Hague Kevin: Social Workers Registration (Mandatory Registration) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Social Workers Registration (Mandatory Registration) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7245. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): When I began my working life in the 1980s I worked for a time as the research officer for the Auckland team of detached youth workers. Detached youth workers were social workers who worked with young people whom we at that time used to call street kids. The detached youth workers ranged from being highly competent professional social workers through to people who were actually just people typically associated with churches I have to say who had no qualifications and no particular skills just a particular motivation to work with those young people. The range of quality was extraordinary from those who did good with the people whom they worked with to those who did harm.I have spent most of my working life in hospitals and health care systems. So I want to pick up where Jono Naylor has just left off. In health care settings most of our professions have mandatory registration and mandatory regulation. Social workers are one of the very few exceptions to that rule—an inappropriate exception.If someone calls themselves a doctor we have confidence that that person has appropriate training and has the appropriate skills and knowledge to undertake the particular set of medical work that they are doing. We have confidence that they are experiencing ongoing medical training to keep their skills up to date—that could be a problem for Jono Naylor working for Alzheimer’s New Zealand. We have confidence that they work to a mandatory code of ethics. All of that we have confidence in and that is important.It is important because we need to trust the person who calls themselves a doctor. We need to trust that person because of the capacity for harm if they do not perform their job adequately. In the medical setting it is obvious is it not? We would be aghast if someone called themselves a doctor but actually was not really registered as a doctor or did not have those qualifications. It would be completely inappropriate.But social workers are also so often in the setting where they actually have the possibility of causing harm to the people whom they work with because those people are vulnerable. The reason why people are working with a social worker is that they have need they are vulnerable and therefore they need to be able to trust that the person calling themselves a social worker is in fact subject to all of that regulation to assure the quality of the service that they provide. It is a no-brainer.Mandatory registration of social workers is an absolute necessity. My partner is a social worker and I know that the variability in the quality of work that I experienced back in the 1980s continues to this very day even though we have voluntary registration. Voluntary registration has not proved to be enough. We need to go mandatory.I want to finish by addressing the argument—if you could call it that—that has been presented tonight by members on the Government benches. Essentially they say: “Well we agree with mandatory registration. We agree with mandatory registration but actually we want to have a review.” Well what is the review going to address? The review is simply going to address the issues that are already canvassed here.All of the words that we have heard from Government members will all be blown away and in the tide of history what the good social workers will hear tonight is that this Government chose to vote against mandatory registration chose to vote against professional standards for social workers and voted against the issues of great social work.