Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill 
Second Reading 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I move  
That the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. This bill represents New Zealand’s biggest commitment to improving front-line youth justice services in many years. Our more serious youth offenders will get more attention. They will get greater support they will face stronger discipline and there will be greater expectations of change. 
The legislative changes will give Youth Court judges new options by providing for tougher and longer orders for our most serious young offenders. These are young people who are on a fast track to prison if we do not turn their lives round. New Zealanders have been appalled that some of these offenders are as young as 12 or 13. This bill extends the jurisdiction of the Youth Court so that these young people—a tiny minority—can get the intensive support offered by this Government’s Fresh Start reforms. Their behaviour needs special attention if they are to be saved from a lifetime of crime. 
All serious young offenders will be subject to longer and more intensive sentences but they will at the same time receive support and rehabilitation opportunities unequalled in New Zealand’s history. This Government is serious about tackling youth offending and we are putting $84 million into the Fresh Start initiative over the next 3 years in order to do just that. 
I thank the Social Services Committee for its diligent and careful consideration of this bill. I especially thank the chair Katrina Shanks for the outstanding job she did. I am pleased that the committee received 51 submissions on the bill with most people giving up their time in order to make oral submissions. The committee made a number of excellent recommendations and I thank it for that. It is clear that there is a great deal of interest in getting this legislation right. 
The bill introduces longer and more intensive sentencing orders. It doubles the maximum time that a serious young offender can spend in a secure residence from a standard 3 months to 6 months. I have talked to many professionals who work with young offenders and their families and there is general agreement that 3 months is not long enough to make a lasting change. One mum told me that she had just started to see improvements in her son’s behaviour before he was home again and back to his old ways. A longer time spent in a residential programme will help to embed good habits and boundaries and better prepare young offenders for their return to their communities and families. 
We will not just dump these young people back into the community. The bill also doubles the maximum amount of time—from 6 months to a year—that a young person will be supervised and supported in the community after release from a secure facility. Under this bill Youth Court judges will also have new options to compel young offenders and their families to complete parenting education mentoring and drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes. These orders will address the root causes of offending. 
Every single serious offender who appears before the Youth Court will have a comprehensive plan that addresses her or his particular crime triggers. We know that these programmes work. A young man sentenced for aggravated robbery was linked to a mentor who by encouraging the boy into kapahaka helped him reconnect to school. That young man is now crime-free and looking forward to studying business and information management at university. 
Young offenders will be intensively monitored kept busy and focused and held to greater account if they fall from the straight and narrow. The bill will for the first time see young offenders kept under the scrutiny of the Youth Court. It has long been a defect in the legislation that young offenders cannot be compelled to come before the Youth Court to answer allegations that they are in breach of their sentences. Also on occasion sentences have expired without young people being held to account for their breaches. This has actively undermined public confidence in the youth justice system. 
The Social Services Committee has proposed amendments that will enable the Youth Court to issue arrest warrants for young offenders who breach orders or go into hiding from the system. The amendments will also enable the Youth Court to suspend the operation of an order while it deals with breach allegations. Police are granted powers to ensure that the curfew conditions of intensive supervision orders can be enforced by arrest if necessary. 
Our plans for 12 and 13-year-old offenders who commit serious crimes have attracted a lot of attention and debate. In my view it is absolutely necessary for the Youth Court to have jurisdiction over this very small number of young people if they are to be saved from a life of crime. The Family Court simply does not have the tools and solutions to deal with these extremely complex cases especially when there is often little buy-in from these children’s families. 
Let me be very clear—we are talking about only those young people who have a record of offending well beyond their years. These are 12 or 13-year-olds who are out of control and are a danger to our communities. Let us take the case of a 13-year-old boy whom the system is struggling with at the moment. He has been in trouble with the police since he was 8 years old and he has a fully fledged drink and dope habit. His most recent offending involved threatening with a weapon assault and burglary. As the second-eldest of six children his behaviour is now impacting on his younger brothers and sisters. 
The bill gives us more choices as to how we address the issue of serious child offenders. Police will have the choice of taking action in either in the Family Court or the Youth Court. The Youth Court will have the power to refer a matter back to the police if judges feel that a matter would be better dealt with by the Family Court. I believe that this approach will protect those very young offenders—those 12 and 13-year-olds who are to be dealt with by the Youth Court. I want to be clear that the Youth Court is specially designed to deal with young offenders. I have no doubt whatsoever that Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft and his fellow Youth Court judges will take a balanced and sensible attitude towards the small number of 12 and 13-year-olds who come before them. 
The Social Services Committee has recommended several changes in relation to child offenders. In particular it has tightened up the rules that determine which child offenders should be subject to Youth Court jurisdiction. Many submitters were also concerned about the current inadequacies of the Family Court to deal with child offenders. For example the Family Court has no power to impose bail conditions and has limited options when a child first comes before the court. The Fresh Start reforms will be better supported when we can fix the way that the Family Court deals with child offenders. As such I welcome the Social Services Committee’s inquiry into child offenders. I am confident that the committee will identify practical ways to improve the ability of the Family Court to respond to child offenders. 
An important feature of Fresh Start is our plan for our 40 most serious youth offenders to participate in military activity camps. These are kids for whom the system is just not working. These young people have no respect for the law people or property. They are notorious in their neighbourhoods and many adults will have tried and failed to help along the way. 
New Zealand’s armed forces have a long and proud history of working with young adults. Since 1993 thousands of young adults have participated in Limited Service Volunteers schemes. Seventy-five percent of those who have completed the military training life skills course have succeeded in getting work or have gone on to further skills training. The mix of traditional values—team work self-discipline individual responsibility pride and discipline—has turned round the lives of thousands of young New Zealanders. It makes sense to incorporate some of these elements into a programme for those who until now have been seen as hopeless cases who are tracking an almost inevitable path to prison. 
The recent pilot run by Child Youth and Family at Burnham shows what can be achieved. I am aware that getting that camp up and running in such a short time has placed some limitations around it. Nevertheless it has provided valuable lessons for future camps. In November I attended the graduation at this camp and it was inspiring to hear the stories. Some families were moved to tears by the changes they saw in their boys. It was pretty incredible to see a patched gang member dad apologise to his son for not being there for him in the past. All the young people made a real connection with their army supervisors. The programme challenged them physically and psychologically. 
These camps have nothing remotely in common with the old sentence of corrective training. They are a modern innovation that incorporates army-style discipline with cognitive behaviour treatment and a full range of rehabilitation programmes including alcohol and drug counselling mentoring and intensive supervision. I commend the bill to the House. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 The Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill had a very very poor start on its journey in this House. In fact the Minister of Youth Affairs was in such a hurry to make her name and have her photo in the paper that she brought in this bill half an hour before Parliament was to sit at 1.30 in the afternoon. Nobody including the public or other political parties had an opportunity to look at it before she rushed it through under urgency to the Social Services Committee. So it had a pretty poor start. It was not because it was not ready; in fact the bill was ready 2 days before she tabled it half an hour before Parliament sat. 
Todd McClay 
: That’s enough; what about the children? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Half an hour before Parliament sat Mr McClay says is long enough. Well it might be for him but the people of New Zealand and the other political parties in this House deserved to see that bill when it was ready to be seen. 
Katrina Shanks 
: You had 9 years—9 years. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: And to the member sitting across the House saying we had 9 years—well of course the changes that the Minister is making in terms of the length of sentences were in the bill that we introduced plus changes for children in New Zealand. All of that was dumped for this hastily drawn-together bill. It has become clear that this bill is more about hype than it is about substance. It is about slogans and not about good policy. It is about political expediency and not about sound decisions based on evidence. If we wanted proof of that we needed only to sit and listen to the submissions at the Social Services Committee. Her bill is not based on sound evidence and that was told to us over and over again as we questioned the submitters. 
I also think it was a shame that the Minister tried to pull the wool over the eyes of this Parliament and the public when the bill was introduced. She told this House that her flagship boot camps would not be implemented until the end of 2010. The bill was not even finished in the select committee before she set up a pilot of boot camps at Burnham. We had not even finished the most important part of this bill to make boot camps part of the options before she went ahead and started to implement them. Now she has once again told us what a great thing this is based on a few months of a pilot without proper evaluation and without proper research. It is that sort of sloppy thinking that really has tarnished this bill that the Minister has brought in. 
