Social Workers Registration Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Social Workers Registration Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:607;Page:4850] 
Social Workers Registration Bill 
Second Reading 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Social Services and Employment) 
: 
 I move  
That the Social Workers Registration Bill be now read a second time 
. This bill provides a framework for the registration of social workers in New Zealand. It puts in place a number of measures designed to protect the safety and well-being of all New Zealanders who receive the services of a registered social worker. The regulation of social workers has been the subject of debate over a number of years. There has been concern about the lack of credibility of social work as a profession. There has also been a growing expectation from New Zealanders particularly those who use the social services that social workers should be more accountable for their work and that their work should be more transparent. In its 1999 manifesto the Labour Party pledged to establish a system of professional registration for social workers. This bill delivers on that commitment. 
The nature of social work requires social workers to assist individuals families and communities who have to cope with stressful life events and difficult circumstances. Because those circumstances often make people vulnerable New Zealanders need to be sure that they are protected from poor social work practice and the harm it can inflict. The proposed legislation addresses that need. The aims of the bill are firstly to protect the public by providing mechanisms to ensure that social workers are competent to practice and accountable for the way in which they practice secondly to create a framework for the registration of social workers thirdly to provide for a board to promote the benefits of registration and to administer the registration system and finally to enhance the professionalism of social workers. 
The bill stipulates that registration will be based on a person’s competence and fitness to practice social work. The entry criteria for registration will require an educational qualification and practice experience followed by an assessment of competence. The person must also be judged competent to practice social work with Maori and different ethnic and cultural groups in New Zealand. The bill proposes that only those people who have been through a competency process will have the right to use the title “registered social worker.” While other people will not be stopped from practising social work uncertified practitioners will not be able to give themselves that title. The bill also requires that registered social workers renew their registration after 5 years including the undertaking of a further assessment of their competence. Registered social workers will be made accountable for their practice through the establishment of a complaints and disciplinary process. 
The Social Services Committee received 37 submissions on the bill. The majority of those submissions—30 out of 37—supported the intent of the bill which is to provide public protection to improve the quality of social work services to scrutinise the fitness and competence of social workers and to ensure they are accountable for what they do. Those submitters saw that the bill would benefit the people who use social work services. A smaller number of submissions expressed reservations about the bill. In particular they questioned whether the bill would be able to achieve its purpose and offer enough protection to the public if registration was not mandatory. I know at least one speaker will raise that issue here in this debate. I would like therefore to address the issue of it being voluntary to become a registered social worker. 
As the select committee quite rightly noted it is not viable to introduce mandatory registration immediately. Although the specific criteria for registration have yet to be defined because that is a job of the Social Workers Registration Board it is likely that a significant proportion of the social workers who are currently practising would not immediately meet the criteria for registration. It would also be unrealistic to expect that employers and individual social workers would have the time and the money needed to gain registration immediately. Mandatory registration is not consistent with other forms of occupational regulation. Voluntary regulation regimes are the most common form of regulating other professions. For example they are used for accountants. As a result of considering that issue the select committee has recommended that as part of its regular review of the legislation the Social Workers Registration Board should specifically consider the extent to which the system of voluntary registration is achieving the purposes of the legislation. I of course support that. 
As a result of the submissions received on and of its own consideration of the bill the Social Services Committee has recommended a number of other changes which I support. I will just skip through them. Members of the committee were concerned to ensure that the registration framework is established as soon as possible after the bill is passed. To assist that they have recommended that the commencement clause of the bill be amended to require that the members of the Social Workers Registration Board must be appointed within 12 months of the bill receiving the royal assent. That is what we will do. The remaining provisions of the bill will come into effect by Order in Council and different dates may be appointed for different provisions. Those amendments enable the Social Workers Registration Board to be established as soon as possible but no later than 12 months after the enactment of the legislation. I of course support that change. 
The select committee saw merit in one submission that suggested that if a similar complaint against a registered social worker had previously been made and investigated then that information should be taken into account before a complaints assessment committee makes its assessment of the complaint it has received. The select committee has recommended amending the bill to allow that when assessing a complaint about a registered social worker a complaints assessment committee may have regard to any previous investigation or considerations and the consequences if any of those investigations. 
Another change that the select committee recommended which I fully support relates to the complaints procedures that are maintained by the employers of social workers. The Commissioner for Children suggested that the complaints and disciplinary tribunal should have a role in ensuring and promoting the establishment of complaints mechanisms within the agencies that employ social workers. Such mechanisms would assist the tribunal to better manage complaints that are likely to be referred to it. The committee agreed with that suggestion. The bill has been amended to include a new function for the Social Workers Registration Board which is to promote that process of complaining. I agree with that. It will certainly help with the policing of unprofessional activities by social workers in their employment. 
Finally the select committee recommended that a new penalty be included in the bill. The penalty would be against a person who holds an employee or a professional associate out as a registered social worker knowing that the employee or social worker is not registered or that his or her registration has been suspended. Again that amendment addresses submissions that expressed concern that the bill could take responsibility away from the employers of social workers. 
I would like to thank those organisations and members of the public who made submissions on this bill. In particular I would like to acknowledge the contribution of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers and what it has done in bringing this bill to fruition. That association is committed to professionalism—it has been for a long time—and it welcomes this bill. I would of course also like to thank the select committee for its work and for the changes that it has suggested and that we have made to the bill. 
I have circulated Supplementary Order Paper 73 which largely makes technical improvements that give more clarify to certain provisions within the bill. The most significant amendment made in that Supplementary Order Paper is to extend the time limit for provisional registration from 6 to 8 years. That will allow social workers who have been granted provisional registration within 3 months of the bill being passed more time to gain their qualifications. I suspect that qualification for registration will take up to 5 years to get because of the academic and professional components that will be required. Therefore that increased time is useful. 
The measures in this bill provide a process for the registration of all social workers in New Zealand. New Zealanders are entitled to know that social workers are competent and practice safely that poor social work will not be tolerated and that people will be held accountable in this profession. As I want to reflect in my third reading speech this is a profession that I have had a very close association with over a very long period of time. This bill has a 20 to 25-year history before it has come before Parliament today. I therefore thank all those who have worked hard on getting it this far and I look forward to its further progress. 
KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) 
: 
 The National Party will be supporting this bill because we think it is very important that social workers work towards a position where they can become registered. We think it is very important that every occupational group thinks very seriously about the standards within its own occupation and of course we are a party that has always supported high standards in any occupation be it social work engineering medicine or any other area. 
But I say that this particular bill is a mere shadow of what was expected. There were huge expectations of this bill particularly from the social work community itself. There was an expectation that it would make a real difference to social workers by lifting the standards in social work and putting in place a better system of registration. Initially even the Government was looking at mandatory registration for those working within the Government sector. That is why I think it is a bit of a shame that the Government has made an about-turn when it comes to the provisions that relate to the Government sector. 
In Mick Brown’s report in December 2001 which was a very important report it is stated that the introduction of social worker registration should be given urgency. At the time the Minister told his Cabinet colleagues that he wanted to have this bill in place by the middle of 2001. Now here we are nearly 2 years later than that having only got as far as this with a very watered-down version of what was originally intended. Originally it was intended that social workers from the Department of Child Youth and Family Services and from other Government agencies would be required to work towards registration. We all understood that that would have been an administrative issue for a lot of social workers but we felt that it was important that the Government put a peg in the ground to say that was the standard it expected of Government-employed social workers and in particular those who exercise statutory powers—in relation to that those social workers who work specifically with children. 
That provision has been removed which was quite a shock I suppose not only to the social work sector but also to the Minister himself. When we look at some of the Cabinet papers of the time we see there was actually a Cabinet recommendation that “all statutory social work functions must be performed by registered social workers. The Minister of Social Services and Employment should require CYFS to include in their purchase agreement that registered social workers must be employed for social work positions and incremental targets negotiated”. Also a transition period of 6 years or more was to be allowed to give time for existing Child Youth and Family Services social workers to gain qualifications required for registration and one permanent position on the board was to be reserved for a person from Child Youth and Family Services. That has all gone now. Only some months later all those recommendations by Cabinet had to be rescinded. 
Why was that? It was because the Government had not done its homework. When the Government turned round to the Department of Child Youth and Family Services and told it what the obligation would be the department said that 44 percent of its front-line staff did not have any qualification at all and that only 55 percent of the social workers who joined it as new employees had qualifications. Basically the department advised that that standard was not possible. It would also in terms of training costs have cost about an additional $2 million a year to train Child Youth and Family Services employees up to the level where they could be registered. 
I see that as an administrative hurdle but not as a reason to give up working towards higher standards in social work altogether. The Minister is right on one thing: all New Zealanders deserve to know that when they are working alongside a social worker that worker is of a certain quality and standard and has done certain things. That is not to say that life experience is not important but when we look at registration I think it is important that we put a peg in the ground that works towards a higher standard of service because social workers are dealing with New Zealand’s most vulnerable people. 
This bill is nothing more than a shell of what it was. Most of the provisions have been watered down and the bill no longer applies to those social workers who work within the Government sector. Registration is totally voluntary which means people can either decide to call themselves a social worker or not to do so. Yes there is provision that only registered social workers will be able to call themselves that but the average punter out on the street will not know the difference between a registered social worker and someone who professes to be working in a social work capacity. So the bill has been watered down. Even the Supplementary Order Paper has further watered down the provisions. For example the maximum total period for which a person may hold provisional registration is extended from 6 to 8 years. For a person seeking temporary registration as a social worker the period is extended from 6 months to 4 years. 
Eight years as a total maximum period in which to hold provisional registration is the equivalent of someone’s entire childhood. I do not think that is good enough. I do not think those objectives are ambitious enough. I think that it was possible at least to get the Government sector working towards a higher standard for its social workers and really having been scared off by a bit of resource and administrative cost the Government has just given up on that obligation altogether. So if we look at this bill we can see why the social work sector is very happy to get it into the House at least. It is 2 years late but social workers are mainly happy because this bill just brings registration into the House for the first time. I think there are some deep concerns about the quality of this bill and about what will actually be achieved. 
When the State is dealing with New Zealand families and particularly when it is exercising statutory powers registration is important. There have been concerns about professionalism and about the experience and education that is needed. In particular if we look at some of the high-profile cases that have been in the media of late we see a lot of the concerns the public have relate to the experience of social workers. When we look at the amount of experience that some Child Youth and Family Services social workers have we see the majority of staff have less than 5 years’ experience. That is not to underestimate the quality of some of the social work training programmes and the teaching in a lot of those programmes but life experience does count as well. There does need to be a greater source of social workers who have a lot more experience. That is also why we are deeply concerned about the shortages of social workers in this country. 
Working as a social worker particularly with the Government agencies is not a bed of roses; it is a very tough job to do. Social workers are criticised by a wide range of people when mistakes are made but equally the public has the right to have very high standards. By establishing the registration procedure and working towards having a higher standard of professionalism within the industry we will all be better off. But in terms of what the Government has done here in this bill it is sad to see that many of the provisions have been watered down and that many of the things this bill aims to do have been slowed down. I think that to be able to sit for 8 years on a provisional registration is appalling. The industry was keen to get this legislation into the House and implemented as fast as possible so that social workers could start working together as an industry to provide a better service. So it is a shame that the Government has not played its part and that social workers from Child Youth and Family Services and other Government agencies have no obligation to be involved in registering at all. A lot of training needs to be done to be able to take social workers to that level but it seems that the Government has backed away from that obligation as well. 
