Vulnerable Children Bill

I move, That the Vulnerable Children Bill be now read a second time. This bill is an integral part of a suite of measures I have introduced to prevent, and better respond to, child abuse and neglect in this country. This includes the Children’s Action Plan, which is now truly in the action phase. The bill will bring into effect several initiatives laid out in the Children’s Action Plan. These include making Government agencies jointly accountable for the well-being of vulnerable children, and better screening and vetting of Government workers and Government-contracted workers who work with children. The bill also includes amendments to the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989 and the KiwiSaver Act 2006, as well as minor amendments to a number of other Acts.

At its core, this bill enables a fundamental shift in how we as a nation protect our children from abuse and neglect. It will demand that these children and their needs, complex as they are, are rightly placed at the centre of measures and initiatives designed to protect them. We are a strong and enviable country with a proud record in many areas of social support, but our record in protecting some of our most vulnerable children from abuse and neglect is shameful. This bill turns decades of talk into action to turn round that record.

I thank the Social Services Committee for its careful consideration of the bill. The committee has made a number of worthwhile recommendations that I believe will help give best effect to the intent of the bill. I also want to acknowledge the members of the public who took the time to submit on the bill. The committee received 115 written submissions, and 62 submitters made oral submissions. Each submission provided valuable input and a unique perspective, which has led to the improvements to the bill.

The committee recommended some minor changes to the child protection policies to help provide clarity and ensure the policy intent is maintained. Child protection policies will support better identification of child abuse and neglect. The bill requires organisations working with children to ensure that their staff have been thoroughly screened, through a safety check, and are safe to work with children. This approach will reduce the risk of children being harmed by those who are entrusted to look after them or work around them. Too many times we hear of people who have slipped through the net and been able to prey on vulnerable children despite people having concerns about them.

The committee recommended several technical changes to children’s worker safety checking to clarify the intended scope of the requirements. That part is now clearer about which sectors and professions require safety checking. People who have committed serious violent or sexual offences have no place working with children. The bill places a restriction on employing or engaging people who have committed certain serious offences to work alone with children or to have responsibility over them. I must say, it always surprises me that we even need this one, but it is a fact that some employers, even knowing the history of some people, still choose to employ them and put them in a position where they are working with vulnerable children.

The committee recommended adding a further 18 offences to the list of offences in schedule 2, relating to serious violent and sexual offending, sexual offending against animals, historical sexual offending against children, and objectionable publications. I support this recommendation as it is important that this list consistently covers the range of serious violent and sexual offences that make a person unsuitable to work with children.

Exemptions may be granted for those who have been genuinely rehabilitated, but that decision will be made based only on the strongest evidence possible. I am sure some of the committee members might like to comment on that, but that is where we may have people who have committed crimes in the past, have then gone through a thorough rehabilitation, and are working with youth, and are able, actually, to use some of that experience to turn young people’s lives round. So that is where that kind of exemption can be and where we thought it was necessary.

We want to get the correct balance between employees’ rights and those of employers, while also ensuring, of course, that children are protected. To improve this balance, the committee recommended some changes that strengthen the safeguards for employees and provide greater certainty to employers of what is required of them. I believe that once an allegation is made and someone is told that they may not be employed because of their past history, they have 5 days to actually go back and make sure that that fits.

The bill introduces changes that will make it harder for parents who have killed or severely abused or neglected a child to have another child in their care again. The changes to the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act will put the legal onus on these parents to prove they are safe before they can have, or continue to have, the care or custody of any subsequent children. I feel strongly about this one. Unfortunately, past behaviour can be indicative of future behaviour. Someone can prove that they have turned their lives round with the right interventions, but the onus should be on them to prove that. We should well and truly make the safety of the child paramount in the decisions we make moving forward. The Social Services Committee also recommended some other changes to the part of the bill that amends the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act to provide clarification and to ensure that the policy intent is maintained.

Last month, in March, I announced that the Government had decided to put the proposal for child harm prevention orders on hold for the time being. This decision was not taken lightly. It was taken over a long period of time. The Government is already putting a range of measures in place to protect vulnerable adults and children from people who present a high risk of harming them. In recent years we introduced police safety orders and 24-hour GPS monitoring to track the movements of high-risk offenders. We also removed the eligibility for parole for repeat serious violent offenders and offenders who commit the worst murders. Initiatives that we are working on include new public protection orders covering offenders who pose a very high risk of imminent or serious sexual or violent offending.

Under the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) the new Education Council and its disciplinary bodies will have more options for addressing serious misconduct by teachers, including physical, sexual, or psychological abuse of a child or young person. As I said, we carefully considered submissions to the select committee on child harm prevention orders. Given the extent of the other measures to protect vulnerable children, I am satisfied that we can significantly strengthen the protection of our children without pursuing child harm prevention orders at this point.

In conclusion, this legislation marks a significant change in how we work with vulnerable children and how we respond to their needs. We acknowledge that the changes proposed are controversial for some and will take many people out of their comfort zones. I make absolutely no apology for that. To achieve an improvement in terms of the horrific problem of child abuse and neglect in this country, we need to face the problem head on. What we have been doing is not working and is nowhere near good enough for those children who need us most, so we need to take action. I believe that this bill is a significant step towards us having improved services for those children who need us most. I commend this bill to the House.

