Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. Others deserve to be recognised for a lot of the work that went into this bill. Some of them worked on the bill when I was in Opposition, and others have worked on the bill since I became the Minister. I recognise Anne Tolley and Chester Borrows, and Simon Power had a lot to do with this bill, as well. They paid a huge part in bringing it together in those early days.

I recognise the chair of the Social Services Committee, Katrina Shanks, for the work she did in getting the bill through the select committee. We certainly took on board some of the changes that were recommended by the select committee members after they heard from submitters. I thank Child, Youth and Family, and not just the officials who sat there for many, many hours going through the very detailed implications of this legislation. I recognise those who have actually done the work so far to implement the bill. We heard a previous speaker talk about how these things do not happen quickly or lightly, and that person is right. It takes a lot of evidence-based work, and it means going back to what really does work. But a lot of this bill is, of course, about extending current orders.

I also recognise those amazing people who work in our youth justice sector. There are so many of them, both in non-governmental organisations and within Child, Youth and Family. They work with young people in our communities, and they work hard to try to turn their lives round. There is also a whole bunch of people who work in our facilities, which are pretty daunting places in which to work, at times. I acknowledge that I admire the work they do. It is probably the most important work we do, and this bill, I hope, will back them up. That is the bill’s purpose.

The bill represents the most significant changes to New Zealand’s youth justice system since 1989. It underpins this Government’s Fresh Start programme, which is our rock-solid commitment to dealing with serious youth crime. New Zealand’s youth justice system is rightly regarded as world class in delivering a sensible criminal justice model for 95 percent of young offenders. But it is a well-recognised fact that, as in most places in the world, the system is not working for the 5 percent at the hard end of criminal offending—anywhere between 900 and 1,000 young people who are on a fast track to prison. Fresh Start is aimed at giving those young people a new future.

We have seen a weekend of young people out of control. There have been serious attacks on members of the police and the public, and some of the offenders are very young. The nine Tuakau teenagers who have been charged with the vicious assault of a police officer are aged between 14 and 18. Fortunately, these young people do not represent the majority of teenagers, but they do highlight the growing problem of serious and violent offences carried out by young people.

The Government is prepared to provide some real protections for the public. We are demanding real accountability from serious young offenders. We are also offering them practical help to change their behaviour, and real opportunities to live happy and successful lives. This bill does that by providing the Youth Court with a toolbox with a much wider range of sentencing options. These new tougher and longer orders will allow us to make inroads into the underlying causes of these young people’s offending. But that is not the whole story.

The Fresh Start package also supports prevention and early intervention. We want to steer young people away from trouble, and say “Well done!” when a young person makes a positive change in his or her life. We provided the places for the 100 young people we saw in January on the Prime Minister’s holiday programme for young people who have been in trouble but have turned their lives round. We saw that what happened was hugely successful. We put them in front of the right sort of role models, and we saw something positive happening for those young people. It was really encouraging.

This summer we had 15,000 places for young people on 1-week breakaway holiday programmes. Those young people would not normally have been able to afford something like that. They come from families who were a bit under stress, and they were getting to the end of a long holiday period. They were starting to get a bit antsy, and they were starting to get into trouble. So we took recommendations from police, from sports clubs, and from the grassroots people who brought those kids together. It was basic early intervention, but we certainly saw a difference in those young people. It got them off the roads, and it got them into contact with positive role models. They were with mentors from their own communities who really invested a lot in them. Early intervention is about getting to kids as young as 11 before they make choices and before they go off the rails.

The Government is also supporting the community sector that helps children at risk. We are developing a new way of working with the community providers that are providing home-based programmes and providing really early intervention in dealing with some of our most vulnerable families—families who are really not doing too well, at all. The new high-trust contracts cut bureaucracy and allow providers to be innovative and flexible in order to achieve the best results for their clients, and I must say I have a personal bias, because for me it is about the children. So they are the services that actually make a difference in our communities. We have heard those providers saying for 10 years that they want more flexibility and the ability to get on and do the stuff that really matters, instead of ticking a whole lot of boxes. They want to be able to move their contracts around and have freedom within them. Dr Prasad shakes his head, but that is because there was not that level of understanding by the previous Government.

We are saying to people that they know what works best for their people and their communities, and we trust them to get on and do as much as they can by way of early intervention. We heard earlier from another member who said that we have seen that for years and it has not worked in many cases, because it has happened too quickly. I would agree in some respects.

It is quite amusing that last year the criticism from members on the other side was that the bill was taking too long to come to the House. It was October, they said. A year had passed, and why was I mucking around so much? The other criticism was that it cost too much money. Quite frankly, we need to put the right dollars behind it. I am talking a $152 million investment in these young people, and it starts with early intervention and goes on to make the differences that are needed.

If this Government was not backing up this programme with real dollars so that the professionals can work in the right way with those young people, then I too would have concerns, but I do not. This bill will make a significant difference to young people’s lives. It will make a difference to the young people who, quite frankly, have been left on the scrap heap of despair that leads to victims behind them and continued offending, which leads them to adult jail. We will not give up on them.

The bill will provide for longer orders. The research tells us we need to work much longer with these tough young people if we are to effect change in them and in their families’ lives. We are doubling the maximum length of the Youth Court’s top-end sentences. The maximum lengths of supervision with activity orders and supervision with residence orders are doubled. The maximum length of the supervision orders that kick in after a young person finishes supervision with activity or leaves the residence is also doubled, and that is significant. Common sense and research tell us that intensive, long-term supervision of youth in their communities is necessary if these young offenders are to avoid a lifetime of crime and punishment.

There is a wider range of orders. Serious youth offenders are often the product of their environment. Some families need to take greater responsibility for the path their kids are on. [Interruption] I am sorry; the member cannot have heard the beginning of my speech. I talked about early intervention, better community programmes, and the investment in communities at the early intervention stage, all of which this range of Fresh Start packages will adjust.

The bill will enable the Youth Court to order the parents of these kids to attend parenting programmes. Youngsters who are parents themselves—there are a number of them, unfortunately—will face parenting orders too, so that they will have the opportunity to learn what good parenting is. Successful people who have overcome the most awful hardship in life can point to a single adult, more often than not, who has backed them, showed them the way, and stood beside them through the tough times. The Youth Court will now have the option of mentoring programmes for these often very alienated young people.

Alcohol and drug abuse is behind many a criminal act. The Youth Court will now have the power to order youth offenders to undertake drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and this will be backed up by new community and residential placements. There will be young offenders who fail to grasp the opportunities provided to them under this bill. Accordingly, the bill provides the public with better protection by significantly increasing maximum sentences and by way of new orders for repeat offenders.

