Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Whoo! I have to commend you first of all Mr Assistant Speaker for putting up with that monologue for 10 minutes. That was probably the longest filibuster I've ever had to endure. But I have to say even the members across the House will soon be looking at their watch saying Come on get it out." Wasn't that right Mr Alastair Scott?Alastair Scott: You got it wrong.CLAYTON MITCHELL: No? Well done Mr Bidois. This is a perfect opportunity to show the collegiality of the House and how we can actually come together and not squabble and fight like seagulls fighting over a chip. I am going to make my contribution quite brief. I know everybody in the gallery is smiling so they're pleased to hear about that and all the people back home as well.Look we are supporting this. It is obviously a Government bill. I want to take the opportunity to commend Carmel Sepuloni the Minister for pushing this through. There's been a lot of work behind the scenes working collegially across the House to ensure that we get these settings right.When we look at the nature and the time that it's taken to get this here there's been some 16 years pass. We know that work was done under the stewardship of Anne Tolley as well and of course through the select committee process where everybody has been working together. With a slight blip in the radar over the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) we are now here and that's gone through the House now and we are actually now commending this today. The idea of having a compulsory registration for the Social Workers Registration Legislation Bill is what this essentially is. Submitters and those social workers that have come in and spoken to us think that this is a great idea. It does lift the profile of the very important role that they play within our community particularly with the most vulnerable people within our community and I think that has to be listened to. But the three aspects of this that particularly I think stand out are the fact that it puts protections around the workers themselves it puts protections around the people that the social workers are working with and it lifts the game and profile to actually create an industry—that's not the right term; an organisation—Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Sector.CLAYTON MITCHELL: —a sector—thank you very much—which will actually lift and grow. A lot of what goes on within those social workers' roles on a daily basis is hidden from many of us here. I know many MPs do engage quite closely with that social sector. But it's an extremely important role that they play and we need to do what we can as a Government moving forward to ensure that they've got the tools that they like. The implementation time for this bill is two years which is an adequate time for existing social workers to get themselves registered. For potentially some of the older social workers and social workers working in the provinces that are not so easily accessible to some of the educational requirements there's a five-year period—Matt Doocey: You said you weren't going to talk for long.CLAYTON MITCHELL: —for them to engage and get involved with—mate I'm only at three minutes; I've got plenty of time I didn't waffle on for 10 minutes and I'll be certainly well gone before then—which I think is a very very important aspect of the bill. Ensuring that the social workers are practising they must also hold a practising certificate which is renewed annually.As far as the SOP is concerned the provisions that have been brought through in this bill are very very good indeed and certainly the scope of practice for social workers I think was a very important part in that SOP. It was a very large SOP—about the same size as the bill—but it just showed how important this part was to get that right to ensure that that was slotted in there and we do support this. We thank the support from the Opposition to make sure that this bill goes through as it has. A new offence has been created to enforce existing confidentiality obligations about client information. We've seen over the years problems in this field and to have a new offence to really ensure that the protections are there for clients' information I think is a very good part of the SOP. Employers will be required to report concerns about a social worker's competence to the board if the employee resigns or is dismissed for reasons relating to their competence. That is a future protection point put into the SOP to ensure that we're not going to be bitten down the pathway and so that the Social Workers Registration Board have a little bit more autonomy and understanding of the breadth and scope of some of these problems.Just to finalise to wrap things up there'll be a new power that's going to be created that requires people to supply information needed to prove that someone is claiming to be or is actually a practising social worker.So the SOP is a very important one. It certainly goes to the value of this Government's determination to ensure that social workers get the support that they need and that the people—the most vulnerable people in our community—also get that support. So thank you very much for your collegiality and cross-party support on this."