Oranga Tamariki (Parent’s and Guardian’s Responsibility) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Oranga Tamariki (Parent’s and Guardian’s Responsibility) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.

It’s a pleasure to stand up and speak to this bill tonight. We’ve heard a lot of words in the House tonight about people who have been in the House for short times or very long times. This is my bill that’s been in the tin for the last almost three years. It was originally put in the tin by our member Mike Sabin. And Mike has had a huge amount of experience in the police and with people who are working with youth and drugs, and it is a pleasure to stand here and put this bill up today.

Whatever you think about any parts of this bill—and I want to go through some parts of this with you—there is a great need in this country to do something around youth and crime. And so every day we talk—[Interruption]

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! That member, if he wants to stay in the House—there’s no problem with interjection, but we would like it to be a bit witty and a bit quieter.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Every day in the news, we read about young people, we read about crime, we read about dairy robberies, and we read about all of these things that are on our screens every night on TV. And, obviously, over time, things have changed in our communities around parental responsibility. Part of the reason why I’m really excited about putting this bill up—and you can tell me all the problems and the challenges with it, but I’m interested in fixing this problem.

Last year, I was lucky enough to go to a women parliamentarians conference in Iceland, and during that conference, we learnt about what Iceland did for their youth. Now, they have a much smaller population than we do—330,000—but, basically, they top the European table these days. The percentage of 15 and 16-year-olds who had been drunk in the previous months, right from the 1990s, went down from 42 percent in 1998 to 5 percent in 2016. And the percentage who have ever used cannabis is down from 17 percent to 7 percent, and smoking cigarettes has gone from 23 percent to 3 percent. [Interruption] You can laugh and yell if you like, but—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Actually, could the member stop bringing the Speaker into the debate.

Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. Those on the other side of the House can laugh and yell if they like, but Iceland, to curb the drug, and I’m quoting this now, “To curb [the] drug abusing, booze swilling youth, simple measures were implemented under a plan called Youth in Iceland. Alcohol sales—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: It’s just the youth!

Well, if you don’t listen—if the Government over there on the other side of the House ain’t going to listen—we’re not going to solve this issue. So kids aged 13 to 16 were placed under a 10 p.m. curfew in winter, midnight in summer, and each local community got together and the parents pledged. They worked with the police. And Iceland is now exporting its models to 35 cities.

So we can have a look at this bill and we can say, “Hey, it’s not quite right.” The Hon David Parker came to me yesterday and he has taken some advice, which he has given me, which says that this may not be suitable for the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act because it may go further than what is necessary. And so I have got that document with me, and I think if it does go further than necessary, it would be great to be able to take this to a select committee and just figure out how far we might get this to go, because we have an issue to solve in this country, and I think it would be very remiss of us not to have a look at this as one of those opportunities, given the success that’s happened in Iceland.

And if there’s not exactly the right words in the bill or the right criteria, well, let’s take it and have a look at it, because, under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the advice we’ve been given says it enables, rather than requires, orders to be made in respect of parents and guardians. It could therefore be argued that the bill leaves scope for the Youth Court to make orders that are consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and, indeed, the judges must exercise their discretion to make orders in a way that is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

So it’s not impossible to get over this with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. All we have to do, as a Parliament and as New Zealand politicians, is sit down and work out some answers. And I know we talk a lot about children and we talk a lot about the social investment approach. And we call it “social investment”, and I know on the other side of the House it’s being called something different, but we have children in this country that need us, who grow into teenagers who need parents, who need boundaries, and who need places where they can get safety. Teenagers need boundaries and I think it’s our responsibility to put some of those boundaries around teenagers. Personally, I think that that’s a late stage.

So when we talk about our social investment, as we talked about it when we were in Government with Bill English, we talked about getting five to nine-year-olds and wrapping the services, wrapping all the tools, around them and involving their families and parents. So what this bill does is it talks about an extension of that. It talks about actually taking them when they’re teenagers, involving their families and parents—and most parents want to be responsible. In fact, lots of parents want to be responsible, but if you’ve got a child that’s young and growing up and they don’t get those boundaries and they don’t get those responsibilities, nothing’s actually going to change by the time they’re teenagers. So look, we have to find a solution to this problem, and this bill says—look you can argue all you like, but one of the primary factors identified in studies and by the police—I’m sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker—judges, and the wider community working with young people, is the lack of suitable parental or guardian oversight.

So we have a responsibility in this Parliament to deal with that. I would urge you to take the bill to select committee and have a look at it. What has struck me, in the last 3½ years that I’ve been in this Parliament, is that we have a lot of things in common about the what and the why. We can look 20 or 30 years out, and we’d probably all agree on the same goals and end goals. But we often disagree on the how and the why.

