Bradford Sue: Children Young Persons and Their Families  Amendment Bill (No 6) — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Children Young Persons and Their Families  Amendment Bill (No 6) — First Reading 
[Volume:645;Page:14594] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 Madam Assistant Speaker I too would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your promotion and say we look forward to working with you over the next few months in your new role. 
I would like to take just a brief call tonight to confirm that the Green Party will be supporting the Children Young Persons and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 6) going to the select committee as we believe that on the whole it makes a series of very useful changes to the legislation relating to children young persons and their families. We are especially pleased with the increase in the upper age of the definition of a young person to 17 as that finally brings us into line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in this particular area. We are delighted that neither the Government nor a majority in this House has supported the reverse approach taken by Ron Mark’s Young Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill which sought to lower the age of criminal liability originally to age 10 and then to age 12. The Green Party believes it is important that New Zealand not only moves the age upwards in order to comply with the UN convention but also gives the Family Court and the Youth Court the power to deal more effectively and more pragmatically with young people rather than have many more of them forced into the maw of the mainstream justice system at an earlier age as Mr Mark advocates. 
One related aspect of the bill where we do have some concerns is around the move to extend to 14-year-olds the Youth Court’s power to convict young people and transfer them to the District Court for sentencing. Although I acknowledge that it relates to indictable offences only the Green Party is anxious about its implications and will listen with interest to submissions in this area. We also continue to have ongoing and deep concerns about the adequacy and availability of both care and protection and youth justice facilities. I hope that alongside the work on this bill the Government will continue to deal with the infrastructure problems that dog the system at present. 
Another area in which I have a particular interest is the whole issue of the transition from care to independence for children and young people who are in some form of Child Youth and Family care or jurisdiction. In the 1999-2002 Parliament I was responsible for a Green Party Budget bid that saw more resources go into supporting some young people who needed help in that transition period when they were very vulnerable once they had turned 17—an age group that has all too often been virtually abandoned once it has left the care and protection of the service. I am therefore glad that this bill expands the availability of extended care agreements both in terms of the range of young people eligible for them and in relation to possible extensions where those agreements are approved. 
This bill also contains a number of other modifications to the way that Child Youth and Family operates. I look forward in the select committee process to hearing from people and organisations who are directly impacted on by or involved in these processes as a lot of this bill is quite technical and we MPs can learn from their experiences. Meanwhile we will be supporting the bill to go through its first reading although remaining open during the select committee process to amendments that may be needed in order to improve it.