Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.

In recent years, we have seen an unacceptable spike in youth offending. For a small group of young people, our current responses are not working. There is a clear gap in the youth justice system, and the system does not have the tools to respond adequately. For this small group we need to do more, and this bill closes that gap.

This bill makes fundamental changes to offer a faster, stronger, and more targeted response to young people who repeatedly commit the most serious offences. It is my view that this might be our last chance to try and prevent these young people from entering the adult jurisdiction and becoming persistent adult offenders. I want to do everything we can to break that cycle of offending. The bill introduces a young serious offender declaration and a military-style academy (MSA) order. These changes are going to drive a more immediate, intense, and long-lasting intervention.

I wanted to start by sharing the experience from the military academy pilot, which lays the foundations for this legislation. This year, we had 11 young people begin the 12-month military-style academy pilot, with one young person deciding not to take up the opportunity. Each one of them was showing persistent and serious offending behaviours and was in a cycle of going through the youth courts, spending time in youth justice facilities, and then reoffending and ending up back in youth justice facilities. They were causing harm to our communities and everyday New Zealanders who became victims to their offences.

The pilot was the beginning of an acknowledgment that I wanted to do more and do better to respond to our most serious young offenders. Oranga Tamariki has taken a new approach to youth justice that is tougher on crime but also puts the needs of the young people at the very heart of this programme. For three months, the young people were in Te Au rere a te Tonga, where they learnt new life skills, took part in training, followed a routine, learnt teamwork, and looked for a better future. Several of the boys left the residence with jobs already lined up. Each one has a mentor who is working with them for 30 hours face to face every week, and there is intensive, tailored support for each young person while they reintegrate into the community and put the new skills they have learnt to use.

I’ve seen firsthand the success of the residential stage of the military-style academy pilot. These young people engaged in three months of the programme without incident and without any safety concerns. To me, this is phenomenal. The clinical team observed improvements in their behaviour, and some of them have made progress towards building healthier relationships with their whānau. They’ve been encouraged to set goals for themselves and work towards these, but this hard work is only just beginning, and I want to ensure that every one of these young people is given the chance to be the best that they can be.

That is why today I’m proud to introduce legislation that builds on the success of the pilot and will be a key to achieving the Government’s target of reducing child and youth offending. The bill creates a young serious offender declaration, which will unlock stronger powers for both the Youth Court and New Zealand Police. A young person will be eligible for a young serious offender (YSO) declaration if they are 14 to 17 years old at the time of offending, have committed at least two serious offences, and are likely to go on offending, committing crimes with a sentence of 10 years or more. This is targeted exclusively at young people who have had previous interventions that were unsuccessful.

Before a young person can be declared a YSO, police will first have to inform a family group conference (FGC) that they are likely to meet the criteria for a YSO. The FGC will then have an important opportunity to consider the best response to that young person’s offending and make recommendations to the Youth Court. The YSO declaration will be made at a judge’s discretion and, in making any YSO declaration, the judge will consider a range of factors including the young person’s history, their social circumstances, and the views of the victim.

Once a YSO declaration is made, it will last two years, allowing experts to invest in and get alongside these young people over a longer period of time. After a declaration is made, the Youth Court will have a range of new powers available to it, including the ability to make a military-style academy order, longer Youth Court orders, and to increase the use of electronic monitoring.

Crucially, for every young person declared to be a YSO, it will also trigger a far more intense operational response. Oranga Tamariki will offer wraparound support, including intensive case management and more support from social workers. They will increase work with the young person’s family, offer targeted rehabilitation, and focus every effort on their transition to ensure that every young person is entering a positive environment and given the opportunity to turn their lives around.

The bill also provides new police powers to ensure that when a young person is reoffending, we can respond far quicker, before that offending escalates. The bill also creates a military-style academy order where young people will be based in a youth justice residence between three and 12 months. During that time, they will take part in a bespoke curriculum with daily activities to support their learning, their health, and their wellbeing. It will include military-style activities, and the young people will be part of a group where they progress together throughout the duration of the programme. This is about having consequences for the actions but rehabilitation at the other end.

The MSA order will now be the most restrictive Youth Court sentence available. However, it is underpinned by an intensive case management for each young person. Following the residential component, the young person will be put on a supervision order, which focuses on their transition back to the community. Family and whānau are critical partners and will be engaged for the full duration of the programme, where appropriate.

