Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill

Members, the House is resumed. When we broke for the dinner break, we were up to call number two on the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill, and I’ll call the next speaker. I call my neighbour, Harete Hipango.

I stand with the distinct privilege but also responsibility as spokesperson for the National Party with the portfolio of children and Oranga Tamariki. I’m always cognisant, when I do speak in an advocacy role for our children, of the importance of their voice not only being heard but being listened to.

I address the House this evening on the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill at this second reading, with considerable concern and consternation on behalf of the children, our children of Aotearoa New Zealand, who are in State welfare care—not so “wel”; in fact “ill-fared” care, with the oversight of this bill. As indicated, speaking for the National Party, it’s a privilege. But I speak this evening on the importance of our children’s voices and their views being not only heard and paid lip-service to but listened to and heeded by this Government.

For the public who may be listening to this debate this evening, the purpose of a second reading is that with the first reading of the bill, it’s passed over to the select committee and open for public submission and then scrutiny. So this second reading also is about reporting back to the House after having listened to the public opinion, after having scrutinised the law to improve it before it goes to what the next stage will be, the committee of the whole House, for further scrutiny and amendment of a bill that is deeply flawed and does not serve the interests of our children in State welfare care. So the second reading is very much about reporting back to the House what that scrutiny was and what the public submission was.

The report back to the House is some 18 pages long. The National Party, with the ACT Party, with the Green Party, and with the Māori Party have all filed opposing views to this bill. That in itself speaks volumes, but, importantly, it is the volume of the voice that has been extinguished by this Labour Government and by the Labour members of the select committee when those submissions and presentations were made. In effect, the submitters with their submissions have been placed into a very submissive position by this Government.

So I now quote, importantly, what I think encapsulates what this bill should be about and what this Government should be doing in heeding the voice and the views of our children. Dame Whina Cooper said, “Take care of our children. Take care of what they hear, take care of what they see, take care of what they feel. For how the children grow, so will be the shape of Aotearoa.” There are a total of 403 submissions that were received by the select committee; 311 of those were expressly opposed to this bill, and only eight in support. We heard oral submissions from 96 spokespersons and, significantly, the voice and the voices representing those children of experience in State care: VOYCE Whakarongo Mai, Voice of the Young and Care Experienced.

The National Party’s minority view, along with the members of the other political parties’, have been detailed in the select committee report. I acknowledge that there is so much that has been canvassed and there will be lengthy debate at the committee of the whole House in terms of proposed improvements and amendments to this bill that is fatally flawed. I say it’s fatally flawed because the fact is that the majority of the public views, voices, and submissions and from VOYCE Whakarongo representing, and an advocacy body on behalf of, those children who have been in State care, are saying this bill will not work. Effectively, what the Government has proposed to do, in listening to bureaucrats in ivory towers, is displacing, dismissing, dispensing with those with lived experience of care in the State welfare system, of those with lived experience advocating—legal experts, family lawyers, family law academics, professors—and, importantly, our community and voluntary sector organisations working in this space.

So, importantly, also what this bill is attempting to do with its oversight—which, in my view and the view of the public, is a massive oversight and dispensation and dismissal of what the public concerns are—is not only seeking to disband the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, not only gagging the commissioner but, effectively, disembowelling the office, effectively decapitating power to truth by setting up—and that was done back in July 2019—an Independent Children’s Monitor, which this Government, for some reason, considers to be independent when it was positioned in part of the Ministry of Social Development, a Government bureaucratic agency, but now sidestepped into the Education Review Office.

So the function of the Children’s Commissioner, Judge Francis Eivers, and her office, which was about monitoring investigation of complaints on behalf of children and their families and advocacy, is dismantled into three separate components and entities of the Independent Children’s Monitor. This was a done deal. Even before this bill came to select committee, it was a done deal because, back in July 2019, the Minister had set up the Independent Children’s Monitor. Effectively, the resourcing had been repositioned into the Office of the Ombudsman to deal with investigation of complaints. And the Minister said, this evening, that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner has had to refer a number of those to the Ombudsman’s office. Well, one really should look at the resourcing.

The Office of the Children’s Commissioner is resourced at $13 million, compared to the Ombudsman’s office of $40 million. It’s under-resourced, and the expectation for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner to continue under-resourced is unreasonable and unfair. This bill is flawed because it takes the view that the oversight—separating what the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, internationally renowned and a template for children’s advocacy, was doing so well as truth to power, by disestablishing, disembowelling, decapitating, and removing its effective function into what will be a commission and a board. So three separate entities of a Children’s Commissioner board, an Independent Children’s Monitor, and the Office of the Ombudsman to do what will be disconnected, disjointed, and will not have any measure of coherence or cohesion in representing best the interests and the voices of our children of Aotearoa New Zealand in State welfare care.

My time is almost up. This bill is significantly one that is flawed. The Government should heed and listen to the voices of our children who are care experienced and take that on board. We do not commend this bill to the House.

I do commend this bill to the House. I want to first thank the 400-plus submitters, many of whom had lived experience or deep professional experience with and of Oranga Tamariki. As a member of the Social Services and Community Committee and as its current acting chair in the absence of Angela Warren-Clark, I acknowledge the depth of their expertise. And I acknowledge, also, their fears that despite the strong commitments on this side of the House, this legislation is not truly intended to create real change but is yet another whitewash of a bad service, allowing it to get worse and to continue to perpetuate inadequate practice. This is our experience—and I speak as a former practitioner with experience of Oranga Tamariki myself—of previous reviews from that side of the House. That is the history that creates a certain cynicism, a certain wary suspicion of any attempt to remodel Oranga Tamariki.

