Social Workers Registration Legislation Bill

Members, the House is in committee for the consideration of Supplementary Order Paper 191 to the Social Workers Registration Legislation Bill.

It was only yesterday that we were in this House debating a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that the Minister had dumped on this House at short notice. Here we are, less than 24 hours later, correcting a mistake. It’s a lesson to the Minister to make sure that she uses the time available in the select committee. The Social Services and Community Committee report-back was back in April—10 months ago—and there was plenty of time for the work to be done to ensure that the legislation before the House had full scrutiny, allowing the chance to report it, refer it back to the Social Services and Community Committee for the scrutiny it deserved. So—no, instead, we have a sloppy, sloppy set of circumstances that mean that the legislation is back in the committee stage. Actually, I think this is the first time in my coming up to 11 years in Parliament that I’ve seen this happen. So, for those that are watching it, it’s not a regular occurrence.

This is an example where the Minister decided, after the select committee reported back and after the departmental report that didn’t recommend changes in key areas, that, actually, she wanted changes herself. The problem with that is the lack of scrutiny in terms of the detail of those changes. We’ve raised multiple issues around key areas, like the qualifications, like the scopes of practice. If it wasn’t for this SOP 191 now, today—so, another SOP—guess what? Those very complex and disputed components of SOP 187, which the Minister introduced at short notice and dumped in this House, without the regulatory impact statement, I might add—there was a May 2017 regulatory impact statement that was in this House for the committee of the whole House stage—and the Minister expected a robust debate that she then actually mocked.

So what it would mean is the scopes of practice and the education components—instead of coming in in two years’ time, they would have been coming in the day after Royal assent. That would have absolutely gutted and destroyed 8,000 social workers who do critical work in New Zealand. Minister, it’s not good enough. That is sloppy. That was rushed at the final hurdle, when it should have been addressed and it should have been referred back to the Social Services and Community Committee so that it could have had the scrutiny involved.

So I want to look at a couple of particular issues in terms of the commencement, because SOP 191 relates to the change in the commencement. One of these areas that we’re talking about—just so the committee is clear—is around what social workers will be able to do or not able to do under their scopes of practice. New section 6AAB(1)(b) in clause 8 imposes a new restriction on social workers, which is that “they practise within”—within—“the terms of their individual scope of practice”. If this mistake hadn’t been picked up at more than the eleventh hour, that would have meant that scopes of practice would have had to be written this week. If the Royal assent was this week or next week, they would have had to be written in a rush, or otherwise every single social worker would be working not within the bounds of their own legislation.

What an appalling situation that the Minister for Social Development, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, would have put an incredibly hard-working, dedicated sector of social workers in. It was an appalling position that the Minister would have put them in, and the poor Social Workers Registration Board would have had to deal with this nightmare of no making of their own. It’s just unbelievable.

The irony of this yesterday, when National members were trying to improve this particular area—so new section 6AAB(1)(b) absolutely restricts the work that social workers do. Make no mistake about it—it restricts their ability so that they have to work within a scope of practice. That would be a huge limitation and a huge issue on them. What the National members were trying to constructively do was to make improvements to that, and the Minister said that because National members had used the word “remove” instead of “delete”, we hadn’t done our work on SOPs. Guess what, Minister—guess what? The Minister in charge of this legislation is responsible for the detail, and the detail needs to be right. It is unacceptable—it is unacceptable.

The report back was in April, and members of the select committee on the National side had asked for more time to explore the issues of scopes of practice and qualifications that have been raised in the committee of the whole House stage. If the amendment on SOP 191 is not agreed to, those significant changes dumped by the Minister by an SOP will come into effect the day after Royal assent—the day after Royal assent—not in two years’ time. There’s actually quite a bit of difference in that, and I know that for the Ministers sitting opposite, who are listening to this debate and who are pretending not to, it is probably a good lesson. There’s a big difference between the day after the Royal assent and two years, but that’s what happens. That’s what happens when you remove the select committee process when, actually, it didn’t need to be removed.

National members had asked for an extension to the report back, and the Labour members on the select committee refused that request. We thought that maybe it was urgent and that maybe the Minister wanted to pass this by May or by June. Where are we now? February 2018—10 months later. In February—this month, last week—a big SOP dropped on the Table that the Minister is now actually expecting to have the support of this House for. Well, it’s shoddy. It’s absolutely shoddy. Taxpayers and, actually, the sector—the sector deserves better. The sector deserves better than to have a situation like this, which is clearly irresponsible. Actually, attention to detail is what matters. When you’re dealing with legislation, it matters.