I want to bring to attention the important matter of the use of force which will be enabled in this legislation. Use of force is already available to Oranga Tamariki staff working in a Youth Justice residence. There are safeguards in place for this, which include strict policies and training for staff, along with reporting and escalation processes. In this bill, it is proposed that qualifying community providers would also have use of force powers. This is to ensure that providers and their staff, whether Oranga Tamariki or another agency or provider, will have the power to use force in the form of physical restraints or physical holds no greater than reasonably necessary to prevent a young person from being harmed, harming themselves, or harming another person. That also prevents a young person from absconding from a residential location or while outside the residential location for other activities or while at another location used as part of an MSA, from time to time.

The intention of these powers is to keep young people safe, keep the people working with them safe, and keep our communities safe. If we’re going to devolve back to community and back to iwi, we need to be able to give them the same powers as Oranga Tamariki so that in the future, they may be able to run these programmes themselves. These powers will have carefully considered safeguards enabled by secondary legislation.

There are existing legislative provisions which provide for restricted use of force powers in order to keep children and young people safe in the community. For example, under the Education and Training Act, which applies to all schools or authorised staff members in teaching positions at registered schools, they are able to physically restrain a student where certain conditions are met, and this will be the same.

This bill is an important step as we get to the root of serious and persistent youth offending. It signals a change in direction that the Government is taking to provide stronger, faster, and tougher responses to young people who continually offend. We want every young person who will be part of this programme to take up every opportunity that is offered to them. Ultimately, what they do with these opportunities will be in their hands.

I wish to acknowledge the work of my colleagues—the Minister of Justice, the Hon Paul Goldsmith; and the Minister of Police, the Hon Mark Mitchell—who have worked closely with me to help me deliver this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. That was the Minister for Children—the Minister for Children. One week after the Prime Minister delivered an apology to survivors of abuse in State care, the Minister for Children is introducing legislation to respond to serious youth offending that is tougher, more punitive, lacks evidence, goes against the advice of her officials, goes against the recommendations of the royal commission, has no evidence to support that this approach works, and has all the evidence for her for the approaches that do work and is completely ignoring it.

💬 Shanan Halbert: Just cares about the politics.

That’s right. This bill is taking us backwards. This bill is seriously dangerous for our young people.

This pilot hasn’t even finished yet and the Minister is introducing this law today to entrench boot camps. The pilot was a 12-month pilot. We’ve only finished three months of in-residence. It hasn’t even been evaluated. You haven’t been able to take the lessons or learnings from it and include it into the approach. That is because this Government never cared about whether it worked or not.

💬 Hon Chris Bishop: What did you lot do?

The things that you’re extending in here around Circuit Breaker and Fast Track were the things that Labour was doing and that the evidence showed is working, and yet you will carry on doing things that the evidence shows does not work, against officials’ advice, against—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before the member carries on, please don’t use the word “you” in your debate.

I am trying very hard not to do that as they heckle me and I am responding to them, but I will try to refrain from bringing the Speaker into the debate.

It goes against officials’ advice, goes against the Children’s Commissioner’s advice, goes against things that the Chief Judge of the Youth Court is saying works and is needed. This Government doesn’t want to listen to any evidence. Officials said “lack of evidence underpinning the military style component … Not able to consider non-legislative responses.” The directive from this Government was: “We want enhanced legislative provisions.” There has been a lack of consultation and they know that this will disproportionately impact on rangatahi Māori. They are extending the use of force—wait for it—to third-party providers. And they have not even put in the safeguards in this legislation—it is an afterthought. It’s going to be probably done—possibly done; who knows?—in secondary legislation.

Have they learnt nothing from the royal commission, where it said that these are the very types of circumstances that give a rise to abuse being able to happen in State care? Rushing it through, not putting safeguards in place—this is unbelievable.

You’re giving police greater powers to allow them to designate somebody a serious young offender—children—and arrest those deemed serious young offenders without a warrant and sentence them to your boot camp experiment. Now, watch this: it is increasing—first it was three months, but now it’s three to 12 months—the in-residence component. We didn’t hear the Minister speak to that. Allowing contractors the use of force, not having the appropriate safeguards in place, leaving it as an afterthought. How can we trust that this Government is going to do the right thing by these young people when we cannot see any evidence of that so far? We do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I begin this kōrero with the words of Dame Whina Cooper: “Take care of our children. Take care of what they hear. Take care of what they see. Take care of what they feel.”

