Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I move, That the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The bill was introduced on 12 November 2024, and on the same day the Prime Minister apologised on behalf of the Crown to survivors of abuse and neglect in care. The bill reflects the Crown’s ongoing commitment in its response to the recommendations from the abuse in care royal commission of inquiry.

The royal commission was one of the most significant inquiries in New Zealand, and over six years it examined our care settings, heard from survivors, and made comprehensive recommendations to address past wrongs and ensure a safer care system now and, also, for the future. This bill is an important part of our wider response, and complements the work already well under way to implement the commission’s recommendations. We are committed to doing better for survivors, and I know these changes to our existing legislation will make a difference. I’m pleased that the bill has reached its third and final reading.

I want to begin by acknowledging the survivors who shared their experiences with the royal commission, and who also made submissions on this bill. Their courage and honesty have been instrumental in helping to shape this legislation. Their voices are deeply valued, and will continue to assist us and strengthen and improve the care system.

I want to thank the Social Services and Community Committee and my parliamentary colleagues for their thorough consideration of the bill, and advice they’ve given to refine and strengthen our legislation.

The bill amends four pieces of legislation: the Children’s Act 2014, the Crimes Act 1961, the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, and the Public Records Act 2005. I’ll now describe each of the amendments to the individual pieces of legislation.

The bill strengthens the children’s workers safety regime in the Children’s Act. This change aligns with recommendation 58(b) in the royal commission’s final report, which is about ensuring that the Children’s Act is fit for purpose. Under this bill, it will be unlawful to employ a core worker if they have an overseas conviction for an offence that is equivalent to a New Zealand offence specified in the Children’s Act, or a conviction for certain offences involving harm against minors in the Prostitution Reform Act 2003. It’ll mean that people who have been convicted of overseas offences involving serious harm, including harm against children, equivalent to a specified New Zealand offence cannot be core workers unless they have been granted an exemption by the chief executive of a key agency. There was widespread support for this change during the select committee process, and no person or organisation submitted against it.

The bill changes the Crimes Act to add “disability” to the definition of a “vulnerable adult”. This directly responds to, and reflects, the royal commission’s recommendation 26 in their report. In the Crimes Act, someone is a vulnerable adult when they are unable to remove themselves from the care or charge of another person—it is not about any inherent characteristics of that person in care. The Crimes Act amendment will mean those caring for disabled adults will now understand that they have a statutory duty of care towards them.

The amendment to the Oranga Tamariki Act will provide greater protection for children and young people in residences, including youth justice residences. The bill will enable the search of residents, staff, and contractors to youth justice residences on entry to prevent unauthorised items being brought in. The bill also introduces approved search plans in both youth justice and care protection residences, which must be developed with children and young people. Search plans must take account of a child or young person’s needs and preferences, their experiences, and they’ll be able to request their plans are reviewed. This change aligns with the royal commission recommendation 78 to have a fit for need and individualised care system. This was also supported by submitters. The ability to provide input and have a voice in these plans is also important for their wellbeing and safety. Importantly, these changes also include the removal of authority to strip-search children and young people in residences.

The changes to the Oranga Tamariki Act will also clarify the maximum time a child or young person can remain in secure care, in a secure care unit, without judicial oversight. Currently, the Act provides that a child or young person must not be kept in secure care for more than 72 continuous hours, or more than three consecutive days, without judicial intervention. The bill removes the reference to the period of up to 72 hours. This means that the child or young person can only be held in secure care for the shorter of the time periods currently allowed. This will provide greater accountability and protection for young people in care. A further change was made, as a result of the select committee process, to clarify that secure care starts on the first day the child or young person is placed in secure care. Oranga Tamariki and the select committee heard from care-experienced young people about these changes, and I want to acknowledge and thank them for contributing to the select committee process.

The fourth and final part of the bill updates the Public Records Act. Many survivors have shared stories of their poor experiences when seeking access to their care records. The royal commission made a number of recommendations to improve record-keeping systems and processes, and record access requests, and spoke about survivors’ experiences and outcomes when requesting their personal records. The bill will introduce new powers for Archives New Zealand and the Chief Archivist to support improvements in record-keeping practices. These changes received widespread support, with no submissions against the change. Submitters suggested that there should be more transparency about the action plans and performance notices that will be put in place using these new powers. A change to the Public Records Act will see these reported in the Chief Archivist’s annual reports.

All of the amendments in the bill represent a significant step to improving the safety and wellbeing of children, young people, and adults in care. I acknowledge that there is still a lot more to be done to ensure the wrongs of the past are not repeated, and this Government is committed to continuing this work with urgency and with care. I want to acknowledge the effort of all parties throughout this process. Although we may not agree on everything, we agree that change needs to happen, and protections need to be stronger for our children, our young people, and adults in care.

I’d also like to thank my colleagues the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Minister of Justice, and the Minister for Children for their support and contributions. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. In three weeks’ time, together as a country, we will be commemorating the National Day of Reflection, on 12 November 2025. As we are all aware, this day marks one year from when the Prime Minister delivered an apology on behalf of the Crown to survivors who endured abuse, harm, neglect, and trauma in State and faith-based care.

I want to take us back to that moment. I want to quote the words of Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who said in his apology statement: “It’s a hugely important day for us, the representatives of the Crown and of successive Governments, that we finally—finally—acknowledge the thousands of confronting experiences of neglect, abuse, trauma, torture, and that we finally own up fully to our failings and offer our sincerest apologies. We are sorry. Today, all of Aotearoa New Zealand will bear witness to the truth: to what survivors experienced, to our decades of wilful ignorance, denial, minimisation, and to our conviction to end such horror and vile acts from continuing.”