Serious youth offenders will face more intensive monitoring in their communities, including electronic monitoring and curfews. If they flout orders, they will find themselves back before the Youth Court to face the consequences. This bill has been improved by the consideration given to it by the Social Services Committee. It is the sharp end of the Fresh Start programme. I commend it to the House.

After so much debate I personally see the third reading of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill as an opportunity to say some most important things and to reflect on the core of what this bill represents and what the Government is truly proposing. First, I want to acknowledge something that the Government has continually thrown back at Opposition members as we have contested the prospects of this legislation proving to be successful. Opposition members continually face an assumption by members in this House that we do not understand that some people in our criminal justice system just cannot be reformed.

I say to Government members that we acknowledge that that is the case. In fact, I grew up with someone who worked in our criminal justice system. I have always been very open about the fact that my father is a policeman. While growing up, I watched as he dealt with some of the most horrific criminal offending that I think a human being would ever want to see. We acknowledge that there are people in our criminal justice system who are beyond help, but we have always argued that we cannot tarnish our young people with that same brush. We must acknowledge that we have a tiered system in New Zealand for good reason, and that 17-year-olds and under, and 12 and 13-year-olds, should not, by default, be moved on in our criminal justice system before it is right to do so.

I want to reflect on why we have that core principle in our legislation. Why is it that we deem our young people to be different, to be a special case, as it were? I think it comes down to a very simple reason. It is one that I think even Minister Power would acknowledge; he is, after all, the Minister who hosted the Drivers of Crime meeting here in Parliament. If we put all of our young offenders, even the top 1,000 whom the Government claims it is trying to deal with, into a room, we will see the same characteristics in each of them. We will see young people who are disengaged from education and/or employment. We will see young people who have been subjected to violence, either in the home or gang-related violence. We will see young people who have been subjected to drug and alcohol abuse, 80 percent of whom would have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time that they committed their offence. We will see social deprivation: young people who claim that their families have not had enough to enable them to get by.

I find it utterly abhorrent to hear the ACT Party member Mr David Garrett claim that a decade of Labour policies, as he put it, is to blame for all of those factors existing in a young person’s life, and that that is the contributing factor to those young people’s offending.

💬 David Garrett: 25 years of welfare is what I said.

I say to Mr Garrett that I grew up from a young age in a town that demonstrated why our young people end up in the situations that they are in. In the 1980s I lived in a small place called Murupara, which will be known to Todd McClay. That town suffered under the weight of privatisation and a central government that at that time did not care for its most vulnerable families and young people. When I was young the seeds were being sown for our young people’s future criminal offending. The Salvation Army, the Youth Court judge, and any number of other people who work in the social sector acknowledge that Rogernomics has a lot to answer for, and so do the policies of the 1990s. I am not saying here that that situation is the entire contributing factor to the youth offending encased in this bill, but that the bill is a blunt instrument for dealing with a much deeper problem, which goes back decades beyond our own time.

Because we know of all of those causes, and because we know of all of those catalysts, the obligation sits on us and on our communities to turn lives round. We know what the contributing factors to youth offending are, and if we ignore them it means that we are ignoring our responsibility, as well. I believe that when communities know about all of these factors that exist, it is up to us to make sure that we intervene at the right point. This issue goes beyond the age at which young people enter our criminal justice system. If we already know that 80 percent of our young people are under the influence of drugs and alcohol when they offend, why are we waiting to issue court orders on those young people when they hit the Youth Court? What are we doing to intervene before criminal offending occurs? I have seen no deep financial investment into that area. In fact, if we speak to the people at Odyssey House they will tell us that we are waiting until it is too late. We must do more. Members on this side of the House would happily work with the Government on any initiative to proactively intervene at an early point in those young people’s lives.

I do believe—and I have heard the explanations, often very rational ones, from Chester Borrows about why 12 and 13-year olds are being shifted into the Youth Court—that inherently this is a shift in criminal responsibility, and I stand against that. I stand against the notion that the issue is just about expediency; I think it is much more symbolic than that. I believe we are giving away one of our greatest powers here, which is to deal with families at the same time as we deal with young offenders. As Lianne Dalziel has pointed out numerous times, none of us would claim that a 12 or 13-year-old who is committing an indictable offence with a criminal penalty of 14 years or more is doing that in isolation and has come from a perfect background or family. So why are we disempowering ourselves and taking away the ability to deal with that young person’s family as well as the young person, when we know that there are care and protection issues at play? This is a fundamental shift. I acknowledge what the Minister has said; I agree with her. That is why we oppose the bill.

The second most significant part of this bill that has been discussed probably did not need to be included in legislation. It is the policy change around the much-disputed term “boot camp”. Anyone who is listening to this debate might question why the Government is upset with us using that term, although I still maintain that it was the Prime Minister who first used it publicly to describe the Government’s direction on youth justice. I believe he did that just after the election, in February, I think. Perhaps we called the policy that, because it looks very much like corrective training, which had a 92 percent failure rate—a 92 percent occurrence of reoffending amongst those who graduated from it. Perhaps we called the policy “boot camps” because almost every submitter who came to the Social Services Committee also believed from the description that National’s policy would be close to corrective training, or like every other failed initiative of that type overseas. Perhaps it was because the providers came to us, described to us the programmes that they already offer in New Zealand, and said that if the Government really was going to do a wraparound programme, the providers already did exactly what the Government was describing: getting to the core of offending and issues, working with families, and trying to move young people into employment. It was misleading to the public for National to claim that its policy was something different from what providers were doing. That was what caused the confusion.

Whether it was an intentional move or not, the cynical part of me says the term “boot camps” came out because it appealed to people. It sounded good. Now we hear the Government disputing that that is what it is trying to do. I believe that the confusion can rest only at the feet of the Government on that. But if the National members are genuinely trying to create a wraparound programme that incorporates all of the elements of multi-systemic therapy, for instance, why did we not invest in the kinds of initiatives that the Minister has already referred to: those of the people who are already working closely in their communities, who already have that experience, and who have demonstrated that they are the one person who can turn a young person’s life around? Why did we start something completely new with the army? That is where the confusion has come from. Closing down Te Hurihanga proved only to reinforce that, in my mind. Let us evaluate what we have and invest in what we have. That is exactly what we could have had with Te Hurihanga, and that is exactly what I think would have led to a successful path forward in our criminal youth justice system.

To sum up, I say youth justice is one of many areas that I feel quite passionately about, but I have felt let down by this bill. I feel that it has shifted what was incredibly forward-thinking legislation and changed it fundamentally. I acknowledge that changing it back, in a political sense, will always be very difficult. I ask that in future debates perhaps Government members may consider a situation where next time, instead of talking about those young kids whom they perceive to have already failed, we start to talk about how we can intervene earlier and turn those kids’ lives around.