It is my pleasure to rise and give Labour’s first contribution in this second reading on the Vulnerable Children Bill. We have already indicated our support for this bill, but we do so with some disappointment that the opportunity was not taken via this bill to put on the table a wider range of measures that we believe could have a positive impact on a wider range of children. The Minister for Social Development presented to the public some time ago via the green paper process the ability for the community, those working in the children’s workforce and beyond, to share their vision and their hopes for the future for the children of New Zealand, and they did so with great enthusiasm. The response to that process was enormous. In amongst that response—because I read many of the submissions, as many as I could, given that there were so many—many said: “Let’s use this opportunity to say that if we lift all New Zealand children and focus on general well-being, we will at the same time impact those who are particularly vulnerable.”

So I do have the sense that although this piece of legislation is heavily targeted towards those children who are at very high risk of abuse or neglect, our concern is that by being targeted we potentially allow children to fall through the gaps, and that it is very hard to always isolate just who those children might be. A wider approach would have lifted the boats of many and not just the few. That is, and continues to be, our position. We would have liked to see a wider Children’s Action Plan, which is what the Children’s Commissioner advocated in his submission on this bill. When we raised with him the fact that that was not here and asked whether he saw any sign of that coming, he was very careful in his response, but the clear submission seemed to be that given that he is doing all the work at the moment around things like the Child Poverty Monitor, he obviously remains sceptical that that piece of work will be picked up by the Government.

I do want to focus on some of the specifics of the bill. The Minister mentioned that the child harm prevention orders have been removed from the bill. We did express concerns about those orders, but did say that we wanted to hear at the Social Services Committee what the view of the public was. I have to say that we still do not feel like we have been given a very clear explanation from the Government as to why it removed those, because that announcement was made before the select committee had even reported back. That has meant that there is obviously a large chunk that has come out of the bill, and all of the reasons that the Minister gave around the current work, or past work, that the Government has done, which she believes will cover the area that child harm prevention orders were in, were actually already in motion, already either planned or in place, when the child harm prevention orders were first drafted. So I still feel there could be a little more clarity as to why those have been removed—placing on the table again, though, that we always thought that the threshold that needed to be met in terms of the evidence base for those child harm prevention orders was very, very high, because it basically said that we would be placing an order on an individual without a criminal conviction having been met, so we were very sceptical about those in the first place.

Checks on the workforce that works with children were part of this bill. There was quite a debate at the select committee as to whether or not that needed to extend beyond the State workforce, which is what this bill covers, and whether or not the areas of vulnerability are actually in our volunteer workforce. Some did come forward and say that they feel it was incumbent on them to carry out those checks, even if the law was not going to prescribe this for them, and that they needed to be part of this as well. But it struck us that there needed to be greater support for those volunteer agencies that feel really vulnerable. The State is now legislating up until a point, but they do not have the same kind of support and yet still feel obliged to carry out those checks. So there is still more work there to be done.

There is also the issue of establishing protocols for reporting to Child, Youth and Family—having child protection policies in place. It was our concern that a lot of the significant agencies—you know, health boards and so on—already have child protection policies. They have had them for some time. Actually, those organisations where that might be new could benefit from support in developing those policies and training. Groups like Child Matters do a fantastic job at training agencies or organisations on child protection policies, but now they have been told that they need to do that without any of the extra support behind training staff appropriately, and training is key if those child protection policies are going to work.

I want to come to Part 3 of the bill. This is when we get into some areas that I think have been a really contentious point for those who are working in this space on behalf of vulnerable children. They relate particularly to special guardianship orders. In the time that I have worked across Child, Youth and Family issues, I have had numerous contact from foster carers, who take on the incredibly important role of a foster carer because of their desire to support vulnerable children. They do not get much back for doing that job except the satisfaction that they are helping a very vulnerable child. They do, if they are for a time under the heading of a foster carer, get some support from Child, Youth and Family. They get some financial support as well. A lot of that, though, ebbs away if they move into a Home for Life situation. Yes, there is some financial support still there, but they get very little moral support. Their contact with a biological parent, which at one point as a foster carer might have been mediated by Child, Youth and Family, disappears. It is all on them from that point. That includes the court processes that they have to go through, because these parents, these non-biological parents who take on care and guardianship roles, are frequently challenged by parents who have proven themselves to be not fit to parent, yet they will find themselves being dragged through the courts to do things like move town for work, or around visitation rights, and that is extraordinarily frustrating for a foster carer, as you can imagine.

This bill is meant to fix that, but there have been some questions raised as to whether or not that is what it will do, and I want to read some extracts from a parent who would be affected by this bill: “We received no support from Child, Youth and Family at all, not even moral support. We are on our own. We fight the battles alone. We have all of the responsibilities and none of the rights. Really, all we want is the right to do the best we can by our little girl, but we legally cannot sign consent if she was to undergo a medical procedure that required anaesthetic. Legally we are obliged to contact and consult with two individuals who cannot parent if they want to travel, and are supposed to do so even when we travel domestically. They are supposed to get consent to the school she goes to and where we live and could even object to the fact that we go to church.”

It has been implied that this bill is going to give greater legal rights and allow less litigious situations for these parents, but the proof will be in the pudding, and there is definitely a need for that element of the bill—absolutely. We make a commitment to review how well that is working for those parents, and if this bill does not fix the problem, we must go in again and ensure that those parents are properly supported.

