Adoption Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Associate Minister of Justice: I move, That the Adoption Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

All children have a right to be in safe, loving homes. Any case where that isn’t happening and children are being exploited is a tragedy. Sadly, the current New Zealand Adoption Act 1955 has not sufficiently kept up and protected children from the global tragedy that is child trafficking and sexual exploitation.

I’d like to personally thank, at this time, the International Child Protection Unit at Oranga Tamariki for stepping up and working incredibly hard on this serious issue with myself and other agencies. Your work in protecting the vulnerable is nothing short of heroic. As staff at Oranga Tamariki, an agency that is often scrutinised, you do not always get the credit that you deserve, and I would like to thank you on behalf of myself and also a grateful nation for the work that you do in the background on complex and challenging issues such as this.

Evidence has shown the absence of strong safeguarding measures has resulted in some adopted children being moved from their home countries into harmful home environments, both within New Zealand and other nations via New Zealand, where they’re open to being abused, neglected; slavery is an issue—and open for sexual assault and physical assault. This is just unacceptable. Our current legal protections currently fail to avert that tragedy and we just cannot allow this to continue.

This is why we find ourselves here, under urgency, urgently resolving the risk of harm to children and young people adopted overseas and sometimes brought to New Zealand and sometimes elsewhere. While most adopted children are thought to be safe and secure in their adoptive family environment, we cannot in good conscience allow any level of child exploitation to occur or allow any risk for that to occur.

I acknowledge that the temporary suspension of section 17, which recognises adoptions made overseas for the purposes of citizenship and immigration, may be disappointing for some families, but please be aware that we do not make this decision lightly. We make this decision only with the thoughts of the safety of young people in our minds.

There are people seeking to be great parents, but whose pathway to adoption may be lengthened by this. We will find an enduring solution as quickly as we possibly can, but preventing the risk of harm to children and young people is what matters most now. That is our responsibility, whether they are our child or not. As a nation, we need to work together to make sure that our children are safe. I put my hand up to enter Parliament on the sole purpose of caring for and protecting children and young people in New Zealand. Whether that harm through adoption is happening on our soil or overseas soil, we have a responsibility to make sure that they are protected from those heinous crimes.

I am grateful for the hard work across Government agencies to make sure that this has happened in a way where we can make sure that no one is rushing for adoptions right now and we can make sure that our young people are safe.

The other area I would just like to point out is I can truly never understand how hard it would have been for some of these officials with absolutely no pathway to interfere, even when they knew that what they were signing off meant that those children may not be safe. So this is also a shout out to those staff who every day have to sign off these adoptions—we are making sure that they can make sure that young people are safe when they’re signing those documents. So I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. I want to, first of all, request that the Minister provide to the House the Attorney-General’s report. It appears to exist. The disclosure statement refers to it and says that advice has been prepared. There would appear to be no reason why this House shouldn’t be informed of that. I would absolutely request that that happen.

Having just had some opportunity to read the disclosure statement, which was tabled less than an hour ago, it does raise some concerns. I note that no regulatory impact statement whatsoever has been prepared, and I accept that, in cases where matters are pressing, sometimes the process is somewhat truncated, but this is not a bill that has been cobbled together in a couple of weeks. It’s a bill that has been months in the making. I’m very surprised that there’s no regulatory impact statement whatsoever. What we’ve got to go on in terms of official advice is this disclosure statement, which is pretty thin, and the Attorney-General’s report if and when we see it.

This is a very significant bill that is going to affect a number of quite discrete communities. If the problem is adoptions being used to exploit young people—and I think that’s the problem—then, in terms of what is the right solution, the only people who appear to have been consulted on this were the Family Court judiciary and the people in Government who will operationalise this bill, whatever that exactly means. It seems that it’s only been an extremely narrow consultation.

The fix, it appears, is not to address some of the root causes of that exploitation, and it’s not to carve out or have some kind of test as to whether or not we recognise an adoption by testing that adoption. It’s been this blanket ban.