As survivor advocate Keith Wiffin reminded us, what happened over decades “Ripped families and communities apart, trapping many into a life of prison, incarceration, leaving many uneducated, and ill-equipped to cope in the outside world. It has tarnished our international reputation as an upholder of human rights, something our country likes to dine out on.” Keith went on to say, “Today’s speech by the Prime Minister is an opportunity to bring about some healing, relief, and comfort. To achieve this, he must connect with survivors as being genuine and sincere, for example by committing to timelines to deliver redress for all those who have suffered. Survivors have witnessed a Royal Commission of Inquiry play out for six years. It’s three years since the state was given recommendations for an independent redress scheme to be incorporated, but we sit here today with nothing. The public of this country has invested heavily in this inquiry and like us they expect outcomes.”

It was on this day that the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill first entered this House. As Keith’s comments foreshadow, in comparison to the magnitude of the harm, the bill felt underwhelming at the time. Hopes had been high that the Government would announce a new independent redress system—but, still, it was something, and it is for this reason that Labour has supported this bill throughout, with some reservations, as we have noted, along the way.

During select committee hearings, survivors, advocates, and experts criticised the limited scope of the bill and the lack of engagement with survivors. While the general intent of the bill was supported, the changes were called “piecemeal”, “tinkering”, and “a squandered opportunity”. I would like to acknowledge Ihorangi Reweti-Peters, who, in an article in The Post, talked about how “Although the intentions behind the amendment bill are constructive and signal governmental commitment to addressing historical abuses, a notable concern remains: survivors were not offered the opportunity to review or provide feedback prior to the bill’s introduction to Parliament.”

Some submitters opposed the bill in its entirety, saying it was a distraction from the work to respond to all the recommendations. We have not seen a great deal of action from this Government, so perhaps they have been distracted—unless you call kicking the can down the road “action”. In their response to the royal commission, published in May this year, the Government declined to accept, or had not even started to consider, 85 of the royal commission’s 207 recommendations from across the two reports, Whanaketia and He Purapura Ora, he Māra Tipu. The Government has fully accepted only 19 recommendations, and they claim to have completed a mere 13.

Much of what is in this bill are small steps towards the recommendations in Whanaketia and He Purapura Ora, he Māra Tipu. The royal commission identified significant issues with data collection, record-keeping, and information management practices. The previous Labour Government had started work to improve the Government’s record system. The provision in this bill to improve record-keeping and the Chief Archivist’s ability to enforce compliance with the Public Records Act is a welcome change. I encourage the Government to continue to work in this area. For people who were taken away from their families and communities, Government records are sometimes the only place where information about them can be found.

Similarly, the improvements in the vetting of people who seek to work with children and young people are welcome. But there is much more work to do to build and maintain a system whereby all care staff and care workers are vetted, registered, and well trained, with powerful mechanisms to enforce appropriate standards. We wholeheartedly welcome the removal of the use of strip-searching for children and young people. This is entirely consistent with the royal commission’s recommendations and is a well-overdue change.

The bill demonstrated so clearly why proper and meaningful consultation with survivors, experts, and advocates is so important, and why this is one of the central recommendations of the royal commission. The change to the Crimes Act to include disabled people as vulnerable adults was not supported by submitters. As a result, if passed, we will have something in legislation that is not supported by the people it is supposed to be there for. This result is wrong and should not have occurred. The Minister was well placed to consult properly or to remove this part of the bill, or to do further consultation, but she chose not to. That goes against the entire point of the royal commission.

Further, we were concerned about the inclusion of the potential use of force during searches at youth justice facilities, and I submitted several amendments to include the use of proven de-escalation methods as an approach to avoiding the use of force—but these were not supported by the Minister and the Government. As we know so well, the children and young people who are in youth justice facilities have complex and often traumatic backgrounds; they need trauma-informed, specialist, wraparound approaches, not force. This bill is a missed opportunity to mandate the use of modern approaches to behaviour management—approaches that are rehabilitative and not potentially harmful.

This sits alongside the Government’s pilot boot camp legislation, to put these into law—no doubt soon—to be again considered in this House. This reminds me of the broad findings of the royal commission. As the royal commission showed us, children, young people, and disabled people mostly ended up in care because of discriminatory attitudes and beliefs about them—attitudes and beliefs like racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and the lack of care for people who were doing it tough. As a country, we have some improvements in terms of challenging and eliminating discrimination, but we have much, much more to do.

This Government’s approach to Māori, Pacific, disabled people, people receiving income support, and young people in the youth justice system demonstrates that discrimination is alive and well in this country. If we want to make sure that we never repeat the horrors contained in the royal commission’s findings, we need to take seriously the recommendations for public education and awareness-raising campaigns, and a great deal more urgency should be placed on implementing all of the royal commission’s recommendations.

On this side of the House, we will continue to hold this Government to account for the promise to take responsibility that it made in the Crown apology. This bill is at least a start at preventing abuse, harm, and neglect in care, and supporting survivors, which is why we support it. That is my contribution from this side of the House. As I said at the beginning of my speech, one of the key points that I wanted to make is how important it is that, in anything that we are doing, the involvement of survivors is so important. It has been overlooked in this piece of legislation, and I worry that we are not heeding the advice and the recommendations of the royal commission about the pivotal role that survivors need to play in redress and in responding to the recommendations of the royal commission. We support this bill to the House.

The Green Party supports the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill, because survivors deserve for us to support progress. I’m aware that survivors are also very clear that this is in no way going anywhere near the depth of support for the royal commission of inquiry recommendations that survivors deserve. However, the Greens will absolutely continue to work with prioritising survivor experience and survivor voice, and working with any Governments, to ensure that we really are prioritising their experiences.