There is one final but really critical point that I want to end on. Currently in New Zealand, for a child in Child, Youth and Family care or the State’s care, the State’s obligation on their parents ends when the child turns 17. Show me a parent who raises a child up until the age of 17 and then on their 17th birthday shows them the door and says: “Do not contact me again. I care little where you live, what you do, but don’t come back.” You would not do that—simply, you would not—if you were a decent parent, and yet that is what we as the State do. This bill purports to put in place support to the age of 20 for children who are in Child, Youth and Family care, but there is no real legal obligation. They can advise on accommodation, yet a 17-year-old cannot fall under Housing New Zealand provisions. I know of cases where children—because that is what they are—are referred to women’s refuges because they have no housing for 17-year-olds. This bill does not go far enough in obliging Child, Youth and Family to continue having responsibility for those children. We were told of that in no uncertain terms by a young man, during his submission, who had been in a foster-care situation himself. Labour will oblige Child, Youth and Family to continue responsibility, legally, for these children beyond their 17th birthday. That is what a decent parent would do and that is what the State should do, and we will be making moves to ensure that that happens in the future.

It is a great pleasure to rise to support the second reading of the Vulnerable Children Bill. To the majority of New Zealanders, the idea of abusing children is simply abhorrent. However, a small percentage of New Zealanders do hurt our defenceless children. Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of our most precious little ones is a reality, and it happens right here in this country called God’s own. Whether the cause of the abuse is put down to alcohol, drugs, low self-esteem, mental illness, or whatever the reason—although I personally do not believe there is any excuse for abusing children—our children are hurting, and the need for the Vulnerable Children Bill is paramount.

Most of our Kiwi kids grow up in a loving and safe environment where they can be children and they can play without fear, but more than 50 children have died in the last 5 years in this country because of extreme abuse. Because of abuse, a child under 2 is hospitalised every 5 days. Every year Child, Youth and Family substantiates 22,000 cases of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and neglect. They are shocking statistics that we should all be embarrassed about. New Zealanders have had enough.

The reforms we are making are major and represent the most significant legislative reforms to address child abuse and neglect since the passing of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act. Reforms were proposed in the White Paper for Vulnerable Children and the Children’s Action Plan. The Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Justice, and the police will put policies in place containing provisions on the identification and reporting of child abuse and neglect. These Government departments’ funded and contracted services also have these policies in place. This includes Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, district health boards, and school boards of trustees.

This bill is about reinforcing the need for shared responsibility and coordinated action across the Government social services sector to better protect our vulnerable children and to help ensure that our children are safe with those who work with them. The standard safety checks for employees in the Government, and the Government-funded children’s workforce, are making sure that people with disqualifying convictions are prevented from working with our children. We are increasing the number of social workers in schools, to cover all decile 1 to 3 schools. We have put social workers in hospitals, we have increased funding and services for children in care, and we have introduced Children’s Teams to work with at-risk children. Now 142,000 children have access to social workers, meaning there is face-to-face contact with professionals trained in dealing with complex and difficult issues.

The Social Workers in Hospitals initiative introduced in 2009 is also making a positive impact with social workers now based in every district health board in the country. We will have a national children’s director in place and two Children’s Teams in place. Also a Vulnerable Children’s Board of chief executives has been operating for some months now. We are working on a care strategy for children in State care; the Child Protect line, a vulnerable kids’ information system; and increasing the pool of iwi caregivers. This is not just about a very narrow focus on vulnerable children; this is the Government’s response to our vulnerable children. It is a signal, it is a sign, and it is a message to the rest of New Zealand that we have had enough of the abuse of our children and the neglect of our children.

This bill will bring in better Government accountability, better vetting and screening of people working with children, and better guardianship and protection laws. Any person working for the Government, with children, will be screened and vetted. This will affect around 280,000 workers. People with serious convictions will permanently be restricted from working closely with children. The Social Services Committee recommend adding 80 more offences to the list of restrictive convictions, meaning that a person who has committed any of these offences cannot work alone with children or have responsibility for them, and I think that is a fantastic move that we actually ended up with in this bill.

The committee also recommended changes to protect employees’ rights, without compromising the safety of children, by providing a 5-day suspension period to address concerns between the employer and the employee before any termination can be actioned. Other committee recommendations include some minor changes to ensure clarity of the intent of the policy. When abusive parents go on to have further children, they will also have to prove that they are fit parents, or their children will be removed. At the moment the onus is on the State to prove that the new baby is in danger. This leaves an innocent life at risk, and we do not want to do that. We want to protect them from harm, and this move—putting the onus on parents to prove that they are, in fact, safe to have the children with them—is a good move. This is so that abusive parents who have had their children removed cannot disrupt the children’s new, safe, and stable home with Home for Life carers.

We introduced Home for Life in 2010—a home where a child can find stability and permanency, and where they can feel secure enough to learn and to grow. The bill will allow an appointed guardian such as the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development or an approved service to enrol a child in KiwiSaver and to manage the account without needing to obtain the consent of their guardians. This National-led Government is committed to improving the lives of vulnerable children. We have set targets in early childhood education, where we have increased spending by 74 percent in 2008. In the year ending June 2013, 95.7 percent of children starting school had previously participated in early childhood education. That is a great record.

