Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill

When we last were debating this bill, the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill—the next call is an ACT Party call. I call on Karen Chhour.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill, and there are just a couple of things I’d like to point out when it came to the consultation on this bill. Unfortunately, it ran parallel with the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill, and I feel that many of the submitters either got confused between the two bills, or this bill just got hidden behind the other bill because it was of such importance. So, unfortunately, we didn’t have much feedback around this bill and around how it would affect people in the real world.

I was having a look through this bill, and we supported it through the first reading because I felt that we needed an opportunity to look into the subsequent child provision. Currently, as it stands, for anyone who has had a previous child or a young person removed from their care and there’s no realistic prospect that that child or young person will be returned to that person’s care, the next child seems to be automatically uplifted. I honestly did not see how that was fair. People deserve natural justice. People deserve to be innocent until proven guilty and to have an opportunity to have a second chance.

But the more I thought about it, and the more I see stories coming out around Oranga Tamariki, and decisions made, and children that are being abused in care or abused in the homes of the parents or stepparents, I have to push back a little bit. Right now, what we’re proposing is that it will only be for a parent or a caregiver that has been convicted of murder, manslaughter, or infanticide of a child or a young person that is in their care. But often we see children that may not have been murdered or may not have died at the hands of their caregiver or their parent, but they have been abused quite badly, to the point where, in a case recently, the child was beaten so badly that he nearly died and he was left permanently disabled. Those children wouldn’t come under the provision of subsequent children because they didn’t die.

So I feel that maybe there needs to be another section added in there to include anyone who has been convicted of an offence involving assault or injury to a child who was in the person’s care or custody and who has had an imprisonment of at least three months, so that we’re actually including that in there. The way it’s written now, we won’t take into account the children that have been beaten so badly that they are permanently disabled, and I don’t feel that is right. So we cannot support this bill through the second reading, and, hopefully, at committee stage, we can make some changes that will allow us to continue supporting this bill.

There’s also another section within this bill that I was looking at, and I couldn’t understand the changes that were being made and the little amendments in the back. It was around bail for young people, and it is in clause 29: “If a child or young person appears before a court and the court considers the child’s or young person’s bail, no breach of a bail condition that occurred before the appearance may be used to support a subsequent arrest under this section.” I’m a bit wary of changing bail conditions for youth when we have a huge spike in youth crime currently, and I’m just wanting to understand why we’re making that change, because no submissions were made on that. I’d just like a better understanding of that, and maybe we can discuss that in the committee stage as well.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard a number of stories and had a number of emails that have come to me around concerns with the uplifts of children and with the uplifts of subsequent children. One example of when it goes wrong, when Oranga Tamariki doesn’t uplift a subsequent child—there’s a story where a young lady is already currently taking care of three of her sibling’s children that have been removed from care and put into the care of the sister. The mother is now pregnant with the fourth child, and this caregiver is saying, “My sister is not capable of looking after this fourth child, but I’m not capable of taking on a fourth child.” She contacted Oranga Tamariki, and Oranga Tamariki will not go further with that because the baby is not born yet.

That is, unfortunately, where the problem lies. Instead of making provisions available so that we’re not uplifting children at birth, I feel that we need to look at this in a better way. We need to look at it before the child’s born—wraparound services before the child is born—and then there would be no need to change this law because we’re dealing with the parents and providing them with the services they need to prepare for the birth of the subsequent child. We wouldn’t necessarily need to uplift if we’ve got a plan in place before the birth of the child. Now, we remove the child once it’s born, and then we put a plan together. Those first three or four months are the most important for the bonding between the parent and the child, and we’ve taken that away from the mother—and the father—if they’ve done nothing to deserve the child being uplifted.

So, I think, although the best of intentions are there, there are still many questions to be asked in the committee stage, and I would like to be able to debate that completely in the committee stage so we can support this bill further. But, right now, ACT can’t support this bill in its current form.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I rise to take a brief call in this, the second reading on the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill, or as we know it, the “subsequent child bill”.

I was a member of the Justice Committee, who worked on this bill.

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Social Services.

I’m so sorry. The Social Services and Community Committee—a far more intellectually rigorous committee than my other one, the Justice Committee! A delightful committee to work on, ably and wonderfully chaired by Ms Angie Warren-Clark—oh look, there she is!

I rise to take this brief call. This is about repealing a piece of legislation that the National Party brought in when they were in Government in 2016. As previous speakers have said, the intention was to it was to put in a safeguard where parents had had a previous child removed in the hopes that history would not repeat when another child was born.

