Monday, September 07, 2009

Give that man a medal

This is most enjoyable. An excerpt from an interview by Paul Holmes with Chief Families Commissioner Jan Pryor.

PAUL Dr Pryor, isn't the fact true that you exist simply because Labour needed to buy Peter Dunne's cooperation to form a government years back, purely political invention is what you are, you can do nothing and you can make nothing happen, and it costs us eight million dollars?

JAN That’s a view that I hope is changing Paul. The Commission before I came spent about four years clarifying and focusing on what its role should be, because you're right, it was established as a political agreement. I would argue very strongly now that the Commission has earned its stripes. What we do we have three functions, we listen to families…

PAUL All bureaucracies believe in the right to exist and justify that don’t they?

JAN Well let me give you a personal account here, I until a year ago was a full time academic and researcher in a university, I was leading a research centre that was doing research on families, when I was asked if I would do this position I had to think very hard about it. I believed then and I believe even more strongly now that I can do more for New Zealand families in this position of independence, of giving contestable advice to government, to NGOs, to communities and work alongside families and communities, than I could do from the university.

PAUL Alright but certainly in its five years of existence the Families Commission has certainly not affected the child abuse stats, 12,100 kids were listed as abused or neglected by Child Youth and Family last year, 12,100, and that was two and a half thousand more than the previous year. You don’t seem to be achieving much there.

JAN Well do you know – well let me tell you what the Commission does around family violence generally, and remember there is a Children's Commissioner who focuses particularly on children,

PAUL And then there's a department of Social Development as well.

JAN Social Development doesn’t have the independence we have, but let me tell you, I as Chief Commissioner am on the Family Violence Child Support which is a very powerful body of people from everywhere, Police, government…

PAUL Who are obviously really effective in stopping family violence.

5 comments:

Berry said...

Maybe he should have also asked if it was true that the institute she was heading provided a major chunk of the 'research' done by the FC.
Also should have asked whether she in fact still holds both jobs as was initially the case.

homepaddock said...

A wonderful confirmation of how ineffective the Commission is.

KG said...

The Nats could axe at least half a dozen Departments, save millions and we'd notice absolutely no difference.
Why don't they? That's the interesting question.

Anonymous said...

No gumption.

Sus said...

*Why* don't they, KG?

Because they're statists.

End of.