Lee Melissa: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLee Melissa: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11495. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MELISSA LEE (National):Tēnā koe e te Matua Kaikaranga. Huri noa i te Whare i runga i te reo karanga o Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. Tēnā hoki tātou katoa. It says: “Greetings Mr Speaker and my colleagues in the House. I acknowledge you in Te Reo in celebration of Māori Language Week. Greetings one and all.”It is a great pleasure to rise to speak on the second reading of the Families Commission Amendment Bill. The well-being of families is crucial to our society. The family passes on culture and we all come from very different cultures. In New Zealand we have more than 200 ethnicities with the values that those different ethnicities bring and the knowledge that the family is at the very heart of our community. We are going to make a difference for the families in New Zealand that are struggling. We need to be able to invest in interventions that we know will actually work.The Families Commission Amendment Bill is about streamlining the Families Commission’s core activities through a learned and more focused structure. It will remain an autonomous Crown entity but it will be more streamlined with a single Families Commissioner which is down from the original seven. This will put the commissioner on the same footing as most other Crown entities and the structure will be more focused. The board will be made up of members from the public sector and academic and philanthropic representatives and there will be scope for the appointment of a member other than the Families Commissioner to be the chair of the board.These are significant changes for the Families Commission in terms of its structural arrangements work programmes capability requirements and size. Functions will be introduced such as independent monitoring and evaluation to drive quality services for families. So I am a little bit confused as to why Denise Roche actually said what shesaid just before saying that she feels that the independence will be taken away in terms of research. The new functions will definitely provide for more independent monitoring and evaluation of the functioning of the Families Commission.A social science experts panel will be created. This panel will complement the work of the commission’s board. It will provide guidance and academic peer review of research done by the commission which to me says that it is definitely independent. The commission will prepare and publish an annual families status report which will measure how New Zealand’s families are getting on. I think that it is very very important at any point in time that we look at the way our families function. Over the years the functions of families have sort of changed because we have come from very extended families to more nuclear families—we have fewer children and fewer people living in one household—and the way we operate has also actually changed. But the fact is the core value system of families has not really changed and the ways we nurture our children have not really changed.The Families Commission currently receives $8 million in funding each year which equates to $32 million over 4 years. We are prioritising $4 million over 4 years into parenting programmes. We have identified in different bills that have actually gone through this House that we have a major issue with parenting. We need to teach our young people how to parent. For some reason they do not seem to be getting that kind of nurturing to find out how to best become parents. When I became a parent I guess I did not really know what a good mother or a good father should be. I guess the only role models we have are our own parents and we do not really get that kind of education at school. I think learning how to look after our children is actually a good thing.Relationship education and youth mental health initiatives are also very important and $14 million over 4 years will be reprioritised into the Social Policy Evaluation and Research Unit because if we want to make a difference to families we have to make informed decisions about programmes that will actually work for our families.The Social Services Committee considered 11 submissions on the Families Commission Amendment Bill and many including the Salvation Army the National Council of Women and the IHC supported the changed services. This is a great bill. I commend it to the House.