The punitive approaches we see today reflect a double standard where some hold a set of hopes and aspirations for their own children, but a vastly different one for others. The Government, particularly the Minister for Children, are failing our tamariki. They claim to protect our young people, yet their policies disconnect them from their communities, expose them to harm, and set them on a path to failure. These so-called new boot camps are nothing more than a rehash of past failures—untrained staff, no meaningful oversight, and isolated settings. These were the very conditions that allowed abuse to flourish in the 1970s, leading to the failures of the John Key Government’s boot camps. Have we learnt nothing? Take care of what our children hear. Right now, they’re hearing politicians agreeing to the use of force in care.

Too much of this conversation has been focused around the tough-on-crime narrative—the offending of these rangatahi. Why are we willing to accept a double standard in how we treat these tamariki, accepting things for them that we would never accept for our own children? Let’s shift our focus. Let us not look at their actions but at the soil in which they’ve been planted. Let us understand the environment in which they have grown from and understand to guide the response we offer. Take care of what our children see.

On behalf of the Green Party, I stand here to oppose this bill in the strongest terms. It is time to end the harmful boot camp experiment and put the rights, safety, and wellbeing of tamariki first. Let’s take a moment to consider the age of these rangatahi, from 14 years old. These are children who have endured the worst that New Zealand has to offer. For many of them, no one cared what they saw, no one cared what they felt, and it’s time for us, as elected officials and leaders, to deeply care about these tamariki and put their lives on a trajectory of being able to be the best they can be. An Oranga Tamariki briefing paints a stark picture of the background of these tamariki: 80 percent have a confirmed or suspected mental health - or disability-related diagnosis—80 percent; 20 percent have attempted suicide; 90 percent face significant learning difficulties. Half of the boys and a quarter of the girls have been physically harmed more than three times in the past year, and the overwhelming majority have grown up in poverty.

How does this Government respond? It ignores expert evidence, dismisses official advice, and undermines what we know works. These boot camps will re-traumatise our rangatahi for generations to come. These boot camps are not our future. We know that there are community organisations focused on prevention that are already working. I want to shout out to Ngāpuhi Iwi Social Services, specifically for their Mahuru programme. Mahuru isn’t just another intervention; it’s a vision grounded in the importance of identity and connection. Through Mahuru, tamariki remain in their Whare Tapu o Ngāpuhi, where they can reconnect with their culture and heritage and learn about their identity in a supportive and familiar environment. Mahuru represents an opportunity for something different.

It is time for a shift. We need to focus on what works. We need to care about what our children see, what our children hear, and what our children feel.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to rise and speak on the Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill at its first reading. The youth justice system is working for most children and young people with offending behaviour, but not all. There is a small cohort of young people who are committing most of the serious and persistent offending and continue to offend despite interventions, and I can speak to this having been a youth advocate in the courts, having been a defence lawyer in courts across New Zealand, worked in prisons across New Zealand, worked as a mental health advocate across New Zealand. There are some who continue to come back time and time and time again to the courts. Those interventions aren’t working, and something different needs to be done.

This bill is to do something different. This bill will establish a young serious offender (YSO) declaration and a new military-style academy order in the Oranga Tamariki Act. The YSO declaration, the young serious offender declaration, seeks to increase public safety and accountability for offending and reoffending. That accountability is important, as is the public safety component, which is important.

There are, unfortunately, some young people—and not just young people—in this country who commit some very serious violent offending, the most serious violent offending, in some cases, if their offending is not arrested early enough. I have also seen this both professionally and personally, and there are some—and I heard some comments around the use of force. The use of force is the use of restraint for those who will commit violent offences, potentially, against themselves or against others who they are in a facility with or against staff who they are in a facility with. There is a necessity for restraint of those who would use force, to prevent them from using that force. That is the sole reason those rules will be in place.