Unfortunately, a thorough review of the operation of the legislation found it hasn’t worked as it was intended. In fact, as a practitioner, I have seen this in operation in my years as a practising lawyer. I remember a young woman called Tania, who was in a relationship with a very, very violent man. She had the first baby removed because she could not separate from this man; he was fairly chronic as a stalker and controller, and she was unable to escape. She subsequently did manage to escape, there were further babies, and each time there was anguish and distress because Oranga Tamariki had to undertake these investigations.

Just as has been said in the review, what happened was social workers, rather than walking alongside this young māmā, became her judge and jury. So many barriers were put in place of a good working relationship that’s so important between social worker and client and whānau, that it was years and years of trauma for that māmā and for her young children.

So I thoroughly welcome the repeal of this piece of legislation. It was a nice thought. It did not do what it was intended to do. What we need is the wraparound services, not to uplift our pēpē, and that is what this Government is trying to do. I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. This is obviously a very difficult and sensitive topic. You know, there can be no more important work for this House and its representatives and policy makers than considering the protection of children—I mean, I’m tempted to say “vulnerable children”, but, of course, children are, by their very nature, vulnerable—and it’s important that we turn our mind, with the utmost clarity and concern, to protecting those who are in a particularly vulnerable situation, a situation of even greater concern than merely a situation where there has been some sort of breakdown or difficulty, and the processes must be followed. We’re talking no less than the importance of life and death decision-making, actually—just to be blunt about it—in the cases of the fate of these young people, and the care in which they’re placed. I use the term “care”, perhaps, loosely, in some cases.

We will all be aware, in this country and in this House—and I’m sure it goes without saying that we would all deplore the idea of violence against children. Nevertheless, that has been the experience, sadly, of far too many of our young people entrusted either with the default arrangement, which is to say that they’ve been growing up in a household and problems have developed or maybe have been there from the very start, or else problems have developed by some other care arrangement—whether that’s organic in the sense of being a family or a blood relation, or some other kind of family arrangement, or, indeed, the intervention of the State. All the well-meaning words in the world will not protect those who are most vulnerable and in a situation of experiencing violence if we do not set in place the right systems.

Now, I don’t pretend to know the right systems myself—I don’t know if anyone in this House does entirely—but I can say, for those who are concerned, to ensure that barriers for the protection of children are not taken down that have been erected in the first place. To those who would say that we need to be careful about putting up barriers between the State and the family, I say that I understand exactly where you’re coming from; I acknowledge that concern. We in the National Party understand, of course, that, wherever possible, it should be family and whānau who are able to raise their own children. But, at the same time, we recognise the sad reality that sometimes, and, regrettably, too often—and, of course, one child injured or killed in this way would be one too many—it’s been the case that, in care, a child, whether a subsequent child or otherwise, has been failed by the State, primarily, of course, by those who actively perpetrate such violence, but when the State does not make the right decisions or the best decisions or the least worst decisions in the circumstances, then that’s something we should all take very seriously.

So, as far as the bill goes, I haven’t had the benefit of involvement at a select committee level, but I’ve listened carefully to the contributions of those who have. I understand that, effectively, it’s a repeal of that subsequent child provision or regime that the National Party had introduced in 2014. The previous contributor to this debate, Dr Emily Henderson, has said that it was not working as it had been intended. Well, that may or may not be true, and I’m not particularly in a position to know one way or the other, but I would say that we should indeed be very careful to replace a system without being extremely confident that we’re replacing it with one that is at least as good, if not better. And, of course, the concern here is that we will remove a layer of protection that’s so badly needed by children who are in particularly vulnerable situations.

I will acknowledge the point that has been made in documents associated with the bill that additional Family Court proceedings for older siblings in care can be damaging—that’s a fair enough point to make, whichever way one addresses or considers the bill. Extending disputes between families, entrenching the positions—particularly of the parents, or the would-be caregivers—and expanding the scope of disagreement by airing those in a way that’s not likely to lead to resolution is, of course, harmful to the child, and that’s another form of harm that we should be anxious to avoid. So, like others on this side of the House, we the National Party say that we cannot support the bill.

Mālō ni, kia orana, Mr Speaker. I’m happy to take a brief call on a bill that will amend the Oranga Tamariki Act of 1989. In doing so, can I acknowledge the team that have worked on this as members of the Social Services and Community Committee—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Hard-working.

Hard-working, indeed, from the chair there.

