Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill

Good morning, members. When the House suspended last night, we were up to the second reading of the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill. We are up to call No. 9, a National Party call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to rise and speak to the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill. For someone who does not have lived experience, one can only imagine the great difficulty and the horror of having to relive and give testimony to the abuse and neglect suffered—for some, quite a while ago; for others, not so long ago—and so I want to begin by commending and praising the bravery of the nearly 2,400 victims of abuse who have come forward to give testimony to the royal commission. In addition to that, once again, they have had to relive and redocument their sufferings through their submissions to the Social Services and Community Committee. It is, for myself, totally unimaginable, because I do see a lot of suffering and anxiety in other things, but not in this, for myself.

The bill demonstrates the Government’s commitment to change—true, legislative change—that will mean that, hopefully, there will be no further similar situations going on into the future. The bill aims to better protect people, especially children, in the care of the State.

I also acknowledge all the members who have contributed yesterday and last night and who will contribute today, and I commend their determination to bring the voices of the many into this House. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. With this legislation, we need to remind ourselves of the survivors and put them front and centre. They are those who have gone before and, sadly, are no longer with us, and those who are still with us and who have participated in this process, but they are also those who didn’t because it was too raw or too hard, or life just meant they couldn’t.

Three weeks ago, I buried a friend of mine. Her name was Susan, and Susan was a survivor of State care. As I look at this legislation and as I listen to the debate again today that we’ve had from last year, from the select committee to now, I can’t help but reflect on the life that Susan had and on what must happen so that what happened to Susan doesn’t happen to anybody else. We’ve heard people say that we don’t want this to happen again, we want to make sure that this is something in the past, and we’re washing our hands of it and moving forward, but as we deal with this legislation, we need to be aware and we need to be vigilant of the fact that abuse still exists and still happens.

If you think this is in the past and that we’re talking about something that’s happened 20, 30, 40, or 50 years ago, yes, it did, and we’ve got better. But we haven’t got there yet in terms of ensuring that there is no more abuse by the State or by the Church of those who, through no fault of their own, end up in the system.

I look at this legislation and I look at what was done in the past, and, for me, as I read it and I look at it, it was very much about making it easy for us, making the system easy for the State—making the system easy so that we could just pop people away somewhere, wash our hands, and know that we’ve done our bit. They’re fed, they’re watered, they’re clothed, and they’re housed, but it goes far deeper than that.

When we look at this piece of legislation, yes, we’re going to support it—we must support it. But it does not go far enough to ensure that the State, which is the caregiver or the parent of a child, or of someone who is in an institution for mental health reasons or for other reasons—that they are cared for in a way that means abuse doesn’t happen again, and, unfortunately, we aren’t there yet.

We look at the recommendations of the royal commission, we look at them and we see those 200 recommendations that sit there, and they’re challenging for us as politicians, they’re challenging for us as lawmakers, and they’re challenging for us as people who hold the purse strings, because it will cost us—it will cost this House—to do the right thing. We need to do the right thing and find a way through, where we don’t just sign up to 19 of those recommendations but we actually look and we search deep within our hearts and our souls and find a way to do what is right for those who are survivors of State- and faith-based care, and, for those who are currently in the system, we need to ensure that this does not happen, because that reflects on us, on our nation, and on the kind of people that we are.

I reflect on the life of Susan. She went to Victoria University and graduated when she was 22. She graduated when she was 22, and she was doing OK. Life wasn’t easy. She had a history within her whānau of schizophrenia, and, sadly, as she matured and her brain developed, schizophrenia became her lifetime companion—which no one wants—and what did we do? We popped her into Porirua Hospital for 25 years. We put her into a hospital, we left her there, and we let her be. That met her daily needs, but if you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we didn’t get beyond the shelter, the food, and the water—that’s as far as we went. That is abuse and it must not happen again, and, sadly, when I did her funeral a few weeks ago, I discovered, as we got the death certificate, that her mother had died in Porirua Hospital. She was another survivor—or she didn’t survive—of the State.

We must do better. We must get this legislation right to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

We are here this morning discussing the second reading of the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill follows an apology from the Crown, which follows the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions. This bill enacts the changes that arise from the royal commission of inquiry. It is a start and it is a good first step.

I’d like to acknowledge all the previous speakers from across this Parliament who have shed light and continue to shed light on the stories throughout New Zealand of the tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have been impacted and who continue to be impacted by abuse in State care. I’d like to acknowledge Minister Erica Stanford for taking on this work amidst her other important ministerial portfolios. I’d like to keep this contribution short. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a bill which Labour is supporting, as it should support any step forward that tries to protect children from further abuse when we know that the consequences have been so heavy and there has been such a good-faith, thorough look at what has gone wrong. But it’s been made very clear by the Labour Party that we’re really concerned at the timidity of this piece of legislation and that it’s just simply not going far enough. I think there are 19 recommendations out of the 200 that have been adopted by the Government.

