Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I'm pleased to take a call on the second reading of the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill. As my colleague the Hon Alfred Ngaro has said this was a piece of work that was started in the previous Government and is being continued by the Minister for Children the Hon Tracey Martin. So National members will be supporting this legislation in the second reading but I want to just reinforce some of the points that my colleague made about the timing. Part of it is you know it's been signalled for a very long time that these significant changes to Oranga Tamariki in a whole range of areas come into force on 1 July this year. It's 11 June and we're on the second reading of a piece of legislation that will be enacted and comes into force on 1 July which is pretty concerning. I was actually just listening to the speaker before me the Hon Peeni Henare who talked about the fact that this legislation that we are discussing today amends 11 pieces of legislation and the related regulations so it is particularly complex. To have a situation where the process through the House is a shortened one makes it that much more challenging to ensure that we fulfil our responsibility as legislators and put good legislation into the House. So I don't accept the Hon Tracey Martin's comment that it was the previous Government's fault that this is a shortened report back. When she became a Minister when she came into office in 2017 this time frame for 1 July 2019 was well known. So in terms of getting legislation ready in a timely manner and into the House to enable a select committee process to enable sufficient scrutiny of the legislation I actually don't think is too much to ask for. So I do want to put that criticism to the House. My colleague the Hon Alfred Ngaro actually went through a number of examples to demonstrate that this is now becoming quite a repeated exercise for the Government in their legislative programme. You know I accept that some of the other pieces of legislation weren't quite as complex as this one but what really struck me in the select committee process for this particular piece of legislation is the number of changes that were recommended in the select committee process by officials. For those people who are watching the debate or listening to it who perhaps might not have been party to what happens in a select committee process the legislation is drafted then based on submissions that the public make the bill can be amended or improved which is good news. In this case though a significant number of changes come from officials themselves and the concern that I and other members had with that on our side of the House is actually why hadn't this work been done earlier and why had those recommendations been kind of left to what feels like on 11 June the 11th hour?So we're not debating the merit of this piece of legislation and the policy behind it which of course we introduced which basically means that the age is lifted for those who are before the youth justice system. That's fantastic—basically you know significant changes around procedures and processes related to 17-year-olds within the youth justice jurisdiction. But where the concern is is the number of changes so late in the piece and I do hope—I do hope—that we've got it all right for two big reasons. A lot of this focus is around the young people themselves and their experience in the justice system. But actually I also want to make sure that for the victims of the crimes that these young people committed it is now right—that in the 11 pieces of legislation that we have amended and that we are on the second reading for today we got it right. I sincerely hope given the time pressures involved for the victims of those acts that there isn't a gap there isn't a mistake. That's why process is important. That's why the ability for scrutiny of the legislation not in a rushed time frame is so important. Some of the areas of change that we talked about—the Minister went through some of them—were around the process of joint charges with another person for example. You know it sounds all very technical. The word being used—that this is you know technical" changes—actually I disagree with; some of these are quite significant. So basically the Oranga Tamariki Act currently allows children and young people to be tried jointly with adults. Part of it is making sure that children and young people are dealt with in the Youth Court as much as possible. The intention is to keep the proceedings in the Youth Court when none of the co-defendants choose trial by jury and that includes the adults who have been charged with an offence equivalent to an offence listed in Schedule 1A which is the serious offending. But the point I want to be clear about is you know for most people the process of how the justice system works and the joint charges with another person—whether it's a family group conference that can be suspended whether it's one trial or two—at the end of the day yes it has to serve the young person that's before the justice system but we have to make sure that every single process is concluded so that we don't ever have a situation where the victim of that crime feels as if they're the one that's been hard done by. It's been really interesting because just in the last week the Government has been talking about the fact that the justice system is failing victims. So you know when we have a process that's rushed with legislation like this Oranga Tamariki legislation it is a concern and I think it's important to note that we do get it right. You know the Minister's gone through a lot of the changes and talked about how important they are for the young people themselves—I agree with that which is why we introduced the policy change in the first place. But the justice system equally has to work for the victims of that crime. That's where all of the changes that occurred in the select committee process—and just referring to the departmental report that the select committee worked off. Twelve of the recommendations are completely new ones—completely new recommendations that came from officials. That's actually a lot in a select committee process. So it is important that the ability for—well actually the public don't get to scrutinise those because it happens after the bill was originally drafted. Those changes weren't in the original bill so the public don't get to make a submission on that. Had there been more work done in the original piece of legislation we perhaps wouldn't be in this position.As I said the bill comes in on 1 July. We're sitting at 11 June so there's not many days and there's a significant—Hon Ruth Dyson: Whose legislation was it originally? Hon LOUISE UPSTON: —Supplementary Order Paper in the name of—well actually this Government's been in place for what 20 months now? Plenty of time to be able to work on the legislation make sure it's correct bring it to the House in a timely manner and not reduce the opportunity for public scrutiny. But they don't like hearing that. It's really unfortunate. Time and time again the Government arrogantly jams legislation through the House with either no select committee process or a minor one—which actually is poor poor practice—and doesn't allow sufficient public scrutiny. I'm hoping we're not back here in a few months' time to fix yet another piece of legislation."