This is a lightweight bill. It received very little support at the select committee. It received very little support for the main parts of it particularly about lowering the age at which children would go into the Youth Court. There was almost overwhelming opposition to boot camps. There was some agreement on the extension of the range of sentencing options. We support an extension to sentencing options. However we also are rather worried about how effective compulsory mentoring would be. We do not have any evidence that making people have a mentor is necessarily effective. We also do not think it addresses the fact that 80 percent of the young people who appear in the Youth Court now are under the influence of alcohol and drugs. The Minister is saying that they will be able to get some help with alcohol and drugs. But we have not seen where the resources the training and the services are going to be provided from so that the young people who have those problems will receive those services. That information was not shown to the select committee when we asked for it. It was not shown to the public of New Zealand or the submitters. It is hot air. That is what we have had from the Minister. 
The submissions on the bill were overwhelmingly opposed to lowering the age at which children could appear in the Youth Court. It is significant what Judge Becroft the Principal Youth Court Judge has to say. After all Minister Bennett paraded Judge Becroft around as the pin-up boy for her policies before the election. So she ought to take some notice of what he said when she brings in legislation. He said he believed that this constituted the most fundamental change to the system since its inception in 1989. Judge Becroft also highlighted: “there is a real concern by Youth Court Judges that the Court will be assuming responsibility for the worst child offenders who by definition will have the most serious care and protection issues yet the Youth Court will not have the necessary statutory ‘ammunition’ to deal with the inevitable care and protection issues at the root of offending.” 
So when the Minister talks about this bill she talks about making sure child offenders get the appropriate punishment but she does not talk about the root of their offending: dealing with their care and protection issues. Labour raised the issue in the select committee that if the concern is that the Family Court does not have the tools why do we not give a greater range of powers to the Family Court rather than transferring child offenders to the Youth Court? But we could not even consider that. We were told it was outside the scope of the bill. It did not need to be outside of the scope of the bill. The Minister wrote the bill. She could have said “Yes why does the select committee not look at that?”. Now she is saying “Won’t the select committee inquiry be good looking at youth offending and the range of tools that the Family Court might have?”. Why close the door after the horse has bolted? Why not do it first? Why did she not look at those issues before bringing in this bill? Judge Becroft has made it clear that this bill does not deal with those issues that address care and protection. The right approach would have been to look at extending the powers within the Family Court. 
The other major issue which I think most submitters submitted on was the issue of military-style camps. John Key before the election campaign did call them boot camps. Unfortunately either because people from National had forgotten that at the select committee or they did not agree with it they believed that calling them boot camps was a misnomer. But that is what John Key called them in the run-up to the election. He did it for a purpose. He did it for political expediency. That is what they were called. That is what every submitter who came to the select committee called them: boot camps. 
We set about pulling apart the reason why New Zealand ought not to go down that path why we did not need to have military-style camps set up in New Zealand in the style of a boot camp. Submitters pointed out the failures overseas. They pointed out the failure within New Zealand when we had that sort of approach and the recidivism that came with it. They pointed out that there were other approaches. It was also pointed out—and was quite clear to us—that we did not even need to include a provision in a bill to be able to have military-style camps because ho we have one set up at Burnham without this legislation. So if the Government wanted to put in place military-style camps we did not need to go through the expense and the time of calling on submitters from all around New Zealand to tell us they think it is a bad move. 
Does the Government really want to do something in terms of the most serious offenders? After all we heard from the police that we are talking about 80 apprehensions—not 80 offenders not 80 arrests but 80 apprehensions—and some of those are children who have been apprehended more than once so we are talking about a very small group. Why not I ask the Minister keep open Te Hurihanga? Why not put Government resources into that programme which has shown a huge success? But for political purposes the Minister has decided to close Te Hurihanga even though it is showing that it is working. What is so sad about this is the shonky figures that the Minister has used to justify closing it. The Government has tried to put the entire cost of establishing one programme on to eight kids. As somebody said why not put the entire cost of Wellington’s maternity hospital on to the first birth that came out of it? I say to the Minister that this is a poorly designed bill. It is not based on evidence and Labour will not support it. 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to stand and support the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill in the House tonight. As chair of the Social Services Committee I can say that we had a substantial debate within the committee and many issues were raised with submitters when they came forward. Because of some of the issues changes were made to the bill. We do not always get a bill 100 percent right before it comes to a select committee. We listened to the submitters and we made changes accordingly. 
Tonight I would like to acknowledge the officials who put a lot of work into this bill. They came back many many times with many new answers for us as we dug deeper and deeper. The committee appreciates the hard work they put in. I also know that the officials worked outside their normal hours in support of this bill. 
The bill received 51 submissions. They came from the Youth Court the New Zealand Police the Law Society and many non-governmental organisations. At the select committee a huge criticism was that there was no evidence-based research to support the changes made by this bill. The fact that New Zealand has undertaken little evidence-based research concerning youth offending and the programmes is no reason not to make a change—otherwise we would be waiting forever to make a change that will make a difference in these children’s lives. Because of that the status quo is not good enough for us. We had to make changes; there was no choice. 
In an article in the 5 September 2009 issue of the  
Dominion Post 
 Judge Andrew Becroft put forward some very important facts about the youth whom he sees in his Youth Court. I will give members just some of these facts and they are pretty sobering: 85 percent of offenders appearing in the Youth Court are male; 80 percent are not at school—that is not truancy; they are entirely out of the education system—80 percent have alcohol and cannabis problems; 50 percent are Maori and in some areas that figure is up to 80 or 90 percent of the youth who appear before the Youth Court. 
Judge Becroft went on to say he sees a lot of family instability such as a dad who is long gone and a mother who is struggling. One in three kids will undergo a psychological assessment and many go on to further assessment counselling and treatment. He went on to say that no New Zealand research has been done but that based on international evidence about a quarter of teenagers who appear in the Youth Court have symptoms—sometimes obvious sometimes subtle—of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Nobody really understands how seriously damaged a lot of these kids are. Judge Andrew Becroft was saying that we have a major problem in New Zealand and one that needs to be addressed. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: And it’s too late. It’s too late when they’re in the Youth Court. 
KATRINA SHANKS 
: Labour members sit there and say it is too late. It is never the right time to give up on the children of New Zealand. This issue might have been in the too-hard basket of the previous Labour Government but this Government and this Minister will not give up on the children of New Zealand. These young people are what this bill is about. The status quo just does not work for a National Government. 
What about the purpose of the bill? Let us go right back to why the bill is before the House. A big part of the bill is about 12 and 13-year-olds appearing before the Youth Court so it is important that we have protections in place for these children. It is important also that we strengthen the Youth Court and give it more tools so that it can treat these children when they appear before it. The court has to be given tools for sentencing and measures for dealing with offending and addressing the causes that underlie offending and that is something the Labour Government did not understand. We need to address the underlying causes of offending. That is what this bill helps to do and if Labour members read the bill they would see that. 
Many submitters agreed that the bill addresses areas of high and complex need. It is aimed at increasing the methods of accountability of young offenders increasing assistance for young offenders and improving and providing tools to the Youth Court. The greatest concern of some of the submitters was the extension of the Youth Court’s jurisdiction to 12 and 13-year-olds. We must remember that we are looking at and discussing the most serious and persistent young offenders who cause significant harm to themselves to others and to their communities and for whom the present system is not sufficiently intense. 
Expanding the Youth Court’s jurisdiction to 12 and 13-year-olds charged with serious offences is important to this Government so we also had to give it more tools to deal with these offenders. These tools will involve things like longer supervision with activity orders; longer supervision with residence orders because 3 months just does not cut it; early release from supervision with residence orders; and military-style activity camps. A range of new orders will be introduced including parenting education programme orders mentoring programme orders alcohol or drug rehabilitation orders judicial monitoring intensive supervision orders and breach provisions. I notice that the Labour members are not arguing about these new tools because they are good and they strengthen the Youth Court. The big argument about the Youth Court was that it had no tools. 
We will also improve other existing orders. Measures for dealing with offending by a child or young person should as far as is practicable address the causes underlying the child’s or young person’s offending. The removal of consent to community work orders is pretty logical is it not? What offender when told: “We would like you to do a community work order but you have to agree to it.” would want to agree to that? So we will remove that consent process. There will also be split sentencing a review of orders for periods of at least 8 months social worker reports and access to reports and plans. This is pretty logical stuff. 
I want to speak more about the most controversial aspect of this bill—the military-style activity camps. Twenty-seven submitters were opposed to having military-style activity camps in the Youth Court’s jurisdiction. Military-style activity camps will cater for the most serious young offenders on Youth Court orders who require intensive 24-hour supervision a structured environment and a complete package of support to address the causes of offending. Long-term mentoring will be provided along with help with literacy and numeracy skills—something that Labour does not think we are failing in. Well I can tell members that a lot of these children do not have good literacy and numeracy skills. Most of them have dropped out of school. They are not truants—they are not even in the education system. 