Now, I will firstly go over the key concerns from this part of the bill, because I then want to—if Madam Speaker will allow—make sure that I take up my responsibility as a former violence prevention Minister and the understanding of trauma-informed approaches that we must see in all and any legislation when it comes to responding to the abuse in care.

Survivors have been very clear that they should have deserved full engagement with this bill long before it came to anyone—to any MP or to the public—long before, from the get-go. We’re aware that the Minister stated that they could have made submissions during the public select committee stages—yes, of course; but, actually, no, it’s not good enough. Survivors should have been fully engaged from the very start. We also need to recognise the barriers that can prevent the public and survivors, especially, from engaging in the normal democratic systems.

There are also still concerns from survivors over new section 384KB, inserted by clause 28, and the use of force that is still permitted in care settings. That continues to normalise violence. It moves us away, instead, from the de-escalation techniques and the violence prevention techniques that we instead should be prioritising. I want to acknowledge that this bill, again, has been a missed opportunity to focus on incorporating and focusing on those de-escalation and trauma-informed care techniques, rather than still normalising use of force.

There is still—and this is one of the big concerns—institutionalisation of youth justice residences and care institutions. So there is concern that the changes contribute to further and re-institutionalising youth justice residences when, again, instead there should be a shift away from the punitive, institutionalised models and towards community-based and trauma-informed care models. That’s a really important concern to highlight.

I do want to centre the voice of disabled people who can see that there is a flawed definition of “vulnerable adult”. I understand the intention of care that it is designed to pick up and protect. However, disabled people have been very clear that the proposed definition risks framing them through a lens of deficit and dependency, rather than recognising autonomy, agency, and mana. It is important that we note and continue to work with those concerns, and that instead there must be—and this is hard but enduring—co-design approaches: proper relationship engagement design approaches to legislative protections for and with the disability community to ensure that the language does not continue to rob them of their dignity and mana.

We must continue to ensure meaningful engagement, relationship upholding, and consultation when it comes to any progress on the royal commission of inquiry conditions. I note that only 28 of the 138 recommendations have been completed or have seen progress initiated, so we all have a responsibility to move a heck of a lot faster or more meaningfully than that. Those are just Government decisions—any Government of the day. We have much to gain as a country from ensuring that this is a good process. That actually will benefit all of us for role modelling how we can properly care for survivors who have been abused in our State care system.

With that, Madam Speaker, I do hope you will allow—survivors have been very clear that we cannot talk about any one piece of legislation without understanding the whole approach of the Government, and I pull on this as a third reading, which I am aware can sometimes take a wider approach.

Just less than an hour ago, we have seen, in this House, the assisting legislation of the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill. That redress system bill is relevant to this bill, because all of our legislation approaches need to take up the strength-based and trauma-informed approaches that are so necessary—that the royal commission of inquiry demanded, that survivors have demanded, that research indicates is the most enduring way that we can heal our nation of intergenerational harm and violence.

Surely, we would all want for that, but, in the former redress system bill, you are seeing some survivors’ abuse and violence undermined and minimised by creating a hierarchical structure that sees only some survivors being paid redress—what all survivors should be entitled to—and that, to me, is one of the biggest harms against the royal commission of inquiry, against the evidence, against the survivors: that the State is choosing to minimise and undermine the harm that it has caused only to some people, that it is saying that only some people’s harm deserves to be recognised, only some people deserve to be recognised for the violence that was inflicted upon them by the State.

Let’s be very clear that all people who perpetrate harm need to be held accountable, and we have a system for that in place already. The redress system is instead sending a message to only some survivors: “I’m sorry; your harm does not deserve to be recognised, unlike other people’s harm.”

Let’s remember that when we are affording survivors redress, that it is that child, that young person who we need to be recognising—that young person and that child who have been violently abused and sexually, violently abused in the State care institutions. That’s who the redress is to—to a child and a young person who have been violently harmed by the State. By not recognising their harm and by minimising their harm, that is not the State taking accountability for its own violence; that is the State choosing to discriminate about who worthy survivors of violence are, and who deserves to have their violence recognised. That is the complete opposite of a trauma-informed approach. It is the complete opposite of what survivors collectively, and the research and the royal commission, have demanded for all of us.

Back to this bill, because it was really important that I put that on record and I am proud of putting that on record—and I note some of your speakers stood up for about 10 seconds and also asked us to not be emotive.

They’re not my speakers.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: Has that bench seen this times nine [Holds up report] of the reports and the evidence and the harm and the lived experience of survivors to then stand up and demand us to not be emotive? What is that bench saying about the level of recognition that violence deserves? I leave that on the Hansard for that side of the House to have to live up to for decades—well, for ever, now. It’s on the record. That’s what that side of the House has called for.

A truly progressive step in recognising and prioritising and centring survivors of State abuse would be one that is strength-based; that sees in every single survivor the opportunity for them to be properly supported as they wish to be, to be able to live and thrive in their community, to understand that we are not asking individuals “What is wrong with you?”; we are instead asking “What happened to you?”; that we are working with whole of whānau and community and not just individuals who were harmed by the State; that we are ensuring that our responses are culturally grounded, recognising that the majority of survivors are Māori; that we are ensuring that we acknowledge the systemic harms of colonisation and the violence of colonisation when we are working with healing; that we even include healing when we are talking about any redress and response to abuse in State care; that we prioritise healing and strength base for all survivors. That is the system that we should be aspiring to. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I’m not quite sure how to take that previous speech where we have all been categorised into a box and it was saying that this side of the House doesn’t care about the harm that was caused to victims of abuse in State care. I’m really struggling to kind of even respond to some of the rubbish that has been spouted from the other side of the House. Marama Davidson talked about us having a responsibility—

Hon Marama Davidson: Respond to survivors.

