KEY POINTS:
New Families Commission head Jan Pryor is surprisingly relaxed for someone whose new empire may be wiped out in a few months time.
Pryor, 62, is hedging her bets. When she takes over as the commission's "at least half-time" chief commissioner on Monday, she will keep her other job leading the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families at Victoria University.
Her predecessor, Dr Rajen Prasad, also 62, is tipped to be named on Labour's election list next Saturday.
For National, the most likely election winner, this may be the final insult from a body it has never liked. National MP Judith Collins has not forgotten that Prasad attacked former National leader Don Brash after his 2005 Orewa speech for "driving a wedge" between families on domestic purposes benefit and other families.
By contrast, she says, the commission has never criticised any Labour policy. She is coy about whether National will again propose merging the commission with the Children's Commissioner as it did at the last election, but it's clear that the commission is fighting for its life.
"I'm not saying the Families Commission will go, but I have expressed some concern that it's been disappointing in some of its work," she says.
It has one key political champion: United Future leader Peter Dunne, who talked Labour into establishing the commission after the 2002 election. He says keeping it would be a "bottom line" for his party to join any coalition.
Of National's other possible coalition partners, Act and NZ First both voted against creating the commission, and Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia is disappointed that it has failed to advocate for stay-at-home parents and beneficiaries who missed out on Labour's Working for Families.
Pryor is positioning herself as more neutral than Prasad. Asked about Prasad's attack on Brash, she says: "That was Rajen. I'm me.
"I'm first and foremost a researcher and an academic."
By law, the commission's "main function is to act as an advocate for the interests of families".
Dunne himself says he is happy that the commission has taken up multifarious causes ranging from family violence to paid parental leave. But when he proposed the commission in 2002, he had merged his party with the Christian-based Future NZ.
Larry Baldock, one of six Christian MPs who came into Parliament with him that year, says they wanted the commission to focus on the key problem of family breakdown, which has given New Zealand the world's second-highest rate of sole parenthood.
"We understood that family breakdown was at the root of much of our child abuse, as well as causing huge social costs," he says.
"Unless the commission was going to address that and rebuild fences at the top of the cliff, it was never going to pay for itself.
"I think one of the roles that we saw was that it would play an independent role in vetting all legislation for its effect upon families."
The Families Commission Act does require the commission to promote "stable family relationships".
But it does not say anything about vetting legislation, and in practice the commission has made submissions on only a few bills. It supported Sue Bradford's "anti-smacking" bill, another Bradford bill letting jailed mothers keep babies for two years, and Sue Kedgley's flexible working hours bill. It opposed Winston Peters' bill to delete all references in law to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Instead, Prasad has driven the commission to set its own agenda. It started by asking 3700 families about what would make their family lives better. People answered: " Time with family, good family relationships, being able to access support, and living their lives true to their own values".
In response, the commission has prioritised helping families to find a better balance between family time and paid work. It has recommended much more support for after-school care and more paid parental leave.
It's promoted better relationships by tackling domestic violence in a full-on blaze of publicity, funding the full $3.5 million cost of the current advertising campaign, "It's not okay."
Another early project found many parents were missing out on parenting education. The commission created a parents' guide on its website with links to national parent help agencies.
Perhaps surprisingly, it has won support even from smaller, local agencies that work with families on a fraction of its budget.
"They advocate on behalf of everybody, and especially non-profit organisations who are trying to work with families with low incomes and family violence issues," says Maria Levi of Manukau's Pasefika Mana Social Support Services, which survives on just $200,000 a year.
Malia Hamani of Toa Pacific, which cares for older Pacific people on a budget of $250,000, is excited about a commission project on elder abuse for which Toa organised a focus group.
"I have just attended a research forum they had in Wellington. Just listening to all the other studies, you can only say, wow, this will not happen from central government per se!"
Nationally, Parenting Council chairwoman Lesley Max says the commission has filled "a large gap" on policy for families.
Parents Centres chief executive Viv Gurrey, a National list candidate, says the commission has brought the community sector together.
"You don't very often see the Families Commission fronting things, but they are the foundation for many projects," she says. "It is a bedrock for the community sector."
Some, however, are sceptical. Ian Grant of Parents Inc, which ran seminars for 210,000 people last year with only $2.9 million, says he could have helped many more parents with the money the commission sank into researching the obvious - that children do well with good parenting.
Lobbyist Bob McCoskrie of Family First says the commission has stumbled at the "ideological judder bar" of committed marriage.
"We could produce thousands of pieces of research to show that when it's Mum and Dad and they're married, it's the best environment for children," he says.
Yet when he took British author Theodore Dalrymple to meet the commission in 2006, "he felt that every time he mentioned the word 'marriage' it was like he'd said the word 'f***'."
In Pryor, the commission has a new leader with credentials to respond to this criticism. Born in Blenheim, she did a doctorate in developmental psychology, wrote reports on child custody disputes for the Family Court in Auckland for 10 years, and has become a world authority on the effects of separation on children.
In 1997, Britain's Rowntree Foundation asked her and Australian expert Bryan Rodgers to settle a bitter argument among British experts by reviewing the international evidence on family break-ups.
Their report in 1998 reached two conclusions.
"First, on average, children whose parents separate are at risk of adverse outcomes," Pryor says.
"Equally importantly, the majority of children whose parents separate do not have adverse outcomes.
"We identified that it's not the fact that one parent leaves the home, distressing as that is. It's the mobility that occurs as a result of moving schools, it's when parents argue and fight, and when household income goes down, when parents get distressed and can't parent properly.
"So there is a period of time when things go pear-shaped for kids, but most of them within two years are back up there functioning very well."
The lesson for parents, she says, is to "keep your conflict to yourselves" and keep the children's lives as stable as possible.
Pryor and her own husband separated 20 years ago when their three children were school-aged, but her husband remained "an extremely involved parent".
McCoskrie hopes Key may announce National's policy at a Family First "forum on the family" in Mangere on September 8.
Abolishing the commission would appeal because National needs to fund its planned tax cuts.
McCoskrie's preference is to replace the commission with a more powerful Ministry of Families, tasked explicitly with scrutinising legislation for its effects on families.
While politicians argue, Pryor waits, likening the commission to a child whose parents are fighting over custody.
"A child may have an idea of what they'd like to happen when their parents are fighting. If they have information about other families, that helps them," she says.
"Families may struggle, but if they know what helps, that has to be useful."
FAMILIES COMMISSION
* Created by a coalition deal between Labour and Peter Dunne after 2002 election.
* Tasked "to act as an advocate for the interests of families".
* Has led policy work on family violence, paid parental leave and after-school care.
* May be axed if National wins the election.