Now, I appreciate that this is a piece of legislation that is looking to stop some of the really crass things that have happened that have really caused harm, and one is strip-searches, for example. There is an attempt to be more nuanced in that approach.

I was appalled to find that the first part of the bill was looking at extending to the existing workforce restrictions on core children’s workers with convictions from overseas offences that were equivalent to some of the most heinous offences against children. Isn’t it incredible that we were living in a situation where it was possible for somebody with those convictions to be working with children in this country?

It does show a degree of neglect, and it is pretty incredible that we were in that situation at all, and so it is very important legislation. I don’t mean to disregard it, but I also think it’s really important that the Government listen to the amendments that are going to be made by my friend the Hon Willow-Jean Prime, whose primary portfolio for the Labour Party is the welfare of children, and they will be made in absolute good faith. She won’t be putting up things for the sake of opposition; she’ll be putting up things that should deserve a cross-party, good-faith look, because that’s what really is important about the work that we do in this House—it’s what’s going to stick. It’s what’s going to work for children in this country to stop abuse.

It couldn’t be a more critical issue on which to look at all the contributions in this House and get this as right as possible. It doesn’t mean we will get it entirely right. Some of these are really hard problems, and it’s hard to solve them, and what do you do? I think we had the comment from the Green Party earlier where there was talk about the strip-searching when people are coming into the places where children are being cared for. What do you do when people come in, in terms of searching them, etc., in order to preserve dignity and in order to make sure that people visit when their children are alienated from them in that way? How do you balance those things? Those are tough questions, but that’s why we absolutely need to solve them, and the public need us and want us to solve them by doing cross-party work in areas like this.

Now, I also would like to take the point that my friend Glen Bennett has made. This is an area where the cost is huge and the cost of redress is huge, and we cannot afford to just simply kick the can down the road on the worst possible things that have happened in this country.

We’ve had children tortured and we have had devastating consequences. We talk about gangs, we talk about methamphetamine use, and we talk about imprisonment, and, mostly, it’s the very same kids who end up in that system, and we have not addressed the critical recommendations in this report. Yes, there are 200 recommendations, but there are also some where the survivors of this were actually most forceful in what they thought.

One of them is about the independence of the group that was going to look at redress, etc. There was a request for independence, and we haven’t met that yet; in fact, it’s been decided not to do that because it’s too expensive. I mean, I don’t think that we could think of something that is more important for the people who are impacted by this kind of terrible abuse by the State and faith-based organisations than their trust in the system that we create. They have to believe in it—it is so important.

We have a problem out in our community with disengagement from the State and from this process in this House. People are feeling utterly, utterly alienated from this House, and so I think it’s really important that we spend not only the money but the political capital putting in place systems which are a bridge to people who have been completely alienated, because they have absolutely every reason to distrust both the State and the religious organisations, which—let’s face it—are supposed to be the organisations that talk to the soul. They are supposed to look after the spiritual wellbeing of people, and they have breached that trust.

We have examples across the world of this kind of problem occurring. We are not alone. We have countries like Australia and Canada, where our indigenous populations in these countries have been particularly severely impacted, and it is worrying that in many of those countries we have the same problem of disconnection. Actually, despite these inquiries, which I believe are absolutely in good faith, we hear the stories of people, and despite the fact that we have volumes of terrible stories, we still have not reacted across the globe in a way that means that people are accountable for their crimes. That is a problem for me.

I look at Canada and I look at what has happened there and how few of the priests involved in the abuse have ever been prosecuted. I was listening to something recently on this and it was a description of what had happened. There was the closing of the files, the private settlements of these matters were happening, and, in fact, none of those priests had been prosecuted in the criminal system, whatsoever—none. That’s an institutional problem—that’s a will problem.

We not only need to listen to these stories and to record these stories, but when people tell us these stories—when they tell a royal commission these stories, which are devastating—they entrust us to actually follow through. So while I see this law as a tiny step in the right direction, I don’t get up here to make political hay when I say that this is not good enough. We cannot “Pollyanna” it, and the most important thing that we need to do is recognise that this abuse isn’t just in the past.

