Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Not one more of our tamariki mokopuna. I think that needs to be the position of this House.My contribution today will focus on the updated objects and principles in the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 and I want to focus on where they came from. I would just like to read from section 13 of the current Act. Section 13(2)(b) says: the principle that the primary role in caring for and protecting a child or young person lies with the child's or young person's family whanau hapu iwi and family group …". Where did that come from? Actually it came from the report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Māori Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare. If you google it what it says is that it was "a detailed commentary and enquiry into racism within New Zealand society and in particular within the Department of Social Welfare."The relevance of this piece of legislation to Māori is actually monumental. Between 1955 and 1985 there were 45000 closed stranger adoptions. Most of those were Māori children who were placed within Pākehā families. Today we are talking about 5000 children in State care—3000 those children are Māori. So the relevance of this particular piece of legislation to Māori is huge.I also want to quote from the Pūao-te-Ata-tū report on page 7: "At the heart of the issue is a profound misunderstanding or ignorance of the place of the child in Maori society and its relationship with whanau hapu iwi structures." Currently there are over 26 references to whānau hapū and iwi in the Child Youth and Family legislation. When this piece of legislation goes through there will be only six and the biggest issue that we have is that kin placements—or Māori children being placed within whānau hapū and iwi—will cease to be a priority.In 2012 the Families Commission published a report by Dr Fiona Cram. It was a very interesting report because what it did was look at children in care and it noted that worldwide indigenous children were overrepresented in child welfare systems. These were the reasons: systemic racism the application of white middle-class standards and values to indigenous communities and also intergenerational fragmentation of the family and community structure. So really it was a commentary about the continued consequence of colonisation. Overrepresentation was exacerbated by structural risk factors and those were poor housing and poverty. That context I think is incredibly important especially when we try to answer the question: who is best to care for Māori children?Well from Pūao-te-Ata-tū who is best to care for Māori children? It actually is whānau. Ultimately it is the children's parents. If they are unavailable then we are looking at grandparents we are looking at their aunties and uncles or we are looking at siblings cousins. But ultimately why do we want children placed within whānau? Because it is within whānau that we know who we are and where we come from. Who we are and where we come from is about our identity and that is where our whakapapa is incredibly important. Who helps answer that question: "Ko wai au?". Ko Tongariro Te Maunga ko Taupō Te Moana. ["Who am I?". Tongariro is the mountain and Taupō is the lake.]Am I not really lucky? I can quote my pepeha. I know where my maunga is. I know where my awa is. I know where my marae is. I know who I am.So unfortunately I think the implementation of the legislation has really been about shifting responsibility from the State to any other kin carer and it did not matter who they were. What we have never done is fully implement the findings and the recommendations of Pūao-te-Ata-tū. Professor Mason Durie actually in 2006 presented to Treasury a whole lot of indicators of measuring well-being. But central to that was the capacity of manaakitanga and that is about the capacity of the family to care for itself and for its tamariki and the mokopuna. And why is that so fundamental? Because actually it is about access to Te Reo to tikanga Māori—to what makes you who you are.So if we erode that from this piece of legislation essentially what we are saying is that as a Māori indigenous person of Aotearoa we can go back to the 1950s 1960s 1970s and 1980s and place you outside your whānau hapū and iwi and you can be brought up by some random and that is in your best interests. Well we refute that fundamental principle. Thank you."