Chhour KarenDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm just checking another member didn't want to take a call.Simon Court: Point of order Mr Speaker. Thank you Dr Craig. We do have a member—Karen Chhour—who is intending to make a call remotely. So could I ask the Speaker and the Clerk if they have got Karen Chhour online.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): My apologies. I do have Karen Chhour online and apologies to you Dr Craig. I do have Karen Chhour online. Apologies to you Karen. I call you now.KAREN CHHOUR (ACT) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker. It kind of saddens me that I'm having to speak to this bill today; I was hopeful that it wouldn't get this far and get past select committee and into the House for second reading. Sat through a lot of submissions from young people who expressed huge concerns around how this is going to affect them in that they feel that they won't feel safe under this new direction. Now it's OK to sit there and say our Social Services and Community Committee was full of lawyers and advocates and caregivers and all this other stuff but until you've been on the end of a system that has broken you down to the point where you don't know where to go you can never really fully understand what it feels like to be a youth that has got absolutely no strength left in them to fight anymore. These youth are up here fighting for the rights of the next generation and the people that come after them so that they don't suffer the same fate as those in the past that have been ignored and unheard. These are not just youth that don't know what they're talking about. These are youth that have been through the pain of a system that has let them down. These are youth that understand the consequences when Oranga Tamariki and complaints systems don't work. I get emails on a regular basis that tell me that the system right now isn't working. But they're also telling me that this new design is going to be even worse than what we've got already. The Children's Commissioner has built up a brand of trust and in order for an oversight system to work there needs to be trust. And right now the children and young people and organisations that represent these young people are saying that that trust will be completely gone under this new system. Sometimes perception is important as well. Sometimes the fact that the youth do trust the Children's Commissioner is enough to stop sit back pay attention and listen to what they're saying. These are youth—that I had the pleasure of going to a meeting not that long ago—who spent three years putting together a document especially for people like us who sit in Wellington and don't listen. They wrote a document especially for us to understand how to communicate with them how to listen to them and how to make sure that they are heard in a correct manner. Any member on the other side of the House that decides in the future that they want to engage with young people I recommend that you look for this document: Kia Tika Kia Pono – Honouring Truths. It's an ethical framework for engaging with children and young people who are care experienced. These are the ones that are affected by this bill. These are the ones that have to go through life being let down by our system. These are the ones that know what it feels like when we get it wrong and they are telling us that we are getting it very very wrong. Now I would like to appeal to those on the other side of the House to take a step back for a moment. Think really hard about the way you vote on this as the decision you make today will affect many families and young people in care. If you even have a sliver of doubt that this will not improve the outcomes for our young people you must in all good conscience vote against it progressing any further. Sometimes the hardest thing we can do in life is put our own agendas and ambition to the side and make the choice to do the right thing even if it upsets those around us because this isn't about us; this is about the next generation. We are the caregivers of the next generation and we can't afford to keep letting them down. This Government and past Governments keep making decisions on behalf of our youth based on our adult knowledge based on our education based on what we learnt in a classroom. But unless you are on the other end of it you will not be able to understand truly—truly—how this affects you for the rest of your life if you get it wrong. We really really urge that the Labour Government take a moment sit back and reflect on those submissions. I watched and I heard and I saw the pain in the eyes of some of the people that came to submit. These children didn't only just give their voices they gave a part of themselves to us and they deserve to be listened to.There are many concerns around separating the monitoring the advocacy and the oversight of this system confusing young people about where they need to go. It's all right to say They can go to the Children's Commissioner and then they can direct them where to go" but it takes huge courage to even get through that door in the first place—to the Children's Commissioner—and then you're saying that the Children's Commissioner has to turn these kids away and send them off to another resource. It just feels like these kids will get passed from place to place to place and get lost in the cracks on the way. Advocacy and oversight and monitoring can all work together. The Children's Commissioner has built up a brand of trust. That's what we need. Oranga Tamariki is a system that is not trusted. Unfortunately it's a system that is known to be manipulative and untrustworthy. So we need to have a way where we can make our youth feel like they can trust who they're going to. I wonder if anyone's even asked the Children's Commissioner—even though they may not have done an official investigation for a while—how many complaints have come their way that they've advocated for and it hasn't had to get to the point of investigation because their advocacy has managed to fix the problem before it gets there. And the fear of being investigated by a bold Children's Commissioner who is willing to stand up and say what needs to be said is enough to get the organisation to pull their head in. So next time a member from the other side of the House stands up and says that young people and their voices matter the most to them just consider: can the youth and the agencies and the advocates that came before us in the select committee really have faith in those words if you vote for this bill today? With all due respect to the member Emily Henderson there may be experiences in there where you've gone through university and the member has learnt to be a lawyer and an advocate for children but have you been on the other side of when things go wrong and really understand the implications on a young person's mental health on a young person's self-esteem and who they will grow up to be when they are let down? So I stand on behalf of ACT today and fiercely oppose this bill."