We will be raising other concerns that we have about this bill during the course of the debate. We have particular concerns about the issues relating to the treaty and about some of the more politically correct aspects of this bill. But in short I say we will support the bill. 
JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 I rise for United Future to support the second reading of this bill. As the Minister has outlined the bill provides a framework for the registration of social workers. By raising the standard of professionalism for social workers it is expected that the safety and transparency of social work will increase for the good of the general public who are served by social workers. 
The bill originates from the recommendations of Judge Mick Brown formerly of the Youth Court after he had reviewed the service procedures of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services in 2000. He recommended urgent changes to increase the quality of social work. 
 It is common that when members of the public require the assistance of a social worker they are in a needy and vulnerable situation that does not need to be further complicated by poor social work practice. Increased public safety is a key aim of this bill and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the fall-out from social work incompetence. However it has been recognised that a one-size-fits-all approach to registration would not best serve the present interests of New Zealanders. There are many fine social work practitioners who have had years and years of experience and have a great track record and who entered social work long before there were any clear requirements or specific tertiary qualifications to be had. 
The registration of social workers will come under the Social Workers Registration Board set up as a Crown entity and the Social Workers Complaints and Disciplinary Tribunal. It will include an annual practising certificate for registered social workers with three tiers of registration: full registration and limited registration in the form of provisional registration and temporary registration. In respect of full registration we applaud the matters included in that framework including the recognition of New Zealand qualifications the review of competence every 5 years the requirement that the board be satisfied that a person is considered fit and proper to be practising as a social worker and the all-important clauses inserted by the Social Services Committee which we applaud requiring social workers to have culturally sensitive practice as part of their scope. Obviously having sufficient practical experience is part of what is required. In respect of provisional registration there is an 8-year time limitation for existing social workers to qualify for full registration and that time is allowed for them to become fully upskilled. Special appropriate conditions apply and special restrictions can be applied. Temporary registration is available for people with overseas qualifications who are either working here temporarily or who are waiting to meet the New Zealand requirements for full registration. 
United Future compliments the select committee on the wise way that it has approached the complicated issues that have required grandparenting provisions so that existing social workers who do not have tertiary qualifications but who have many years’ experience can have a pathway to registration. The discussion paper put out by the Ministry of Social Policy in 2000 found that among existing social workers 57 percent had tertiary qualifications although it was unclear how many of those qualifications had a direct link to social work. Twenty-four percent had school qualifications and 19 percent had no formal qualifications at all. Those people who argue against this bill because registration is not mandatory need to understand that if social workers are to be given the chance to enjoy a professional coming-of-age then time must be allowed for the current situation to be addressed. This bill includes review provisions that will mean that as professional progress is made over time mandatory registration could then be considered along with any other issues that may become apparent. 
It is interesting that the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers recently made a submission to the Health Committee requesting that social workers be included under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill. Although there is some doubt as to whether the breadth of setting in which social workers operate makes that bill an appropriate measure under which this profession should be regulated the request further indicates the very real need felt by social workers for a framework to operate under. There has been concern for many years about the lack of credibility of social work as a profession and at the same time there has been growing disquiet amongst the public and in particular consumer groups that people in that occupation are not as accountable or the practice as transparent as is considered desirable. 
One of the problems faced by those wanting to legislate for safe practice is that defining social work is difficult. The International Federation of Social Workers which is an international body with over 80 member countries that approves the ethical standards and principles that are binding on the social work occupation in each member country acknowledges that difficulty. The focus of this bill is not to define social work; that is always the job of the professional bodies. The focus is to establish the legislative framework that supports and facilitates professional credibility and status. For that reason United Future is pleased to support the passage of this legislation. 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First supports this bill. It has been on the Order Paper for a very long time and we are pleased to see that at long last it has reached this stage. We all know in this Parliament that social work is becoming an increasingly challenging occupation; that has become very evident over the last few months with some very high-profile cases. We read about an increasing number of young people who have had problems in their lives and some of them should have been identified and assisted further by social workers. This occupation is becoming increasingly complex. Social workers make decisions that impact irreversibly on the lives of children and their families and as MPs we all receive letters and calls about those cases. A registration system for social workers is absolutely vital as that puts some emphasis back on accountability and accountability is required in this role just as it is in other professional roles where people’s lives are involved. 
New Zealand First supports the bill in its intent to work towards improving the quality of social work services. It is our view that a registration system will over time result in increased protection and safeguards for children and their families and also for social workers. New Zealand First is aware that the bill in itself will not upskill social workers. But it does provide a framework for ensuring that social work in New Zealand begins to get some of the rigorous discipline that is absolutely required. 
Sufficient resourcing and support must also accompany the new registration system. Of course that does include training. Ongoing supervision will encourage professional development and will provide personal support. It will also ensure that the needs of the client are being adequately met and that the social worker is very very clear about his or her role and responsibilities. New Zealand First believes there should be a clear intention for all social workers to be registered over time. We recognise too that this bill will not eliminate poor practice quickly. However it should begin the process of improving the quality and accountability of social workers. Because social workers are involved with the most vulnerable sectors of society a quality service is essential. One of the first things that registration will offer social workers is status and the new registration board should enhance the status of the social work profession. 
 We know that the Department of Child Youth and Family Services has staff turnover challenges and registration may be an important tool in the department’s efforts to recruit and train staff. The certainty of professional development usually does attract staff. Recent news releases point to a reduction in the number of full-time students choosing to study for a career in social work. The association of social workers estimates that in the past 5 years there has been a reduction of up to 15 percent in those willing and trained to do social work so the improved image of a department staffed by qualified and registered social workers may also help to attract and retain suitable staff. 
We are pleased that only qualified and certified people who have been through a competency process will be able to call themselves registered social workers. Only then can the public be satisfied that a social worker is competent or is at least deemed to be competent. Social work is becoming increasingly complex and New Zealand First believes that a registration system will provide a national standard and framework of control for both the roles and the responsibilities of social workers. New Zealand First supports this bill. 
GEORGINA BEYER (NZ Labour—Wairarapa) 
: 
 It is a privilege to speak in the second reading of the Social Workers Registration Bill. As the current chair of the Social Services Committee I would like to acknowledge and credit the Social Services Committee of the previous Parliament which dealt with this bill. Therefore I would like to acknowledge the membership of that particular select committee with its chair Taito Philip Field and Mahara Okeroa Sue Bradford Helen Duncan Dr Liz Gordon Dr Muriel Newman Jill Pettis Katherine Rich Bob Simcock and Anne Tolley. There are a couple of names there that we have not heard for a wee while and it is nice to have them mentioned and given credit for having worked on such an important bill. 
The registration of social workers will enhance not only competence but also credibility and give certainty to the public on the quality of service they could receive from people who work in this area. Social workers are extraordinarily vital to some of the current issues that communities around New Zealand are working on and with. As we do have a numbers problem with social workers we hope that these mechanisms will enhance the work they do and the confidence that the public has in the work they do. It adds to their bona fides in a very positive way. I support the bill. 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Social Workers Registration Bill we are dealing with today is one of those unfortunate pieces of legislation that have been left to languish on the Order Paper for far too long. We first debated this issue in Parliament in October 2001 and the Social Services Committee reported back to the House almost exactly a year ago to the day in April 2002. In the meantime the professional organisation for social workers the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers has grown quite concerned about the delay. The association has been worried that the original impetus that led to the bill’s development may be lost and that hold-ups in getting the bill passed may slow down the positive but extensive processes that will be needed to ensure that adequate systems protocols personnel requirements and so on are in place to ensure that the bill is implemented successfully and in a timely way. 
The association also sees it as critical that the Social Workers Registration Bill is implemented before the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill as my colleague mentioned earlier so that the professional standing of social workers within the health sector is assured prior to their inclusion in that much broader legislation in terms of the health workforce. For these reasons I am delighted that this bill is finally before the House and I can assure all concerned that the Green Party will continue to support strongly the long-overdue establishment of a regulatory framework for social workers across all sectors in New Zealand. 
I sat on the Social Services Committee that heard submissions on this bill during the last term of Parliament and was impressed by the overwhelming support for registration from all manner of groups and individuals not just those with the most direct stake in the bill. However by the end of the process the Green Party was left with one or two reservations about where the bill had got to. Firstly we felt that in order to enhance the quality of social work the bill should reflect a commitment by the Government to work towards the mandatory registration of all social workers within an agreed and specified time frame. We were looking at 10 years. We supported the submissions of the Association of Social Workers and others who called for the registration board to be granted sufficient authority to require eventual compliance from all employers in the public community and private sectors to employ only registered social workers. We do understand the arguments presented by the Government and others that the costs of compliance with compulsory registration will be organisationally very high—and that is not looking just at money—and that it will take time. But at the same time we believe that 10 years should be long enough and is a goal worth aiming for specifically in the legislation rather than our leaving it up to later reviews of the Act. 
The second reservation we had with regard to the bill was that it lacks specific reference to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and explicit acknowledgment of the obligations of the Crown as called for by a number of key submitters. However after learning that groups such as the Association of Social Workers have accepted with reluctance the omission of Te Tiriti o Waitangi from the bill we did not feel able to pursue this matter without community backing and join with the association in hoping that it will be looked at closely as part of the first review 3 years after enactment. The Green Party was also pleased that the select committee in its deliberations did agree to recommend changes to the bill that will clarify provisions for Maori as distinct from Pacific Island peoples and other ethnic groups and that the Social Workers Registration Board will be required to maintain mechanisms such as advisory committees or separate caucuses with the goal of ensuring that the views of tangata whenua will be available and will be heard. 
Overall we look forward to the passing of this bill and the much-needed enhancement of the social work profession that it encompasses. 
MARK PECK (NZ Labour—Invercargill) 
: 
 I support this bill. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (NZ National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 National is supporting the Social Workers Registration Bill very much because we want to ensure that there are high standards of professionalism amongst social workers. I do note that Minister Maharey pointed out that the genesis of this bill has taken in the order of 20 to 25 years and I too would like to pay tribute to social workers who face enormous challenges in their everyday work. 
I note that in the 2001 census there were 10401 social workers in New Zealand. But what I observe as I go about my electorate work is that there seems to be a tremendous range of qualifications for social workers. I have certainly seen incidents in my electorate particularly around Huntly where situations unfortunately have not been well handled—very very difficult situations requiring huge levels of skill and huge levels of professionalism. I will cite just two examples. One was a situation where a woman’s husband was found molesting the children. He was sent to jail and unfortunately those children were sent to another family despite the woman exhorting the department to allow her to keep the children. They were sent to another family a caretaker family where they were molested. 
On the other side of the coin I have heard of situations where foster parents who have very high levels of professionalism and great levels of sincerity have taken in children from the Department of Child Youth and Family Services and they have not been given the full information about those children. The children then have turned round and accused the foster parents of molesting them and those parents have gone through the horrendous situation of clearing their names. That sort of situation is absolutely a great worry and explains the huge need for this Social Workers Registration Bill. 
I note that of the 37 submissions the three main concerns were lack of explicit reference to the Treaty of Waitangi the voluntary nature of the registration system and the lack of recognition of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers. I would like to concentrate a little on mandatory registration but before I do so I want to point out that in March 2000 Judge Mick Brown was asked by the Minister of Social Welfare and Employment to undertake reviews into Department of Child Youth and Family Services procedures. In his report he noted particularly that he had great concerns about the professionalism of social workers with particular reference to issues of training qualification and supervision. It was observed that only 44 percent of front-line staff and only 55 percent of new staff had a B-level social work qualification and that there could be difficulties in staff being released for training. He also noted the very high turnover rates. 
