Newman Muriel: Care of Children Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Newman Muriel: Care of Children Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:621;Page:16689] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on Part 4. I want to put on record what I think is the absolutely appalling situation that we are in today. We have had the Care of Children Bill before Parliament for almost the whole year. Hundreds and hundreds of people have made submissions and the committee has travelled up and down New Zealand to hear those submissions. 
Now we have a situation whereby the Labour Government in urgency on a Friday—when we have the whole day ahead of us right through to 10 o’clock tonight—is cutting off all the speeches and contributions that parties want to make. It is absolutely appalling and it is simply a denial of free speech in Parliament. Just to set the record straight I say that Opposition parties can do nothing absolutely nothing about it. The Chairperson is the master of what happens in the Committee stage. When Government members start to take calls for closure the Chair can ignore them—which he should be doing—or he can heed their calls and close down the debate. We used to have clause by clause debates on parts such as Part 3 which has 37 clauses. I put in an amendment and got one call. That is an absolute disgrace. The Labour Government does not want to debate the bill openly. 
We are now debating Part 4. It is a much smaller part because it deals with smaller more complicated but also more concise issues. The rest of the bill is where the bulk of the debate should have occurred. I feel that that is an important point to be made. 
Part 4 deals with paternity testing. We have already heard some contributions on the issue but I make the point that the Labour Government has such a double standard—given that we passed a bill the other day about human reproduction that ensured sperm donors had to have their identities recorded so that children at some later stage would be able to find out who their fathers were and given that we have the domestic purposes benefit in New Zealand which is being used by 19000 women who choose not to name the father of their child. As we have already heard that is around 36000 children who do not know who their fathers are and this Government has failed to do anything about it. 
If the Minister for Social Development and Employment were here he would stand up and say that that is not correct and that he has made all those changes. But again the changes are Clayton’s changes. The issue is whether those children have a right to know who their dads are. In the majority of cases the mothers know who the fathers are. There is absolutely no doubt about that. Should Parliament pass a law ensuring that those children get to know their paternity—get to know their history and who their dads are? I say “Yes”. The Government should be doing everything it can to ensure that the loophole is closed. Otherwise we have a bizarre situation in New Zealand. We have rules and regulations—and rightfully so—stating that family members who are very close to one another are not able to marry for well-recognised reasons yet we have 30000-odd kiddies out there who would not even know whether they were marrying their cousins because they do not know who their fathers are. 
It is an absolutely stupid situation and the point is that those numbers have escalated under Labour’s watch. When Labour took over there were 12000 women who failed to name the fathers of their children. That number has gone up to 19000 and is on the way to 20000—one in six women now on the domestic purposes benefit. Nobody can tell me it is because they do not know who the father is.