Moroney Sue: Vulnerable Children Bill Children Young Persons and Their Families (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill KiwiSaver (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Vulnerable Children Bill Children Young Persons and Their Families (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill KiwiSaver (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 19 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18741. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):It is a pleasure to rise to speak at the third reading of the legislation formerly part of the Vulnerable Children Bill. I congratulate the Minister for Social Development on bringing the legislation forward and bringing it all the way through to its third reading in a timely fashion. I also want to commend the work that was done at the Social Services Committee on the Vulnerable Children Bill because I think that it did improve the bill and we were able to ensure I guess that some of the more problematic parts of that bill were taken out actually. That was what happened; quite a significant part of that bill was taken out. I also want to acknowledge Anthea Simcock from the Child Matters organisation in Hamilton because I understand that quite a lot of what has ended up in this legislation has been as a result of her advocacy around the issues for children who are vulnerable and vulnerable to child abuse. I think we should just call it what it is quite frankly. So I congratulate Anthea on her involvement in this.It is of course with great sadness that I reflect on another Hamilton occasion which I am not so pleased to acknowledge. Very recently our community in Hamilton has witnessed the death of an 8-month-old child an infant from our community. That is a very very sad occasion and it makes us all reflect on our community and what it is about our community that allows children to be put in the sort of danger where they lose their lives in terrible terrible circumstances. I just want to say at the outset that this legislation although a good start is sadly a little bit of a wasted opportunity because there are so many other areas that could have been addressed in this legislation and that would have actually allowed it to deserve the title of legislation that really will protect all vulnerable children.Although there are some very useful measures that will regulate and make it safer for children who are being cared for in the services that are provided by the paid workforce we do know that in New Zealand very sadly the majority of child abuse cases and child deaths due to abuse happen not because of actions done by people in the paid workforce but by those who have relationships with those children that ought to be loving relationships and protective relationships but have instead turned out to be abusive relationships. So although this legislation deals with a proportion of this ugly problem that we do have here in New Zealand sadly the vast majority of cases will be untouched by this legislation and I think that is a great shame. We have still got an awful lot more work to do—an awful lot more work to do.I want to reflect on some of the areas that the legislation does cover. As I have made reference to it does deal with people working in the children’s workforce and ensures that there are some more robust screening and vetting processes in place than there are currently and that is useful. There is also a very controversial part of the legislation around the removal of subsequent children. This is the situation where if a parent has already had children removed from them because of their neglect or abuse of those children at the birth of a subsequent child that child can be removed. I guess it is not terribly controversial in one way because that already happens in a New Zealand setting. That is already the situation. But what this legislation does is allow that to happen with I guess less evidence from Child Youth and Family that the subsequent child is at risk and I think that that is a big step to take.I watched with great interest 3rd Degree earlier this week I think or it may have been last week where we saw the story of the mother of Delcelia Witikā who was one of those children whose name just brings the horror of the situation straight in front of us. I watched that with great interest because she was a mother who had been convicted of the manslaughter of her children—I believe it was the manslaughter of her child. She was a woman who was herself subjected to extreme domestic violence and she failed to protect her child from that level of violence as well. What was interesting was looking at her and her life more than a decade on I think from that terrible event that occurred. It was interesting to note that she has had a subsequent child another daughter who is not directly in her care but whom she has contact with. She has a completely different relationship a completely different life and a completely different environment in which she is engaging with that child so it actually gave me great hope. It gave me great hope that from terrible circumstances parents can actually get to a stage where they feel that they can have a loving relationship with another child so I think that is something that we need to discover more about and we need to understand more about.It was with great sadness that I heard Delcelia Witikā’s mother whose name I cannot remember—Tānia I think; Tānia Witikā—describe the chaos that she was living in the poverty that she was living in and the environment where drugs and alcohol were a very normal part of daily life. I do believe that until we get to those root causes until we address those issues and in particular until we get really serious in this country about domestic violence—because that was very much a part of this story—then we will not be able to protect children like Delcelia Witikā in the future. I think that is the challenge that we still have in front of us and the provisions in this legislation to remove subsequent children are not really the answer that we need to get to in this country. The answer that we need to get to is to have those children born into a loving environment where they have the resources necessary where they are not living in poverty and where they have I guess the ability to sustain a loving family environment. That is going to take more than this legislation. I think the Minister for Social Development has already acknowledged that and I applaud that.Let us not kid ourselves for one minute. Unless we deal with the issues of poverty we actually confront those and we acknowledge those we will not be able to deal with them. I would say exactly the same about domestic violence. I am very concerned that we have in this country an increasing number of incidents of domestic violence happening but a lower number of arrests and a lower number of convictions. That to me is the story of a country that is turning a blind eye and that is trying to suppress how serious the problem with domestic violence is rather than a country that is prepared to own up acknowledge the problem and know the size of it before it can even begin to address it and that does concern me because I am not in favour—I am not in favour—of sweeping things under the carpet. I think that as a country we have done that for too long. I am absolutely dismayed to learn that the police stopped reporting the levels of domestic violence in their annual report 2 years ago because that is a symptom of a country that is wanting to sweep matters under the carpet rather than expose them understand them and deal with them. We will not protect our children if we cannot protect women in their own homes quite frankly.Violence against women and children is a big cost to our country. It is a huge cost to our country and not only to those individuals but to each one of us because we are all affected when we as a country cannot say that we can protect the most vulnerable. The children talked about in this legislation are amongst the most vulnerable and I do not believe that we are doing enough. It is a start with this legislation but I do not believe it is enough to actually make sure that we can stand up and be proud of what our country is doing with regard to protecting these children. Thank you.