There will also be programmes to address drug or alcohol problems. The programme will include a period in a military-style activity camp a structured programme in a residential environment and supported transition back into the community. There will be a focus on installing self-discipline personal responsibility and community values. Actually that is what most parents do undertake. We install self-discipline personal responsibility and community values in our children. It is unfortunate that not everybody does that in their own family or in their wider families even. If they did then maybe we would not have so many offenders now. People actually taking responsibility for their own families would be a good thing. 
Military-style activity camps may represent the last opportunity for some young offenders to turn their lives round after being dealt with in the adult criminal jurisdiction. Child Youth and Family is working with the New Zealand Defence Force and a non-governmental organisation to develop and deliver military-style activity camps. The Defence Force has proven experience in helping young people to gain important life skills self-discipline and employment through its Limited Service Volunteers programme. In fact I have recommended that to some of my constituents and they have had some great success stories. 
There will be 40 available places on military-style activity camps. We are not talking about a lot of places; we are talking about a few. The programme being introduced will differ from the previous corrective training sentence and some other military-style models used in other countries. 
This legislation is well overdue. I commend the Minister for having the courage to face some of the hard issues that confront the youth of New Zealand. It is my pleasure to support this bill tonight. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am extremely disappointed in the direction this Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill proposes for children and young people. Unlike the previous speaker Katrina Shanks I attended the ministerial meeting on the drivers of crime hosted by the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Maori Affairs last year. I would be interested to know the Maori Party’s view on this particular legislation. 
I came away from that meeting last year quite heartened by the approach that I thought the Government was going to take over a really important issue. I felt it would eschew the law and order drum it had beaten the tattoo on every year for several layers of intervention—early intervention school-based intervention and the youth development programmes that actually were effective in making a difference and being a last chance to turn people away from a lifetime of offending. 
Following on from that meeting I was then absolutely delighted to see that the Prime Minister had appointed a chief science adviser. I thought that that was fantastic especially when I read the speech that Professor Peter Gluckman gave later on in the year. I quote from that speech. He said: “There is the beginning of the recognition that there is a far greater need for evidence to be rigorously based and inform policy formation although I hasten to say that there can be many cogent reasons why evidence and policy need not align: the evidence may not be complete”—that is the assertion of the member who has just resumed her seat—“the public may not accept the evidence”. Well that is pretty much a problem that we have in terms of how crime is reported. The speech continues: “it may conflict with the accepted values of a society the cost implications may be contrary to the approach supported by the evidence”—ha ha! That is why Te Hurihanga has closed down—“and ultimately the democratic process will put constraints on decisions that can be made. The important point however is not to deny the evidence but to acknowledge it and explain when and why policies are developed that are not in accord with the evidence.”  
This policy and this bill are not in accord with the evidence and I have not heard the Minister stand up and explain why the Government has decided to ignore not only the very good general advice from the chief science adviser but also the advice of the Chief Family Court Judge and all the researchers who spoke at that meeting that day such as Richie Poulton from Otago University and David Fergusson from the longitudinal study in Canterbury. We had there everyone with a long-term interest in evidence-based policy and intervention who had been working on these issues for many many years—working with central government to bring about some change within our education system and within social development across the range of policies where those policies needed to be changed. 
But what do we have? We have had no explanation other than that anecdotally it felt really good to be at the graduation ceremony. Well I have been to lots of graduation ceremonies where I have felt really good about the change that has occurred but I want to know that when change occurs it will be long-term and sustainable and will make a difference in the lives of these young people. That is what I want from policy in this country. 
I think this bill is an insult to the appointment of a chief science adviser. There is no evidence to back military-style boot camps as a method of achieving that long-term sustainable change that is often needed to override—and I think this is where on both sides of the House we are being honest—an upbringing that no one in this House has experienced. The Minister talked of the people who gave evidence in the select committee. Those who are committed to making a real difference actually opposed the provisions in this bill; they are not evidence-based. 
Let me just briefly refer to the actual kinds of interventions that came up at the discussion we had at the ministerial drivers of crime meeting. They were to provide parenting advice support and intervention from pregnancy and through the early childhood years particularly in vulnerable families—those in poverty with young mothers and with parental criminality—and to provide coordinated and effective early screening diagnosis and intervention programmes for at-risk families and individuals encompassing and addressing a wide range of issues such as conduct disorder mental health issues and family dysfunction. 
Another intervention was to address the alienation and disengagement of young people from education by giving teachers the skills and support to deal with difficult behaviour and to improve alternative education provision and pathways back into education for those who were excluded or not enrolled. Well in my electorate this Government has got rid of all the adult and community education to speak of which is exactly the opposite of what was recommended from that meeting. 
A further intervention was to provide more accessible and timely mental health drug and alcohol treatment services with greater use of tikanga Maori - based models. I thought that was very interesting because the bill we will be dealing with next is a carry-over from legislation that our Government introduced—and guess what? All of the provisions about access to addiction programmes have been completely expunged from the bill; they have gone. We can see that this Government is not really interested in getting to the root of the problem; it is more interested in the headline news. 
Another intervention was to provide positive leisure sports cultural activities and role models for young people in order to give them positive focus for their spare time and energy and to build their confidence identity and sense of belonging and worth within society. That is the sort of thing that does make a difference. I have heard Judge Becroft use the expression that kids in sport stay out of court. It is a pretty simple one but those kids are busy involved and engaged. They learn team activities: they are not individuals left to fight on their own; they learn the skills to work as team players. 
Other interventions were to improve the quality and availability of therapeutic rehabilitation and reintegration services for prisoners and offenders serving community-based sentences and to review the underpinning principles structures and processes of the justice system to ensure that bias was addressed and the needs of victims were met and that justice system responses did not inadvertently increase crime. That is very interesting because of course we all know what the reality is in terms of increased recidivism of the effect on imprisoning people for longer. But we do not want to talk publicly about facts; they might get in the way of a good headline. 
Yet another intervention was to reinvigorate a sense of caring and responsibility within communities by building community capacity resources leadership and social capital. When the group was asked to say how that would happen in fact the very first point the group came up with was to have interventions based on evidence with a strong focus on what worked and with greater investment in research and evaluation. 
I thought that day was tremendous; I felt very heartened by it. Other interventions were to support innovative community-based and Maori-designed programmes but those needed to be evaluated and they needed to demonstrate effectiveness too; to develop an immediate long-term 10-year cross-party inter-agency approach to addressing the underlying drivers of crime in partnership with iwi and communities; to adopt a strengths-based approach that built resilience and strengthened families and communities by building their capacity and capability; and to adopt a resourcing model that provided sustained funding for effective programmes and flexible funding to enable local responsiveness and build provider capacity and capability and then to build relationships between iwi in order to share ideas models and initiatives. But that is all too hard for the Government. It just seems that it has given up on what really works. 
I have a question for members on the other side of the House. Who are Alexander Tokorua Peihopa and Whatarangi Rawiri? How about Phillip Kaukasi Riki Rapira and Joe Kaukasi? Maybe this quote from the  
Sunday Star-Times  
website will help: “Michael was brutally murdered nearly 4 years ago by six thugs including this country’s youngest killer Bailey Junior Kurariki.” The first two names I mentioned were the two young people who murdered Michael Choy and the other three were the others like Bailey Junior Kurariki who were convicted of manslaughter. It took me ages to track down the names of the people who murdered Michael Choy because story after story only ever referred to Bailey Junior Kurariki. He was the one who contacted the pizza firm who enticed the pizza deliverer to the house and who opened the door when Michael Choy arrived. What Bailey Junior Kurariki did was wrong but he has been additionally punished with the notoriety his youthful age earned him. Yet nobody knows the names of the real killers the murderers. 
I make this point about extending the jurisdiction of the Youth Court to 12 and 13-year-olds for other crimes beyond manslaughter and murder—as it already can—and I say that the Government should think about the consequences. 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I firstly acknowledge those final comments from my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel. I agree and I think that was exactly the issue that needed to be put on the table: that a child of 12 years old becomes notorious due to his age while those who committed the crime—he did commit a crime; but he did not wield the bat—become anonymous out of the notoriety driven by the youth of the child and what is done to that child by the legal system which has no capacity to deal properly with issues like this. The problem with the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill is that it does not help and it makes the situation much much worse by not recognising that children as young as 12 years old are children. They might know what they do is wrong but they do not or cannot understand the consequences of what they do and they must never be treated as if they are anything other than the children that they are. 