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: Yeah, well, I’m actually one of those survivors, so can you just calm it down and allow people to have their own opinions without rubbishing everybody under one category, because at the end of the day, we can talk to multiple survivors who will all have a different version of how this has affected them, how this has traumatised them, and how they want us, as a Government, to respond to that. Not all survivors think the same, not all survivors want the same kind of redress, and this is a complex subject. But to categorise everybody on this side of the House as being responsible for that harm? We are doing the best that we can, under really horrible circumstances, in having to take on this complex situation.

Now, this bill is in response to the abuse in care inquiry. In no way, shape, or form has anyone on this side of the House stated that this is going to be the be-all and end-all and fix of what has to come. Not everything that needs to be changed across the children’s system and across the system of care has to be done through legislation. There are ways to change practice, there are operational changes that need to happen in the background, and there’s work to be done that does not require legislative change.

This Government has worked tirelessly in the background, changing practice across the youth justice system and professionalising the youth justice system to make sure that our young people are actually cared for in a way that is appropriate. To say that this Government hasn’t responded fast enough—I feel that there are certain things where there will be unintended consequences that need to be thought through before we change legislation. We have to make sure that legislation is clear, that it is meaningful, and that it’s actually going to make real change, and so these fixes that are within this piece of legislation are meaningful changes that can be done right now to make a real difference in young people’s lives across the sector.

In the Oranga Tamariki Act, the changes are around clarifying secure care, which was really quite a muddy ground. Young people didn’t actually have the security of knowing how long they were going to be in secure care, and so we are changing that. It is also about making sure that not only are children and young people safe in a youth justice facility but that the staff are safe, as well. It’s about making real, meaningful changes to make sure that they are safe within an environment that is, essentially, their home. But to say that we are institutionalising our young people and that we are going to encourage violence by having reasonable force is, I think, a bit irresponsible.

Reasonable force is not about violence; reasonable force is done in good practice, with good training, to make sure that de-escalation does happen first, before reasonable force is used, and to say that that’s not going to happen is actually disingenuous. In the committee of the whole House, it was explained quite well to the Opposition that de-escalation training will happen, and so to say that that was not addressed is actually quite a joke—to say that we didn’t address that problem.

Look, we hear it quite a bit that these changes that are done have not been done in consultation with survivors, but what I would say is that there was six years of consultation with survivors—six years of an inquiry into the abuse in care, six years of listening to survivors, and six years of writing survivors’ stories, to be held and written for everybody to be able to read that going into the future. Six years of experiences are now in writing and, actually, we will be able to go back to that throughout history.

What I don’t think we need to do is to constantly stop the work that we’re doing to have another talkfest when what survivors do want is for something to happen now, and that was the whole point of the recommendations. The point of the recommendations was that that was what the survivors were wanting through the consultation that happened in the redress for the abuse in care inquiry.

I think, to say that there was no consultation is a little bit low, because there was six years of consultation. There was also time for a lot of this stuff to happen previous to this Government. The previous Government knew that this inquiry was happening; it knew of some of the recommendations well before we came into Government, and I think that we need to stop attacking each other and actually work together to move forward.

Another part of the bill that I really wanted to emphasise and that I feel will make a really big difference is the amendments to the Public Records Act. Now, for far too long, people who have been through the system—and I’ll speak to the children’s system, in particular—have not been able to have access to their lives. Every piece of documentation at every visit and every conversation that’s been had is documented, and not to have access to your life and to your story is unacceptable.

On top of the changes to the Public Records Act, there is work going on in the background—particularly with Oranga Tamariki—around an upgrade to our front-line technology system, which will allow young people to have access to their lives in their own time and under their own rules on how they want to be able to access their information. Whilst we look at legislative changes as being something to celebrate, we also need to understand that that’s not the only way that we can respond to the abuse in care inquiry.

Not everything requires legislation, but what it does require is level-headed conversations around what is best for those who have been through the system and been let down by the system, and around how we can actually have a positive approach to this, rather than trying to have a jab here and there about who did what to whom, because we’re never going to move forward if we’re constantly looking at these things in the negative. Whilst I appreciate that the Opposition is supporting these bills, what I would have appreciated more would be their speaking to the positive changes and speaking about how this will have a great effect on those who have fought for years to be heard and who have fought for years to have some of these changes made—and it was all made political. It was not about those who had suffered, and it was not about those who had been through a system and had been absolutely hurt and harmed; it was all political. It’s actually quite disappointing.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the third reading of the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill. I don’t intend to take up the time of the House. This is an important piece of legislation that needs to be brought into law.

I think, to put some context into this bill, it was introduced at a time when the apology was being delivered and we wanted, as a Government, to ensure that there was a clear message that work had commenced, was under way, and was being prioritised. At no point has the Government or anyone debating this issue in the House suggested this is an end point. This is about the legislative reform that we could bring to the House. It is a difficult process to pass legislation, so that is why it has taken longer than I think many of us would have wanted it to, but it is a starting point of legislation that needed to be passed to ensure that some of the recommendations that were made could be addressed as quickly as possible and demonstrate the Government priority. I think that’s what this bill has achieved.

The bill comes after incredibly, deeply traumatic findings of the royal commission into abuse in care. It acknowledges the harm inflicted. It does not seek to minimise or mitigate that harm or suggest that the journey is over. It is about ensuring some steps—and we keep moving forward.

As the previous speaker, Karen Chhour, outlined, this is not only a legislative response; there is a lot of work and policy that is being driven. I think it shows good faith that, through this process in the Social Services and Community Committee and in the debates in the House, we have found a common ground, and I hope we can continue to find that common ground as we move forward to address the recommendations of the royal commission.