But on the Government’s side of the bench, on the Government’s side of the select committee—I don’t know much about other select committees, but on this select committee, we have senior social workers and managers from within Oranga Tamariki. We have managers of women’s refuges, people who have audited Child, Youth and Family Services—going back to one of its previous incarnations. We have a Family Court lawyer and a Family Court academic, and we also have people who have lived experience as foster parents and as foster sisters. None of us—none of us—have any truck with whitewashing this service, and nor has this Government, and anyone who wants to hear that loud and clear should not only listen to Minister Sepuloni but also Minister Davis, who could not have been more clear in his comments on this bill.

It is no whitewash. We have just turned a single commissioner into a commissioner and a board with five other people around him able to take on roles, able to cover areas of expertise. How is that a gutting or a beheading of a service? We’ve just timesed it by six. We have created an independent monitoring service because, heck, that is required and it was what the Beatie report wanted. We have finally reinforced the role of the Ombudsman. Now, it was said, “Oh my goodness, we’ve cut the ability of the Children’s Commissioner to investigate.” The last time that the Children’s Commissioner investigated a complaint was around 2012. The role of investigator has always been played—for the last 10 years at least—by the Ombudsman, and the Ombudsman has assured our committee that he is thoroughly resourced and feels well and truly able to take on this role. We have further entrenched the need for cooperation. There will be no wrong door.

Now, some people say that we should continue to delay. Some people want us to wait for the royal commission. Others want us to restart the consultation process. There will always be more information. There will always be another review, another report, but do you know what else there’s going to be while we’re waiting for that? More children being failed by Oranga Tamariki. We have to start somewhere. This may not be a perfect system—no system is perfect—but that’s why we’ve built in the review process. We are not so arrogant as to say that we are developing something perfect, but, for heaven’s sake, not one more child should be failed, and nothing that we can do on this side will be left undone to make sure that this system starts to meet the needs of children and whānau, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, it gives me no pleasure at all to be standing to speak to this bill, the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill, tonight at its second reading, because I know that this bill is going to be train wreck. I know that this Government has closed its mind to delaying its progress, and we’ve just heard that quite vehemently from the previous speaker, Dr Emily Henderson. A delay would actually create a more fulsome consultation with children, young people, agencies, and their families. A delay would also enable the findings of the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in State care to complete its work and to report back with its recommendations. That report back is due in June of next year, and I imagine there will be recommendations for change that come back with that report. They will be relevant to what this bill is seeking to achieve, and I argue that we owe it to the work of that inquiry and the people that have contributed to the information to wait until that inquiry is complete so that we can do a proper job and get it right the first time.

The other reason that this bill needs to be delayed is because of the farce of the consultation process that was conducted. The outcomes are significant once they’re implemented, so those with the most to contribute needed time to gather their thoughts, to discuss with colleagues, to think about those that this bill will impact on, and then to prepare and offer feedback. So what did the Government members on the select committee choose to do? They chose to put out the consultation, open it up for submissions on 22 December, and the submissions period closed on 26 January. To give full credit to those submitters, the 374 submissions that the committee received, thank you for giving up your Christmas break to put your thoughts into your submissions on this bill. And, out of those 374 submissions, eight submissions expressed their support for the bill. In fact, one submitter told the select committee they were consulted in the preparation of this bill, they were consulted about the aspiration and what they wanted to achieve, but, sadly, they were not told what the mechanism for doing that was going to be. So there were a few boxes ticked in the consultation phase, but the cold, hard reality is that those with the most to contribute were excluded: the voice of care-experienced children and young people. I do give credit to VOYCE Whakarongo Mai for the time that they have put into their submission on behalf of those people.

Now, this bill seeks to dismantle the role of the Children’s Commissioner, a position that has been held for 33 years. It is extremely trusted, it is well known to the public, and I believe that it is of particular concern to those children and young people who are in State care. We do say, and I support the fact, that the bill’s objectives are to strengthen the independent monitoring and complaints oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, because they are admirable goals, but this bill will not get us there. If we compare this bill to other radical changes that this Government has implemented into systems across sectors like health and tertiary education, we can have no faith that the changes in the oversight of Oranga Tamariki will be successful and deliver the outcomes that are suggested. The role of the Children’s Commissioner is a precious one, I believe, and even the appointment of a Children’s Commissioner is a very special position to hold. No one should be afraid of having someone who is completely independent of Government. I have to say, in my observations over the years, the former Children’s Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft did no favours to the Government that appointed him, and nor should he, because that was not his role; his role was to monitor and advocate for children, and that’s exactly what he did. Sometimes those messages are difficult to hear, but that is how you build a system that is in continual improvement mode and will always be open to that improvement.

We had a lot of submissions to work through, and that was done over a period of a few weeks, but there are a few that I would like to particularly focus on—one in particular, from one submitter. It has been talked about today—about the role of monitor and advocate—and the bill seems to assume that the two roles are completely incompatible. But, if that is the case, then, we have to wonder why the legislation was designed in that way in the first place and has been operating, in terms of the Children’s Commissioner’s role, so successfully for such a long time. As my colleague Harete Hipango mentioned before, it is only because of the resourcing of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner that possibly their workload has been a bit hard for them to manage. But that has a simple solution; we don’t need to set up a whole new bureaucracy in order to make that office more efficient.