The other thing that this bill will do is it aims to achieve a “reduction in [the] seriousness and frequency of offending through access to a timely and enhanced rehabilitative service response.” I’ll say that again: a timely and enhanced rehabilitative service response, which, as the Minister for Children said in her speech, will put the needs of young people at the heart of the programme. It will put the needs of the young person at the heart of the programme. It will have an intensive care management for each young person, recognising that there is a unique component of factors which have led them to the position they’re in.

I’ve heard concerns around its being a military-style academy. I can speak also from personal experience, having been an army reservist: the army isn’t what it used to be. The army is not the place of physical discipline, of overtly aggressive behaviour, and bullying, etc. That is not the modern New Zealand Army. I spent time in Waiōuru, in my initial training, and I came there as someone who thought of myself as an independent thinker. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle that disciplined environment. I can say it is fantastic. There’s the opportunity for three square meals a day, which is something many of these young people will not have experienced; there’s the opportunity to form teams with the people that you are with; and there’s the opportunity to learn about what one is capable of, to learn things that one did not know, capabilities that one did not have.

It takes time to change behaviour. It doesn’t happen in a few weeks, doesn’t even happen in a couple of months. I know this having had many, many, many clients across New Zealand who have had a desire to change, who have had a real desire to change themselves, address the often, you know, acute trauma that sits within them, but they have struggled in rehabilitation programmes to stay focused and to address them, because it is hard, hard work to address the demons, so to speak, that sit within people’s souls that they need to address from their past. It takes time, and this programme will give them that time. It will help give them the interventions, give them that rehabilitation, and help them find that sense of purpose that’ll empower them to live lives that will be good for them and be good for our community. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First have always consistently championed policies that prioritise public safety, but also with a balance of ensuring that victims are heard and the offenders have the opportunity to rehabilitate, and that is one of the reasons that we are in support of this bill. We see that there is a balance in ensuring that people are held accountable for crimes, but also that victims are heard and those who are committing the crimes have the opportunity to turn their lives around. We feel satisfied that the policies and actions and strategies that are mentioned in this bill will actually do that and enable someone to take the time to make a decision to turn their life around.

Now, we feel that it’s important to protect our communities—to protect our offenders, as well, and, like I said, give them the ability to rehabilitate and then reintegrate back into society. We feel that the time taken here in some of these strategies will give them that opportunity. New Zealand First supports this bill because, as you know, we are very much champions for public safety; to ensure that severe offenders are properly addressed and that the community feels safe knowing that we are taking care of them. This bill we see has a rehabilitation-focused angle, so there are interventions here to ensure there is a healthy balance between safety and community.

We also wanted to ensure that inside this bill there is an effective deterrent so that prior to offending, someone may think, “I don’t think I’ll do this because the pain of doing this is not worth it”, and it may give them the opportunity to think twice as their path goes along in their own personal rehabilitation. We really do want to see a safer community. We want to really see our youth have the opportunity to change their life around—

💬 Shanan Halbert: What about safety for trans communities?

All of our youth. In spite of heckling that often comes from the other side—it seems to be the same narrative—New Zealand First always does listen to all New Zealanders. We have the youth at heart in our decision making. Hence, we commend this bill to the House.

💬 Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Absolute nonsense.

Oh, absolutely! Thank you.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. Kia ora. I stand on behalf of the 80,000 people that came to town the other day. What a great thing, and they weren’t whispering. They were telling us—particularly the opposite side of the House—very clearly, “You are screwing up massively.” But they also bought the solutions. They didn’t just come to tell you off; they came to say, “Hey, we are our own walking, talking, thinking vibes. We have our own minds. We have our own remedies. Quit telling us how to be.” OK, so I just wanted to start with that, Mr Speaker—thank you for the opportunity.

I want this House to hear this: a person who is not embedded within their culture burns it to the ground to feel the warmth. If you don’t understand that, you need to read some stuff. You need to understand deeply what you are supporting. When you stand and go “I commend this to the House.”, what you are commending is the disruption, is the extermination, is the eradication of Māori people, and here we go.

Let me tell you this: when you say, “boot camps”, they’re called “boot” for a reason, right? Don’t just like get soft and go, “Oh, it’s a boot camp.” Don’t do that. Don’t kid yourself, and, by the way, they are boot camps for children. Don’t say “youth” and then you go, “Oh, well, they’re a little bit older so they can handle the boot.” Think about this—understand it. What you won’t understand—[Interruption] I get that you don’t understand it—I accept it; I’ll send you some reading material—but understand me when I tell you that the reason you cannot know is because you are drowning in ignorance. But let’s just move on. I’ll just take you through it and—[Interruption] Yep, there we go—it’s great.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Tērā pea hei āwhina mō te mema mēnā ka kōrero koe ki ahau. Hei aha rā ngā kōrero ki ngā mema.