So I know that over the course of the next little while, members from the other side of the House are going to stand up and they’re going to be having a discussion about the how and the why of this bill. I’m open about the how and the why; it’s the intent of the bill that I think is important. I think we owe it to our youth to have a look at it. So, with that, I think we should let the discussion begin. It’s my pleasure to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. If the House will indulge me, just very briefly—in farewelling a good man by the name of Bill Wiki, from Ōtara; a staunch Labour Party member, but, more importantly, a community stalwart. I will farewell him in Māori first, and I’ll link this to the rest of my contribution on this particular bill.

Nō reira e te Pāpā, e Wīremu, whakangaro atu rā koe ki a rātou kua ngaro atu ki te pō—i oti i a koe ngā mahi rangatira ki roto i a Ō Taramainuku, hei tutuki, hei hāpai i ngā mahi me ngā wawata o te hapori o Ōtara. I mate koe, i aituangia koe ki roto o Ōtara engari i tukuna atu te taone o Tāmaki-makau-rau i tō tinana ki tō wā kāinga ki roto i a āu o Ngāti Hine. Kotahi te kōrero ki a koe e te papa: haere mai, haere.

[And so we farewell you, elder statesman Wīremu, as you join those who are no longer with us—you who achieved great things amongst Ō Taramainuku, so that the aspirations of the Ōtara community might be realised and advanced. Even though the accident that took your life happened in Ōtara, the wider Auckland region recognised that your remains must return to your people of Ngāti Hine. Only one thing remains to be said, dear sir: farewell.]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to farewell Bill Wiki. I mention Bill Wiki because Bill Wiki was a staunch man in the community of Ōtara. Bill Wiki was a big family man. Bill Wiki would take young, mainly male, Māori and Pacific Islanders off the street and into his home. He would take them into his home because these kids had nowhere else to go. They didn’t have families they could go home to and eat meat and vegetables for dinner and sleep in a nice warm bed. These were street kids—many of them hardened street kids. He took them in, out of the goodness of his heart.

Sadly, when I read a particular bill like this, I can’t help but think about Bill Wiki. The reason is that some of the orders that can be imposed by the introduction of a bill like this actually stop the good heart of Bill Wiki for his community. They actually say to him that because of the actions of one, the multiple kids that were taken into his home shall be punished for it. Why? Because it says that if one particular bad apple tends to play up, because of the order placed on Bill Wiki by the court then all of the other kids would miss out.

This doesn’t take into consideration the dynamics in a community such as Ōtara, where cultural disconnection is a real thing, where family disconnection is a real thing, where tribal disconnection is a real thing, and where church disconnection is a real thing amongst Māori and Pacific Island communities.

So I want to remember Bill Wiki, as we contribute towards this bill. It is important to make sure that the approach we take—and I take the point of the member whose name is on this particular bill. We do want the right outcome for our families; not a punitive one. We want the right outcome for our families—one that is whānau ora - centric, one that puts the family at the centre of all we do in making sure that young people get the support and the care that they need to be successful in this country.

I’m sad to say that in this particular bill, it doesn’t achieve that. It takes a very staunch, punitive approach, and I’m not surprised by that, given the bills in the House this evening. The Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) Amendment Bill is another one that, while well intended, looks to solve a particular problem but, if anything, creates more problems. It also contributes to the well-known fact in the public—that it was the former regime that actually was quite happy to build prisons, and now we know why. Because bills like this actually look to punish families.

Let’s look at the whānau dynamic. In many whānau across my electorate of Tāmaki Makaurau—and this isn’t unique to Tāmaki Makaurau—the whānau dynamic is very different. I’ve spoken about Matua Bill, and I know that many grandparents actually find themselves inheriting—whether it was by force of law or by the good nature of the grandparent—more than one child. They inherit families; they inherit all of their grandkids in one go.

Sure, we might be able to point the finger at absent parents, absent mums and dads, and blame them for the culture and the behaviour and the delinquency of these young people. But I’d argue that this particular bill actually doesn’t focus on the young person. My experience in my communities is that when grandparents take in their grandchildren, they do it with the acknowledgment that the parent is actually absent. They have other issues—mental health issues, addiction issues.

The last thing we want to be doing is locking these people up—whether it’s the parent with the mental health issue, the alcohol or substance abuse issue, or just the hard fact of living in the current environment where expenses are far too high. They struggle. They work hard. They try their best to raise a family, but just can’t do it because times are hard.

This particular bill sets out to punish those kinds of people and, even worse, sets out to punish the grandparents who are actually filling that role of looking after their family, keeping whānau together. I recall, in the last parliamentary term, that was what one of the focuses was. It was about keeping whānau together. Sadly, what this particular bill does is, it doesn’t do that.

