Turei Metiria: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Turei Metiria: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:8786] 
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.