Prasad Rajen: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16511. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour):I wanted to come back and address three further aspects that are on my mind in terms of the Families Commission Amendment Bill. I want to respond to the Hon Chester Borrows who believes that members on this side of the Chamber are inconsistent in the position we have taken when we talk about a children’s ministry and strengthening the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. In fact I say to the Hon Chester Borrows that I think he has missed the point.The very thing we are arguing is that the changes in this bill are a travesty of the autonomous Crown entity model. What these changes do is anathema to that particular model and that is the bit that we are really objecting to. We would rather strengthen the Families Commission and let it go but because this bill is a travesty of that we have difficulty.I also wanted to express my concern that the White Ribbon programme would be transferred out of the commission. I thought that Mr Alfred Ngaro might take a call and defend that particular programme rather than taking a closure call—we did hire him to do some work for us when I was in the commission.Coming back to new section 8A in clause 7—this is about the commission’s monitoring evaluation and research function—really those functions are being delimited in this particular clause and I will explain why they are being delimited. New section 8A adds managing contracts to the list of functions. Here is an autonomous Crown entity being asked to manage contracts on behalf of the Government. Why are those contracts not being managed by Government departments and Government ministries? This is an autonomous Crown entity. To use it in this particular way as new section 8A does is a travesty of that particular model and it actually delimits the commission from doing the advocacy work for which it was designed and that work still needs to be done because many of our families are not doing that well.Roles that the Ministry of Social Development had—appropriately as the Ministry of Social Development—are now being transferred into the Families Commission and there is no real explanation for that; for putting it in this big area of evaluation etc. When you give the commission these kinds of functions then it actually delimits the role. What is the gain? What is the gain from asking an autonomous Crown entity designed to advocate for families to manage contracts of this type? Where is the gain when there is so much to be done in this particular area? So again this bill is really a downgrading of the particular functions of the Families Commission.I want to go now to clause 11. This is about the membership of the commission. I thought the Hon Chester Borrows skipped through this very very lightly because this really is quite germane and I believe officials have also skipped through this very very lightly. Although I appreciate the work of officials and their advice to the Social Services Committee in this area I do not agree with them. There is no strong argument to replace commissioners with members. One member of the board which is appointed by the Minister will then be selected as the Families Commissioner. What is the role of that member? Oh that is whatever the commission decides it is.Can you imagine the role of the Children’s Commissioner being put through that kind of process? It is just not going to happen. So here we are—there is a major change here and there is no reason. If the Government wanted to drive through a different corporate model then it ought to have done that much more clearly but the bill actually does not really reflect the real nature of Crown entities of this type. When will the Minister or somebody explain why we have a Families Commissioner in the bill—why? There is no justification now for having a person on a governance board—because that is what this becomes—having the role of the Families Commissioner. It becomes window dressing. I would like the Minister to explain to us why we should have one at all when at the moment there actually is a wider provision for a—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member but the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The House in Committee has resumed. The House in Committee is considering the Families Commission Amendment Bill and is debating Part 1. Dr Rajen Prasad had the call. He has a small amount of time left.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Thank you Mr Chairman. I hope I will get to finish my last call after this. I wanted to also talk about another provision in this bill which is new section 18B in clause 11. What new section 18B does is establish a social science experts panel—