O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you Madam Chair. [Interruption] I know; it's a terrible disappointment. I know some good people who could help you work through this.Can I acknowledge the member who's just taken her seat Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki. Be optimistic about those 100 years. Modern healthcare is incredible so be optimistic. Secondly thank you actually for sharing some of your story. I don't think from this side there's any concern about the why" of this bill the Social Workers Registration Legislation Bill; it's more elements of the "how". My honourable colleague Louise Upston had indicated earlier as I had and others yesterday that there are questions around how this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) has come about and why the rush. I do take on board that it's been 16-or-so years but that said it still does not provide if you will an excuse to rush things forward.I know that the Minister Carmel Sepuloni when she touched on the SOP said that 70 percent of 74 submitters spoke around scopes of practice which is great. I've had the good fortune even though I didn't sit on the Social Services and Community Committee to read through them. That's still 70 percent I would argue that needs to be interrogated in the best sense of the word through select committee. The 30 percent that didn't speak to scopes of practice or spoke against the concept need to be heard.We are primarily on Part 1 and I know within that there's a Part 1A. I'm going to at this point keep my discussion to the first clauses of Part 1. I suppose fundamentally this is about the concept of a scope of practice. Having chaired the Health Committee scopes of practice are an incredibly important factor in the medical profession and rightly understood should be an important part of social workers as well. There are probably some questions—not now but for later—about whether or not we should have actually engaged the existing scopes of practice legislation and brought social workers into that. I suspect that could have been somewhat controversial. The Minister may be able to address that because other—well the first debate becomes instantly whether social work is part of health. Arguably I'd say it is but I could imagine had we had a select committee process that health practitioners—be they doctors nurses podiatrists optometrists and others—may have wanted to have a say. But it probably is the initial question to the Minister of whether she considered having scopes of practice not within a separate bill—as it is at this stage under the Social Workers Registration Act—but whether or not social work scopes of practice could have been included within the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act as it sits.In new clause 4 of Part 1 the determining of a scope of practice is to be inserted. It's one line; it's a simple line. I think it just needs to be acknowledged once again though that this is a major major step and change; and the member who has just resumed her seat began to indicate why.In new clause 5—and it's where I'll spend initially most of my time—we have quite a change from what the select committee itself suggested to what has now appeared in the SOP. Because we have not had an opportunity in select committee to engage I would welcome understanding this a little bit more. So first and foremost we now have two definitions being repealed. I do I think understand why "registered social worker" has been repealed but the definition of "particular condition" raises a question for me of why that's been removed. Is that absolutely necessary? I think some of the discussions we've had already tonight but certainly yesterday were about exploring the wide variety of activities that a social worker undertakes. Therefore ipso facto if they're doing a wide range of work there must be a wide range of particular conditions. So I'm curious to understand why that has been removed.We're also seeing in new clause 5(2) actually a whole array of new interpretations being put in. So the select committee removed the notion of "restricted work". I assume but I'm very happy to be corrected the reason that was taken away is because through the scopes of practice it's going to define what is within work—so unrestricted—and what is to remain restricted. But again it would be interesting to understand from the Minister—again seeing as we haven't interrogated it further—why restricted work has now been removed from her SOP changes in Part 1 new clause 5.We also have now the addition of a prescribed qualification brought in. It's defined here. It means: "a qualification prescribed by the Board under section 5B". Now at one level it makes perfect sense. The question Minister is: is this a qualification-setting ability or mandate or delegation of the board or is there going to be a reliance on—as with just about every other qualification—the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA)? So it's a simple question. I'm very happy to be told at whatever point that I've missed something significant particularly in new section 5B set out in new clause 6A in Supplementary Order Paper 187. But the long and short is most qualifications are if you will given prescribed by the likes of the NZQA or a university or a polytech—I'd better use the singular seeing as it sounds like there's a proposal to merge every polytechnic. But at the moment it reads as if a qualification can be prescribed by the board. Now I assume they'll be looking towards polytechs universities and others to do so but are we opening up a possibility here that actually the board itself could decide to say "We've just created this qualification." and that will be fine? I think that should be looked into.We also have in the SOP for Part 1 clause 5 a new interpretation or definition of "scope of practice" and there are actually a number of issues arising here mainly through the nomenclature. It talks about the social work "profession". So it says here "in relation to the social work profession … 1 or more social work services performed by the social work profession …". It's unusual writing. A profession if you will does not provide the immediate service; a person does—an individual person. A profession as a whole oversees if you will the care but in a lot of our legal texts we talk about a person. In other words I'm surprised that it doesn't read "in relation to the social worker or work services performed by a social worker as prescribed by legislation". Instead we are talking about a profession and that's slightly unusual. Again it's not necessarily wrong but a scope of practice is if you will Minister put forward by a profession but it is manifested and enacted by a person and surely we are aiming at actually describing what a person does in this case.We then move on to the question of a difference between the word "performed" and "provided". So again this is in Part 1 clause 5(2) where it talks about social work services being "performed". It's not to make light of it; performances aren't something theatrical here. "Performed" implies it's done around a person whereas "provided" is something which is given. And I'm very happy to be corrected by those who are far more expert than I or who are social workers but by and large I would understand social work to be something that is "provided" to people. It's something where a provider—a single person an entity rather than a profession—is giving something if you will rather than "performing" which is I would like to stress something which is done around a person. I suppose you could make an argument that it's a wraparound service but primarily we're talking about the provision of a service.So I suppose I would ask the Minister to explain "scope of practice" or the definition thereof but I'd be suggesting to her and perhaps to the committee of the whole House tonight that really we should be saying in relation to social workers it means "one or more social work providers who are providing the social workers that are"—actually I can't do it on the fly but I think you get the sense Minister of where I'm going; that really we do need to look to change the word "profession" to indicate that this is not about the whole profession and then divide down to individuals but we start with individuals who then form a profession. I think it keeps their individuality respected but also to talk about the work services as something that is provided if you will—"gifted". It's not really the legal language but it's gifted to the person rather than performed around them.I'm probably going to run out of time but I will just indicate that I'd like to take some further calls around what a "social work service" means. I think "service" is well in keeping with something which is provided but I'm a little concerned Minister that actually it's not quite broad enough. I've had the good fortune of working alongside a number of social workers over the years and I just can't help but feel that the wording here is just a little bit limiting. I'm always worried in this House about ill-considered consequences. One of the last things I'd like to see after 16 years is that we actually limit what's happening but I'll come back to that in my final calls."