Children must only ever be treated in the context of their family in the context of their community and in the context of the care and protection issues that Judge Becroft talked about. That is the only way to make sure that that child gets the help that that child needs however heinous the crime. Sometimes the crime can be terrible but this is still a child—not a young adult not an adult but a child. Such children must be treated with all possible care to make sure that they are well and healthy that they never commit that act again and that they never suffer as they must have done so that they committed that crime in the first place. This bill does not do that. This bill does not treat the issues around children who offend. This bill attempts simply to treat them like young adults meeting some need of a community that prefers punishment to care and punitive action to preventing recidivism and crime. 
The Green Party will oppose this legislation at this stage and at the third reading. Following the first reading of this bill I was not able to be on the Social Services Committee for most of the time that the bill was being dealt with and when submissions were being heard. But at the very first reading of this bill I acknowledged that there were some good measures in it around extending the orders of the Youth Court for example and giving the Youth Court more tools to deal with the young people who go into that court. I can see that the select committee has tried to make some positive contributions and changes to the legislation. It is good that an admission of a prior offence at a family group conference cannot be used to then escalate that offending or that child through the process. It is good that there is an attempt at least to try to keep 12 and 13-year-olds in the Youth Court as opposed to the High Court and other courts and that there is an attempt to try to restrict the time that 12 and 13-year-olds will spend in custody. I see that there has been some legitimate attempt to make the bill better. 
But the problem is of course that the bill is fundamentally flawed. The premise on which it is based is that 12 and 13-year-old children should be treated as young adults and that is simply inappropriate and wrong. It will cause more offending later on because of the way that the children will be dealt with. The bill is contrary to New Zealand’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. That alone should signal to the New Zealand community that legislation like this and the policies of the National Government driven by the extreme radicalism of the ACT Party are really driving New Zealand legislation around crime issues back to the 19th century. The legislation does not take into account the most recent evidence about what works to reduce crime in a community what works for young people to reduce their risk of offending and what works to prevent families from being in a situation where their kids might offend. None of that is incorporated into the policies of the National Government or ACT’s extremist agenda. All the extremism on that side of the House is geared towards making New Zealand a much more punitive country one that cares even less for families and for children and it is driving the penal system back into the 19th or even the 18th century. 
One other concern I have related to that is that this Government has wasted thousands of dollars on this ridiculous legislation; thousands of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere or on policy development that would have looked at how to prevent children from being in the situation where that kind of offending was even likely. The legislation admits that it might apply to about a thousand children in New Zealand and to only one hundred for the most serious offending. That begs the question of why all the resources are put into just those few when in fact if we can put more resources into the 200000 children for example who live in the most severe poverty we might get a much much better outcome. In fact I will not even qualify it. We would get a much much better outcome if we put the resources into the children and families who need them now rather than wasting time at this other end on legislation that is unnecessary. 
The truth is that there are no plans and this has already been expressed tonight in the House. There are no plans to increase access to drug and alcohol treatment for children. 
Todd McClay 
: You should have been in committee. 
METIRIA TUREI 
: No. Let us look at the evidence. We know that in prisons for example there were 500 places for drug and alcohol treatment for 8000 prisoners in New Zealand. That has recently been increased to 1000 places. So we know that although 80 percent to 90 percent of crime committed is due to drug and alcohol issues in this country which leads to the imprisonment of 8000 people or near enough only 1000 of them will get access to any kind of drug treatment; not only that it is those who are in jail for longer who will get access to that drug treatment. Those who are in jail for lower-level crimes for which this intervention would be effective at preventing them from reoffending do not get access to that treatment. It only applies if prisoners have a sentence of 3 months or longer. So the whole system by which this Government is looking at drug and alcohol rehabilitation services fails from the outset because there is no plan and no properly thought out scheme to deliver those kinds of services to the people who need them to prevent reoffending and to help keep the community safer. That same failure applies across the board including over drug and alcohol rehabilitation for young people at risk. 
There is certainly very little in this latest plan of John Key’s to increase access to health or education services for young people and children at risk. In fact all of the attention—the $26 million for example—is going into standards which will simply tell these children particularly those most at risk just how stupid they are. Not only that but the standards will tell the whole country just how stupid they are. In his speech yesterday John Key said that the Government would look at intervening aggressively in those schools that failed to meet the standards. If that is not a direct threat to those schools that find most of the difficulty with most of the kids the kids who are really at risk then I do not know what is. How are they are expected to meet standards under those conditions with kids who are most at risk kids who are hungry kids who are cold kids who are not sleeping and kids who are sick because of the housing that they are in? Yet this Government will not help. It will aggressively intervene in those schools. Those schools will be identified as failed schools because the kids at those schools will be identified as failed kids. 
There is no plan from members on the Government side of the House for dealing with the reality behind those children’s lives so that there is real intervention to provide them with the support services the schooling system the health the education and the housing that they need. Raising benefits to make it possible for their families to live and to buy good food and good clothing would really help. We should increase wages so that people do not have to be the working poor but are able to work full-time take care of their kids and provide them with good housing. We need to build State housing as I suggested earlier so that the 10000 families on the waiting list for State houses have somewhere to live and their kids have somewhere to live. They would be able to go to school at the same school and would not have to move from school to school because their housing is so insecure. 
Those are basic systems and basic services that would support the families of the kids who are most at risk. We would not need stupid legislation like this because our children would be properly cared for by their families and because they would live in an economic and social system that cared for them. We do not have that in this country. Those children live without any care from the social and economic system in this country. The inequality in this country is getting worse. We already have the sixth-worst inequality rate of highly developed countries. It is a failure; it is shameful. What does this legislation do for those kids? Nothing. It makes it worse. We are pleased to oppose stupid legislation like this. Thank you. 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker huri rauna kia ora tatou katoa e te Whare tatou e nohonoho nei ki roto i to tatou Whare Miere tenei haora o te po. Tena koutou kia ora tatou katoa. 
Whenever people screech and carry on about the sins of youth one guy’s name keeps being brought up time and time again. Judge Andrew Becroft Principal Youth Court Judge since 2001 is quick to point out—and rightfully so I might add—that youth offending has remained relatively stable and has even reduced in some areas while violent crime has increased right across the spectrum particularly in the 51 to 99-year age group. It makes one wonder why all of a sudden the Government has decided to spend $84 million on targeting serious and repeat offenders in the Youth Court when in fact only 1 percent of kids actually end up before the court. The Government should be focusing on the key issues put forward by people like Judge Becroft such as ensuring more targeted resourcing and the coordination of relevant agencies instead of beefing up the court infrastructure and extending the court’s jurisdiction to include 12 and 13-year-olds. 
We are not walking away from our responsibility for dealing with serious and repeat offending amongst a small group of youth either. We know that this country has to deal with this issue honestly and openly but we also know this: increasing the thumping power of the courts criminalising even younger kids and dishing out orders and punishments like French fries quite simply does not work. Research from all around the world as provided to me by Chester Borrows shows that the countries that invest more in communities and in rehabilitative justice have lower criminal offending rates than those that use the big stick approach that this Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill is proposing. One report from Britain showed that the more face time that we spend with kids at risk and the better we target resources towards helping them the better the outcome we get and the lower the cost our society pays as well. The same report proved that the cost of support services needed to help youth to break out of the cycle of criminal offending is less than a quarter of the cost of keeping them locked up. 
All that confirms what we already know—that the best way to reform young offenders is to help them deal with the issues in their lives and equip them to make better choices in the future. Of course the long-term cost savings are not just economic. People profit as well: offenders their families their communities and society at large. That is what Whanau Ora is all about: taking the funding currently being wasted in futile one-size-fits-all social recovery programmes run by Government agencies and targeting that funding in ways that help and that enable families and their communities to lift themselves out of despair and raise themselves to another level. 
There has been a lot of talk about boot camps too. Although I have a soft spot for good programmes—boot camps or whatever we want to call them—that encourage rangatahi to challenge themselves and raise their sights I know too that some are based simply on isolating kids and treating them to a short sharp shock. I know that all that does is increase their sense of alienation and fuel their anger. Boot camps are OK but they simply will not work just by making somebody fitter faster and harder to catch. There must also be strong elements of rehabilitation and a challenge to youth to reach their potential. Dr John Langley a member of the Youth Justice Independent Advisory Group said: “the one single factor that correlates most highly with violent behaviour in our young people is that those who commit it have had an excess of violence and punishment inflicted on them … Why dish out more when we know that has caused the damage to them in the first place? Such an approach is both wasteful and logically absurd.” At its extreme this wasteful and absurd approach also threatens the whanau-centred approach articulated by the Maori Party and enshrined in the Children Young Person and Their Families Act. 