I also took the opportunity to just look at our international obligations. Look, I’ll be quite clear: I’m no expert on international law or the law of adoption. It’s interesting that the disclosure statement says that we’ve worked closely with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade on the proposals on the bill, in particular those that relate to specific countries. What they don’t say, in response to the question “Is this consistent with our international obligations?” is that it is. I took the opportunity to just run out and print off the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is all about the rights of the child. It’s important to note that children have a right to adoption. You can understand that a child who, for whatever reason, doesn’t have one or two parents has a right to have the law recognise that relationship. In article 21 of the UN Convention on the Rights to the Child, it says that the “States Parties”—and we’re one of them—“… [must] Recognise that intercountry adoption may be considered as an alternative means of child’s care, if the child can’t be placed in … an adoptive family”. Intercountry adoption is part of the international law framework, and we’re peeling that back.

I’m saying this because I want the Minister and her officials, who I have no doubt will be watching, to be on notice that we intend to raise so that they can give us the most fulsome answers in the committee of the whole House stage. Whilst my study has been cursory, it does throw up some issues.

The other thing that’s noted is that this does significantly limit the jurisdiction of the Family Court in respect of adoptions. That’s quite unusual, right? Whilst the Family Court is a creature of statute, it’s a division of the District Court, and it gets its power from this House, it’s unusual to start curtailing the jurisdiction of the court. I note that there’s kind of a safety net when it says that the Family Court no longer has jurisdiction to make these orders—I think that’s the amendment to section 3—except, and I think it uses the phrase, “in exceptional circumstances”. Then it gives a couple of examples. I was almost concerned with the examples because they were so extreme. I mean, one was a child with one parent dead and the other terminally ill, with the only remaining relative being a person in New Zealand. That is truly extraordinary.

I do think, in this House, we need to probe what is meant by “exceptional circumstances”. In my view, the bar of exceptionality should be relatively low. We’ve sent a very strong signal to the courts about this, but you’ve got to remember that the court will be examining the particular case. They are not simply recognising an overseas order; they are making an order, and they can put the interests of the child first. I’m very cautious about saying to a Family Court judge, “We are taking away your exercise of judgment unless it reaches a threshold way up here.” This is why we consult on these things. Is that the right phrase? Perhaps, in that clause, the phrase should be “clearly in the best interests of the child”, because that’s actually the guiding light for most of our legislation in the family law sphere.

What we could get is a situation where it is clearly in the best interests of the child that the Family Court judge make the order, but it’s not exceptional, so we’ve got a judge whose hands are tied and must decline to act in the best interests of the child. That’s not a good outcome. It’s unfortunate that these comments are being made on the hoof because that’s what urgency does, but I hope the Minister and her officials will carefully consider anything that comes up in the committee stage. It is possible to come in and out of committee, and it is possible to not hear all of the stages consecutively in this period of urgency. It may be that some time for deliberation is needed.

I’ve listened to several of these speeches, and some people are saying that the reason is to have immediate protection of children from exploitation, but the Minister, in her speech, pointed out the reason for this urgency is to stop any adoptions that are currently under way so that no further adoptions will be recognised. It’s not about an immediate protection; it’s about making sure that we don’t have a rush to the courtroom for adoption orders—whether that be in New Zealand or in an overseas jurisdiction—to all of a sudden sneak in before the door closes. That’s why we’re in urgency now.

I am deeply concerned that this bill is a low-quality bill because people with expertise haven’t been consulted. Lawyers, psychologists, social workers, communities affected, and people who have families overseas and who are leaders of the communities that might know about adoption practices in different countries and cultures haven’t been consulted. This is going to come as a sharp jolt to some of these communities who have been under the impression that we recognised the decisions of foreign courts and jurisdictions. There are some of my concerns, but I’m sure there will be more in the next hour or two. Kia ora, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa to speak on the second reading of this bill. Now, following on from the first reading, I apologise that I didn’t indicate our position in the speech itself. We do support this bill, but we still have some serious concerns and questions around this bill.

I think, to start with, we did hear that there has been very limited consultation around this bill. I think it’s important to understand—with all of this, what I will be saying is pivoting and also signalling to the Minister the kind of questions that we’ll be asking the Minister during the committee stage—that what we’re not seeing is the engagement with the affected communities. Now, this bill does disproportionately impact some communities over others. I think it shouldn’t be out of the question, and it should within reason, for the Minister to be able to say which key stakeholders the Minister has engaged with during the formulation of this bill or, in fact, what communities the relevant agencies have communicated with as part of this bill.