[Maybe to assist the member, you should speak to me. Never mind speaking directly to the members.]

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. In essence—in the original statement that I opened up—this is what drives the ethos behind this bill. It explains why our own—just take that in—would turn their backs on our own mokopuna.

Those Ministers who cannot boast toto Māori—and you need to read about that to understand it—hide behind their colleagues’ struggles with disconnection to advance their own bigoted, autocratic agendas. So aroha ki ngā minita Māori e kūare ana ki wā tātou toto e kōrero ana ki a koe. Aroha ki a koutou katoa. [So shame on our Māori Ministers who are an embarrassment to our bloodline, I am speaking to you. A shame on all of you.]

These Ministers, just know you have no need to conceal. We see you; we know you. Ka aroha ki tō tātou nei toto Māori. [What a shame on our Māori bloodline.] Do not think that we are blind to your actions, nor think that we will hesitate to defend them, even if it means holding our own to account. You might get a little bit upset about some of the stuff I’m saying that might disturb you, and I hope it does. I want it to disrupt and disturb you. You might find it jarring, but, buckle up, there’s more to come.

Boot camps are a place where we can hobble, bring all our mokopuna together, make them wrong, and call them youth, but they’re, in fact, children. They are our children, and you have absolutely no right to think that you’ll send them back to Oranga Tamariki. The irony of—let me read this—“Oranga Tamariki”, and then the “youth offending”. If you had any understanding of our reo and the sacredness of it, you would know that that is such a contradiction: “Oranga Tamariki” and “youth offending”—“Oranga Tamariki” and “youth offending”. Read some stuff and understand—read some stuff and understand.

This is the reality for our tamariki Māori, who constitute 70 percent of children in State care—70 percent of children in State care. You won’t know that they are 70 percent of State care and 80 percent of those currently experiencing—I was a social worker back in the day. I know what the Minister is rabbiting on about—I know. She’s theorising and, possibly, having her own experiences, but trust me when I say that this is a hopeless, disgusting, and shocking piece of work. The authors are completely lacking in evidence and mindset, and, basically, this must not be commended; this must be burnt down. I’m tempted to rip it up. Kia ora tātou.

I stand in support of the Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill on its first reading.

The title of the bill is very descriptive of its application. The application has to do with youth aged 15 to 17 years old who repetitively seriously offend. The bill raises two points in order to try and mitigate the repetitive serious offending of young people aged 15 to 17 years old, particularly in holding them to account and then also providing them with support to attempt to address the issues that contribute to their continued and repetitive offending.

It is very standard in the world of parenting, of all children. I have been involved in a United Nations consultative body on the welfare of children for many years, for over 20 years, and accountability is a big factor in the structure that helps to form young people—accountability for what they do—and it helps in their understanding of what consequences and what gravity their actions are providing to them, and not only to them but to the people around them. The bill seeks to provide for a young serious offender declaration, and also for a military-style academy order. The idea is for these to be put into the tools of Oranga Tamariki to enable Oranga Tamariki as an organisation to address these two points: accountability and providing a pathway out.

We’re talking about, again, a small cohort of repetitive serious offenders in that age group—15 to 17. A lot of us are parents in this House. A lot of us would have gone through, or are going through, our children going through the 15- to 17-year-old space. It is a difficult space. It requires a lot of control on the side of fathers and mothers, on how they react to their children but also how to provide them with that push towards accountability, and also a structure for them to be able to locate themselves in this world where they live. We are responsible for that, but, at some point in time, when our young people become 15 and 17 and they go out and offend—and repetitively offend—then they may need to be put into spaces where they are strongly held into a structure.

That is exactly what the military-style academy is intended to provide: structure and accountability—structure in the sense that, while in residence under the Oranga Tamariki system, young serious offenders will be monitored closely. They could be required to wear electronic bracelets so that they will be ensured to be identified and made accountable if they were to violate the conditions of their residence. Also, this is intended that they comply with that residence requirement and complete the three-month programme of the military-style academy.