The issue around the advocacy and monitoring was pointed out to us in one submission, and I’d just like to point to a couple of those—the Human Rights Commission, for example. Its functions include to advocate and promote, to be an advocate, and to monitor and analyse progress. The other one, the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, their functions include: to advocate for the collective interests of people who experience mental distress or addiction, and to monitor mental health services and addiction services and to advocate for improvements to those services, because robust monitoring leads naturally to advocacy. So I suggest that this is a bill looking for a problem to solve, because there is no need to separate the functions of advocacy and monitoring. It’s worked extremely well in other departments, and I can tell you that this is not unique to New Zealand. Those advocacy and monitoring roles are used across Australia, in many states over there, as well.

There were some submissions that, I guess, were quite blunt, and I’m not surprised by that. When we heard from one submitter, they talked about the independence of the monitor. In their submission, they suggested that that was an abuse of the word “independent” because, by putting the monitor inside the Education Review Office—and we were told by the Minister earlier tonight that that’s the backhouse support—the cold, hard reality is that that is a ministry that is overseen by a Minister, and it is at the will and whim of the Minister and the Government of the day as to how they operate. I would suggest that perhaps what is happening here is that the Government’s abysmal performance across a range of their activities is the reason they’re absorbing the monitoring of Oranga Tamariki into the Education Review Office so they can better control the results of that monitoring. This role needs to be totally independent of Government and its Ministers, and it cannot have the confidence of the public when it sits inside an existing ministry—it’s not even dedicated to this role.

So I urge the Government: do not be afraid of honest feedback and criticism. This is how systems and processes are improved, this is how outcomes are improved, and that’s what we want for our children. We want the outcomes for those kids who are in care to be better—always better. I don’t believe the Government wants a watchdog; I believe it wants a lapdog.

Fa‘afetai tele lava, Mr Speaker. As always, it’s a privilege and an honour to take a call in this House as the member for the beautiful Ōtaki electorate. Can I first start by quickly acknowledging the passing of two Māori wāhine toa rangatira in the Horowhenua area: whāea Helen Hori Te Pa and Linda August. My aroha goes out to the Hori Te Pa and the August whānau, who do so much for the Horowhenua and the Ōtaki electorate.

Now to the bill, the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill. I would also like to thank those who submitted, both oral and written, for sharing their stories but also their heartbreaking experiences. I know that was really hard for them. Being part of a really hard-working and very busy Social Services and Community Committee, I’ve been looking forward to making a contribution on this bill, because that means that we are that much closer to ensuring a much more accessible complaints system for whānau, for tamariki, for rangatahi, and for our communities who find themselves having to navigate what is currently a really messy and, at times, closed process. This bill strengthens the independent complaints oversight and investigations related to Oranga Tamariki.

Having had care of tamariki in our whānau as well for a number of years, and throughout that time having real struggles as a whānau to understand, feel welcome, and navigate that space—a system that was really foreign to me and my whānau—was at times really frustrating and actually quite depressing. We felt really let down by the complaints process and then, of course, felt like we were letting down the tamariki that we had in our care and, actually, his whānau as well that we were trying to plan a return to home with. We tried to utilise the complaints process. Even trying to find out where to start, someone to help us in that space, someone to talk to us and not look down at us and not talk down to us—I mean, talk language that we could understand so that we could do the best we could to support this tamariki in our care and support the return to a home for that whānau—was so frustrating and heartbreaking. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the iwi providers and the NGOs in the Ōtaki electorate that supported that tamariki in our care, our whānau, through that space, I think would still be stuck in what’s currently a really horrible process.

This bill will ensure that complaints like that and the complaints process is accessible to all. It will create a framework for the monitor and the Ombudsman and the commission to work together—to work together for the betterment of our tamariki and our whānau. The changes made already to this bill from our select committee process, which also shows that this Minister is listening, especially ensuring a Chief Children’s Commissioner who will also chair the board, and giving the Ombudsman special powers to act really quickly when receiving those complaints from our tamariki, are going to make a massive difference in terms of tamariki and whānau navigating this space. Oranga Tamariki needs real change, not just a name change, and it doesn’t just need band-aids. We can’t keep putting band-aids on this; this needs proper change.

I want to thank Minister Sepuloni and the officials and this Labour Government, actually, for being brave enough to say, “We’re not going to keep putting band-aids on it. We’re going to do some real change.” This is what real reform looks like. Real change is needed to ensure the safety of our babies, of the wellbeing of our whānau, and to make sure that this cycle doesn’t carry on. This is a great place to start. I fully support this bill, and I already see the difference it’s going to make to whānau.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to start my contribution tonight with three quotes from submitters to the royal commission of abuse in State care. Firstly, “the taking of Māori children has been a cost that has been both intensely personal and inherently political. The presumed right to do so was derived from the same racist presumptions of European superiority that marked colonisation as a whole, and the attendant belief that indigenous children needed to be ‘saved’, ‘civilised’, and ‘protected’ from themselves.” That quote, of course, came from the wonderful Moana Jackson. Then, Dr Alison Green: “The trauma we are carrying is killing us. I agreed to give evidence at this hearing because I want my whānau to have better lives, to be respected as the young people they are, and the elders they will be. Hardly a day goes by when I’m not reminded of the trauma we live.” And then Keith Wiffin: “Nothing breaks my heart more, to see the continued appalling rates of abuse coming out of those homes and institutions today. The historical and the now are inextricably linked. We have not learned from the past.”