I want to touch on another aspect that isn’t unique to Tāmaki Makaurau, but is certainly heightened in Tāmaki Makaurau, and that is a housing crisis.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’d rather you talked about the bill.

Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker, it talks about one of the imposable conditions in this particular bill. It requires parents or guardians to reside at a nominated address with the child or young person. Many children and young people actually live on couches. They live in sheds. They don’t have a fixed abode. They travel around their friends’ places, they sleep on the couch, until their mother or father or the guardians of that particular house kick them out. Are we suggesting, then, that we can impose upon parents who struggle in the same way—we need not look past Te Puea Marae, all of the emergency housing places in Tāmaki Makaurau. Are we expecting parents to actually find themselves, all of a sudden, in a house where they can be there with this particular young person, to care for them? I reiterate the point: there is a housing crisis.

I want to touch, too, on the comments made by the member around the advice from the Attorney-General, who makes it very clear that this is a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This is a clear breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. While we might take the point from the member who introduced this bill in saying that, sure, we can flesh out the well-intended purposes of this bill through another stage, through the select committee, and through other readings and processes in this House but the fact remains that this is, in the words of the Attorney-General, still a serious breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—on multiple levels; not just on one level but on multiple levels.

I’d argue then that this particular bill, as has been mentioned numerous times in the House this evening, is well intended but poorly drafted—poorly drafted, without consideration of the realities of whānau, the realities of young people, a prison system bulging, in fact bursting, at the seams, and social factors that are affecting communities. They simply aren’t being considered in this particular bill. And, of course, that’s not good enough. What we hope to see in a particular bill of this nature is one that does actually focus on the family.

Pūao-te-ata-tū is a classic example. It’s a great piece of work that can advise bills like this and that actually puts a whānau-centred approach on these types of bills to make sure that we’re not taking a punitive approach but one that says, actually, the young person is a part of a whānau, and it is a wider whānau. It might not be the guardian or the actual biological parents but they’re part of a wider community. What this particular bill does, and I’m sad to say, is it doesn’t do that.

In fact, I’d argue it would break the family down. It would cause more strain on a service that simply cannot take any more punishment. I’m talking about the prison system. I’m talking about the social welfare system. I’m talking about all of the public services that our communities expect to be there but simply can’t cope. This bill will simply add a further burden on that particular public service, let alone the arguments about whether or not something like this can actually be policed—can actually be policed.

In the closing seconds of my contribution, we on this side of the House, the Labour Party, will be opposing this bill, and we would encourage the member to think a bit wider in drafting a bill of such nature, in the hope that it may pass in the future. Kia ora tātou.

The joy of a nation is when we stop to celebrate all things that are good and great about what makes us New Zealanders, what makes us Kiwis—it could be sporting, it could be cultural, it could be commercial. All of those things, the things that we say and uphold—that is the greatness and the goodness of a nation.

But the issues that are the shame of a nation are the abuse and neglect. The member, Peeni Henare, talked about the realities—that is our reality. The realities are that we know the names of the families and of the whānau. We can see the faces of those young children, and even children who’ve been in care, and we know the cause and the issues behind them. It burdens us as a nation, and it should burden us as a Parliament, even here tonight, in this place and in this Chamber. The purpose of this bill, the Oranga Tamariki (Parent’s and Guardian’s Responsibility) Amendment Bill, in its first reading, is to address that very issue.

The member who just spoke, the Hon Peeni Henare, talked about facing some of those realities. Here are some of our realities: there’s 158,900 notifications every single year on average to the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services; there are 33,000 further actions that are taken into place—in other words, there is a duty of care and a care of concern in which there must be some action taken apart; there are 6,100 family group conferences; and there are 5,700 children that are currently in care at the moment. So if we’re not taking it seriously—if that’s not our reality, as that member has said—then that’s the reason why we’re here tonight.

This bill is not about playing tiddlywinks. This is not tiptoeing through the tulips or anything else that other members may turn around and say. This is a bill that’s serious about addressing the issues of abuse and neglect. If we look into the core roles and responsibility—in fact, the briefing to the incoming Minister for Oranga Tamariki declares this: the core role, and one of them in section one talks about this, is “delivering family-led decision-making to address care and protection concerns”. This bill is doing that very action. It’s saying this: the responsibility and the burden should not just be on children and young people who are offenders. Actually, it should be something that should be shared right across the board.

This issue has been raised by police, social workers, counsellors, and even the courts themselves. This has come out because what they are saying is this: that we need another tool to hold to account the issues of concern that are out there.

At the moment, if we look through some of those issues—and let’s talk about this. When we think about the youth justice system, there are 2,400 FGCs—family group conferences—for young people alone, 550 young people remanded in residence, 300 young people sentenced to youth justice supervision, and that number doesn’t decrease but grows every single year. To the member who just spoke—and I want to honour him by the fact that I know Bill Wiki too was a great man. This bill does not take away the responsibility or the voluntary nature and the spirit of generosity that people like Bill Wiki play every single day. This is what that does—it says this: that the responsibility is not just with the Bill Wikis of our communities; it’s also with the parents and the guardians who have a care responsibility.

