Upston LouisePart 2 Amendments to other ActsHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Chair and thank you for the opportunity to contribute in this committee of the whole House stage. I want to respond to a comment that was made earlier by the Minister in the chair in terms of being very disparaging in terms of tabled amendments that have been put forward by this side of the Chamber. Members have been contacted by a number of social workers educators academics and customers or clients who work with social workers and to have a Minister absolutely scorn any constructive improvement that this side of the committee has made to improve the legislation so it is workable I find quite disgusting. So my first question in my contribution in Part 2 given that this is a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that's been dropped on the Table at short notice again is that I haven't had an answer to my question in my contribution around the regulatory impact statement. The regulatory impact statement that was tabled in the early stage of the committee the whole House was that of 1 May 2017; only today is there one for the Supplementary Order Paper dated 26 July 2018. So I want to know—I'm asking the Minister: how can this committee scrutinise legislation when the regulatory impact statement isn't even provided for members of this side? So we will be asking questions. We will be constructively contributing to a debate in the absence of the ability of the public to have it. That is our responsibility. That is what we are paid to do and I do hope and I do request with all due respect that the Minister engages constructively as we are trying to improve pieces of this legislation that have been amended at short notice without public scrutiny. So my question is around the regulatory impact statement and why the regulatory impact statement wasn't provided on the Table of the House. Mr Chair you may have a view on that in terms of whether that actually even reduces the ability of the committee to debate in the committee of the whole House and whether or not there is a ruling that should be considered by this House in this situation. So in terms of Part 2 I do want to refer to the regulatory impact statement and I'll put on record that is the regulatory impact statement of 26 July 2018 and not 1 May 2017. The Minister has also talked about a 16-year time frame which is absolute rubbish given this bill was introduced in May 2017. So in terms of amendments to Part 2 of the Social Workers Registration Legislation Bill in particular I want to refer to clause 70(2) which talks about the fit and proper person". In the regulatory impact statement there's significant commentary around who is a fit and proper person to practise. For those that have just joined this debate in the Parliament on the Social Workers Registration Legislation Bill what isn't of debate is how important this legislation is. It was introduced under National and one of the elements is for those particularly vulnerable New Zealanders who will be interacting with a social worker. They do want the assurance that there is a fit and proper person that is working with them as a registered social worker. Although we haven't had answers to some of the questions we asked in the earlier part of the debate I very clearly do want the question answered around the regulatory impact statement which I think's a clear breach of the practice of this House. So in terms of the fit and fit and proper person—so when the Hon Anne Tolley who was the former Minister for Social Development who introduced this legislation which moved from the voluntary regime to the mandatory registration regime one of the key elements was the expectation that people who are working with social workers would know that they've been police-vetted as one of the elements. So that comes to the heart of the fit and proper person test in terms of their ability to practise. So I don't think there'd be anyone in this committee that would disagree with the fact that we do want to ensure the fit and proper person test is applied and in Part 2 the amendment to this legislation is around the amendment to the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act of 2004. I would've thought that in the select committee process we might have seen a bit more contention. I'm sure the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand will have a contribution to make because they've been quite outspoken in the past about the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act and its possible uses for good bad or indifferent reasons. So in this instance it's about the amendment of the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act so that the Social Workers Registration Board who are the regulatory body responsible for the social workers who will be registered under this Act is considering whether the eligible individual is a fit and proper person to be registered or to practise as a social worker under the Social Workers Registration Act.A lot of this debate has focused on competencies and on qualifications. This one is more around the person's character. The regulatory impact statement has several pages on this and as I say it's the regulatory impact statement of 26 July 2018 not the one that was on the Table when we last debated this. It is really critical because the Social Workers Registration Board are the regulatory body that they have confidence in terms of being able to declare and be satisfied that the applicant is a fit and proper person to practise social work. There'll be a range of people who are going through this regime. There'll be those who are already registered under the voluntary scheme. There'll be those who are working towards sufficient qualifications that will allow them to be registered under what will be the mandatory regime after the transitional phase has been completed and then there will be others who have been working as social workers for quite some time who you could argue have sufficient experience. That group in particular would have been working with members of the public for a long long time.So in terms of the legislation there are a number of examples of reasonable grounds that we agree with. A conviction for an offence punishable by three months' or more imprisonment—that clearly is a reflection on fitness to practise and I don't think there will be any disagreement in this House on that. I would be interested to know in terms of the Minister's advice after the select committee process was completed—because there were no changes to the fit and proper person test recommended in the departmental report but as we've seen with other areas the Minister has then gone on and got subsequent advice from a group of people; some have been listed others haven't—whether there were other changes proposed around the fit and proper person test. Was there consideration after the select committee finished its deliberation that was either considered and then discounted around the fit and proper person test—and I'd be interested to know if the Minister would be able to provide details around that. Obviously we have visibility of what did make the cut but not of what didn't make the cut. Clearly in terms of the select committee process that's really been completely abandoned and the Minister believes that the parliamentary select committee isn't the place to improve legislation and have the ability to consider details by submitters and by academics or education providers or social workers themselves.So in terms of Part 2 in clause 70 there is an amendment here around the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004 and as I said I am interested to know what the Minister's considerations were outside the select committee process because I think the House should have full visibility of it. The Minister had indicated on another occasion although not today that she was willing to engage fully in the process and we would expect that.In terms of the fit and proper person element also from the regulatory impact statement there is the ongoing question mark about annual practising certificates and the assessment of fitness to practise at that point. So there was a—[Time expired]"