The royal commission, which has been mentioned several times this evening, found that about 40 percent of people in this country who have been in care have been abused. That’s about 250,000 people in this country who have been abused in supposed care. They recognised this as historical and also, I will quote them, “It continues to this day.” Sixty-seven percent of children in State care are Māori. Seventy-six percent of children harmed while in State care are Māori. Māori, Pasifika, and disabled children have been and continue to be disproportionately harmed by our misnamed child protection services.

The royal commission is hearing from survivors right now. Yes, they’ve put out an interim report, which has been mentioned, but at the time they put out the report they’d only heard not even a fifth of the evidence that they expect to hear. They hadn’t even started to engage with the Children’s Commissioner on the information that they hold. They were only identifying their research gaps to fill. The bulk of their report was starting to tell us the stories and to encourage others to bring their voices. So to be saying in this House that, actually, this bill responds to the royal commission report, particularly when the royal commission forum—made up of survivors and experts who are monitoring that process and have been for many, many years—told all of us to stop this bill, that they saw this as a pre-empting of the process; they did not say, “Go do this now, fix it later. You’ll give credit to our voices, our spilling of our trauma, to prevent harm in the future. Don’t worry about that, carry on and we’ll agree for you to fix it later.” That is not what they told us. To hear from the other side that this is so urgent in terms of significant reform that we ignore those voices, that process, gives me a pain, if I’m honest.

I really want to speak, too, to the point, and to recall that quote from Moana Jackson, around the harm of colonisation and how deeply entangled with our child protection services it is, and to acknowledge that what we’ve heard from Minister Sepuloni is, “Well, there were 22 hui in 2019. That’s our commitment to honouring Te Tiriti. That’s partnership.” Those hui were before the Waitangi Tribunal reported. That was before the Whānau Ora inquiry into abuse in care, before the ombudsman report, before the Children’s Commissioner’s two reports around what is happening in our child protection system. People, there was no engagement with Māori after that evidence was on the table, and there is no evidence of formal Te Tiriti engagement with Māori after the bill was drafted. That is not partnership.

It has been actually reviewed by the Auckland University Aotearoa Centre for Indigenous Peoples and the Law, which put out a report last week that found that the bill, as it sits on the Table today, breaches the Crown’s obligations under Te Tiriti and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in substance and in process. They, on scrutiny of this bill and the process in developing it, have called on the Government to taihoa and engage with Māori on the transformation of Oranga Tamariki, including its oversight and any reconfiguration of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, in a way that recognises their status as Te Tiriti partners, that recognises Māori rangatira over the care and protection of tamariki Māori and their rights under the indigenous declaration.

We’ve got a royal commission forum telling us to stop a very early-stage engagement with that process, and we have a very clear message that the consultation does not meet the requirements under obligations of partnership, which is so vital if we are to have any hope of our child protection system no longer being a tool of colonisation, which it is, actively. We have so much evidence of that. And then we also had the 403 submissions, which have already been mentioned several times, from care-experienced young people, from, basically, our entire children’s sector: lawyers, health practitioners, Starship Hospital, academics, including those with deep experience and knowledge of Government. These are not naive people who do not know how to read legislation, which, to me, was the suggestion from the Minister, of, “Oh, people just don’t understand this. They think it’s, you know, sitting within the Education Review Office and we bring it, and there are—people don’t.”

Some submitters, admittedly, had that confusion, particularly young people who found the legislation, and the time frames to be able to understand it did not enable their full participation. But there were many, many submitters who are and have been actively involved in helping Government shape legislation in the past, who said that this was problematic and needed to stop. And it is not enough for members on the Labour Party to be able to say, “We’ve got experience. We care deeply about children. Our views, our few people’s views, count more than all of those other perspectives and that deep, deep knowledge that came from many of those submitters.” It just does not stand up.

Then, in the most possibly—I always find the Tiriti perspective the most important, and it’s hard to separate from the royal commission perspective. But then we have the perspective around ensuring that we’re meeting our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is about ensuring that children’s voices are heard and informing the decisions, particularly effective. The Children’s Commissioner is their agency, and they had no say in this complete restructure of it. It’s their agency. It’s to carry their voice. And they had no opportunity to say, “This is what we want. This is how we want people to represent us and keep us safe.” The young people who have been telling this Government to stop need to be heard. Shame on Labour.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m just checking another member didn’t want to take a call.

Simon Court: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Dr Craig. We do have a member—Karen Chhour—who is intending to make a call remotely. So could I ask the Speaker and the Clerk if they have got Karen Chhour online.

My apologies. I do have Karen Chhour online, and apologies to you, Dr Craig. I do have Karen Chhour online. Apologies to you, Karen. I call you now.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It kind of saddens me that I’m having to speak to this bill today; I was hopeful that it wouldn’t get this far and get past select committee and into the House for second reading. Sat through a lot of submissions from young people who expressed huge concerns around how this is going to affect them, in that they feel that they won’t feel safe under this new direction.

