Upston Louise; Tolley AnneSOCIAL WORKERS REGISTRATION LEGISLATION BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Social Workers Registration Act 2003Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I hesitated just for a moment because I was hoping that the Minister in the chair Carmel Sepuloni would take the first call to explain in detail the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that she has delivered to this House SOP 187. It's a fairly significant SOP and so I know that this side of the House has a lot of questions about it. As I said I was hesitating because I hoped the Minister might've you know kind of taken the charge to take us through it in detail.So I'll start from where we are. For those that've just tuned in this is the committee of the whole House stage of the Social Workers Registration Legislation Bill. I want to make sure it's very clear from the outset of my comments: this was a piece of legislation that was introduced when National was in Government by the Hon Anne Tolley. She did a wonderful job in introducing the legislation to the House so I want to start by putting my acknowledgments in front of the House.I also want to note at this point that in the first reading in August 2017 it was a piece of legislation that was unanimously supported by the House and that's not a particularly common occurrence in this House which hopefully provides a bit of a context for some of the discussions and some of the questions that will follow for myself and also my colleagues.In terms of the select committee process one of the things that I think is important to note is that the departmental report was produced by officials and there weren't actually many recommendations for change based on the many wide and various submissions that were made. I want to particularly thank the submitters who as all submitters do put a lot of effort in to the comments they made to the select committee. They do that because they anticipate that those views will be taken into consideration seriously by the select committee to ensure that we have a better piece of legislation and fundamentally that is the process of the select committee. So in this Part 1 debate I think it's important just to kind of set a bit of a background of understanding so that those who are listening or watching this debate understand what's occurred.So the departmental report has some changes but actually not anything too significant. One of the challenges was that there were a large number of issues that were raised by submitters because their commitment was to ensure this was the best possible piece of legislation. Members all around the table—and I want to actually also put on record that the Social Services and Community Committee has a very constructive way of working together and my belief was that it was also incredibly constructive on this particular piece of legislation.There was only one issue but it's a fairly significant issue and that was that there was a very short report back required for this piece of legislation. Again you know to be fair some of that was around process of elections after the first reading change of Government and I accept that. So submissions were called for in December and submitters had to provide their submissions by 31 January. The challenge is and was that the report back was in April and that made the ability of the select committee to give its due work and scrutiny on this legislation with the intention given that everybody supported it in the first reading to really listen to those that were using and served by this legislation to ensure that it was the best piece of legislation possible.The Minister had indicated last night that there would be good opportunity in the committee stage. She expected full and detailed questions particularly around an SOP because the SOP and the changes there didn't have the scrutiny of the select committee. So that's why colleagues on this side of the Chamber will have a number of questions around that and we want to ensure that this SOP is given due regard.There were a number of submitters who raised significant concerns about the workability of the bill. So this debate is not about what the bill will do; it's about how it will occur. So yes we all want mandatory registration for social workers. Yes we want to ensure that the standards and professionalism of this sector is lifted. Yes we want to ensure that anyone who works with a social worker is working with someone that has been police-vetted and is registered and that they can be assured of their quality. But where a lot of the discussion occurred in the select committee and the concerns that were raised by multiple submitters—and I know some of my colleagues are going to use examples and consider individual submitters' concerns that were raised. What was really unfortunate was that although the select committee was well aware of the concerns the officials didn't recommend significant changes and they didn't recommend changes to the scope of practice which was an area that many submitters thought should be included in the legislation.So the National Party members on the committee in terms of the minority view—which I thought I would just make sure is on record—were concerned that given the restricted timeframe the committee was unable to address fully submitters' concerns and had an extension of time been granted we would have been able to fully consider submitters' issues." So that's the context for this debate: a shortened report back a request to extend it and a request that was denied by Labour members. And so we weren't able to fully and thoroughly tease out the issues that were raised and so none of that was included in the select committee's work.At the end of the day that is the job of a member of Parliament and I have had some feedback from someone today asking why National was being negative. Well—newsflash—the job of the Opposition is to hold the Government to account and to provide scrutiny of legislation and when scrutiny of legislation and SOPs of this particular size—how many pages are we up to; 67 pages and it's not the first time it's happened—then absolutely we must give it our thorough and diligent work. If we can't do it in the select committee and we're forced by the Government to do it on the floor of the House in the committee of the whole House then that's absolutely what we will do.One of the issues and this is just around Part 1 and I'll come to it in the next debate which will be a separate debate that will be on Part 1A—that's a completely new part; so the focus of this is really just Part 1 and this Part 1 goes into the purpose and the interpretation of the Act which as I said nobody disagrees with why this piece of legislation is important or that it must be passed. But there are some challenges around the process that's been undertaken so far and the ability to incorporate some of the changes that submitters had said would improve the legislation. So you know our commitment in this committee of the whole House is to ensure that we do end up with a bill that we believe will deliver to the concerns of those submitters. So in terms of asking questions about the changes in for example section 4 in clause 5 in Part 1 in the interpretation section around "scope of practice" and again in new clause 5A there's further definitional issues there regarding the recognition of the New Zealand qualification.So one of the primary questions that I do want the Minister for Social Development to answer is: given the officials and the departmental report did not recommend any changes and any incorporation of the scope of practice what changed?CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Just before I call the next speaker can I just say to the member who's resumed her seat that there is not a separate Part 1A. Supplementary Order Paper 187 inserts a new Part 1A into Part 1 so we have the debate on Part 1 the debate on Part 2 the debate on the Schedules and then the debate on clauses 1 and 2. So Part 1A is not a separate part."