The bill is a start. The bill is a process. Change needed to happen; more change will continue to need to happen. This is a starting point that New Zealand First commends and, therefore, we commend this bill to the House.

E ngā mōrehu, e ngā toenga rangatira kua ora tonu ahakoa te mamae, ka nui te w’akamānawa ki a koutou katoa.

[To the survivors, the remaining leaders that have endured despite the anguish, I honour all of you.]

We stand, Te Pāti Māori, in staunch support of the survivors of abuse in care. We stand with those who have carried decades of mamae, who have had to hide in shame because of the State’s violence, and we stand, sadly, for those who have had to be silenced in their pain. We stand in the shadow of the truth, and we acknowledge that it has come too late for many.

This nation was extremely emotional when it received the news from the royal commission and the report and the nine texts or manuals of all of those survivors’ pain. This House, if I remember rightly, was full of emotion. In fact, it was full of emotion downstairs when every CEO had to stand up and talk about their agency’s part in this. I refuse to hear from those in this House that think we are not allowed to be emotional about any part of this bill. Absolutely it was political, because some of our mokopuna and our tamariki were only in there because of who they are and where they came from. Colonisation is political, and to deny that in this House is to deny the very existence of the pain and the reason why they were in State care.

I want to also talk about acknowledging those who couldn’t be in the room for the apology. I remember being downstairs and hearing and seeing all the pain. We heard from rangatahi who told us how they were treated differently because of who they were. We heard how cruel the Crown treated them. We heard about the Crown’s care—its conditional, colour-coded, and cruel behaviour.

One survivor said, “We lost our reo, our whānau, and our w’akapapa, and the State called that protection”. So when the Government says that this bill is a step forward, ka pai; we can agree on that, but when it says it’s enough, we definitely do not agree, and we do not support this bill.

Joseph Mooney: Never said that.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Then why is this bill here like it is? What the bill misses is what the survivors asked for. They asked for the disestablishment of Oranga Tamariki. We missed what the survivors asked for. They asked for change. I don’t care what anyone who isn’t a survivor in this House has to say. They cried, they pleaded, they begged for change. This bill patches the law. There’s no change. It doesn’t change the power; in fact, it strengthens everything that created the pain. What we’ve got here—it leaves the same ministries, the same hierarchies that oversee the very systems that broke the tamariki in the first place.

This is not transformation—be very clear, w’ānau mā. This is business as usual. This is maintenance. We’re hearing every excuse. Every survivor waited decades to be believed. Our solutions that we had were there, right in front of us all, to agree across every party in this House, and that was to adopt the 138 recommendations of the Whanaketia report—138 recommendations. “Give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.”—that wasn’t what we said; that was what they wanted: to take into account, to give effect, to make sure that every judgment that comes in takes into consideration their rights and interests. Kāo. Missed the beat. They also wanted to make sure that we had a Māori survivor, mokopuna-ora, w’ānau-ora authority; an independent, survivor-led, tikanga-based kaupapa. Let those who have lived the harm be part of leading the healing. Kāo. Same agencies, same people, same people that created the harm. Nothing’s changed.

They wanted to see funding for prevention. They were so caring about everyone else that could be in the same boat as them. They wanted to ban strip-searches of children, stop the treating of trauma with trauma. Kāo—missed. They wanted a guaranteed lifetime of access to their records under Māori data sovereignty. Missed. The kaupapa beneath all of this is that it’s the same system that removed our tamariki, our mokopuna, in the first place. I think the sad thing is that if we had a Prime Minister who truly supported this apology, then he would have proved it, and this Government would have proved it in everything they did. No; we’ve gone from apology to no action. Let the survivors lead. Let whānau fund and be funded first. Publish the truth. We don’t support this bill. Kia ora rā.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of Te Rōpū Kākāriki, supporting our awesome co-leader Marama Davidson, who laid the foundation for the work that’s being completed to date, but the work is not complete. We are merely in a process of trying to improve and broker solutions which focus on the victim.

In reviewing the Whanaketia survivor experiences and thinking of the six years of evidence that was presented to royal commission, and as someone who was fortunate to have a mum and a dad and who was raised in a loving home, I can only share my aroha to the mōrehu, the mōrehu who suffered in a system which harmed them. The abuse was not by accident. It was a system which established power and control and silenced the voices of children. It was a system that broke a generation of young people—where, yes, some have fallen into harm’s way; they have been imprisoned, they have not been good spouses or parents, they have struggled in relationships, they have struggled to keep jobs, and yet it was the system that did this to them, and it was by design.

This legislation is merely just one part of a cog of a bigger, wider conversation we have to have as New Zealanders, as we consider what the pathway forward is. How do we listen intently to the voices of ngā mōrehu and the evidence that they firmly presented before the royal commission? Then, with the report with the 138 recommendations, how can we see the recommendations coming into full effect? This is incremental change, and we believe it is not moving fast enough to bring about some reconciliation for those who have been harmed at the hands of the Crown by those who were meant to look after them.

I want to reflect on the royal commission and their kōrero in relation to imprisonment and the correlation between State care and imprisonment. It’s been especially high for those who have been victims of State care. The research found that one in five within our prison system has been a victim of abuse in State care. We spoke earlier about the redress system and the presumption that is going to be imposed upon them, but we’ve disproportionally impacted this population of harmed people. They are now grandparents. They are disproportionately those who have filled up our prisons and who have filled up our gangs. Whanaketia holds the voices of the voiceless who have sat for a lifetime and finally found light and the ability to share their stories. They were stories that were hidden, they were stories that were silenced, and they were stories of those most vulnerable.