This is not some broad sweep. This is not to judge and to condemn all parents that are out there. No, it’s to those who do, and have to be held to account—that’s what this bill is doing. I hope that New Zealand First will listen to this, because they too know the importance of holding a community to account—people who do have that responsibility. We’re only talking about a small amount. We’re only talking about those, as I said—when there is abuse and neglect, when you’ve gone to the point where there is the wonderful generosity of people like Bill Wiki, who cared for those who are in need of care, who’ve been abused and neglected. It’s at that point where there is a small minority who need to be held to account. That’s what this bill actually does.

It does two things: it holds them to account. It says this: there are two areas—the liability serves two purposes. It’s the relationship between the guardian or the parent and the child. It talks about the importance of that role. It also talks about recognising the consequences of their behaviour. That’s about as plain English as you can get. Now, if the members opposite can’t get that, the members opposite need to talk to the police, to the youth justice social workers, the coordinators that are out there in the community, and ask them this question: who else needs to be held to account?

I have to say this: if the speakers across the House, in the Government, are serious about holding people to account, if they’re serious about addressing the shame that exists in our community of abuse and neglect, then they should send this bill to the first reading, through to select committee—allow the community to speak, allow them to have their voice, to declare that this bill is a good bill that actually serves a purpose in our communities.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The previous speaker, the Hon Alfred Ngaro, asked that we should send this bill to select committee and allow the community to speak. I just want to say to that member, my colleague, that the community has spoken, four months ago. They don’t want them in here. They don’t want them to be in Government. In fact, because they continue on that same path, they—I don’t know why the previous speaker was so angry and so antagonistic, because that conveys their whole attitude about youth justice.

I want to say to Barbara Kuriger—look, I accept when I’m listening to her. Her spirit is very different from the previous speaker. Her spirit is very different from Mike Sabin, who supposedly drafted this. To hold this bill with Mike Sabin is not a good look, Barbara. I’d ask you to go back to the drawing board—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think you should use the full name.

—because I think if you are sincere, and if I accept what you’re saying on face value, Barbara, there are no quick—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member will use another member’s full name.

I would say to the member Barbara Kuriger that there are no quick fixes for this. To blame parents for the sins and the crimes of young people is just utterly wrong. It reflects badly on the National Party and their whole attitude of treating offenders and their families as scum, and that’s reflected also in the attitude of the previous speaker. It also reflects that you guys—that lot—have run out of ideas. It’s precisely the reason why you now sit on that side of this House, because the country recognises that for nine long years you’ve swept aside many of the problems that this Government is now having to fix, and one of the problems is the issue of youth justice.

The Hon Peeni Henare recognised one of our kaumātuas, Bill Wiki, who passed away recently. He’s absolutely correct: Bill Wiki was an example within the Ōtara community, a place which he referred to as the capital of Manukau City, and he used that to try and provide support and confidence to the young people in Ōtara—and, indeed, Manukau—that they were something of worth. This bill actually condemns not only the young people who need help but also their families, their whānau, who are essential to provide support for a lot of our young people.

Look, there are no quick fixes for this, and I think the fact that they are resorting to this blaming the parents for the sins of the young people shows the lack of ideas that they need—the lack of ideas, not only that, but also the lack of wanting to genuinely do something right for the young people, whom we all know are the future of this country.

I have to say, they know the numbers. They’ve known the numbers for nine long years, and chose not to do anything about. I also feel suspicious that when they know the numbers and it reflects high for Māori, reflects high for Pasifika, it begs the question: are they so intent on showing their racist attitude towards these families? Because that’s how I see it—that’s how I read it.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Look, I really think the member—

💬 Hon Alfred Ngaro: Point of order—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I understand the point of order. I think I will ask the member to stand and withdraw that comment.

I withdraw, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The bill as presented is inconsistent with what all researchers tell us, what all organisations tell us: that it needs to be a holistic approach of supporting help not condemning families, because, ultimately, these young people need their families and there’s a range of problems—families is only one factor. Employment, poverty, education, health, and drug addiction—all of those require a holistic approach and a long-term aim to make sure that we strengthen families. This bill here is not about strengthening families; it’s about dividing and condemning families.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Firstly, New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill, and I’m going to spend these five minutes explaining to the National Party why, if they have any common sense, they shouldn’t actually be supporting this bill either.