We have a target to increase infant immunisation rates so that 95 percent of 8-month-olds are fully immunised by December this year. By 2017 we aim to halt the rise in children experiencing physical abuse and reduce the current numbers by 5 percent. Considering that we have had such a terrible record with abusing our children, that is an ambitious target. We are supporting vulnerable children by tackling poverty issues, our approach being to fix issues with vulnerable kids before it is too late. We are expanding the KickStart Breakfast programme. More than 1.5 million breakfasts have been served since the Government expanded the programme last year. We are boosting support for KidsCan to ensure that kids in need have access to raincoats, shoes, and our basic health care programmes.

There is always more, as other members have said, that the Government can do and the rest of New Zealand can do. This Government is fully committed to lifting the quality of all New Zealanders’ lives, and this bill deals to the very heart of our shame—the shameful record, the shameful history, of our abuse of the most vulnerable. This is a great bill. I commend it to the House.

I am pleased to take a call in the second reading of the Vulnerable Children Bill. Whenever it comes to debating bills of this type in this House, I have had reason to reflect on the many years I have spent working with vulnerable families and vulnerable children, training social workers to work in this field, and, indeed, researching and writing about many aspects of vulnerable children and vulnerable families. When I do that reflection, I recall all of the actions we have taken. My experience goes back to 1971. Every time there is a proposal to improve the lives of vulnerable children, a few years later when we look at the effects of those proposals, we scratch our heads and ask why it did not achieve its effect. Why is it that now we end up in the 21st century with such a poor record when it comes to child abuse and neglect? How did that happen when, since 1971, I can recall, we have had the kinds of speeches we are having in the House now—the comments to the effect that we have found the answer, and that when we put these matters into legislation and when they are practised, things will be that much better? I just wish I had that confidence. Nothing I have heard so far gives me that confidence.

That is not a reason not to support this bill. We have every reason to support this, and, indeed, we do, but it is a matter for quiet reflection on what it is that we ought to be doing that we are not doing. The question haunts me. Why do we as a country have such an alarming rate of abuse and neglect? The refrain is: will these sets of provisions make the difference? We can go further in asking those questions. Why is it that a certain section of our communities live lives of quiet desperation, often producing the harm, if you like, that we are designing approaches to resolve? So why does that happen, and why do those communities and those individuals and those families live lives of quiet desperation? Why are the poor and, to some extent, certain ethnic groups overrepresented in this field, and why do we not have conversations about that? Why do we not begin to address those things a lot more comprehensively? And then the refrain is: will this set of provisions enable us to improve the lives of the vulnerable in a comprehensive kind of fashion? And the answer is maybe, maybe not. But still the sadness remains.

Why are there so many cases where subsequent generations produce the same effects? It is not as if we did not know about them. It is not as if these families and these children have not come to the consciousness of some official. It might be a teacher, it might be a Plunket nurse, it might be a recreation person, or it might be somebody else in the community, such as a doctor or a nurse, and, down the track, colleagues at work, etc. Why is it that despite our knowing of them—and many of these cases have been identified and referred to the agencies and others who work on improving the lives of the vulnerable—we fall short, and we fall short so seriously? So we then begin to ask questions about the quality of our interventions. We can create the best set of legislative provisions, but it will not make a damn bit of difference if we do not have the right type of people—highly trained people—to operationalise the intention of the legislation. We have known about abuse and neglect for so long. We have known for so long where it occurs, yet we have not been able to bring together a comprehensive set of provisions to protect the most vulnerable. Will this set of provisions do that? I am not so sure, but I hope that they will.

We can reflect on our adult justice system, and it is littered—it is littered—with those who were vulnerable much earlier on in life. It is littered. Why does that happen? In fact, we treat them in such a way that they become the abusers of tomorrow and, therefore, we have to look at ourselves as well. So what is the extent to which these provisions I first looked at—why do we fail? Why are the billions we have spent and the provisions we have made not working? These matters worry me. They worry me as a parent, they worry me as a grandparent seeing young children, they worry me as a previous practitioner in this field, and they now worry me as a member of this particular Parliament. Over the past almost 6 years I have sat in this House and watched the various provisions we have tried to come up with to address this issue, and we have always supported any good idea. This Opposition has supported the good idea to say: “Well, maybe these sets of provisions will make a difference.” But at times I worry that the other sub-context, or the other sub-conversation, if you like—the other conversation that goes on—is the way in which we also heap a lot of criticism on these families, as well. We have done it even recently. Whenever we talk about welfare abuse, whenever we talk about dependency, or whenever we talk about those going overseas for a holiday when they ought not to be—whenever we do that, we are pointing a finger at a whole bunch of people who are the vulnerable, from whom these families come.

So on this particular occasion there is no need not to support these provisions, because the provisions themselves will make some difference. Coming to the specific things in the bill, because we share the concern amongst New Zealanders, we do support the provisions here, but will these provisions be enough? I do not know. This bill addresses the vulnerability of about 30,000 children, but the vulnerable whom we know of are about 300,000 children, yet we are not actually focusing on that in any comprehensive kind of way. Those who are at risk, if you like, are a much larger pool, and these provisions address some of those. So in maybe another 20 years’ time somebody else will be standing here giving a very similar speech, asking why in 2014 our provisions were not more comprehensive, because those who are living in poverty are vulnerable, yet our provisions do not get to them.