What this country needs now is effective interventions and programmes like those where communities taking responsibility for their youth are supported by resources that would otherwise be spent on their incarceration and are reinvesting the savings in other community youth programmes. The results of the interventions and those programmes are clear: increased community care a 25 percent reduction in detention and probation and a 75 percent drop in jail time. That is what we should be talking about: strengthening communities and helping them to develop their own solutions to take care of their own kids. That is also the basis of the Children Young Person and Their Families Act: treatment rehabilitation and restoration. It is a youth justice system based on making young offenders accountable for their actions but also because they are just children it is based on rehabilitation and restoration. Those principles remain the basis of our world-leading reputation in the field of youth justice—a reputation that this bill places at risk. 
The Children Young Person and Their Families Act 1989 was the brainchild of John Rangihau and others who wrote  
Puao-te-ata-tu 
. They recognised the centrality and importance of the whanau to the care and protection of young people and of having positive alternatives to custodial sentencing based on families and communities taking responsibility for their own. This bill will erode some of those principles so regretfully we will be opposing this bill and focusing our energy on making Whanau Ora a concept that will help to turn whanau communities and the whole of Aotearoa round. Kia ora tatou. 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I am pleased to be able to stand and take a speaking opportunity in the progress of this Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill. It is important to look at where this bill came from and at what it is trying to address and to look also at the way that the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act has been practised through until now. To be fair to Labour members I say that the previous Labour Government realised there needed to be some alterations to the legislation. Some of those alterations National supported; some of them we did not. But what had grown over a period of about 15 years since the implementation of the 1989 Act was a lack of confidence in the ability of the Act to deal with younger offenders especially prolific younger offenders. 
The reason for that was that there was a lag in time between the apprehension of offending 12 and 13-year-olds and their finally being dealt with before the Family Court which is where this legislation started out. A young child aged 12 or 13 and brought before the Family Court after being reported for prolific burglaries for instance took so long to go through the family group conference process and the resolution practice that before he—generally it was a “he”—could get in front of a judge and have a resolution numerous amounts of further offending had been going on. What we ended up with was a situation when the practitioners—the police—and the youth justice social workers would lose faith in that system and not initiate those sorts of orders. In other words they did next to nothing with those young offenders. 
We have heard the name Bailey Kurariki quoted a number of times in the course of this debate—funnily enough by people who were not in a position to be able to hear the evidence before the select committee. But the whole thing was yes that the serious offending on that occasion crystallised the fact in the minds of not only National members but also Labour members that we needed to do something. If Michael Choy had not died then Bailey Kurariki would not have been charged with anything because there was no precursor for him to be able to be brought before the court. The action taken in response to the manslaughter conviction sustained by him would have happened under the law both as it is now and as it was then. 
So we have to be very careful that we do not set about muddying the waters here and trying to think that this is some move by the now Government to do some dirty deal in order to deal to young people aged 12 and 13. What has been implemented as a result of the select committee process is that we now have a system whereby the Youth Court judge will act as the gatekeeper to where those 12 and 13-year-olds will be heard—either in the Family Court or the Youth Court. So when the police initiate a charge against a 12 or 13-year-old the first appearance will be in the Youth Court. The person who decides whether that 12 or 13-year-old goes back to the Family Court to be dealt with or continues within the Youth Court because he or she meets the criteria is the judge. What is wrong with that? Who are the best and most appropriate to make that decision? It is the judges. When we had Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft before the select committee what did he say? 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: “I don’t want them.” 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: No he said: “What you are doing is trying to lump far too many 12 and 13-year-olds straight into the Youth Court.” That is what he said at his initial appearance. He said to the select committee: “What you need to do here is streamline the process so that the practitioners working within the Youth Court process and within the youth justice process are able to get those 12 and 13-year-olds dealt with more quickly and on to curfews and adjournment provisions like bail conditions so that they are under curfew there are non-association clauses and there are prohibitions on knocking around certain neighbourhoods where the crimes they are committing are happening.” He said that the process should be streamlined. 
So what happened? Those bits were pulled they were rewritten and we have pretty much done what he said. We have streamlined that process so that 12 and 13-year-olds appear initially in front of the Youth Court. If they are prolific offenders they can have adjournment conditions put on them and be sent back to the Family Court and that is where the vast majority will go. But those offenders with previous offending or previous admissions after they have had legal advice—which is another condition put in after the select committee process and on advice from officials—will carry on through the Youth Court. By doing that they will be able to access programmes they cannot access at the moment in the Youth Court. 
We were criticised by the Labour spokesperson on social services for not increasing the powers of the Youth Court to equal those that currently exist within the Family Court. Those of us who were privileged to be in the committee when we discussed this know that we had a look at doing that. But we were told that we could not do it because the scope of the bill was not wide enough to increase the powers of the Youth Court along those lines; therefore that has not happened. It is true to recall that the children young persons and their families legislation put up by the Labour Party when it was in Government extended the provisions of supervision with activity and supervision with residence. What we have done is to glue conditions on to the back of that on which they are then released back into the community. A number of things were put up in the initial bill that the National Party was happy with and was happy to support and that was one of them. 
Those on the other side of the House who have had the privilege to attend those supervision-with-residence courses know that a huge chunk if not the majority of those young people who are sitting in those places right now are doing back-to-back 3-month courses. Some of them are on their fourth fifth and sixth 3-month period on a course and it has gone nowhere for them. Every time those young people have been released they have had to go out and create a whole new set of victims before they can come back and access what we call the justice system. That is rubbish. So we are pleased to have received at least within the select committee the support of those Labour members who agree with that particular part. It was foolish to have ever stated in legislation that before a child could be ordered to attend community work that child had to agree to it. How ridiculous was that; we are pleased to see that change happen as well. 
We have heard a lot of talk about military-style activity camps and I can understand why. It is a bit of a touchstone for people who want to give the whole thing a smack-around. Let us look at where that came from. The introduction of military-style activity camps came from an agreement which is also bipartisan across the House on the way that limited service volunteer courses work and on the way that the military components of academy education courses work as well. Yes the point can easily be made and it is well made that people who attend those courses do so voluntarily as much as those who attend as part of an academy volunteer This is usually their last chance at education; they go on that course or they are gone. 
What we have tried to do with military-style activity camps is to take the best of the limited service volunteer courses and the best of the military component of the academic programmes then to force those young people by order of the court to attend those courses and wrap services around them that actually address for instance issues within the family—issues that deal with drug and alcohol that deal with literacy and numeracy that deal with violence and that deal with their background. My colleague from the Maori Party talked about Whanau Ora; this is exactly that. It is about reaching back into families which the current system does not and cannot do and is not empowered to do. 
It is hugely frustrating to have a bill that seeks to intervene in the lives of young people—the most vulnerable in our community who desperately need intervention—shafted and ridiculed by people who want to put those sorts of labels upon it knowing all the time having sat through the select committee process that that is not what was intended and that that is not how it is going to work. I urge the members of this House to look within themselves and have the courage to be able to support this legislation because it is worthy legislation.  
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 Last night I spent some time thinking about how I might describe this Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill to someone who was hearing about it for the first time—to someone who perhaps had no knowledge of our youth justice system political agendas and the issues we face in New Zealand—and thinking about how I would tell that person what we were doing here today. I would probably start with this: our youth justice system as it is now is unique. It is something we should be proud of. It is a system that acknowledges that young people should be treated differently; that for the most part we have an opportunity to turn their lives around. It is a system that until now at least has been internationally respected. But this bill and the policy that surrounds it undermines our existing system. 
I will take this opportunity to go through the most significant elements of the bill. In fact I want to focus mostly just on two elements but first I give my thanks to all of those who participated in the select committee: practitioners academics youth leaders and community organisations. They all gave up their time to present to the Social Services Committee. They are people with more hands-on knowledge than ourselves and they undoubtedly told us how it is. 
Two parts stood out for me in particular as a member of that select committee. The first was the Government’s decision to enable proceedings to be commenced in the Youth Court against children aged 12 or 13 years who are alleged to have committed specified offences. This point has been well canvassed in this House this evening. As my colleague the Hon Annette King has already pointed out the Principal Youth Court Judge said it best when he stated that this part of the bill constitutes “the most fundamental change to the system since its inception in 1989.” Why would we make such a significant move such a fundamental change? I have to be honest and say that after a full select committee process I was still none the wiser and neither were the submitters. 