This will make a number of changes, including some minor and technical amendments that the committee have brought to the attention of the House that will certainly improve clarity but also focus on enhancing the rights of children and young people and removing some provisions that some may consider as being redundant or perhaps not well-utilised.

Colleagues previously have made contributions around what, I guess, is a key aspect of this bill. It relates to the partial removal of what is known as the “subsequent child provisions”. This is a change that will remove the mandatory involvement of the Family Court oversight for parents who’ve had a child who has previously been permanently removed from their care.

I guess the rationale for that is that often the provision itself is rather complex in nature; it is not often utilised. That, in itself, is no good reason to, effectively, remove it from legislation, but I reflect on the contribution our colleague Emily Henderson—someone who has been at the coalface, in terms of Family Court jurisdiction—and her contributions earlier today in the House which reflected on the role that this provides as a barrier for some social workers who are working with family and whānau.

So this is about providing that element of whānau and family wellbeing and care, noting, though, that there is still a requirement where the subsequent child provision would still apply to those who have a conviction of murder, manslaughter, or infanticide. That is because the presumption of risk is at a level that is still appropriate. I am happy to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to take a call on the second reading of this bill, because I believe that it’s important that every child and young person in New Zealand grows up to reach their full potential, and I think this bill takes us one step further in that direction.

So I wasn’t on the committee when it heard the submissions on this bill, but I have taken a little bit of time to read some of that feedback provided by the submitters. Just noting that the committee received 24 written submissions and heard 11 oral submissions. I’d just like to thank everybody who provided their feedback through to the committee.

I guess the impression I got reading the submissions was just the incredibly negative impact that the subsequent child provisions have had on, particularly, parents and caregivers who had made a lot of steps to turn their lives around and wanted to work in the best interests of their subsequent child, and then having the current provisions in place and the huge distress that that caused.

But I also think that some of the submitters talked about the impact that the current provisions had on the approach that Oranga Tamariki then took more generally in terms of considering subsequent children. I think that the real sense was the partial repeal—what it would mean is that social workers could then use their best clinical judgment and their experience to make those decisions about what was most important in the interests of the children and young people, but also to allow them to work alongside whānau in a more meaningful way.

But also there was quite a lot of support confirming the fact that the subsequent child provisions for caregivers and parents who’ve been convicted of the death of the child in their care was retained, given the seriousness of those convictions.

So, I think, while this is a relatively small and short bill, it’s a really, really important one. I think it will make a significant difference in the lives of the children and their whānau that are impacted by these provisions. So I’m happy to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Dr Liz Craig, the member who just resumed her seat, referred to the fact that this is a small bill, but I would argue with that side of the House that it is a very important and significant change that the Government is proposing and that National opposes.

I want to return the House’s attention to a debate that took place in this Chamber a week ago today, and that was an urgent debate because the Ombudsman had returned a report on the events that resulted in the death, the murder, of a five-year-old boy—Malachi—when Oranga Tamariki failed to do, in his words, the “bare minimum”. What we are debating today is actually the risk of serious harm and death to a child, and so it is absolutely critical that this House takes this issue seriously, because on the surface of it, it doesn’t sound like it’s too much of a big deal. But what we are talking about here is a piece of legislation that is proposing the partial repeal here today, with the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill, of what was the result of months and years of work around vulnerable children that the previous Government undertook and, by and large, that the Government under Tracey Martin, as the Minister for Children, continued.

If you think about a child that is born into a family where a child has previously been permanently removed from the parents’ care—permanently removed—it’s quite a high threshold; it’s quite a high threshold. So this bill is a debate about risk, and on this side of the House, in the National Party, we see that where there is an identifiable risk that another child born into that household will be harmed, we’re not willing to risk it—we’re not willing to risk it.

That’s not to say that those parents can’t work hard to have that child in their care, and I absolutely think that work should be done really intensively and I agree with the Minister for Children that it should be done by community organisations that are closest to the whānau involved. But the question here is about automatically taking that child into care and protection.

Care and protection—those are the key words in this debate, and, unfortunately, as the ACT member Karen Chhour, who spoke earlier in this debate, has identified very clearly, this piece of legislation without the consultation at the same time that a very controversial piece of legislation was out for consultation, and that was the oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system. So we’ve got multiple things going on at once.

