day celebrations. Many of the gentlemen on both sides of this Chamber actually wear a white ribbon to signify their support in encouraging men to take responsibility for their actions with regard to violence towards women and children. I have to say very clearly that wearing the white ribbon is not a gimmick; it is actually a very strong statement about your intent in terms of not staying silent about violence towards women and children and actually wanting to speak up. The Families Commission had done an awful lot of work to ensure that the White Ribbon Day celebrations the White Ribbon Day ambassadors and all of those programmes not only—to quote your words Minister—had “legs” and developed within the community but actually stayed strong.The community cannot do this work on its own. With the many hundreds of thousands of call-outs for the police every year for family and domestic violence it is a requirement that the Government steps in. Something that I have seen over my time working in the family violence sector is that to encourage the community to be a participant in this was one of the key tenets of the Families Commission. I am very sad to see that that particular event will probably suffer some demise because it will not have the support of the Government.What it is that we really require to support our families is what the Families Commission was originally set up to do. Families are wonderfully diverse and are made up of all types of components. The Families Commission really honoured and respected the difference and diversity that families bring and the types of support that are required for that diversity as well whether it be supporting young people through teenage pregnancy or supporting parents through difficult times or looking at how children could be better supported.Of course what I was particularly pleased to see when I was working in the sector was that the Families Commission was an independent voice for all of those different sectors that wanted to participate in supporting families. Here I refer to supporting district health boards and other health boards and supporting social service providers and private individuals to actually make a difference in families’ lives. Families need a lot of resources in order to function well. They also need to have a lot of work in terms of supporting all those conditions that the Government can provide to help families in need. This is where the Families Commission had a particularly strong approach.A few years ago I first heard of the demise of the Families Commission and that it was likely to become more of an evaluation and research institution. Although on the one hand information and research on families is really important and useful for me it signalled that we were moving away from our commitment to families and towards actually seeing them in terms of research and evaluation and I do not think that that is particularly appropriate for us. I was quite sad to see the number of commissioners reduced to one and that their major function would now be in evaluation and research. So when we think about the work—