Maharey Steve: Families Commission Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Procedure 
Maharey Steve: Families Commission Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:614;Page:10300] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I always like to follow the words of Dr Muriel Newman because they are nothing short of entertaining—always. They are something like  
The X Files 
 I always find: the entire world is a series of conspiracies. It is an amazing mind to try to get inside when one listens to Dr Muriel Newman talk. I notice that over the last little while there have been a large number of her articles in which she has been raving on in a very similar fashion on the net. They are often sent off to newspapers or publications. I have not seen one single one of them published and I imagine that that is because people can recognise stupidity when they see it. 
I want to reflect on what I think are the two core points that have been made by— 
Dr Muriel Newman 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I know that this debate is a robust one but I think that the Minister just tipped over the edge a little in terms of denigration back then. If you had have been listening very carefully you might have pushed him a little back on to the straight and narrow in this debate. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I say two things to the member. The first is that under Speaker’s ruling 38/1 people are allowed leeway in order to respond to the previous speaker. Secondly members make disparaging remarks about each other all the time. It is personal reflections that are out of order. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I want to reflect on what I think are two core points that have been made in this debate. The first I guess—and I respect this point of view—is that we should not do it. The view that we should just not have a Families Commission would seem to be the point made by most of the people who are speaking on the Opposition side of the Chamber. But we are going to do it and we are going to do it not because the Families Commission is a sop to United Future but because this is a minority Government. In other words parties get to advance a range of policies in a public relations environment that they would not get elsewhere. Just as New Zealand First advanced policies when it was in coalition with the National Party we are seeing in this Parliament the advancing of a policy that comes from a party other than the Government. There is nothing of a sop about that; it is simply a fact of life that parties can do that now in this environment. Frankly I welcome that. I think it is a good thing that we have a multi-party environment where other ideas can rise to the surface and can be advanced and debated in this Chamber. In this case United Future has quite properly made that possible. 
The second point that people frequently make really hinges around whether we should advance privilege and only talk about one kind of family—which is usually referred to I have to say as the traditional nuclear family. We could get into a very long debate about that but I say to people that I do not think members mean what they are advancing. The traditional nuclear family as it is often called is a relatively recent invention even in Western society. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Not an invention. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Well it is a way of organising the family that stems largely from Victorian times in Britain. If Ms Tariana Turia were here—but Taito Phillip Field is—she would refer as he refers to the traditional family whether Maori or from the Pacific Islands as an extended form of family which may well have seen grandparents or aunties and uncles bringing up children rather than their biological parents. Those societies would certainly have relied on a large network of people who may or many not have been biologically associated with those children and they would traditionally have had that family structure for a long period of time. So the notion that we would start to say we should have a piece of legislation that defends the traditional nuclear family as people have said because it goes back to Genesis is just factually wrong and stupid to talk about. It is a stupid thing to say and it has no merit because it does not reflect history. Nor does it reflect the direct experience of a large number of people in this Parliament. 
The other thing we are told about the nuclear family being traditional is that it is made up of mum dad and the kids. In the sense that we usually applied that in New Zealand it meant mum being at home and looking after the kids and dad being at work. Now I know that Katherine Rich does not support that. I do not criticise her at all for being here in Parliament. It is her right to organise her family in a way that she believes will serve her children well— 
Phil Heatley 
: You’re so generous. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I am not being generous. I am just saying that when we get up and advance those ideas about the traditional nuclear family we should realise we have already passed on from that tradition in this country. Everybody in this Parliament supports the new organisation because they support the right of women to choose to go to work—to go outside the home to earn a living. They also support quite rightly the fact that it may be that males stay at home and provide the ongoing care of children. So let us not get hung up on a silly notion that this debate is about the traditional nuclear family being somehow dragged out of history and preserved in legislation—as if the family ever existed in that form traditionally or as if anybody in this Parliament wants it to exist in the way that perhaps my mother and father experienced it with my mother staying at home to look after us and the breadwinner dad working outside the home. We do not believe in that any more in this Parliament and the notion that we would preserve it in legislation in this way is clearly something that no one wants. Those are empty debates. 
I suggest therefore that the most sensible line of argument that has come through here today—and I have heard it from National speakers as well as from speakers all around this Chamber—is that we should not be arguing about the form of the family but should want good outcomes from every kind of family. No one in this Chamber doubts that it is a good idea for kids to be brought up by their parents. That is a great idea to have. I was brought up by my parents; I liked that. I am sure there are other people all around here who also experienced that—but other people who did not. Yes it is good if kids can stay with their parents and be brought up as children by them but of course that is increasingly not the case in this society. We have extended families we have whanau and we have sole parent families—we have a diversity of families. Should we not as a Parliament be dedicated as speakers have said to the functions of all kinds of families? 
I heard before from a National Party speaker that the key functions of families are easy to detect. It is common sense as well as research-founded knowledge that if kids get good support from families if they get good nurturing if they get love and if they get consistent boundaries for their behaviour they will be pretty well certain to turn out OK. I hope that the Families Commission will commit itself to ensuring that every child comes out of every kind of family with those outcomes. That is what I hope. Some kind of notion that it will dedicate itself to advancing only one kind of fictitious form of family would be a complete travesty of public policy and I do not think anybody in the Committee would want us to have that. We want mums to be able to work outside the home. We want fathers to take responsibility for their kids all the way through their lives. We want children to grow up in an environment where they will become dependable adults just as they hopefully are able to depend on adults to bring them up. That is the kind of vision I think that United Future has been expressing extremely well and that is why the Government has been comfortable to facilitate this bill and put it through. 
I know that when I sit down we will go back to a silly debate about the traditional nuclear family and so on but I want to put on the record the fact that we as a Government stand for kids coming out of every single kind of family with the best possible outcomes. That is what we stand for that is the vision of the Families Commission and that is what it is hoped the Families Commission will achieve. If it does that then every kid in this country will be thankful.