Williams Poto: Vulnerable Children Bill Children Young Persons and Their Families (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill KiwiSaver (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Vulnerable Children Bill Children Young Persons and Their Families (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill KiwiSaver (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 19 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18752. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):Good afternoon Mr Assistant Speaker. I am very proud to take a call on the legislation arising from the Vulnerable Children Bill. It is one of the reasons that I got into the professional work that I was doing—because I acknowledge that in many aspects of our work the voice of children fails to be heard and in this regard having legislation for vulnerable children means that the voice of children should well and truly be heard today.I acknowledge the thousands of submissions that were made during this process over the course of the years that this legislation has traversed which started with the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children and went on to the White Paper for Vulnerable Children. Various pieces of work fell out of that including the Children’s Action Plan and the development of the Children’s Teams. And here we are today in the third readings of this legislation.I acknowledge the significant work that communities social workers legislators and everyone has done to bring these bills to this day. But I want to add my note of disappointment that despite those thousands of submissions and despite all the thousands of hours that went into the crafting of much of the work that the community submitted on some of that has not made it into the bills. There are some aspects that have and I acknowledge that but there are many things that we have not found in these bills that will not go far enough to protect the children of New Zealand.I will go back to what I believe was the genesis of this legislation because I really appreciate that the Minister for Social Development was trying to curb what has become a national disgrace in terms of our child abuse statistics and that is the case of child “M” in west Auckland. Some of you may recall that case where that poor child was the subject of torture at the hands of her parents and one of the significant aspects in the reporting of that particular case was the failure of those services that were engaged to work with that family to actually communicate with each other. I wonder about the lessons of that case that have not been learnt and have not found their way into this legislation.When I was working for a family violence service we had a picture of Minister Bennett on the wall. She had been interviewed by the New Zealand Herald some years ago talking about what she wanted to do to protect our children. That picture sat alongside some of the other pictures of children who had been abused such as the one the member Melissa Lee talked about Nia Glassie; pictures of James Whakaruru whom I use as my personal touchstone in my work; and the Kāhui twins. What I would like to ask today is whether this legislation would have protected those children—whether it would have prevented what happened to those children. In the case of child “M” where one of the most overriding issues was the lack of communication between those social services and Government agencies would this legislation go far enough to protect that child? I doubt that it does. Will this legislation go far enough to have prevented what happened to the Kāhui twins? It is possible under the provisions relating to subsequent children. Will it go far enough to prevent what happened to James Whakaruru? I am not so sure—I am not so sure.What this legislation does not contain are things like the positive aspects of parenting—supporting parents to be good parents simple things like promoting attachment and bonding. When you have young parents this is a process that needs extra support and help. Does this legislation include positive parenting programmes for struggling parents? I do not think it does. Does it address what the chief social worker terms the “unholy trinity” when it comes to vulnerable children: parents with mental health issues problematic substance abuse and family violence. I am afraid it does not address these. The chief social worker talks about what he terms the determinants of the most vulnerable children and this legislation fails to acknowledge them.I was listening to some of the other speakers. The Minister herself talked about the collaboration between the chief executive officers and the accountability that they will have in addressing this issue over a range of ministries. That is great and I applaud that but it is not the first time it has happened. We had a national task force on sexual violence prevention which was put together by the last Labour Government that this Government disbanded. I just want to remind the Minister that that was a good process. That was a good process. The Minister in recent days has been talking about how much has been put into sexual violence abuse prevention—$10.4 million I think over the next 4 years. What I want to say is that those programmes were in place but they were not well supported. The result is that we have to put in place legislation like this to support our most vulnerable children.There is another issue that I want to raise and that is in terms of legislation that has unintended consequences. I refer to a comment that I think my colleague Louisa Wall made about the numbers of arrests declining in terms of family violence. There were changes in 2011 to the Solicitor-General’s guidelines on arrests. What that meant was that there was a higher threshold required before an arrest could be made. The threshold was around whether it was likely that a charge could then result in a conviction. So police had to then make a determination on whether it was likely the situation they were seeing before them could result in a conviction in a court of law. That had a huge impact on family violence statistics. It was an unintended consequence but it meant that fewer men were arrested in domestic violence call outs. The unintended consequence of fewer arrests is that fewer men are being compelled to attend family violence and anger management programmes so fewer men are supported to deal with their anger. That is one of the key indicators as determined by the chief social worker to prevent harm to children and by a matter of unintended consequence we have fewer men being supported to deal with their anger.What I think we should have done is looked at having a much more positive approach to our children. Why are we targeting such a small group of vulnerable children when there are at least 285000 children living in poverty? Yes I understand the rhetoric that poverty is not an excuse but as my colleague behind me Andrew Little says it is an explanation. When one of the determinants of safety in a child’s life is the level of income and resource that goes into that child’s household then we must recognise that poverty is a key driver of safety for children. Why are we not looking at making positive changes to these families’ lives? Warm dry affordable homes where kids are not getting sick children who are well fed and well supported so they are not going to school hungry and unable to learn programmes that actually support all kids—real measures in place to address the 285000 children living in poverty so that they can reach their potential.I want to say I commend the Minister on starting this journey. This journey has not gone far enough. I would recommend that this journey continues so that we can do more to keep our children safe. Thank you.