The report included a variety of recommendations one of them being that the introduction of social worker registration be given urgency. Here we are 2½ years later and if this is urgency in the Minister’s terms I do not know what urgency is. It has taken 2½ years to start finally implementing the recommendations of Judge Mick Brown. 
The second point he made was that by mid-2002 social workers should not be able to exercise statutory powers except when co-working with registered social workers or members of the police. I hope the Minister will be able to assure the House that that is the case. I fear that it is not the case and the situations that I cited in and around Huntly were such instances. They absolutely illustrate the need to implement the recommendations of Judge Mick Brown which I am afraid this Minister has sadly neglected. 
The third recommendation was that the department must set an agreed percentage of registered staff as a goal that must be realised by mid-2002. Once again I hope the Minister will give an explanation why he has failed in achieving that recommendation. 
After the Judge Mick Brown report the Ministry of Social Policy published a discussion paper on the registration of social workers. Written submissions were received on that policy paper focus groups were held etc. and a summary report was published. The report notes that there is general support for a registration system for social workers. All written respondents considered that registration should be compulsory for statutory Government social workers. Again I ask the Minister what he is doing about that. How far as he got in achieving it? This is a hugely important matter for solving the everyday practical problems that we see hit the newspapers in New Zealand from time to time. I suggest that the Minister has again failed to achieve the very simple basic recommendations that Judge Mick Brown submitted almost over 2½ years ago. 
With regard to mandatory registration the bill provides for voluntary registration of social workers. Only registered social workers will have the right to practice under that title but the bill will not stop people from practising social work. I note that the submitters were concerned that non-registered social workers will not be subject to the complaints and disciplinary processes that will be applied to registered social workers. Again particularly in the statutory area it is of huge importance that unqualified social workers will not be subjected to the disciplinary processes that we would absolutely expect them to be subject to. I note that the select committee agreed that all social workers should meet a set standard of practice. I also note that one of the great absences in this bill is that it does not mention supervision or supervised practice nor continued professional education. If ever there was an area for continuous quality assurance for peer review and for quality-improvement activities it must be within the high-risk area of social work. The bill does nothing to address that. I think that is a huge gap and I hope the Minister will take that huge gap very seriously. 
I note that one of the difficulties not sorted out by the bill is that for registration to be made mandatory the term “social worker” would need to be defined. We have over 10000 so-called social workers in New Zealand and despite a genesis of 25 years for this bill to come about again the Minister has failed to grapple with the fundamental question of what is a social worker. Surely once we get into the high-risk area it is absolutely vital that they are appropriately mandatorily registered in order to ensure that there are high standards and to ensure that the public is appropriately safeguarded. 
I also note that the board is required by clause 102 to review the operation of the Act 3 years after full enactment. Again I think that is absolutely important. It behoves the Minister at the time to do so. It may well not be Minister Maharey because in 3 years’ time we will have a National Government. We will be ensuring that there is a review of this Act. I have said that we will support it at this stage of events but this lazy Labour Minister who has failed to achieve the recommendations of Judge Mick Brown will fortunately not be around to do the quite proper thing that clause 102 suggests which is a review of the Act. 
The last thing I want to talk about briefly relates to the Treaty of Waitangi and ethnic representation. I note that a common criticism by submitters was that the bill does not contain special reference to the treaty. Submitters argued that the treaty is the basis from which social work practice is developed. They say that including explicit reference to the treaty would give recognition to the position of Maori as tangata whenua and to the right that comes with that position for Maori to determine their own social work processes. I am afraid that I cannot entirely agree with that but we certainly do support the bill. 
Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY (NZ Labour) 
: 
 I compliment my colleague Steve Maharey on this excellent bill which will improve the accountability of social workers and improve social services. I am delighted to support the bill. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT NZ) 
: 
 Here we are again under urgency dealing with the Social Workers Registration Bill. Last time the bill was brought into the House it was under urgency and here we are again. What a contrast this bill is to the previous bill before the House the Hop Industry Restructuring Bill. The previous bill was all about deregulation; this bill is all about regulation. We already have self-regulation in the social worker industry but obviously this Government believes that it cannot trust the industry—the 10000 social workers in New Zealand—and that it has to come down with the heavy hand of the State. 
The Government believes that the State has to step in and take over control of the industry but it is not doing it. All it is saying is that it is going to register social workers. But it is a Clayton’s bill. It is a Clayton’s regulation because at the end of the day it is voluntary. Can anyone imagine passing in Parliament a bill that says: “We’re going to regulate an industry but it’s going to be voluntary.”? I believe that this is the strangest piece of legislation that has been through this Parliament for a very long time. 
I tried to think why if it is to be voluntary Labour is trying to do it. We have to remember that Labour is a socialist Government and that socialist Governments love to regulate anything that moves. If it does not move they simply nationalise it. The basic rule in policy development and passing legislation is that if it is not broken it does not need to be fixed. 
At our hearings in the Social Services Committee I asked for evidence of a tidal wave of complaints against poor social work practice in New Zealand. There was none. The only major agency that has complaints against it is the State agency. That means that this bill has been brought in to address problems with Child Youth and Family Services—problems that Mick Brown highlighted in his very good report. Instead of the Government addressing the problems in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services it decided to regulate the whole industry in New Zealand. That is an extreme example of absolutely poor governance and this bill is a very good example of poor legislation. It makes the Government look tough on poor social work practice but it is really a Clayton’s bill. It is voluntary not mandatory. 
Mick Brown highlighted huge concerns about competency within the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. Just to refresh people’s memory this came after the tragic case of James Whakaruru. A number of reports were written about his death and they found many cracks and holes in the way the department handled that little boy’s case. He ended up dying. Since that time we have seen another high profile case—that of little Lillybing. A whole lot of other cases have also come to the attention of the public of New Zealand—tough cases that the department has been involved in—and cracks have been found in the handling of them. The point is that Judge Mick Brown put forward a plan of action for dealing with systemic failure within the department. I asked the Minister how many recommendations from Judge Mick Brown he had actually put into practice and he will not tell me. Clearly the Minister is not on top of his job. 
Since Judge Mick Brown highlighted those problems within the department 4000 unallocated cases of potential child abuse have occurred. Hundreds of those cases were registered as critical and were not seen within the statutory 24 hours. The very urgent cases were not seen within 2 days and so on. We have had an escalation of the number of children being taken from their homes put into care and not being returned to their homes. We have had low morale within the department as it has been restructured time and time again. We found out that the number of social workers with less than 5 years’ experience increased from 67 percent in 2001 to 74 percent in 2002. 
So we have a picture of an extremely troubled department. Not only that we also know that it does not follow best practice. In the corporate world in most other places best practice is followed. If one agency is doing well and another one under the control of the same department is not then it is best practice to find out what is going right and spread it around. The Department of Child Youth and Family Services does not do even that. It is an agency that has systemic failure that needs to be addressed. 
This bill will not address the problem at all. The reason is that the Minister decided he wanted all statutory social workers to be registered within 6 years. He took the idea to Cabinet and Cabinet agreed that it would be a very good idea to register them. But some months later after the Minister had consulted a bit more he found that it was not a good idea for all statutory social workers to be registered when social workers in non-Government agencies and private practitioners do not need to be. He said that that was not fair and did a U-turn. He asked Cabinet to change its mind on registering all social workers in Child Youth and Family Services involved with statutory responsibilities. The real reason is that he suddenly figured out that registering all the social workers in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services would cost around $30 million. That is the real reason the Minister did a U-turn and changed his mind. So we now have a bill that he talks tough on—a bill that he will not even ensure his own department abides by. 
This is disgraceful legislation because it raises many hopes in New Zealand that social work standards will improve. There is nothing wrong with trying to improve social work standards. In fact it is an honourable goal. But this bill being a voluntary bill will not do that. It will create two classes of social workers—those who can afford the $14000 and those who cannot. The ones most likely to afford it will be those who are employed by the Government. We will end up with Government agencies with registered social workers and private practitioners not being able to register. 
The training of social workers is another problem I would like to raise. When the private sector was invited to provide tertiary education a number of providers decided that distance social work courses were a really good idea because then social workers could continue in their jobs while quietly working towards registration and building their qualifications. But this Government has come in and like a great big Godzilla has slapped down private training providers. Basically the Government wants to get rid of private providers from the tertiary education sector. The people who will be hurt will be those very social workers who would like to improve and increase their qualifications. Distance course providers will find that all of a sudden they cannot do it anymore. 
So I say to the Minister that as he is the Minister responsible for tertiary education as well and if he really does have a goal or raising the standards of social workers in New Zealand then he has to promote distance education in the social work field. He has to promote the involvement of the private sector in that because the polytechnics and the universities will simply not be able to provide the number of courses needed. He needs to have a holistic approach to this issue and he has to tell himself that the raising of standards starts at home. He is the Minister responsible for social services and it is up to him to sort out the problems in that department. If it is because the structure of the department is obsolete and we need to look at different models then he needs to do that before he tries to regulate everyone. 
LYNNE PILLAY (NZ Labour—Waitakere) 
: 
 I am proud to stand in support of this bill. Social workers have been calling for legislation to support and regulate the profession for many years. This bill fulfils a pre-election commitment and is yet another example of this Government keeping its word. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson) 
: 
 It is good news that we have legislation that will provide a framework for increasing the professional standards of social workers. That is good. But what that member and Labour have failed to do is to provide legislation that will actually work and do the job. 
I commend my colleagues Katherine Rich and Paul Hutchison who in the second reading debate put a clear argument regarding some of the bill’s major deficiencies. I want to speak to those. First of all I want to put on the record just how important social workers in our community are. When we read of the tragedies that occur with children we see that it is social workers in practice who are making the decisions—life and death decisions—that affect the children of this country. That is why this National Party stands for high standards in that profession. 
I have a number of questions I would like the Minister in charge of this legislation to answer in respect of the detail that none of the other Labour members want to talk about. The first one relates to the gross inconsistency of this Government to occupational regulation and why it does not trust social workers. The bill is about State control of the profession and that is an oxymoron. State control of the profession will not deliver high professional standards. It is by giving control to a profession and trusting a profession that we get the very best from it. None of those characteristics are in this bill. [ 
Interruption 
] 
I ask the Clayton’s member opposite why it is for instance when it comes to my own profession the engineering profession that the Government says the members of the board will be appointed by the profession itself. The Government supported that. But when we come to this bill it says that every member of the Social Workers Registration Board will be a Government appointee. Why the inconsistency? Can Ms Pettis the member opposite who is giving me a dirty look answer? Why does the Government trust the professions of nursing engineering electricians lawyers and accountants but does not trust the profession of social workers? The silence is deafening. People on this side of the House expect some consistency around occupational regulation. Mr Maharey needs to get his head clear and come up with something constructive. The Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers is a perfectly good professional organisation that has set up a set of professional standards. It has set a benchmark. There are hundreds of social workers out there in New Zealand including my wife who have gone through all the work to get registered with the association and are now being told they have to go back to base one. Is that going to make sense? Is that a sensible way in which to manage the profession of social workers? I suggest that it is not. 
