Moroney Sue: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16515. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):I rise to take a call on Part 2 of the Families Commission Amendment Bill named “Transitional provisions”. I guess it will be no surprise to anyone who was following this debate before the dinner break that the only transitional provision that the Labour Party thinks should be in this bill is the one that actually sees the Families Commission out of business. We do want to not have the Families Commission. We do not think it is doing the job that it was set up to do. We think it has become very politicised. We think that it has not done the job that families would expect it to do—advocating for their interests and doing that independent of Government. So actually it is part of Labour’s policy to replace the Families Commission with a Ministry for Children and a Minister for Children.I think that is the correct thing to do because one of the things that the transitional provisions do here is take the Families Commission from being the way it was set up under Labour which was as an advocacy body to represent the interests of families and transitions it to this new beast created by the National Government which is diminishing its advocacy role. National is now doing it formally. We think it has happened informally under this Government anyway but now quite formally it is diminishing the commission’s advocacy role and giving it some research responsibilities that we believe properly belong in a very very well resourced department like the Ministry of Social Development. That is the organisation that has the capability and the capacity and should have the responsibility to be providing the sort of research that is now surreptitiously being created as a research unit by this Families Commission Amendment Bill. The only fit and proper transitional provisions that we would be able to support as a party would be the one that sees the Families Commission fold in favour of a children’s ministry because that is where some decent work would in fact be done that would be advocating for the interests of families.As I said in my speech on Part 1 of this bill the reality is that even before we were debating this amendment bill this commission had been hamstrung. It had been politically hamstrung from advocating for families properly and so therefore what is the point? What is the point of having a Families Commissioner—who will under Part 12 cease to be called the Chief Families Commissioner and will be renamed the Families Commissioner to hold the office of chairperson—in that office if they cannot even back up a report done by their own commission supporting the extension of paid parental leave? What is the actual point of fiddling around and changing the title of this person when really their whole purpose has become defunct under the current Government’s regime in the way that it has treated this commission and has disabled it from doing its core function?I also want to point out in debating Part 2 that the National Party has taken the title of Families Commission far too literally. If it is going to have some transitional provisions then maybe what it should be considering is ensuring that it is not the families of National Party MPs—and National Party Cabinet Ministers in particular—who are appointed to this commission and who get to carry the title of currently Chief Families Commissioner but to be renamed the Families Commissioner. The Deputy Chief Families Commissioner is to cease to be called that and instead is going to be called a commissioner. The commissioners cease to be called commissioners but get to be called members of the commission. This is revolutionary stuff quite clearly. I cannot understand what the revolution is that is taking place here but it has seen fit to take up parliamentary time with the National Party changing these titles as it transitions the Families Commission from even pretending to have an advocacy role for families and asks that commission to take on with very small resources the sort of research capability and capacity that really should sit with the Ministry of Social Development.Just as we did with Part 1 we will be opposing these transitional provisions because they do not transition this commission to anything useful on behalf of New Zealand families. To continue to use the title of Families Commissioner we believe is a complete misnomer when that is not in fact what they are able to do.