Tēnā koe, e te Mana Whakawā. Tēnā kōrua, te Minita Take Māori me te Minita whakahaere i tēnei pire, otirā, huri noa i tō tātou Whare i tēnei pō, tēnā koutou katoa. E tū ana au ki te tautoko i tēnei pire engari me te mihi tuatahi ki te ture matua nā te mea, pakeke ake i te rua tekau tau tēnei ture e mahi ana, ā, kei te haere tonu te ia o tērā ture matua i roto i tēnei pire, nā reira, e tautoko ana.

[Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Greetings to you two, the Minister of Māori Affairs and the Minister responsible for this bill; and, indeed, to you all throughout our House this evening. Greetings to you all. I rise to support this bill, but must first acknowledge the original Act, which has been in place for 20 years. Its ethos continues in this bill, so I endorse it emphatically.]

This bill is focused on three main things. It expands the jurisdiction of the Youth Court so that 12 and 13-year-olds who commit the most serious crimes can be incorporated in the jurisdiction of the court. It strengthens and expands the orders that the Youth Court is able to make, including parenting education, mentoring, and drug and alcohol programmes. It also creates tougher and more effective sentences to get these young offenders back on track.

In the past week alone we have seen a number of examples of the kind of offending that this bill is directed at. In Tītahi Bay this week a massive fire devastated 75 hectares of Whitireia Park, and the offender who is responsible for that arson and who has been arrested is a 14-year-old. Yesterday’s headlines showed that a 15-year-old boy appeared in the Gisborne District Court. He was accused of bashing a young mother on the head with a crowbar as she was out running with her toddler. The young mother was unknown to the boy. The Minister has already referred to the off-duty policeman in Tuakau, who was set upon when trying to break up a fight, and we have also seen news stories of the tragic outcome for Liberty Templeman. These are just a few examples of a very small group of young offenders who are, nevertheless, committing very, very serious offences. There is no end to the high-profile cases involving youth offenders, but there needs to be an appropriate response, and that is why I commend Minister Bennett for her work in bringing this bill to the House, as well as the others who have worked alongside this kaupapa.

We need to deal with young offenders in this age group and front-foot the issue. The previous Government seemed happy to wait until they were older and had committed more serious offences and then tried to put them through the adult system and rehabilitation programmes. Andrew Becroft said that there were not enough tools available for the Youth Court, and recommended changes, which can be seen in this bill. Members opposite have asked whether anybody thinks that a youth offence happens in isolation. No, and certainly no member on this side of the Chamber thinks that. But this bill is focused on the fact that it does happen, and it happens amongst a very small number of youth offenders. Yes, there are other contributing factors, such as a dysfunctional home life, low or benefit-dependent income, poor health, poor education, poor housing, and identity and self-esteem issues. That is why this Government as recently as 2 weeks ago, in the form of the Prime Minister’s statement, talked about the wide and comprehensive agenda that this Government is committed to. This bill focuses on a specific part of that.

The Prime Minister’s statement talked about the Government’s priority of growing the economy, and the need for national standards addressing low educational attainment. We recognise that young people have the opportunity of getting a good education, and, using national standards, they have an early warning system that identifies that they are failing in the education system, and this can be addressed. We understand that a good education will help to divert young people from an otherwise difficult pathway, and into having better educational options.

We understand that growing the economy will lead to better employment prospects and more investment in business, and will expand and increase the standard of living. We understand that Treaty settlements will contribute to the restoration of an economic base and the ability for iwi to practise tino rangatiratanga rather than the tino kāwanatanga recipe that the previous Labour administration constantly fed into the Māori communities while it was in Government.

Nobody thinks that a youth offence happens in isolation. Members opposite kept saying somewhat emotively, and thereby misleading the public listening to this, that these offenders are only children. Of course, we are not talking about all 12 and 13-year-olds. Perhaps that has escaped everybody’s attention, including members opposite. We are talking about the very small group of 12 and 13-year-olds who have invaded homes and grievously assaulted other people. Let me assure members that the victims of those crimes do not think they will not be upset because it was only a 12-year-old, or it was only a 13-year-old, who committed the crime.

When we talk about rights, we also have to talk about reciprocal responsibilities. When we quote United Nations conventions, we need to quote a wide range of them. Let me give members an example. Article 40.1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children who offend should be dealt with in a way that “reinforces the child’s respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others …”, as well.

💬 Hon Steve Chadwick: Yes, children, that is right.

Yes, we are talking about children, but we are talking about that very small group of children who are seriously offending. No, it does not apply to all children. Yes, this bill expands the jurisdiction of the Youth Court, but, no, it does not create child criminals. It allows the court to deal with those who commit crimes. Yes, it provides an expanded range of tools, but, no, it does not assume that the judges will suddenly go mad and apply that jurisdiction indiscriminately. In fact, I can tell members of this House that a very constructive project is going on right at this moment in the Porirua District Court, working with and talking with the very diverse communities that make up Porirua about how the court can better serve the interests of the community.

The Youth Court jurisdiction is being expanded in order to give a wider range of tools to judges so that they can deal with the issues that confront them. They will not be used willy-nilly; they will be used only on the youth offenders who break the law. We are not talking about all 12 and 13-year-olds, and members opposite would do the country a favour if they stopped scaremongering and focused on that fact. The Youth Court said that youth offending has remained at the same level for the past 5 or so years, after a steep increase before then. A recent newsletter from the court claims that it is reasonably certain that the age at which young people begin to commit violent offences is getting younger, and that the violence committed by young people is becoming more serious. It continues, arguing that the real solutions will be found in coordinated inter-agency, properly funded, early intervention programmes. That is what this Government is doing. We agree, and we have committed to funding tens of millions of dollars to reduce youth offending, because unlike members opposite, when we commit to a policy we put real dollars into it. We do not talk about it; we get on and do it.

The Minister has outlined a range of those coordinated, integrated agencies that are working with each other to ensure that we can assist these young people to get back on a path of leading a quality life not only for themselves but for the whānau, hapū, and iwi, which members opposite find easy to trip off their lips but do not understand how hard it actually is to work within those whānau, hapū, and iwi, who every day try to ensure that their young people make good choices in life. I commend this bill to the House. I thank the Minister for the work she has done on this bill, and the officials who have worked alongside her to make this possible. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou katoa.

I believe that this Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill is a shameful bill. It is without hope for a generation of young people who have been referred to tonight, and it undermines the philosophy of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act, which it amends.

