Beaumont Carol: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16510. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):I want to join my colleagues in explaining why Labour opposes the Families Commission Amendment Bill. Can I also start by acknowledging the contribution that Dr Rajen Prasad played as a Families Commissioner at a time when the Families Commission was actually playing an important and useful role. We did support this bill through to the Social Services Committee because we wanted to look at it closely—we did not want to make any rash decisions on it—but having done that we do oppose this bill for a number of reasons. Essentially we are concerned that as proposed in this bill the advocacy function of the Families Commission will be significantly limited. We believe there is a need for strong independent advice. The Minister in the chair Associate Minister for Social Development Borrows mentioned that he thought our position was somewhat inconsistent because we were saying we would get rid of the Families Commission and set up a Ministry for Children with a senior Minister. But in fact we are also saying that we would seek and continue with the idea of an independent Children’s Commissioner. So we do see that the independent advocacy role is very fundamental.Indeed what could be more important than our families and our children and having people willing to speak up on some of those issues? My colleague Poto Williams has spoken about the area of domestic violence as being one of those critical issues. There are a number and I want to come back later in my contribution to talk about paid parental leave as being one of them.We are concerned that this bill limits the advocacy function of the commission. We are also concerned that with the establishment of the social policy evaluation and research unit within the Families Commission which is proposed in this bill that unit will be very closely linked to what the Government is doing and will further eliminate the independence of the commission to undertake research in areas that it might consider necessary for children—like poverty like financial literacy like family violence and like paid parental leave.Also this bill significantly alters the governance arrangements of the commission and we think that it actually ends up creating a confused governance structure where the power will effectively lie with the chief executive and make the Families Commissioner role fairly redundant. So we are worried about who will actually determine and set the work programme of the commission and that is important. I think for many of us the concern has been highlighted by the way that the commission has abandoned its role as an independent commission recently and agreed for example—as my colleague Sue Moroney talked about—with the Government on paid parental leave solely based on what the Government said it could afford or not rather than on any evidence-based policy assessment of the importance of that policy. I do not think it is possible to talk about paid parental leave without looking at the many dimensions of how that will support our families and why it is such a significant initiative. I am pretty astounded that members opposite will be voting down Sue Moroney’s bill—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!CAROL BEAUMONT: —to extend paid parental leave. Paid parental leave Mr Chair is something that you would expect a Families Commission to be promoting. My concern is it has already evidenced by its actions in lining up behind the Government on this issue a lack of independence and this bill in our opinion will further reduce the independence of the Families Commission to be able to do things like advocate for paid parental leave. Why is paid parental leave important to families? Obviously it is important from the point of view of ensuring that households retain some income at a time when families are under financial pressure—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! This bill is not about paid parental leave. You can talk about that and mention it. This is about restructuring the commission. Although you can mention paid parental leave—that is fine—you cannot get into the substantive matter of the values or otherwise of paid parental leave. You can mention it as you have done but you cannot get into the detail of it.CAROL BEAUMONT: What I am trying to illustrate though is the importance of having a Families Commission that has an independent advocacy role in relation to an issue like paid parental leave. And if you are going to have an independent advocacy role which we believe is compromised by the structures that are being put in place here with a change in the advocacy function actually limited by this bill—