What we require is a more comprehensive action plan for children that will produce a paradigm shift in the way in which our society thinks about the vulnerable, because there is something wrong with New Zealand society when it comes to violence. We are very, very tolerant of violence. No matter what we say in this House, this society is very tolerant of violence—whether it is violence against our children, whether it is violence against our women, whether it is violence of men against men, or whether, indeed, it is in the way in which we conduct ourselves in our language, etc. It is somehow ingrained in the psyche and the personality of New Zealand. We are not addressing it, and that wider conversation is not taking place. So this particular bill looks at some aspects of that, and those we do not argue with. I am glad that there will be a much more comprehensive look at those families who have had vulnerable children producing others. It will look at that.

So there are many, many aspects of this bill that are worth supporting, but unless we have highly trained people who are capable of identifying the cases and bringing together high-quality programmes to produce the change that is required, this bill will be suboptimal in its effects. But it is still a bill worth supporting. There are some good ideas here, and others will talk about those during the Committee stage. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party certainly agrees with some of the provisions of this legislation, the Vulnerable Children Bill, but not all of them. Where we have disagreements, they are serious, and so we are not intending to support this legislation any further. We did vote for it at its first reading, to make sure that we had a genuine discussion about the issues of how to best support families when they are in a state of vulnerability—and children, in particular—but we are not satisfied that this legislation meets the goals.

We do appreciate that the Government is attempting to improve the safety of children. That itself is a laudable goal, and there are some aspects of this bill that go some way towards that, but this bill and the resources that are required to implement it will not be effective if the Government continues to neglect the issues of child poverty and family violence, which increase the risk to children. Those are the drivers of risk to children and they must be addressed, too. So we consider that at the same time as the Government is doing this bill, which is really about identifying particular individuals and focusing on individual needs, it should be implementing specific child poverty reduction measures and other policy initiatives that directly target family violence as the core driver of increased risk to children.

I would say that we are very pleased that the Minister for Social Development has chosen to remove the child harm prevention orders from the bill. They were particularly onerous, there was no evidence to back them up, there was no research that indicated that they would be successful, or any indication from the research we saw in the Social Services Committee that significant numbers of children would be protected by them, so we are very pleased that they have gone.

The collaboration in the bill is good—the collaboration between the chief executives of all the various ministries. That is all very good, too, but, actually, it should not require legislation to make it happen. Actually, these should have been put in place and it should be the normal practice of any Government intervention. There should be cross-ministry engagement and cross-ministry plans backed up by evidence and research that those plans are working, with clear targets being set for the reduction of violence, for the reduction of child poverty, and for the reduction in the number of children who are presenting to Child, Youth and Family and to other agencies—and in the number of families who are presenting to other agencies—for assistance. With plans like that in place and clear responsibility for meeting those objectives, we will have real change. Whether this particular level of collaboration in this bill does that or leads to that, we have yet to see, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

We are very pleased about providing more financial support to young people who are leaving State care. I will talk briefly about that shortly. We are, however, still very concerned that there is no intention by the Government to help the community sector with the cost of the increased police checks. The community sector came to the select committee and was very clear that this was not necessarily a bad idea—in fact, many welcomed it—but the financial burden was placed on those agencies that are at the front line of dealing with the most vulnerable families. The money that they use to go out to family homes, to go to meet and talk with families and kids, and to make the assessments about whether a child is at risk and then to take action for that child if that is the case is now going to have to be used for police checks. There is a significant cost to community organisations at the front line, and, repeatedly, the officials and the Minister have said that they will not make any kind of compensation or reimbursement for those costs. It is a significant cost in some cases, and that cost will come out of the services that are provided to the children and the families whom this bill is arguing to assist. It is unfair to place that obligation on these services that do such a fantastic job on behalf of us all and for them to have no reimbursement whatsoever.

I am particularly concerned about the provisions that increase the powers of the State to remove children from their mothers at birth. There are already significant powers that the State has to remove a child at birth if it considers that there is a risk. Part of what this bill does is it changes the onus of proof. It is already very difficult for mothers, particularly, to demonstrate to Child, Youth and Family that they have had enough intervention that they are able to keep their baby and care for them properly. But now the burden of proof has changed quite significantly and the hurdles for these women are now significantly greater, and we can see no justification for that.

The single most critical factor in how children survive exposure to domestic violence is the presence of at least one loving and supportive adult in their life. For many children the loving and supportive adult is their mother, who will repeatedly do her best to provide her child, her children, with a normal life, even when she herself is being abused. So she is the subject of domestic violence; her children are the subject of domestic violence. She is fighting for her and their lives as best she can, but the child abuse system does not acknowledge the role of this protective parent. We too often hear of these women, these protective parents, doing the best they can and losing their children because they have been unable to keep their children safe from the abuser. This is even in cases of post-separation where she has left the abuser, she has taken the children with her, she has not been able to stop the abuser from continuing the violence, and the children are removed from her. The children are removed from her. She is punished. She might have tried the court system and it failed her. She might have tried getting other support from women’s refuge—none of which has been able to keep the abuser away. Nothing about the State system has been able to keep the abuser away from her and her kids, and she is the one who is punished. Her children are punished.