I draw the attention of the House to just a few of the provisions of this Act: the principles upon which it is based. First, and I have already mentioned this in the Committee stage, it is: “An Act to reform the law relating to children and young persons who are in need of care or protection or who offend against the law”. The comment I made in the Committee stage was that for those who offend against the law there are always—always—care and protection issues. The purpose of the Act is also “to advance the well-being of families and the well-being of children and young persons as members of families, whanau, hapu, iwi, and family groups:”. It talks about making provision for families “to receive assistance in caring for their children and young persons:”, and its purpose is also “to make provision for matters relating to children and young persons … who have offended against the law to be resolved, wherever possible, by their own family, whanau, hapu, iwi, or family group:”. The intention of the legislation is summarised in that introductory provision.

Then we have the principles of care and protection in Part 2 of the Act. The care and protection principles state, first of all, the utmost concern of this legislation, which is: “the principle that children and young persons must be protected from harm, their rights upheld, and their welfare promoted:”. The second principle in section 13 of the Act states: “(b) the principle that the primary role in caring for and protecting a child or young person lies with the child’s or young person’s family, whanau, hapu, iwi, and family group,”. That is all very well and good when things are good at home. It is not very good for those who do not have the range of opportunities available to them that all of the members of this House have had.

Then we have the youth justice principles. There is one thing that I do not think this House has taken into account. We have heard the Minister for Social Development and Employment and others say that one of the reasons why we have to have this legislation is to provide for some clout, as it were, to ensure that orders can be put in place before the matter goes before the Family Court. Yet one of the founding principles of the youth justice provisions in Part 4 is: “the principle that criminal proceedings should not be instituted against a child or young person solely in order to provide any assistance or services needed to advance the welfare of the child or young person, or his or her family, whanau, or family group:”. Again, we are seeing an undermining of the essence of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act.

We had a most extraordinary contribution from the previous speaker, Hekia Parata, who said that we should not care about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child obligations. We have signed up to those, and I was absolutely astonished to hear that we have a member in this House who does not think that is important. In the entire time that we have been debating this bill in the House, not once did the Minister comment on the advice that she received on the challenge to our obligations under the convention that this measure will entail. Does it matter? The previous speaker said, no, it does not. I say, yes, it does. In fact, the Minister of Justice is currently amending the Adoption Act so that we can ratify the optional protocol to the United Nations convention on the rights of the child on the trafficking of children. It certainly matters to the Minister of Justice that we are able to ratify an optional protocol, but it does not matter to the Minister for Social Development and Employment that we are failing to meet our obligations under this convention in this most fundamental change.

The Minister for Social Development and Employment said in her opening statement in the third reading—and I think others would have heard it, as well—that she accepted that this was a fundamental change in a law that was world-leading when it was passed in 1989. The irony is that this Government thinks that children who have grown up in the most appalling set of circumstances should simply be punished for their subsequent wrongdoing without addressing any of the underlying issues. That is why I say that there are always care and protection issues involved.

I have heard the Minister repeat the list of offences that will be covered by this change in jurisdiction from the Family Court to the Youth Court. Let me, again, make it clear that murder and manslaughter are already covered by the Youth Court jurisdiction. I think that we hear these different examples to try to put the numbers on the table. I ask the next Government speaker to please get up and tell us how many 12 and 13-year-olds have been charged with murder over the last few years. I am sorry, but I could not find it in any of the documentation associated with this bill.

💬 Hon Member: It’s not an evidence-based approach.

It is not an evidence-based approach. Only once in the entire time that the Minister spoke—and it was right at the tail end of her contribution in the third reading of this bill—did she talk about the environment within which the children are brought up. The offending does not occur in a vacuum. I thought that, finally, we had an acknowledgment from the Minister that that is the case, but there is no ability to address the underlying drivers when we are talking about such young children.

I asked the Minister a serious question during the Committee stage on this bill. She did not answer that question at all. It is a really horrible question to ask, because there is no comfortable answer. The question was that if Chris and Cru Kāhui had survived the attacks that they suffered in the very early days of their young lives, which were snuffed out so early, what would they have grown up to be like? What sort of adults would they have become if they had survived the brutality of their environment? What would they have become?

I am hearing from the other side of the House a sense of disquiet or discomfort about actually addressing the underlying drivers of crime. We know that those drivers are fundamental to how these children are able to see themselves as part of the world and as part of a community, and to what they are able to do in terms of responding to the challenges that they are confronted with.

The ministerial Drivers of Crime meeting actually reinforced my very, very strong views that we need a collaborative approach across the House, so that when there is a change of Government—as there is from time to time; it happens—the non-governmental organisation sector is not thrown up in the air. The Minister of Māori Affairs was there and he will recall the number of non-governmental organisations that said that they are sick and tired of one thing coming in with one Government and then going out, and a new thing coming in with the next Government. It is time we actually dealt with this, and the public want us to do this collaboratively. That is why members on this side of the House made the offer to do so. The pilot we had been operating, Te Hurihanga, has been tossed out to be replaced with a programme that is not even ready to take its place. That is simply not good enough. That programme was designed to make the long-term difference to incredibly damaged children so that real change could occur.

Then we move to the boot camps. I think Jacinda Ardern nailed it when she said that the Government used the language of boot camps to garner public support, and then criticised everyone else because the public thought that boot camps were contained within the legislation. I have the Te Hurihanga evaluation and I have gone through the issues that it raises. It is not just about reoffending rates; it is about turning round the children’s whole lives, which is quite a different model.

Children need strong adult role models in their lives. Children need to feel a strong sense of belonging. Children need to feel safe in their homes and in their communities. All children who offend have care and protection issues, and those issues must be addressed so that they can learn to take responsibility for their actions. It is hard to tell people to take responsibility for their actions when nobody intervened when they were being violently abused, raped, sodomised, and everything else that has happened to these young children who have ended up in this category. I would rather see us work collaboratively to make a difference in the lives of these children so that they grow up to be responsible members of our community.

Before I deliver the address prepared for this third reading, I acknowledge the work of colleagues in Labour—Lianne Dalziel, Jacinda Ardern, and others—whose contributions have been very valuable over the last week or so of debate on this bill. I reiterate my support for what has been said, and for their view. I think they have done a great job of expressing the concern of the community and, particularly, my concern on a number of issues.

It is with genuine sadness that we see the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill come before the House. It will cause children and their families considerable harm. The Green Party came to Parliament because its members want to look after our country; we want to look after its people and its place. We are here to make change for families—for those families, in particular, who need us the most. This legislation will only damage those families and communities and, in fact, make our communities less safe. It should not be brought before the House or supported.

I make it clear that the Greens recognise that this bill makes changes to the way that child offenders who commit the most serious crimes are dealt with. Although we oppose this legislation for the changes that it makes and its fundamental purpose, we do not in any way undervalue the significance of the loss and the harm that is caused by young offenders who commit very serious violent offences. These are often terrible crimes that can seriously damage or destroy whole families and whole communities, and they are always an awful tragedy. But this is why the Greens are so strong on issues around victims’ rights, for example, and why the Green Party initiated the victims inquiry. It is why we have consistently argued for greater recognition of victims’ rights and their voices in the legal process. It is why we have been so committed to restorative justice in particular, as opposed to the punitive approach of this Government, and the means by which that process gives back power to victims—those who have been deprived of it by offenders.

