English Bill: Families Commission Bill — First Reading 
English Bill: Families Commission Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:608;Page:5614] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 Is it not interesting to hear such sincerity from a member of a party that recently—just prior to the last election—regarded any mention of the word “family” as a personal attack on the Prime Minister and responded to it viciously as I found myself? The question is whether that leopard has changed its spots and the answer is no. No one should presume that the Families Commission Bill represents anything other than a triumph for the paranoia of Steve Maharey and the Labour Party about the fact that we may end up having a debate in New Zealand about the social facts of family. 
I was looking forward to being able to support the Families Commission. When United Future said that it was seeking one in the aftermath of the election I thought that that was good. It is a strong interest of mine and I hoped that United Future would make progress on it. Much like many of the people who voted for United Future I had assumed that it would achieve a Families Commission—or some kind of representative function for families—that would mark out the territory that its voters thought it should mark out and that is to advocate for a pretty well-defined family actually. Whether United Future’s supporters are correct in their view of the family is beside the point; the fact is they expected a clear definition of a family. I ask the House this question. If during the election campaign Peter Dunne had said: “I support families—that is any group with a psychological attachment.” do members think he would have got the support he did? The answer to that is no because in that context everyone from a parliamentary caucus to a bikie gang has a psychological attachment. 
The fact is that the bill reflects Labour’s desperate and paranoid attitude that the family may actually get some definition. I say to Labour members that they need not have bothered. Why cannot families decide? Why cannot normal people who run these groups decide whether the Families Commission is advocating for them? That is the first big problem with this legislation. Now a family is a family if it fits the bureaucrats’ definition of one and their definition is of course “anyone”. This bill is a “New Zealand Population Commission Bill” because there is no one who is not included. The point of that is the commission itself will become meaningless because it is not advocating for anyone. 
In fact the people who supported Peter Dunne share my view to some extent. One of the reasons we are debating this kind of legislation is that the family and people who run families have become a minority interest group. I think that is correct. They now have become a minority interest group. We cannot assume that the people who run the country or spend public money have an interest in or an understanding of or empathy for the issues that thousands of New Zealanders raising a family in New Zealand face every day. That is why we have this bill. It is also why we have a range of lobby groups around the country such as the new Parenting Council that is being set up. 
Now that we have seen Steve Maharey put his fingerprints all over this legislation we know that the $28 million the Government has dedicated to it will be funding one great big binge in political correctness. I could stand on the sideline at any sports game this Saturday—I will not be there this Saturday but I will be there for a few more— 
Hon Roger Sowry 
: It’s like the America’s Cup. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The America’s Cup has got more—that is right—because it is much more important than this! I could stand on the sideline at any sports game and ask the parents there whether they think Steve Maharey spending $28 million on a Families Commission will make any difference to them and the answer of course will be no. 
For instance the commission will be appointed by the Minister and will have to reflect the diversity of people who have psychological attachments. Of course we will end up with a commission so diverse that it is incapable of agreeing about whether to have biscuits for morning tea let alone getting on with the difficult job of advocating the interests of families. 
What will the Government do if someone on that commission gets up and says that all the social research done about families and groups tells us that two-parent families work best and that therefore the commission should make that its top priority? That is the least contestable conclusion of social research in the last 30 years. It is the clearest conclusion of any social research done in the last 30 years. The Minister will ring the commission up— 
Hon Steve Maharey 
: Oh rubbish! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The Minister says that is rubbish. Does anyone think the Minister will let the Families Commission do that? Of course not because he would have any number of people all over him saying that no we cannot get caught in that fuddy-duddy conservative backward-looking version of families. This commission will have to advocate for everything; that is what it will have to do. It will have to advocate for diversity. It will have to advocate for everyone. Well of course at that stage it will be pointless. It will have even less point than the Ministry of Women’s Affairs which I notice the Government is itself seeking to abolish. 
I have got another message here and it is for all those fine dedicated people in our community who do work so hard to support and to advocate for families and who are quite capable of deciding for themselves whether unrelated people living in a household amount to a family. They are quite capable of sorting that out. One would think we never knew about those situations until Steve Maharey told us about them. That is how we know there is diversity. I ask who does live in the ivory tower: is it Steve Maharey or is it everybody else? Is it the front bench of the Labour Government or is it everybody else? 
I say to all those groups that this bill is a threat. This is a Government that cannot stand community groups that have a point of view it does not like. So the Minister of Education says to schools publicly that they should boycott the Life Education Trust because it is too successful. It has strong community support. Now the Government is setting out to destroy the Yellow Ribbon campaign and Project Hope. I say to the Parenting Council and to Parenting with Confidence that their biggest enemy will be the Families Commission because it has been charged to develop and implement parenting programmes. The bureaucrats are now going to develop and implement parenting programmes. 
Why not leave it to parents? Why not use a fraction of the $28 million to help fund the Parenting Council which has just been set up and was launched by that Minister just a couple of months ago? Why not use a fraction of it to put programmes of the quality of Parenting with Confidence in front of every parent in New Zealand? No. Hui seminars human rights indigenous rights diversity—dumbed-down difficult stupid political correctness—will kill this. 
I give United Future credit for trying but I give them my sympathy for having failed. I say to United Future that we are with it. We want strong advocacy for families and good use of public money to encourage and build the families of New Zealand and I hope we can work with United Future to make this legislation even vaguely workable. But I must say that it does not matter what is in here; as long as this Government is in charge this measure will certainly fail because the Government wants it to fail. It has designed it to fail. It wants to make sure it cannot actually focus on the realities of family life. This commission will be praised to the skies in the Human Rights Commission and laughed at in the families of New Zealand.