Upston LouiseClauses 1 and 2Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Sorry I'm just getting to the place of this debate. So in terms of the issues that we have addressed in the committee today I want to just reiterate for those who have just joined this debate that this is not a debate on policy in terms of mandatory registration of social workers because we do agree with that on this side of the House. In fact this side of the House introduced the legislation. So in terms of the title of this there will be no debate—well not from me anyway. There might be debate from my colleagues so I don't want to speak for them. But where I think the real issue is in this particular debate on clauses 1 and 2 is around the commencement. The Minister has said that you know this legislation has—the House has waited for a long time given that it's been 16 years and I flatly refute that. In terms of the commencement of this legislation it will come into effect within particular time frames that are clearly laid out in clause 2 on page 8 of what is now the Supplementary Order Paper. One of the clear challenges around the commencement though is the Social Workers Registration Board and their ability to manage what could be potentially a large volume of work that is now coming their way as a result of not just the changes to the bill that National agrees with but also the Supplementary Order Paper that was tabled or dropped on the House with very little warning. So I wanted to just go through the implications of the commencement date because the Social Services and Community Committee actually heard from the Social Workers Registration Board last week in their annual financial review. It's a very small organisation—they do a mighty job—and although they have been planning for changes to their legislation and being prepared for the commencement of the legislation what they obviously haven't been able to do is prepare for the changes based on Supplementary Order Paper 187. As this side of the House has highlighted there may well be agreement around the inclusion and the significant change of the scope of practice but how easy will that be for the Social Workers Registration Board to implement—and the impact therefore on the commencement dates? All of the sections are listed in there and I wondered if the Minister had actually considered a change to the implementation of this legislation to enable to Social Workers Registration Board to adequately gear up for what is a significant change based on issues like the—I've just lost the word. Instead of it being the qualifications that were the New Zealand qualifications—the change in that area the change in terms of the scope of practice and whether there's multiple or one and the impact on the social worker needing to appear before the Social Workers Registration Board on multiple occasions. If they've changed job a different scope of practice applies and therefore they need to appear back before the Social Workers Registration Board—issues that were asked of the Social Workers Registration Board last week around funding and timing of any funding whether they would be requesting Crown funding. So my question to the Minister in terms of the commencement is: in any of those areas was there a discussion with the Social Workers Registration Board to for example wait until after the Budget this year to see if they had secured additional funding for resources? They will be required to grow their organisation to deliver this legislation particularly in the time frames that are stated and so I'm interested to know whether or not the Minister had looked at any one of the clauses—I could list them: clauses 4 5A 6B 7 8 9 etc.—and whether there was a consideration for any one of those that had a wider impact.We've seen in this House still quite a large area of uncertainty from those members of the sector that have contacted Opposition members and asked for clarity so the timing of the commencement of this legislation and each individual section—was it considered—[Time expired]