Restorative justice not only opens the justice process to victims of crime but directs the whole legal process towards a proven means that ensures that crime can be prevented. The truth is that we must invest our resources into preventing further crime. To do anything else is not only to waste scarce public funds but to waste human capability. It is a waste of our people. We cannot afford to continue to lose child after child, young person after young person, to the legal system, which causes them so much harm and keeps our communities unsafe. That itself is enough of a tragedy to shift the thinking.

The Greens are most concerned that harm does not continue, and that as best as possible our legal system protects all children and their families. It is our view that the age of criminal responsibility should never go under 14—there is a very good argument for increasing it—and that there should be a much greater emphasis on establishing small-scale and dispersed youth rehabilitation centres in order to end the detention of young people in police cells and adult prisons, and to intensively address serious offending within a small-scale environment that can reflect their needs. Family group conferences are a key part of that process. The undermining and distortion of the family group conference process within this bill is greatly regretted. But we will strongly support marae-based Youth Court and youth justice programmes, and these should be increased. I acknowledge that there has been an extension to the Hoani Waititi Marae for Youth Court processes, which is great to see.

The problem, of course, is that this bill fails all of our criteria. It is flawed at its core because the premise on which it is based is that 12 and 13-year-old children should be treated as young adults in criminal law for serious offending. That is simply wrong. I was very surprised to hear Hekia Parata undermine and dismiss the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The failure to address its core concerns was really quite surprising. The fact is that this bill is contrary to that convention. The bill attacks the child’s right to be treated in accordance with his or her age. It undermines the ability of the child to be reintegrated into the community. It undermines any rehabilitation that might ensure that the child does not reoffend. The bill fails the family and the community by exacerbating the social exclusion of the child, and the inability then for that family to recover. The treatment of a child as young as 12 as a youth in the Youth Court will make our communities less safe, not more. Parliament is wasting precious time on the demonstrably failed boot camps ideology, which I am sure will go, given the chance.

The evidence proves that access to drug and alcohol rehabilitation and counselling, if it is extended both in breadth and in length of time, can resolve many of the violence and dysfunction issues faced by children and young people. Early intervention, as has been mentioned by Labour colleagues, is the key. But the Government is failing to close the gaps on the provision of these services. It is futile giving the Youth Court more powers to require young offenders to attend these programmes, because the places in them simply do not exist. The statement about millions and millions of dollars being invested is just wrong. There are not enough places to meet existing need, and there will not be enough places to meet ongoing need, because resources are being diverted into punitive action like boot camps rather than into those programmes that we know will work because they are proven to. No provisions in this legislation will be effective unless there are high-quality, best practice, and properly funded long-term services for young offenders. On that basis, it is with regret that we understand that Te Hurihanga has been closed down. That was a ridiculous decision to make.

The evidence also proves that family focused services that treat the child within the context of the family will greatly maximise the chance for the reintegration of that child into family and community life. That surely has to be the goal—not punishment and not punitive action, but reintegration and restoration of that child in their family.

Thirdly, we know that violence is more common in unequal societies. We know that incarceration leads to reoffending. The longer a person is incarcerated, the more likely they are to reoffend, and that is a fact. We know that the incarceration rate is greater in more unequal societies, and incarceration, frankly, includes boot camps. We know that unequal societies are more punitive in their approach. We know that child abuse is greater in more unequal societies. We know that children experience more bullying, fighting, and conflict in unequal societies. Inequity is at the heart of violence in New Zealand society, and New Zealand society has one of the highest rates of inequity in the developed world. We are not an egalitarian society. We are not an equal or fair society. Every day this Government moves us further and further from the ideal of being such a fair society, causing further harm and suffering to New Zealand’s children and their families. The Government is choosing to ignore the roots of violence.

💬 Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Rubbish.

The member over there can say “Rubbish.”, but he needs to look at the evidence. The evidence proves this country has one of the highest rates of inequity in the developed world, and inequity is the root cause behind social dysfunction, including violence, injury, and damage to children.

We know that rangatahi will be the ones who suffer most from this legislation and the proposals of the Government. Rangatahi already suffer disproportionate punishment and degradation in the Youth Court. The judiciary has been very upfront in stating that rangatahi are more likely to attract harsher penalties for less serious criminal offending when they attend the Youth Court. We know that when children and young people move through the Youth Court into the adult system the bias against rangatahi and Māori is even greater, and that is proven and demonstrable. We know that the only way to deal with the offending of rangatahi is within the context of a tikanga approach within the whānau, which is why we support so strongly marae-based processes for justice, Youth Court, and youth justice processes. In fact, this bill entrenches institutional racism.

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

I know that National Party members will whinge about that, but it is true.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is a phrase that should not be used.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It has been a practice in this House that the use of the word racism to describe institutional issues or contextual issues is accepted, but not in any context where it is an attack on a person or a group of persons. I think that is the right approach to take. My comment was concerned with structural and institutional racism.

💬 Dr Rajen Prasad: I want to underscore that point, because institutional racism does not accuse any individual of anything. It refers just to a system that produces disproportional results, and that is a fact. That being so, it would be a travesty if we could not use a technical term to refer to what is a fact.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the member. I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 42/3. The member Metiria Turei was right on the margin of using that phrase, and I ask that for the remainder of her speech she is very mindful of crossing that line.

💬 Charles Chauvel: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is really just a point of clarification. As I recall the reference by the member, she was criticising the bill as—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I have ruled, and I am allowing her to continue.

💬 Charles Chauvel: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am just trying to understand how her reference—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Look, I have already ruled, and I am allowing her to continue. I have said that she was right on the margin. I am allowing her to continue.

In the last remaining moments I simply say the Green Party is opposed to this legislation. We are very disappointed that it has been pursued as far as it has. We are very pleased that there are other parties in this House—the Māori Party and the Labour Party—that oppose it. We hope to see real change in the very near future to protect our children, rather than punish and accuse them as this National Government is doing.

Tēna koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Last night I got an email about young people. That is not an unusual occurrence by any means, as we frequently receive comments about young people, often in association with criminal activity or youth unemployment. But this email was different. The writer felt sufficiently enthusiastic about our young people to take to her computer at 11 p.m. to tell us about the excitement she was witnessing at home amongst the iwi of Whakatōhea. She described the 10 projects that Whakatōhea have going, under Community Max, which have employed some 40 young people in their rohe. The rangatahi are involved in upgrading marae, developing community gardens, māra kai, clearing tracks on maunga, restoring old pā sites, restoring whenua, and planting native trees and plants.