We had a bill around the oversight of Oranga Tamariki which was opposed vehemently and strongly by every party in this Parliament except Labour. Just about every social service organisation that is involved in the care and protection of children opposed it, and they opposed the removal of independent oversight with the removal of the Children’s Commissioner, being that single point of complaint and advocacy, and being a fierce champion for children. Then this piece of legislation comes along and it looks as if it’s a little tweak—just a little tweak. Well, remember the point of this: this is about a child who was vulnerable—as my colleague Chris Penk said, every child is vulnerable—but who then was born into a family where another child, a previous child, had been seriously harmed or murdered.

So the Government wants to leave that threshold at murdered. Well, no, it should be about serious harm and the risk to those subsequent children in that household. Otherwise, we as a Parliament are willing to say that the life of another child will be lost to us, and, in New Zealand, that’s one in every five weeks, a New Zealand child dies of child abuse. So this side of the House is actually not willing to take that risk, because our interest is in the care and protection of the children.

I accept, having met with and spoken with many, many families who have had children taken into care, that it’s incredibly traumatic, and I accept that the process of working their way back to having their children returned to them is challenging and distressing. I get it—I absolutely get it. But in this debate, the question, the challenge, or the issue must be on what is in the best interests of the child. The child must be paramount in this debate, and that’s why there was so much work done in the previous National Government around vulnerable children. So to start unwinding bits of it doesn’t make sense.

The Government says that legislation is not delivering as intended, and I would argue this: it’s because that side of the House and Minister Davis, who said it in that urgent debate last week—they’re pleased that the number of children being uplifted is reducing. I don’t think that’s the right measure. I think the right measure is fewer children being harmed—not just murdered; harmed—because a child that is harmed if that behaviour of those parents escalates is a child that might be another one of the one in every five weeks—another Malachi—that dies when this Parliament had the opportunity to ensure legislative protection for a vulnerable child.

So, yep, it might be a small piece of legislation—it’s not a very big bill. There weren’t a lot of submitters, but many of the submitters opposed it. Many more of the submitters oppose the changes the Government is making to the oversight of Oranga Tamariki.

Now, I accept that Oranga Tamariki have been undergoing an enormous change over many, many years. That started with the previous National Government, it had been picked up by the Labour - New Zealand First Government, and it is now continuing under Labour. I accept that it’s a challenging organisation and that there are challenges they are facing now and as the days go forward, but business-as-usual for Oranga Tamariki is the care and protection of children.

So National isn’t willing to allow children where there is a clearly identifiable and known risk to remain in the care of their parents when their parents have seriously harmed and assaulted. Karen gave the example of a child who wasn’t murdered, but was permanently disabled because of a violent assault by a parent or caregiver. On this side of the House, we’re actually not willing to take that risk, and I’m proud to say that the National Party puts the interests of children first.

That’s not to say that we don’t understand the challenge where the onus is on the child being removed and the trauma that comes with that—we’re fully accepting that that exists. But there are some instances where the rights of the child must come first, and when we have a Prime Minister who says that New Zealand should be the best place in the world to be a child, let that be a country where their safety and where their care and protection come first.

That’s why National opposes this legislation to reverse the onus for the care and protection of a subsequent child. We want to make sure that every Kiwi child, despite the challenges of their parents and their parents’ circumstances—no child should be put in that position where they are knowingly at risk of harm in their own home environment. The measure should be that fewer New Zealand children are harmed, not fewer children are being taken into care.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to be taking the last, fairly short, contribution on the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill today. First off, I would like to acknowledge the hard work by the Minister the Hon Kelvin Davis, as well as the select committee members, and, of course, everyone who has submitted on this particular bill.

Now, the previous speaker, Louise Upston, mentioned that the legislation is not delivering as it’s intended, and therefore prefers to remain with the status quo. And, of course, that is no surprise that the National Party would like to remain with the status quo, because that is what they generally like to do, never mind that it is not the better situation. The subsequent child provisions were introduced by the previous National Government, and they had an aim of improving the safety of subsequent children, but, unfortunately, what the evidence shows us is that the opposite often occurred. And the legislation, therefore, unfairly, impacted on both the young person and their whānau.

So the Social Services and Community Committee recommends the passing of this bill. They made a number of changes all aimed at improving the readability and workability of this bill. The changes were set out in the legislative statement and also have been extensively debated around the House, so no need for me to go further into those. But I’d like to say that, as a Government, we know that we need to make changes at Oranga Tamariki to ensure children are appropriately protected, and, in regards to this bill specifically, as I mentioned before, it makes a number of changes. But the most important part there is the partial repeal of the subsequent child provision.

Again, thanking the committee members and submitters who have worked very hard in making positive changes to this bill. It’s an important bill and I commend it to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.