Collins Judith: Children Young Persons and Their Families  Amendment Bill (No 6) — First Reading 
Collins Judith: Children Young Persons and Their Families  Amendment Bill (No 6) — First Reading 
[Volume:645;Page:14590] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 Obviously I have not made enough impression in my short time in the House! 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: You are very lucky you were not called “Tuppence”! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker and of course congratulations on your elevation as an Assistant Speaker; and I will remember your name. I am very pleased to be able to follow bar one my colleague Anne Tolley who has set out some of the concerns the National Party has with this bill. I also listened with interest to the statements made by the Hon Ruth Dyson and by Russell Fairbrother and particularly I noted that Ms Dyson talked about anti-tagging and about how this bill was going to have some sort of relationship with anti-tagging provisions and would work in well with the Government’s moves. Well I have news for Ms Dyson. Those of us who live and work in South Auckland will tell her that we are well past anti-tagging now. Now we are into etching of glass and that is the latest response from the taggers in our area. Now they etch glass so that the tagging cannot be rubbed off. The only way to get rid of that is to remove the glass replace it and wait for the next etching. Perhaps we are going to ban the sale of razor blades— 
Anne Tolley 
: Diamonds! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Or diamonds which would be a terrible thing. Ban glass or anything at all because basically that is what is happening. They use compasses from maths classes and that is one of the problems when we try to fix a symptom without dealing with the real issues. 
We oppose quite strongly a couple of things in the bill and that is why we are standing against it at this stage unless there are substantial changes. Certainly the Government does not seem to need our support on it because it has never bothered to discuss the matter with either myself or with Anne Tolley who is in charge of the area of children young persons and their families from our point of view. 
One of the reasons we oppose the bill is that it raises the age of a young person from 17 to 18. That means young offenders aged 17 will now be dealt with by the Youth Court and will be treated as though they are still children. We think that is a shame because I would like to take the Minister and some of her people who have never been anywhere a bit rough around our area and out to visit some of the young people whom she would want to call “children”. They are about 6 foot 2 inches and upwards extremely strong and very very tough and they run by all sorts of street gang names. I will not call them child gangs. My colleague Dr Wayne Mapp mentioned one of those gang names but I think it is best not to because it just encourages them. 
These people would just laugh at this bill and think we are a bunch of wusses. They would say: “You people don’t understand what it’s like. We’re in charge of the streets and you people in Parliament don’t know what’s happening.” Frankly most of them do not because most of them have never been outside of the ivory tower. 
At the moment we have a youth justice system that is already struggling to cope with teenage violent crime and I suggest that the Minister just consider a wee bit the violent crime and the increases in youth violent crime and young people’s violent crime in South Auckland and just consider what that is doing for law-abiding people the vast majority of people who live out their lives there and what is happening particularly in parts of Clendon and Manurewa which is represented by the Hon George Hawkins and certainly I know that he understands these issues. I would say to the Minister to come out of Wellington come out of the Koru Club lounge come and visit the ordinary people of New Zealand and understand what they are dealing with and tell them that the person who mugged their mother and took her handbag and stole her money or hit her over the head was only a child and needs to be treated as such. I can tell him that some “young” people commit very adult crimes and we do believe that where appropriate those crimes should be treated in an adult way. 
It is all very well for the Minister to talk about these great rates of not offending and family group conferences but we all know that there are some children who go through 16 family group conferences. So time and time again the same people are dragged in to come and hear them say: “I’m a very naughty boy” or “a very naughty girl” and “Yes I’ll probably do it again.” That is pretty much what happens. Unfortunately Child Youth and Family deals with dysfunctional families dysfunctional children and often deals with dysfunctional parents and dysfunctional extended family and whanau and it is an extremely tough job. The last thing we need to do is try to belittle the efforts they make by saying: “Oh by the way you’re going to now have to deal with these 17-year-olds who are as tough as anything who in many countries and in various stages in our own country have volunteered to go off to war put their ages up and went off to war and killed people.” What we are dealing with is “kids” as in young people but who are tough hard brutal and they will think that this bill is the biggest con job ever. Of course it is. 
We heard from the Minister tonight what it is all about. It is all about the UN convention. It is about the ticking of the boxes to make sure that we have a UN convention all ticked off so we can all be happy. Well certainly the Green Party thinks that 16-year-olds should be able to vote and they will want to say that no 17-year-olds should not be held accountable for their crimes. This is the same Government that says that basically it does not really matter what parents do because it is young people who should have all the rights. 
Well I think it is time we took some account of victims’ rights frankly. I think it is about time we took account of the rights of good parents. I think it is extremely important that parents be encouraged to be good parents not given yet another excuse not to take their responsibilities seriously. 
This bill gives greater powers to children and young people by making it mandatory to take their views into account. That is utter rubbish; I almost said a bad word! Why it is utter rubbish is that these are kids who have been very very naughty. They are difficult they are very very trying. They cause difficulties for their parents for their neighbours for their teachers and for their fellow students. Some of these kids are very violent. That is why they are there. And here we are having to take their feelings into account! Well sorry I think it is time we took into account the feelings of the rest of the population who do not go around etching windows who do not go around snatching handbags off old ladies going to do their shopping who do not go and break into other people’s property who do not go and tag it do not steal cars do not smash those cars into people while they are drunk and on drugs and illegally driving. 
It is about time we did that but nothing in this bill does it. Also nothing in this bill addresses that other area of child youth and families which is the real cause of child abuse or youth offending. We all know that many of those children who go on to be young offenders have at some stage been abused in their own lives. We know that. However that is no excuse for that behaviour. At some stage people have to be accountable for their own behaviour. There are also many people who are abused as children who do not go on to commit crimes; who do not go on to perpetuate that cycle of violence. Those are the people whom we should be helping. Those are the people we should be encouraging. 
What we should not be doing is trying to say that a 17-year-old who smashes up somebody who takes a car who rams it into a child is just a child and is not responsible for his or her actions. We believe that the person is. We believe that this bill is far too lenient on young hardened criminals and actually does not do nearly enough to deal with the real issues around child abuse and child neglect. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: Before I call on the next speaker can I just apologise to a former member of the House Anne Collins and to the current member of the House Judith Collins for confusing their names. 
Judith Collins 
: I am very pleased I do not have to be Mrs Michael Cullen! 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: Thank you very much.