This side of the House, over the week or 10 days that we’ve had the SOP, have worked furiously, trying to come up with tabled amendments in the committee stage to improve the bill, because the scope of practice will make it illegal for a social worker to undertake a task that is categorised as forming part of other scopes of practice. So the social workers, who are our front-line heroes in our social services, would potentially be breaking the law. But National members tried to ensure the Minister was aware of the impact of some of the changes in that SOP that was tabled, which was close to 70 pages long. But no, she didn’t engage, she didn’t consider it, and here we are wasting the House’s time, fixing up one of her mistakes.

Oh, and when we talk about wasting the House’s time, it was really interesting to hear the Minister say in the committee stage—which we have returned to today—when we were in it yesterday, that National members were wasting the House’s time. Well, when there is no scrutiny and when the select committee doesn’t have the opportunity and the public don’t have the opportunity to scrutinise legislation and to ensure it is fit for purpose, which, as of 10 o’clock yesterday, this bill clearly wasn’t—I wonder what time it was that they discovered the mistake. I wonder what time it was, because, literally, at five minutes to 10 last night—not even 24 hours ago—this bill, in the committee of the whole House stage, was being voted on.

So it would be really interesting to know what time it was that the mistake was found. I’m asking the Minister what time the mistake was found, who found it, and does the Minister understand the impact if this mistake hadn’t been picked up? Has Cabinet approved this change, by the way? It would be interesting to know whether it has been approved.

So I’ve talked about social workers being limited to work within their scope of practice, and not beyond it, but let’s have a look at the other point, which also would have come into effect a day after the Royal assent. It’s a very significant repeal, in the removal for social workers of the recognised New Zealand qualifications. Instead, it will be prescribed qualifications. Would we have had them? Would we have had them a day after the Royal assent? Good luck with that—good luck with that.

I want the Minister to understand the impact of her failure to deliver accurate legislation to this House, her failure to allow the select committee to carry out its work, and her failure for social workers up and down New Zealand if this mistake hadn’t been found.

The irony of this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 191 is that it’s meant to be about ensuring the competency of social workers, and what we know from this SOP is that the Minister for Social Development is incompetent. Why? In the committee of the whole House yesterday, when we debated clause 2, I specifically took a call. I asked the Minister in the chair to reassure the committee that the complex commencement dates were correct, and the Minister got to her feet and said “Absolutely—the bits that come in straight away on Royal assent, the bits that come in at three months, and the bits that come in at two years and at five years.”, and she said that I was wasting the House’s time by raising a question.

Well, now the next day the same Minister fronts up to the committee and wants to reverse and go back into the committee stages and make amendments to that very provision. Now, I’ve put 54 bills through this Parliament as a Minister—not once have I had the humiliation of having to come down to the Parliament and say, “Hey, I’ve screwed up. I want to patch up my mistake from yesterday.” Now, I checked the Minister for Social Development. The Minister for Social Development—this is her very first bill to get through the House, and what sort of humiliation is it for her that the reassurances that she gave to the committee yesterday were false. They were wrong. So I say: why should Parliament today have any reassurance that this botched-up bill that makes 32 changes to the timing of the new social workers registration process—how come we should assure that it’s all OK today?

It’s even worse than that; the Minister in the chair, Carmel Sepuloni, has not even had the gall to get up and to say to the committee, “Hey, look, I’m sorry. I got it wrong yesterday. I gave this Parliament reassurances that I had it all OK, and it is not.” But, can I say, it’s actually even worse than that. Let’s just go through the time line. Remember that this was a bill that was previously developed by the National Government. It was reported back to this Parliament in April last year. That’s 10 months—10 months—for the Minister to get the detail of the bill right, and she introduces an SOP yesterday, and a day later says, “Oops, I have screwed it up.”

And so to the Minister in the chair, I say this: it is very unusual. It is incompetent for you to be introducing changes to the SOP that you only changed yesterday. This SOP is contradictory to what you introduced yesterday. Can any of my colleagues in the committee recall a Minister introducing an SOP the day after they introduced another SOP and saying, “I cocked it up. I messed it up. I got it wrong.”? So I say to the Minister in the chair: you owe the Parliament an explanation. You need to explain to the committee how come you got it so wrong. You need to explain to the committee why it is that the assurances that you gave to this committee yesterday were incorrect and false. Actually, you owe my colleague Louise Upston an apology. Yesterday, when she raised questions about clause 2, you said she was wasting the committee’s time. Well, she wasn’t wasting the committee’s time, because today you’re saying—

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: You’re wasting the time.