Over the last nine years, the National Party has been in Government—the previous nine years. Especially in the previous term, every second week I stood up in this House and I gave evidence after evidence after evidence that the youth justice system was failing. The contrast and the inconsistency with which the National Party has expressed their view over the youth justice system in the last term from the two speeches that we’ve just heard now is absolutely palpable. The contrast couldn’t be any larger. All I heard, and all this House and the public heard, in the last term was how great the youth justice system was going, how youth crime was down, and how it was the best in the world. The two speeches that we’ve heard tonight, so far, are all about how it’s failing and about how if this Government took it seriously enough, then we should put the bill that’s been on the Table right now through to select committee.

What the National Party has just indirectly admitted is that over the last nine years—or for however long that bill has been in the ballot—they have not taken it seriously enough as the Government, when they were, to put it through to select committee and put it through as a Government. That’s the question that that member needs to answer: if it was such a great answer, if it was needed so badly—if it was needed so badly—then why didn’t the National Government put it through over the last three years? Perhaps, just perhaps, when they answer that question themselves, they know why this side of the House is not going to be supporting it—why this side of the House is not going to be supporting it.

Alfred Ngaro mentioned something about New Zealand First: that we understand about parental responsibility and how it is needed to ensure the proper upbringing of these young people to make sure they’re on the right track and off the pathway of crime. And he’s correct. But at least New Zealand First come up with common-sense policies and pathways, and not the slam the fist on the table and say, “Let’s put the parents in jail.” I mean, how nonsensical is that?

For the last nine years, we’ve been hearing and been lectured on the social investment approach and about how the vulnerable children that they want to focus on are either in poverty or their parents are in jail. What does the National Party want to do? They want to fine them and they want to put them in jail. How ridiculous is that notion—how ridiculous is that notion?

I want to read something out very quickly. It’s dated 3 March 2017, and it will prove that the Government, in what they’re saying tonight in the first two speeches—and, I can guarantee, in the next speeches they do for the rest of the night—don’t believe a word they’re saying—3 March 2017. It’s titled “Parents of Young Offenders [Need to Take Greater Responsibility]” and says, “There needs to be greater responsibility [taken] by parents for young offenders, says New Zealand First. Parenting orders [which] were meant to play a vital role in helping parents of youth offenders address their children’s issues, provide the support needed and … reduce re-offending but are just not being utilised. Child Youth and Family have stated that [the conclusion must be that] parenting orders are rarely sought and never enforced and that a lack of parenting support is one of the underlying causes of offending.” Yet … over [the] 5000 Family Group Conference[s]”—which Alfred Ngaro mentioned—“… against youth offenders in 2015 the number of parents on parenting programmes numbered just 131—and of [those] only 7 were under a parenting order by [a] court. In 2016 this number was just 3.”

New Zealand First came up with the solution—a solution that already exists. It is there already in legislation; it is not being utilised. It is a step that is even further in front of the Youth Court—before the young person gets to Youth Court. When the young person gets there, it’s far too late. The solution already exists: parenting orders. There is no need for new legislation. New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a great pleasure for me to be back in these hallowed halls and to have as my first speech in the House since my return on Tuesday this Oranga Tamariki (Parent’s and Guardian’s Responsibility) Amendment Bill, in its first reading. My area of responsibility is now as associate spokesperson on children, so this bill fits very well with the aims of the bill and my role. The aims in this bill are to give the courts the ability to connect how the parent’s behaviour impacts on their child’s offending, and it also is to help parents recognise how their parenting has consequences on the behaviours of their children.

As any parent will tell you, raising a child is a tough job. Most achieve great outcomes for their children. They live in secure and loving homes and with appropriate discipline. But there are some parents who do struggle—they struggle with the job of bringing up their children—or some, as we know, simply, do not care about their parental role, and they fail to provide that necessary oversight that their children need when they grow into young adults. As my friend and colleague Barbara Kuriger mentioned earlier, there are numerous studies that have been done by a range of organisations that clearly demonstrate there is a link between the lack of parental or guardianship oversight and youth crime.

I’d like to read out an excerpt from a probation officer in the UK: “V. Increase in material standards has corresponded with a lowering of moral standards—easy living encourages moral flabbiness. VI. Ideas on the care and training of children on the ‘no repression’ lines have not been fully understood by many parents and have encouraged an emotional instability amongst the youth. [This] old type of discipline has been discarded, but nothing constructive put in its place. VII. The influences from abroad (particularly USA) have largely been responsible for [this lack of discipline], but it is interesting to see that the USA has (a) the highest standard of living in the world, (b) the greatest emotional instability, (c) the highest crime rate—both Juvenile and adult. … IX. This USA influence and emotional instability seems to be increasing and is likely to be a more serious problem than larceny offences. The growth of gangs … flick knives, brutal fighting … [etc.] are all against English tradition and have only had a destructive effect on life.”

