Harawira Hone: Child Support Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
Harawira Hone: Child Support Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:511] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 I rise today on behalf of the Maori Party to address the Child Support Amendment Bill (No 4) which intends to make the payment of child support fairer to those liable for paying for it. The bill reflects two key kaupapa that the Maori Party is determined that this Parliament should uphold: the kaupapa of justice and the kaupapa of whanaungatanga. 
It is a matter of justice that the responsibilities and obligations that come with the privilege of parenting should be upheld. The Child Support Amendment Bill (No 4) will make it easier for non-custodial parents to contribute to paying child support. The Maori Party supports that move as a matter of justice and because it is also about the removal of penalties. The bill is proactive and it is positive. Currently late payments of child support incur harsh penalties. It has been demonstrated that this has not led to any new payments. More than half of the total $1 billion in unpaid child support debt comes from late-penalty fees and more than half of liable parents are already in arrears—a figure that has more than doubled since the year 2000. The speed with which penalties mount up actually works against the reduction of outstanding debt. Harsher penalties do not work and this bill appears to recognise that. We must therefore resist all attempts to introduce punitive soul-destroying penalties simply because some people think it is important to do so. 
We must also be cautious that although it seems this Government is introducing legislation that the Maori Party is in support of we in the Maori Party are always aware that a drop in the popularity of a Government often leads to it dispensing with issues of justice while it goes for the baubles of power and office. This morning the Maori Party spent time with the special rapporteur on situations of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples. We discussed this very concept and in particular Maori rights. Justice is not just about the payment of money; it is also about ensuring that children keep their links to the people from whom they were born. I have met too many people from Te Tai Tokerau who are trying to reconnect with their own whanau and with few exceptions nearly all of them have been State wards in some way shape or form. 
This bill is also about kids and I raise this here because I saw a letter from Cindy Kiro the Children’s Commissioner that really upset me. In it she said: “We know that most children who break the law have been abused and traumatised. These are the children who need to be rehabilitated. We need more youth facilities and other options in order to do this.” Now I tell those members who do not know what youth facilities are like that they are basically prisons for kids. After the prisons for kids teach them to be even worse kids they end up in the prisons for teenagers. Then after that they end up in the prisons for big people—for people our age. 
 What we are getting of course is a prison system that has totally collapsed. The Children’s Commissioner is recommending that we feed them in at the bottom end. She is feeding them in at the bottom end so that we end up in a situation where adults are going to jail because they know no other kind of lifestyle. 
Now although I respect Ron Mark’s comments last night about parents having responsibility for kids and how we should not do the crime etc. a lot of it is also to do with how stupid some crimes are. Not too long ago it used to be a crime to keep eggs in the fridge. Not too long ago people such as Ron Mark and Mahara Okeroa could get arrested at night for walking around simply because the law said it was illegal to walk around with one’s face darkened. 
Hon Mahara Okeroa 
: I never got arrested! 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: No. Now those are the kinds of laws that this country has to deal with because we have accepted our laws from somewhere that has nothing at all to do with this country or the people of this country. They are talking about little kids running around in England and putting soot on their faces to rob places. 
There is something sick in a society where the Children’s Commissioner whose primary responsibility is the protection of children can say that we need to build more youth prisons. We are supportive of a bill that tries to reduce a sense of penalty but we are against any attempt to use youth facilities and increase the number of youth facilities so that we are just feeding kids in at the bottom end and they come out as hardened criminals at the other end. What sort of justice does that represent? I suggest to the Children’s Commissioner and to anybody else who thinks it is a great idea to send kids to youth facilities to spend a couple of nights in those youth facilities. I made a statement a couple of weeks ago that people from Child Youth and Family Services who do not mind sending kids to jail should spend a couple of nights in jail themselves before they think about sending kids there. After they have spent a couple of nights in jail and absolutely freaked out about what a scumbag place it is—and I know because I have had some middling experience with it—they will then realise that it ain’t a good place for adults to be. After those Child Youth and Family Services staff and the Children’s Commissioner have spent time in jail and realised what a hellhole it is perhaps they should send their own kids in there after them. Once they realise that they would never ever contemplate sending their own kids to jail maybe then they will know that jail is no place for our kids or anybody else’s kids. It is a university of crime at the top end and unfortunately the Children’s Commissioner wants to start them off at a preschool for crime—youth facilities. It does not work. 
I support the view that we as the Maori Party and as Maori people need to take up our own responsibility in telling our own whanau that we have to pay our dues in this society. If we create a situation where our kids are trapped into that kind of poverty where our kids are trapped into a situation where they will end up going down that track then we have to take responsibility as well for trying to lift them out of it. This bill goes some way towards addressing that; recommendations to send them to youth facilities or allow them to be held in jails does not. 
The Maori Party supports the bill. Our party does not support any attempt to start our kids on a life of crime by simply increasing the number of youth facilities so that kids can get to the position where they will end up going to jail sleeping in vans outside prisons or staying overnight in rugby clubs and all those kinds of places. This is a big issue and it is starting at the bottom end. I hope we can all do our bit with cross-party stuff to try to address those problems. I tell folk that harsh penalties do not work but helping kids will. Kia ora tatou katoa.