Then we see the level of prescription. The bill has more than 200 clauses that monitor all manner of things and go into all sorts of detail that I think is grossly unnecessary. Why do we not trust the profession to develop sensible rules regarding the level of qualification a person should have to be able to be registered? What are the professional standards associated with the conduct and the ethics of a profession? We trust every other profession to do that. Why is it when we come to this profession we do not? The Government’s most recent legislation that dealt with the registration of a profession was the Teachers Council legislation. It said that it would allow members of the profession to sit on the council and make the decisions. What is it about social workers? Why is it that we do not trust them? Why is it that we have a separate and different set of rules when it comes to that particular profession? I simply do not understand. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: It wouldn’t be the first time. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Would Mr Clayton Cosgrove explain to me why we trust the teaching profession to be involved in setting standards and appointing members to the Teachers Council but do not trust the social workers profession to appoint— 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Read the bill. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I have read the bill. If the member reads the schedule he will see that the Minister will appoint all the members of the Social Workers Registration Board. Why is that? 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Read the bill. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I have read the bill. That member is the sort of flunky member we have on the Labour side. Those members cannot answer the substantive questions. The substantive question here is: why is it when it comes to accountants doctors engineers plumbers and electricians we trust those professions to develop the rules and to run their own professional body but when it comes to social workers we do not? Again we have absolutely no explanation at all from Government members and that is an issue I will be pursuing in the Committee stage. 
The second great contradiction is that when it comes to the early childhood sector this Government has passed regulations that completely ignore experience. I know of people who have worked in the early childhood sector for 35 years. They are excellent teachers. This Government has come along and cut them off. It said that no it does not trust them and it is not going to allow them after 2005 to continue to work in early childhood centres. Yet this bill says that we are to respect those people that have experience in the sector. Well both sectors deal with children. The bulk of the issues managed by social workers in New Zealand are to do with children so why is it that we say experience does not count when it comes to early childhood workers but when it comes to social workers it does? I would have thought one would come to some sort of consistent approach. We on this side of the House think that experience matters. We are prepared to accept both early childhood workers and social workers who can show they have the experience to set high professional standards. Why does the Government not do that? Why does it have a different view? We have no explanation at all in that regard. It is a double standard and it is not good enough. 
Further why does it take 200 finicky clauses to regulate the social work profession yet most other professions are being regulated by a fraction of that number? For instance if we take engineers—of which there are over 15000 in New Zealand—only 40 clauses regulate them. Only a fifth of the number are required. This bill is far too prescriptive. It sets out all sorts of little details. For goodness’ sake! The people involved should be able to sort those details out for themselves. 
John Carter 
: It almost sets out what they have to have for lunch. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The bill is almost as bad as that—it may as well set that out. If members look at the clauses and the schedules and at the level of detail they will see they go way beyond what is reasonable. Basically it is because the Government does not trust the profession. The Government wants to prescribe and over-regulate every single aspect. My worry is that this will add a whole lot of cost when far more sensible regulation would not have required it. Why do we have to prescribe for an annual practising certificate every year? The engineers do one every 5 years— 
John Carter 
: They just make the decisions. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: They just make the decisions. Mr Maharey believes it is best. This bill has quite draconian powers. The Minister of Social Services and Employment can with no reason at all sack any member of the Social Workers Registration Board. Does that apply in respect of any other profession? Is a Minister able to sack a person who regulates engineers accountants or electricians? No he is not able to. No we do not have that sort of thing. The reason is that this Minister runs such a mess of a social policy ministry—and the Child Youth and Family Services—that he does not want the Social Workers Registration Board to send any missiles the Government’s way. If the Social Workers Registration Board has some hard things to say about the Government it will get fired. No reasons have to be given—its members will just be sacked. This is not much better than the sort of thought police we have in other areas. 
The strength of an independent body is its independence from the Government. The professional people—whether doctors engineers or accountants—should be able to express their free will without the axe that hangs over professional boards like the Social Workers Registration Board. This bill should have provided for legislative backing for the term “registered social worker” and allowed that to be transferred to the perfectly competent Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers that we are proud to have in this country. 
Amendments recommended by the Social Services Committee by majority agreed to. 
Bill read a second time. 
In Committee 
Clauses 1 to 147 and schedules 
KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) 
: 
 This is a very important part of the process. We need to get it right because the Social Workers Registration Bill will potentially affect about 10400 social workers who currently work in New Zealand. This debate is wide ranging over the total bill so I will work my way through some of the concerns that I have and some of the questions that I would like to put to the Minister in the Chair the Hon Steve Maharey. First I will discuss the title. Social Workers Registration Bill as the bill is presently named is not quite accurate. If it is to be appropriately named the word “voluntary” has to be inserted so that it becomes the “Social Workers Voluntary Registration Bill”. 
One of the key things we understand about this bill is that social workers do not need to register. I would argue as many of my colleagues have argued that if someone happens to be one of the shonky cowboys or cowgirls of the social-work world would that person go the distance and register? The chances are that he or she would not. When it comes to making sure that this legislation does increase the discipline on the profession or raise its standard or increase the professionalism within the sector that issue can be debated. It can be debated because many people who presently work within the sector and who may not have the qualifications and may not be implementing a best-practice approach to their profession simply will not register at all. I question the bill’s effectiveness in making big changes. 
The purpose of the bill is to protect the safety of members of the public and to encourage competency in practice but once again if we are looking at really protecting the safety of the public the State sector plays a role in that. It should be a leader within the sector and that is why we find it quite alarming that such a big chunk of social workers has been left out of this bill. It was originally intended that they be involved. About 10 percent of social workers in this country are employed either by the Department of Child Youth and Family Services or by other Government agencies. We have to protect members of the public and especially those who are most vulnerable. People who have to deal with Child Youth and Family Services in very difficult times will not know whether they are dealing with a registered social worker. We have some concerns about whether the bill will create a framework that will really make a difference. 
I turn now to clause 4 “Interpretation”. One of the glaring problems is that “limited registration” can be up to 8 years. That is hardly a limited registration. That is the equivalent of one’s childhood. Limited registration should be for a very short period of time and it should be a period in which hopefully the person is working towards full registration. So 8 years is far too long. 
There are some pretty vague words in Part 2 and for that reason we think the registration board in making decisions about social workers will run into problems. What is a “fit and proper person”? There is a definition in the bill but one of the things we do know about social work is that some people come into the profession having had certain life experience that allows them to have greater empathy with some of the people they are working with. At the moment people are not allowed to be a social worker if they have a conviction that could have been punishable by up to 3 months’ imprisonment. I want the Minister to confirm that that provision will not include people with quite serious convictions that may not have resulted in imprisonment because the judge decided not to impose a prison sentence. There could still be some pretty serious crimes that could be of deep concern to other New Zealanders. 
The next issue relates to the increasingly “politically correct” approach to legislation. This legislation had some really general statements about a social worker having practical experience in social work. That has been broken into two so that a social worker has to have specific experience dealing with Maori Pacific Islanders and other cultural groups. When people are dealing with those who are disadvantaged then of course cultural issues are important so they can tailor what they are offering. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson) 
: 
 I have some important questions about the detail in this bill that I want the Minister to respond to and the first of those is a very important issue of principle. The previous issues of occupational regulation and the two most important reforms have been the accountants and engineers. What the Government has done through legislation such as this is provide legislative protection for a term in the case of a chartered accountant or a chartered professional engineer and then trusted the profession to develop a set of codes and regulations that can come through a proper process. 
In this bill we have a very different approach to occupational regulation where there is a statutory body completely appointed by the Minster making all the rules and regulations around the profession. I would like to know from the Minister in the Chair the Hon Steve Maharey why we have taken and why this Parliament is taking such a different approach to occupational regulation. What is it about social workers that means we cannot trust them? Why is it not possible given all the work of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers for us to provide some statutory protections and an acknowledgment of that organisation and let them run the system? It was good enough for accountants and engineers; why is it not good enough for social workers? That organisation has gone to a huge amount of expense to develop the standard. That work is all washed away. It has done a huge amount of work for many social workers to be registered. Hundreds of them all over New Zealand have been put in place because the statutory framework has not been there. It just seems common sense to apply those other models. They are working well and we should do that in this case. 
My first question to the Minister asks why we do not trust social workers as a profession. Surely when we talk about professional regulation the very notion of a profession is that it is able to manage its own affairs. It is not some Big Brother State organisation imposing something on a group of individuals but the profession having an active say in the development of its own code of ethics and its own disciplining of its members. That in my view is the definition of a profession. The Government is not allowing the social work profession to develop in that way and that is a mistake. 
The second key question I have for the Minister—and I will take point after point as I am entitled to in this debate—is about the very draconian provision in clause 10 in schedule 1. That states: “The Minister may remove a member from office at any time without compensation”. That means any member of the board. Why is that necessary? If it were a State-owned enterprise I could understand it; and we do have such provisions with regard to State-owned enterprises. When the Government of the day is managing a key State asset it must finally have responsibility. But when it comes to an organisation that is setting the standards for a profession why do we need that extent of State control? I do not know of any other professional board that has that: not one and my understanding is that we have statutes for over 28. 
I asked the library to find out for me whether there is any other professional board where the Minister has the power at any time to sack a member of that board without giving any reason and the answer is that there is not. So why is it that this Minister wants us to give him the power to fire any member of the Social Workers Registration Board? Does any member opposite know why that is the case? Why is it necessary to have that power in this legislation but not for plumbers electricians doctors nurses teachers or for any other body? 
I will tell members why I think it is. I think it is because the Minister has become so defensive about children and young persons that he is afraid of a strong professional body like the Social Workers Registration Board—and it is true Parliament does have a testy relationship with professional bodies representing teachers or doctors or engineers as does the Government and sometimes those bodies do send a missile across the Government’s way. That is part of democracy. That is part of their being a profession. My fear is that the Minister of Social Services and Employment will use clause 10 of schedule 1—which gives him the power to fire any member of the board including the chair or the deputy chair—to give them the Kit Richards treatment if they dare say anything. 
John Carter 
: He won’t use it surely? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The Minister seems to be indicating he will not use it. So why does he need it? Can he provide some explanation in respect of that important clause? 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 The Committee stage is a very important part of the process. I too would like to start with the title. We believe that the debate on the title is a very serious one because any title must be a fair reflection of the legislation. It should be accurate and self-explanatory. Quite frankly— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: We are debating the whole bill. 
BARBARA STEWART 
: That is right. The title does not reflect the content of the bill. It should definitely include the word “voluntary”. 
Like other groups social workers have been advocating for registration for many years but we know that the commencement is going to take a fairly long time. Once registration has been introduced there are many agencies and employers who will be faced with a whole lot of planning and personnel requirements and that will take some time. Before they can even do this the Social Workers Registration Board has to be established. Of course that cannot begin until the board is established and empowered to act. 
Clause 6(b) states that a person has to be fit and proper to practise social work. It is important that the definition or interpretation of these words is consistent with other usage. Likewise clause 6(c) deals with competence to practise social work with ethnic groups and that raises a big query as to what determines competence. Is it knowledge of language or protocol or religion? We do need to know. 
New Zealand First too believes that any system that registers social workers has to be open inclusive and flexible due to the very nature of social work. We support the establishment of the registration board to overview the practice and the procedures but we know this is going to be a longer process than we initially thought. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I would also like to make a couple of comments about the title of the bill. My colleague Katherine Rich’s idea of calling the bill the “Social Workers Voluntary Registration Bill” is a very good one. It certainly reflects what this bill is all about and does not put anybody in the situation of believing that this bill means what the Minister’s title says. I did think that a more colourful way of saying it would be to call the bill the “Social Workers (Clayton’s Registration) Bill”. I think that that would again explain to people just what this Government is up to with this bill. The point is that the way the title is worded would give people confidence that something is happening in the industry when it is not—in other words give confidence that is not warranted. 