I signalled in my first reading speech that I would be talking more about the bill itself. Let’s start with Part 1 and some of the questions I have around the new section 17. Now, I find that to be a peculiar aspect of this bill in the sense that different children, depending on their country’s exemption status, will have different visas and access to citizenship here in Aotearoa New Zealand—at least that’s based on my cursory reading of page 4 of this bill. What I really want to focus on here is the fact that, if the adoption occurs in a country that is not an exempt country, then the adoptive person—in this case, most likely the child—as a result of that adoption will be able to acquire citizenship by descent. Normally, they would they be granted a visa or entry permit under the Immigration Act 2009. If that is correct, then if you are adopting a child from a country that’s not in the exemption list in Schedule 1AAB, even though you have adopted them, that person cannot come to Aotearoa New Zealand unless there is another form of immigration visa or temporary visa status that they can apply for.

I really want to know the rationale around this—particularly in light of what the Minister said in their first and second readings—and whether this is to ensure that no, I guess, potential harm or exploitation would happen to the child here in Aotearoa. On the land, within the jurisdiction of Aotearoa, I guess that makes sense, but that seems to be a really extreme way of mitigating some of these issues, especially when it sounds like you are allowing the person to be adopted but they just can’t come here. I think that has serious implications for some of the families, and I will be keen to hear from the Minister about this.

The other thing, which is interesting, that is going on under the part of the bill—if you’re looking at Part 2—is around amendments to the Family Court Rules. I will be really interested to know—and I know that consultation has happened with the Family Court—what sort of public awareness, but also in terms of function within the Family Court itself, was provided as a result of the changes we’re seeing. In particular, we’re looking at providing evidence of the applications and the child’s ordinary place of residence or other evidence of the circumstances in which the application is made. If that is the case, it would be interesting to hear from the Minister if this is an existing provision or if this is a new provision that has been introduced. What would that, potentially, serve?

While I understand the main purpose of this bill is to place the safety and wellbeing of the child, or any child that is adopted, into consideration, there are definitely some unanswered questions where I don’t know if the bill is drafted in a way that meets the best interests of the child. Potentially it does, and the Minister has considered a lot of these, so we would be happy to engage with the Minister during the committee stage on that.

I also want to pick up on what the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, mentioned in terms of the Hague convention on overseas adoption and surrogacy arrangements, and in the broader context of what this bill would mean in terms of our relationship under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and, obviously, in terms of our interactions and consultation within the international community. There are definitely a number of agencies that I would be interested to check in terms of the Minister’s or the officials’ engagement.

Previously, we mentioned some of the communities that are most affected as a result of this bill, particularly the Pacific community. What was the level of engagement with the Ministry for Pacific Peoples? What was the level of engagement with Mana Mokopuna - Children’s Commissioner? What is the level of engagement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in particular, in terms of our international relations and standings?

I am incredibly grateful that, following on from my first reading speech, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA) report is now available on the Ministry of Justice website. This is a luxury that we didn’t have the last time we had a bill, which was the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Amendment Bill. The BORA report wasn’t available until the bill passed its third reading. Now, we do have the BORA report, and I do thank the Minister of Justice or the powers that be or, potentially, the Minister for nudging the Ministry of Justice to upload the BORA report. It is now available, and it is another tool that we are able to use during the committee stage and as part of the discussions that we will be having after the second reading. The BORA report is a really good resource because we don’t have any of the other resources like the regulatory impact statement or a supplementary analysis report or even a child impact statement.

We will be interested to hear, during the committee stage, whether the Minister would consider waiving some of the legal privileges around this piece. I find it fascinating that there are large sections of the BORA report that have been redacted. Now, most of the sections that have been redacted have been redacted under the Official Information Act section 6(a) and section 6(b). I think it’s important for us to consider what the reasons were for those redactions and how that fits in the broader context of international relations when we’re looking at this bill.

Under the Official Information Act section 6(a), “Conclusive reasons for withholding official information”, official information may be withheld if “that information would be likely—(a) to prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand or the international relations of the Government of New Zealand; or, (b)”—which is something else that has been used to redact certain sections of the BORA report—“to prejudice the entrusting of information to the Government of New Zealand on a basis of confidence by—(i) the Government of any other country or any other agency of such a Government;” I think, it is important for us to highlight what some of the information that has been provided in the BORA report would mean when we are discussing it during the committee stage and why those specific sections are being redacted. It will be really nice for the Minister to highlight that to us in the committee stage. With that, again, we do support the bill, but we have lots more questions.