If a child commits the worst offences in our law books they can already be sent to our adult courts. As for the rest there is no denying that if a child—I repeat a child; a 12 or 13-year-old—is committing the kinds of crimes that the Government has identified then there are issues going on in that child’s home and that child’s life. The best court we have in New Zealand to not just deal with that child but also assist that family is our Family Court. Nothing the Government has proposed has convinced me otherwise. 
Again Andrew Becroft noted that “there is a real concern by Youth Court judges that the Court will be assuming responsibility for the worst child offenders who by definition will have the most serious care and protection issues yet the Youth Court will not have the necessary statutory ‘ammunition’ to deal with the inevitable care and protection issues at the root of offending.” He did not talk in that statement about issues of streamlining or of the Youth Court being inundated with young people. He talked about its inability to deal with those young people with the statutory powers it has. 
If the heart of the issue as the chair of the select committee has pointed out was the desire to give judges the right kinds of powers then why in the first instance did the Government not look at giving greater powers to the Family Court? We proposed this to the Principal Youth Court Judge who said that it would have been a much more elegant solution than the fundamental change we see before us today. Labour refuses to support such an amendment a fundamental change that the Government cannot justify for which it has no evidence and which undermines our system. 
Perhaps more telling though was the fact that the most commonly raised and discussed element of the bill was something that was not really even a formal part of the primary legislation. As the chair of the select committee has pointed out everyone had a view on the Government’s so-called boot camps. I call them “so-called” because in fact it was the Prime Minister who first coined and referred to the military element of these camps so strongly. Almost unanimously the view of submitters was negative. Submitters told us that these methods have been tried and have failed in New Zealand. We have heard over and over that those who graduated in the early version of these camps’ corrective training had a 92 percent reoffending rate. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: How much? 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: It was 92 percent. If that was not enough plenty of other jurisdictions have also tried these programmes and have failed. But Government members—and I acknowledge this—continually maintained during submissions that their programme would be different. It was not the same as corrective training. This programme would work intensively with young people it would focus on providing good role models and it would take a wraparound approach. It was presented as if it was a completely new idea. Well it is not and if this is truly what the National Government is aiming to create then we already have it. It was called Te Hurihanga and for the listeners who may not have heard of this programme before it was established several years ago by Phil Goff and Judge Caroline Henwood. 
Te Hurihanga was small and intensive and it took on the worst offenders in Hamilton and the surrounding area. At first we must all acknowledge Te Hurihanga was controversial. Some local Hamiltonians did not want it but that was then and this is now. I do not need to pass judgment on this programme which was based on multi-systemic therapy and was operated by the Youth Horizons Trust. It has been evaluated favourably by a reviewer and that review is now publicly available but more important it has been judged by local police officers family and friends of those in the programme and the local community. It has been described—I say to the member from Hamilton West who is with us in the House—as a godsend it was filled with talented and skilled staff and it was the reason that offending has dropped by 82 percent by those who have graduated. It now even has the buy-in of some of its biggest opponents. 
Let me be clear and honest. In youth justice success rates are low and tough not just here but everywhere in the world. But Te Hurihanga was making gains and for less than it would have cost to imprison someone for just a few years. Without this programme many of these young men would have been facing that as soon as they hit their 17th birthday. Last week the Government announced that it would close Te Hurihanga and I am left with one big question. If it is not the model that the Government wants to follow as it describes then what is? 
I fear that despite the Government’s denial the answer is closer to the boot camp model which is the failed model that the Government has tried to distance itself from. I fear that the Government’s Fresh Start programme rather than being the full wraparound it describes is based on the idea of a short sharp shock as my colleague from the Maori Party described: short-term programmes that churn young offenders through with little acknowledgment of the hard and difficult truth that the methods that work take time; they take work not just with the young person but also with their family; they take experienced staff; and inevitably they take money. 
Ultimately gains in youth justice take political courage. In a society where a “lock and throw” mentality is popular investing in early intervention programmes that already exist may not make for a sexy headline nor may having an evidence base or using programmes with acronyms like MST or multi-systemic therapy and FTT or functional family therapy or following the recommendations of expert advisory groups but those would have been the right things to do. It is time for some political courage. 
For a brief period I thought like my colleague Lianne Dalziel that Simon Power might have been capable of it. He launched the Drivers of Crime conference. He committed himself to listening and to addressing the precursors of crime and investing in them. He heard the things that we have all been told over and over: if we get a group of young offenders in a room we will find something common in all of their backgrounds whether it be poverty family violence a lack of engagement in education or drugs and alcohol. We know the problems; we just need to invest in the answers. 
I lost faith in this Government’s desire to make that investment last week when it closed Te Hurihanga. If the only measure for early intervention for this Government is something that is cheap then that move is truly short-sighted. Nothing costs this country more than the intangible cost to a victim a family who has lost a loved one to crime or as a consequence of it and a wasted life behind bars—nothing except perhaps the absence of political courage. 
TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 Thank you members for the applause before I speak. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill and it was a great privilege to serve on the Social Services Committee. There was more than a year’s worth of work from the select committee on an issue that is a great problem for New Zealand. I can cast my mind back to when this bill was first brought to Parliament. I can remember the debate in this House and I can remember what members opposite said. I thought then that it would be interesting to go into the detail of the bill at the select committee and really look at the problem we have in New Zealand which is that younger people are being driven towards crime and that those who have been committing crimes are not getting support from the Government of the day. 
We had this bill before us in the committee for a whole year. Indeed the Labour members of our committee from the very first day said we were going too fast and were rushing the proceedings. They had been sitting around there for 9 years and they said the Government was going too fast on its new legislation. A case was made to the Minister for Social Development and Employment and the Minister came back to us and said if we wanted to have more time she would allow it because it was important to get this legislation right for the good of the children. A member opposite is nodding his head; he remembers that. But what happened when we turned up to the committee and said we could take a bit more time to hear more people and make sure the bill that we brought back to the House was a good bill? The Labour members threw their hands in the air and as Mr Mallard said earlier they chucked their toys out of the cot. They said the Government was in disarray. 
Well I say there is a growing problem of youth offending in New Zealand and there has been for many years. I pay tribute to those members opposite who were part of the previous Labour Government. I believe they had the very best intentions at heart for the youth of New Zealand during their time in Government. Let us have a quick look at the problem. I will then briefly talk about how this bill will work through and help to address the problem. 
Let us take the 9 years before 2008 and look at some of the offending by young people. Violent youth offending by those aged 14 to 16 rose by 47 percent. None of us here want children to get into trouble; none of us want kids to go out and commit violent crimes. But in the 9 years until 2008 there was a 47 percent increase. Violence by 12 and 13-year-olds increased by 30 percent robberies by 14 to 16-year-olds increased by 94 percent and offences involving intimidation and threats increased by 69 percent. Members should go out and listen to the public’s concern about law and order in this country. A grievous assault is a serious crime. Grievous assault offences by young people increased by 122 percent in the 9 years until 2008. What happened over that period of time? The previous Government forgot about those kids. I said earlier that I believe members of that Government had the very best intentions at heart but I think they became caught up in the things that they were doing rather than looking at whether children were being helped and whether the problem was becoming worse. The reality is that it did become worse over that period of time. 
We have heard today lots of reasons why we should not pass this legislation. From members opposite we have heard about a lot of the things that they did. They have said those things were OK and were working. I tell members that anybody whose family member has been grievously assaulted by a young person—and those assaults increased by 122 percent—would disagree with the members opposite. I listened to those members during the select committee deliberations I listened to them during the first reading debate and I have listened to them today. The only conclusion I have come to is that I must treat them in the way that the New Zealand public did for at least a year before the last election and certainly since the election: I think I pretty much have to just ignore them. That is what the New Zealand public has been doing; those members have no credibility on these issues. 
The select committee went out and visited a number of institutions that work with some of the children who are the most troubled in our society and who get into the most difficulty with the law. I say to members as a father that I did not enjoy those visits. I did not like to see children up to the age of 17 locked up in a form of incarceration. I did not like that at all. I came away from that visit to Auckland thinking that those kids should not be there. 