This report was dated 1958. Now, we all know there have been and always will be tensions between young people and their parents, as the boundaries between them get tested, and for some that will overflow into tensions with the law. The work will never be finished when it comes to finding more creative and effective ways to assist our young people to avoid falling into this downward spiral of lawlessness. We all agree there is no one magic bullet, but that is not a reason why we should not keep making progress.

This bill adds another tool for our judiciary to assist them in dealing with our young people who come before the Youth Court. Currently, there is no ability for the judicial system to hold parents to account for the lack of their oversight that leads to some young people committing crime. Parents do hold that responsibility. By giving the judges the ability to impose conditions on the young offenders who find themselves in the judicial system, who are charged with an offence and released on bail, it will help focus and support parents to comply with the imposed appropriate conditions. The judge has discretion over these conditions. As we’ve heard tonight already, they can impose a curfew or where that person can live, and I actually trust our judges to impose the most appropriate conditions for each individual on a case by case basis.

I’ve also had experience myself where young people were knocking on doors in my local town, and I can tell you that there was a parent at the far end of the spectrum training those young people to be criminals. That is the far end of the spectrum that we are addressing with this bill. I have pleasure in committing it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Normally, I would congratulate a member for getting a bill drawn and note that that is a rare occurrence, but I must say in this instance I feel a little sorry for the member Barbara Kuriger having this bill drawn in her name. I felt from her initial speech and recognition of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that came back raising quite a few issues that she realises that this isn’t the answer, that if we want to be supporting our young people and our families actually we need a very different approach to this. I’ll note that the member in her speech spoke about Iceland, which has been quite inspirational, but it wasn’t about, in my understanding, the curfews or the “chosen” parental response, but actually a lot about providing good programmes and making sure that they were readily available to young people.

I do think I also need to echo the views—the Green Party shares the views that were expressed by New Zealand First in acknowledging that this has been sitting around since the previous Government had the opportunity to consider this as a policy intervention, and that choice was never taken, because, I think, it is inconsistent with the concept of a child-centred approach and with the direction that the previous National Government was going in around supporting whānau and redressing the terrible outcomes, particularly for tamariki Māori and whānau Māori. So the Greens are certainly opposing this piece of legislation. We think it takes us in very much the wrong direction.

I acknowledge the idea of parental responsibility, and that when you hear that phrase it conjures up the idea of a parent freely able to choose how they act, and relationships of love and trust in a family. I think underlying part of my concern with this bill is that it misses our context of epidemic levels of family violence in this country, and that we don’t have the services in place to be able to support behaviour change and support positive parenting out of the context of leaving violent relationships.

I was in Australia this week looking at the changes they’re making in response to family violence and got to sit in on a session looking around youth offending and their youth courts, and the research that they’ve been doing shows really clearly that we need to be working with mums who have left violent relationships even when they’ve got very, very small children, because the impact of the trauma on that child often goes unaddressed, and we have no systems, really, to address that in New Zealand at the moment.

It ends up with that child being violent towards their parent, and that child will often end up in our Youth Courts and in this exact situation. Now you’re looking at adding that mother potentially being at risk of being sent to jail for not meeting an accountability in the relationship of that child—ending up in court because of the behaviour and the result of the initial abuse and the State’s failure to respond appropriately. It’s just the wrong way to go.

We have to make sure that we understand the dynamics of domestic violence on our children and on the parents and create a system that addresses it and responds appropriately and has all the bits working together. We don’t have that, or anywhere near that, at the moment. Even in our family group conferences, where there’s the option of parenting orders, we haven’t got a family violence analysis in that.

People don’t understand the dynamics, and people have been put in dangerous situations, and now you’re looking at adding penalties that could fine people or send them to prison when that is so much of the context that this operates in. It’s dangerous, and the Greens won’t be supporting it.

Madam Deputy Speaker, it’s an absolute privilege to stand here to speak on this Oranga Tamariki (Parent’s and Guardian’s Responsibility) Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge the member Barbara Kuriger. I’m counting my six months in this place, and I see her as someone who is hard working, but I’m sad for her that this is something that—yeah, I’m just going to start this.

I chose to become political because I come from a place where I can actually say that I bring the voice of experience. In 2000, I became a youth justice social worker in Grey Lynn, Auckland central. In 2007, I became a youth justice manager in South Auckland, Māngere-Ōtāhuhu. So I think it’s fair to say that I bring the voice of experience. We’ve heard it from all over the place—the passion that’s come out of here—but I think what I can contribute to this is that we are legislating what I think is punishing vulnerable parents. In my experience, I’ve heard members of this House talk about vulnerable children, vulnerable communities, but for me vulnerable children come from vulnerable parenting or vulnerable homes. That’s why I am saddened for the hard-working member from across the floor that this bill is in her name. This is about punishing vulnerable parents.