I would like the Minister to take a call. I hope he is not going to sit through the whole Committee stage and not rise to his feet and explain a few things that we will be raising. I want him to explain what he really wants to achieve by putting this bill into our legislative programme. In particular I want to ask him what changed his mind from deciding that he would require or ask all his statutory social workers to become registered. What caused him to change his mind; to say no that he is not going to put that requirement on them that he is going to leave registration to them so that it remains voluntary? I want the Minister to tell the Committee whether it was the cost—$2.3 million a year over 12 years which works out at about $30 million. 
If the Minister does not take a call then the Committee has to assume that he is not prepared to invest in his staff particularly in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. We have to assume that he is not prepared for that department to take a lead in social work registration in the country; and that he does not believe in his heart in raising professional standards because it seems he is not prepared to invest in the staff. Unless the Minister takes a call I am afraid that will be the conclusion the Committee has to reach and it will be the conclusion that New Zealand will reach. So I do implore the Minister to explain to us why he changed his mind. 
The other point of concern is the Social Workers Registration Board. Again I would like the Minister to explain to the Committee how we will know that the board is not going to be made up of Labour Party hacks—candidates who did not make it and people who are friends of the Labour Party. How can the Minister assure us that that board will be well representative of the profession and that its members will not simply be the Government’s lapdogs. We do know that this is a Government that likes to preserve its power. The honourable member Nick Smith mentioned Kit Richards who was one of the first people in the public sector to stand up for a cause that he believed in. And boy did he get guillotined as quickly as anything! The Minister of Social Services and Employment has made it clear that he is in control of the board so does this mean that that Minister will have control of the whole social work profession? That is what I believe is intended unless the Minister takes a call and explains to us that we are interpreting this wrongly. 
It is a very serious business if we have political control of a profession driven through Parliament when only a very small proportion of that profession works in the public sector and a great many people in the profession work in the private sector. What we do not want in this country is for political control to go beyond the realm in which it should exist. 
The other point I would like to raise is in respect of clause 7 which relates to overseas-qualified social workers. Clause 7 has a whole lot of provisions whereby those people will be able to work in New Zealand. We all know the plight of overseas-trained doctors who come to New Zealand full of hope after being told by the Immigration Service that they will be able to work in this country only to find that they cannot work. What we do not want is for people overseas to say to themselves: “Well New Zealand I’m a trained social worker. I’ve got heaps of experience—years of it. I’d like to come and work in this country.” only to hear that they will be able to come to New Zealand but cannot practise. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Social Services and Employment) 
: 
 Just because there may well be some people still listening to this debate outside the Chamber and they may well seriously have taken in any of the arguments that have been put up so far I will spend a couple of minutes advising them that this is the normal kind of Committee debate where Opposition members entertain themselves by raising issues that they know the answers to. For example Dr Nick Smith who has been a Minister knows that the Crown entities legislation is reflected in this bill and that the clauses in it are standard to that kind of legislation. Muriel Newman knows that also. 
The main reason we have changed from 6 years to 8 years for registration was explained in my second reading speech and I am sure Dr Newman sat riveted in her seat listening to it. We have changed it because we believe that probably the most likely thing is that people will settle into a 3 years academic 2 years practise requirement to become a registered social worker. Many of them will have to do this part time. It seemed to us that 6 years was a little tight for that so we have agreed to allow 2 years’ latitude. 
Dr Newman had just started on a question about overseas-trained social workers. Yes we do want to get our share of those skills that move around the world. Some of them will be social workers and some of them will want temporary registration and this bill allows that. There will be other questions for those people who are listening at home to this debate but I give an assurance that most of them will be rhetorical. Members are asking questions to which they know the answers. 
JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 United Future would like to draw attention to clause 10 in Part 2 which the Minister has just referred to where the provisional registration timing has been lengthened from 6 years to 8 years. Initially we were concerned with the timing of 6 years then a bit more concerned when it turned to 8 years but we have considered the advice given by the Minister. We understand that the introduction of registration has to be looked at in context. In the 2001 census 46 percent of those who identified themselves as social workers had gained only a school qualification or less. We realise that our current social workers will have to consider either returning to university or starting from scratch if they want voluntarily to become registered social workers. They will need to be given time to do that if they want to continue working while processing their qualifications. Because a large number of women are in social work they will also have the added responsibility of running households. We want to see that life-work balance considered as we give time for people to upskill and register. 
However with the 3-year review built into the bill which falls inside that 8-year timing we suggest that some questions will need to be asked in 3 years’ time—that is what progress have provisionally registered social workers made towards full registration how ready are we within New Zealand for mandatory registration and does the title “social worker” with time need to become a protected term? We would like to see protected within the 3-year review that the term “social worker” can be used only by people who are registered as opposed to at present when the term “social worker” can be used by unregistered people. That is a question that may need to be asked in 3 years’ time as we see what progress has been made by those people who are provisionally registered. 
While it looks as if 8 years is a soft and lenient period in which to gain full registration we consider that we do need to support current social workers. We have to understand that we are now asking more of people who are already overworked and under-resourced and we need to support those people in our request that they become more accountable and competence-based in our social work system. United Future’s concern is with that part of the bill. We support it because it provides grandparenting provisions for people to become registered but we think that in 3 years’ time some hard questions will need to be asked. 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 As I mentioned earlier the Green Party does support the bill as amended. I am taking just a very short call to talk to the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 73 which we received only recently. In particular the Minister deals with clause 11(2)(b) that relates to limited registration being no more than 4 years’ duration. When we looked at this provision more closely we thought that allowing people to continue through periods of 6 months’ temporary registration was too long. We would like to see that reduced. To that end we have put an amendment on the table calling for it to be no more than 3 years. I understand that the Government will support that amendment and I welcome that. It is part of the social work profession’s desire with this bill to do everything it can to increase and enhance professionalisation and not to allow people to continue for too long in a temporary situation. 
We do understand the need for this in that we welcome qualified and experienced social workers coming to our country from overseas. All too often they are needed to bolster our workforce which is in decline in some respects. We also welcome at times retired people going back into the social work workforce with all their experience. It is not that we are against people working on a temporary basis but we do not think it should go on for too long and therefore we welcome the Government’s support for our amendment. 
TAITO PHILLIP FIELD (NZ Labour—Mangere) 
: 
 As chair of the select committee that helped to process this bill I want to take a short call to say that the provisions in the bill and the issues we were dealing with in the select committee provide a good balance in relation to what is needed in a transitional period when we need to promote competent well-trained and qualified social workers. We have known for a long time and even from the sector that there is a need to improve standards. I believe that this bill fulfils the needs that have been expressed by the sector particularly with regard to registration. We also need to give people who might be well experienced as social workers the opportunity to get themselves qualified and trained to meet the requirements of registration. 
After so many years of the issue being raised by social workers and those who wanted to see standards raised I congratulate the Minister and this Government on this bill finally coming before the House. In relation to social issues and the care of children there is a great appreciation by the community that we need well-trained and qualified people who are properly registered to be effective in looking after children. That is one example. There are many other areas of social work where registration will help promote standards. 
What the select committee and the Minister have done in setting up the regime for registration strikes a very good balance for the next 3 years. At the end of that period there will be a proper review so that we can look at what has happened in that time and then look at mandatory registration and other important issues. I congratulate the Minister and hope that members will support the provisions during the Committee stage. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (NZ National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I note that in relation to the title of the bill that it has been generally agreed—certainly from this side of the House—that the word “voluntary” should be inserted. I also have another suggestion and it is that we call this bill the “Steve Maharey Let’s Make Social Work Registration Very Complicated Bill”. As my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith pointed out we have something like 109 pages of Maharey complications in order to achieve voluntary registration. This is a tribute to a sociologist’s dream—or a sociologist’s nightmare. 
I now cross to the purpose of the bill which is to protect the safety of members of the public by providing for mechanisms that ensure that social workers are competent at and accountable for their practice. Yet we learn here that there are 10483 social workers that only some of them will register and that a large number of them will not be accountable for their practice. Those who do register only have to do so every 5 years or is it the practising certificate that has to be— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: It is every single year. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: As I was saying earlier on in terms of accountability for practice some social workers are involved in very high-risk activities. I am extremely concerned by the recommendations of Judge Mick Brown that by mid-2002 social workers should not be able to exercise statutory powers—except when co-working with registered social workers or members of the police—and that the department must set an agreed percentage of registered staff as a goal that must be realised by mid-2002. I would like the Minister to take a call to tell the Committee what he has achieved or confirm that he has achieved nothing or at least tell the Committee what he intends to do about that recommendation. We need a degree of accountability and there is a huge absence of that from this Minister. It is regarded as one of the important parts of the purpose. 
 I note that there is no definition of a registered social worker but again when we have a bill whose genesis has taken according to the Minister 20 to 25 years it seems absolutely absurd that we do not have a definition of what a social worker is. Apparently there are over 10400 social workers and surely this Minister who has managed to contrive a 109-page bill should be challenged intellectually to try to achieve a basic definition of what a social worker is. We find that a certain percentage of social workers will be registered voluntarily and that is terrific—we support that. We want to achieve high levels of professionalism in this country but when we have a bill about social workers that does not even define what a social worker is there is a huge gap in thinking. I have asked the Minister to take a call to give us his thoughts about what a social worker is. 
I would like to move to the area of registration and practising certificates. I note that a person who has a recognised New Zealand qualification is entitled to be registered if the board is satisfied that his or her competence to practise social work has been found satisfactory and that he or she is a fit and proper person etc. The bill goes on to state in new subparagraph (iv) of clause 13(1)(b): “that … he or she—(A) is competent to practise social work with Maori; and (B) is competent to practise social work with different ethnic and cultural groups in New Zealand.” But where there is a lack of clarity is that there are no ongoing quality assurance requirements. Could the Minister explain? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson) 
: 
 In response to my earlier points the Minister gave one of those lecturing-type of speeches in which he said: “Don’t worry. Trust us. What’s in here is the same as all other similar legislation.” I want to challenge the Minister on that point. I want him to tell of a single other professional body or registration board in respect of which there is the power for the Minister to fire any member. Does the Minister have the power to sack any member of the Nursing Council? No. Does the Minister have the power to sack any member of the Engineer’s Board? No. Does the Minister have the power to sack any member of the Chartered Accountants Board? No. Does the Minister have the power to sack any member of the Plumbers Board? No. Having told this House that this is the same as any other legislation can the Minister tell me whether he has the power to sack any member of any professional board? The Minister has told this Parliament that these provisions are identical. I simply ask him to give me one other example. The library has provided me with the information on 28 other professional boards and its best advice is that for none of them does a Minister have that particular power. 
Katherine Rich 
: None? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Not one. So how can the Minister stand up during this important Committee stage and tell us not to worry because it is the same as every other provision in every other bill? I ask the Minister to perhaps ask his officials to give us an example of one other case. If he cannot then he has misled the House—and the listeners—and that is very serious. 