I have been visiting child services agencies for the last wee while, talking to them about the nature of the families they work with, the very high-risk vulnerable families. One service told me that 50 percent of the parents of the families at risk come from State care—50 percent. State care has failed to provide those parents when they were children with the resources they needed to have a good and fulfilling life. State care has not helped them grow into the parents and adults who are able to have the resources to care for their children as they would like. Yet this legislation will take more children from parents and put them into State care. State care is not safe. Everybody knows that. The State system is trying to address that, and good on it for doing it as best it can, but it is still failing those kids. Those kids grow up to be parents, and those parents have their own kids removed, to be taken back into State care where the cycle starts again because at no point in this cycle has any Government truly addressed the drivers that have led to those kids being there in the first place, which are child poverty and family violence.

These are the issues that have to be tackled, and there is not one single thing in this bill that deals with that. The State will take children away. It will do police checks on individuals. It will take an individualistic approach. I asked the Minister about this and said: “Do you understand that we need structural change and we need an individual approach at the same time?”. Yes, she said; she understood that. No, she was not going to address the structural drivers that cause family violence. No, she was not. That was not her priority. So the Greens are very disappointed. We are disappointed in the time and the resources that it has taken to write up this bill and to eventually enact and do all this work, knowing that, at the end of the day, not a single thing is going to make the major difference that we need made in this country, which is tackling child poverty and family violence. We will not support this bill. Thank you.

The greatest disappointment was when the last speaker, Metiria Turei, continued to go on about child poverty. The greatest disappointment was when that member basically said to the whole of New Zealand that if you are impoverished, then you are more likely to abuse your kids and to neglect your kids. I tell you that most of New Zealand needs to know that that was a speech that put the blame on that. Here are the reasons why.

The last member who spoke would not like this, but when the Children’s Commissioner, Dr Russell Wills, came to give a submission at the Social Services Committee, this is what he said. He is part of the Child Poverty Action Group, which goes around and talks about this issue. Dr Russell Wills said this: “Poverty is the secondary issue. The issue around vulnerable children is absolutely important. The direction of the Vulnerable Children Bill is important. Its focus is important. Its intention to address the core issues is absolutely important.” So we now have the Children’s Commissioner stating that really clearly. I will say it again. He said that poverty is the secondary issue; vulnerability, neglect, and abuse are the critical issues. Here are the reasons he gave: the reality is that abuse and neglect have no ethnicity tag and they have no socio-economic tag. We cannot go out and say that because you are impoverished, you are more likely to abuse and neglect your kids. I can tell you this: if you go into any community, you will see that community rise up and condemn any person who says that. That is what is happening.

💬 Hon Member: Rubbish.

It is not rubbish; it is the truth. Back when the Hon Steve Maharey was the Minister for Social Development, I was part of the NGO sector, which turned round and, after the Mick Brown report, put together what we called the blueprint. The blueprint had the intention of bringing all of the sectors together. The report talked about siloed operations. There was a lack of champions. There was a lack of commitment to responsibility for the issues in the sector around abuse, neglect, and the vulnerability of our children.

What this bill has done is at the heart of that. I have got to tell you—and Dr Prasad knows this—that those recommendations were never upheld and they were never taken on board. But what this Minister has done is, firstly, to take on one of the core principles—leadership—that came out of those recommendations. She has taken on that core principle, leadership, to ensure we have accountability and responsibility. The Vulnerable Children Bill is about responsibility. It is about being accountable to New Zealanders, about the importance of vulnerable children, and about the neglect that happens in our community. These are the things that are important. At the highest level there are five chief executives of five key Government departments who are held accountable. Why is that important? Because that accountability is about their responsibility, about Government responsibility.

Can I also say this: the responsibility of addressing the issues of abuse and neglect in our communities is not just the Government’s. That last speaker from the Greens keeps talking about Government responsibility, but she is afraid to front up to our communities and talk about community responsibility. We know what we need to be responsible for. This bill has done that. We know that it has the support of the Labour Party, and we know that it is being responsible. The thing about what the Green Party members say and want to do is that they think the responsibility of care when dealing with abuse and neglect is entirely that of the Government and not of the community.

We think this is a very good bill. It is comprehensive. There were 115 submissions; 62 were oral submissions. We have worked constructively and collectively together. We also have the support of the Labour caucus to ensure that this bill absolutely fulfils its primary obligation around the abuse and neglect of our vulnerable children in New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for the minute and a half that is actually left before the dinner break. I rise on behalf of our wonderful New Zealand First Party to speak on this Vulnerable Children Bill. The second reading will need to be debated with caution. It is a shame that Parliament is no longer a place where legislation can be debated and scrutinised thoroughly with fair, democratic views. New Zealand First voted—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

As I was saying before we broke up for tea, this bill needs to be debated with caution. New Zealand First actually voted against the report of the Social Services Committee because there are areas in the bill that need to be fixed. The loopholes create discrepancies for those whom this bill is meant to care for. The report presented an atmosphere of false hope, using specific words to sell this Government’s idea of a solution, but without true commitment. That has been a major concern. Sweet phrases are being used to win support for this bill in the hope that no one will take the time to look into its contents properly. Language is now becoming the art of window dressing, intentionally creating confusion and forcing false perspectives on ordinary people. This tactic is clearly perceived by many who do care about vulnerable children. They do care about our children. They have responded through submissions because they are concerned about their loved ones being victimised unfairly.