We could stop and pause and think about how our young people who are in this space really need to be given that spark, that moment where they could have a chance to see outside the spaces where they have been repetitively offending. That spark could really provide them with an opportunity for change, and that is what is aimed at in this amendment bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Obviously, we oppose this terrible bill, the Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill, but it’s appropriate to bring to the attention of the House that the hīkoi that happened this week was not just about the rotten, filthy Treaty principles bill; it was about what this Government has been trying to do over the last 12 months, in terms of implementing this type of legislation and removing kaupapa Māori initiatives and positivity, like Treaty legislation. It’s incredible that that’s now being removed from legislation like the Māori Health Authority and like te reo Māori—that loss. What did we lose in terms of te reo Māori?

💬 Hon Willow-Jean Prime: $30 million.

Thirty million dollars. It’s just shocking, the attacks. It’s attack after attack after attack, and this bill—this legislation—is no different. How the Government wants us to buy it is by implementing its stupid, ridiculous boot camps. It’s based on the Limited Service Volunteer (LSV) programme and on what was happening in terms of LSV. They’re using that as an example.

I’m an ambassador for the LSV group. I was one of their ambassadors and I helped a number of people get involved in it. There’s a big difference here: they were all volunteers. They were all volunteers, and it was a terrific course. But this course is quite different, and you’ve got to ask why this Government can’t listen to the voices of the hīkoi. Mariameno Kapa-Kingi said that it was 60,000 or 70,000, and I know it was 50,000 to 55,000-plus. New Zealand First and Winston Peters thought it was 22,000, which shows how stupid New Zealand First are—they don’t know how to count. It was 55,000, and then you have this Government trying to ignore it, but all those people who were on that hīkoi—Māori Party, Greens, Labour, National Party; we saw a lot of good National Party members there—said that they’re totally sick of this Government and they want the attacks on Māori to stop. This legislation is an example of that.

This legislation is an example of a breach of Treaty principles—a breach of Treaty principles. I want to break that down simply for the Minister because she and her party have so many problems in understanding Treaty principles. There’s what you call the three Ps, just for the Minister—you need to tell your leader this. It’s called participation, protection, and partnership—all right? Participation-wise, Māori do not want to participate in your rotten, useless boot camps—all right? That’s the participation part. We want to be consulted on it. Protection: we want our kids protected. We don’t want them in your stupid boot camps—right?

💬 Hon Karen Chhour: Go talk to the local iwi, then.

No, we talk to all the iwi. Maybe you should start talking to the iwi.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Can I encourage members to not have—

Mr Speaker—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): That’s right; talk to me.

—99 percent of these kids are our kids, and this Minister, who decides to ignore the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, is totally in breach of it.

The third part, in terms of Treaty principles, is partnership—something the ACT Party refuses to accept. We don’t want to partner up with this sort of rotten stuff. We want to get involved in what we know works. I’ll tell you what works, Minister: not American-style boot camps. Tikanga Māori works. It’s proven. Talk to Dr Mason Durie. He will tell you to embed our young people in tikanga, te reo, aroha, manaakitanga. We have the answers in terms of these young people; it’s not your stupid, rotten, useless boot camps that are based on American-style principles. That is not the way to go.

💬 Hon Karen Chhour: How did that work for Labour? These kids were in and out. No help, no support—well done, Labour!

You don’t know, Minister, because you yourself and your party—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): I want members to not talk to each other across the Chamber.

That’s terrible—yes, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): If you want to have a conversation, step outside, and—

Shocking—stand outside, and take Mr Seymour with you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): —Mr Jackson, feel free to talk with me directly. Just speak to the Speaker.

I’m speaking to it—we know the answers in terms of this. Our former Minister Willow-Jean Prime is at the forefront. We know about Māori values—tikanga. I’ve seen it firsthand on my marae. Come to our marae, Minister. We’ll show you the way with our kids. Instead of going to rotten, useless Americans, and putting in your “filthy-style” military—

Kua pau te wā ki te mema. [The member’s time has expired.]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call on the Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill. There are 877 fourteen- to 16-year-olds who faced police action in the last year ending June 2023. This was for theft causing injury, and burglary. We know that this is just petty at the start, but, where I come from, I’ve been told on many of an occasion that a life of crime sometimes starts with something as simple as not having a driver’s licence, and then it escalates and it goes terribly bad from there on.

