Rich Katherine: Families Commission Bill — Third Reading 
Rich Katherine: Families Commission Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:614;Page:10692] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 I rise to speak in this third reading which will see the creation of the Families Commission. My first question is to the members who support this bill. What would the Families Commission have done for the Cremen family the Burrows family or the Williams family? For those families who are genuinely in need in this country the Families Commission will not do one single thing. 
National does not support the establishment of a Families Commission as proposed. While the commission has some worthy goals the cumbersome structure the duplication of tasks that are being undertaken by other Government departments agencies and non-government organisations the unwieldy objectives and the politically correct definition of the family will ensure that those goals will never be realised. The commission set up under this legislation will be hamstrung. It will not be able to speak out on behalf of individual families or individual cases as the Children’s Commissioner is able to do. It will not be able to contradict Government policy of the day. We believe that the proposed structure will leave the commission open to ministerial manipulation and will raise potential problems with regard to public perceptions of the commission’s independence. 
Our primary reason for not supporting this bill of course is that it is unworkable. It contains the unworkable all-encompassing definition of the family which basically means almost every New Zealander. I have argued strongly that we already have a House of Representatives here to represent New Zealanders. That is what we are here to do. The Families Commission with its budget of $28 million will be all things to all people. If one stands for everything then one stands for nothing. If one stands for all forms of families and champions all forms of families then one will not be able to make any comments that will be able to help people to improve their lives. The Government’s adherence to the doctrine of diversity is to the detriment of the traditional family structure which for centuries has been proven to be a successful way to bring up kids. Sure not everybody has that kind of family but we should be able to say that there are some structures that do work and that do ensure that we maintain the best opportunities for children that they can have. Those who originally supported the Families Commission imagined it would be a champion of the traditional family. When Barbara Stewart stood up and quoted from the United Future manifesto she was right in saying that the original intention was to have something that would be able to say that marriage and traditional families were good. Well the commission has been diluted down into a politically correct version of that so I wonder how the United Future members are going to be able to stand opposite their supporters and explain what has happened. 
The commission that is being created by this legislation does nothing for the protection of our social fabric. It may well undermine the particular things that we already know to be historic truths about families. The commission will be established at considerable expense—$28 million for just another bureaucracy set up here in Wellington—and it will be just another talkfest that will not really do anything for New Zealand families. I know the Minister of Finance over there on the Government benches did not want to spend $28 million on it. I am sure he had a lot of other good projects in mind but he knew he had to do that in order to get United Future’s support. That $28 million would have been better spent on a number of non-governmental organisations that are already helping out the families who are most in need. I am thinking of organisations like Plunket Parents as First Teachers the Parenting Council and Barnardos—a whole group of organisations that are already helping the families who are most in need and that are already making a difference rather than being something that is just another bureaucracy here in Wellington. 
The Families Commission will be a weak puppet and it will not be able to deliver on all the objectives that both the Government and United Future expect it to deliver. Political support has been given to the commission simply to maintain United Future’s support for the Government and for no other reason. We could tell that by the way that the Minister sat in the chair during the Committee stage of this bill. His head was low. He was embarrassed that he had to put his name to something that would be unworkable and would not achieve anything except for paying a few salaries here in Wellington and keeping the bureaucratic machine going. 
I say that we are here not to create feel-good legislation but to put in place laws that will make a difference to families. If the answer was to set up another committee then I think those involved certainly asked the wrong question because what is needed out there is not just another committee with a bunch of earnest commissioners who will travel the country chanting: “Families are good families are good”. All of us in this House know that that is the case. I find it absolutely bizarre that those people who support this bill say that those who are against it are anti-family purely because they do not support the establishment of this commission. Well that is just absolute rubbish. Just because we do not want to spend $28 million on something that we feel is already being done by the Ministry of Social Development and a lot of other Government agencies Government organisations and non-governmental organisations does not mean that we are anti-family. It means that we have a common-sense approach to the expenditure of money. 
Let us do something a little extraordinary. Let us say here today that the $28 million will be spent on something that will make a difference. Let us give it to the Parenting Council to Parentline in Hamilton or to the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. We all know that the Department of Child Youth and Family Services needs a little bit of extra funding to deal with the problems that it has—in particular the 3000 unallocated cases of children who are waiting as we speak to see a social worker. Let us give that $28 million to Plunket so that it will not have to cut the number of visits it gives New Zealand woman who are having children. Let us give it to Parenting with Confidence to the Triple P programme the Home Instruction Programme for Pre-school Youngsters or the Parent to Parent programme. The organisations I have mentioned are all doing work out there to support families and in particular the families who are most in need. 
I think it is just extraordinary that people think that another little committee sitting here in the middle of Wellington will be the solution to all societal ills. The Families Commission would have done nothing for the Cremen family for the Burrows family or for the Williams family. It would certainly have not been in a position to do anything to change the life of Coral Burrows. Yet when we look at all the people who support this bill we see that that is the sort of ideal they are holding up—the sort of Utopia that they think this Families Commission with a budget of $28 million will somehow make possible. For the last 67 years this party has shown the importance of families and that is why we are saying that if the Government is to spend $28 million it should do it on something that will make a difference to them.