The member across the floor, the Hon Alfred Ngaro, stated that there are over 5,700 children in State care. I might say in those statistics there are 1,109 young people who are over the age of 14 years, and I want to say that because at any one time the State can become that parent who has been talked about today. So I want to refer to the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, where it defines what a young person is. Part 2 of this Act talks about a young person over the age of 14 years but under the age of 18 years. That is care and protection, and that’s what the rest of everyone has been talking about, which is separate to what we are talking about tonight, which is Parts 4 and 5, which define a young person as being over 14 years and under the age of 17 years. So that is youth justice.

If we take that definition and we look at the number of young people who are in care, we’re looking at 1,119 young people who are currently in the care of the State, who is the parent and the guardian. If, in an unfortunate experience, this young person ends up in the Youth Court and under section 240, conditions of bail, subsection (1), “Where a child or young person is released on bail pursuant to 238(1)(b), [that] court may impose … a condition [on] that child or young person’s release [to] the child or young person shall not”—it goes on to talk about the child’s or young person’s parent. So who in the State is going to be that person who is going to be under new section 240A of the bill, if you’re talking about that?

I want to also talk about social investment. Because I bring personal insight into the workings of Oranga Tamariki, in my 30 years’ experience in this organisation, I want to refrain from talking about what I actually know and go to the stats. I know it’s late at night, but can you please bear with me. The total Youth Court outcomes for the last financial year were 2,013. In the total Youth Court outcomes, there were 1,278 young Māori people, there were 453 European people, 189 Pacific people, and 93 others. Of those 2,013, the court discharged 618 of those charges. But what I want to get to, in terms of social investment and investing in vulnerable parents, is that 93 of those charges ended up being convicted and sentenced in the adult court. What are we doing? What are we doing? We are subjecting vulnerable parents, who have got vulnerable young people—according to the last financial year, 93 ended up in the District Court. We are feeding our prisons.

I say to you, the member from across the House, I don’t support this. We really need to invest in supporting vulnerable parents, if that’s what you call social investment. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker for the opportunity to speak and participate in the first reading of the Oranga Tamariki (Parent’s and Guardian’s Responsibility) Amendment Bill, introduced by Barbara Kuriger, a good friend of mine. I congratulate her that her bill has been drawn and is going to the first reading. It’s my pleasure to support it, and I would like to share a few things.

I would like to start with one of the news items which I read today. It says that “Police are hunting for an Auckland teenager believed to be responsible for a … ‘crimewave’ while on bail and facing a raft of serious charges, including kidnapping and assault.” We are talking about a teenager. We see, now and then, teenagers and youth attacking hard-working people working at dairies, petrol stations, or takeaways. That is not what we expect our youth to do. If we have got good parenting for these children, they won’t be going out and getting involved in crime. We don’t want them to be responsible for some of the crimes that are heinous, because the trauma of which these workers go through after they are attacked and beaten up—I have seen so many people that they are traumatised for a long, long time.

I was in Hamilton last weekend where there were about 70 shopkeepers together discussing why it is happening. One of the reasons we can see is that the parents are not looking after some of these children who get deviated from their track. And that is what this bill is asking: that the parents and the guardians should be responsible for a good upbringing of these children. The children are the future of this country, not only the country but for us also. We have to look after them.

There is a simple example we can see. If we plant a plant and if we don’t look after it, it will not grow. There are more chances that it will die if we will not water that plant—same way with the children. If we don’t give them proper training, proper education, and proper cultural education, then they are going to deviate. We have seen in many cases—I’ll give another example: yesterday, when I was coming to Wellington, I met a young girl, a Pacific Islander of Samoan origin, and she was so much cultured into her culture that it was a pleasure talking to her. Her parents have given her a good education. She came all the way from the North Shore to work at the airport—I think her age would be around 18 or 20—and she was working as an assistant manager at a shop. That shows that if we properly give education to our children or upbringing of the family values, then they can too be a good citizen of this country.

This bill takes a step in the right direction by making a parent or a guardian accountable for their child’s offending where it is linked to a lack of supervision. There are a number of factors influencing a young person’s decision to offend. One of the primary factors identified in a study by the police, judges, and other wider communities working with young people is a lack of suitable parental or guardian oversight.

If we make sure that the children are back home before it gets dark and the family sits together, has dinner together, and discusses all the things that happened during the day—that brings a lot of difference in their attitude. That is what I have seen in my own family. My children come home, we have dinner together, and it is a good upbringing for these kids. I am hoping that when they are grown up, they will give the same kind of care to their children so that they can be good citizens of this country. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s my pleasure to take a short call on this member’s bill, the Oranga Tamariki (Parent’s and Guardian’s Responsibility) Amendment Bill. I congratulate the member Barbara Kuriger for having her member’s bill drawn. However, I share what we’ve said on this side of the House: we feel sorry for you, because this bill is a bit of a dog.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I hope you don’t feel sorry for me.