Now, it’s OK to sit there and say our Social Services and Community Committee was full of lawyers and advocates and caregivers and all this other stuff, but until you’ve been on the end of a system that has broken you down to the point where you don’t know where to go, you can never really fully understand what it feels like to be a youth that has got absolutely no strength left in them to fight anymore. These youth are up here fighting for the rights of the next generation and the people that come after them so that they don’t suffer the same fate as those in the past that have been ignored and unheard. These are not just youth that don’t know what they’re talking about. These are youth that have been through the pain of a system that has let them down. These are youth that understand the consequences when Oranga Tamariki and complaints systems don’t work.

I get emails on a regular basis that tell me that the system right now isn’t working. But they’re also telling me that this new design is going to be even worse than what we’ve got already. The Children’s Commissioner has built up a brand of trust, and in order for an oversight system to work, there needs to be trust. And right now, the children and young people and organisations that represent these young people are saying that that trust will be completely gone under this new system. Sometimes perception is important as well. Sometimes the fact that the youth do trust the Children’s Commissioner is enough to stop, sit back, pay attention, and listen to what they’re saying.

These are youth—that I had the pleasure of going to a meeting not that long ago—who spent three years putting together a document especially for people like us who sit in Wellington and don’t listen. They wrote a document especially for us to understand how to communicate with them, how to listen to them, and how to make sure that they are heard in a correct manner. Any member on the other side of the House that decides in the future that they want to engage with young people, I recommend that you look for this document: Kia Tika, Kia Pono – Honouring Truths. It’s an ethical framework for engaging with children and young people who are care experienced. These are the ones that are affected by this bill. These are the ones that have to go through life being let down by our system. These are the ones that know what it feels like when we get it wrong, and they are telling us that we are getting it very, very wrong.

Now, I would like to appeal to those on the other side of the House to take a step back for a moment. Think really hard about the way you vote on this, as the decision you make today will affect many families and young people in care. If you even have a sliver of doubt that this will not improve the outcomes for our young people, you must, in all good conscience, vote against it progressing any further. Sometimes the hardest thing we can do in life is put our own agendas and ambition to the side and make the choice to do the right thing, even if it upsets those around us, because this isn’t about us; this is about the next generation. We are the caregivers of the next generation, and we can’t afford to keep letting them down. This Government and past Governments keep making decisions on behalf of our youth, based on our adult knowledge, based on our education, based on what we learnt in a classroom. But unless you are on the other end of it, you will not be able to understand truly—truly—how this affects you for the rest of your life if you get it wrong. We really, really urge that the Labour Government take a moment, sit back, and reflect on those submissions. I watched and I heard and I saw the pain in the eyes of some of the people that came to submit. These children didn’t only just give their voices, they gave a part of themselves to us and they deserve to be listened to.

There are many concerns around separating the monitoring, the advocacy, and the oversight of this system, confusing young people about where they need to go. It’s all right to say, “They can go to the Children’s Commissioner, and then they can direct them where to go”, but it takes huge courage to even get through that door in the first place—to the Children’s Commissioner—and then you’re saying that the Children’s Commissioner has to turn these kids away and send them off to another resource. It just feels like these kids will get passed from place to place to place and get lost in the cracks on the way. Advocacy and oversight and monitoring can all work together. The Children’s Commissioner has built up a brand of trust. That’s what we need. Oranga Tamariki is a system that is not trusted. Unfortunately, it’s a system that is known to be manipulative and untrustworthy. So we need to have a way where we can make our youth feel like they can trust who they’re going to.

I wonder if anyone’s even asked the Children’s Commissioner—even though they may not have done an official investigation for a while—how many complaints have come their way that they’ve advocated for, and it hasn’t had to get to the point of investigation because their advocacy has managed to fix the problem before it gets there. And the fear of being investigated by a bold Children’s Commissioner who is willing to stand up and say what needs to be said is enough to get the organisation to pull their head in. So next time a member from the other side of the House stands up and says that young people and their voices matter the most to them, just consider: can the youth and the agencies and the advocates that came before us in the select committee really have faith in those words if you vote for this bill today? With all due respect to the member Emily Henderson, there may be experiences in there where you’ve gone through university and the member has learnt to be a lawyer and an advocate for children, but have you been on the other side of when things go wrong, and really understand the implications on a young person’s mental health, on a young person’s self-esteem, and who they will grow up to be when they are let down? So I stand on behalf of ACT today and fiercely oppose this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to speak on this bill. I’ve only just joined the Social Services and Community Committee, and so I wasn’t actually on the committee when they heard the submissions, but I am very familiar with the advocacy work of the Children’s Commissioner, and so I’d like to focus my comments today on those aspects, because over the last few years we’ve had some very strong advocates in the area, particularly of child health and child poverty, and I do remember working alongside and with, over previous years, Children’s Commissioner Dame Cindy Kiro and also Dr Russell Wills on that advocacy around child poverty.

I think the issue we’ve got is that the needs of New Zealand’s children and young people are incredibly diverse, and so I was really pleased to see that the advocacy functions of the Children’s Commissioner would be strengthened in this bill. Basically, what we’re putting in place is a Children and Young People’s Commission with a clear legislative mandate to advocate for all children and young people in Aotearoa. The addition of a board will mean that we’ve actually got a wider range of skills and experience around the table, and so, basically, what the requirement is is that half of the board will need to have Māori knowledge and understanding of tikanga Māori, so bringing much more of that expertise around the table but also having the ability then to have people with expertise in Pacific communities, disability, and a whole range of other aspects, because there’s a significant amount of advocacy work that needs to be done, and strengthening that is really important.

