Nash Stuart: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Nash Stuart: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:660;Page:9025] 
STUART NASH (Labour) 
: 
 I was not going to take a call in this debate but I decided to do so when I understood that Graeme Dingle had put forward a proposal to run the Fresh Start programme but it was awarded to the army. I want to talk about that because I was one of the mentors on Graeme Dingle’s Project K programme. That programme was about providing at-risk youth with a mentoring supportive environment. 
I will tell members about the little fellow that I looked after. He was from a very poor family; of that there was no doubt. The family ate KFC three times a week—he was slightly undernourished. He had asthma yet his mother and her partner smoked two packets of cigarettes a day between them. But I understood that the mother actually wanted what was best for her son. She understood that her little boy was going off the rails but she was prepared to try anything to make sure that he did not end up in jail like his father. 
That was the sort of project that Graeme Dingle ran. It was a supportive project. It was about mentoring; it was about bringing the best out of kids. It was not about locking them up and saying that they would get fitter and faster by being sent away after six months and then seeing them in another 12 months when they are over 18 years and can go to jail. Project K was about turning kids round. It was such a positive experience that I learnt a lot about myself as well as a lot about that little fellow. 
I will talk about youth offending in a slightly different way by continuing with the quote that my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel was in the process of giving before her time was up. Professor Gluckman 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 the public may not accept the evidence it may conflict with the accepted values of a society the cost implications may be contrary to the approach supported by the evidence 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.” In terms of how we can improve the use of evidence by a Government Professor Gluckman went on to say his “goal is to try in an unbiased way to look at the evidence that explains why New Zealand adolescents have such high morbidity—second only to the USA—and to identify what we know about childhood and adolescence which might impact on policy settings in health education social welfare and justice that might lead to better outcomes.” 
I acknowledge and I understand the need to seriously address the problems of youth offending. I think we all agree on that; the issue is just one of how we go about doing that. I think first and foremost we need to address the problems of disaffected youth. In respect of my little fellow his friends and a lot of his peers they had lost their cultural identity. Once people lose their cultural identity it is a very short step to losing their personal identity and from there it is just a short step to losing the ability to aspire. People in that situation do not care about anything and do not see any prospects for themselves at all. There is no vision and there is no ability to appreciate the value of other people’s property. Then what we get is graffiti violence and all those sorts of things from disaffected youth in our society and our communities. They should not be there; Labour put in place policies to address those issues. 
Let us look at the policies that this Government has put in place which actually do not address poverty—for example tax cuts. This Government gave tax cuts but anyone who earns under $40000 per year—we are talking about 75 percent of the people in the Napier electorate for example—did not get any tax cut. Those sorts of policies and the sort of tax proposal that we have on the table at the moment widen the gap between the most privileged in our society and the most vulnerable. That reinforces stereotypes and that comes back again to a lack of ability to aspire. That is an absolute death knell for a lot of our young kids and a lot of our communities. We need to have policies that alleviate poverty. When I heard that the minimum wage was going up by 25c an hour I thought about those who earn the minimum wage. They are people who are working in two three or sometimes even four jobs because they need to work 24/7 to put food on the table clothes on their backs and occasionally to provide schoolbooks. I think it was identified by Tim Macindoe that some children are growing up without parents because their parents need to work such horrendous hours earning dreadful salaries just in order to survive. It is a vicious circle and it is our role as parliamentarians to provide policies that alleviate poverty. I am just not seeing that from members on the Government side of the Chamber.