Oh, sorry—I feel sorry for the member, because this bill is a bit of a dog.

💬 Hon Jacqui Dean: Oh, too young to be arrogant.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Well, that’s not very nice. She’s older than she looks. Ha, ha!

This is a very short clause bill, which, essentially, amends the Oranga Tamariki Act of 1989 and gives the Youth Court judge the ability to impose conditions on parents or guardians—I’m 46, thanks—of young people against whom a charge has been proved.

The second part of this clause also gives the courts powers to impose the liability on those parents where the orders are not complied with. The liability will be a fine or imprisonment, because parents of youth who are in the youth justice system are best criminalised in the justice system—surely not. I mean, really. Let’s make parents criminally liable—I suggest that this is a nonsense. Let’s make things harder for families by making these parents into criminals!

We all know that the prison route is a failure, and that keeping people out of prisons is better for society. The Youth Court works in a unique way in that it can be mutually restorative for the young person and their parent or guardian. I have worked with lots of young people, and I can tell you that those children—even though they don’t like the behaviour of their parents, they still love them and they still want to be with them, and, eventually, hopefully, with intervention from the youth justice system, or some other system prior to youth justice, our children won’t go down this path.

So this bill seeks to insert new section 240A into the principal Act. I’m going to get a little technical here and look at the specifics of the wording of this bill. Firstly, the bill, in clause 5, refers to “Where a child … is released on bail … the court may make … orders in respect of the young person’s parent or guardian where they are lawfully”—that’s right, lawfully—“entrusted with … care or custody:”. So what this bill therefore says is that even though these parents or guardians are lawfully entrusted with care and custody, they’re actually not trusted or, in fact, good parents. What this bill says, therefore, is that a group of parents, the ones who have young people in the youth justice system, are to be blamed and not helped.

I hope that across this House none of the members here ever have a child in this system, but if a member has that great misfortune, your duty of care is therefore in question, and we as parents in this country—we may have conditions imposed upon us. Remember, we too can be grandparents caring for these children.

Let’s look at these kids. The youth who offend are 80 percent male, 73 percent are aged 15 and 16, and 63 percent are Māori. They most commonly commit burglaries, theft, assault, and robbery. We have heard from the member Jan Logie about domestic violence, and I think she covered that area well, so I won’t talk about this. These are actually a group of kids who need the support from all of us. They need to be held to account for their behaviour—and that’s the youth justice system—but also supported to make better choices, helped to get jobs, to attend school, to deal with addictions, to get help with mental illness—all the areas that have been woefully neglected by the last Government; all the areas we’re working on on this side of the House.

The idea that we want parents to be home, we want them to provide a loving and stable home, we want them to be free of addictions—these are things we can agree to. We need to build the capacity of those parents; we need to offer help and support, not punitive or criminalisation. I therefore cannot commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a right of reply tonight. We’ve had some very heated discussion, and, to me, that is positive because it shows everybody across this House cares deeply about youth and cares deeply about some answers that we need to find.

But I want to put a few things in context here in that we are not talking about rounding up all the parents and putting them in jail. Sometimes, when discussions are had, people take this topic to the extreme, and I really want to commend particular members like Jan Logie, who stood up before and she made some very positive comments about some of the other tools that are in the toolbox. This bill was really about one tool that we were trying to add to the toolbox, which was there because the youth justice system has not failed, as someone mentioned before—I think it was you, Darroch, when you were very wound up—but we do have some people in the system that have reached extreme, and it’s very difficult to deal with. So there’s a lot of tools in the toolbox that we can use, and this was just going to be one other one.

Alfred Ngaro talked about it not taking away the spirit of generosity. I don’t know Bill Wiki, who we had Peeni Henare paying a tribute to—I didn’t know Bill Wiki, but I commend people like that, and I know that there’s lots of people out there like that who are prepared to give of their time, to give of their effort. There is no intention, with putting this piece of legislation forward, to start attacking people who are doing their absolute best, but, unfortunately, there are some situations in this society that no matter what Oranga Tamariki do, no matter what the police do, and no matter what the justice system does—there are some people that just get too hard, and this was really about putting an extra tool in the toolbox.

I had to wonder at some point whether some members over the other side of the House actually had any agreement that parental responsibility existed at all. Teenagers need boundaries, as I mentioned at the start of the discussion, and I think it’s really important that they get those, and there’s lots of ways there, and I’m really pleased that we’ve had this discussion tonight. There’s been lots of animation in the House, and there’s been lots of people who really care about the youth. It’s my pleasure to commend the bill to the House. Thank you.