Tolley AnneHon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Children): I thought I would just take a call and answer a few of the issues that have been raised. Can I first address this issue that has been talked about by a couple of speakers now that the current legislation is OK—that it just has not been resourced properly. While I have some sympathy for the resourcing issue and have attempted while I have been Minister to make up for some of that lack of resourcing and penny-pinching the reality is that if you talk to the young people for whom the system is working it is not working. The current legislation does not work for them. Even something like our internationally renowned family group conferences are known all over the world. Many other countries copy that. The young people say: Actually the adults sit around the table and talk about us. Nobody talks to us about how we feel what's happening to us and whether we think what's being proposed is going to work. And actually we know all the people that are sitting round the table saying they're going to do stuff for us and we know when that's true and when that's not." So even something as integral to our system as the family group conferences the young people themselves are saying they are not effective for them.I have never ever blamed the staff for that system not working. We had in Child Youth and Family and now in the Ministry for Vulnerable Children Oranga Tamariki some passionate great professional staff who have done their very best. The system has become over the years so risk-averse that we know that those staff were spending less than 15 percent of their time with young people and their families and the foster families and more than 50 percent of their time on administration. Now that system cannot be right. It cannot be right. What is more the expert panel said it is dealing with the crisis in a child's life.The cathartic moment for me was when I looked at that coroner's report on those four young women who died who had committed suicide in Flaxmere. The coroner did an amazing job bringing in child psychologists going right back through the lives of those four young girls who were tragically lost. We looked at all the opportunities when a crisis happened in their lives and various agencies went in and out but there was no one single point of accountability. There was no continuity for those young girls and their families. There was no prevention put in place.Whenever a crisis happened and work was done to support the family and those girls there was no ongoing support. What the expert panel said was if you can get in and work with these families the first time they come to the agencies' attention you have got a much better chance of preventing that family from falling apart and those young people needing to come into care. We have to change the legislation in order to do that. We have to change the legislation in order to lift the age and to help and support those young people to transition into adulthood. It is silly to stand in the Chamber and say the legislation is fine just put more money into it because the legislation is not sufficient to support families early on and support young people as they transition out. So that is the first thing.The second thing I want to address is Nanaia Mahuta's very good questions about the Treaty obligations and the requirements put on the chief executive. So in no way does anything in this piece of legislation remove the obligation of the Crown as a Treaty partner. But what it does do and this is quite unusual—we have put the responsibilities for the chief executive into legislation which would normally be in the conditions of employment. No other chief executive of a State agency has the robust requirements that we have put into the legislation. So we are very fortunate that we have an extremely able person who has taken up that role quite willingly.We have also reflected that she is accountable for implementing those principles of the Treaty and she has to report regularly on how she is putting them into effect. That means that we need to have some oversight of that and we are working with the iwi leaders as to how that might be achieved. She also has to report annually and publicly on the targets that have been set for the changes that are made for tamariki Māori. The targets have to have been set and then she has to report against that and she has to report how she has given effect to the Treaty of Waitangi.These are quite onerous responsibilities that are put on the chief executive because 60 percent of the children in care are Māori. That has not changed much in 20 years and we are absolutely determined unashamedly and have high aspirations to reduce the number of tamariki Māori who need to come into care and whose families need that ongoing support. I think that probably answers all the questions."