Youth are overrepresented in crime figures, and we have to do something about it. We have to wrap support around these people, as my colleague has alluded to, but we also have to get in front of the issues so that we don’t have to have the youth-offending statistics that we do now. When the Opposition stands and says that it’s not fair and we shouldn’t have consequences for young people, I say, “Rubbish”. Boundaries are one thing; committing crime is another. There have to be consequences. Previous Governments’ soft on crime, softly-softly approach has not worked, which is indicated by the statistics. Evidence is everything. Consequences for crime will bring a drop in youth offending, which has already happened. We’ve seen it. Increased police activity. Ram raids have gone down from 410 in January to September 2023, to 161 between January to September 2024. Note that we used the same months as a comparison. That is a reduction of 61 percent in one year. We did that with police and better processes. Burglaries are also down 10 percent. This is good.

I want to tell you, Mr Speaker, about a young man from my electorate, from Murupara, a young man called Rhys. His family live in Murupara—I’ve met some of them; I’ve met his mum. She runs the cafe there, and she’s awesome: Melody. Rhys’ sister is Natalie Delamere, who is known for her prowess on the rugby field. Rhys’ story was recently in the New Zealand Herald. He was a bit of a ratbag, in his own words—in fact, he described himself as something much harsher than that, which I won’t use here. He got into trouble, he lost a place on the national basketball squad because of his behaviour, and he was facing a life of crime and going down the wrong track. But his mum sent him to LSV—the Limited Service Volunteer course, which my colleague just alluded to. It is a similar programme to what this bill alludes to.

He took that attitude that he had discovered with him to LSV, but he very soon understood that that wasn’t going to work, and he turned his life around. He graduated from LSV. He won many of the awards at LSV, because of the boundaries and the discipline and what he learnt there at that time. He now runs three businesses, he has a social media following of 40,000 people, and he calls out bad behaviour. What’s more, his other family members have also sent their children and tamariki and rangatahi, whichever age, to LSV. When asked in the New Zealand Herald about the military-style boot camps, Rhys said, “There’s no harm in trying. All these reoffenders need this because they need to get out of their bad habits.” That comes from someone who’s been there.

💬 Hon Willow-Jean Prime: It’s not the same boot camp.

No, this is not the same, but it’s better because it has all the support mechanisms that you have talked about needing to be done. This bill amends the Oranga Tamariki Act. It provides for a young serious offender declaration and new military-style academy order. It is part of the promise to restore law and order, to protect the rights of victims of crime—because we forget about them all the time—and by addressing serious and persistent offending.

Young people who offend will be held to account because reoffending in a serious nature needs to be dealt with. This will be done through the support around them and through enacting this bill. With that in mind, I think it’s a good bill. I think we need to do something, we need to provide some consequences, and we need to get things back in order. With that in mind, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Deep down, I really believe that Karen Chhour knows that this is a mistake. I think she believes that this is the wrong thing to do for rangatahi and tamariki in New Zealand. The reason I say that is because the programmes that were put in place—like Kotahi te Whakaaro, like Circuit Breaker, like Fast Track—have been working and contributed to a decrease in youth offending. That is why they have continued to be funded and extended under this Government. That is the real work within our community that works with whānau, that works with iwi to actually reduce youth offending, to reduce that hard core of repeat youth offenders that cause so much mamae to themselves, their whānau, and their communities.

My question is: why are we doing this if that is already working? The answer is that it’s the same as with the Treaty principles bill: it ticks a box in their voter base to keep their voters happy, to show that they’re tough, that they’re hard, that they can lock up 14-year-olds, and that they can get a third-party provider to use force against a 14-year-old. This bill enables force and tough measures to be used when every single scrap of evidence from the Children’s Commissioner, from our informed youth providers, from every researcher, even the National Government’s own Chief Science Advisor, Dr Gluckman, has advised that these methods of being punitive to our rangatahi do not work. In fact, the reoffending rate for young people who have been through these military academies is around 80 percent, whereas for the young people who go through programmes like Kotahi te Whakaaro, which they continue to support because that’s where the real work is being done, the reoffending rate is the opposite. Around 80-plus percent do not go on to reoffend.