Well, the member opposite says we are wasting the time of the House—actually, we were right. The Minister was wrong. Clause 2 was a stuff up, and why do we know that, Mr Jackson? We know that because we have the unusual precedent of the committee being asked to undo what it did yesterday. I say again: how can we pass legislation asking social workers to be competent when their Minister has proved that she is totally incompetent? I say again: we should continue to take calls because what the Parliament is being asked to do this afternoon is totally disgraceful. The Minister, yesterday, told this committee that she had clause 2 correct. We face the unprecedented—it’s the first time, I think, it’s happened under this Government, where a bill has had to be recommitted. That is, yesterday this bill was passed through all its committee stages. It was finished. The Government said that we’d got it all OK. It’s all ready to become law, and then the Minister and the Government have today introduced a motion to recommit it and to completely rewrite clause 2. I just say to members of the Government: don’t expect to manage your House agenda with this sort of incompetence and not expect any sort of explanation. They’re such an arrogant Government that they think they can botch the law one day, try and fix it the next, and not take a single call of explanation.

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: That member should listen to his whips.

Well, I just simply ask the member opposite: does the Minister opposite think that it is acceptable for the Minister for Social Development to give a reassurance to the committee yesterday that was false and untrue, without any explanation? My colleague Louise Upston has asked: when did the Minister find out that she had completely stuffed up clause 2? Is there an answer from members opposite? Well, did the Cabinet approve the new changes to clause 2, my colleague Louise Upston has asked? Is the committee any wiser about that? Was it a mistake that was made in the Minister’s office, or was it a mistake that was made by the Ministry for Social Development? Will the Minister apologise to the members on this side of the committee that raised questions yesterday about clause 2 and was told by the Minister that we were wasting the committee’s time? Will the Minister apologise to Louise Upston when she said yesterday that the provisions in clause 2 would not work, when the Minister today is admitting that indeed Louise Upston was correct?

All we have found out today is that the very legislation in which the Government is trying to ensure competent social work has been handled incompetently by the Minister for Social Development. Again, I say to the Minister in the chair: stop the arrogance, provide the Parliament with an explanation, and explain to us why clause 2 was stuffed up yesterday, and why we find ourselves in the very unusual situation of having to recommit this legislation and having to completely rewrite clause 2.

I’d also like an explanation as to why was it that the Government wouldn’t let the Social Services and Community Committee finish its job in April last year when this bill has sat on the Order Paper doing nothing for 10 months—how does that make sense? And how does it possibly make sense for the Minister to have an SOP yesterday that she has torn up today, recommitted the bill, and is now proposing to fix up yesterday stuff up?

I wasn’t expecting to have to take a call in this debate, because, occasionally, parties can work together for the best interests of this House, for the best interests of the public, and for the best interests of the people that we are seeking to serve through our legislation. This was supposed to be one of those moments. Allegations have been made from the Opposition that I have made mistakes in the process. It’s very disingenuous, actually, and I think that the general public should be concerned about that. The Opposition knows very clearly that the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) have acknowledged that it was their oversight, and that is the reason that we are back here. In fact, I was in the cafeteria at lunchtime when Simon O’Connor said to me, “Carmel Sepuloni, politics aside, I hope you’ve had a stern word to PCO.” His words to me were about why we are back here today. So I have to say that, to me, if anything, this just indicates the disarray that the Opposition is in, given that their whip gave a very clear instruction to them that we had agreement across this House that we would not re-litigate any of the debate, that we would not stand and take calls, and yet Nick Smith and Louise Upston—who Nick Smith thinks I need to apologise to—have to stand in the House and defy the whips by taking calls when it’s unnecessary.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! I took my time before I stood up, but it’s really inappropriate to bring the officials into the debate. This debate is about this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 191 and only about this SOP. So—[Interruption]—I’m on my feet. And so we need to turn our attention to this SOP.