I will quote from the email to share the optimism that she feels for our youth: “To see the mana and confidence these young people show, they feel wanted and appreciated, they are contributing to our communities, they take on any training they need to help them to better their future. These are young people who believe that they are useless and no one cares. I am so proud of them, all the more so that our whānau were able to employ them to make our marae and whenua a place to be proud of. This is the beginning of Whānau Ora.”

I choose to bring these comments to the debate, as it is rare for our discussions in this House to make an explicit link between young people and pride, confidence, and mana. All too often, as indeed in the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill, we focus on problems of youth. In this bill the intention is unambiguous. It proposes tools to deal with the 1,000 or so serious offenders aged between 12 and 16 years. The young people who are the focus of this bill are mainly repeat offenders. Eighty percent of them are male, just over half of them are Māori, and the majority have left school or are near to leaving school.

In this Chamber we debate a range, a menu, of initiatives, including supervision and residence orders, treatment foster homes, lowering the jurisdiction of the Youth Court to include 12 to 13-year-olds, military-style activity camp programmes, electronic monitoring, and the like. The contribution I would like to make to the debate is to encourage us to take a broader perspective on those 1,000 young people. We need perspectives that provide us with an optimistic view to remind us of the potential of all our young people to plan proactively for our future. I was pleased that the Social Services Committee recommended amendments that specified, as for example in the issue of placing child offenders in residences, that the chief executive must consider all reasonable, practicable, less restrictive alternatives. But the general thrust of the bill remains to focus on a wide range of sentencing orders to be made for dealing with offenders. In doing so, it appears to ignore some of the strongest opposition from key submitters on the bill.

Judge Andrew Becroft, the Principal Youth Court Judge, described the proposal to include 12 to 13-year-olds within the youth justice system as “constituting the most fundamental change to the system since its inception in 1989.” Kim Workman from Rethinking Crime and Punishment encouraged Parliament to remember that the 1989 Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act has worked well, and that any amendment should not detract from its focus on treatment, rehabilitation, and restoration. Dr Cindy Kiro, the former Children’s Commissioner, promoted the need to heed the research conclusions that the most effective responses are those that include a child or young person’s family and wider community. That view was strongly supported by Jono Campbell, the manager of Te Ora Hau Ōtautahi. As the manager of the urban Māori youth organisation, he described this bill as being counterproductive to building strong communities, noting that it alienates whānau, community, and collective responsibility, and will be particularly harmful for Māori.

The youth justice area, as the House will be aware, is one of the most well-researched policy areas of debate. Dr Gabrielle Maxwell from the Institute of Policy Studies, right here in Wellington, concludes from her analysis of the research: “If you are going to make a difference in the lives of young people who have been abused and traumatised, it is necessary to provide them with close and sustained, supportive, pro-social relationships.”

She also suggests that they will need education and skills to enable them to find their meaningful role in the community, and they will require help in dealing with any addiction problems. What we know is that prison, youth institutions, and boot camps are not a conducive environment for habilitation, rehabilitation, or restoration. It all depends on the quality of leadership that can embrace our young people: the connection that offenders can make to positively engage in change. We know that “getting tough” approaches do not work. Our young people need to be exposed to opportunities to learn new behaviour and values, to be taught new skills in active ways.

Although it may be heresy to some, the leadership to inspire change can, in itself, come from ex-offenders who are committed to working with young people to reduce offending and reoffending. Examples of this include the Delancey Street Foundation in America, the Salisbury Street Foundation habilitation centre in Christchurch, and Moana House in Dunedin, which were all founded by ex-criminals. Yet the Government and officials all too often cannot accept that offenders have anything constructive to contribute towards preventing offending behaviour, preferring to see them as recipients of services and not people who have something to offer.

I go back to the recommendation from Dr Maxwell to focus on close and sustained supportive pro-social relationships as the key element of change, and I want to refer to that broader context of the situation for youth in Aotearoa. One of my key concerns for our young people is the lingering effects of the recession in relation to employment, in particular on the 15 to 19-year-old age group. Māori unemployment is approximately 1½ times the non-Māori rate. For Māori youth, there is a twofold effect: the effect of being young, coupled with the fact that Māori unemployment is consistently higher than that of non-Māori.

How do we support these young people to continue to promote a situation of hopefulness and to focus on their future? We do that by reminding them of their connection to us—that our collective aspirations include them and that they are worthy of work, that they are people whom we care about. During the select committee process, Manu Caddie from Te Ora Hou Aotearoa told the committee that the bill is focused on the individual and not enough on the whānau community. It was the advice of Manu that funding for the very worst offenders might be better spent on strengthening communities to support their young people, rather than on ordering individuals to be mentored or counselled. Our focus should be on further investigating those interventions and programmes that are whānau and family-based, that are effective based on evidence, and that represent value for money.

The 1989 Act stimulated the social sector to consider the centrality and importance of the whānau to the care and protection of tamariki rangatahi and to youth justice. This bill, in focusing on individual strategies for individual youth, undermines the very intention of the overriding legislation, such as greater whānau involvement in decision making and including hapū and iwi in the plans and policies.

The Māori Party is very clear in our commitment to Whānau Ora. We want to support communities to develop and implement their own solutions. As part of this, we require Government agencies to work with families and whānau on issues affecting them. We are tired of servicing the symptoms; we want whānau to be part of the direction forward, and we are unable to support this bill at its third reading. Kia ora.

I will start with a few comments about the process that the Social Services Committee went through. Although it was a fairly heated debate at times and colourful at other times, what was quite overwhelming was that the committee agreed on a number of things. I am sure that each member of the committee engaged in a positive way, albeit we were not free from politics. Given that it was a parliamentary select committee, no one should be surprised by that.

It is also important to note the history of the legislation that the bill amends. The Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989 replaced the Children and Young Persons Act 1974. The drafting of that legislation included the responsibility to deal with families. When the legislation was written, it was a world first. Funnily enough, it was written in the same year that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was written. It seems unusual to me that the Government of the day, in drafting the bill and being aware of what the convention entailed, did not include within it the provisions that the Opposition seems so drastically to want today. The fact is that, around the world, different jurisdictions classify the various ages of people appearing before their criminal jurisdictions in different ways. A person who is legally a child in New Zealand might be a young person in another country, or an adult in yet another country. If we look at all the countries that are signatories to the convention, we will see things interpreted in different ways.