I bring to the House the story of Mr NK. His hometown was Taitoko Levin. He shared about how, as a 14-year-old, he was sent away to boarding school and then to a bootcamp in Tūrangi. He suffered abuse there. The officers would hold him down, they would beat him, and they would kick and push him around and press him on his chest. Following the harm that was inflicted, he spent a lifetime in and out of jail for small sentences of burglaries and thefts. Then, he got a big sentence for aggravated assault and was only just released, recently, in 2012. Now, he describes, in his evidence, the cycle. Surely, we’re at a point where we can say to Mr NK, “We hear you. We know Whanaketia has provided the path for us to make amends and try to do better for their children and mokopuna.” What we are asking, as Te Rōpū Kākāriki, is: have we done enough? Have we done enough in these amendments and what we’re proposing? The select committee has heard, and there’s opportunity for us to do more. We have come so far, but we can, absolutely, do more.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak at the third and final reading of the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill is a response to the royal commission of inquiry into historical abuse in State and faith-based institutions. As the Government made it very clear from the very outset, it is to implement urgent reforms or broader responses to the commission’s 138 recommendations—they’re still in development. There’s a lot more work to come. Unfortunately, some members of this House are very aware of that, and they are seeking to use this for political gain, which is unfortunate, because this is a serious issue and a serious matter for many, many New Zealanders—both those directly affected, those indirectly affected, and for all of us. We need to acknowledge what they have been through, and we need to have a responsible discussion in this House, as it reverberates across our nation, for the sake and the betterment of our people.

There are some changes to be made to the Oranga Tamariki Act, the Children’s Act, the Crimes Act, and the Public Records Act—an omnibus bill, to make some changes to that. I’m just going to give one example of things I think the Opposition has been irresponsible about: that is, making some changes around the Oranga Tamariki Act, around de-escalation and the use of reasonable force for young people in that environment. Unfortunately, I have heard endless critique against that.

Now, I’m going to share one little story to say why these people should really wake up and live in the real world. A number of years ago, I was working as a lawyer, and I was contacted by a father of a young man who’d been accused of a very serious crime. I went to see him in Invercargill Prison, and while I was helping him fill out the paperwork to get a lawyer who was appropriately qualified for the level of seriousness of what he’d been charged with, he, without warning, attacked me, punched me to the face, and knocked me to the floor. While he was attempting to continue that, and I was fending him off, two corrections officers came in and tackled him and got him off me. I stood up, my shirt covered in blood. I can tell you that I was thankful that reasonable force was used that day to stop that man from continuing that assault.

There are, unfortunately, many cases where people will use force against themselves or others, and reasonable force needs to be used to stop that, so let’s have a responsible conversation as we continue this piece of work, ladies and gentlemen. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is important—and I take note of the previous member, Joseph Mooney’s story, and acknowledge what he said—but I want to go back to what our Labour leader said when we first started this. The Hon Chris Hipkins said, “It’s a hugely important day for us - the representatives of the Crown and [of] successive Governments - that we finally acknowledge the thousands of confronting experiences of neglect, abuse … trauma, … torture, and that we finally own up fully to our failings and offer our sincerest apologies. [We are sorry] Today - all of Aotearoa New Zealand will bear witness to the truth - to what survivors experienced, to our decades of wilful ignorance, denial, minimisation and to our conviction to end such horror and vile acts from continuing.” The Labour position was very clear in terms of where we were at.

We don’t resile from that. We also don’t resile from supporting this bill today—obviously, with reservations, because we want so much more to be done. I don’t come here to criticise or condemn any of the stories from the Government, from Minister Chhour. I do respect her story, her life story, and her position. The problem is that so many of the experts through this have been ignored, and that is where so much angst comes from in the community. Believe it or not, many of our community, many of our people, want the Government to do well with this kaupapa. It is important the Government does well with this kaupapa, but when you have initiatives, like boot camps, that were clearly recommended against by experts in the community—absolutely adamant that that type of a strategy was not going to, and does not, benefit people who’ve been through the system—totally ignored by the Government, it does not help.

It doesn’t mean to say that people are going to walk away from the Government, and, as I said, others will be opposed to this bill today. We are not. We just want more—we want more. Oranga Tamariki is a shining example. The former Minister Kelvin Davis went down the track of recommendations in terms of having an all-Maori board to respond to the types of tragedies that were happening within the Oranga Tamariki system, where babies were being taken, and whānau were not being consulted. We wanted to avoid all that, so we put in the necessary, I suppose, people—despite survivors saying there was no more need for Oranga Tamariki, and they’re still saying that, and that is still being ignored. But, as a Labour Government, we did not get rid of Oranga Tamariki, either, but we have put in people who we think are incredibly necessary in terms of the process going forward.

Minister Chhour has worked with those sorts of people—people like Dame Naida Glavish, who’s been an adviser, and other good people within the Oranga Tamariki area. Also, contracts have been given to our community organisations. That is one of the ways forward. This Government must look to go down that track, in terms of giving communities the opportunity to deal with this kaupapa.

Laura McClure: You sound like you’re saying our policy.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: That is happening, but that is not happening enough, to that member.

Laura McClure: Oh, come on!

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No, it’s not happening enough. Even Mr Seymour would agree with that here, with his charter school stuff. He would want more in terms of what’s happening with communities. I certainly acknowledge that there has been an effort from the Government in this area, in terms of this bill, and that’s why today we will be supporting the bill. But the bill does not go far enough and, in many ways, is a missed opportunity.

