Families Commission Bill

There are a couple of issues that I want to cover today in relation to the Families Commission Bill. I am in a generous mood today, because the sky is bright, the sun is shining, and I am a National Party MP, and boy, am I proud of it! One of the things I will say to the people of New Zealand today is that I can save them $28 million, because I can tell them what children need. It is nice that United Future members are in the House to listen, because they are the ones who are so keen on spending $28 million. I will give it to New Zealanders for nothing: children need love. They need care, they need commitment, they need education, they need health, they need boundaries, and they need discipline. They need to know their whakapapa. They need to know who their father is and who their mother is. They need to know that they belong, and most of all, they need, wherever possible, two great parents.

Two parents will do a better job any day than one great parent. Two great parents will do a better job any day than one not particularly great parent, and the new partner that he or she has this week. It is about time that we acknowledged it. We do not need $28 million being spent on a bureaucracy so that United Future MPs will have a job to go to after the next election, just to prove that. This bill does not acknowledge anywhere that two great parents are better than one great parent. Nowhere does it acknowledge that children need, and should have, whenever possible, two great, committed parents.

The Lancet—the journal of the British Medical Association—has recently published a Swedish study. Sweden is one of those very liberal countries that are held up to us by the great feminist leader whom we have at the moment in New Zealand. That particular country is a very liberal country, and it is now starting to look at what its liberal views are doing to its children. Researchers studied one million children for a decade—not for a day, but for a decade—all the way into their mid-20s. The study found that children growing up in single-parent families are twice as likely to develop serious psychiatric illness and addictions later in life. The researchers also found a tremendous amount of other information, and all of it was bad. When we compare oranges and oranges, children will be better off in two-parent families, almost without exception.

Nowhere in this bill is there a reference to two-parent families. Two-parent families are simply being reduced, in this anti-capitalist, feminist agenda given to us by the Labour Party and its cohorts—and unfortunately supported by United Future, something I just cannot understand—to a historical, patriarchal aberration. Those parties think it is all about male domination. They obviously have not lived in any family that I have been part of. It certainly is not about male domination, either my parents’ or my own.

💬 Bernie Ogilvy: Aw!

I say thank you very much to Mr Ogilvy, the former doctor. Let us have a look at the real cost of the Families Commission. When I look at this bill, I think: “What else could we do with $28 million?”—apart from buy a few doctors’ degrees. We could get 5.6 million hours of free childcare. That would be good, would it not? We could have 2.18 million Plunket Line inquiries. That should last for a few years. We could have 357,379 booster seats. [Interruption] Is the member I hear over there the one who called out to my colleague Katherine Rich to go home to her children? We could have 2.9 million 20-packs of baby nappies, and 5.3 million hours of early childhood education for under-twos. My goodness, we need childhood education for our under-twos in this country! It is a useful thing to produce, is it not?

Or we could have United Future cronies all working away in a bureaucracy so they can all have a job once we get rid of that party in 2005. Which shall we have? Or we could have 55,000 inquiries to the office of the Children’s Commissioner. That should keep it going for a little while, should it not? We could have 1.8 million Births, Deaths and Marriages inquiries. Members may wonder why I would put that in. I will tell them why—it is because 17,000 women in this country cannot or will not name the father of their children, and I cannot believe that these people are being allowed to have children. We are paying for them, and they do not even have the nous to say, “What’s your name, mate?” before they decide to go and mate with them.

Frankly, that is just appalling, because there are 17,000 children, plus all the others as well—their brothers and sisters from goodness knows how many fathers—all with no fathers, no whakapapa, and no idea of where they came from except it happened to be a stray sperm swimming around.

It is just appalling that we have this situation in New Zealand, and we do not need $28 million spent on some bureaucracy to tell us that. The money could instead be spent on 627,400 two-year subscriptions to Kiwi Parent, and that would be a lot more use than a Families Commission that does not even know how to define what a family is, and needed its own Supplementary Order Paper to tell us all that the term did not really mean that it would be a criminal gang. It took an entire amendment to do that, and an awful lot of argument and money has been spent saying: “Oh boy, it is not a gang.”

Something even better could be done, I suggest, by tripling—three times—the amount of funding available for the Parents as First Teachers programme. Would that not be a good thing? In my electorate I am very lucky to have the Home Instruction Programme for Pre-school Youngsters, which was set up and run by the Pacific Foundation—a wonderful organisation that is not bureaucratic and actually does something. It is a wonderful thing; it is not a Government department, it does not have a bureaucracy, it actually does something.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: Aw!

What that organisation does—and I would like to have a little less cynicism from the Minister of Transport—is that it teaches parents how to be parents. Most of us learn our parenting skills from our own parents, but now that intergenerational hopelessness has been bred by woolly-woofter liberal ideas, there are parents who are not capable of being parents without a tremendous amount of work. What this programme has is very, very good people who actually help.