It does not mean that with the benefit of hindsight we would not go back and change some stuff. For instance, I do not believe for a moment that, given the opportunity to go back, Labour would not have made some significant changes—changes that it is actually voting against in this bill—soon after 1990, when it was elected to Government. In fact, Labour set about making a number of those changes in a piece of legislation that is still on the Order Paper, as I understand it, and that the Green Party was supporting. It does things like extend the term of supervision with activity and supervision with residence. This is in spite of the fact that we have just heard the Green Party member Metiria Turei complain that incarceration for longer terms can only be a bad thing. Legislation that the Green Party was supporting in the last two elections did pretty much what this Government is doing in terms of those sorts of sentences.

We also have to remember that under this legislation the number of young people aged 12 and 13 who will appear in the Youth Court will probably be fewer than 100, based on current statistics. Those statistics not only come from the ministry but also have been given to us by the Youth Court. The person who will make the decision whether the 12 or 13-year-old appearing in the Youth Court—the child—will continue down the track within the Youth Court is the judge. The person who has been applauded the most by both sides of the House—we all want to grab hold of his every word and glue it on to our policy statement—is the Principal Youth Court Judge, Andrew Becroft. It is within his jurisdiction, and by judges acting under his direction, that the decision will be made whether that 12 or 13-year-old has offended in such a way that he or she should continue through the Youth Court and access the provisions of this legislation, or whether he or she should go back to the Family Court and be dealt with in that way. It is very, very important to remember that those judges are the people who are making that decision.

I have another interesting point. The Opposition has raised and protested against only a very small number of things. The Opposition actually supports longer terms for supervision with activity and supervision with residence, which is in effect what our Fresh Start camp is, but with further wraparound services—and the Opposition supports that as well. It supports the removal of the consent required for community service orders. The only problem the Opposition really has is with the use of the term “military-style activity camp”, and with the provisions relating to 12 and 13-year-olds. The Labour Government accepted that there needed to be closer supervision and a closer look at the impact of programmes on people after they had finished a residential sentence. But Labour has not said that if it were returned to Government, it would turn this back. It has not said that when Labour is next in Government it would unwind this measure and undo it. It does not say that. It knows that it supports the bulk of this stuff. It is only those two provisions that it does not like.

The fact is—and I take issue with the previous speaker, Pita Sharples—that this legislation includes parents, family, and whānau far more than they have been included to date. This legislation is actually a step towards where the Māori Party would have us be in terms of inclusion and in terms of getting some semblance of Whānau Ora operating within the criminal justice system. I accept and applaud the fact that the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989 took that process a long way down the track—far further than it ever had been under the previous legislation. A lot of us cynical cops at the time were absolutely convinced that it was going to fail, and I am absolutely convinced that it did not fail. The only problem with the provisions it instilled within our youth justice system reaching their full potential was that a lot of cynical policemen and women out there did not apply it in the way that it could have been applied, because it took too much paperwork and it was too cumbersome to deal with in a speedy and timely manner. Young 12 and 13-year-olds who should have been appearing in the Family Court, and who should have had their care and protection issues dealt with, because their offending displayed a need to do that, never made it there, and that was because of the attitude of practitioners operating in the field.

I also supported the separation between care and protection social workers and youth justice social workers that the previous Government implemented to try to deal with exactly that situation. When people sit in the Youth Court, as I have sat in the Youth Court, they see young person after young person appear before the court, only to have their cases put off again because the social workers who are in charge of case-managing the proceedings before the court have not done the notifications that they should have done. All of that eroded the confidence and the trust that people had in the youth justice system.

This legislation shifts responsibilities towards parents, but it does not cut them adrift and hold them solely responsible. It has the ability to hold parents accountable for their children’s offending, and so they should be. I am proud of this legislation. I thank the people on the select committee who worked towards it, and those who worked against it. Thank you for their engagement.

In coming to Parliament, after doing most things that I had wanted to do, I expected and looked for those rare opportunities when I could sit down and really work, across parties, on solutions to fundamental problems of concern to our society. I liken it to having spent most of my professional life pulling bodies out of the river, but one day deciding to go upstream and work with people to build fences so that people did not fall into the river. This Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill was an opportunity to begin to address some of the concerns that Government members had, and for all members to try to work our way through the legislation to address those questions and come up with a set of solutions with which we could engage in a productive kind of way. My sadness is that that opportunity has been missed, because members on only one side have been trying to do that. When members on the other side are constantly trying to focus on political capital—making political capital out of the situation—it becomes very hard. I will talk about that more as I go on.

Labour, by its record since the change in Government, has always supported reasonable legislation to address fundamental problems. Labour members have always taken an optimistic view on that, but when I came from the select committee, and into the legislative process that is almost at an end now, the feeling I had was that here was a Government juggernaut that had already made up its mind and that was disregarding any advice that could be put before it. It was determined to go down a particular track; I likened that to a punitive approach. Somehow in the process leading up the election—the pre-election campaign—there was this notion that the only response was to be much harder on crime, through every level. Of course, there was the action of 100 days, which came into the select committee hearings, as well, but the juggernaut prevented us from taking the opportunity to develop this set of proposals in a far more constructive way.

I have a lot of respect for every member of the select committee. The committee was very ably chaired, and every member of the select committee really struggled to engage with the issues and with the submitters. But in the end, I had the impression that National committee members were prevailed upon not to follow what the select committee was being advised but to deliver on what was a punitive approach to the legislation. Chester Borrows, as well, has talked about how an opportunity was missed.

The bit that Labour members have major difficulties with in this particular bill is the ideology driving it. That ideology is a punitive ideology, and it automatically leads us somewhere. No matter what safeguards we write into the bill, over time those who interpret the provisions will begin to internalise that particular ideology. There is a lot of legislation where that is the case.

Two days ago, Unicef New Zealand put out a press statement. That organisation is a group of people who are concerned about young people, and who think about New Zealand society quite a bit. The organisation makes reasoned statements from time to time. Its New Zealand executive director says: “The Bill is a backward step in the treatment of children who commit serious crimes.” Indeed, that is Labour’s view, but this is a large, credible organisation that is making these comments. Its statement continues: “Lowering the age at which children can enter into the realm of criminal jurisdiction takes New Zealand in the opposite direction to that proposed by international and national experts on criminality and human rights.” My good friend Pita Sharples has articulated that far more comprehensively than I could ever imagine, and I tell the Minister that he is absolutely right. Indeed, all of the advice that he has talked about advises us to go in the other direction.

The select committee was going in the opposite direction. It is no wonder that the debate in the second reading, the Committee stage, and this third reading has been quite tetchy. It is because the opportunity has been missed and the advice has not been taken, at all. The bill really is about lost opportunities for the Government to address what it saw as problems with young offenders. It is almost as if the kind of bravado that the Minister displays from time to time in the House has driven the thing this far, but members of the Government in the select committee have not been able to let loose and begin to think their way through it. They are all honourable members, and they all have good brains they could have used to come up with much better amendments than the ones here.

