Stewart Barbara: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStewart Barbara: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11496. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BARBARA STEWART (NZ First):I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Families Commission Amendment Bill. Yet again we have been left totally disappointed by this bill. The Social Services Committee failed to make any changes that would change our position on this particular bill. New Zealand First opposes this bill because it has failed to make any worthwhile difference to families in New Zealand. Again we are very surprised that the Hon Peter Dunne has not ensured that the commission which he advocated for with the Labour Government back in 2002-03 has been left to wallow and fall into this level of disarray. Where was his support to ensure that it remained a vibrant worthwhile successful operation that could produce the results that were required to ensure that it remained operational?In our minority report we also stated that we believe that these changes are detrimental to the well-being of New Zealand families and whānau and that reducing the number of commissioners from seven to one will negatively affect the work that the commission carries out. If the complication of the projected budget that will be invested into the Social Policy Evaluation and Research Unit is added the situation gets disorganised and issues will inevitably rise to the surface regarding accountability. So we have got a lot of questions about this revised Families Commission.We also question whether or not this Families Commission organisation is worthwhile when it does very much the same research as that carried out by the Ministry of Social Development. We believe that the Families Commission can nolonger be justified. It is time really that we worked towards protecting the family unit rather than making steps that would be detrimental or provide no added value for it. We believe that this amended bill has actually undermined the efforts to protect the family unit and children. The proposed changes do not really do any good whatsoever. These alterations will be more harmful than good.Although we realise that it may be economically and politically desirable to minimise the number of commissioners that we currently have that number should not be pared to just one. That is far too small. We fail to see when seven were not doing the job properly how one person can actually pick up all of that slack and improve the lives of families in New Zealand.What we are actually seeing here is a major revamp of the role of the Families Commission. One has to ask whether this revamp really goes far enough and whether we really need the Families Commission any more. We in New Zealand First do not think that we do. We know that hard economic times are upon us and research in these hard economic times must be forward thinking and very very focused and the money could be better spent towards research in some other area.In New Zealand First we think that the Families Commission has got a long way to go to improve—far further than what this bill actually stipulates. We know that the commission reports directly to the Minister for Social Development the Hon Paula Bennett who justifies the amount that is actually being invested into the research unit. However there is a lack of consideration of the fact that the issues and the themes on which the research unit will be focused are interrelated and they cross many social sector boundaries. For example the White Paper for Vulnerable Children that the ministry and the research unit produced last year contains issues and themes that are directly related to the work that the commission carries out. These kinds of underlying problems will surface again and again and basically complicate the work that the commission administers especially now that it will have just one commissioner overseeing the entire organisation. This will inevitably have dire consequences and we believe that Parliament will most likely be re-evaluating the work of the commissioner in the future.What we are seeing here is that version 1 did not really work out in 2003 so we now have version 2 which is more focused and leaner. Our best hope is that the new version 2 of the Families Commission will be carefully monitored on a regular basis to ensure the best-possible output. There is a definite limit on how many versions of the commission there can be before people actually lose confidence in it totally and version 2 almost reaches that limit.Greater emphasis needs to be placed on promoting and carrying out more groundwork that creates better understanding and fosters better outcomes for all New Zealand families. We know that New Zealand families are already experiencing economic and social hardship. Changing the governance of the Families Commission and reprioritising its budget will do nothing to help in this particular instance. In fact we believe that it will just produce further barriers to their development. Paying for a group of professionals and academics through the social science experts panel will only emphasise on paper all of the problems that New Zealand families are facing on a daily basis. Research and groundwork are needed to work simultaneously and in conjunction with one another.New Zealand First would have liked to see something that would be useful to New Zealand families for the money that is spent. We are going to be carefully monitoring the outputs and ensuring that the money is not spent on consultants to travel around New Zealand and overseas at the expense of families. It is for these reasons that New Zealand First opposes this bill.