Prasad Rajen: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Prasad Rajen: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8882. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I am very interested in what the member opposite Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga has just said. The member talked about the legacy of the Minister for Social Development. It is very interesting that we had the Families Commission before the Social Services Committee yesterday and now we are talking about this legacy. Let me tell the chairman of that committee that there is daylight between how the Minister conceives this commission and how the commission presented itself yesterday. There is daylight in that—absolute daylight. Just putting a small number of very well-known researchers on to the commission will not make an efficient commission in the sense that the Minister thinks it will. 
Let us take just one of the things that this Minister is presiding over and I look forward to hearing what the explanations are. Yesterday we found out about the commission in this manifestation spending $411000 on one staff member for 17 months—$411000. 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: That sounds like the sort of thing that used to happen under the Labour Government. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Is the member supporting this? Is the Hon Mr Bridges supporting this? Because if the member is then that Government has got a lot of work to do to find out about all of the consultants who are being used. That is what this commission has been driven to: bringing people from Australia who then establish their own consultancy company and then their own consultancy company gets hired—hiring the same person back to the commission and spending $411000. That is what this Minister is presiding over at the moment. I know there have been some justifications such as “We’ve been restructuring.” and “We’ve been having a look to see.” Well why is this commission not developing the capacity within the commission? It is not. So there is daylight between what the legacy of this Minister will be and what this commission is set up to do. 
There is also daylight between how the Minister conceives of the research functions of this commission and how the commissioners described it yesterday. At the moment it seems it will end up being probably not too different from what it has been evolving to yet the Minister has couched this in terms of this radical differentiation between what the commission has been set up to do and where she wants it to go. There will not be much difference. There will still be largely—[ 
Interruption 
] Three million dollars Mr Bridges will not give you the kind of research that this Minister wants. The Minister talks about evidence-based research. There is daylight between evidence-based research—that Government is not using the evidence that is currently available. On the “boot camps” legislation the research says do not do it. The Minister did it. It is not working. Mr Bridges might like to know about this. It is the same with the welfare reforms that we debated yesterday. The English experience and evidence show that those kinds of sanctions do not work. But no the Minister wants to do it. So why is there this daylight between the Minister’s policies— 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: How much will it cost? 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: —in the area of the most vulnerable in our society and the work of the commission trying to set it up to do the evidential work that it will do? It will produce the reports and I bet you this Government will not put them into operation. That is what will happen. So now there is this daylight. What is the question the member is asking about costs? 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: How much will it cost? 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Well all that your Government is giving for this role Minister is $3 million. It cannot be done—cannot be done. 
Debate interrupted.