My second point is this: we all know that social workers working for the Department of Child Youth and Family Services have a huge turnover. We know that they are under a lot of pressure and we know that their salaries are not particularly high. I want to ask this Minister whether the fees for this bureaucratic monster that he is creating will be paid for by the social workers in its employ? It is a very reasonable question because not only do we have the annual registration fee we also have a fee for disciplinary matters. So what does that mean? It means that if there is a disciplinary action against a social worker the cost of that will be imposed on all the other social workers. Can the Minister assure me that the levy that will be struck will be paid for by the department and will not be a sock on the private earnings of those workers in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services? It is a fair question. For instance I know that the Government has just whacked up the teachers’ fee by 80 percent. This Government says that inflation is only 3 percent but it has just increased the fee for every one of our 45000 teachers by 80 percent. Now the Government says that the boards of trustees can make a decision about whether teachers pay those fees and some of them do and some of them do not. But in this case the Minister is the employer. We have I understand— 
Hon Steve Maharey 
: We are not the employer. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The Minister’s Department of Child Youth and Family Services is the employer of social workers. Are those social workers in the department— 
Steve Chadwick 
: There are plenty of other departments. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Indeed but this is the most significant employer. Can the member from Rotorua give me an assurance that the fees that come from this legislation will not be taken out of the wages of social workers of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services? 
Steve Chadwick 
: It depends on where they work. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: So if they work in Nelson they might; if they work in Auckland they might not? 
Steve Chadwick 
: No in which context. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Well if they work for the Department of Child Youth and Family Services will they be expected to pay this fee out of their private wages? The Chamber is silent. Is that not a fair question? Is that not a question that the Minister in the chair should be prepared to answer? It is a simple question—yes or no. 
Steve Chadwick 
: It is up to their employer. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Well hang on a moment! The employer is the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. The only income the department has is prescribed by this Parliament and this Minister. I want to know who will pay this fee. I do not want to see it as a further imposition and a further nail in the coffin of the huge morale problem within the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. This Minister owes Parliament an answer because he is creating this bureaucracy. He controls that bureaucracy. If he had left the matter over to the profession there might be a fair argument. He has not and he should answer that question. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I did appreciate the Minister taking a call a little while ago. I now know that he has answered the question I asked about whether he was prepared to invest in his department. The Committee will recall that the cost of upskilling his staff or registering the departmental staff in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services was about $30 million. I asked him to tell us whether that was why he no longer requires the department’s staff to become registered. Was it the cost? He failed to answer so that means that we have a Minister who is not prepared to provide the support if one likes for his department so that it can take a lead in becoming a registered agency. 
I think this is a very serious issue. I understand that there are 989 full-time staff in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services and some 580 of them are unqualified. The cost to register them at $14000 a head would be about $30 million. From what the Minister failed to say it means that he is not prepared to make that investment. If he is prepared to I would like him to tell the Committee. Does he expect the department if it is going to support the staff to find that funding internally? Will he be granting it from the Budget process? I see he is making all sorts of moves with his head and I would like him to put the answers on record by taking a call. 
An issue of extreme concern to me is that the Social Workers Registration Board has the absolute discretion to grant registration based on any criteria at all that it thinks fit. The original assumption was that registration would be based on having a social work diploma qualification. But I understand that that board which is appointed by the Minister could change it. It could decide that instead of needing a qualification that 5 years’ experience would be enough for someone to be eligible for registration. I understand that the Minister has seen papers that outline that to him. It means that this Minister could decide that someone does not need a qualification; someone needs only 5 years’ experience. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN 
: Before the dinner break I was reiterating that there are some 580 social workers in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services who are unqualified. It would cost the Government around $30 million to provide for their qualification and registration. But now we understand that the new Social Workers Registration Board has absolute discretion to grant registration based on any criteria that it deems fit. I think most of us thought that registration would be granted on the basis of whether the applicant had a diploma or a qualification of some sort. We understand that the board could change the basis of the criteria to the number of years a person had been in practice. Therefore 5 years’ practice could make a person without a qualification eligible for registration. 
The implication for the department is that instead of costing $30 million it would cost only $12 million to register the 264 people who would now need registration. If the Minister has a lapdog board made up of Labour Party supporters he can save the Government a cool $18 million by changing the criteria that everybody expects. I would like the Minister to take a call on that very very serious matter. I do not think that most social workers in New Zealand realise the discretionary power that the board has. It amounts to an opportunity for political interference at the highest level. A Minister can change the criteria if he or she has a board that is compliant. I ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Steve Maharey to tell us what safeguards the profession has to know that political interference will not be undertaken either by himself or by any other subsequent Ministers. 
The Minister has to realise that Labour will not be in power for ever. Many of us hope that at the next election the balance of power will change. The Minister has to think about what he will do if he is in Opposition and he sees a National Government Minister changing the criteria to suit him or her. It is not in the best interests of the profession. We need high standards in this profession not political interference. 
KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) 
: 
 The Minister of Social Services and Employment said he was looking for some steady debate and some good questions so I will rise to that challenge on the proviso that I hope he will rise and answer a few of the pertinent questions that the Opposition has raised about this bill in earlier parts of the debate that have not been answered. Unlike what the Minister said these questions are not rhetorical. We are hoping for some answers and some clarity. 
One thing I would like to know is why recommendation 3.5 of the Judge Mick Brown report has not been followed. It was received 2 years ago and clearly stated that the introduction of social worker registration should be given urgency but that has not happened. It has been a couple of years. 
John Carter 
: We’re in urgency now! 
KATHERINE RICH 
: Yes but it is 2 years down the track. It is happening a lot later than many people thought it would. 
The second thing Judge Mick Brown recommended was that by mid-2002 social workers should not be able to exercise statutory powers except when co-working with registered social workers and/or members of the police. Why was that not implemented? Judge Mick Brown said that the department should set an agreed percentage of registered staff as a goal that must be realised by mid-2002. Once again why did that not happen? There was certainly an expectation that it would happen. The Minister wholeheartedly endorsed that report when it was received. 
We have not heard an explanation about why the Government has backed away from asking the Department of Child Youth and Family Services social workers to register. We have not heard the Government’s explanation as to why it has backed away from that. We have a few ideas as to why the Government has decided not to include all Government social workers as was the original intention. The Minister even went to the trouble of getting it approved by Cabinet only for it to be rescinded some months later once further homework was done. I think it is extraordinary that things would go as far as that only for a total about-face then to occur. We have not had any explanation for that. 
At the moment the country faces a huge shortage of social workers. It will be a real problem for this country if we do not work out better ways to support social workers to undertake social work in this country. There are two reasons for that shortage. The first reason is the number of social workers who leave the country after they have graduated. I come from Dunedin and I know that there is an English group that comes in every year to actively recruit New Zealand social workers and take them over to the UK. We are also pretty dependent on immigration on overseas social workers coming in to plug a lot of the vacancies that cannot be filled. 
If I look at the parts of this bill relating to overseas-qualified social workers I realise how difficult we are making it for them to come here and practise. We are asking overseas-qualified social workers to clarify whether they are competent to practise social work with Maori. A very experienced social worker from the UK who has perhaps practised in London will have worked with a wide range of cultures and peoples. I do not think there are any social work courses in the UK that specifically deal with the Maori culture but I doubt whether that has anything to do with the quality of a social worker or his or her practical ability when working in this country. It is an unnecessary hurdle. The principles of social work apply equally regardless of the nature of the client. Yes a social worker has to be able to react and tailor his or her service to a wide range of people but to ask overseas-qualified social workers to go on a specific training course is quite unreasonable at a time when we do not have enough social workers to fill vacancies. 
The second provision is that someone from overseas is required to live and practise social work in New Zealand. Social work is becoming a very specialised profession and there will be some occasions where someone who has a specialist interest in a certain area may not choose to live in this country. That person will come over and just work with specific cases. For example somebody dealing with Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy might live in Sydney and travel to this country. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Whip—ACT NZ) 
: 
 I have to say how disappointed I am in the Minister of Social Services and Employment. It is a huge disappointment because we know that this is a Minister who is not shy about talking. I would like to try to understand a little bit better why he is not prepared to take a call. I remind him that this bill is being passed through all its stages under urgency. Here we are late at night on a Thursday going through the motions with a Minister who will not talk to the Committee about the issues the Opposition has raised. I believe they are extremely serious issues and if the Minister does not want to treat this bill with contempt he will get to his feet and he will answer some of the points that have been raised. 
I want him to tell me how we can be guaranteed that political interference is not behind this bill. 
David Benson-Pope 
: Don’t talk to us about contempt. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN 
: Maybe Mr Benson-Pope would like to stand up and put on record how the Opposition can be assured that this bill is not a mechanism to bring political interference into another area of professional expertise in New Zealand. There are no guarantees in this bill that the Minister will be kept under check by anybody. The point is that if the Minister puts in place a bunch of his mates they will be driving the profession. They will be able to change the criteria without any checks and balances. Where are the safeguards for all those people who rely on social workers to help them with their problems? There are none. 
I tell the Minister that I believe that this is an extremely serious issue. I am not aware that anybody in the profession understood that the criteria could be changed in the way that they can be. There are no criteria written down in the bill so it is up to the judgment if one likes of the profession. In my mind changing the criterion from a qualification to a number of years of experience with no qualification is a huge change—the two are poles apart. 
That was the official advice the Minister received. It was pointed out to him. He made no decision to try to put it right in the bill—to include it in a form that would assure members of the Opposition or members of the public that it was out of the politicians’ hands. I would like the Minister to take a call to tell us that my interpretation is not the correct one and that the safeguards are actually written in the bill. 
The other point I would like to make is that it costs $14000 per social worker to get a qualification. Those workers may not even need to get a qualification according to the advice the Minister has received. Are we to put enormous compliance costs on social workers and on the organisations they work for when that might not be needed? If he does want them to train for and obtain a qualification can he tell the Committee what he has done as Minister of Education (Tertiary Education) to ensure that enough providers of services will be out there to help those social workers who would like to gain qualifications to get them? I understand that at the moment the need out there and the actual number of people who can provide help are absolutely out of kilter. There are nowhere near enough trainers in social work to help those people get qualifications if they so desire. 
It is very important that the Minister sets the record straight and that he tells us exactly what the criteria are to be from his perspective because he will be the one who is guiding this. He will be the one who sets the basic criteria for how people gain their registration. We have seen two very different scenarios put forward in the advice that has been given to the Minister and it is only fair that New Zealanders and social workers who have a very very keen interest in this matter are informed by him. The Committee stage of a bill provides the Minister with an opportunity to address the nuts and bolts issues that are raised. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Sue Bradford to the amendment set out on Supplementary Order paper 73 in the name of the Hon Steve Maharey to clause 11 be agreed to: 
to omit new subclause (2)(b) set out on Supplementary Order Paper No 73 and substitute the following paragraph: 
(b)must be such that when it is added to the duration of any previous period or periods of limited registration of the person the total is no more than 3 years. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 80 
Noes 26 
Amendment to the amendment agreed to. 
Labour 52; New Zealand First 13; Green Party 7; United Future 8. 
New Zealand National 20; ACT New Zealand 6. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 73 as amended in the name of the Hon Steve Maharey be agreed to. 
Amendments as amended agreed to and clauses 1 to 147 and the schedules as amended agreed to. 
Bill reported with amendment. 
Third Reading 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Social Services and Employment) 
: 
I move  
That the Social Workers Registration Bill be now read a third time 
. The key principles of this bill are to provide people with greater protection from the harm that may result from poor social work practice to enhance the professionalism of social work and to ensure an investment is made in the people who work in this important occupation. For Dr Newman’s edification I repeat the phrase “to ensure an investment is made in the people who work in this important occupation” which means that we have allocated the Department of Child Youth and Family with funding to ensure that they can make it through to registration. 
The bill establishes a regulatory framework for the registration of all social workers. It will be applicable across all sectors where social workers are employed in New Zealand. The bill will improve the quality of social work by requiring that registered social workers are competent and held accountable for their practice. It establishes a system that will provide greater protection to the often vulnerable people who receive services from social workers. People receiving social work support deserve a quality service. 