There are more than 80 countries that will be exempt from the suspension, including the US and the UK, which means adoptions from those countries will be able to continue. So I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to take the second call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Adoption Amendment Bill. I acknowledge the hard work of the Hon Nicole McKee, the responsible Minister, for bringing this bill to the House. It’s a difficult process of work. It is a practical and immediate step to prevent further harm to children, who are vulnerable, and therefore New Zealand First continues to commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call. I call Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. We stand, again, for the second reading, in support of this bill. Now, as we listen and have had a bit more time to look at what the information is in front of us, there are some questions that we look forward to asking at the next stage—and that will be around how the Government is going to determine which overseas countries have the appropriate or sufficient safeguards and how that will be applied.

Again, the principle of what the bill is out to do is critical; we understand that. I guess one of the other things that we’d like to raise is how—and we see this bill, and it’s a bill that has hit a bit of a vein for Māori in the fact that our whāngaitanga—our tikanga—is often captured in this particular bill, so we would like to have seen changes that reflect us. We know that the timing is not right, given the immediacy that the Government says it is addressing, but I did bring to rise how these changes will affect those nations that have w’akapapa, that have strong alliances here in Aotearoa, in that context, and whether the reforms undertaken will be culturally appropriate and adjusted, as those connections are obviously different for some places here in Aotearoa than in other nations, other countries.

We did hear the Ministers earlier mihi to the officials and to Oranga Tamariki, but, you know, we have a situation now where we have tamariki that have been unmonitored, their wellbeing hasn’t been able to rise to any of the existing framework that we have. In fact, we understand there’s a heavy reliance on our NGOs. I think it’s really important to take the expertise of our NGOs in this space, and how and whether those agencies that are stepping up, whether it be Oranga Tamariki, Justice, the Ministry of Business, Employment and Innovation—whoever—are going to be resourced and able to monitor the wellbeing and the continued wellbeing of the tamariki and the families concerned

I think the issue that we’re trying to address and support here is that lack of child-protection framework in Aotearoa. We also acknowledge that this is more of a—I’m trying to think of the right word—you’re doing something and halting it on the understanding that we are going to be able to have all the necessary mechanisms set up. I guess, as we’re suspending things and acknowledging the tension and the anxiety from the good families, and how we are able to make sure that that isn’t put on hold. Adopting children—for us, as Māori, whāngai—has actually been a really important part of keeping our families and our tamariki protected and safe as well.

We acknowledge that there will be key mechanisms that the Minister will need to assure us have been worked through. In short, we do look forward to listening to the other questions that are coming out in the next phase and appreciate that the Minister has been open about what it is that this bill is intended to do. Nō reira, kia ora koutou.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Children are our most precious taonga, and they must have stable, safe, and loving homes. We have an obligation as lawmakers to ensure that all children, no matter where in the world they are, have their rights and mana upheld.

There are questions around the implications this bill will have, and the onus is on the Minister to show that the harm prevented is balanced with the harm that this bill will cause. Both having and not having this bill will cause harm because there are littlies with genuine need who will no longer be coming to New Zealand for a safe, loving home. We need to ensure that this is the right solution.

The Green Party will be supporting this bill, introduced today under urgency. The bill closes loopholes in our adoption laws that have allowed the exploitation and trafficking of young children to occur, and we’ve heard about some appalling cases. Though we will be supporting this legislation today, I also want to put on record our wider concerns and expectations for the long-term reform that must follow, and how the use of the select committee would have strengthened this legislation.

As the Minister and my colleagues in the House have outlined, this bill addresses two key problems in the Adoption Act 1955. Firstly, section 7, which allows New Zealanders to adopt children from non - Hague convention countries; and secondly, section 3, which allows anyone overseas to attempt to use the New Zealand adoption law to adopt a child regardless of their connection to Aotearoa, enabling people to bypass stricter laws in their own countries. This bill does not permanently resolve those issues, but instead creates an interim solution. It suspends all adoptions enabled under sections 3 and 17, where there are no adequate safeguards, until either a long-term reform is passed or until 1 July 2027 at the latest.

