Ardern Jacinda: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Families Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16516. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):It is my pleasure to give a contribution to the debate around the title and commencement clauses of the Families Commission Amendment Bill. I think that gives us an opportunity to get back to the core of the bill. If this was a well-functioning bill if the Families Commission was structured in a way to deliver what its title implies which is advocacy for families what would the bill in itself need to have entailed? I touched briefly in Part 1 on the debate around the advocacy function. Having a Families Commission because all commissions through implication by the fact that they are a commission implies that it does have a strong advocacy function. We can think of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment which is probably one of the strongest advocacy functions and that is probably determined by the separation that it has from the Government in its advocacy role. Think of the Children’s Commissioner—again a very strong advocacy function. So the use of the word “commission” in the title implies that you would expect the same.My concern though with the advocacy function of this bill is that it is quite narrowly defined in Part 1 thereby challenging whether it should be a bill that refers to a commission. The advocacy function is defined in new subsection (3) of section 8 inserted in clause 6(4): “In performing its advocacy function the Commission must identify and have regard to factors that help to maintain or enhance either or both of the following: (a) families’ resilience: (b) families’ strengths.” It is quite tightly defined but even under those headings you would think we would have a Families Commission that would be willing to talk about a family’s resilience being affected by for instance the high cost of living. We know for instance that research tells us that you are likely to see considerable dysfunction in families where financial stresses start to compound. So we know that there is a correlation between things like the cost of living and how functional our families are. Those economic stresses are really important.Why have we not heard the Families Commission talk about that in recent times? Resilience—why have we not heard the Families Commission talk about the strain on families in Christchurch? We have heard children’s advocates talk about those issues but we have not heard the Families Commission. So it seems to me that if you were defining families’ resilience and strengths there are plenty of advocacy roles that the Families Commission should be playing currently that we are not seeing. That is what you would expect from something that holds the title of “commission” because that is the kind of advocacy role that we are used to seeing.So if we are not calling it the Families Commission Amendment Bill what would we call it? Is it the “No Family Advocacy Bill” the “Token Gesture to United Future Bill” the “In Name Only; After the Election We’ll Get Rid of it Bill”? There is a whole list of things but the title Families Commission Amendment Bill is I think an unfair representation that probably sullies the name of other commissions that are already in operation and that do very very good work. So I do not think the title Families Commission Amendment Bill is quite right.Think about though for instance what differentiates a household with a couple of adults living in it from a family. Actually one of the defining features although New Zealand families classify themselves in a diverse range of ways and that is to be celebrated is often the presence of children. That is one of the often-used defining features of a family—the presence of children young people or infants in that environment. You can have all sorts of make-up around their caregivers but often the consistent thing is the presence of those children. So you would naturally expect a Families Commission to be quite focused on those younger vulnerable people in that arrangement.Why then do we need a Families Commission and not just a Children’s Commissioner? What is it that it represents that is different to the Children’s Commissioner? I do not believe that that has been adequately answered by the Government or even by this bill. What is it that the Families Commission adds on top of what the Children’s Commissioner adds? A Children’s Commissioner who advocates well for children also advocates well for families. If you look after the youngest and most vulnerable in our society you do not actually end up looking after just the family; you look after the society as a whole. This bill seems to ignore the important role of those children and the fact that—