I have been to the graduation ceremony. I have seen people who had no self-esteem before and unbelievably little confidence who now talk proudly to me about reading to their children, making sure homework is done before the children do anything else, and being great parents. That is what money should be spent on, not yet another bureaucracy stuck in Wellington doing nothing for anyone out there. Those are the sorts of people we need to help this country.

It always amuses me when National Party members take umbrage when one is speaking the truth of the situation to them. Yes indeed, when Katherine Rich got up to speak, I did interject and say, “absent mothers”, because this bill is about helping families. When it is considered how many times those National women, in particular, vote against pro-families legislation, I always think it is a bit rich. This is a good bill, and I look forward to it being passed through the House.

It is with a degree of sadness that I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in this third reading of the Families Commission Bill. It is sadness, as this is a model of a Families Commission that will never save one child in this country, and will not deliver what is required for the children and the families of New Zealand. I think that all of us in this House looked forward to this legislation, because we recognise that the strength of the family is the foundation of our nation. New Zealand First has said on many, many occasions that the quality of the future that we leave to our children will be determined by the quality of the children that we leave to that future, and the quality of those children is determined by the quality of family relationships.

We absolutely support some of those ideas that were mentioned by the Minister about the strengthening of the family and how important the family is for the future of the nation. We support that, but this Families Commission is a bureaucracy that cannot and will not deliver what is required for the children and families of New Zealand. The bottom line is that this legislation is flawed and it will return to this House. In its election manifesto, United Future talked about establishing a commission for the family. Among its many roles, it would provide a family mediation service that would support, promote, and develop the provision of marriage and relationship counselling services. Then there is this legislation, where none of that is mentioned.

United Future members have said at previous stages that this is their vision. This afternoon, the people of New Zealand will see that this commission is a nightmare—a $28 million nightmare. It must be noted in the records that opposition to this legislation has elicited the most incredibly vitriolic response from United Future. We have seen press releases that were totally erroneous, and the leader of that party wrote to each of the submitters, stating that their views were totally ignored by the Opposition. This is totally inane, unprofessional behaviour. All submitters were listened to and questioned by the committee, and due process was followed in our select committee. It was a totally disappointing performance from the party that prides itself on bringing common sense into politics. If that is the sort of common sense United Future brings into politics, I am totally disappointed with those members.

New Zealand First has made no secret of the fact that we would have supported without reservation a Families Commissioner that worked in with the Children’s Commissioner. We all know that that organisation is working as an advocate for one of the most important elements of the family—children. It is working very successfully, too. That organisation has a proven track record, and additional resources could have strengthened up its office, and it would not have required $28 million either. The $28 million that was required to set up this Families Commission, as was pointed out by my colleague Judith Collins, could have been better spent on more practical help for families than will be provided by this Families Commission. Organisations like Plunket, Early Start programmes, and other community groups that were working in the areas of parental support, could also have been used. I must say that United Future agrees with that. These organisations already have a proven track record. They are of great assistance to families, and they are successful. Some of this funding could have been given to some of these groups.

Practical help is required—rather than research, which this Families Commission is going to carry out. There is already a lot of research carried out, even by the Ministry of Social Development, on New Zealand families. We already know what is required for successful families. The resilience factor I think is mentioned in this legislation. Things like quality housing, health care, adequate nutrition, education, employment, a loving family, and two committed, loving parents are required. As has already been pointed out, meeting all these needs is absolutely paramount. Why do we have to spend $28 million to prove what we already know?

There are a whole number of areas in this bill that make it totally impossible to support. United Future received some of its electoral support—I know some of this from the worm, as well—because of its focus on families; families that were easily definable by most New Zealanders. It is very evident that United Future was speaking with a forked tongue about families, and consequently has gone from a hero to a zero rating in the estimation of many people. Even the submitters have contacted us on this issue, as well.

New Zealand First put forward in the Committee stage a definition of “family” that would have been accepted by most New Zealanders. But guess what? United Future voted it down. My colleague Peter Brown will speak further on that. We also have some grave concerns about the number of commissioners who will be part of this commission.

💬 Judith Collins: How many?

There will be three full-time commissioners and three part-time commissioners. United Future told us last week that these roles have already been advertised. There were hundreds of requests for applications. I do not know how many United Future MPs have applied, as yet. Next time around, perhaps! The total irony and the total arrogance that is shown here is absolutely astounding. It shows how much notice United Future was ever going to take of any contributions from anybody in this House in the Committee stage. Everybody here wants to achieve something while he or she is in Parliament. All I can say is that the legacy of a huge bureaucracy that United Future members want to create has turned their heads. Common sense has gone out of the door.

This House has not even passed the legislation, and already United Future members have raced ahead with advertising for these roles. One must now ask what their role will be in the selection of these family commissioners. Pride always comes before a fall. It is unfortunate that this is going to be a very expensive fall. The cumbersome structure and the duplication of tasks that are undertaken by other agencies will ensure that the goals of this commission and the lofty purpose outlined in this bill will never be realised. It will never be achieved at all. It is totally ironic that at a time when we know more about the family and its dysfunction than we have ever known, we pass legislation that will assist in ensuring that there is just as much dysfunction.