In response to a lot of the submissions, there was a real sense that there was a need for a clearly identifiable advocate, and so as we’ve had canvassed tonight, the committee recommended that we have a Chief Children’s Commissioner, who will also chair the board, so that there’s that single person people can focus on, but that also allows for that diversity and experience around the table. I think one of the other things I understand people were advocating for was having it very clearly spelt out that the Children and Young People’s Commission could report directly to the Prime Minister on matters affecting children’s rights. While there was no preventing that happening in the current legislation, it wasn’t spelt out, and so that is a change that, again, the select committee has recommended.

But, basically, the independence of the commission won’t be changed, and it will remain an independent Crown entity. So I think this is an important bill, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the impacts it’ll have on strengthening the advocacy that the Children and Young People’s Commission can do on behalf of the whole diverse range of children and young people in our country. I commend this bill to the House.

I call Melissa Lee for five minutes.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It is rather unusual for me to be standing and speaking on the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill because I don’t actually sit on the Social Services and Community Committee, nor did I sit on it during the hearings. Having said that, it is an absolute pleasure to have been given the opportunity to speak about how wrong this bill really is.

As members of Parliament, we often get terrible stories of people who have been abused as children or who have actually been in the system of Government services like Oranga Tamariki that have the oversight of children who are on their own with no guardians, for example. When children come into the system, it is often a given that they have the worst possible outcome because Government does not do the function of carer very well.

When a Government decides to overhaul a system that is broken or is not functioning properly, I would have thought that the people who have not been served properly are the very people it should have consulted with, and I haven’t participated in the select committee, but from the speeches that I’ve heard so far in this House, it is very, very clear that this Government has an agenda. Those members are not interested in what the children have to say, nor are they interested in the views of the people who submitted to the select committee, or the views of the Opposition, because they are arrogant in thinking that the Labour Government knows what’s best for everyone in this country.

Harete Hipango: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

MELISSA LEE: Exactly right, Ms Harete Hipango.

I think it was the Prime Minister, in her recent Harvard commencement address, who said—and I quote her—“Democracy can be fragile. This imperfect but precious way that we organise ourselves, that has been created to give equal voice to the weak and to the strong, that is designed to help derive consensus—it is fragile.” Those are the very words of the Prime Minister of this country, who apparently cares about the children of our nation, and this is the bill that that Government brings to this House to reduce the mandate of the Children’s Commissioner.

Not only is the Children’s Commissioner the one person who should have more power to give voice to our children but that commissioner is now only one of six. Tell me, does that mean that that power is reduced? It’s being watered down, in my opinion. I may not know the system very well because I haven’t really been involved in the bill from the beginning and haven’t even heard the submissions, but it really, really makes me very upset. There are parents on that side of the House. I would urge the Labour members who are parents, who care about their children, to look at the children who do not have parents and who rely on the State to look after them and provide them with the protection and safety that they so deserve.

Someone once said “Look into the eyes of the children and you see the future of the nation”. What do we see in the children who have been abandoned or who have been abused? We still see hope. Let’s actually not abandon their hope by doing bills like this.

This bill should be dumped, and the Labour Government should be ashamed of bringing this bill to the House. Those members should be hanging their heads in shame and unable to look at those children’s eyes, because if those members actually think that they’re doing the best for the children of this country, they are very sadly mistaken. I do not commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te W’are. I rise on behalf of Te Paati Māori to speak to the second reading of the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill. We actively opposed this bill at first reading, and we continue to oppose it now. The submissions received by the select committee only serve to confirm and strengthen our view that it is reform that is short-sighted, breaches Te Tiriti, and, to be perfectly honest, is downright dangerous. In the words of the submission from leading Māori public-health advocates Hāpai te Hauora, “[The bill] will not only stagnate any attempts to pursue better outcomes for tamariki and whānau engaged with Oranga Tamariki but may even perpetuate the harms and dysfunction of the current Oranga Tamariki system at disproportionate and irreparable rates.”

It is obvious that the Crown has learnt nothing from the constant controversies surrounding Oranga Tamariki. This is a systemically broken organisation. Racism, paternalism, and cultural disregard run rampant. And yet, in this bill, the Government relegates tangata whenua oversight to a Māori advisory board under a Crown agency within the Education Review Office. It would almost be laughable, if it wasn’t so disgraceful. There is no Government department that needs robust, independent, and Treaty-compliant oversight more than a department that has responsibility for child protection.

As Moana Jackson, who’s been quoted quite a lot tonight, said, the Crown has no right to put our children into State care. Our role, therefore, must be to dismantle these Crown systems of oppression and, in its place, devolve power and resources to w’ānau, hapū, and iwi through a mokopuna Māori agency as affirmed in Te Paati Māori’s policy. As we work towards that goal, we must hold Oranga Tamariki to account at every step on how it treats every single one of our babies in every w’ānau, community, and region across Aotearoa. We must hold their feet to the fire and say, “Not one more mokopuna will be stolen from their w’ānau, hapū, and iwi—not one more child.”

Despite the need for much-greater and more independent oversight and monitoring, the Government remains determined on changing the monitor of Oranga Tamariki from an independent Crown entity to a departmental agency, when this inevitably reduces the independence of the oversight. In no way does the bill provide for the Te Tiriti o Waitangi guarantee of tino rangatiratanga of w’ānau, hapū, and iwi over the care and protection of tamariki Māori. It also weakens the role of the Children’s Commissioner, a role which has proven to provide important advocacy for tamariki Māori.

