Newman Muriel: Children's Commissioner Bill — Third Reading 
Newman Muriel: Children's Commissioner Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:613;Page:10121] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the ACT party to speak in the debate on the third reading of the Children’s Commissioner Bill. It has a long history in terms of trying to get passed into law. It started out as a member’s bill sponsored by John Wright of the Alliance. It was interesting that the Labour Government promised to rush it through when it took the bill over during the select committee process. It has been a long rush—4 long years—but never mind it is here today. 
The ACT party has opposed this bill. We oppose it for a couple of reasons. Essentially we oppose the idea of commissions. Commissions are basically customer service organisations that take the heat off Ministers. It seems to us that if people have a problem with children and with the system they should be contacting the Minister responsible who can do something about it. The Minister has the discretionary powers. Although the Commissioner for Children does a very good job in his or her advocacy role he or she cannot help individual cases. The commissioner is even excluded under the provisions of the bill from being involved in any issue or case that is in front of a court or a tribunal. 
 Many of us as members of Parliament are written to all the time by parents who are fighting with the Family Court the Department of Child Youth and Family Services and so on. The Commissioner for Children would get many more such letters but unfortunately he or she cannot do anything by law. The commissioner’s office raises expectations that families out there that are struggling with the system will be able to be helped but essentially they cannot be helped. 
There is a second reason ACT does not support this bill. I have been noting tonight in this debate that the Minister Government members and parties that support the Government have been talking about the fact that the commissioner is independent. That is totally wrong. The commissioner’s office is administered by the Ministry of Social Development. It is under the umbrella of the Government’s social welfare agency. Secondly the commissioner is appointed by the Minister. If the commissioner were appointed by a cross-party process or in some independent way then maybe we would have revisited our view on this bill. The point is that it is a political appointment and it is a political office. Because that is the case we know we will never get honest open truth about issues that affect children and families—issues that should be being pushed into the view of Parliament and the wider public in an honest manner. We do not get that here. 
Interestingly the Social Exclusion Unit under Tony Blair’s Government in the United Kingdom performs some of those roles. It actually talks about some of the tough issues that surround child abuse and children who are harmed in their families. The unit is quite fearless in talking about the role that family breakdown and long-term welfare dependency play in child abuse and in being open about the fact that many children in foster care fail to do as well as children who are living in a family whether it be their own family or an adoptive family. Here in this Parliament and this Government we do not talk about those issues. They are all swept under the carpet because it is not seen to be politically correct to do so. 
That is my real worry about the Commissioner for Children. Although the commissioner may want to raise some of the tough issues to do with children and the way we are bringing up kids in New Zealand he or she will be silenced by the fact that the Minister for Social Development and Employment does not want these issues to be put into the public arena. If the Minister did want those issues to be put into the public arena then he would enable it to be well known that child abuse more often occurs in broken families where there is a long history of welfare dependency and he and his Government would do everything they could to reduce long-term welfare dependency in New Zealand which would include helping solo mums to get back into the workforce and get off welfare. 
There is a bizarre situation in this country whereby the Ministry of Social Development has a policy agency that has even published reports stating that long-term welfare damages children and that sole parenthood damages children. Yet this Government passes laws that make both of those situations worse. We now have laws that say essentially that if a mother with a new baby goes on to the domestic purposes benefit she can stay there until her youngest child is 18 years old and she will not be required to take a job. That means that that young woman could be on welfare for life. If she chooses to have another baby at the right time she will have a whole lifetime of being dependent on the taxpayers of New Zealand for her well-being and of being unable to be a working role model for her child. 
One of the most important things parents can do for their children is to teach them the values of hard work and to take responsibility themselves as parents and to teach their children to take personal responsibility. We do not talk about any of those things because the Government does not want those links between family breakdown and welfare dependency to be related back to the growing levels of child abuse in this country. I am not saying that they are the only issues—we all know that child abuse is very complicated—but until we have an open and honest Government that will allow an open and honest debate about these issues we will never start to solve the difficult problems that face us and every child today. 
The Commissioner for Children is excluded from being involved in the Family Court and—[ 
Interruption 
] I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The level of interjection is such that I cannot even hear myself speak. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I agree. There will be no more interjections that are continuous like that. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN 
: The Family Court is an area that the Commissioner for Children should be speaking out clearly on. There was an article in the  
New Zealand Herald 
 just a couple of weeks ago by a Family Court lawyer who identified ways the Department of Child Youth and Family Services fails when it brings cases in front of the Family Court seeking to take a child from the parents’ home or to place a child in care. The article stated that the department often does not turn up on time that it does not have its case organised and that half the time it is a complete and utter shambles. If there is anything the Commissioner for Children could do to help make things better for the department so that it can help solve child abuse in this country that thing should be the commissioner speaking out very strongly about what goes on in the Family Court and lobbying for more openness. If we had an open Family Court the public could judge for themselves and some of these problems would disappear pretty quickly as the Government realised that it had to get its act together. 
I come back to the issue of accountability and responsibility. As I said parents and the public should be going to the Minister rather than having to go to the Commissioner for Children to talk about the difficulties they have with the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. But I have to say that we have a bizarre situation right now. The Minister who was in charge of the department previously Steve Maharey basically ducked away from any responsibility for the department once the baseline review was due to come out. That review has been completed and we now realise just how deep and systemic the problems and failures are within that department. Now there is a new Minister Ruth Dyson who fails to accept responsibility for her department. We cannot get the Minister to accept responsibility in this House and it is that Minister to whom people should be going when they have problems with the department or problems with children in this country. 
The last reason why we do not support this bill—apart from the fact that the commissioner is a political puppet and apart from the fact that it shields the Ministers from true accountability—is that the Labour Government in enacting the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child will use the Office of the Commissioner for Children as a back-door way to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act and thus ban smacking in New Zealand. The Government will use a back-door method—through the Office of the Commissioner for Children—to do that. I warn New Zealanders that that is on the Government’s agenda and it is one other reason why we do not support that office which is a political machine of the Labour Party.