Urgency means this bill has not had the benefit of select committee scrutiny, because it was only released at 1 p.m. today, and will pass through all stages this afternoon. We know that the last time the Government put something through under urgency was the pay equity bill, so of course we are sceptical as to the actual harm prevention and whether this bill will actually do what it intends to do. Without that select committee, we are debating without community input, expert input, and, so far, no regulatory impact statement or child impact assessment—and a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report that is heavily redacted and that I’m sure would have helped answer some of the questions that we have.

We have heard from our trusted stakeholders, like those at ECPAT (Child Alert Trust), that the way this bill is currently drafted does have issues like those. In the Ministry of Justice public consultation in 2022, Samoan, Tongan, Tuvaluan, and Kiribati communities told the Government that adoption in Aotearoa can be a pathway for children to remain connected to whānau, to access education, and to build a better life.

Further, it must be noted that there has been work already undertaken by Oranga Tamariki with Samoa to arrange bespoke safeguarding, and we must be sure that this bill doesn’t undermine that work; noting that there are significant numbers of adoptions from Samoa each year, and there will be children with genuine need for a safe, stable, and loving home in New Zealand who will be adversely affected by this bill. This is a point I will be raising with the Minister directly in the committee of the whole House stage, to seek to understand what impact this will have on the current work that is being undertaken. Those voices matter; young people’s voices matter, and reform must not erase them.

We remain concerned that, without comprehensive reform, temporary fixes risk delaying the real work. The Adoption Act is nearly 70 years old, and it reflects outdated ideas about children, family, and consent. It must be replaced, not patched over. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Adoption Amendment Bill proposes urgent interim amendments to the Adoption Act 1995 to tighten up New Zealand law on international adoptions and ensure the safety of the children who are adopted overseas to be brought into New Zealand to live. I commend this bill to the House.

I want to respond to some of the points that have been made on the other side of the House. Really, they just lead me to having more questions for the Associate Minister of Justice, which we can traverse more fulsomely in the committee stage.

The member Carl Bates pointed out that there are more than 80 countries that are exempt, and he said that for that reason he supports the bill. The issue that we have is that we haven’t yet got the rationale for why some countries are included and why some countries are excluded. I’m our spokesperson for Pacific peoples, and I’m certainly not suggesting that this is targeted to Pacific peoples, because there are a number of countries that are not Pacific regional countries that have been excluded, as well. However, on the list of countries that are not exempt for adoption are Samoa, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Nauru, I believe—and those are the only the ones that I could count up at this point. Of course, there are countries that are not exempt, from other parts of the world, including, from what I can see, Japan, Venezuela, Ghana, Kenya, and a number of others. But us asking the question is quite a legitimate question to be putting to the House.

I do need to make the point that there will be questions asked about this from our Pacific community, and rightly so, because, as has been pointed out by other members of this House, culturally, adoption within family, regardless of whether we live in the motherland or not, is quite a normal, everyday thing for us to do. In fact, many of us grew up with uncles and aunties that we knew weren’t just our uncles and aunties; they were our mums and dads, and we weren’t just their nieces and nephews; we were their daughters and sons. The closeness of whānau in the cultural side to adoption is going to mean there will inevitably be questions raised from our Pacific community about the particular countries here from the Pacific that have been excluded, and so I think that it’s important—with my Pacific peoples spokesperson hat—that I am asking some of these questions.

I do need to put on record—particularly, given there’s a number of Ministers that are involved in the decision that is being made here—that earlier this year in May, on behalf of the Pacific caucus, our Pacific caucus chair, Jennifer Salesa, wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs expressing our concerns with what we were seeing with respect to the exploitation and abuse of children who were being adopted. Now, it’s important I put on record that the vast majority of adoptions—and I think the Minister has stated this earlier in the House—are safe adoptions. They are children being adopted by whānau who care for them and love them, and they are safe in those circumstances. But we’ve all seen the media stories.

Off the back of that, our Pacific caucus wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs asking a few different questions, and we will want to know during the committee stage whether or not some of these things were traversed. One of the questions was just whether or not the New Zealand Government and the Government of Samoa had had any conversations about Samoa signing up to the Hague convention, and whether or not the Government has any plans to review the systems New Zealand has in place to ensure compliance with our obligations under the Hague convention on intercountry adoption, specifically in regards to the vetting of individuals wishing to adopt—which touches on an issue raised earlier in the House by the Minister for Children.