I was listening to Joseph Mooney, and I do sympathise with what Joseph Mooney was saying, but the use of force contradicts survivor- and trauma-informed practice. I think that’s the thing, Mr Mooney. I mean, how can we legitimately be against abuse in State care while still—and this is the point—allowing the State to use force, you know? Obviously, some common sense is going to come into it, but—but—this has been the kōrero of many survivors through the years; that the State is not listening.

In particular, I think we brought out the kōrero of Ihorangi Reweti Peters, who’s an advocate. His name has been mentioned today—a survivor of abuse in State care who served as a member of the rangatahi reference group and on the Māori recommendations working group for the royal commission of inquiry into abuse. Just today—just today—in The Post, he criticises the manner in which the Government has gone about this process by limiting the involvement by survivors and by ignoring the call for a real, independent redress system. That’s what survivors are saying. It’s quite damning, what he’s saying, and I know that people on the other side will respect this view. It was clear that the Government cared more about—well, they probably won’t respect this view—how they look to voters than acting on the promises to survivors.

Hon David Seymour: Oh, don’t be like that.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Well, that’s from a survivor, Mr Seymour, and you should respect that. It’s someone who has been to hell and back, and rather than rubbish it and, as you accuse us of, being all political, maybe we should respect what that survivor has said.

Hon David Seymour: We do. We’re not politicising it.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No, you are politicising it, because you’re not listening to what we’re saying. While we support the broad aim of the bill, Mr Seymour, let’s not pretend—

Hon David Seymour: The member is running out of material.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I haven’t run out of material. I’ll keep going for another 10 minutes, if you like. While we respect the broad aim of the bill, the reality is that the Government is just not going far enough. It’s just the start, Mr Seymour, and you can’t just put in processes like boot camps to look after things. If we were the Government, we would have a vastly different bill. We would have a bill, Mr Seymour, that takes into account the Treaty of Waitangi, that, sadly, you have a problem with. Survivors, as you well know, have been very clear—but you don’t understand that, because you’re stupid in the head—

Hon Members: Oh!

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: But he is stupid in the head.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Mr Jackson, are you calling me stupid?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No, not you. Sorry, Mr Chair.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Well, you were.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: My apologies. I was calling Mr Seymour stupid. All right? Is that OK?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Stick to the bill.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Certainly not you, Mr Speaker. What I’m trying to say, Mr Seymour, is that one of the calls from survivors was that the Treaty of Waitangi be respected and be part of this whole legislation, but Mr Seymour has got this weird sort of resentment to the Treaty and doesn’t understand that part of the Treaty process is that there is a special consultation process that has to be set up with Māori, that Mr Seymour disagrees with and refuses to be part of.

I say today, in this third reading, that whilst we as Labour will agree with the bill, we are way off where we want to go. We need to understand that you have to consult with communities much better. You have to consult with Māori much better. They do not know the way forward with regards to this, and survivors have to have a certain level of confidence, and they don’t at the moment. They’re feeling excluded. They’re feeling ignored. They’re not feeling part of the process. This Government needs to stop attacking communities, survivors, Māori. But we will support the bill, because it is at least a start. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

This is a five-minute split call—Paulo Garcia. Apologies, I have been left with an incomplete list.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Alongside the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill, this bill, the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill, is another step forward in the Crown’s response to the royal commission’s findings, making an important start to changes to improve the safety and wellbeing of children, young people, and adults in care. The bill aims to protect people in State care today and into the future. This is a legacy owed to the courageous nearly 2,400 survivors who provided their experience and shared their experience of abuse that has contributed to the commission’s work, which has now resulted in this additional step to improve the safety and wellbeing of children. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I remember when the Prime Minister apologised on behalf of successive Governments for what has happened to New Zealanders in care. I think, at the time, there was a lot of hope by those who have been impacted that something would actually get done. Today, we should be joined together in celebration that at least something is being done, albeit this something is a redress that is not enough.

Let’s be really clear, a lot of harm has been done to New Zealanders who were in care and who, through no fault of their own, were subject to the kind of punishment that you read about from other places around the world, not in New Zealand. But it is a fact that it happened here. It’s a fact that we, as a Parliament, should be doing as much as we can to, as the key word in the name of this bill says, redress that situation. We’re not even saying “compensate them” for what they’ve lost. We’ll never be able to compensate for them. Using a word like “redress”—redress can mean all sorts of different things to different people. I hope that everyone that has been impacted by abuse in care goes one more step and tells the select committee how and why this is so wrong.

As my colleague the Hon Willie Jackson said, we will support this bill not because it’s enough, but because we want it to be enough. We want those who have been subjected to the abuse in care to have another day so that they come to another forum, so they lay out the abuses of their lives one more time in the hope that something will be done, even those who, through this bill, will not qualify for any redress. That’s why I say redress can mean different things for different people. Clearly, for some people, redress will mean they will get something; redress for others will mean they get nothing, no matter what abuse they suffered. I reluctantly accept that we support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In this third reading of the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill, we are not doing everything in one hit. As other speakers have talked about, we are doing many things in the background. We cannot do it all at once. I think that the gravity of what we all heard as evidence, it really means that we should take it into account with everything we do. From this moment and every moment forward, whenever we’re thinking about people that are in vulnerable positions, we should always, in this House, have cause to think about survivors of abuse in care and those that are vulnerable. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill. As the last speaker on the Labour side, I wanted to talk about why we’re supporting: it is step one in a process that, we hope, helps change the settings so that people are looked after in a different way when they’re in care and do not have a repeat of the experience that people have had before.

Part of the criticism across the House today has been a suggestion that we in the Opposition are too critical; that we have too many things to say that are critical. I urge the Government to remember that it’s our job to absolutely be zealous advocates for people in the system. That’s our job. I think that the select committee process that I was involved with, and this piece of legislation, did exactly that.

