Sepuloni Carmel; Prime Willow-Jean; Chhour KarenHon CARMEL SEPULONI (Deputy Leader—Labour): My questions are in relation to the role that the Minister played with determining what would be cut in terms of funding and for what and what wouldn't and referring back to the actual hearing the Minister when questioned said that she had no role to play in making those determinations because they were operational decisions. At that point I said that as a Minister and having been in this position I would have been given advice on what the options were for cuts and at that point the Minister said that yes there was some direction and that she felt that the cuts were being made to back-office programmes. However generally a Minister will be given at least categories in relation to what would be cut. Now what we saw was that Family Start Nelson; the Porirua Whānau Centre Northcote Women's Centre—there have been counselling services there have been prevention services there's been 24-hour parenting care that's been cut across the country. I want to know from the Minister whether or not these names of organisations or the contracts for which they were contracted to provide services for were ever put in front of her and whether she was given options in terms of choosing who would and would not continue to be funded because there are huge implications for the young people that no longer have access to the services and for those communities some of which have lost access to all of what was available with things like counselling services. Also in the same vein we asked the Minister and the CEO when we could expect to be informed of the contracting arrangements—which social services would continue to get full funding which social services would lose funding and whether or not there would be social services that got additional funding—and we were told that that information would be released publicly once those decisions and determinations were made. Now the expectation was that that would have been on 1 July. However we are now nearly in September and we have not seen a full list of organisations that are continuing to be funded by Oranga Tamariki and the Government or that have lost full funding or partial funding and we have not seen the list of organisations that may have got additional funding because the Minister has tried to say in this House that that funding wouldn't go back to the core but would be shifted to other services. So when will we get that full list from the Minister that rightfully should have been released on 1 July for public transparency's sake and also for the sector to understand what has occurred here and yet we still haven't received it. Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair. I do just want to say that the Minister did not answer my question about what percentage of the back office was cut in the restructuring. I would like to know what that number is because at the Estimates hearing she said that it was 9 percent but I believe the number is different. So if I could please have clarification around what percentage of the back office has been cut as a result of the restructure. When we look at the Minister's comments in the select committee she said that There will be no financial impact and there'd been no impact on the frontline services. This is a guarantee." yet I have just heard that social workers are now having to do things like drive children across country which is taking them away from their social work responsibilities. Is this not an impact on the front line? To add to my colleague's questions and contribution in the Estimates—I have the transcript here—the CEO said that "We're happy to provide that with accuracy at the end of the completion of our contracting round. … At the end of that process it will be very clear what services we will continue what services will be enhanced what services will be varied and what services will be discontinued." I echo the question: when will we receive that information because the select committee has not received that in post-hearing questions. I have asked written questions and have been told that it's not in the public interest for that amount of information to be prepared and to be released yet we were promised that we would receive that information. We need to see that so we can identify what services have been cut what services have been reduced and where the reinvestment has in fact gone so that we can provide the scrutiny that our select committee is supposed to provide for these Estimates hearings. Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children): Thank you Mr Chair. Just in regard to the 9 percent reduction in staff members that's the information I have. The final decisions and outcomes for the organisational restructure were that 594 roles were disestablished 175 new roles were established—an overall reduction of 419 roles all together—and 1900 total number of roles in scope of restructuring out of 5100 staff or 37 percent. Front-line staff were not in scope for these changes and the reason that this information has not been finalised or publicised yet is that the exact number is still not yet available. We're still working through the redeployment process as some staff have been offered the opportunity if they have a qualification in the social worker space to move into that front-line space. Those conversations are still happening so the exact number is not known yet."