Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to take a call on the second reading of the Families Commission Act Repeal Bill. The purpose as has been stated by previous speakers is to repeal the Families Commission Act 2003 and disestablish the Families Commission and tie up all the loose ends associated with doing that. It's a pretty tight bill; the purpose is pretty obvious and pretty clear.It has been to select committee and there were three core issues that were raised in that process—one of people having a concern that they wanted to see the retention of a statutory agency that advocated for families. The view of the committee and of this House indeed was that actually we have other mechanisms to be able to achieve the goal of ensuring that our families and their needs are integrated into policy and the most obvious that we have coming forward is the child well-being strategy as well as the cross-Government work in terms of bringing together good research for the well-being of our communities.The second concern that was raised was the need to maintain coordination and collaboration for effective evaluation and research. The Social Investment Agency has progressively been taking on that role as there has also been more thinking across Government about the need for joining up our response for wicked problems in particular that can't be dealt with effectively in the silos of Government. So I would like to assure those submitters that that concept of joining up our thinking and ensuring and supporting collaboration is very much a part of this new Government's agenda. The previous idea of social investment was seen to do that through a very narrow lens of data.We have a broader vision for doing that. And it has been interesting to me to hear some of the dancing on pins around the idea of social investment and broadening the concept of whānau and the understanding of that because from everything we saw that did not go together particularly well in the previous concept of social investment that seemed to be quite deeply individualised and re-stigmatising. So it's great to see us moving forward really holding the principles of coordination collaboration and community as well as family.Other people were concerned about the need to ensure ongoing availability of the information because there has been some great research done. I'm happy to give assurances as others have to this House that that information will be readily available and that the Hub which is New Zealand's one-stop shop for social science research will be moving from the social policy evaluation; and the research unit to the Social Investment Agency; and that Growing Up in New Zealand will be supported through the Ministry of Social Development (MSD); and that the annual Families and Whānau Status Report and the supporting research around that will be brought in to the Ministry of Social Development as well; and very dear to my heart the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse who do brilliant research very much in our communities all around the country with great relationships will be supported by the Ministry of Justice. We look forward to seeing their work into the future.The Green Party—I do think in this speech I should acknowledge that we didn't support the establishment of the Families Commission in the first place.Hon Ruth Dyson: I recall. I remember it well.JAN LOGIE: Yeah—ha! Then Sue Bradford was our spokesperson at the time and she was quite clear in the House that the Green Party saw the establishment of the commission as a duplication of work that was already happening within existing agencies—MSD in particular—and that it was a waste of $28 million over four years that was really solving a problem that did not exist and was more about politicking than it was about the well-being of our families. And in noting that there had been no public outcry for the establishment of a research agency to support families yet there had been quite a lot of public outcry in relation to poverty in our communities which it would have been nice at the time to see that money going into. I've had similar concerns over that time.None of those comments are to say that I didn't respect and value the research that came out of the Families Commission—because I really did. They did some fantastic work. I don't think the case was ever made that that work couldn't have been done within other agencies. So now it is great to see the House in agreement on returning that work across our agencies and with the coordination role through different mechanisms. It's very clear to me that our Government's focus is on actually delivering the outcomes: on action rather than more talk. On that note I will sit down.