Roy Heather: Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Roy Heather: Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak to this third reading of the Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill. The ACT party will be supporting this bill. Before I begin to speak to the bill itself I will take a moment to thank and to congratulate the bill’s author Sue Bradford on both her initiative and her efforts in promoting this very worthy cause. If we are to improve the outcomes for children born into families under often less than ideal circumstances and if we are to improve the outcomes for the benefit of society we must look to this sort of initiative. 
The ACT party sees this bill as a win-win situation for those involved. Firstly it is a win for babies who will now have the opportunity to spend those very important first few months and years of their lives with their mothers when that opportunity might previously have been denied them. Secondly it is a win for mothers who will now have the opportunity as I have just outlined to form that bond with their babies. Thirdly we hope in anticipation that it will be a win for the greater society in terms of the benefits those children will have for their futures. 
One aspect that ACT was particularly concerned about was striking a good and clear balance between promoting what was best for the child and ensuring at the same time that the mother’s obligation to society—the reason for her being in prison in the first place—was met. Some key amendments to the bill have resulted in that balance being struck. ACT believes that the parenting agreements for example which create a code of conduct are vitally important in that area. Furthermore it is important to note the amendments to the bill to ensure the safety of the child while also allowing for increased support for the mother. Those include new section 81A(1) inserted in clause 5 which ensures that screenings for mental health and substance abuse issues are completed in order to evaluate the mother’s ability to look after the child as well as to create the potential to offer the mother extra support in the future and that screenings identify that the mother has no previous convictions for an offence involving sexual or violent offending against children. As Sue Bradford outlined in her speech the parameters are reasonably rigorous and ACT supports them. 
More flexibility has been introduced into the process in that non-biological mothers and non-breastfeeding mothers are still eligible for the programme. While we recognise that the World Health Organization recommends that a mother breastfeeds her child exclusively until the age of 6 months and then up to 2 years after that we know that it is important to allow mothers not to feel boxed into a corner and pressured to breastfeed in order to be eligible for this programme. 
Retaining a parent’s choice about the best option for the family’s circumstances is paramount and something that is important to the ACT party. Too often children have been used as a tool in the behaviour patterns and decision-making processes that go on in prisons. There is less scope now for that to occur due to the obvious clause that allows children to stay with their mothers until they are 2 years of age. But that provision has been furthered by introducing clauses such as that requiring a child development specialist to be involved in the consideration of ending a placement rather than this being the role of solely the chief executive of the Department of Corrections. The provision creates a more robust decision-making process which is of very high importance when it involves the potential separation of a mother and her child. 
The international standards and experiences surrounding that very issue are also of particular interest to ACT. Article 2.1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child deals in part with discouraging the unnecessary separation of children from their parents. It follows that this applies also to the separation of babies from their birth parents. Article 3.1 of the convention also establishes the key principle that the best interests of children shall be a primary consideration in any decision concerning them. Naturally all of this would be lost if a baby were unnecessarily separated from its mother after it was born because the mother had an obligation to serve out her sentence in prison. International experience indicates that it is frequently considered to be in the best interests of both the child’s health and development and the rehabilitation of the mother for the child to be accommodated with the mother in prison for a period of up to 2 years or more. In fact a study in the United Kingdom has shown that the detrimental impact on the behaviour of children deprived of parental care through parental imprisonment is greater—greater—than the impact on children who lose or who are separated from their parents in other ways. That just demonstrates further how important this bill is. 
The bill in fact allows New Zealand to catch up with the rest of the world in relation to this issue. I note that many other countries’ time periods far exceeded our own status quo of 6 months. In particular the time varies in Australia from between 6 years in Victoria to 1 year in Tasmania. The time period is 4 years in both Malaysia and Canada; 3 years in Singapore Hong Kong and Thailand; and 2 years in Indonesia and Viet Nam. Korea has a time frame of 18 months as do the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom; and it is 1 year for Japan. To my mind we are doing absolutely the right thing here in Parliament today by extending the right of mothers to retain their babies with them in prison until the children reach the age of 2 years. 
At a very practical level and as outlined by Judith Collins some children who will now have the ability to stay with their mothers in prison in their early years will actually have a better and a safer start to life. ACT has always promoted mentoring as the best possible way to assist families at risk. Hopefully this bill will assist mothers and babies in this way with both perhaps having more support than they would ever be likely to have had if that early start had been in their own homes. 
This issue is something that I feel strongly about. Simply being confused about the situation is no excuse for not doing something about it. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights stated: “There are no simple solutions but the complexity of the situation cannot be an excuse for failing to protect the rights of children who have a parent in prison.” The ACT party agrees with that statement and agrees with this bill. We happily give our support to it.