Ardern Jacinda: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Families Commission Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16811. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):It is my pleasure to speak to more of the substance of the Families Commission Amendment Bill than Phil Heatley the last speaker referred to. Our concern with this bill has been that for some time there has been an erosion of the Families Commission. It has moved away from its original purpose and it is no longer advocating for the best interests of families in New Zealand and we believe that that is being furthered today through this legislation. Not only do we have organisational change—so fewer commissioners; some consolidation of the way that the structure works—it also feels to us that there is a narrowing of the advocacy role of the Families Commission as if it could have been narrowed any further.The best example I can think of is that recently the Families Commission chose not to put down an advocacy position around the extension of paid parental leave despite research and evidence from the World Health Organization advocating an extension and despite the Families Commission itself in the past having done research and advocating an extension. Therefore the only thing you could point to was that there was some kind of politicisation—that because the Government did not wish to extend paid parental leave to the extent that the Labour Party was promoting through Sue Moroney’s bill it was a face-saving mechanism not to have a commission like the Families Commission come out and agree with that. That is the only interpretation one can take given that there was such a turn-round in its position.So it has become our view that given all of that the Families Commission should be abolished entirely and that we should instead start investing greater effort in the Office of the Children’s Commissioner particularly given that it has demonstrated a greater advocacy role and has taken up of its own volition—which it should as an independent entity—what we think are the true issues facing children. In fact we would like to give it greater independence in the same way that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is independent for instance.The New Zealand First member Barbara Stewart rightly I think pointed out that we do now have a wealth of information out there about the kinds of things that we need to be doing on behalf of children and their families. We have had the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty we have had the Māori Affairs Committee and we had the Health Committee produce a very very good report on the importance of the first 1000 days and what should be done to improve the lot of children there. So we have a range of evidence and yet interestingly the Families Commission—which presumably would have been involved you would have thought or at least advocating on or realising some of the issues that have been raised in these areas—had very little to say on it. In fact when you ask it via a select committee about its main focus in the future it talks about things like adolescence and alcoholism. Yes alcoholism is very very important but there is a range of other issues that feel very very untouched on by the Families Commission.So that is what we would do differently. Not only would we reallocate that investment to the Children’s Commissioner; we would also establish a children’s Minister. We would establish child impact assessments so that every piece of legislation coming through Parliament that would have an effect in some way on children would have an impact assessment included. So for instance any bills that suggested changes in gambling laws would rightly include an assessment of the impact on children and families. Alcohol law changes—exactly the same. It would be a really practical measure that we could take to improve the lot of children and families.We would also introduce a child poverty eradication and reduction bill. Essentially it would be an action plan for children and families. It would set out how we would measure child poverty and what targets we would set to reduce it. It would establish a board across health education and social development and create a set of objectives on how we would make sure that we would reduce the effects of poverty across all of those areas—housing as well. For instance if you wanted to reduce rheumatic fever rates you would not just put that with health; you would put it with housing. We would make it an across-the-board gathering of chief executives and we would set genuine targets to start reducing the effects of poverty on children and their families.Those are some of the practical initiatives that we want to take to put children at the heart of everything we do. We do not believe that the Families Commission is a part of that any more. It has simply stepped too far away from its mantra.One concern I do want to raise though given that the Government has decided to retain the Families Commission is that it will now establish a social policy and evaluation unit. It has got a predetermined annual budget of $3.5 million. There is not too much specific information about what it will be confined to researching. There are a great number of contracts out there in this space of working with families that might for instance tap into the evaluation resource that will exist here but we are not quite clear on who will be benefiting from the existence of this unit.One thing we do know—and Alfred Ngaro talked about this—is that the Government wants the Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal study to be connected to the Families Commission. Alfred Ngaro claimed that what the longitudinal study needed was a champion. Well I have to disagree. The longitudinal study was doing very well thank you very much without having to have a 40 percent funding cut as I understand attached to what Alfred Ngaro then dressed up as needing better advocacy. The advocacy it needed was to be able to maintain its ability to continue that very very important study without having a Government come in and start adjusting whether or not it had the money to survive and continue. That is the kind of advocacy it needed. Instead however we have seen carte blanche shifting of that report and for what reason? Why is that occurring?The University of Auckland was a perfectly good home for the longitudinal study as was Otago University the last time we did something similar. The Ministry of Social Development was funding the longitudinal study. There was nothing that suggested that anything was going wrong. We had some very good interim reports and some vital information—the kind that this unit is now being established to produce because apparently we do not have it. We do. We have very good information. Why the change?If some member on that side of the House can tell me why we needed this change I would be very interested to hear it because it strikes me that it is nothing more than political. Also could some member perhaps rationalise the funding cut to that study—anyone? Does anyone wish to give us a reason why what this bill presumes to advocate which is the provision of greater research and evaluation a better evidence base and better information for us so that we can benefit families—which report did that better than the longitudinal study Growing Up in New Zealand? It is pretty hard to find anything that is going to do a better job at it than that report and yet this unit is getting a separate budget allocation and the Growing Up in New Zealand report has seen a change for the worse in terms of its funding. So if any member would like to explain that to me I would be greatly enlightened.I suspect that it has got something to do with the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor coming in and playing a role in some regard and deciding that things needed to be done differently. A little transparency would be very very useful. But overall that is not the only contradiction in this bill—all of which points to the fact in our minds that this organisation is now highly politicised and we have seen good examples of that lately. It is time for it to go. The role that it plays could be played better by the Children’s Commissioner. That is why Labour opposes this bill.