Our children are precious—there is no secret about that—and they ought to be given a fair opportunity in life. They need love. They need safety. They need access to an environment that cares for their future. They must be provided with the stability that comes with fairness and fosters a balanced approach to life. The truth is that greed is now replacing common sense and love. Love will come when greed and manipulation stop. Love will come when the personal agenda is put aside and there is a focus on positive outcomes for all. The evidence of child abuse in New Zealand is tragic—absolutely tragic. New Zealand’s record of child abuse is concerning. Children are being neglected and ignored. It is a real shame to think that child poverty is actually encouraged here in New Zealand. It is disheartening to have a Parliament that introduces legislation that would result in demolishing any good efforts to enhance a happy environment for our children.

We have heard of the saying that when we were children we used to think that when we grew up we would no longer be vulnerable. The unfortunate reality now is that to grow up is to accept vulnerability. The term “vulnerable children” is a relatively new term. The fact is that one of the virtues of being a child is vulnerability. But children are expected to gain more security and independence as they grow older. Sadly, the harmful, negative, and threatening influences of today such as drugs, alcohol, and domestic and sexual abuse mean that some children never get that chance—never. These negative influences perpetrate the vulnerability of children.

It is our responsibility to ensure that our children can grow up to become confident young adults. The Kāhui twins did not have to die if the loopholes in New Zealand legislation had been afforded common sense. The number of young children being subjected to unsafe environments has increased over the last 6 years—or the last few years, if I could say it that way. It is a demoralising outcome for a country like New Zealand, which often raises human rights concerns at international forums. Young baby Nia Glassie—I am sure that everyone will remember her—would not have died if our Government applied intelligence that would put the safety of our children as a top priority.

The words being used in the title of this bill sound great to our ears. The title flows perfectly, and it is very hard for anyone to oppose something that aims to provide a safe haven for our young children. One of the positive aspects of this bill is the area where information sharing amongst Government agencies will ensure early detection of vulnerable children. One would hope that it does not get to the wrong hands, who could then use it to blackmail those who are already vulnerable. Information sharing means raising any alarm on things that could potentially lead to risks, detecting the vulnerability of children, and accounting for appropriate actions that would be needed to address the issues. It is meant to put children at the centre of everything that may need to be done. But the bill fails to recognise other elements that can create difficulties for our children. This is the area where the attempt to protect our vulnerable children could be seen as pure manipulation and those with power behaving dastardly, ignoring the need for children to be at the centre of any efforts.

Nothing brings me more happiness than trying to help the most vulnerable people in our New Zealand society. However, introducing legislation for political point-scoring is dangerous and will have a huge negative impact on our community. I asked a question at the select committee about security checks on volunteers who are engaged on a regular basis with children. To my surprise, the response I was given was that some religious groups are not comfortable with this because it could put people off volunteering in schools, early childhood education centres, or whatever organisation it may be. I immediately thought of my mother, Feao Leono, who often said we are never so vulnerable as when we trust someone, but, paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.

If those who offer themselves to volunteer are actually genuine about the service that they provide for young children, they cannot possibly be concerned about security checks. In fact, they would probably support them all the way. It means that it will be getting rid of the risks and harms that are associated with those who do work with our young children. A number of child abuse incidents occur as a result of these types of situations where volunteers’ backgrounds have not been checked and children have been found to have been abused.

I introduced a bill to the House called the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill. This bill has been reported back to the House. Again, it was a bill that would have deterred criminals from committing crimes in the presence of young children. Some of those at the Law and Order Committee thought that was already covered under the current legislation, when it is clearly not. It is down to the judge to use that option. So let me say this: if this were the case and it was already covered, then why are we deliberating on this bill here today? To think that the current law allows the judge to consider options that incorporate additional punishment—it is clearly not black and white. It is possible that this current Government is working against the common-sense approach because that bill was under the name of the New Zealand First Party, without any regard for the children. If current legislation is sufficient to cover the basic requirements for vulnerable children, then why have there been so many cases where vulnerable children continue to be affected?

We have a responsibility as a State to protect our most vulnerable citizens. That means children, of course, and includes seniors and those with disabilities. The question is whether this bill will be enough. Will this bill deliver that outcome? We all accept the general expectation that vulnerable children need safeguards from those who would cause harm to them. Well, that is our moral obligation. It is our obligation to ensure that we support changes that will bring about better outcomes. In fact, it is our obligation as parliamentarians to introduce legislation that delivers justifiable results, including peace and happiness for our tamariki. There is a wider cost to society when children are deprived of basic needs crucial to their development. If we cannot protect the future generations, there will be an economic cost to the country as well. New Zealand First will put forward a Supplementary Order Paper at the Committee stage for members to consider, and we urge the Minister for Social Development and the Government to seriously give it some consideration. Thank you very much.

Every so often, as members of Parliament, we have the opportunity and, in fact, the privilege to do something really significant, and this is one of those moments. In the nearly 6 years that I have had as a member of Parliament, there are few things that I can think of that have been more important to us, and I am very, very proud to be supporting this bill, the Vulnerable Children Bill.

I want to acknowledge the Minister for Social Development and the Social Services Committee for the huge job that they have done. I am deeply disappointed and indeed amazed to hear that the bill is no longer unanimously supported by all the parties in this House—because it is that important. This is a measure where New Zealanders are crying out to us for action and for leadership, and through a very thorough, rigorous process starting with a white paper and coming through to this bill, the Minister and her wonderful team have delivered.

