Williams Poto: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16811. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):The Labour Party opposes this bill the Families Commission Amendment Bill. We did support the bill going to the Social Services Committee because we wanted to have a closer look at the implications of it. What does this bill do? Well one of the things it does is it changes the governance structure of the commission and it devolves the commissioners and therefore it can determine a lot more of its own course and functions. So it really could be seen as a quasi - Government department rather than an independent autonomous Crown entity that makes useful recommendations on what the issues are that families face and what the Government social service providers and the community can do to better support our families. By developing this governance structure we lose the independent advisory nature of the current commission’s set-up and that makes no sense to me at all. So you lose the advocacy ability of the commission the ability to advocate on the best way forward for New Zealand families because some of the recommendations will likely be at odds with Government policy. Is that not a useful grown-up and good thing to have—an independent commission that can advise you when your policies are not meeting the needs of New Zealand families and potentially doing them harm?This bill also by its very nature does away with the valuable programmes that have been developed in conjunction with the community such as the White Ribbon campaign. I have heard a member from the other side of the House say during a previous reading of this bill that the White Ribbon campaign has a life of its own and that it would survive without the injection of support and funding from the commission. Yes that is true. It has become an event or a series of events that is hugely successful and has gained a lot of traction. But why stop now when more and more men are coming on board with pledges becoming ambassadors wearing the ribbon and having healthy and safe conversations about family violence? Why would you stop? Does it not make more sense to continue with the momentum that is building? I think so anyway.What else does this bill do? It establishes a social policy evaluation and research unit within the commission to provide independent monitoring and evaluation of programmes being delivered in the community and also to provide research into key issues programmes and interventions. That is great—I hear lots of people say—but I just want to quote from something that the Hon Anne Tolley said in the House a little earlier. She said: “The intention of the unit is to improve decision making across the sector and to thereby help families improve their lives. The evaluation would go across the wider social sector.” So is the intention to provide genuine unbiased evaluative advice and feedback to the community groups working with those families or as I suspect it might be to act as an audit function into the sector? What if your group or your provision does not make the grade? What then? Do you potentially lose your ability to serve your community? Does the ministry then decide to pull your funding?Or have I got that completely wrong and will the research concentrate on developing best-practice models for the sector? That would be great too. The best-practice models and ideas for developing the workforce had better come fairly cheap because I can assure you that the Government is unlikely to fund best practice even if its own research unit recommends it. It is unlikely to spend money on developing the workforce either. Why do I say this? Because of the funding cuts that have already been made to the Families Commission and to programmes.Why will we not support this bill? We do not support this bill because we feel the changes being promoted will diminish the useful work that the commission has had a long history in providing. We would do away with the commission altogether and focus on funding the Children’s Commissioner. We would do that because we know that there is one glaring omission on this Government’s watch and it has been the development of measurements and targets to reduce child poverty. Backed by legislation we would require regular reporting on progress at every Budget because it is important and useful and should be done as an absolute priority. But we all know that this Government is not good at numbers—missing 20000 kids off the poverty list. Healthy kids grow up to be healthy adults; hungry children living in damp homes with poor nutrition grow up to be unhealthy adults. I am afraid that the health and social impacts are cumulative and progressively detrimental. Thank you.