We also put on record in that letter that we wanted to know from the Minister whether the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was working alongside Oranga Tamariki and the Ministry of Justice to support regional adoption safeguards, and we also asked in that letter if the Government of New Zealand is offering diplomatic, legal, or technical assistance in this instance to Samoa to consider the Hague convention and strengthen their own protection measures for children. Now, that is just one particular country, but they were questions we put to the Minister of Foreign Affairs because of the concern that we have on this side of the House, and I know that’s a shared concern across the House.

The response that we got from the Minister of Foreign Affairs was that the Hague convention is a matter for the Samoan Government, although there is an acknowledgment that the New Zealand Government officials can talk to them about those things, that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been working closely with Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and the New Zealand Police to develop approaches to introducing safeguards for children who are the subject of those particular adoption processes, and that—because we were talking about one particular case from Samoa—officials in New Zealand and Samoa have been cooperating on improving safeguards for adopted children, from the point of the adoption in the Family Court through to their movement to reside permanently in New Zealand. With that in mind, we were given a lot of information in that particular letter from the Minister of Foreign Affairs about work that was under way, that discussions were taking place between New Zealand and, in this particular instance, Samoa on safeguards for the protection of children who may be adopted in New Zealand by a New Zealand family. But we haven’t actually got any feedback about where those conversations have landed.

Samoa is just one example, but what do other countries want to see New Zealand do? What advice have we received from our officials and from Pacific regional counterparts with regards to how we could strengthen those safeguards? I think that’s where we feel like we’re missing a whole lot of information on this side of the House.

We’ve gone from zero to a hundred, effectively, with interim legislation being brought to the House in urgency saying that all adoptions will be paused, but we haven’t seen what may be coming on the other side of that pausing, that suspension of adoptions, and we haven’t got any feedback on those conversations that have been taking place to ensure the protection and safeguards are in place at a Pacific regional level for children. Now, this doesn’t just apply to the Pacific region because, obviously, adoptions happen with other countries as well. But, as I said earlier, I’m really here with my Pacific spokesperson hat, and so I do need to turn my mind specifically to the considerations for our Pacific region and those countries that have been excluded from the list of countries here, and to who will, basically, have like this full cut with regard to any ability to have adoptions from their countries to New Zealand whilst this is being considered and the new legislation is being drafted.

I also want to know from the Minister: what are exceptional circumstances going to extend to? I mentioned earlier there will be some families that are highly disappointed because they would have had the process under way already with respect to adopting a family member, now only to be cut off. There will be a high level of disappointment for the family from whence the child comes, but there will be a high level of disappointment here for those awaiting parents who were awaiting their children. Will that be included in the exceptional circumstances that the Minister is considering?

Also, there is another scenario I’ve thought of. Quite often, family will adopt siblings, but they can’t always bring them all over at once. They have a staged approach to bringing over the nephews and nieces that they are adopting from elsewhere, and so they may have brought over one or two of the siblings and there may be others where there was a clear intention that they would come. I’m wondering—from the Minister—whether that will be considered in the exceptional circumstances category whilst this interim legislation is in place.

Finally, my question—which the Minister can’t necessarily answer in the second reading. However, I’m giving clear notice of what the questions will be during the committee stage. It is about the precedent. What do other countries do? Has New Zealand had far more flexible adoption rules than comparable countries like, say, the UK, Canada, Australia, or the US? Is it the case that, actually, those countries that we’re excluding here have not been able to adopt their children to family members in those countries because they had a much tighter system with respect to adoption? Or are we going to be in a regime which is a lot stricter than other countries whom we would consider to be comparable countries when it comes to international adoption, and, in particular, with reference to these countries that have been excluded?

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’re in the second reading of the Adoption Amendment Bill. Just a friendly reminder to the person that just sat: this is a temporary situation and there are exceptional circumstances to mitigate some of the factors that she was suggesting. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ll just point out to the member who resumed her seat, Rima Nakhle, that we can all read; we know that this is both the second reading and that this is temporary. Yet it is a piece of legislation that has significant ramifications. It is an important piece of legislation. This is a rushed process; we are hearing all stages of this bill through urgency. Usually, during a second reading speech we would be referencing what we’ve heard during the select committee process, but we are not able to do that today because of urgency. Yet we do have some significant questions on this side of the House.