I want to start with the example of one of those glitchy issues. We’ve got a situation where children are going through strip-searches, and they’re going through a process of going into an environment which is not ideal, to say the least. We have come to an agreement, in this legislation, that that won’t happen anymore, and that was a really good thing. But when we were in the select committee, we got to a gnarly discussion about the related issue of the use of force. There were lots of opinions in the select committee about that, and there was close questioning. Absolutely, that should happen; it doesn’t mean that the story that we heard from our chair, actually, of that select committee from the Government benches today is not correct: that there isn’t risk for people in those situations, that we shouldn’t look after the staff, that we shouldn’t look after the other children in those situations, and that we shouldn’t have to face the reality that sometimes force will be used. It does not mean that. What it means is that the people in Opposition, on those select committees, are doing their job. They are absolutely holding that space and asking those questions. That’s an important job to do. It wasn’t an easy one to remedy, and it hasn’t satisfied the Green Party, but this bill actually has got the support of this House as a result.

I recently stole myself to watch Adolescence. I had not quite managed that. I’ve got the sexual and family violence portfolio, and I just couldn’t bring myself, given what I am seeing and reading about on a daily basis in my job, to watch that show. But that show is a really interesting examination of a child going through a process. It didn’t mean the child hadn’t actually been involved; in fact, I don’t want to spoil the plot, but the child had committed the act. But that process was terrifying, as we were watching it from the outside. Our process has to be as human as it possibly can be, because we actually need a degree of safety for those people going through those processes. They come from all sorts of traumas, and we know that, so it’s incredibly important.

Now, one of the things that this law change will do is it will check the background of the people that are working with these very vulnerable people. It will check their backgrounds much more thoroughly than they’ve been checked before. That’s an incredibly important thing, because we know this is a place where violence grows—a relationship where somebody has no choice but to be there is a place where violence grows and there is predatory behaviour—so it’s really important that we make these amendments, and we change the system so that we’re checking overseas convictions.

I was interested to see that, in Australia, an enormous amount of money is being poured into systems of vetting, etc., because they have a state system, and so people move from state to state. We are lucky, in this country, that we have a contained couple of islands. We can do this job well, and we can change this effectively, I think. So that’s something that’s happening here.

There was a discussion with regards to the changes in this legislation over the Crimes Act. In this legislation, there is use of the word “disability” as a category of vulnerable person, and that caused a lot of controversy. I think that you’ve heard, in other speeches, people talk about why that upset people who didn’t want to use that term because it felt like “disability” was being equated with “vulnerability”, and it was the, kind of, defining feature. Now, that was discussed, and, in fact, the wording has been kept, but I just wanted people who are from outside of this House to understand what that was about: that definition fits within a context. It’s a definition of a vulnerable adult in the situation where a person is unable, by reason of those definitions—and that’s age, sickness, mental impairment, disability—to withdraw himself or herself because they are in the charge of another person. They are completely vulnerable in that situation, so the two go together. The disability goes with the vulnerability of not being able to get out of the situation.

I think there is a good argument for an alternative use of language here, because that’s what the stakeholders wanted. I think it’s really important that people realise that what is happening predominantly in this legislation is that we are recognising the vulnerability of people, the fact that they cannot leave these situations, and they are more vulnerable as a consequence. I think that’s a really important part of this legislation.

Now, I wanted to return to the issue of safe havens, because I use that language, having thought about it a lot. It’s become a core value that I’ve got, and that is a Labour value, I think: that we need to create safe havens for people, and that those safe havens are, hopefully, in their own homes. At the moment, they are simply not. We’ve got way too high levels of domestic violence and sexual violence in this country, and sexual violence is actually on the rise. We also have our utterly precarious housing, and a lot of these children that we’re talking about here are actually coming through the most broken of those situations, and they don’t have safe housing. When they move into these systems, and they move into what was described—I think, by one of the Green members—as “institutions”, it’s incredibly important that we role model that kind of safe environment.

In this case, that was a difficult discussion because it wasn’t the safety of one of these children; it was the safety of many of these children. Things like the searching that was needed for the safety not only of that child but for the safety of the other children in the place. There was a balancing act to be done.

What I became satisfied of, in this inquiry in the select committee—and I entered it rather late; people had already started—was that people were asking those searching questions, were thinking about those things. We, as a consequence of this legislation, won’t have got everything right, but we’ll be a lot better off, and those children will be a lot better off than they were. It’s a good step on the way.

Now, I just want to spend the last part of my speech talking about the bit that’s a worry, and that is the lack of engagement with the sector. I don’t accept what Minister Chhour said when she said, “We have been engaging for six or seven years.” That is just not good enough. This engagement has to continue and it has to be a partnership, and I think it has to be a partnership with the people impacted. They won’t all hold the same view, and we won’t all actually be able to suggest we know because we’re a victim—that’s actually irrelevant. It’s about us all being involved in those processes and honouring those people who are most impacted.

It’s not a case of owning that space; it’s a case of letting others be in that space and participate fully in designing the kinds of solutions here. Hopefully that means that we come up with better solutions. I commend this bill to the House.

Ka tino tata te mutunga o tēnei pire, nā reira he kōrero poto tēnei e pā ana ki ngā taipitopito o te pire nei.

[We are near the conclusion of this bill, so this will be a short speech about the details of this bill.]

Thank you very much for the considered speeches, particularly in just the last 15 minutes. I feel the weight of legislation like this—what it is that we are discussing, what it is that we are doing—and I appreciate the āta whakaaro me te āta kōrero hoki o ngā mema atu, nā reira ka tuku au i te pire nei ki te Whare [careful consideration and mindful discussion also of other members. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House].

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.