Collins Judith: Families Commission Bill — Third Reading 
Collins Judith: Families Commission Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:614;Page:10686] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 There are a couple of issues that I want to cover today in relation to the Families Commission Bill. I am in a generous mood today because the sky is bright the sun is shining and I am a National Party MP and boy am I proud of it! One of the things I will say to the people of New Zealand today is that I can save them $28 million because I can tell them what children need. It is nice that United Future members are in the House to listen because they are the ones who are so keen on spending $28 million. I will give it to New Zealanders for nothing: children need love. They need care they need commitment they need education they need health they need boundaries and they need discipline. They need to know their whakapapa. They need to know who their father is and who their mother is. They need to know that they belong and most of all they need wherever possible two great parents. 
Two parents will do a better job any day than one great parent. Two great parents will do a better job any day than one not particularly great parent and the new partner that he or she has this week. It is about time that we acknowledged it. We do not need $28 million being spent on a bureaucracy so that United Future MPs will have a job to go to after the next election just to prove that. This bill does not acknowledge anywhere that two great parents are better than one great parent. Nowhere does it acknowledge that children need and should have whenever possible two great committed parents. 
The 
Lancet 
—the journal of the British Medical Association—has recently published a Swedish study. Sweden is one of those very liberal countries that are held up to us by the great feminist leader whom we have at the moment in New Zealand. That particular country is a very liberal country and it is now starting to look at what its liberal views are doing to its children. Researchers studied one million children for a decade—not for a day but for a decade—all the way into their mid-20s. The study found that children growing up in single-parent families are twice as likely to develop serious psychiatric illness and addictions later in life. The researchers also found a tremendous amount of other information and all of it was bad. When we compare oranges and oranges children will be better off in two-parent families almost without exception. 
Nowhere in this bill is there a reference to two-parent families. Two-parent families are simply being reduced in this anti-capitalist feminist agenda given to us by the Labour Party and its cohorts—and unfortunately supported by United Future something I just cannot understand—to a historical patriarchal aberration. Those parties think it is all about male domination. They obviously have not lived in any family that I have been part of. It certainly is not about male domination either my parents’ or my own. 
Bernie Ogilvy 
: Aw! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I say thank you very much to Mr Ogilvy the former doctor. Let us have a look at the real cost of the Families Commission. When I look at this bill I think: “What else could we do with $28 million?”—apart from buy a few doctors’ degrees. We could get 5.6 million hours of free childcare. That would be good would it not? We could have 2.18 million Plunket Line inquiries. That should last for a few years. We could have 357379 booster seats. [ 
Interruption 
] Is the member I hear over there the one who called out to my colleague Katherine Rich to go home to her children? We could have 2.9 million 20-packs of baby nappies and 5.3 million hours of early childhood education for under-twos. My goodness we need childhood education for our under-twos in this country! It is a useful thing to produce is it not? 
Or we could have United Future cronies all working away in a bureaucracy so they can all have a job once we get rid of that party in 2005. Which shall we have? Or we could have 55000 inquiries to the office of the Children’s Commissioner. That should keep it going for a little while should it not? We could have 1.8 million Births Deaths and Marriages inquiries. Members may wonder why I would put that in. I will tell them why—it is because 17000 women in this country cannot or will not name the father of their children and I cannot believe that these people are being allowed to have children. We are paying for them and they do not even have the nous to say “What’s your name mate?” before they decide to go and mate with them. 
 Frankly that is just appalling because there are 17000 children plus all the others as well—their brothers and sisters from goodness knows how many fathers—all with no fathers no whakapapa and no idea of where they came from except it happened to be a stray sperm swimming around. 
It is just appalling that we have this situation in New Zealand and we do not need $28 million spent on some bureaucracy to tell us that. The money could instead be spent on 627400 two-year subscriptions to  
Kiwi Parent 
 and that would be a lot more use than a Families Commission that does not even know how to define what a family is and needed its own Supplementary Order Paper to tell us all that the term did not really mean that it would be a criminal gang. It took an entire amendment to do that and an awful lot of argument and money has been spent saying: “Oh boy it is not a gang.” 
Something even better could be done I suggest by tripling—three times—the amount of funding available for the Parents as First Teachers programme. Would that not be a good thing? In my electorate I am very lucky to have the Home Instruction Programme for Pre-school Youngsters which was set up and run by the Pacific Foundation—a wonderful organisation that is not bureaucratic and actually does something. It is a wonderful thing; it is not a Government department it does not have a bureaucracy it actually does something. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: Aw! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: What that organisation does—and I would like to have a little less cynicism from the Minister of Transport—is that it teaches parents how to be parents. Most of us learn our parenting skills from our own parents but now that intergenerational hopelessness has been bred by woolly-woofter liberal ideas there are parents who are not capable of being parents without a tremendous amount of work. What this programme has is very very good people who actually help. 
I have been to the graduation ceremony. I have seen people who had no self-esteem before and unbelievably little confidence who now talk proudly to me about reading to their children making sure homework is done before the children do anything else and being great parents. That is what money should be spent on not yet another bureaucracy stuck in Wellington doing nothing for anyone out there. Those are the sorts of people we need to help this country.