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. In this particular case, the Minister is not at fault. The Minister checked the SOP. The wording was correct. It was formatted incorrectly by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who have written a letter of apology to the Minister and to the House, because, in fact, the information supplied by the officials was incorrectly presented. It is absolutely appropriate for a Minister to point those things out, because the question is: how did the House get into this situation? The Minister can’t answer that question if she can’t actually say that the officials made a mistake and have apologised for it.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I thank the member for bringing that to my attention. It is in the Standing Orders. I’m not aware of any letter but, according to the Standing Orders, members should not bring the officials into the debate, and I felt that that had been done.

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. We have an entire debate about why the bill is being recommitted and what the mistake was. The Minister is being challenged for not addressing that—she is addressing that by pointing out how the mistake was made and who made it.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m going to reiterate what I said before, and I’ll just allow the Minister to continue.

So now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, can I move on to give a more comprehensive explanation of why we are back here today. So to be clear, why we have recommitted to reconsider amendments to clause 2 set out in Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 191 today is because last night, when we voted on clause 2, we did not vote on the amendments proposed in SOP 187 for this part; instead, as the bill currently stands, the version put forward by the select committee is the current version.

The reason for the error—and I do need to respond comprehensively to the Opposition, given that the question has been raised over and over again and they’ve asked for an explanation from me in this House—was a drafting error by PCO, who failed to indicate that there were amendments to be voted on in clause 2 through the SOP. The proposed changes were not underlined and identified as changes, which was a significant oversight by PCO, which they acknowledge. PCO have acknowledged this, and we will be continuing to work with PCO to ensure errors like this do not continue to occur.

Why do we need to amend it? It’s essential that we put forward the right version of clause 2. Without the correction in the new SOP today, registration within scopes of practice and the other affected amendments will come into force on the day following Royal assent. As was discussed yesterday evening, it’s important that we get scopes of practice right, and we need to ensure all the proposed changes in the SOP come into force, as intended, to allow for proper consultation and preparation by the sector. So I’m making a point. I’m not having the stern talking to PCO that I was asked to or told to by Simon O’Connor, although I do appreciate his sentiment.

What I do want to point out is that we accept occasionally, even in this place, mistakes are made. PCO acknowledged they’ve made a mistake in this instance, which is why we’re back here today. Last night, I acknowledged that an older regulatory impact statement was put on the Table instead of the more up to date one, and we also pointed out that the Opposition submitted 10 SOPs that all had to be corrected because they all made no sense, and were also badly worded. So, actually, it’s not just PCO that have made mistakes in this process. We forgive them, and we are here to finish this off, and to get this very important piece of legislation through committee stage so we can get on to the third reading and assure New Zealanders that, actually, social workers that are in place are qualified, they are registered, New Zealanders can feel protected, the profession can feel protected, and we can move on from 16 years ago when this bill was first introduced and social worker registration was made voluntary, with the intention of making it mandatory. We can move on to the point where we finally get to that place that we actually all agree on—where social worker registration is mandatory in New Zealand. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Mr Chair, thank you. There’s a statement that’s commonly said: “A little humility can go a very long way.” Really, all we’re asking for here is that the process where the committee stage had gone through—and the Minister Carmel Sepuloni is right, a mistake has been made. All it would have taken was to come into the Chamber, to recognise that, and everything would be OK. But, again, what we have is a Minister who’s now stood up, who has put fault on the Parliamentary Counsel Office, attacked the Opposition, and gone on to tell us about 16 years. We all talked about 16 years some time ago in the committee stage. Again, can I remind the Minister that we are only here, where we are now, because the mistake had already been made. The extension that was asked for was to give a shorter period of time. We would have been able to have the scopes of practice. It would have all been over—done and dusted. We are only here because of the tardiness of that Minister.

As I said when I started this brief speech: a little humility would have gone a long way. I don’t propose to talk too much longer, but I just want to say we do support the bill and its original intent. We support the scopes of practice. We’re just disappointed—like those that are out there who made submissions in regards to this. And I know you want me to look at the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) because that’s what this part is all about—SOP 191, which recognises that mistakes have been made because the Minister and her ministry did not take the time to do the appropriate thing, which was to allow the Social Services and Community Committee to go through its process. And this is the reason why we’re here again, back in the Chamber; it’s unfortunate. I’ll finish off as I started: a little humility goes a long way. Thank you, Mr Chair.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. In the interchange earlier, members indicated that they hadn’t seen the letter of apology; therefore, I seek leave to table it.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. It may be tabled.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 191 in the name of Hon Carmel Sepuloni to clause 2 be agreed to.