Bradford Sue: Families Commission Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Families Commission Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:608;Page:5622] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will not be supporting the Families Commission Bill which is before us this afternoon. The bill is an affront to families in desperate need of support right now and it is an affront to hard-pressed community organisations that already do the work the commission is charged with. The Government sees fit to put up to $9 million or more a year into a superfluous new bureaucracy simply to meet the demands of a political agreement with United Future. 
There is nothing wrong with trying to do more for families or parents or children or the groups that serve them. The Green Party campaigned last year on ending child poverty—the child poverty that still afflicts up to a third of this country’s children. We also campaigned for increased support for education in parenting a universal child benefit reforms in family assistance and family support and a whole host of other things that would immediately benefit families in a practical way. We would also like to see more funding going to groups that advocate for—and in other ways work for—families and children and we are totally behind the Commissioner for Children Bill. 
However rather than giving immediate income housing or other relief to families in need or boosting the work of hard-pressed community groups supporting families and children this bill before us this afternoon takes $27.8 million of taxpayers’ money to establish a new Crown entity whose main function will be “to act as an advocate for the interests of families generally.” To quote further subclause 7(2) states: “That function does not include acting as an advocate for the interests of a particular family or particular families in connection with a particular case or issue.” 
So just what will this new commission be doing? In this country we already have a number of fine organisations that advocate strongly and well for families and for parents and children in a variety of ways. A number of such groups also carry out the subsidiary functions outlined in the bill such as promoting informed debate lobbying the Government and carrying out research on matters relating to families. I will name just a couple in the latter category—there are many more. I am sure we have all noticed the sterling efforts in recent years of the Child Poverty Action Group and Charles Waldegrave’s Lower Hutt Family Centre. Both carry out sound research on issues affecting families especially low-income ones and advocate strongly for the interests of children and families at every level and in every part of the political spectrum. We have also seen the rise of groups like the Parents Centres which provide programmes for parents around the country—alongside organisations like Parentline Homebuilders the People’s Centre and a whole range of community iwi pan-tribal and Pacific peoples’ organisations whose whole existence is geared to supporting the needs of families particularly those who need help most. 
I would much rather have seen at least some of the proposed $28 million poured into direct support and infrastructure funding increases for those organisations rather than into another layer of bureaucracy whose purpose seems indistinguishable from a lot of what is already in the public sector and whose functions are already being met in all sorts of places in the voluntary sector. At a time when lotteries funding is diminishing by the year and the funding of Community Organisations Grants Scheme committees in places like Manukau City is so stretched that average grants are around a totally inadequate $4000 a year it seems ridiculous to prioritise investment in a body like the new Families Commission. 
In terms of what is already there in the public sector notably we have the Commissioner for Children. A bill geared to strengthening the commissioner’s role has languished on the Order Paper for the last couple of years and there is still no sign of it surfacing in the near future—that I am aware of anyway. If Labour had been serious about wanting to increase the advocacy role for the children and young people who constitute a high percentage of families I am sure we would have seen the Commissioner for Children Bill back in the House some years ago. 
On top of that in the public sector we have the Ministry of Social Development itself—a massive enterprise employing around 350 policy analysts many of whom spend much of their time researching and analysing social conditions in this country and giving advice to the Government. That is a huge public investment in social research. On the Social Services Committee we often receive the benefit of briefings on their latest research results much of which provide useful underpinnings for the development of social policy—for example through the excellent living standards survey and social reports. Those studies include detailed information about the living standards of a whole range and type of New Zealand families and the development of indicators to measure desirable social outcomes—with a particular focus on the needs of children and young people. It is hard to see how a much smaller Crown entity in the form of the new Families Commission could ever emulate the depth and breadth of research in policy advice relating to families already offered by the Ministry of Social Development. Community-based research such as that carried out by groups like the Child Poverty Action Group and the Rev. Charles Waldegrave could be of much added value if more resources were put into it but I do not see that same quality and style of research coming from another State body. 
In the past the Green Party has tended to support the establishment of new bodies that could offer independent advice to Government in critical areas. However our recent observations of the actions of the Tertiary Education Commission and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority have led us to believe that those bodies are not necessarily offering independent advice at the level we would expect and we are no longer so quick to assume that setting up an avowedly autonomous Crown entity will achieve particularly useful and independent outcomes. 
Further the Green Party notes that it is intended that the new Families Commission will consist of between three and seven commissioners and that it will have a budget of $9.2 million a year when it becomes fully operational. That is astonishing when one considers that the Office of the Commissioner for Children receives less than $2 million the Ministry of Women’s Affairs $4 million the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment $2 million and the Human Rights Commission just under $8 million. What are the Government’s priorities here? What is the real point of what it is doing? After all the Human Rights Commission—a long-established and respected body endeavouring to advocate and research a huge range of issues as well as dealing with a large number of actual cases—receives less than this new body. It is pitiful to see the Commissioner for Children and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment treated with such comparative contempt given the importance of the critical interests they attempt so valiantly to represent on very low budgets. 
The $28 million being spent on setting up and running the Families Commission is a slap in the face for families in desperate need of support right now—in May 2003. We do not know exactly what the Budget this week will bring families but from what has been made public already it is pretty clear that there will be no changes reforms or improvements to family assistance family support or benefits. Nor am I expecting any major new initiatives to allow low to medium-income families to rent or buy homes that they can afford in the districts where they live and can get jobs. A lack of decent affordable housing remains one of the biggest causes of health and educational problems for children and families. 
I am of course under no illusion about the political imperatives under which the Labour Government is operating with this bill but it is a pity nevertheless that taxpayers’ money is to be spent in a less than efficacious manner simply because of past election deals. If United Future really had families at heart there are many other ways in which it could have pushed Labour to spend this money. I hope the day will come when common sense rather than a blind commitment to a vague ideal of “family” will determine how we spend precious dollars when a third of this country’s children are still living in poverty.