Martin TraceyHon TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Families Commission Act Repeal Bill. I acknowledge the Hon Alfred Ngaro who has just resumed his seat. He is right. This is another piece of work another loose end after nine long years that this Government is having to tidy up for the previous administration. So I acknowledge that.I'm very pleased also that the honourable member acknowledged where the Families Commission Act 2003 actually came from. It was with a support agreement between the United Future party led by Peter Dunne and the Labour Party. I don't know how many people remember how controversial this piece of legislation was when it first came in. Something unusual happened and what it was was that the opposition to this piece of legislation had the majority on the select committee that it went through. I believe it was Georgina Beyer who was actually the chair of the select committee at the time that the original Families Commission Act 2003 went through. The supporting administration didn't have enough votes inside the select committee to actually make any amendments or to provide any report back like a minority report or whatever on this piece of legislation.It was very controversial at the time and the Hon Peter Dunne did a large number of press releases and a large number of media interactions about how awful he felt that was. However in the House the bill went through. I think it cost about $28 million to set up; so it cost $28 million to set up back in 2003. I guess we could say—I think we should say—that actually the Hon Peter Dunne was visionary with regard to the creation of the commission in the first instance and what its purpose was which was to provide research for policy development and policy direction. Many have taken hold of that vision I suppose and used it in ways that they believe suits their purpose.We've had others today talk about the fact that the words social investment" and so on and so forth are mentioned throughout the documentation that will repeal and therefore remove this entity. But I think it's very interesting and I want to pick up on the contribution by the Hon Peeni Henare because New Zealand First doesn't use those words. We don't use the words "social investment" actually and I think what this Government—in one of the areas that I'm responsible for we actually talk about well-being. We talk about the well-being model that's being developed and the hope from my office anyway is that the well-being model will do what the Families Commission Act hoped would be done and that is that we would be able to know what were the key things that identified well-being for our people; not what the risk was but what were the key things that would identify well-being.Once we have identified well-being that is the line in the sand that we hope that none of our citizens will fall below. So unlike some of my colleagues I don't use the phrase "social investment". I am more focused on actually the well-being of our citizens rather than treating them as some commodity that we're either going to put dollars into or dollars not into. I think that is going to be one of the markers of what will be a test with this piece of legislation.The reality is the disestablishment of the commission has gone so far that it would be inappropriate to turn it back. The previous Government had taken it so far forward that to turn it back would actually have incurred much higher costs. They had already redistributed those moneys and those responsibilities.I think it is interesting that Alfred Ngaro mentioned the Dunedin study the Growing Up in New Zealand study. I think it's interesting that he mentioned it because it's actually that party that tried to shrink it—actually went to take away funding from it so that it went down from the number of young people that we were going to follow and continue to study in New Zealand. But there was conversation by one of their Ministers in the previous Parliament that they were going to shrink those numbers; they would not fund it to that level. So I do think it's interesting that that was raised by one of the speakers there.I think what's going to be interesting as we go forward is to see where these responsibilities have been shifted to. For example the Family Violence Clearinghouse contract has now gone to the Ministry of Justice. The Family Violence Clearinghouse produces some incredible pieces of work. They're confronting they identify areas of—I'm going to say "challenge" which really minimises what they actually identify but they identify areas of challenge for New Zealanders for our citizens that many a Government has not gone far enough to address. We've either ignored it because it's uncomfortable and we don't want to believe it about ourselves or for whatever other reason somebody decided that that investment wasn't worth it. So I would be interested to see that the quality of reporting that has come out of the Family Violence Clearinghouse continues even though it has been shifted into the Ministry of Justice. As I mentioned the Growing Up in New Zealand study the ministerial social sector research fund questions—they've gone to the Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Internal Affairs has picked up the qualifying social enterprise.The online hub—I would suggest that as many New Zealanders as possible before this bill goes all its way through and that website disappears please go and have a look at the research that the social policy evaluation and research unit did and put online. It has impacted positively in so many ways so we certainly don't want to take it away but I think it's going to be important to see whether that quality of research that quality of policy advice is going to continue once we have now moved all these functions to somewhere else.So in closing this is another situation of the current Government just tidying up some of the loose ends left behind by the previous administration who appeared to be so busy—we're not sure doing what in nine years—that they couldn't complete a few things. So this Government will pick it up and New Zealand First will support with our Government members this piece of legislation through. We want to honour the Hon Peter Dunne and United Future which way back in 2003 had the vision to start us on a pathway that some wish to now refer to as the social investment model but many of us now talk about the well-being that we will place for our people. Kia ora."