Ball DarrochDARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Advocacy Workforce and Age Settings) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill although I acknowledge the issues that the other Opposition parties have with this bill. Frankly throughout the whole process from the first reading through to the select committee process New Zealand First has had similar concerns or issues or questions or queries around pretty much that same provision around the delegation. But there is a key difference or key reason why New Zealand First is supporting this bill. I think what I feel obliged to do is go through the five aims of this bill and explain why New Zealand First supports four out of the five and has an issue with one of them.The main reason why New Zealand First is supporting this bill is what it does. The issues that have been brought forward by the Opposition parties are about how the Government or the ministry intends to achieve that what". Those are the problems that the Opposition parties have. But New Zealand First is concentrating on what will happen when this legislation passes and the main aim is to achieve a child-centred system. The first way it does that is by "extending State responsibility for care and protection to a person's 18th birthday …". As a party that is what we know we want to stand up in the House and support in order to ensure it goes through in legislation. There may be some issues or caveats with the other four ways in which the Government wants to achieve that aim but that cannot diminish the need for care and protection to include those 17-year-olds.The second aim is to encourage the participation of children and young people in decisions that could significantly affect them and New Zealand First supports that. It wants to ensure that "wherever possible policies and services have regard to the views of children and young people" and New Zealand First supports that aim. It aims to support "the set-up of independent advocacy services with a particular focus on children and young people in care". New Zealand First agrees with that. But the one aim and issue and method that we have an issue with and concern about is that the Government aims to allow "a broader range of professionals to perform a wider set of tasks to help identify and meet the needs of vulnerable children and young people."We have heard both sides of the argument in this House. We have heard the Government and the Minister for Social Development stand up and say that this is a great thing because professionals from outside of the scope can be employed to help social workers or to help care for children. We have also heard from the other Opposition parties that this can be manipulated and that because of the ambiguity with which the legislation is written it is a very subjective provision. That is the problem; it is a very subjective provision. I would hazard a guess that if it were a Labour Government or if it were a Green Government they probably would not have that much of an issue with that provision because they feel that they would have the right perspective with which to use that provision. They are just judging the current Government and the perception of the current Government and how they will use that and New Zealand First does have concerns with that as well because of the ambiguity. There is a little bit of confusion with why the Government wants to allow the delegation of non-qualified individuals because there is legislation going through the House—or it will do shortly—with the mandatory registration of social workers.The whole intent of ensuring social workers are mandatorily registered is to ensure a few things. It is to ensure that the quality and standard of training the quality and standard of performance for those social workers the actual robustness of the roles and the intent of the individual social workers—that they are appropriately qualified and basically that the safety of the children is at the centre which funnily enough is the intent of this legislation. So why would we have the structure and the process that social workers need to be mandatorily registered to ensure the quality of that service—not only the quality but having the right people doing the right job and for the right reasons. Why would the Government need to stipulate that for social workers and yet in this context allow that delegation to go out the window?I would just like to highlight how ambiguous the actual legislation is by reading out just one of the clauses in the legislation: new section 7C(2) inserted by clause 7. This is where it stipulates where the chief executive does delegate to those people who are not registered social workers and it states that whomever that chief executive chooses that chief executive must be satisfied that "(a) the person is appropriately qualified to perform the function or exercise the power taking into account the person's training experience and interpersonal skills;". That is quite obviously a very subjective paragraph. The second point is that that does not actually rule out the concerns that New Zealand First and other Opposition parties have with this. That does not rule out the use of private companies or the entire privatisation of that role. Does it rule out the use of Serco for example? The answer is no.Another point that I would actually like to make on that little piece that I read out is the fact that at the moment there is consultation going on in regard to family violence—about the workforce capability framework and the necessity for anyone who does that role who works within those roles to ensure that they have some core competencies. The question is: does this bill and that part of legislation that I read out apply to the core competencies? Or does it include the essential core competencies within the framework? I would just like to read out where it states that the Ministerial Group on Family Violence and Sexual Violence work programme is inviting consultation on the draft and the purpose of the framework is to outline the core capabilities that members of the workforce need to have to effectively deliver family and sexual violence services and to better collaborate and coordinate with each other.If you compare the need for the social workers to be registered the need for people who work within the family violence sector to ensure that they have core capabilities surely there needs to be some sort of need within this—one of the most important parts of any legislation that goes through the House that is working with our vulnerable children—to have some sort of structure and certainty on whom we have what jobs they are going to be performing and for what reasons.Although we do quite clearly have some issues and concerns with one specific part of the legislation we will be supporting this bill through. We will because we know that in the main part if we do not support this bill then in principle we will be asking to support the status quo or be asking to accept the status quo where 17-year-olds cannot get that help care and protection. I feel confident that when New Zealand First is in Government next year this could quite well be one of the pieces of legislation that will be pulled out and that could quite well be one of the pieces of legislation and provisions within that legislation that we would have a very very close look at. We will be supporting this bill with some reservations and concerns."