Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): I too would like to take a moment to acknowledge your work in the House Mr Deputy Speaker and say that I will miss you. For me the most enduring memory was your leadership around the section 59 legislation. I think your shift in position on that was to the benefit of all children in this country and it is often a very rare thing in this House to see people hearing the evidence and being able to shift in a public way. It is something I maintain a huge amount of appreciation for.So on to this bill—the last bill that we are debating in the 51st Parliament right before the adjournment speeches. It feels as if it is kind of you know getting the slot after lunch at a conference on the last day of the conference when nobody is likely to be listening or caring very much. But this is a very important issue and I would like just to put some of the history on the record as we discuss this.So what this is about is mandatory registration for social workers. The framework to enable this was introduced into Parliament by a Labour Government in 2001 when it introduced legislation to establish a framework for registration that was then voluntary. That passed in 2003. The Green Party at the time called for a commitment from the Government to include a time frame in that legislation for mandatory registration. We thought 10 years was enough time roughly for the sector to be able to prepare and get upskilled to be able to deliver the mandatory registration. But the Labour Government's view at the time was that the compliance costs were high and that it was not confident that it could be done in 10 years.You know we had different views on that and we did not want to leave it so that it would rely on someone else initiating another review and I think now—it is 2017—it does feel a little bit like we were right and that it would have been good to have it in the legislation in order to get that process kick-started from that point.We also had another reservation at that time that the legislation lacked specific reference to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and explicit acknowledgment of the obligations of the Crown. There was quite a lot of discussion about that and the social workers at the time were supporting that call but they backed off it because they did not think the legislation would get through if they stuck to that point. So without the backing of the social workers we were willing to support the legislation. But my understanding is that there was an intent for that to be revisited in the review 3 years later and I have not seen evidence of that. In fact we still do not have that in legislation.Considering the conversations we have been having in relation to the Oranga Tamariki legislation I do believe that this is still an incredibly important discussion for us as a country specifically as it relates to social work and I do hope people will submit on that point—about how we as a country ensure that our practice is consistent with Te Tiriti o Waitangi and that the Crown is protecting those rights that are enshrined in our founding document to ensure whakapapa and the protection of tamariki Māori and their cultural identity and their whole selves. So we look forward to that discussion as the bill goes to select committee in the next term.Another thing I do want to point to is that after the legislation was passed the Government in 2005 established an NGO study award to support social workers or people practising within their community-based organisations to get qualified. The reviews of that study award were glowing in fact. There was a review done by Massey University that showed that the students who had that study award were more committed to finishing their training more confident in becoming practitioners and reported high competence and self-reflection which is a very key part of good social work practice and that they continued working in NGOs even after job changes. It was particularly beneficial for Māori.So that was a really positive thing in helping with that transition and yet—you know we have heard at the Social Services Committee year on year from the Social Workers Registration Board when we review it that there needs to be mandatory registration and it has taken a long time. We also heard from the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers that it wanted it and the white paper on vulnerable children that went to Cabinet also recommended mandatory registration as did the Office of the Children's Commissioner.So I do have to admit to a certain degree of frustration that it has taken until the very last day of the 51st Parliament for this to be introduced when the Labour Party member Carmel Sepuloni introduced a bill in 2015 that could have had the support of the Government. The evidence was there. The calls from the profession and those with an interest in protecting our communities and our children in particular were all calling for this. So it is hard to see that the delay was not an act of politics triumphing over the best interests of our communities.We have heard as has already been mentioned in the debate this afternoon that of the 2013 census there were 18000 people who identified as social workers in that census but only 5500 people at the time were registered as social workers. It was clear evidence really that people were practising and there was a public expectation that they were registered and that their practice had a degree of oversight which was just not the case. We have seen some disturbing and high-profile cases go to our courts that demonstrated that.We also know that at least in 2015 500 social workers working within what was then Child Youth and Family were as yet unregistered. They were staff members who had the support of the State working within the State institution but again there does seem to have been a lack of commitment in ensuring that they had the support to get qualified and registered. I also note that for the social workers in schools the Ministry of Education was unable to report on how many of those social workers were registered. So again it is some more evidence that while we are getting this on the last day it feels like the Government has been very late coming to the party on how important this is.I do want to register another concern—I mentioned before the NGO Social Work Study Award and how important and successful it had been in upskilling people—which is to recognise that the Government canned that programme last year despite the really really glowing reports of the benefits of it. That does need to be seen particularly in the context that the social work degree has now moved from a 3-year course to a 4-year course that most of our community-based organisations' funding has not increased—their baseline funding—since 2008 and that there have been restrictions introduced on access to student allowances and their ability to have funded access to education.We need social workers who have life experience and who come from diverse parts of our community particularly people who have had poverty in their background. It makes their work more real and we need to be ensuring that they are able to get in and practise as social workers. I think that that decision of the Government—if it wants to ensure mandatory registration and diverse social workers it needs to revisit that decision. But the Green Party is happy to support this to select committee in these last few hours of this Parliament.