This commission cannot advocate for anybody. The Children’s Commissioner has always been able to advocate for children, yet this commission cannot even do that. It cannot talk about any problems that certain families are experiencing, whether it be solo parent families, nuclear families, or problems that grandparents are having with their grandchildren. The commission cannot advocate for those particular groups.

What will we get? We will get a very generalised message that will not mean a lot to anybody. It cannot be everything to everyone. We can only hope now that this Families Commission, because it will come into being, can achieve something worthwhile. We doubt it. New Zealand First will look forward to monitoring the outcomes of this $28 million talkfest and ensuring that the commission’s performance is efficient and effective, as is outlined in this particular legislation. It is for all these reasons that New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill.

As anyone who has been following this debate will know by now, the Green Party is completely opposed to the establishment of the Families Commission. We believe that it simply represents an unnecessary duplication of the work already being done both by a number of community sector agencies and by the Ministry of Social Development. It is also a waste of the $28 million over 4 years that has been allocated to it. That money could be spent far more productively on supporting the community organisations that carry out the same kinds of functions as will the Families Commission. Part of that money could also be put, with good effect, into providing adequate resources for existing bodies, like the office of the Children’s Commissioner, which is severely underfunded at around $1.7 million a year and has only 12 staff, despite the critical work it attempts to carry out for New Zealand’s children.

The Families Commission is purely and simply a creation of political expediency—the result of a post-election deal between Labour and United Future. There is nothing inherently wrong with such deals, and I would be the first to acknowledge that they are likely to always be an integral part of MMP parliaments. However, it seems a pity that at a time when many children and families live in daily poverty and barely survive from one crisis to the next, we should as a result of electoral expediency be committing resources to something of such nebulous value. There was no public outcry for a Families Commission prior to the rise of Peter Dunne and the “worm” in the 2002 election campaign. It was not something that community organisations were ever organising around. The church and community groups that I worked with around the country in the late 1990s were, and still are, on the whole, much more interested in whether they have enough funding to survive the next 3 months, so that they can continue to provide services for children and families, than they are in the establishment of a Government commission to carry out more research into the New Zealand family. Those groups already know a lot about the realities of life right now for parents and children, and for wider whānau—after all, they work with families every day.

A lot of research has already been done, and continues to be done, into the true situation for families in all sorts of difficult circumstances that result from 20 years of structural unemployment, low wages, low benefit payments, and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor. Research or no research, groups like the People’s Centre, Homebuilders, the Waipareira Trust, the Downtown Community Ministry (Wellington) Inc, and many others know what is going on with families a whole lot better than most of the MPs sitting in this House, and better than most of the public servants busily analysing policy in their Wellington offices. We do not need to have a whole lot more research and analysis, or between three and seven family commissioners to help to direct research operations. What we do need is a Government that is prepared to read the reports, listen to people, understand the results of the research that has already been done—including research from the Ministry of Social Development itself—and then to take action on the recommendations from all that plethora of research. What families need is action and solutions, not more paralysis by analysis. What families need is a Government that is prepared to take the drastic step of committing more of its annual budget to measures designed to bring families out of poverty, rather than to continue to give national priority to channelling billions of dollars into Budget surpluses, debt repayment, and the Superannuation Fund.

I can hear supporters of the Families Commission respond that its core functions include far more than research—and that is quite true. The commission’s functions also encompass things like acting as an advocate for families generally, encouraging informed debate on matters relating to the interests of families, increasing public awareness of matters relating to the interests of families—such as the importance of parenting—and facilitating the development of Government policies that serve families. All of that is well and good, and there is nothing wrong with any of it. But surely all of that is already being done by a diversity of organisations and various parts of the public service.

Organisations ranging from the Plunket Society and Parentline through to Unicef New Zealand and Barnardos New Zealand, and literally hundreds, if not thousands, of others advocate constantly and well—in their local communities, and nationally—in the interests of New Zealand’s parents, families, and children. The Child Poverty Action Group and a range of associated individuals and organisations continue to do an amazing job, on very limited resources, of researching and championing the needs of the nearly one-third of the country’s children who still live in poverty. The Children’s Commissioner has just had a whole new bill passed in this House to strengthen the functions and powers of that office—with a particular commitment to working with the Government to enact the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—without the funding increase that office needs in order to really get moving. The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services—which represents the social services of the Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches, and the Salvation Army—continues not only to offer hands-on assistance for families and children from over 550 locations around the country, but also to carry out research and make policy recommendations in the interests of families and children.