That is the challenge I lay down for these speeches yet to come in the House. Explain to me why these programmes that are doing the real work, that are actually turning young people’s lives around were continued to be funded and extended if you are popping up your shop front of boot camps to look tough and simply harm rangatahi more. That is what they are doing. These actions are harming young people and recreating the cycle of offending that goes against obligations in the Treaty and that goes against good research in this area.

I would like to look at what’s happening for those ones that are under 14, because this legislation talks about 14- to 17-year-olds. We know from research that those ones going through are the police, who are turning up no longer to family violence call outs, no longer to mental health call outs, with no additional services or social services to take up that space. That is where the damage is being done to our rangatahi—young people who grow up with family and sexual violence being normalised as part of their lives—having cuts to front-line Oranga Tamariki social workers, and taking away contracts to providers like North Shore Women’s Centre, who provide counselling and support for whānau to keep the tamariki within the whānau. That is where the money’s been taken from.

Do you know my reckons? It’s that those savings made from cutting front-line social workers working to keep tamariki in their whānau—those savings—are going towards building these boot camps. That is the sad part about this bill. Nicola Willis has capped her Budget, and she’s told her Ministers, “If you want to go do some stuff you’ve promised your voters, go find the money.” The money has been found by Karen Chhour by cutting the very services that will keep these children in their whānau, keep them protected, and keep them supported. That’s where the money has come from, and that’s the real sadness in this.

I actually hope that those programmes that they continue to fund keep doing that real work and keep helping. I really send a prayer out and I feel so sorry for New Zealanders where young people are exposed to the harm and the violence that occurs in these institutions, in the face of having a royal commission of inquiry saying that these camps have caused damage and harm to our young people. They don’t want the research. They don’t want to learn from history. They don’t want to look at the truth. They’re more intent on ticking their voter box to keep their votes coming in. Political power has reigned over doing the right thing for the next generation of New Zealanders, and, for that, Mr Speaker, I weep.

I stand to express my support for this bill. It’s a crucial piece of legislation when we address serious youth offending, and I will use that word “serious”. As some of my colleagues have already mentioned, there are a number of programmes, and our youth justice system does do a good job for the majority of youth offenders. Now, unfortunately, there is a group of serious youth offenders that are repeat offenders. These kids have great potential and I mourn if we don’t do anything to actually get them on the right track. We need to do something different because what we have been doing so far to date hasn’t been working. This is a first step. I had a mother in my electorate office this week in tears because we are not doing enough to help her child get on the straight and narrow.

I also want to acknowledge the victims of crimes of these young offenders. I think of some of the media reports. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 15-year-old driving a car that hits you or someone that is older. There are still the effects sustained, the emotional and physical toll it takes on victims and their families, and I just want to acknowledge the victims of crime.

We’ve seen a whole range of increases in serious offending over the last 10 years. I think in Christchurch we’ve seen it more than double from about 46 serious repeat offenders to about 105 young offenders. The crimes that we are seeing are things like robbery and extortion. We’re seeing things like weapons offences. These are serious crimes that have been committed by young people.

Once again, I do express my hope that these children can reach their full potential. This bill does emphasise a balanced approach, recognises that accountability is essential for people that commit crimes—

💬 Shanan Halbert: Where’s the balance in manhandling our kids?

—but we also provide support and guidance to these young individuals. I hear some heckling from the other side about our boot camps, so what I will say about what the Chief Children’s Commissioner had said on visiting—

💬 Shanan Halbert: About manhandling our kids.

—on handling—when they had visited the pilot—if the member over there would just like to be quiet for a minute, I’d actually read out what the quote was. She said she saw a multidisciplinary team working on a one-on-one basis, focusing on their trauma, wrapping therapeutic and rehabilitative approaches around the individual.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Can I ask members to not have a conversation across the Chamber.

That is in the media—those quotes—so anybody can go and have a look at it.

We are also introducing a new young serious offenders declaration. This will allow us to identify and respond to young offenders who pose serious risk to themselves and others. By doing so, we can tailor interventions so we can actually accelerate rehabilitation, which I think is very important, and I think most people in the House would agree with that. I think this is a step which can help us address the issues that we’re facing and help these young people in their time of need.

The question is, That the

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.