Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. The Green Party is supporting the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. As has been canvassed by others this is part of a review of the Social Workers Registration Board that happens every five years and as a previous member mentioned it happened in 2020. We do agree that overall the changes that are being put in place are not controversial and we acknowledge that it includes things like broadening the scope of grounds for interim suspension where an investigation under the Social Workers Registration Act under the Health and Disability Commissioner Act or a criminal proceeding is reasonable; contemplated just not under way; and a few other things that include enabling the board to delegate registration functions so that the board can focus on governance functions.I think the key points around this is that it improves the mechanisms to hold social workers accountable for the work that they do to keeping themselves and the people that they work alongside safe and it also improves some of those governance aspects.It's interesting because unlike the member Carmel Sepuloni who spoke prior to me I do think there are some standing questions that I actually think are relevant to this bill in terms of what the Government is doing. One of the key things in the changes here are about how social workers can be accountable for the work that they do. And in my view to have a thriving social work care workforce it relies on that workforce being resourced. It relies on that workforce being adequately trained. It relies on that workforce being trained in a way that allows them to have enough resources as they complete their training. Those are the things that actually create social workers that are best placed to serve their communities and to keep themselves their colleagues and the people that they serve safe.So if we're going to continue with the reviews of the system that are in place to hold social workers accountable for any potential harm that they cause I do have concerns around how the changes that the Government is pushing through will interact with the ability for social workers to have access to safe workplaces and that they don't end up having to use these improved mechanisms.So for example the fact that many social workers will now be having to be in workplaces where there will be less of them to serve potentially just as many people concerns me because it could end up relying on some of these mechanisms more and more. So I guess there are some outstanding questions that I hope we can unpack at the select committee around actually some of these mechanisms—whether there's an expectation that they their use will increase as a result of the Government's actions.We still have a workforce—and I say this as somebody who has been a guest lecturer for social workers who has trained social workers as a field educator—who while they're studying are struggling to survive and that affects the quality of their practice later on because many of them are actually just struggling to make ends meet. So if we're going to make changes as to how we hold them accountable I guess we should start with the question of how we can train social workers in the best way we can.I also want to know about the professionalisation of social work. I do want to caution against assuming that the only way in which social workers can be of excellence is through this kind of professionalisation pathway. We've got to remember that many Māori Pasifika and migrant communities benefit a lot from the experience pathways and actually that we should remember that those experiences can enrich and diversify our social work practices. And so I think there needs to be a balance struck in relation to what the Minister alluded to around putting them on par with other kinds of professions while at the same time acknowledging that right now if we were to kind of streamline social work practice and potentially professionalise it further it could actually miss the mark in terms of having social workers who actually extend their knowledge outside of what's considered to be normal at the moment. Somebody could have a social worker show up who had never received any training around how Work and Income works and would come to my previous workplace hoping to have the labour of volunteers who actually did understand how Work and Income works so I think there are some gaps right now in this kind of social worker professionalisation. But overall the Green Party supports this bill. We look forward to unpacking some of the nuances of how this bill interacts with the Government's actions at select committee and I hope this results in a constructive conversation across party lines.