I pay tribute to everybody working around the country, and there are many thousands of wonderful people who are doing terrific work in this area trying to protect our most vulnerable children. I cannot commend this measure more strongly to the House.

Thank you for the opportunity to rise and speak to the second reading of the Vulnerable Children Bill. I wish I could share the enthusiasm of the member who has just resumed his seat, Tim Macindoe, for how significant this bill is. Yes, this is an issue that does need addressing. It is the Labour Party’s view that the Government has not grasped this opportunity to deal with the very serious issues that confront the nation’s children, that the bill is not as significant as it should have been, and that it falls short on a number of counts. So, sadly, if this is the most significant moment in the member’s career, I wish it was an awful lot more significant that what it has been.

We did have the opportunity, and we still have the opportunity in this Parliament, to actually address the issues that do make 285,000 children in this country vulnerable, but instead the Government has chosen to do some things to assist 30,000 who are deemed to be at risk. Those I am referring to are the 285,000 children who by this Government’s own estimation—by this Government’s own estimation—are living in poverty and, sadly, this bill does nothing to address their plight.

Even for the children whose plight it does aim to address, sadly, it does fall short. It does aim to address the plight of children who find themselves in situations where they are at risk of being physically or sexually abused, so they are very, very vulnerable. I want to just restate—and I am sure other members when they have taken calls in this debate have been clear about this—that no one could be more vulnerable in our society than a child placed at risk in that way. But the bill focuses on people in paid employment and the risk they pose to vulnerable children, when what we know as a country is that people in paid employment, in front-line services with children, are not where the vast majority of this harm takes place. What we know is that the paid professionals are much less likely to be in a situation of abusing children and that, in fact, it is in the unpaid workforce and the volunteer workforce where most of this harm happens.

I was severely disappointed as a member of the Social Services Committee to discover part-way through the submissions on this bill that this bill did nothing, and still does nothing, to address that very serious and large-scale risk, because we do know that that is where children are most at risk. Yet this bill does nothing to regulate or address the issue of having a safety regime for children around people who either work in volunteer organisations or volunteer for organisations where children are placed in care. I think that is a great gaping hole in this legislation.

Again, as it so often is with this Government, sadly, it is a grand title that the Government has afforded this bill, but the detail does not actually match up with the rhetoric. If this really was a bill that addressed vulnerable children, then as well as the issue of children being placed at risk of abuse, it would deal with the vulnerability of those 285,000 children who are living in poverty.

The good news is that the Labour Party has got plans to do exactly this, and I want to recommend to people listening to this debate Labour’s Best Start policy. If the Government was really serious about addressing the issues for vulnerable children, then it would be agreeing with the approach being proposed by Labour. The Best Start policy ensures that every child who lives in a family where the family income is less than $155,000 per annum would receive, on the birth of that child, $60 extra a week, and for low-income families that payment would stay in place up until the age of 3. That is a very real and practical way of addressing poverty and vulnerable children living in poverty. If the Government was serious about addressing the concerns about vulnerable children, that is exactly where it would be heading. It would be heading down that track of ensuring that all children get the very best start in life.

Again, a Government that is really serious about dealing with children and making sure that they have got the best start in life would be supporting my bill to extend paid parental leave to 6 months. Instead, the Government is deploying all sorts of delaying tactics—everything it can think of to stop that bill from going through this House, including the extreme threat of a financial veto. That is what the Government thinks of vulnerable children. It is actually prepared to use the most extreme tool available to it as a Government to stop children from getting supported in those very early and vulnerable first 6 months of their lives. That, I think, says it all about this Government’s priority for supporting children in those very early vulnerable months.

That is also part of Labour’s Best Start programme—the policy that actually will deal with the needs of vulnerable children rather than this bill, which addresses a narrow sliver of the issue. However, however narrow the sliver is, it is an important sliver, I must add, because of course we want to ensure that children who are at risk of being harmed by adults—and it bothers me to stand in this Parliament and say it, because we as adults should be the people on whom vulnerable children can depend—should be able to depend on the fact that when they are in the company of adults they are safe, but, sadly, that is not the case.

This bill does a little to address that issue, but it does not do a lot to address it. I was, however, pleased to see that the Government did back down in the end on the idea of using child harm prevention orders. It was the view of the Labour Party and other parties represented on the Social Services Committee, right from the outset, that these were not going to work, and that the child harm prevention orders were going to be significantly overreaching. The Minister for Social Development came to that decision at the end of the day, but it took many, many submissions from a wide range of submitters to convince her that taking measures against people who had not had a conviction and for whom there was no evidence or proof that they had offended against children was not workable and was going a step too far. The Government came to its senses in the end.

There is one other issue that came to light during the submissions on this bill that I would like to briefly give some oxygen to during this debate, and that is the issue raised by a number of organisations who talked to us about the plight of children who are extremely vulnerable because they have severe disabilities, their family has been unable to cope with those disabilities, and they have ended up being institutionalised for life as a result of that. The plea from a number of those organisations was to say to the select committee that, for goodness’ sake, if these parents are not willing or able to give a home to these children, there are other foster families who would like to do that, and that child should have the right to not be institutionalised for life but to have a home for life. I think that is something that I would like to see this Parliament give some consideration to in the future.

The Labour Party is supporting this bill. We do not think it goes far enough.

Debate interrupted.