Families Commission Amendment Bill

It is my pleasure to give a contribution to the debate around the title and commencement clauses of the Families Commission Amendment Bill. I think that gives us an opportunity to get back to the core of the bill. If this was a well-functioning bill, if the Families Commission was structured in a way to deliver what its title implies, which is advocacy for families, what would the bill in itself need to have entailed? I touched briefly in Part 1 on the debate around the advocacy function. Having a Families Commission, because all commissions through implication by the fact that they are a commission, implies that it does have a strong advocacy function. We can think of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, which is probably one of the strongest advocacy functions, and that is probably determined by the separation that it has from the Government in its advocacy role. Think of the Children’s Commissioner—again, a very strong advocacy function. So the use of the word “commission” in the title implies that you would expect the same.

My concern, though, with the advocacy function of this bill is that it is quite narrowly defined in Part 1, thereby challenging whether it should be a bill that refers to a commission. The advocacy function is defined in new subsection (3) of section 8, inserted in clause 6(4): “In performing its advocacy function, the Commission must identify and have regard to factors that help to maintain or enhance either or both of the following: (a) families’ resilience: (b) families’ strengths.” It is quite tightly defined, but even under those headings you would think we would have a Families Commission that would be willing to talk about a family’s resilience being affected by, for instance, the high cost of living. We know, for instance, that research tells us that you are likely to see considerable dysfunction in families where financial stresses start to compound. So we know that there is a correlation between things like the cost of living and how functional our families are. Those economic stresses are really important.

Why have we not heard the Families Commission talk about that in recent times? Resilience—why have we not heard the Families Commission talk about the strain on families in Christchurch? We have heard children’s advocates talk about those issues, but we have not heard the Families Commission. So it seems to me that if you were defining families’ resilience and strengths, there are plenty of advocacy roles that the Families Commission should be playing currently that we are not seeing. That is what you would expect from something that holds the title of “commission”, because that is the kind of advocacy role that we are used to seeing.

So if we are not calling it the Families Commission Amendment Bill, what would we call it? Is it the “No Family Advocacy Bill”, the “Token Gesture to United Future Bill”, the “In Name Only; After the Election We’ll Get Rid of it Bill”? There is a whole list of things, but the title Families Commission Amendment Bill is, I think, an unfair representation that probably sullies the name of other commissions that are already in operation and that do very, very good work. So I do not think the title Families Commission Amendment Bill is quite right.

Think about though, for instance, what differentiates a household with a couple of adults living in it from a family. Actually, one of the defining features, although New Zealand families classify themselves in a diverse range of ways and that is to be celebrated, is often the presence of children. That is one of the often-used defining features of a family—the presence of children, young people, or infants in that environment. You can have all sorts of make-up around their caregivers, but often the consistent thing is the presence of those children. So you would naturally expect a Families Commission to be quite focused on those younger vulnerable people in that arrangement.

Why, then, do we need a Families Commission and not just a Children’s Commissioner? What is it that it represents that is different to the Children’s Commissioner? I do not believe that that has been adequately answered by the Government or even by this bill. What is it that the Families Commission adds on top of what the Children’s Commissioner adds? A Children’s Commissioner who advocates well for children also advocates well for families. If you look after the youngest and most vulnerable in our society, you do not actually end up looking after just the family; you look after the society as a whole. This bill seems to ignore the important role of those children and the fact that—

I am pleased to take my last call in the Committee stage of this bill, the Families Commission Amendment Bill, but, again, still with a heavy heart. You would expect the title of a bill to give you some idea of what is in the bill. Simply calling it the Families Commission Amendment Bill tells us nothing, so clearly the title is inappropriate, because the bill does a number of things that ought to be reflected in the title. The one that comes to mind is that this is clearly actually the “Doing Away With the Families Commission Bill”, because it effectively does away with it. The bill has got an organisation with board members, run by a chief executive, with one person called the Families Commissioner, and there is nothing else in there that requires it to be in the form that it is. So the title of this bill would be far clearer if it was the “This is How We Get Rid of the Families Commission Bill”.

We know that the Government has not liked the Families Commission—it did not want it established; it never supported it—but it is quite interesting why now it is forced into a position where it has to support the Families Commission, but morphing it into its own image. It is only because of its coalition partner. So it could then be called the “Saving Our Coalition Arrangement and Using the Families Commission to Do It Bill”, because there is no other reason for this particular bill. There is no problem it actually solves that is a problem in the Families Commission today, except the ones that the Government and the Minister for Social Development have created. So this is saving the coalition. That is just all it is. It takes away, really, the opportunity to, as my colleague Jacinda Ardern was saying, really strengthen even further advocacy for our children and our families, but it does not do that. It could easily be called the “Saving Our Coalition Partners Bill” or the “We Don’t Like It But We Have to Have It Amendment Bill”.

But it does something far more serious than that. It actually takes away the most powerful function of the Families Commission. That was advocating for families through consulting with them; doing the research, finding out what programmes there are and what is working and what is not working, and what changes ought to occur; and then advising the Government and providing public education on those findings. That is what it was designed to do. But here we have a commission that, although it has been given an advocacy function, has actually been given the job of doing a Family Status Report. If you read the Family Status Report, it is not a Family Status Report; it is a hash of things that have been written before around families. I invite listeners and members to read it, because that is all it does. Everything that is there has already been said. So maybe it should just be called the “Doing a Family Status Report Bill”, because it does nothing else. It does not add anything of value. The Ministry of Social Development is already producing a social report. It is only a small jump for it to tweak that to actually address families, but it does not bring that in.

But the other one is that it actually brings in is a social sciences expert panel. This is probably the real bite in this particular bill, because here the Minister will appoint the social sciences expert panel. At the moment the Families Commission has access to all of the experts in the world, all of the experts in the private sector, all of the experts in our universities, and all of the experts in our various agencies that deliver this. All of that is gone; this minimum of four people will now become the experts panel. They will provide advice on what work is to be done and they will monitor the quality of the reports coming out. What is this about? This is a sham. So it is the “Don’t Trust Anybody Bill”, because it actually does away with the very intelligent resources that are already available that the commission has been using. But, no, the Minister plus one or two others will appoint four people who will be given this job.

This is corralling the Families Commission, which is why this is a cynical bill. That cynicism ought to be reflected in its title, because here is a Government being as cynical as it can be, trying to hide it in all kinds of lovely sounding terms. But, in the end, it is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Maybe that is a good title as well. Thank you.