Just to take the work of the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services as one particular example, it would be far more useful if the Government were to spend $28 million on implementing even some of the specific recommendations from its latest report, issued a couple of weeks ago, on preventing the cycle of debt than on establishing the Families Commission. That report uses a literature survey and case studies to highlight the growing impact of debt on low-income families, both in and out of work. It identifies key issues that are causing the debt crisis to escalate, and provides a whole series of recommendations through which this or any Government could begin to address the problems.

Those suggestions are wide ranging and include among them raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour, calling for a public campaign to inform low-wage workers of the income support entitlements that are available to them, an increase in childcare availability and a lowering of childcare costs, investigating ways of providing casual workers with certainty of income, setting benefits at levels adequate to ensure a decent quality of life, extending the child tax credit to all families and amalgamating it with family support, adjusting all family assistance payments to account for past inflation and indexing them for further inflation, ensuring that all those who are eligible for benefits receive their full and correct entitlements, allowing Work and Income the discretion to waive or reduce stand-downs in cases of hardship and more discretion in granting non-recoverable assistance, increasing the investment in State housing and in third sector housing initiatives, investigating and implementing ways in which the Government can stop being the driver of unsustainable debt, investigating and implementing ways in which the Government can do more to help and protect people who are excluded from mainstream credit, looking at methods of improving the financial literacy of ordinary people, and much, much more.

I present this long list—in itself just a partial one—because I think it is time that MPs, political parties, and the public service woke up to the fact that there is already an enormous amount of knowledge, experience, and passion out there in our communities geared towards advocating for, and solving, the problems that confront New Zealand families today. I have used only one example here of a report with recommendations that has been carried out on one particular aspect of family life: families struggling with low incomes and debt. There are, of course, many other areas of activity around families, from domestic violence and abuse through to parenting problems and solutions, and from mental illness and its impact on children and families through to the special needs of families whose members have major physical or intellectual impairments—and many more. My point is that in each of those sectors there already exists a multiplicity of organisations with their own in-depth specialisation, research, and knowledge. In every case I am sure that one could quickly find any number of well-thought-out and useful recommendations for action that any Government could pick up on, without having to go through the extra expense and bureaucracy of establishing a Families Commission as an extra layer on top of all the other work that is already happening.

If Labour and United Future are really serious about supporting families, I hope that over the coming year and a half they will do everything they can, alongside relevant Government departments, to pick up on the recommendations I have just outlined, and others that are coming out of different parts of the community and voluntary sector. I also hope that they will consider supporting my member’s bill next year to establish a universal child benefit, as a signal that they are genuine in their desire to do something a lot more real for the families of this country than this Families Commission can ever hope to offer.

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 3,000 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.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave of the House to table a press release that the Hon Peter Dunne has just put out. It contains a particularly vitriolic attack on myself, and suggests that I be demoted even further.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is.

I want to start with the point that the previous speaker ended on. She talked about the National Party’s proud 67-year history of commitment to families. It is so proud and it is such a deep commitment that just 9 weeks ago, for the first time in those 67 years, it appointed a family spokesperson—the member who took a point of order recently.

I have listened to this debate today with extraordinary amazement. I have been in this House long enough to think I have seen most things, but I have seldom seen a debate like this one, which is so lacking in argument and substance, and so dripping in petty jealousy from members opposite. Their arguments have nothing to do with whether a Families Commission should be established; they have everything to do with the fact that we promised that one would be established, we are establishing one, and we will ensure that it is adequately resourced to do the job it is expected to do, and those members opposite do not like it.

They claim that we should support all sorts of other organisations. They fail to say that every single one of the organisations they have named supports the establishment of the Families Commission. Every single one of them says it wants this commission in place, it sees the value it can bring, and it looks forward to it beginning its operations, because it wants to work alongside it. The only problem is the National, New Zealand First, Green, and ACT parties have a different view.

Well, I want to say—and I will say it to John Carter because he is the one person opposite who is capable of listening and understanding it, if he gets off the telephone for long enough—United Future will not support any future Government that does not support the Families Commission. My comment about the member who is just leaving the Chamber is that her comments today in strong opposition to the Families Commission would, I suspect, come as a surprise to her leader, Dr Brash, because he is starting to talk about building wider coalitions. Let me repeat what I have just said: any party that does not support the Families Commission will not have the support of United Future if it is in Government, period. That point needs to be understood, not as a game of one-upmanship—

💬 Jim Peters: We’re all shaking over here.

The member opposite does not count. He knows it. He will go back to the far north, go fishing, and we will be none the sadder for his departure. Let me make this point.

💬 Jim Peters: The member doesn’t know about these issues.

The member opposite knows, does he? Let me say to Mr Peters that he may not know it but most people around New Zealand laugh at him. I will move on from there. [Interruption] This commission—

💬 Jim Peters: The member doesn’t know!

It is the truth. The member might not like the truth, but it is the truth. People will be rocking in the aisles right now at the thought of that member interjecting. As for Mrs Stewart, they do not even know who she is.

