Logie JanCHILDREN YOUNG PERSONS AND THEIR FAMILIES (ADVOCACY WORKFORCE AND AGE SETTINGS) AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingDebate resumed from 29 November.JAN LOGIE (Green): Our children rely on us for so many things. They rely on us to feed them provide them with shelter nurture and teach them respond if they get sick and keep them safe. Our babies rely on us for everything. Government policies make many of these things easier or harder for parents and caregivers. A shortage of affordable housing means some children are living without adequate shelter. Wage and income support policies mean that 148000 children are going without what the rest of us consider the basic necessities of life and over 155000 more are living in families in income poverty.The reluctance of Government services to acknowledge Te Tiriti o Waitangi and protect kaupapa Māori services or tikanga Māori responses means that whānau and tamariki are continually being alienated from the cultural systems that support them. Tamariki Māori are being taken from families and placed in care and are hurting. That is the history and that is still the current reality for many tamariki in this country. We hear a lot of rhetoric in this House about the importance of caring for our children and I do not doubt for a second that every single member in this House does care but there seems to me to be a fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge the centrality of Government policy in shaping the options for families and indeed the centrality of Government policy in causing harm to children. We cannot debate child welfare without acknowledging that. It is not something to be scared of. In fact it is something to embrace because improving the welfare of our children becomes so much easier when we acknowledge that.A truly inspirational truly new child protection service would recognise that as a starting point. A truly inspirational service would not be focused on a group of children defined ahead of time as vulnerable according to randomly established factors that ignore the impacts of fundamental Government policy settings on their lives. A truly inspirational service would have been developed in partnership with Māori. That is what the Greens stand for but the truth is we would have supported this legislation even if it did not start at that point.But there are things in this legislation—although some are good there is a core point that worries us so much that we cannot support this legislation. I think it is really important to note that this is legislation dealing with the care and protection of our children and our babies. This is legislation that should have cross-party support because it is legislation that any person I would imagine would want to endure and to be adequately tested to the point where there was support across the House for it—because it matters so much. But sadly from the point of introduction of this legislation the Government has continued to lose support for it as the community concerns have become louder and clearer. It is a real tragedy that we are in fact unable to support this legislation.The Minister for Social Development talks about the failings of the Child Youth and Family system and how we need to move beyond that. I would also like to note that the Green Party is not saying we think things are OK at the moment. There is no one who could read the reports of the Commissioner for Children or the many reports that have preceded that and say that things are OK at the moment. But when the Minister talks about the failings of Child Youth and Family she is talking about the failure of the State and of successive Minsters and at the heart of that where so much harm has been done particularly to Māori there has not been consultation. These proposals have not been developed using that knowledge of those communities and we are led to a point of not having the right solution to the problems.Although the Green Party supports several measures in this bill with caveats we are so profoundly disappointed at this overhaul that only consulted Māori in such a completely token way. We cannot support legislation that would enable Serco to come in and uplift children from families. We cannot support legislation that would enable that. If the Minister tells us they would not do that that is not their intent well then there needed to be protections in this legislation to stop that possibility. But those protections although asked for were not put into this legislation and we cannot support that.We hear from people in the communities that discussions are now happening between people in the new ministry-to-be and people in the community about the need to establish and create a market that will support this legislation. We clearly have a different world view about what is needed to provide our babies with a healthy environment to grow up in. For the Green Party that is not a market; that is a community and a society that supports all of our children and our families.We are being asked to support in this piece of legislation radical reform that enables the dismantling of the State child protection services without a policy platform of what that will look like. It was kindly described by the Office of the Commissioner for Children as outstripping the policy process. In other words we do not know what we are being asked to sign off on with this piece of legislation and considering the very high level of anxiety that this bill may enable with that dismantling the Green Party is taking a precautionary approach and opposing this bill.We share the fears that were raised by several submitters that the bill is looking at providing extra roles in an already deeply fragile underfunded community sector where they will now be expected to take on additional roles without adequate funding. We have seen that happen with the children's teams and we are seeing that happening every day. Our children are put at risk when that happens because these agencies are doing their best with not enough and we cannot support the extension of that.We also share the concerns that the delegating out of these roles could further reduce transparency and accountability and when the Office of the Commissioner for Children said it does not have the budget to follow it up properly now in a centralised system in a devolved system where they have no more money how can we be sure of the safety of those children? When we have been hearing through the historic claims process that some claimants have been bringing cases of abuse that have been dismissed because although the child was placed there by Child Youth and Family they were not in a Child Youth and Family institution we seriously have to consider the implications of this piece of legislation for any child who may be abused in the future that this bill potentially enables the State to abdicate responsibility for what may be mass harm for children if the centralised system does not have proper oversight and systems. That is a very real concern with this legislation and it may also undermine child abuse investigative expertise which is already struggling to work in a centralised system. We cannot support this legislation. It risks the safety of our children.