As was so accurately put in the submission of Hon Dame Tariana Turia, Dame Areta Koopu, Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, and Lady Tureiti Moxon, this bill relegates tangata whenua to the provider level and, effectively, maintains a system that is destructive. Despite submissions from dozens of kaupapa Māori organisations, hauora groups, community groups, Māori legal academics, and NGOs, the Government continues to ignore their calls for change. Of 403 submissions on this bill—403 submissions on this bill—only eight were in favour. A mihi to the young 16-year-old Ihorangi Reweti-Peters, who’s been upstairs and has been giving evidence on abuse in care, actively opposing this, like many submitters. The Crown has not listened. This is an act of extreme arrogance and represents an abuse of colonial power that has no place in this 21st century.

Te Paati Māori opposes this legislation in the strongest possible terms. We will seek to amend the bill as drafted, and we’ll continue to work with our people to stop this. In the words of Dr Fleur Te Aho, “The bill cannot progress unless these fundamental issues for Māori are addressed. It also cannot proceed until the bigger-picture issue of how Oranga Tamariki will be overhauled and how Māori will lead this transformation is taken.” You have been told by the most traumatised to stop. It’s truly heartbreaking to watch this and to watch you proceed with this bill. It is shameful. Te iwi Māori will not let it stand. We do not support this. Tēnā tātou katoa.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. This evening, I want to begin by acknowledging our caregivers, who have for many years cared for children of the State. This evening, I want to rise and acknowledge our Oranga Tamariki staff, community leaders, community activists, those who fight for the right of our tamariki, of our pēpē, of our rangatahi. But, most of all, this evening, I want to rise and acknowledge the children who are living and have lived in State care, the challenges that they’ve experienced, the challenges, sadly, that some of them probably tonight are experiencing. I rise tonight and acknowledge them, and the reason I stand is I want to do right by them.

Now, I actually, to be really frank with you, don’t really want to speak on this piece of legislation, not because I don’t believe in it but because I dream of a Parliament, I dream of a nation, where Oranga Tamariki is a redundant organisation, where the State doesn’t have to be involved in the care and protection of our tamariki. But, unfortunately, we live in a time when the State must be involved and must do what they can to protect our young people.

Now, we could do nothing and allow what’s happening to continue to happen, or we could put things in place and begin to work on it. For myself, I am acutely aware—in fact, this weekend I was reminded—as I buried one of my foster boy’s fathers, of his journey as a young person in care, of his journey as a young person going through youth justice, of his journey of actually not being particularly listened to or heard or respected within our State care system. So I stand here today to ensure that systems are in place that can ensure the future of young people in care is protected.

Now, there’s one thing I want to just reflect on in the select committee process that came out of this for me, and I kind of knew it but it became really starkly clear to me. It was that this place isn’t particularly accessible. This place isn’t particularly accessible, whether it be if you have a disability particularly, whether it be language, whether it be understanding what is going on, and that’s been talked about a few times tonight. So, for me, listening, a learning I take from this is: how do we be the most inclusive and open Parliament in the world when it comes to not only working with our young people but working with all people throughout Aotearoa? That’s important to me, and some of the conversations with some of the young people we spoke with—they spoke very strongly about that and how that could work.

This evening, I just want to leave you with a line that hit me actually really hard from one of our young submitters. It talked about one of the divine spark of our mokopuna—the divine spark of our mokopuna. I’m not going to claim that this is perfect, but this is something that we put in place to ensure that the oversight of the Oranga Tamariki systems is better than it is now for the divine spark of our mokopuna. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition to the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill, in this, its second reading.

I want to acknowledge the heartfelt and knowledgeable voices of those who have spoken in opposition to this bill tonight—across all the parties in this Parliament, aside from Labour. I want to acknowledge the heartfelt way in which they have expressed themselves.

The supposed policy objective of this bill is to promote and improve the Oranga Tamariki welfare system and, subsequently, the outcomes for children and young people in New Zealand. This in itself is laudable, but National believes the Government is risking the safety and welfare of children by steaming ahead with this bill despite its significant flaws and despite the significant opposition to it from the public and the sector. The safety of our babies, our children, our young people is of utmost importance, but National cannot and will not support a bill that weakens protection for children—as this bill does.

This bill is the result of the Government pulling together a poorly thought through Wellington solution to a very real problem—protecting our children from harm—and then trying to rush it through Parliament, hoping no one would notice. It is simply disgraceful that a matter so important as protecting children from harm could go through a truncated consultation process: a submission process timed to coincide with the Christmas holiday break, a press release going out on 22 December with the submission period closing on 26 January. There is not one person in this House that does not know putting a press release out on 22 December is designed to silence detractors.

That this Government has stooped so low as to take a very significant problem like the safety and wellbeing of our children and play games with a consultation process like this is simply wrong, and there should not be one member of this Government sitting here feeling proud of what they have done. Yet, despite the cynical attempt to silence detractors, despite this flawed submission process, 403 written submissions were put in over that holiday period, 96 oral submissions were heard by the select committee, and the vast majority—311 submitters—expressed strong opposition; eight submitters expressed support.

Unlike the Government, we have read and listened carefully to the submissions from the many organisations who work with and advocate to improve the lives of our young people every day. Like the submitters, our view is that the removal of the role of the independent children’s commission and replacing it with a board—where its functions will be shared between three different organisations—will water it down, will mean more bureaucracy, a less effective voice for advocacy of children.

