Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Families Commission redundant

A report from the Families Commission (over 100 pages) basically concludes;

The authors argue that assessments of policy impacts on family form are often based on relatively weak evidence. They conclude: "there is no evidence that government policies have been a primary driver of the major social and demographic changes affecting family form that have occurred over the past forty years" (p 89).

I find that astonishing. What's your reaction?

I argued against the creation of this commission. But on government terms its job is to research how policy affects families and advocate accordingly. If the above statement was true haven't they just shot themselves in the foot?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, yes they have shot themselves in the foot. But it's not true. The unlimited entitlement to the DPB has changed our demographics dramatically.

Single parent families are now very, very common, and there are many problems throughout New Zealand because of it. (EG Sharon Salt)

I can't think of a bigger issue facing New Zealand right now. If we could fix this one big thing, then I think you'd find many improvements in smaller issues as well.

Anonymous said...

This quango is a useless body created by the chameleon Dunne in his post-elecTion dealings with Labour.

The sooner both disappear, the better (the Comission and Dunne)

Swimming said...

the report doesn't actually say anything that already hasn't been said in other reports.
what a waste of taxpayers money.The Families Commission expects that this report will be of interest to policy-makers, academics, researchers and evaluators with an interest in families.

like whom?

Anonymous said...

Like I said before. The $28m the Families Commision cost Labour was the cheapest election deal in history. Support from Dunne to form the government and all it cost was a waffly government organisation that doesn't do anything. I don;t know how the people of Ohariu-Belmont can put up with Dunne - he is a twit.

Brian Smaller

Brian Smaller