Lee Melissa: Vulnerable Children Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLee Melissa: Vulnerable Children Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 17 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13393. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MELISSA LEE (National):Ahnnyung ha seyo. It is a great pleasure to rise to speak in the first reading of the Vulnerable Children Bill. The whole aim of the bill is to protect and improve the well-being of vulnerable children here in New Zealand especially in the area of reducing the number of assaults on our children. Too many of our children in New Zealand are seriously abused and neglected. In many cases of extreme abuse many people had a range of knowledge or some knowledge but no one in particular had pieced the whole together and hence the help was not actually available.This National-led Government is taking action to protect our children. New Zealanders asked us to do that and we are taking action and delivering on our promise. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister for Social Development who has done a great deal of work through the green paper consultation as well as the white paper consultation right throughout New Zealand. I have actually witnessed her speaking at many many public events. I congratulate her on the development of this bill and on bringing it to the House. I will welcome the submissions from the public and I look forward to the robust debate that will happen at the Social Services Committee.Sitting here listening to members from right across the House and seeing their passion I see that we are all focused on our children and I am very glad to see that. Iwas sitting here looking at the plaques on our walls and remembering that our forebears fought for this country to make sure that New Zealand was left in a better condition was in better hands and was better developed for the future of our children. When I hear that more than 50 children have died in the last 5 years in this country—and the Minister of Justice actually quoted this—and that two children are hospitalised every 5 days I wonder what our forebears would think about where New Zealand is right now in terms of the way we treat our children. Our children are the most vulnerable people and yet there are people in this country who maim kill and hurt innocent children who cannot even respond to that kind of abuse. They cannot even say who hurt them.This bill will result in two new Acts: the Vulnerable Children Act and the Child Harm Prevention Orders Act. It also amends the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 and the KiwiSaver Act 2006. This bill is about reinforcing the need for shared responsibility and about taking coordinated and collaborative action across the Government’s social services sector to better protect vulnerable children and to help ensure that our children are safe with those who work with them.When children come into contact with people who have bad things in their heads in terms of the outcomes for those children we have the responsibility to stop those people to protect our children and to make sure that those children have a future—the future that we all come in here as members of Parliament to provide for this country. We committed to halt the rise in the number of children who are physically abused and to reduce the current number 5 percent by 2017 as part of our Better Public Services target. We are absolutely—absolutely—committed to this goal and we are determined to build a safer environment for all vulnerable children.I am very glad that members right across the House are in support of this bill. I know that members have talked about the issues of poverty and some members have talked about how poverty actually affects the outcomes for children. I echo the Minister of Justice’s comment: poverty is no excuse for the abuse of our children. This Government has actually spent a lot of money to try to better the outcomes for people who are poor so that we can actually assist them in providing better conditions for their families.Over the past 4½ years 215000 families have been able to access Government grants to insulate their homes so that their houses are not cold and so that children do not end up with rheumatic fever colds and flu. We are on track to finish insulating every State house that is capable of being insulated by the end of this year. We are also providing more places in early childhood education for the children who need it the most and we are especially targeting funding to ensure that vulnerable children are enrolled in early childhood education. It is in fact vulnerable children who do not end up in early childhood education and we want to make sure that they are in early childhood education. We have put money into that and we are making sure of that.We have also improved immunisation rates for children. Often people say that poor people cannot afford immunisation. Well we are providing it. Under National 93 percent of 2-year-olds are fully immunised and that is a great result to boast about I believe. Doctors visits at any time of the day or night are free for all under-sixes.The Government has funded 149 extra social workers in low-decile schools and an additional 96 social workers have been added to the Child Youth and Family front line. We also know that the effects of the global recession were hardest on those with the lowest income so we took action to soften the sharpest edges of the recession. We did that by protecting Working for Families payments and increasing them this year by legislating consumer price index increases to benefit levels by lowering income tax rates across the board by raising the minimum wage every year since we have been in Government by overseeing the slowest rate of increase to the cost of living in 12 years and by increasing wage rates.There is a lot more that we can actually do and that is why we have this legislation in the House today. We are working on a care strategy for children in State care. We have the Child Protect line and the Vulnerable Kids Information System and we are increasing the pool of iwi caregivers. Anybody who works in Government with children will be screened and vetted and I welcome that. This measure will affect around 376000 workers and I am sure that some of them will think that that is very cumbersome. I am sure that some will even complain that they should not be vetted at all.Anyone with a serious conviction will be permanently restricted from working closely with children. We will introduce child harm prevention orders which can be placed on adults who pose a serious risk to children to prevent them from ever interacting with children. We are getting tough on people who abuse children. Where abusive parents go on to have further children they will have to prove that they are fit parents. I know that that can be quite controversial in some sectors but we must protect our children because often those children who have been hurt abused and even killed have been abused neglected and killed by those people who are closest to them—often their families—and we must do everything we can to protect our children.I think that this is a fantastic bill that the Minister for Social Development has brought to the House. I look forward to the select committee process and I commend this bill to the House.