Ardern Jacinda: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16500. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):It is my privilege to take a call in the Committee stage of the Families Commission Amendment Bill. Up front I want to point out that the Labour Party did support this bill at least it being debated at the Social Services Committee. We have always been very clear about no longer seeing a place for the Families Commission in the current political environment. There are a number of reasons for that not least is the fact that over time it is our view that the Families Commission has become increasingly politicised.Sue Moroney: Has it ever.JACINDA ARDERN: As my colleague chimes in it reminds me that she is right to say “Has it ever.” based on the fact that the recent appointments to the Families Commission board have made it literally the family’s commission—that is the family’s commission of the National Party’s family. I think that some of the last two appointments have included Amy Adams’ sister. She is a Families Commission board member. She was a temporary fill-in and then took on a permanent role at the Families Commission. Hekia Parata’s husband is also on the Families Commission board. There is no doubting that if someone has good credentials and there is a relevant role there might be a place for them.Tim Macindoe: Does the member behind you know anything about it?JACINDA ARDERN: I do not believe that Rajen Prasad was related to any of the Ministers who appointed him at the time. I do not believe that Rajen Prasad was related to any of the Ministers at the time he—Hon Member: He was.JACINDA ARDERN: Married to Steve Maharey at any point—no Rajen Prasad was not. The point that we are making I think is a very fair one. If there is a background that makes it relevant for an individual to be appointed perhaps someone could make a case. But I think that having not one but two members of National’s Cabinet with direct family members on the Families Commission means it is only fair that we raise eyebrows about that particularly when the sister of one of those National members was previously a political ministerial appointment.So it is only fair I think that we therefore raise also the point that this bill dilutes the advocacy role that the Families Commission has had. One might question whether or not that advocacy role has really existed properly for some time. There is no doubt that in the past the Families Commission has held the Government of the day to account. It has raised issues of the day. It is my recollection that during Rajen Prasad’s time I believe there was an important piece of work done around paid parental leave if I recall. It was a very comprehensive report about the importance of paid parental leave.Fast forward to now and we have a case where the Families Commission has no view apparently on the importance of paid parental leave. The Families Commission has no view on whether or not it is important for families to have more time together at the most important developmental stages of a child’s life. That is absolutely extraordinary. Not only does this bill remove the advocacy function for the Families Commission but we would argue that it has been long gone. It has been long gone. That is why that although Part 1 of the bill focuses on reducing the number of commissioners—so having one commissioner and not having multiple commissioners and it is fair to point out that that may have caused some confusion—it actually in our minds does not go far enough. In our minds this bill should remove the Families Commission entirely. That is the conclusion that we have come to.That is not to say that there is not a role for advocacy on behalf of families and children. Indeed we think there is. But sadly the Families Commission is so far gone that we do not think it is the one to perform that function anymore. In fact it is our view that both the functions performed currently by the Families Commission and the proposed functions within this bill should simply be transferred to the Children’s Commissioner. We think the Office of the Children’s Commissioner has done some very very good work has a very strong advocacy role and has conducted itself with the level of independence required particularly in the research that it has done and the ability of the commission to bring together expert advisory panels specific to the areas that it determines need to be focused on—in this case child poverty—and to even bring together funding to enable it to do the work.In Part 1 clause 11 of this bill there is a specific establishment of a social science experts panel with a specific allocation of funding. We believe that that is inappropriate. We believe that the kinds of pieces of research that we were told at the Social Services Committee would be conducted by the Families Commission actually should be carried out by the Ministry of Social Development in its day-to-day work anyway and that to claim that having something independent would add something—well actually this social science experts panel would not be independent anyway so why not have it as part of the Ministry of Social Development?There is one specific piece of work as well that this piece of legislation sets out that the Families Commission will conduct—even though it has been basically gutted except for a couple of little things a few little jobs to do. One is a state of the nation sort of report for families the families status report. Well one could argue that that is essentially the social report that the Ministry of Social Development previously did annually—Sue Moroney: Under a Labour Government.JACINDA ARDERN:—under a Labour Government but when this Government came in no it was not interested in hearing about the social status of New Zealanders on an annual basis. No it was much more convenient to deal with that 3-yearly—I believe outside of the election year—rather than have that yearly. So the fact that it has now created this families status report just rings hollow to us given that something that was comparable and already existed has been gutted since National has been in office.Equally the household income survey a fantastic piece of work that was very comprehensive and unfortunately undermined by Treasury’s—I believe Bryan Perry’s report may have been influenced by Treasury’s inability to count how many children are in poverty. But we do have other reports that do provide us with a useful snapshot. I think that the Salvation Army state of the nation report produced truly independently of the Government has become a useful resource. The Children’s Commissioner’s Child Poverty Monitor if provided with accurate figures from Treasury will be a useful resource. So to claim that the Families Commission needs to do this report and to say it is independent but actually then have the people as Part 1 sets out on the board producing the report not be independent—it just strikes us that what the Government is doing here is acknowledging that there is not much of a place for the Families Commission anymore but there is still a little sort of tether of a coalition over in the corner between Peter Dunne and the National Government which it is going to pay a little bit of lip service to and it is doing that by allowing the Families Commission to exist in virtually name only.So it is our contention and our proposal that in spite of this little bit of reduction in size of the Families Commission let us start over. Let us subsume all of those functions into the Children’s Commissioner and give the Children’s Commissioner more independence—not just actually the advocacy role that it plays now which is gutted from this bill but the kind of independence that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has. The Children’s Commissioner has exercised to a certain degree that level of independence but there have been times when it has obviously been difficult. So we would like to see that role enhanced.Coming back to Part 1 which is the significant part of this piece of legislation—there is not much in Part 2—the first thing that it does is repeal the definition of commissioner and consolidate the function of the commissioner. It really loses the sense of the defined purpose of the commission which is unusual. Most commissions have very strongly set out mandates. After this bill is passed the Families Commission will not really seem to have that beyond publishing its annual families status report. There is an advocacy function—and I am quoting from Part 1 clause 6(4) which inserts section 8(2)—but it “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.” Well actually really the advocacy functions go almost entirely as far as we can tell from our questioning at the select committee and based on the evidence of what we have seen. So the functions are basically that it is not allowed to do anything individual it is not really allowed to push too far beyond doing its families status report conduct a bit of monitoring evaluating—