Martin TraceyHon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister for Children): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's interesting. There's so much that was either incorrect manufactured or something else in the contribution from Nathan Guy the last speaker that I could be completely diverted from what I want to say about the Prime Minister's statement just by taking well over 10 minutes to try and correct most of the inaccuracies. But I think what's most fascinating for me is the statement that he finished with which was that the Opposition has had a good start to the year. This morning at the Finance and Expenditure Committee the Opposition set the tone for the year by deciding to play politics with the select committee process. Three National Party MPs stood outside and refused to allow a quorum in a select committee while submitters—New Zealanders who had paid their way to Wellington to see their elected officials—waited and those members did so because they deliberately wanted to play politics with the select committee process. This is the party that seeks partisanship. This is the party that continually stands up and says Please Government work with us." and then three National Party MPs the Rt Hon David Carter Andrew Bayly and Andrew Falloon stood outside deliberately to make a mockery of the select committee—and to make those New Zealanders waste their money and their time—by not coming into the select committee room. Unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it and New Zealanders will judge that party on their behaviour around those submitters. What did we do—what did we do? We brought those submitters into the select committee room which was now empty and we sat down with them and we spent the next hour making sure that they were heard and had a one-on-one conversation with the Labour Party MPs and myself as a New Zealand First Minister. That is what we did so that they didn't waste their money and their time coming to this Parliament for a game—a game—that the National Party was making. But to get to the Prime Minister's statement—because that is what this Government is going to do—we're not going to play games with New Zealanders. We're not going to play games with the future of our nation. That's not what we are paid by the taxpayers to do. I don't know where those members find the time to think up these games but it's not what we're doing on this side of the House. So with regard to the Prime Minister's statement one of the great privileges I have is I'm the Minister for Children and the Minister for Seniors. This Parliament will be judged and this country will be judged on how we treat our children and how we treat our senior citizens. Madam Deputy Speaker with your good self sitting in the Chair it's almost embarrassing for me to actually go through the changes that are taking place with Oranga Tamariki because the work that set this in motion was yours and with as much honour as I can give it we have continued down that pathway. So Oranga Tamariki had come into existence only in April 2017—under your guidance Madam Deputy Speaker—and in the last year what we have done is we've recruited 150 extra social workers and created a number of new practitioner roles so that social workers can spend more time with children. The average caseload in care and protection has reduced from 31 children to 25 children and a new practice framework sets out front-line social work practice. There are now 250 more caregivers so children can more likely get the right type of care placement and we know that getting the right type of care placement to give them consistency so that those placements don't break down is better for our children. The caregivers now have access to a 24/7 support line and the country's first ever care standards regulations have been set. The ministry has also established a new function to improve the safety of children in care. The ministry is strengthening its relationships with the NGO sector and with iwi organisations. Under section 7(1)(a)—I've got to say Madam Deputy Speaker on behalf of the previous Minister in this role the Minister who set up Oranga Tamariki that it was enlightened to put section 7(1)(a) into legislation. No responsibility like that has ever been placed on a chief executive of an organisation before. It was enlightened by that Minister and Oranga Tamariki is working hard to make sure that we build direct relationships co-designed relationships and flexible relationships with iwi organisations. Around about 70 percent of the children in our care are Māori children. We must have Māori solutions and Māori delivering for Māori well resourced and well-supported by the Government. The last thing a family needs is for Oranga Tamariki to show up at their door. What they need is somebody that they know from their community and they trust in their community who comes well resourced and upskilled so that they can deal with the complexities of that family. That leads me on to the operating model. At the end of last year I took through Cabinet six Cabinet papers so that we could set the new operating model in place and have it up and running by 1 July 2019. Some really important parts of that need to be articulated. We have too many children in care. We have too many children in the State's care and one of the reasons for that is because we do not have an intensive intervention service. So that is something that we will build. We will build it. We are working right now actually with some iwi organisations and I spent a day up in Kaitāia after being up at Waitangi to sit alongside an iwi organisation an NGO there that has been doing intensive intervention for 20-something years but is not recognised by the State not resourced appropriately and not funded. That is what we must do and that is what we will do. The other thing we must do is we must build a transition service and that is where young people who are care-experienced and so they have been in care or young people who have been inside the youth justice facilities—when they leave care or leave youth justice they will be walked alongside of. I don't know about my colleagues but I was 29 the last time I ended up at my mum and dad's place on their sofa in their spare room—right? So how do we expect young people out of care or young people out of our youth justice facilities to just suddenly at the age of 18 be able to be there on their own? They need people to walk alongside them just like any other child or any other young person who has a family that can support them and we will create that service. I'm going to use the last of my few minutes to shift over to seniors. It's a true privilege to be the Minister for Seniors. For the last year the Office of Seniors and I travelled up and down the country refreshing what is the Positive Ageing Strategy which was actually created in 2001. All of its targets finished in 2010 and no work had been done to refresh or update or change any of those targets or to create any new targets. A lot has changed between 2001 and 2018-19 in this nation. The diversity of this nation is completely different. Levels of homeownership among those in their 40s and 50s and 60s have taken a plummet. Many other things have changed. A million New Zealanders will be over the age of 65 in a decade. We cannot have a million New Zealanders with the skills and the historical knowledge that they have just drop out of the workforce. So we must work with and we are working with the Employers and Manufacturers Association and other businesses to give them a tool box to make sure that they understand how to have conversations early to transition workers because there is no retirement age in this country. People are not required to retire—65 is the age that you get a universal basic income from your Government and then you are not required to retire. People transition and that was what we heard on the road. We must remove the word "retirement". People transition from paid employment to unpaid employment they transition from full time to part time and they transition to the next stage of their lives and we are going to work with our communities with our businesses to make sure that that transition is better. So this is a big year—a big year—but the plan is there and I just want to mention the relationship between the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern and the Rt Hon Winston Peters. It is such a tight relationship. They constantly communicate. They work well together. The mutual respect is brilliant to see and the relationship between the Hon James Shaw and Winston Peters is also another tight relationship. We have worked together collegially. We're building on the successes that we have. This is going to be an awesome year for a coalition Government that's going to take this country to the place it needs to be and give the people of New Zealand what they need to be well."