I come back to the Families Commission. This commission is being established because when we look a little bit under the veneer of New Zealand society, we see that the statistics about the state of our families are appalling. We have the world’s second-highest rate of single-parent families. We have 65 percent of our young male offenders being brought up in homes without a father figure present. We have 40 percent of our criminals aged between 14 and 18. [Interruption]

The member who is interjecting said that the problem is we are taking too diverse an approach. I say to that member that the reality is families in New Zealand come in all shapes and sizes. Families in New Zealand do have a whole variety of structures. If we are to tackle the problems—and let us get real for a moment—yes, the two-parent, mum and dad family is the ideal we can strive for, but it is actually a minority in contemporary New Zealand. If we are to strive for that ideal, we should not start by saying to a whole range of family structures and their children that they are automatically excluded and do not count. We will not make progress in that way. We have to say that the ideal is, as we have said and will continue to say, the two-parent family, but the reality is often somewhat different, and we need to work with all groups if we are to achieve that ideal in time. I cannot understand members opposite who seriously think that, by somehow setting New Zealander against New Zealander—because that is the implication of what they are saying—we will build a cohesive society, we will build a country where our families feel included, and we will do something about addressing those statistics I mentioned a moment or two ago.

The member who spoke before asked about the situation in the Wairarapa and those families there. We will not turn dysfunction round overnight, but we also will not make any change by carrying on the way we are. This House has seen more emphasis on families in the last 15 months, since this party has had a prominent role, than in the years beforehand. I say to the Minister of Finance that in the Budget this year, by my count, 15 family-specific initiatives were introduced. That is far more than in any previous Budget in my time in this House. If it takes the influence of United Future to achieve that, and if it takes the prospect of a Families Commission to achieve that, well and good, because it is a vast change from the days of yore when members opposite were in Government and nothing happened. The legacy of their tenure is reflected in many of the problems we face today.

For those same people now to say that a constructive effort—$28 million over 4 years to deal with a problem that, conservatively, costs New Zealand $5.6 billion every year—is excessive, irresponsible, and wasteful is simply nonsensical. We have to make a start. If we really believe that this country functions well when its families function well, if we really believe that families are at the cornerstone of our society, if we really believe that every child deserves the best possible start in life, then we will get behind structures, organisations, policies, and plans to achieve that. We will not sit here whingeing, moaning, and begrudging positive effort. That is all that this debate is about. When one sums it up, the Opposition is saying: “It’s not fair—you’re doing it and we’re not.” There is nothing more to it than that. That is the reason Opposition members play games in the select committee. That is the reason they do not like their game playing being pointed out. That is the reason for the bilious interjections we are getting at the moment. It is simply a case of “You’re doing it and we’re not. It’s not fair.”

Up and down New Zealand, the families of New Zealand do not take any notice of that. If the Families Commission is such an appalling idea and is ridiculed up and down the country, why have there been 170-odd applications for appointment to the commission? Why has every family group and social agency up and down New Zealand been attacking my office and the Minister of Social Development’s office, pleading for application forms in order to nominate people whom that group or agency thinks can make a contribution to the work of this commission?

The reality is New Zealand is crying out for some leadership in this area. It is crying out for a body that will at last put an emphasis and a focus on family life in New Zealand. It is a great tragedy—the previous member drew in current circumstances, so let me say this, particularly as I see the member for Wairarapa—that at a time when family stress and tension are in our national consciousness, that members opposite play the sorts of games they are playing at the moment. It is a great tragedy that we cannot come together at this time and say that, as this initiative has a chance of succeeding, let us get behind it and let us make it work, instead of playing narrow, cheap political games, sneering, moaning, whining, and otherwise behaving in a generally obnoxious and unacceptable manner.

I think the honourable member has voiced some concerns about families, and, to be fair to this side of the House, if we thought this bill would deliver the solutions, we would be supportive of it. I tell that member that before this bill even emerged in any way at all, my colleague Dail Jones had a families commission bill in the members’ ballot.

💬 Hon Peter Dunne: Lifted it straight from our policy.

Dail Jones was not in the House before the election. He could not have put the bill in before the election. A clause in that bill identified a family as being what I think we all believe a family would be. If the member over there thinks this bill will address the issue, then I invite him to read his own bill—the purpose clause. There is no mention of a family in it. The nearest it gets to mentioning it is to state that the bill’s purpose is to establish a Crown entity for the purposes of the Public Finance Act 1989, to state the commission’s functions and powers, and to require the commission to have regard to certain matters and to comply with certain other obligations.

We looked at the functions clause. There are three functions under the main function clause. The first is: “The commission’s main function is to act as an advocate for the interests of families generally.” We thought that was quite good. It is a move in the right direction. But look at the second: “That function does not include acting as an advocate for the interests of a particular family or particular families in connection with a particular case or issue.” Families have to go somewhere else; the commission will not handle that.

