SpeechDr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I do commend this bill to the House. I want to first thank the 400-plus submitters many of whom had lived experience or deep professional experience with and of Oranga Tamariki. As a member of the Social Services and Community Committee and as its current acting chair in the absence of Angela Warren-Clark I acknowledge the depth of their expertise. And I acknowledge also their fears that despite the strong commitments on this side of the House this legislation is not truly intended to create real change but is yet another whitewash of a bad service allowing it to get worse and to continue to perpetuate inadequate practice. This is our experience—and I speak as a former practitioner with experience of Oranga Tamariki myself—of previous reviews from that side of the House. That is the history that creates a certain cynicism a certain wary suspicion of any attempt to remodel Oranga Tamariki. But on the Government's side of the bench on the Government's side of the select committee—I don't know much about other select committees but on this select committee we have senior social workers and managers from within Oranga Tamariki. We have managers of women's refuges people who have audited Child Youth and Family Services—going back to one of its previous incarnations. We have a Family Court lawyer and a Family Court academic and we also have people who have lived experience as foster parents and as foster sisters. None of us—none of us—have any truck with whitewashing this service and nor has this Government and anyone who wants to hear that loud and clear should not only listen to Minister Sepuloni but also Minister Davis who could not have been more clear in his comments on this bill. It is no whitewash. We have just turned a single commissioner into a commissioner and a board with five other people around him able to take on roles able to cover areas of expertise. How is that a gutting or a beheading of a service? We've just timesed it by six. We have created an independent monitoring service because heck that is required and it was what the Beatie report wanted. We have finally reinforced the role of the Ombudsman. Now it was said Oh my goodness we've cut the ability of the Children's Commissioner to investigate." The last time that the Children's Commissioner investigated a complaint was around 2012. The role of investigator has always been played—for the last 10 years at least—by the Ombudsman and the Ombudsman has assured our committee that he is thoroughly resourced and feels well and truly able to take on this role. We have further entrenched the need for cooperation. There will be no wrong door. Now some people say that we should continue to delay. Some people want us to wait for the royal commission. Others want us to restart the consultation process. There will always be more information. There will always be another review another report but do you know what else there's going to be while we're waiting for that? More children being failed by Oranga Tamariki. We have to start somewhere. This may not be a perfect system—no system is perfect—but that's why we've built in the review process. We are not so arrogant as to say that we are developing something perfect but for heaven's sake not one more child should be failed and nothing that we can do on this side will be left undone to make sure that this system starts to meet the needs of children and whānau and I commend this bill to the House."