Paying the price for the past is the first step in actually moving forward genuinely in a direction to stopping this happening any more, and it is happening now. We know that this continues to happen. We know that it has not stopped, and until we are prepared through our will in this House to work collaboratively to make sure that the right kinds of responses are in place, that there is consensus on them, and that we are paying, yes, sometimes a financial price but also paying respectful prices like actually getting rid of the control of things into an independent body—until we do that, we have got no right to expect the people who were involved in this and who were hurt by this to trust us.

We have a responsibility to follow through on the recommendations as far as that is possible and to look at this widely. Yes, it’s going to be painful for us, but it’s not going to be half as painful as it has been for those in our population who have been hurt. Thank you. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an honour to be the final speaker in this debate on the Responding to Abuse in Care Legislation Amendment Bill at its second reading. The report from the royal commission was a devastating and weighty tome of horror that we worked our way through. It’s a piece of work that should resonate with and haunt this House for the rest of our days.

As has been acknowledged, the apology was part of the response, and what we’re doing in this House is we’re making the first step now. It’s a small step. We acknowledge that these are the things that we can do that are pragmatic. This stops some of the most egregious abuses of rights—for example, the strip-searches—and puts in place a way that protects people who are in care but also allows us to make sure that dignity is upheld.

Another thing that not many people have talked about in this debate is the record-keeping. There is a change to the Public Records Act which means that there can actually be a notification and there can be more onus put on record-keeping, because many of the survivors—and I want to acknowledge all of those who did contribute to the discussions and to the royal commission of inquiry, because I know that for every one who did, there were thousands of others who didn’t, and a few of those, at least, I have met in my time as a GP. I know the impact that that had on their lives. It was devastating throughout and it changed the trajectory of their lives, and not being able to access timely and accurate records was a frustration. In a way, it appeared that their experience had been denied, which was another way in which they were not believed. By strengthening and clarifying our Public Records Act, we will ensure that in the future, records are more available and that process will be more timely and accessible.

All that we can do is continue to improve and to protect the vulnerable. This is a first step in us doing that, and I commend the bill to the House.

Mōrena, Madam Chair, and thank you. It is a duty to take the final call on this take [subject] for the bill’s second reading, and mōrena ki a tātou. What I recognised in the speeches from last night and, in fact, over the while was that the further we get away from an apology, the easier it becomes for us to—whether we recognise it or not—forget.

When the apology took place in this House, there were many in the gallery, and I certainly remember making a statement that the fact that we’re apologising does not mean that the survivors have to forgive. That is still very, very true today, after I read a statement being released by He Kura Mōrehu, a group of survivors who are deeply, deeply—and this came out just this morning. They are reporting that they are deeply disappointed by the way in which this has been dealt with.

Despite the sentiments that I’ve heard this morning and last night, it does not make any sense at all when we use words like “horror”, “small steps”, and “egregious”, and then suggest that this is enough. It makes no common sense, let alone intellectual rigor, to talk like that as if that is enough. It is absolutely not enough. I don’t agree. Te Pāti Māori disagrees completely, though we’d want to get this right—as a party, we’d want to get this right. Out of any of the pieces of legislation that we debate in this House, this has to recognise in reality and make the changes.

Again, back to the survivors’ report this morning, or their discussion: survivors expect change, and this doesn’t cut it. Recognising that there was the apology, and then there’s the process of admin and payments and so on, they’re looking and expecting something much more fundamental and much more recognising that when we discuss it, it is a debate. It is not just the changes in their lives that this harm caused but the trauma it caused and the trauma that exists with each one of them today. The more we put aside the report and we pop it on the right of our desk, which I do not—when we keep doing that, we make distance, and then we refer back to the things that we’d much prefer to talk about, like fast track, growth, and so on, which I don’t think are things that we should completely ignore, either. But this matter? This is where we could do better, because this House has failed.

This House has failed all of these survivors, and I know this. This is the work that I’ve been involved in. I know this very well and I heard it being discussed last night as well, and members were even relating it to some of the other discussions and debates in the House regarding domestic violence and family violence. All of that trauma—unless this House recognises what it means for individuals and their families and recognises the generational harm, we continue to fail every single survivor who gave their story to the House and asked the House to do better.

We cannot support it. It’s worse than tinkering—I don’t know what another word is right now, but I’ll probably think of one by the time we get to the third reading. I would implore members sitting to my left that maybe today, you need to go back to that report, pick out some of the literature and read it, and we can remind ourselves of the trauma in which our families—each of those families—exist today. Today—they still carry that trauma today.

Te Pāti Māori cannot and will not support this at this point, if at any—when we get to third reading. He Kura Mōrehu, as well—I talked with Tu Chapman; I will be talking with her again today—are deeply, deeply concerned and feel completely ignored, and so we need to do better. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Social Services and Community Committee by majority be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.