Basically, this bill is too liberal and is hugely bureaucratic, so the select committee would not support it. It sent it back to the House. As a response, the honourable leader of United Future sent a very damning letter to all the submitters, or at least most of them, which referred to “an unprecedented and venal political stunt by these four parties”. I ask that member what is unprecedented about a bill coming back to this House. The member has been here a long time, far longer than me, and he knows that many bills have come back to this House without the support of the select committee. He knows that. He is shaking his head. Maybe I should refresh his memory, because I can think of at least one. [Interruption] In my 7 years? That member has been here five times those 7 years.

His letter goes on to state it was a venal stunt. “Venal” is probably the worst word one could use in politics to describe a fellow MP. There cannot be much worse than that. I do not take offence at a great deal, and, to be honest, if the member called me venal in the House I would not object. I would live with it. But he wrote to submitters to say that people in my party are part of a venal political stunt, which means they are open to bribery and corruption. I invite members from United Future to reflect on that. That is what the word means; that is the dictionary definition. If the member does not believe that, I invite him to check the dictionary. I know he knows what it means. I invite the member to reconsider and do what he did when he spoke about Professor Jane Kelsey. In September he said something quite damning about her, and 1 or 2 months later he was in the House retracting it. I invite the member to think, because he has a precedent of withdrawing those sorts of comments. If he thinks we are not taking it seriously, he should think again.

There is more to families than children, although they are very, very important, and I do not want to imply otherwise. I believe that, with extra resourcing for the Commissioner for Children, most cases involving children could be handled. At least the Commissioner for Children advocates on behalf of children. But does this bill cover families of mature people, older people, people who might be worried about their finances, health, and end-of-life problems?

💬 Hon Peter Dunne: Have you read the bill?

I have read the bill. I cannot see anything that says the commission would consider supporting things like end-of-life concerns, as advocated in my Death with Dignity Bill.

💬 Hon Member: Wouldn’t do that.

One of his members is saying he would not do that. The commissioners are not allowed to look at end-of-life situations and concerns that older people, older families, have.

💬 Hon Peter Dunne: Helping people kill themselves?

Older people are worried about end-of-life situations. Mr Dunne should not make light of that. It is a serious concern for many people in New Zealand. If the family commissioners were asked to look at it, would the member endeavour to stop it?

💬 Hon Peter Dunne: What? Helping them kill themselves?

It is not helping them kill themselves. The member is being frivolous about a genuine concern.

What does this definition of a family mean? Let me read the definition. The bill states: “(2) In this section, family includes a group of people related by marriage, blood, or adoption,”—all very good thus far—“an extended family, 2 or more persons living together as a family, and a whānau or other culturally recognised family group.” The little bit there that concerns me is “2 or more persons living together as a family”. Would the family commissioners be looking at, for example—I am asking the United Future members—two homosexual men who are living together and have a passionate desire to adopt children? Are they embraced as a family under this bill? Oh, the members are silent now. Paul Adams is silent.

💬 Hon Peter Dunne: They are not embraced.

They are not embraced under this bill. Well, let the honourable member tell me how he is going to control the family commissioners, because the family commissioners will be appointed under the equal opportunities legislation and the Human Rights Act.

💬 Hon Peter Dunne: They are appointed under the Families Commission Act.

But they will have to be governed by the equal opportunities legislation and the Human Rights Act. Is it impossible that one or more of the family commissioners could be homosexual?

💬 Hon Peter Dunne: Who knows? They haven’t been appointed yet.

But the member will not deny that they could well be homosexuals and want to promote this—

💬 Hon Peter Dunne: They might even be Asian people.

I hope at least one of them is Asian. But I am pointing out to the member that if we have homosexual people as family commissioners, it is not impossible that they will promote homosexual men being able to adopt children. Does United Future stand for that? I tell members that, on this side of the House, New Zealand First has real concerns about that. It is illegal at the moment, and we have real concerns about that happening. If members are opening the door there, they should be aware of it.

💬 Bernie Ogilvy: It’s illegal.

The member says it is illegal now. There is a bill likely to come before this House within the next year that will make it—

💬 Bernie Ogilvy: One at a time.

I am asking those members how they will control it with this bill. This bill is opening the door wider, and I think they are fooling themselves if they think it is not. I say to honourable members that New Zealand First is not prepared to experiment with the lives of children. The research that we have seen shows that children brought up in homosexual families are put at a disadvantage, and we are not prepared to experiment with the lives of children. I cannot get that assurance from the United Future people. They say we do not support this bill because we are frivolous and because we are jealous. Nothing could be further from the truth. New Zealand First would be keen to support something that develops families in this country, and, principally, develops the traditional family, which has served this society of New Zealanders so well in its 150-plus years of history.

💬 Marc Alexander: As long as they are not from other countries, I presume.

Does a member have a question for me? I am willing to answer a question.

💬 Marc Alexander: Would you include people from other countries?