The bill will establish a board to register social workers. The board will be required to promote the benefits of registration of social workers. The employers of social workers and the public generally will also be people to whom this concept is promoted. A tribunal will be established to consider complaints against registered social workers and to manage disciplinary issues. 
Under the registration system only certain people will have the right to use the title “registered social worker”. Only those who have a recognised qualification in social work—and I stress “recognised qualification”—who have enough practical experience who are judged to be fit and proper people to be in social work who are competent and who can practise social work with Maori and different ethnic and cultural perspectives are the kinds of people who will enjoy the “registered social worker” title. The public need to be assured that they can have confidence in people who wield as many speakers have said quite considerable power. 
This is an enabling rather than prescriptive piece of legislation. A significant amount of detail around registration will of course be left to the profession itself through the board. For example the profession itself must decide what an appropriate qualification is. Professions have to own the process of registration in their own profession. 
A number of submissions were received. A vast majority of submitters supported the intent of this legislation. They were of a view that registration would result in better protection and better safeguards for clients and can I say social workers as well. One of the key issues raised by the Social Services Committee was whether registration should be compulsory. Given the shortness of the debate around this bill we canvassed that issue in the second part of this debate and people raised it during the Committee stage so I do not intend to elaborate on it here save to say that I agree with the view of the House that although mandatory registration is not appropriate at this time it needs to be constantly revisited by the registration board to decide when it will be appropriate to move towards a time when perhaps either the term “social worker” is protected or we have mandatory social work registration. But it is not appropriate to do it right now. 
I would certainly like to thank the select committee for all its hard work. It has I think produced legislation that will be welcomed by the sector. I would like to thank the sector itself. It has worked for many many years to get this up and running. It has been closely involved in the registration legislation. I would like to put on the record my thanks to one particular person by the name of Buster Cursonwho has worked with the profession and with the Government right through this process to ensure the liaison has been clear and open and results in good legislation. We now want to ensure that we carry out our promise to social workers that they will move into a professional environment that is good for them good for the public and most of all good for the clients they serve. I commend the bill to the House. 
KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) 
: 
 The National Party gladly votes for the third reading. We think the bill is an important step forward for the social work profession as a whole. However it is important to inject a bit of reality into the discussion about what this bill will be able to achieve once it is enacted. 
We agree with a lot of the comments that the Minister has made. Social workers should work towards the aim of delivering a better quality service increasing the discipline within the profession and increasing the protection of those people who use the service as well as themselves. If members look at all those objectives they will see that the bill in its present form will not be able to enhance the quality of the profession. Certainly it will not make a difference to the discipline of the profession or increase protection because this bill states that registration is voluntary. Anybody who does not want to take part and be registered does not have to. I suspect that some of the less professional social workers—some of those more likely not to follow best practice regimes—are less likely to register. I do not think the cowboys of the social work world will go through the process and register. They will just continue to call themselves social workers and basically not change their practice considerably. 
Yes the Social Services Committee did a good job with this bill and I commend the previous chair Taito Phillip Field. In terms of our side of things we did our job in a timely fashion and we listened to a wide range of groups interested in the social work sector. However I have to say that out of all the advice those groups gave us and the recommendations they made this bill took most of their aims and objectives and basically gutted what they were trying to achieve. They asked for the majority of social workers to be required to register. On the first reading of this bill it was thought that at least State social workers would be asked to register. That sadly is not the case. It is the role of Government to be a leader in the social work sector. With nearly 1000 out of the 10000 social workers being employed by the Government or working within some kind of Government agency it is important the Government works to ensure it is putting the best foot forward for the profession. 
At one stage the Government was going to put expectations for registration in place. It had even done the work and taken the recommendations through Cabinet but some 3 months later the objective to include Child Youth and Family Services and other social workers from Government agencies was rescinded. That was a real shame. It is a shame the Government did not do its homework to try to find out whether it was realistic prior to putting that in place. Somebody within the ministry did not tell the Minister that the recommendation had gone through Cabinet and been rescinded because even a few months later he was happily telling the House that he was pleased that the bill would specifically require all social workers carrying out statutory functions to be registered. A certification model was supported by two-thirds of those who participated in the consultation process; that is true. Perhaps it may even understate the support for that particular requirement when it came through the Social Services Committee. So it is a shame. 
The pace of this bill has been unreasonably slow. It was supposedly a priority-3 piece of legislation. The aim was to get this bill through by the end of 2001 and here we are years later just ending the third reading now. However I am glad that at least there is a framework. It is really important that the sector has a framework to enable it to start looking at what the important issues are—that is the quality of the sector issues to do with training and getting the board under way. We will watch with interest to see who the appointments on that board will be. We will want to know that there is a balance on it and that it will not be just a whole set of political appointments. I am disappointed that Child Youth and Family Services being such a significant part of the sector is not able to put someone on that board. It is a shame that that recommendation too was rescinded by the Government. Being such a large employer of social workers it would have been good to have someone on that board representing that sector. 
I suppose that ultimately what all of us in this House want to know is where the service will progress from here. As many members in this House will know we often hear some pretty sad stories from constituents particularly those dealing with Child Youth and Family Services probation and others areas of social work where things have not got as well as the public expects. Social workers work under immense pressure and I can see why many have decided to leave the country. Certainly when we look at their salaries coupled with the pressure they are under we can see that their job may not be as rewarding as some other jobs they could potentially spend their time doing. With notifications skyrocketing over the last couple of years it is important that we address the problems of shortages of social workers. 
Social workers are being asked to take much higher caseloads than they had to take previously when we were in Government. The caseloads have increased dramatically in an attempt to get the unallocated case lists down. Those lists are shameful. Certainly in Southland today where there are over 200 critical cases the Minister has to take a long hard look at the service. This is his fourth year of managing Child Youth and Family Services and there has been little change. Little progress has been made on unallocated case lists and still children wait while their files are sent to social workers. 
The Mick Brown report released at the time was excellent. It made a number of recommendations but the Government has paid lip service to putting them in place. Of the 57 recommendations made I understand that between 13 and 15 have been implemented. We will hold the Government to account and work with the social services sector to ensure that we can progress its objectives from here. 
TAITO PHILLIP FIELD (Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Social Services and Employment) 
: 
 I want to acknowledge the contribution made by Katherine Rich and other members who were part of the Social Services Committee and the work they did to bring this bill to a state where it is favourably recommended to the House—which is more than what I can say for her colleague Nick Smith. As a former Minister of the National Government Cabinet I would have thought that that member would be a lot more knowledgable than was evident by the way he discredited himself with the sorts of questions he asked. This regime of registration for social workers is something that has been recommended. The sector certainly made it clear that it needed such registration. 
 I want to congratulate the Minister and this Government finally after so many years on giving the social workers sector in New Zealand something that is quite important and encouraging to it in terms of what it has been asking for. In particular it is improving the standards of social work in New Zealand and I commend the registration regime that is to be set up. The board to be set up will be a Crown entity appointed by the Minister and the Government and in monitoring the standards of that board it is important that the accountability returns to the Minister. 
The regime also looks at registration on a voluntary basis. I think that the concept of mandatory registration presented in the various submissions particularly from different areas of the social workers sector is an important point. But the wise move in this legislation is to look at what happens over 3 years and then to have a review. Certainly some of the important evaluations that need to be made can be done in 3 years particularly with regard to mandatory registration. 
The other issue that I thought was quite sensible in this legislation was to ensure that people who practise social work in New Zealand have the qualifications and skills to make the right judgments with regard to the care of children particularly in ethnic communities. There has been some comment in this Committee stage debate about why we have reference to ethnic communities. If we look at the mix of clientele in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services we see that Maori and Pacific Island communities are truly over-represented. Because of the overwhelming numbers it is only common sense that that service deals with Maori and Pacific Island communities. Other ethnic communities are also growing and we also need qualified and competent social workers to work in those areas. 
I am very supportive of what is in the bill. It ensures that those who practice do so competently and that the regime will encourage the standards and improve the quality of decisions made. Finally I say that this bill is good legislation that is well overdue and I want to congratulate the Minister and Government on getting it through this House. 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First supports this bill. It is very important legislation—well overdue as Taito Philip Field has said—that appropriately managed should have a very positive outcome for social workers. It is a step forward for this profession and it may assist with recruitment and retention of staff which is something we have a concern with. This increased professionalism will also have a positive effect on the confidence of the many New Zealanders who come into contact with the service and rely on social workers to help them. 
Social work as we all know has become increasingly complex and a greater accountability is required in that role. So the setting up of a registration board is a step forward but it should be representative of all sectors of social workers. The board will also ensure that there is a greater accountability for social workers which is essential when the decisions that are made impact on the lives of children and their families. New Zealand needs well-trained well-qualified people in that profession in order to deal with the many challenges required of them so sufficient resources and support to accompany the new registration system is an absolute necessity. The review element too is essential and 3 years is a timely period for review. New Zealand First looks forward to monitoring the outcomes of the bill and to having a professional team of social workers in New Zealand working with our children and families. 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 I am delighted that this bill is finally having its third reading tonight and that all organisations involved with employing and/or training social workers will now be able to begin working towards the new era with both hope and confidence. As I mentioned earlier today this bill has been a long time coming especially from the point of view of people in the profession as they have been working towards this moment for decades rather than months or years. I am sure that there will be some quiet celebrations tonight or tomorrow when people learn that the bill has finally been passed. 
Social workers operate at a number of the frontlines of society where the details of life are cruel complex and all too often tragic. Social work is a really hard job to do well and that is exacerbated by the fact that it is one of the professions most vulnerable to public criticism and comment. Working towards the registration of all social workers with a board ensuring high standards of fitness and competence is an overdue and acutely necessary step on the road to lifting the capacity of New Zealand social workers. I am the first to acknowledge that the new Act will not of itself heal all the wounds within the profession or eliminate all poor practice overnight. However I believe that what it will achieve will be a steady improvement in performance and accountability across all social work settings which will in the end benefit all of us in this country not just those directly affected. 
JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 During the third reading debate on this very important bill for social workers I want to reiterate a couple of points that have already been made. I also want to reflect on some of the comments made by other members who were concerned that the outcome of this bill would be to remove the ability for social workers to be self-regulated. The question that pops into my mind is this: if they are so happy with their present level of registration why would they be applying to come under something regulatory like the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill which would provide them with the kind of professional status they hope to get out of this bill? 
One of the other members Mr Smith talked about the fear of State control over a profession. But I reiterate that the aim of this bill is to establish a professional framework for social work that enhances rather than dismantles self-regulation. This bill strengthens that position and gives clout to the term “social worker”. The difference is that on the one hand a Youth Court judge is calling for higher standards and on the other hand a group of what at present are employees are wanting to upgrade to the status of a profession with limited success to date in self-regulating. We do however want to acknowledge the very good work of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association for Social Workers and we want to encourage it in what it has done to date. Obviously it has contributed to where we find ourselves tonight. The association’s attempt to bring all social workers under the umbrella of some sort of regulatory body is to be commended. 
The real need for professional status for social workers reflects the very sad condition that many New Zealand families find themselves in. United Future looks forward to the establishment of a commission for the family to provide a strength-based approach to supporting mums dads and their kids so that the heavy workloads of social workers are reduced. United Future acknowledges the hard work done by social workers and is happy to support the passing of this bill. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT NZ) 
: 
 It is a shame that this bill is again being passed under urgency. It is also a shame that it has taken so long for it to be passed since the original time frame was for it to be a bill that would be handled quickly. 