I mean, just going back to the point that I made about this being rushed: the fact that the bill was introduced just before we had the first reading of this bill, the fact that we’ve just got the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet to be able to look through that, I think my colleagues on this side of the House have made the point—and I agree—that given the Minister knew that this was an issue quite some time back, we would have preferred that the entirety of the bill, that the long-term solution to this issue, was actually worked on in the time that we’ve had, and that we were here today discussing that bill. That being said, the Minister has outlined that there is serious harm to many children who are adopted into New Zealand as a result of our legislative settings. We have read stories of that harm that has been laid out in the media as well. That’s why we are supporting, at this stage, the legislation.

I do have a couple of questions that I also will signal in advance of the committee stage of this bill. My colleague the Hon Carmel Sepuloni has pointed to the list in Schedule 1AAB. My question is around who’s in and who’s out when it comes to the countries that are captured in this bill. It does seem rather arbitrary, and it’s particularly confusing, I guess, because within the explanatory note, within the general policy statement, it does state that the bill does not apply to overseas adoptions within the scope of the Hague convention on protection of children and cooperation in respect of intercountry adoptions.

Yet the list seems to kind of be neither here nor there, given that it includes most of the countries that are signatories to the Hague convention, but not all. It includes Tonga, which is exempt under the list but not a signatory to the Hague convention. I would have understood that if all of the countries that are signatory to the Hague convention were automatically exempted, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here either. So I’m keen to get a little bit of clarification from the Minister during the committee stage on that.

That being said, some of the changes that this bill makes, on a temporary basis, will reduce the risk of people—so the changes appear to be a temporary suspension of both section 3 and section 17 of the Adoption Act to restrict, essentially, the Family Court jurisdiction to domestic adoptions for the time being, and to restrict the recognition of some overseas adoptions under the Act.

The other question that I had was around clause 8 inserting new section 27E of the bill that empowers the justice Minister—in consultation with a number of other Ministers—to recommend the changes to Schedule 1AAB, which is, of course, the list of exemption countries. It allows the Governor-General to add or remove countries from the list, and I would want to know, further down in this process, what the criteria for that would be as well. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Look, the Adoption Amendment Bill is about tightening up our international adoption laws so we protect our children; we protect our most vulnerable from abuse, from sex trafficking, and from exploitation. This is a critical piece of legislation so I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I might start where I started in my first reading contribution, which was just a very quick reflection on the use of urgency. The reason for that is there’s been a little bit of banter across the House on that. I think what we’ve recognised is there can be good reason for the use of urgency. However, when it’s used, it would be best practice for there to be some dialogue between the parties as far ahead of time as is possible to ensure that we have really sound legislation that can hold, even if it’s temporary. Colleagues have pointed to some of the temporary impacts that this might have on children—I’ll speak to some later.

I look across at my bench and I wonder whether this is representative of good lawmaking. That’s the sole reason why we raise that issue. We want to be across all the documents, including the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act reports, and my urge to Government members would be, not only for the continued process with this work, but for future bills that if the Government does choose to introduce urgency, that there are those cross-party conversations and that the documents are with us so we can all do our best for the people of New Zealand.

I wanted to start with a bit of reflection on the process that adoption laws go through in our country, because there is reference in the disclosure statement to work that the Ministry of Justice has done in this space over a number of years. I recall that Tāmati Coffey actually had a member’s bill, mostly focused on surrogacy provisions, but that member’s bill was paused when the Law Commission embarked on a broader piece of work. The bill is now with, I think, the Health Committee and it’s gone through a few iterations. The point I’m making is that I think there’s a difference between identifying a problem or an issue that I think we should be briefed on and aware of and issues escalating to the point where we need to take urgent action. So, again, just a general observation about the fact that where issues concern children especially, I do think that there’s an especially important role for us to work across the House and ensure we get it right at the point of those first red flags.