We then went to a residence where young children were in the care of the State. I sat with some of those kids and listened to them as they were doing their schoolwork. I did not want to see those kids there and I wish there was a way that they could not be there. I spoke to them and asked a young boy who was 9 what he thought about being there. I asked whether he missed his mum. He said he certainly did. I asked whether he had a bike to ride there. He said it was OK but he wanted to be back with his family. I spoke to the people who run that institution afterwards and asked about the boy’s background. His father is a gang member; his mother is in hiding. There is huge violence in that community. I do not want that kid to be in that residence; I want him to be with his family. But the conclusion I came to and the sad reality is that there are too many parents in this country like that boy’s parents for whatever reason: their background or they do not have employment or they do not have enough money or they do not have a great house to live in. But that kid was better off in the residence. Otherwise he would go on to a life of crime because his mother could not help him—she had to hide—and his father did not care enough about him. So it is the State’s responsibility to help that young boy. 
This bill will do a number of things and I will touch on them very very briefly. We will look at how we can help these young kids. Members should think for a moment. Our prisons are full; we know that. It was a big issue during the election campaign a little more than a year ago. We know that people are going to prison. But are members opposite honestly telling me that the moment that young people reach the age of 18 to 24 all of a sudden they start to commit crimes and that is why they go to jail? Actually if members go and talk to the police and youth workers they will hear that the problem starts for many people when they are young and it gets progressively worse. Then when they hit the age of 18 we say they are not youths any more. We say the problem is solved and they end up in jail. 
Well we have to start at the very beginning. We need to look at the kids that have the most difficulty and we need to support them much much more. Of course it will be about drug and alcohol rehabilitation—absolutely. We heard that in the select committee; the Minister has said it. Of course that needs to happen. The members opposite are turning a blind eye and being political if they think that this legislation is not about helping young kids to get out of those problems. Of course it will mean in some cases children spending more time away from their families in an environment where some of the issues can be worked through. Do members know what has been happening over the last 9 years? A child would commit a crime. The Family Court would say the child must go into a residence. The child would go there for a period of time and then be put straight back into the environment that he or she came from. The child ended up being back where he or she had started from and of course started to commit crimes again. Those kids when they hit the age of 18 would get into trouble and go to jail. That is not good enough at all. 
We heard other members talk a little about the military-style camps. We are not talking about the time when those camps were called boot camps and the people had to wear boots and march up and down. Members should go and look at some of the work that is being done at the moment. In some cases when a young person gets in trouble a short sharp shock is enough. The police may visit the home and that is enough—the young person will stop offending. But for many of our children that is not enough and that means that they need to spend some months away from home to learn to respect themselves and be taught to respect others. There will be some discipline. People will treat them as they should be treated and there will be a large amount of follow-up when they go back into the community rather than dumping them straight back there again so that they end up in our prisons. 
I feel passionately about this issue. I could talk about it a lot more. I could talk about young people in Maketu who go out and rob houses and break into cars but I will not. Those young kids need to be given some help and members opposite know that. We need to start to work with them earlier so they do not end up spending their lives in our prisons. I will be supporting this bill and I think those members opposite who have any experience in these areas should support it too. Thank you very much. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I inform Mr McClay that I indeed have the experience that he thinks members on this side ought to have before we address bills like the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill. I worked with many of those families; I worked with them for years. I have also developed many workers to work with them and indeed researched much of the background from which those families come. The member seeks an assurance that Labour members speak from that kind of background and coming from that background I am convinced that the kinds of provisions that this bill has come up with are not what those families require. I do not disagree a great deal with the member when he talks about some of what those families need but where in the philosophical thinking behind this bill or in the principles that guide this bill are the provisions that will enable that to happen? They are not there. 
I too thank the officials who worked with us over the last 12 months. I also thank parliamentary counsel who helped design some of the amendments that were required. I acknowledge the chair of the Social Services Committee Katrina Shanks who led and chaired with good humour and enabled us all to participate with contributions from members from both sides. 
The bill however has a chequered history. That history forces me to really suspect the real motivation for this bill. The bill was introduced under urgency in February 2009. That fact would immediately say to us that there is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed and that we will do so fairly quickly. The bill was sent to the Social Services Committee quite early as well. The committee had begun to receive submissions by April and through May and June heard many of them. But at that point when we were waiting for the departmental report there was a vacuum. There was a direction from the Minister of Social Development and Employment—a letter that was sent to the select committee—saying that officials needed to do some more policy work. We asked what policy work was being done because the select committee—having heard all of the submitters and having understood what the bill was trying to do—wanted to know what the thinking was. Nothing was provided. Indeed we realised later on that a trial of the boot camps—military-style training—was under way. At that point I became very suspicious and I am still suspicious. 
I ask whether this is a real attempt to address the complex and fundamental issues our young people face knowing now what we know from the research and evidence that exists or whether it is merely a demonstration or working-out of some attempt to be punitive—to be seen to be punitive to be seen to be tough on crime. In the context of that particular flush some of the provisions of this bill begin to make sense to me. I do not agree with them but they begin to make sense to me. The Minister in her statement at the beginning of the second reading said that this bill was indeed about targeting the underlying causes of offending but I am not at all convinced that this bill does that. The Government’s own work on the drivers of crime says that we need to move from a retributive or punitive model to a restorative and rehabilitative one but the bulk of the provisions in this bill are really still quite punitive. Even though there are some wraparound services as was talked about the bill is still quite punitive. 
Indeed if the Government really was sincere in its own work on addressing the drivers of crime then this type of bill would not come to Parliament. Much of that work would be about poor parenting poor education and attachments the disconnectedness from the wider society that many of these young people feel and the failure of parents to provide the right environment so that degeneration is taking place in family community cultural supports and structures like that. There would also be a much more aggressive attempt to look at poverty intransigence and the demands on parents particularly single parents. Indeed the drivers of crime material would take precedence. 
This bill does not talk about those provisions but as my colleagues have already pointed out it makes one of the most fundamental changes in child welfare legislation in this country in the last several decades which is to take 12 and 13-year-olds to Youth Court jurisdiction. That is a very serious move; that move forces us to begin to contemplate the particular stage of development of 12 and 13-year-olds. We have been parents; we have brought up those young people and there but for the grace of God some of our own children could have strayed if you like at the ages of 12 and 13. When that happens—I am sure it has happened to members of families in this Chamber and indeed to people we know and have worked with—a punitive approach should not be the response; we should begin to address all those complex factors including our own behaviour the way our family operates the way we have supported our young people in our community and the demands of the young people themselves in terms of their own personalities etc. When we address those kinds of things we begin to manage this transition of the early teens into the later teens. 
Judge Andrew Becroft was very clear about that fundamental shift. He really said to me to be careful about that change and to ask whether that was what we particularly wanted. We know that 12 and 13-year-olds primarily have care and protection needs; they do not need for us as a society to be retributive—to really get our ounce of flesh if you like. In the kind of decent society in which we live 12 and 13-year-olds will always demand that we address their care and protection needs. We have a court that specialises in those care and protection needs and although that court is not perfect—it might require more resources it could be timelier and what have you—it is those shortcomings that should be addressed if we really have in mind the care and protection needs of 12 and 13-year-olds. I have spent half my life working with that particular population and that is what they require. In the time I worked with those young people I fought the system that sought to be punitive towards them. We were trying to get around the punitive approaches of days gone past. But those days are coming back and this is a fundamental change that we will live to regret. Now it is 12 and 13-year-olds but what will happen if that group becomes much more troublesome? If 10 and 11-year-olds get troublesome do we keep going backwards or do we use a different approach? 
I will also talk briefly about boot camps. We pride ourselves that people come to select committees saying that their Government will listen to them that Parliament will listen to them. They take a lot of pride in that and they put a lot of emphasis on what they do. At the select committee experts—people who have worked with this group—said that this particular model does not work. But not one of them has been listened to because here it is in the bill as originally envisaged. That is a problem. I do not think that in this Government there is a serious attempt to look at the programmes that achieve change. Te Hurihanga is a programme that was achieving change. The Minister said that four participants had reoffended but she did not tell us that the overall rate of offending had reduced by 82 percent. The select committee visited that group— 
Hon Simon Power 
: You’ve got no idea. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: The Minister Mr Power is saying that it was useless but the select committee visited them. In a disingenuous kind of way that Minister added the cost of the plant to the cost of the first eight or so kids. 
Hon Simon Power 
: You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: The Minister did. That is how the Minister was reported. But here was a programme that was working successfully and now the plan is to close it down. 
Hon Simon Power 
: There is another side to this story you know nothing about. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: I tell the Minister that we visited this programme. We visited the programme and spent some time there. Not one person in the select committee will disagree with that. But the Minister is not really interested in achieving change. 
TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West) 
: 
 I welcome the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill back to the House because the simple reality is that the status quo is not working. Current measures are letting our young people down and our whole society is paying a very heavy price for the inadequate provisions we have at the moment. I acknowledge the members who worked on the Social Services Committee on this bill. It has been obvious in the House tonight that we had some vigorous debates and we are still quite some distance apart. Nevertheless the issue had a very good airing. I particularly acknowledge the submitters who also brought different viewpoints. But it all assisted us to come to a clearer understanding of the major challenge we face and all of us of course were motivated by the common desire to turn troubled young lives round. I acknowledge the excellent work of the officials who guided our progress. 
It is very disappointing to hear the efforts of members opposite who are belittling the work of the Minister and the real purpose behind this bill. It is worth remembering that New Zealanders voted overwhelmingly for measures of this kind at the last election because they know just how serious this problem is. It is disappointing to note the lack of focus of Opposition members on the breadth and comprehensiveness of the package and their relentless determination to dismiss the bill with cheap slogans and irrelevant discussion of what it is not about. 
Let us remind ourselves of what the bill is focusing on. Whether or not we like it we have a worrying number of young people who are out of control. They are a risk to themselves and to those around them. There are many reasons for that and it is a tragedy to see the increasingly youthful appearance of juvenile offenders. But we cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend that it is not happening. It is and in berating the Government for tackling the issue members opposite have chosen to look the other way and to ridicule the efforts of those who are determined to tackle the problem. 
The evidence that we need this bill is found on street corners the length and breadth of this country. The co-leader of the Green Party was determined to dwell in a naive and discredited mindset that puts all the blame for our nation’s crimes and social ills on everything and everyone but criminals and the socially disaffected. Of course there are serious problems that knock many of our young people off course. Of course life has dealt many of them a cruel blow from the outset. But we will never help them to turn their lives around if we blame all their offending on the system and absolve them of responsibility for their actions. Of course we must provide significant support for our troubled youngsters and intervene when they are hurtling off the rails. That is exactly what this bill is all about. As my excellent colleague Chester Borrows emphasised the crucial thing is to do so comprehensively and in a timely fashion. 
By strengthening and expanding the orders available to Youth Courts we will open up a raft of vital measures. These include parenting education mentoring and drug and alcohol treatment programmes which are not sufficiently available through existing Family Court policies yet are desperately needed if life-changing interventions are to occur. Contrary to the claims of members opposite this significant change is based on compelling evidence. For a start we know that what we have now simply is not working. Many of the 12 and 13-year-olds who are being drawn steadily into youth offending have problems with substance abuse. If we do not give the courts the power to confront that reality we will not only be wasting their time and the taxpayers’ money but more worryingly be dooming any intervention to failure. 
There is clear evidence that access to drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes which assist in getting young offenders off the booze the dope and the P make a difference and there is even clearer evidence that a lack of such programmes is often fatal. This bill is aimed at the 1000 worst young offenders and contains three major reforms. These have been well canvassed by previous speakers. I commend this bill to the House. We must throw our efforts wholeheartedly behind this bill. Then we will start to see real improvements for the youth of our country. 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure indeed to follow the member for Hamilton West Tim Macindoe who has sat on his hands—in fact he was in the paper the other day because he has been fishing—while his Government closed down the effective programme in Hamilton called Te Hurihanga. While the rest of us were fighting in February to try to keep that facility open Tim Macindoe was still fishing. He should have been on the ground; he should have been hearing what the people of Hamilton had to say about the Te Hurihanga facility being shut down. 
If he had been listening reading his emails and at work over that period he would have heard the same things that I have heard from the Hamilton community about why the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill will not work. People do not believe that the boot camp model works. All of the evidence says otherwise. If Tim Macindoe had been working during January and February he would have read this kind of email—this is an example of the sorts of emails that the Minister of Justice Simon Power has been receiving. This email is addressed to the Minister; it is from a constituent in Hamilton. She writes: “Dear Simon I am writing to express my extreme disappointment at your recent decision to close the Hamilton youth justice facility Te Hurihanga. Working with young offenders to turn their lives around is an incredibly difficult task. Internationally research shows there are no quick-fix solutions. Success is hard to come by. Yet in 3 short years Te Hurihanga has been successful. With a sound research base”—yes I say to the Minister that is right—“one of the most highly skilled staff teams in the country and growing community support the lives of young men at risk are being turned around. The young men and their families are committing themselves to change. Yes the programme is costly in the short term but such costs are small compared to the human and financial costs of long-term offending. The costs of a lifetime of welfare support family dysfunction recidivist offending terms in prison and the suffering of the victims of crime are immense and are borne by the whole community.” 
She goes on to say: “These are the costs that need to be taken into account when thinking about the cost-effectiveness of Te Hurihanga. I have seen no evidence”—and neither have the rest of us by the way—“that the Fresh Start initiative has a sound research base or proven rates of success. Your comments so far suggest that it will be inadequately funded. Like many in the community I am deeply saddened by the decision to close Te Hurihanga. I am particularly saddened because I suspect that you are already well aware of the things I have said. Yet despite this you will still make your decision. That suggests to me that you are putting politics ahead of people. I urge you to reconsider your decision for the sake of those who desperately need and want to turn their lives around and who looked to Te Hurihanga for hope.” 
That email is indicative of what many in the Hamilton community feel about the very successful ground-breaking programme that has been trialled. I was very disappointed to hear the Minister stoop to the level of inflating the cost of providing that programme for those young men. 
Paul Quinn 
: Do you have any joy in your life? 
SUE MORONEY 
: I say to Paul Quinn that I do not have joy in my life when these successful programmes that people have sweated over and put their lives into are used to score cheap political points. The Minister got up in front of the media and pretended that the programme had cost $600000 per offender when the truth is that it cost about $170000 per offender. That is a lot less than the human costs that even the ordinary person from Hamilton who wrote that email could work out. She could work out how much in human costs and financial costs it will cost this country to not look at the evidence from Te Hurihanga. The Minister has decided to go against what many in the Hamilton community are calling for. 
There is one particularly telling thing. When Te Hurihanga was established it was controversial and two groups formed in the Hillcrest community in Hamilton. One group desperately wanted the facility to be opened up because they saw the wisdom and the importance of the community taking care of its own. The second group had a different range of agendas. Some did not want that type of facility in their backyard and some were concerned about a lack of consultation. They held a range of different perspectives but they came together to oppose the opening of the facility. One of the most telling things about the success of the programme is that those two groups have now joined forces. They united just this last weekend to campaign to keep the Te Hurihanga model operating as it is. The people who vigorously opposed that facility’s being established in their neighbourhood have now in 3 years completely turned round—as reflects the English translation of Te Hurihanga’s title. They have turned round because they have seen those young men turn their lives round they have seen the commitment of the staff they have seen that the programme has enhanced and improved safety in their community and they have now become convinced. After being completely opposed to that facility’s opening they are now fighting this Government to keep the facility in place. That is incredibly telling. But is the Government listening? The fact that the Government has hurried this bill back into the House before the Social Services Committee has even had a chance to report back shows that this Government has its fingers well and truly plugged into its ears—and not just the Minister but also the members of Parliament for Hamilton. 
There is another telling thing about the opening of Te Hurihanga. At the official opening there was a protest—by the group that now desperately wants to keep the facility by the way. During the opening they left their placards up against a fence and walked away from them. One of the people who did not like some of the offensive slogans on the placards turned them around and guess what was on the back! It was David Bennett of National: “Tick David Bennett. Tick National.” David Bennett was right in the thick of winding that protest up. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: He’s got his way. 
SUE MORONEY 
: He has got his way. Now 3 years later when the people he was supporting in their protest have changed their minds David Bennett still has not changed his. His Government is closing down an effective programme. 
People in Hamilton cannot believe that this Government is turning its back on a programme that is showing successful results with the most hardened of offenders—young men who on average have offended 23 times before they even get to the facility. Let us remember that these young men are aged between 17 and 24 years of age so they have not had a lot of time to rack up that sort of record. But that is where they have come from. That is what they have been doing before they enter the grounds of that facility. Until about 3 days ago the police were reporting that of the eight who had graduated none had committed offences. In the first— 
Hon Member 
: That’s not the problem. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Absolutely. In the first 10 months—the Minister is shaking his head but he is wrong and he knows it—no offences were committed. Subsequent to that there have been four. A 50 percent strike rate is very very good when dealing with this level of criminal activity. Here the Government is closing down a programme that is proving to be successful and replacing it with something that we know does not work—boot camps. The evidence everywhere here and internationally is that boot camps do not work and that is why Labour is opposing this bill. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments recommended by the Social Services Committee by majority be agreed to. 
Ayes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Question agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. 
Ayes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Bill read a second time.