We have railed against this Government putting more into bureaucracy on so many different things. But on this particular issue—the safety and welfare of our children—it defies belief that this Government could seek to do this. My colleagues have explained very carefully that the Government needs to listen and actually hear what the vast majority of experts and organisations who work closely with our children are saying in opposition to this bill.

National is committed to ensuring there is a strong, independent advocate for children. We believe the current structure of the children’s commission that operates under enables this advocacy. Over the 20 years, Children’s Commissioners have been incredibly effective. There have been some fearless voices in the Children’s Commissioner role, and they should be fearless voices who can speak unimpeded by cumbersome bureaucratic structures set up to water down their voice. The Children’s Commissioner is a well-known, established, and proven role that has the trust and confidence of the public for monitoring and investigating complaints and advocacy. The fact that the Children’s Commissioner is often a vocal critic of the Government of the day, whoever is in Government at that time, should be seen as a sign of success, rather than something to be done away with as an inconvenience. They must be heard.

There has been many organisations and people saying the passage of this bill should be paused. The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care is ongoing, its final report and recommendation due in 2023. Why on earth would this Government not wait for that? To make significant changes to the role of the Children’s Commissioner before any findings have been made public from the royal commission of inquiry is an absolute disservice and disrespect to the victims who have come forward during the inquiry to share their stories. We here in Parliament should heed the voices of survivors—who have courageously shared their experiences—before deciding what arrangements serve the best interests of vulnerable children.

The sector was not supportive of the bill. Serious concerns were raised by the sector about the bill, in particular the significant changes to the children’s commission that hadn’t been signalled in advance. This and the disgraceful shortened time frame for submissions led Save the Children to initiate a petition which 10,700 people supported. The petition asked the House of Representatives to retain the Children’s Commissioner as a named role with authority to report directly to the Prime Minister and to consult with children before progressing the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill.

VOYCE - Whakarongo Mai, which stands for Voice of the Young and Care Experienced—established in 2017, an independent charity organisation that helps to advocate for the approximately 6,000 children with care experience—should be listened to. The Government did not engage with VOYCE during the development of the bill. Unbelievable and a travesty. Then VOYCE submitted on the bill, thinking that the process of democracy would hear their account. But, again, their submission was not taken seriously.

Opposition comes from so many different organisations, from so many experienced people in this sector. The Government should be ashamed of taking this bill forward.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on this very important bill, the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill. Now, I’m going to start by talking about the select committee briefly. We see in the select committee report that, despite the very clear disagreement about the bill, the select committee was unanimous in making the changes that it suggested—so congratulations there. We also see in the select committee report that some effort was made to engage with young people and to do things differently in the select committee process. So there was special thought about the time when young people would be wanting to make submissions—after-school hours is an obvious one, sitting from 3.30 p.m. to 6 p.m.—also ensuring that, if requested, the oral submissions by children or young people would not be live streamed or posted on Facebook. There was a range of methods that the select committee did to ensure that participation, and I commend them for that work.

I also want to acknowledge the membership of that committee. We heard from my colleague Dr Emily Henderson about the range of skills and life experiences on that committee on the Labour side. I also want to acknowledge around the House. This is a particular select committee which does have deep knowledge and real interest in these issues, and I believe everybody who’s spoken about this bill very much cares about the wellbeing of our tamariki, and I commend them all, everyone, for their passion on that. It’s been clear that there is agreement on the importance of the Children’s Commissioner, or commission, and I want to add my voice to that and acknowledge that one of my very special mentors in my life was a previous historian, social worker, and children’s advocate; he was John Angus, who was the commissioner from 2009 to 2011, and I cannot say enough the influence that he’s had on my life and really being committed to the advocacy for children and how important that is.

So why do we have this bill? We want to strengthen the oversight of this system, and we’ve heard from my colleague Glen Bennett about how important it is that the system—of course, the system is not perfect; it would be great if we didn’t have this system in the first place—how it’s so important that the oversight is improved. So the bill does that by three main parts. There’s the advocacy, that’s with the commission; complaints and investigation, mainly with the ombudsman; and monitoring with the independent monitor that other speeches have spoken about. Now, of course, there is some overlap between those functions. The Minister talked about that, and the bill is very explicit about this at clauses 57 and 102, on common duties.

The start of the bill deals with that monitoring—the independent monitor and the ombudsman role—but it’s Part 5 that relates to the commission, and this is from clause 82. The idea, I believe, is that this Part 5 will become its own separate bill in the next stage. What Part 5 does is it replaces the Children’s Commissioner Act 2003 and it establishes this board that we’ve heard a lot of about, particularly from my colleague Dr Liz Craig. So that board is created at clause 91, and it has a chair. The chair is going to be called the Chief Children’s Commissioner. Now, the select committee is very clear about why they recommended this. They took on board the submissions that we need a face for people to be able to engage with. So that person is there. But not only are they there by themselves; they’ve got two to five other members. So that increases the diversity, that increases the skillset, and that will increase the good governance of this role of advocating for children, which is so important.

I just want to quickly note that the select committee added to the functions—at clause 99(ha)—this ability to report to the Prime Minister. So that’s there, and also noting that, at clause 118, there’s a provision there for a review of the commission within five years. This is a very sensible clause and, in general, I commend this bill to the House.