The Minister told us this is a bill that is meant to give greater protection to the people whom social workers support. It is meant to enhance the professionalism of the industry and the competencies within the industry. I remain puzzled at how a bill can provide for increased professionalism and competency and greater protections for those people who are involved with social workers given that registration under the bill is voluntary. How can the Minister stand there and say the bill will do this that and the other if registration is voluntary? People can decide not to register because it is voluntary. 
I say to Government members that this bill is a fundamental contradiction in terms. It is a Clayton’s bill that will not achieve the fine things that the Minister claims. It is a bill that will bring State regulation through a politically correct and politically motivated board because the Minister did not put my mind at rest in the Committee stage. This bill is imposing State regulation on an industry that practises self-regulation. 
The Committee heard no evidence of large numbers of people who were complaining about social workers except for the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. But that department is run by the Government for goodness’ sake! So why is this Government regulating a whole industry—some 10500 people—when those who were the subject of most of the complaints were the State’s own department of 1000 people? It just does not make sense. It is for those reasons that the ACT party will not be supporting this bill. 
The point is that the regulation of social workers will not achieve the aim of this bill—namely to try to improve the standards of social work in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. Indeed Judge Mick Brown’s report brought all this about. He was very concerned about the competencies within the department. He saw poor practice he saw systemic failure. We as an Opposition highlighted there were 4000 potential child abuse cases that were unallocated but were being reported on month after month. One day I asked for the duration figures. I wanted to know how long the children whose cases were critical had been waiting; how long had very urgent cases been waiting and so on. The Minister found to his horror that some of those children had been waiting for months and months. The longest cases had been waiting for over 18 months to be seen. There were no provisions in the way the department worked to make sure that those children were safe. 
When the Minister got the report back from the department and it showed these dreadful dreadful figures he issued a statement to say the figures were wrong. It took him 6 months to get the figures right—through a whitewash system I presume! The point is that was blatantly poor practice operating in the department and it was these sorts of issues that Mick Brown wanted the Government to address. 
If we think about the Department of Child Youth and Family Services we recall that when it originated family breakdown in this country was relatively minimal. The number of children with high and complex needs was pretty small. The department actually could cope. But the problem is that things have become worse. New Zealand has the highest rate of family breakdown in the OECD—29 percent of our families are broken families. That means those children are far more at risk. That is what is putting the department under pressure. There are a number of cases of high and complex needs. Many members of Parliament will have received the emails from the family in the last couple of weeks in which it is crying out for support and help and saying the department will not help them and the police will not help them until someone is injured. So these people have nowhere to go because the department is the last port of call. 
I say to Government members sitting on the other side of the House that the model of having one agency is now obsolete. The agency needs to be able to work hand in hand with police health workers and education workers. So the idea of a one-stop shop a community-based agency wrapping all those services together is the sort of model that we should be hearing about in this House today in response to the concerns that Mick Brown raised in his report about competency concerns with the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. 
If in fact we were moving to that sort of model the ACT party would be very much supportive because we would see that it was timely and forward-looking and that it would possibly work extremely well especially if the police took up more of the forensic work that we understand social workers are busy doing. So the social workers are busy investigating doing forensic work doing the “removal of children” work and doing all the stuff that the police should be doing instead of being able to work with children to make sure they are safe and work with families to make sure they are safe so that the child can come back home. At the moment more and more kids are being taken away from their families and they are not being brought back home. The number of children in care is going up month by month year by year. That is not the best answer for this country that is not the best answer for these children and that is not the best that a Government can do. 
I can tell the member sitting opposite that a Clayton’s bill that sounds good feels good and has all the right buttons but does nothing is not the answer. That is why I am so disappointed in the response of this Government to what is the most serious concern this country faces. Every year thousands of children in New Zealand are put at risk because the agency fails to help them in the way that it would want to if it were better organised had better practice or better resources. I do not know what the answer is but I do know that this bill is not the answer. 
If some proper solutions were being presented today the whole social work profession would suddenly start to feel uplifted because its members would see that social work is moving in a modern direction. That would be far better than a bill that basically says to the social work profession: “We do not trust you. We are going to put in place to control you all a board that the Minister chooses by himself with no checks and balances.” What other profession in New Zealand has impositions placed on it in that way by such political intervention? Where are the safeguards for anybody when that is happening? Where are the safeguards for members of the profession to know that if they happen to be ACT supporters or National supporters that somehow they will not find the weight of the board coming down on them? That is a far-fetched scenario but it is one that cannot be pushed to one side when there are no checks and balances in this bill to make sure that the political system does not intrude into that profession. 
There are a few other issues that the Minister did not explain to us. Serious concerns were raised during the Committee stage. There is a real worry in the profession that this registration will create an elitism between different sides of the social work profession—those who have qualifications and can be registered or can afford it and those who do not. There are compliance cost issues on small businesses that run private provision of social work services that they may not be able to afford the $14000 to help their staff become registered whereas the State will. We have already heard from the Minister that he is going to pull down a big chunk of taxpayers’ dollars in the next Budget to ensure that some of his workers can get registered. 
One has to ask whether we need those sorts of compliance costs on an industry that is already absolutely overstretched to the point where many experienced professional social workers are leaving to seek better opportunities overseas and to seek better opportunities in other industries. Do we want to impose a whole lot of Government regulation and compliance costs on an industry that was probably doing a pretty reasonable job except for one particular agency which of course is always going to be the subject of public scrutiny—that is the agency that is run by the Government itself? 
I finish by saying my major concern is the political interference that the Minister did not put to rest. This is a Clayton’s bill and I am very disappointed that we will not be able to support it. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson) 
: 
 National is pleased to support a proper regulatory system for social workers but it has four quite important concerns about this bill. I am disappointed to repeat the fact that these issues were raised in the Committee stage and the Minister was unable to respond to any of them. 
The first of those issues was raised very ably by one of the most effective advocates for children in this Chamber Dr Paul Hutchinson. He pointed out that social workers do wield enormous power. They have the capacity literally to make life or death decisions about children. Yet with those sorts of powers we would have expected that that group of statutory social workers at least would need registration under this bill but they do not. We are disappointed about that and it is something that we think the Minister should have responded to. We think that if people are going to have the power to take children away from their parents then there needs to be some regulatory control around them. This bill is disappointing because it does not provide for that. 
 The second key concern National has about this bill is that it treats the profession of social workers like children in the classical way of this Government’s nanny State policies. This bill says that the profession of social work unlike any other profession will be driven by the Government. Is there any other profession in which the entire board is appointed or dis-appointed—sacked—by a Minister of the Crown? Do lawyers for instance which some would accept is a profession have the Attorney-General appoint the Law Society? 
Simon Power 
: Just the bench. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: My colleague points out that she appoints the judges but not the Law Society. I ask the lawyers in the House whether they would accept the Law Society being appointed by the Minister of Justice. No they would not. They would be up in arms. They would not accept that. Would my own profession the engineers accept it? Is the top body that decides the standards and the professional regulation of engineers run by a Minister of the Crown? It would be George Hawkins and given what he did with the Building Industry Authority I am damned pleased he does not run it. But the law does not allow that. It says it is run by the engineers. If we come to the accountants or the plumbers or the electricians or the doctors or the nurses—in all of those we trust the profession to elect its own. It is so fundamental to being a profession. It is about a profession setting its standards. It is about a profession disciplining its own members. But what we have here from this Government in this bill is good old nanny State. 
The Government does not trust the profession of social workers and that is a big disappointment because the truth is this: who set up a system of a standard of ethics and a code for social workers? It has already been done. The Aotearoa – New Zealand Association of Social Workers has done that work. Does this legislation attempt to build on the work that social workers have done for themselves? No it does not. This bill says that it has to be left to nanny State. Social workers have to set up a statutory authority to do it. We say that is wrong because we trust professions. 
The third area where this party has difficulty with the bill is the costs. The Minister has created a bureaucratic monster here. I do not know why we have to have 200 clauses of very specific detailed bureaucratic legislation to govern social workers yet when it comes to something like my own profession of engineering and many other professions it could be done in 40 clauses a fifth of the number. This is one of the longest professional bills. I ask Mr Taito Phillip Field: how come we need this sort of bureaucracy? Why can we not leave things and trust the profession? Does his Government not understand the sorts of costs it is going to impose on social workers including my wife when they go to register? 
The other key point is that I asked the Minister during the Committee stage whether he could assure members that the bill for this bureaucratic monster would be paid for by the Crown. No no the bill states that every social worker will have to pay a levy every year not just for registration but also to pay for the disciplinary process. We all know that the social workers working for the Department of Child Youth and Family Services are stressed morale is low and turnover is high. I simply asked the Minister in the chair the Hon Steve Maharey whether he could assure me that registered social workers working for the Department of Child Youth and Family Services were not going to have to pay the $200 or $300 a year fee to comply with this bill. The Minister was absolutely silent. Why was he silent? I will tell members why. It is because he is going to bill them for it. We say that is wrong. [ 
Interruption 
] Will Jill Pettis reassure me that her social workers at the Department of Child Youth and Family Services in Wanganui will not be required to pay the registration fee? Will the Government meet that cost? The silence is deafening. 
I wonder whether the Minister who is sitting in the gallery would just give me a nod that the department will meet the costs for the social workers who work for Child Youth and Family Services. I ask the Minister to please give me a nod. He will not. He will not give that reassurance and that is wrong. We know what happened to the teachers. This sneaky Government made it a requirement for teachers to be registered then it put the fee up 80 percent. In the last month every teacher in New Zealand has got a nice little bill and this legislation will do the same thing. 
The last area about which I wish to express concern is something that I want to challenge the United Future party on. It is in respect of the sickly political correctness in this bill. Muriel Newman made a substantial contribution to this debate. She pointed out that if we are to make social progress in New Zealand then we have some big issues to ask about our families and how we can better make society hold those families together. I have been right through this bill but in all the principles and in all the bureaucratic guff I could not find the word “family”— 
Dianne Yates 
: You had 9 long years. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I challenge the member opposite to tell me where the word “family” appears. If we are going to deal with some of the social issues in New Zealand we have the treaty—we have to be culturally appropriate and have all sorts of political correctness— 
Steve Chadwick 
: Blame the social workers for dysfunctional families—how absurd. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: No I do not but I say to the member for Rotorua that if we are to get better social outcomes for this country then we need social workers who understand families. [ 
Interruption 
] It is interesting to note that I have obviously hit a raw nerve because what this bill should say is not all this politically correct nonsense about the treaty Maori and those sorts of issues it should be talking about the things that matter for Maori families for Pacific Island families and for families of every ethnic origin. 
The United Future party went around the country saying that it was going to advocate for families but all we get in this bill is the damn treaty. I say that the family is far more important to this country than the treaty will ever be in terms of support for families. The bill should have addressed that and it does not. 
Dianne Yates 
: Which bill? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: This bill about social workers. I do not expect the Labour Party to stand up for the families of New Zealand but I thought United Future might. 
Larry Baldock 
: We are. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Where is it mentioned? It is not mentioned once in the bill. Good social work practice has to be about social workers supporting families and that is where Muriel Newman is with me and that is what makes it different on this side of the House. It is good news that social workers are having a statutory framework. Let us hope it can raise standards. It is a pity about the politically correct nonsense and the Government’s incorrect priorities. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Social Workers Registration Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 100 
Noes 6 
Bill read a third time. 
Labour 52; New Zealand National 20; New Zealand First 13; Green Party 7; United Future 8. 
ACT New Zealand 6.