I just wanted to make a comment about what comes next, because there is a question about how much we can do in relation to those countries that are not signatory to the Hague convention or that are not approved in other ways. I looked at section 17 of the Citizenship Act, which has a clear gap in terms of a lack of protection or a lack of reflection of the need for the best interests of the child to be considered or a lack of the need for the adequacy of potential adopter parents to be considered, which is why we’ve ended up with people with serious convictions in that space. The other interesting gap is the issue of identifying a genetic connection between the proposed adoptee and the proposed adopter. What has happened in the past is that people have claimed a familial relationship, but there is no requirement in the Act at present in terms of testing for that relationship. So there are certainly things that we can do within the scope of our legislative framework and our protective framework, outside the Hague convention, which I’m sure will come next as well.

In terms of the identification of exempt countries, I just have been looking up countries that have been deemed to be non-compliant with the Hague convention. I’ve come up with a report in 2020 on Japan, Austria, Mexico, Turkey, all of whom are on that list, I believe, so there are absolutely questions that I think we need to talk through in terms of understanding the assessment that’s been made in determining that list and whether considerations like independent reports on those countries’ compliance has been taken into consideration or not.

Dr Duncan Webb made some excellent points about questions in terms of compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Again, I was listening as the Hon Carmel Sepuloni made points about some children being adopted earlier, others potentially being left behind for another year. There are quite nuanced circumstances which might also need to be considered. But here’s the interesting point: they should not be considered as a matter of exemption, but a matter of international human rights, which is something else. So if the child holds those rights, then it shouldn’t be necessarily a case of exemption that we’re looking to.

The other, I guess, issue that I will have some questions around is the decision to create what looks to me to be a Henry VIII power in terms of the Order in Council that allows a change to the list of countries or a revocation of the countries who are currently on the regulatory impact statement. I would question whether that is an appropriate function to be made given the huge implications for children but also given my glance at the section 7 New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report, which I don’t want to say, “hums and ha’s”, but it kind of hums and ha’s about whether certain rights are engaged, including the right to be free from discrimination. When you put that alongside a rather extraordinary power, it does conflate that sense that we are creating this rather bold extraordinary power that could breach a right to be free from being discriminated against as well. So I’ll certainly have some questions there.

My colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan raised some questions about the recognition of an adoption and separating that from a right to a visa or to citizenship, which I thought was fascinating. I wondered about the impact for young people who may be inheriting property for example, and who may have the passing away of a loved one in New Zealand, and how that would impact what a year would look like. Perhaps unusual circumstances, but in the context of the rights of the child, we must consider all these factors as well.

Now, the Minister perhaps has done this in terms of the discretion that’s there, so allowing the exception for surrogacy circumstances, but also Family Court Associates or Family Courts to make an exception. Again, colleagues have pointed to the fact that there’s not a lot of guidance in terms of what those exceptions should be, and perhaps concerningly, there’s a rather high bar threshold set by the two examples that have been included in the legislation. Now, we’re looking at a one-year period in which Family Court Associates, even—who were created in the last Parliament, in terms of their role—will be expected to provide this quite different sort of decision making in my view, in terms of assessing this function with a child who’s based overseas. So the question is: is the guidance sufficient? Is the bar too high? As a practical measure, what steps will be taken to support Family Court Associates to be making this very important decision in terms of young people?

Now, the other thing I did want to raise was in terms of transition measures. It looks to me on my first read that if someone has made an application, that that application will still be considered, but a decision in terms of the second deadline in terms of their rights on citizenship versus a visa would be separate. I haven’t quite gotten my head around how that would impact people for the second deadline, so when this initial period is removed, what that would mean for the right to have a visa, whether that would be reinstated for someone who had a live application or whether that would not be.

Finally, just a general point about children’s rights. I’ve practised for a number of years in this area and one thing that the former Children’s Commissioner used to argue for was something akin to what’s called the Welsh measure, where when legislation was passing through the House, it was an obligation of parliamentarians to actively consider the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It was rather world-leading when it was first done, but it’s proved to be rather successful. My view is that, of course, we should turn a robust mind and analysis to all of our international human rights frameworks. However, if we were to highlight one, I do think that children’s rights is deserving of something like the Welsh measure, and as we go forward through this process, I would just urge the Minister and Government colleagues to sit down and have a robust assessment on whether the future changes, as well as these temporary measures, are compliant with those rights.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Ka tautoko te pire ki te Whare.

[I commend the bill to the House.]

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Adoption Amendment Bill.

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Adoption Act 1955