On this side of the House, I say that some provisions in the bill have our support. Extending orders and giving the Youth Court more orders are not things we dispute, at all. However, the way is also opened up for orders that have been known to fail elsewhere. There is any amount of evidence on that. I have not heard the Minister or speakers from the Government side tell us the evidence on which they have built their set of proposals. An ideological position has led the provisions, not substantive research or examples from national or international experiences that say: “This was achieved.” I refer of course to boot camps, which come in under the “Supervision with activity order” substituted in clause 25.

Where is the evidence for the camps’ success? Why was the evidence not put before us? The signal given was that the Government’s analysis is that all that is missing in the lives of these young people is discipline, and once we give them discipline through military-style boot camps and activities, then we set them, with wraparound services, on the right path. But there is no evidence to suggest that that will come through boot camps. Members have heard the Hon Pita Sharples tell us very clearly that a whole series of complex factors work in consort one with the other—many around family, many around community, and many to do with age and other things—and need to be put together. Proper services that brought all those factors together would have been much more effective. So those are the lost opportunities, which is why this bill is disappointing for me.

Perhaps the one aspect that has bothered us more than anything else has been the sending of children to the jurisdiction of the Youth Court, because that also signals and is consistent with the Government’s ideological position on punitive treatments. The problem with that, I say to the Minister, is the question of what happens when the issue is about 11 year-olds. What will happen when it is about 10 year-olds? Pressure will come on us, but I do not see that this legislation will produce dramatic change over the time of this particular Government. It will not. We will still be talking about the cases we have heard about today; members opposite have been talking about very recent ones. In the end we will force ourselves to become more punitive, and to push the age of criminal responsibility further back, but those positions are really unprincipled. It was really important for us to hear from the Minister what her deeply held philosophical belief was around children. It was really important for us to hear that and for her to put that on the record of the House. But that has been missing. At least if we had heard that, there might have been a difference in the discussions. But the Government has been arrogant and has not listened to experts, and the legislation is disappointing and a lost opportunity.

Perhaps the final point is that it is surprising that Government members who have spoken have really demonstrated the limits of their understanding of the complex issues around this particular—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the member; his time has expired.

Tonight’s debate is a milestone because it completes the enactment of the Government’s major commitments to New Zealanders at the 2008 general election. But it is even more significant because it demonstrates once again the resolve of a Government that cares enough about troubled youths to want to break their cycle of delinquency and crime and give them a fresh start and a brighter future. It is a Government that cares about communities that have had enough of selfish and unacceptable behaviour by a worrying number of young people who are running amok in this country. I say to Dr Prasad that it is a Government that is facing up to the considerable evidence that the current system is not working and has to be fixed.

Labour members’ solution of more of the same demonstrates that they have learnt nothing from their comprehensive rejection at the last election. Opposition members claim to be concerned about these young people but they have consistently and deliberately misrepresented the key provisions of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill and ignored the seriousness of the issues it is designed to tackle.

In my electorate of Hamilton West we have at Hamilton’s Fraser High School one of the oldest and most respected school cadet schemes. It is, if anything, growing in popularity. Fraser’s cadet corps teaches its students discipline, values, and respect. It gives those young people a sense of purpose, builds their self esteem, and encourages them to aim high in other aspects of school and community life as well. Just last week some Fraser High School students who admitted that they were at risk of going off the rails asked to be signed up. I am very proud to represent Fraser High School in this House and I ask members to reflect on what that school and its cadet scheme are achieving.

I mention that scheme because those benefits are exactly what military-style activity camps will offer the young offenders who are the focus of this bill. I am very disappointed that Opposition members of the Social Services Committee continue to parrot the dishonest “boot camp” slogan when they know that their imagery is dishonest and irresponsible. Worse, it insults the fine men and women who are already offering programmes of this nature with great success around New Zealand and those who will lead the new military training activities provided for in this bill. I know they will do it well, yet Opposition members would prefer to denigrate those people by conjuring up irrelevant images of screaming and abusive drill sergeants from B-grade American movies. That is offensive.

Miss Dalziel talked earlier about a disservice, yet she overlooked the irony that her party is doing a huge disservice to the people of New Zealand, and especially the young people who are off the rails, by demeaning and opposing the intent of this bill. Mr Nash lamented the fact that some of our young people are being labelled criminals when they may be just 12 or 13 years of age. We are talking here about young arsonists, young aggravated robbers, and young home invaders. These are serious crimes and I say to Labour members that people who commit crimes are criminals whether they are 13 or 93 years of age. It is sanctimonious claptrap for Labour members to deny that these young people are already on a dangerous path to a lifetime of serious adult offending. They are not innocent and they need our determined intervention. Worse, it is actually heartless of Labour members to say we should not tackle the issues because to do so would damage the self-esteem of our country’s most serious young offenders. I did not know Harry Holland but I am confident that he would tell Stuart Nash that such politically correct puffery is just not right. The package of measures in this bill confronts the reality of New Zealand in 2010; not the mythical Peter Pan dreamland that exists in the minds of members opposite but not in a single town anywhere in this country.

We are talking about mentoring that is tried and tested. It works in my city and it will be extended under this bill. We are talking about drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes that will be essential if many young offenders are to have any chance of breaking out of the damaging environment and lifestyle that so many of them have known for far too long. These programmes are not heartless or offensive to young people, but failing to tackle those problems certainly is. Actually, the words “heartless” and “offensive” better describe Labour’s approach to this whole debate. It is offering nothing new, and nothing that deals with the magnitude and reality of the problem, and it would rather stick with the status quo despite the overwhelming evidence around the country that the current system is just not working. Ignoring the plight of serious young offenders does a disservice, to use Miss Dalziel’s word, to those young people, to their families and whānau, to their victims—who, members may have noticed, have been conspicuously missing from any consideration by Labour’s speakers this evening—and to New Zealanders who suffer day in and day out from the consequences of juvenile delinquency in their communities. We are talking about parenting education to give those young people the skills they will desperately need when many of them become parents while still not much older than children themselves. Without that commitment we condemn their offspring to a future just as bleak, and I am 100 percent sure, I say to Mr Nash, that Harry Holland would say that that just would not be right.

This bill is appropriate. It is realistic and it is compassionate in the manner of tough love initiatives. It reflects the commitment of the Minister for Social Development and Employment and of this Government to doing much better by our troubled youth and all who care for them or live with the consequences of their behaviour. That is why I am proudly supporting this bill and that is why I am confident that it will make a positive difference in one of our most challenging areas of social policy. With the passing of this bill we will give our Youth Court the tools it needs to tackle one of our country’s most serious challenges.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 12 midnight to 9 a.m. (Thursday)