How stupid is the member! I come from another country. How stupid is the member not to recognise that! I am the foremost immigrant in New Zealand First and proud of it. New Zealand First would support any legislation that legitimately addressed the concerns the Hon Peter Dunne raised, but this bill does not. It is far wide of the mark, and it will be very costly. There are better ways of spending the money. Widening the breast-screening age range to include women aged from 40 to 70 would be a better way of spending the money. Regrettably, New Zealand First cannot support this bill because it is too liberal and too bureaucratic. But when we are in Government next time, we will amend it.

I call Muriel Newman.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just to clarify things, United Future is interested in people having a better life, not a better death.

That is not a point of order.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to raise the point that, on the list agreed to by the Speaker and published, Muriel Newman was to have taken the sixth speaking slot. She neglected to—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): That is not a point of order.

I would like to finish my point of order, because—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): I am not going to let you finish, because it is not a point of order.

It is about the speaking order, and it must be a point of order.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): No. It is a procedural matter that I am quite aware of. I have called Muriel Newman, and I do not intend to change that.

Discussion occurred on this at the Standing Orders Committee, and I was informed by the Speaker that he would undertake to advise yourself and the other Assistant Speaker that in a situation where a party did not take the call in the order agreed to by the Speaker, it would drop down to the bottom of the list.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): The member is wasting time. The first three positions are set. The others can move around. As far as I am concerned, and while I am in this chair, ACT has not had its call, and it is going to get it. I call Muriel Newman.

The ACT party has opposed this bill right from the beginning. We see it as a $28 million bureaucracy, and we have to remind ourselves that the Commissioner for Children operates on a budget of less than $2 million. We also see it as a direct payback by the Labour Government to United Future, that—and I say this advisedly—pathetic little party that is the Government’s lapdog. I have to say that having listened to the Hon Peter Dunne’s contribution to this debate.

The major reason that the ACT party is not prepared to support the Families Commission is that it will be manned by political appointees. We know we have a Labour Party that is opposed to the family—that is, its socialist origins and ideology are anti-family. The real concern is that New Zealand will be given a $28 million spin machine to promote Labour Party anti-family propaganda. Given that, there is no way that a party like ACT can support that machine. If the commissioners were not political appointees, we probably would not have supported this bill, but at least we would have considered it.

In his speech earlier on in this debate, the Minister for Social Development and Employment mentioned that he was supporting this legislation because it was pro-family. Yet in a recent speech he said: “I know of no social science that says the nuclear family is more successful than other kinds.” That is the real colour of that Minister—he is anti-family. Coming from somebody who was a sociologist before he came into Parliament, that comment is quite extraordinary. The comment that there is no social science that shows the nuclear family to be more successful than other kinds flies in the face not only of evidence within New Zealand, but evidence around the world—and also common sense.

The married family is the cornerstone of society. Marriage is the best child-rearing institution ever invented. Contrary again to what the Minister has said in this debate, it is an institution that dates back thousands of years, and children raised in a successful married family, in general, go on to be successful themselves. But the interesting thing is that in being successful—in other words, in having good jobs, good prospects, and all the rest of it—many of those children grow up to be centre-right voters. That is why the Labour Government, and “Mr Progressive Party” sitting there, are so opposed to the family. The married family creates people who believe in centre-right philosophies of limited government, more prosperity, and all of those things.

However, I do want to acknowledge, on behalf of our party, that that is not to say that other forms of family do not also succeed really well in building a good life for themselves and their children. But on the balance of probability, other forms of families do face increased difficulties, and their children do face greater risk factors in life. Back to 1987 when Professor David Ferguson was working in Christchurch on his child development study of some 1,200 children who are now in their 20s, he warned the Lange Labour Government against accepting the enthusiastic claims about family diversity as being good for children. Back in those days—the 1980s—he warned against sole parenthood and de facto relationships, because he saw that they created instability for children.

Over the years we have also had warnings from Government departments—right up until very recent warnings from the Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services—that family instability and sole parenthood are risk factors for children. Those two factors are the strongest predictors of infant mortality; childhood injury; physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of children; neglect of children; poor school performance; youth crime; youth suicide; and teenage pregnancy. If this Government cared about the future of children, it would be promoting stability in this bill about the Families Commission, and it would be promoting marriage. That is not to say that marriage is the be-all and end-all for every couple in this country, but at least if it forms a successful type of relationship in which to raise children, it should be promoted by the Government of the day, for goodness sake!

What is really bizarre is that United Future could not even persuade the Government that it should recognise marriage in this bill. That again is an extraordinary situation, given all the pro-family rhetoric of United Future. But United Future could not end up promoting marriage, Labour could not promote marriage, so all of those comments about those parties being pro-family, I am afraid, are hollow ones. The proof is not in the pudding. The proof is not in this bill. The word “marriage” does appear in the bill, because it was in the previous legislation, but it is not promoted in the actual content of this bill and the reasons for it—as many submitters wanted it to be.

