Borrows Chester: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Borrows Chester: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:9335] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I will start with a few comments about the process that the Social Services Committee went through. Although it was a fairly heated debate at times and colourful at other times what was quite overwhelming was that the committee agreed on a number of things. I am sure that each member of the committee engaged in a positive way albeit we were not free from politics. Given that it was a parliamentary select committee no one should be surprised by that. 
It is also important to note the history of the legislation that the bill amends. The Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 replaced the Children and Young Persons Act 1974. The drafting of that legislation included the responsibility to deal with families. When the legislation was written it was a world first. Funnily enough it was written in the same year that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was written. It seems unusual to me that the Government of the day in drafting the bill and being aware of what the convention entailed did not include within it the provisions that the Opposition seems so drastically to want today. The fact is that around the world different jurisdictions classify the various ages of people appearing before their criminal jurisdictions in different ways. A person who is legally a child in New Zealand might be a young person in another country or an adult in yet another country. If we look at all the countries that are signatories to the convention we will see things interpreted in different ways. 
It does not mean that with the benefit of hindsight we would not go back and change some stuff. For instance I do not believe for a moment that given the opportunity to go back Labour would not have made some significant changes—changes that it is actually voting against in this bill—soon after 1990 when it was elected to Government. In fact Labour set about making a number of those changes in a piece of legislation that is still on the Order Paper as I understand it and that the Green Party was supporting. It does things like extend the term of supervision with activity and supervision with residence. This is in spite of the fact that we have just heard the Green Party member Metiria Turei complain that incarceration for longer terms can only be a bad thing. Legislation that the Green Party was supporting in the last two elections did pretty much what this Government is doing in terms of those sorts of sentences. 
We also have to remember that under this legislation the number of young people aged 12 and 13 who will appear in the Youth Court will probably be fewer than 100 based on current statistics. Those statistics not only come from the ministry but also have been given to us by the Youth Court. The person who will make the decision whether the 12 or 13-year-old appearing in the Youth Court—the child—will continue down the track within the Youth Court is the judge. The person who has been applauded the most by both sides of the House—we all want to grab hold of his every word and glue it on to our policy statement—is the Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft. It is within his jurisdiction and by judges acting under his direction that the decision will be made whether that 12 or 13-year-old has offended in such a way that he or she should continue through the Youth Court and access the provisions of this legislation or whether he or she should go back to the Family Court and be dealt with in that way. It is very very important to remember that those judges are the people who are making that decision. 
I have another interesting point. The Opposition has raised and protested against only a very small number of things. The Opposition actually supports longer terms for supervision with activity and supervision with residence which is in effect what our Fresh Start camp is but with further wraparound services—and the Opposition supports that as well. It supports the removal of the consent required for community service orders. The only problem the Opposition really has is with the use of the term “military-style activity camp” and with the provisions relating to 12 and 13-year-olds. The Labour Government accepted that there needed to be closer supervision and a closer look at the impact of programmes on people after they had finished a residential sentence. But Labour has not said that if it were returned to Government it would turn this back. It has not said that when Labour is next in Government it would unwind this measure and undo it. It does not say that. It knows that it supports the bulk of this stuff. It is only those two provisions that it does not like. 
The fact is—and I take issue with the previous speaker Pita Sharples—that this legislation includes parents family and whanau far more than they have been included to date. This legislation is actually a step towards where the Maori Party would have us be in terms of inclusion and in terms of getting some semblance of Whanau Ora operating within the criminal justice system. I accept and applaud the fact that the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 took that process a long way down the track—far further than it ever had been under the previous legislation. A lot of us cynical cops at the time were absolutely convinced that it was going to fail and I am absolutely convinced that it did not fail. The only problem with the provisions it instilled within our youth justice system reaching their full potential was that a lot of cynical policemen and women out there did not apply it in the way that it could have been applied because it took too much paperwork and it was too cumbersome to deal with in a speedy and timely manner. Young 12 and 13-year-olds who should have been appearing in the Family Court and who should have had their care and protection issues dealt with because their offending displayed a need to do that never made it there and that was because of the attitude of practitioners operating in the field. 
I also supported the separation between care and protection social workers and youth justice social workers that the previous Government implemented to try to deal with exactly that situation. When people sit in the Youth Court as I have sat in the Youth Court they see young person after young person appear before the court only to have their cases put off again because the social workers who are in charge of case-managing the proceedings before the court have not done the notifications that they should have done. All of that eroded the confidence and the trust that people had in the youth justice system. 
This legislation shifts responsibilities towards parents but it does not cut them adrift and hold them solely responsible. It has the ability to hold parents accountable for their children’s offending and so they should be. I am proud of this legislation. I thank the people on the select committee who worked towards it and those who worked against it. Thank you for their engagement.