Prasad Rajen: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16504. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour):I rise to take a call on Part 1 of the Families Commission Amendment Bill. I do so with a lot of sadness because of my historical links to the Families Commission as its inaugural chief commissioner. I want to talk about some of the clauses in quite some detail but first I do want to thank my colleagues for the quality of some of the work the commission did when I was there—in fact two pieces of work in particular: the paid parental leave work and the work on elder abuse. Both were seminal pieces of work.As far as the paid parental leave work was concerned I believe it was the best work that the commission did—reviewing the literature looking at the international work on it developing a 13-month plan and a 7-year transition programme economic modelling and for each of the financial years calculating the amount it would take. That was all in that particular report. There was some sadness when the last chief commissioner then resiled from the view of the commission—actually resiled from it. To argue now about the commission in the way that we are from this side of the Chamber is a matter of some sadness to me.The changes in Part 1 of this bill really are very cynical and I want to expose that in the calls I want to take on this particular bill. I want to talk first about clause 5 “Section 7 replaced”. This clause transfers the monitoring and the evaluation functions for social sector programmes to the Families Commission. Here are the monitoring and evaluation functions which are really mainline State organisation functions taken up by organisations via contracts. But here they are being transferred to a second-tier independent commission. To do it in that particular way is really quite cynical.Much of the approach taken here is well known. The strategy is well known. It is an old strategy—tie down an organisation by prescribing it so much work that is not really germane to its goal that it is unable to fulfil the very purpose for which our Crown entities of this type were established. Can you imagine if we did that to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner? It would disable it from actually carrying out its functions. But the changes here in paragraph (b) of the replaced section 7 will actually tie down the commission into simply being a monitoring and evaluation commission because it is being given the role that ought to belong to those agencies that let the contracts and understand why they let them out and so on. That is what they are there for.The decisions are dripping with cynicism. The National Party really never supported the Families Commission when it was first established. It never did. It did not support it in the early stages when we were setting it up. If National had its own way it would close the commission down tomorrow but it has a coalition partner who is an advocate for this commission. I do not think the Hon Peter Dunne has fully realised how these changes actually denude this commission from doing the very work that he advocated for in conjunction with Helen Clark who when she was Prime Minister developed this particular commission and gave it the resources and responsibility over time to develop that particular role. This is completely at odds with the role of a commission of this type. Here this Minister and this Government are through the back door denuding this commission.I am going to look now at clause 6. The Minister for Social Development knows and the sectors outside know that the major strength of the Families Commission is its ability to advocate for the interests of all New Zealand families and to do that based on its consultation with New Zealand families of every type based on its examination of the research that is available and based on its examination of current programmes and their effectiveness and what advice it might give and what position it might take. That advocacy function was its particular strength.In clause 6 there is an advocacy function but it is confounded and denuded of its real power by loading on to the commission in subclause (3) a requirement to produce an annual family status report. This idea is something that comes out of mid air because one of the seminal pieces of work and one of the repeated pieces of work that the Ministry for Social Development does is produce the Social Report. The Social Report has been produced over a period of time based on a lot of data and with a lot of sub-categories to it. It is a wonderful piece of work—a world leader. Anybody reading it can understand how powerful this work is. That either has stopped being published or is published very very rarely now. In its place is this particular social report—and here is the first one from the Families Commission.So here is the Families Commission redoing the work. I have read this. Much of what this first report does is basically this. It tells us how to define family it tells us about the importance of families and things like that and it gives us the demographic data. That information was put together in an expensive and major founding document for the Families Commission—all that data currently exists. So here we are; we are doing it again. It is cynical because this is not going to add anything to the life of any New Zealand family or children at all. But here we are—clause 6 does that.So here we have two clauses that really say to me that the changes proposed are cynical. These provisions are trying to do something to the Families Commission that is unnecessary and they have now risked the Families Commission even existing in such a way. I will come back and speak to the other clauses because they also add to this cynical approach of trying to destroy a commission that was never supported. The Minister is not able really to tell us why these changes are important. We have gone through the select committee process—the bill was referred to the Social Services Committee—and we have tried to find the kinds of reasons behind these changes. In fact there was not much there.The argument for these changes is not compelling. There are huge resources bound up in the Ministry of Social Development and to take the social sector evaluation responsibility and base $3.5 million or so on it and say the Families Commission will now do that and the State sector will evaluate only the programmes it lets out—what is that about? This is not setting up an independent commission of a Crown entity type. We have developed a system of three types of Crown entities. This is the middle type not like the Children’s Commissioner. It is at arm’s length from Government but it is independent. It is able to do its own thinking.By circumscribing the commission’s role in this particular way—and other clauses will show this as well—the Government actually says to me that it has no appreciation for this commission has never really supported it and does not show any real understanding of the work of the commission. Now it is really politicising it beyond belief. We will talk about that as well because the politicisation of this commission is also painful to watch. There is no need for that. It should have been a commission that would serve Governments forever in New Zealand and serve New Zealand families forever in New Zealand but for short-term gain this Minister has reduced the effectiveness of this commission by loading these kinds of responsibilities and others in this particular bill on to it and destroying its ability to do that.I cannot see how the Hon Peter Dunne can actually support this bill because it is the death knell of this commission. We are now compelled to ask whether this is the best way of doing this. Ought we not to have a ministry for children and really make it function like that? Ought we not to strengthen the Children’s Commissioner—would that not be a better way? That is where the energies of this side of the House will go so we can produce good evidence to inform good policy as we move forward. Now I want to move to talking about clause 7. Here also there is more—