When we think about it, the Labour Party and United Future have instead been promoting instability in this term of Parliament. They have voted for a more generous welfare system. In fact, United Future voted for a weakening of the restraints around the domestic purposes benefit. If members talk to community groups out there, they will say that the domestic purposes benefit creates the greatest incentive for marriage and family breakdown of any single type of benefit, or even type of incentive. United Future has supported the Government in raising taxes, and, again, that has put lots of financial pressure on families. That sort of pressure, unfortunately, often leads to family breakdown.

But what is worse is that when families do break up, United Future and the Labour Party appear to be committed to marginalising fathers. I know that United Future will say that that is not correct, but the proof will be in what happens to the Care of Children Bill, and whether it supports shared parenting in that bill, and also supports the opening up of the Family Court. Those two changes to the law would significantly help to reduce the marginalisation of fathers in New Zealand and help connect them to their children, even though their families have broken up. I will wait to see the results of the United Future party’s and Labour Party’s deliberations on shared parenting and opening up the Family Court.

During this debate, we have heard a sanctimonious contribution from the leader of United Future, who appeared to blame all the other Opposition parties for playing politics. I say that it is the United Future party that has been guilty of playing the most terrible game of politics over the Care of Children Bill, by telling all the submitters that because the bill was discharged from the committee because there was not a majority on the committee to pass it, we were not taking any notice of all those submitters. United Future described the Opposition parties as “bloody-minded” and “rat cunning”.

I have never heard such a disgraceful rendition of what has happened to the parliamentary process in New Zealand as I have from the United Future party. It is an absolute disgrace to Parliament that United Future members could use what is a normal procedure when there is no majority on a select committee. I say it is that party that has been playing politics. United Future is very unhappy because we are not going along with its views, but we cannot do that because this is not a sound initiative.

The first point I would like to make is the simple political one: I would not even be in this Parliament, and United Future would not be here with eight MPs, if any other party in this Parliament had bothered to pick up, with a degree of sincerity and energy, the question of the New Zealand family. The National Party when in Government, New Zealand First when in Government, and the Labour Party when in Government have all had numerous opportunities to do that, but they all dumped it. We came along and put it on the political landscape, and, as a result, we are here. I am therefore delighted that today the Families Commission Bill will become law and that we have this wonderful initiative in the life of our country and our families.

We were surprised and disappointed at many of the comments that came from the other parties at the select committee stage, because the comments demonstrated, in our view, a complete lack of in-depth understanding about current thinking in family practice internationally. They looked, for example, at the strengthened provisions of clause 7, which cover the main functions of the commission, and asked what “families’ resilience” was and what was meant by “families’ strengths”. That terminology is not some trendy fad that one drops into conversations at a cocktail party to sound PC. Indeed, those concepts reflect an enormous weight of research and family practice that is well documented and is considered by those working at the grass roots level with families to improve outcomes as being the way forward. Instead of limiting the debate on how best to help families in purely income-related terms, which has tended to be the emphasis of Parliaments in New Zealand over a considerable amount of time, we need to better understand why it is that some individuals and families faced with serious threats and challenges to their well-being manage to cope well while others faced with similar circumstances do not manage to do so. Scholars and others interested in that question have developed the concept of resilience to explain that quality that holds family life together through the scheduled and unscheduled transitions in life.

Families with low resilience factors do not experience improved outcomes just by increasing their income, although that may be part of the solution, and we would certainly do all that we can to ensure that families are well resourced, and we have a range of taxation policies that will do that. The only other point I would like to make, in order to keep this fairly brief, is one that we have spoken on before. For many years in Parliament, when it comes to the New Zealand family, we have put huge resources into putting additional ambulances at the bottom of the cliff. That is right and proper, because we do need to face the realities of family breakdown in this country. But this bill, and at this point in history, I believe, is the time when it is incumbent upon us as a Parliament to start to put a fence at the top of the cliff so that we begin to understand why it is that so many people are in such dire straits in the first place, and to come up with strategies and policies that will ensure that family life over the next generation in New Zealand begins to improve and, hopefully, improve dramatically. We all need to be part of that, and the Government, the State itself, needs to give a lead.

Next week a thumping 32-vote majority in Parliament will vote in favour of extending the minimum annual holiday provisions to 4 weeks. We will do that because the majority of this democratically elected and representative Parliament wants to play a positive role in strengthening families. For the Progressive party there is no division between our commitment to strengthening families, our campaigns against drugs in our society, the campaign for 4 weeks’ leave, or the commitment to a strong economic and regional industry development programme. The Progressive party will vote in favour of the Families Commission, because our commitment is to making New Zealand a safer, more decent, and happy place in which to live, work, and raise families. An absolute majority will say yes to this progressive legislation. We have 62 votes, thanks to the cooperation between three parties that are serious about helping to strengthen families, and about auditing and monitoring all the work that we do against those criteria.