Prasad Rajen: Vulnerable Children Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Vulnerable Children Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 13 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17810. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): I am pleased to take a call on Part 1 of the Vulnerable Children Bill. I would have thought that addressing the needs of vulnerable children would not be a matter of intense contest—that it would be an area in which thisParliament would come together and work collectively to find the best solutions possible that are consistent with the nature of knowledge the nature of science and the nature of practice to make those kinds of changes. Whenever over the 6 years I have been in this House this Government has come up with any sensible idea to do with addressing the needs of the vulnerable and the not so well off this Opposition has supported those ideas—always supported those ideas.However that is not to say that the proposals that the Minister for Social Development brings before the House are perfect. We will support the good projects—and we support this particular one as well and we have supported it throughout the process in the first reading and the Social Services Committee consideration and now in the third reading—but this approach has major shortcomings. We want to expose those and by exposing those shortcomings and attempting to improve the bill we ought not to be subjected to the kind of personal attack we got from the Minister a little while ago in response to the speech given by Jacinda Ardern.I want to remind the Minister of a story because it fundamentally shows the Minister’s own shortcomings in her thinking around this. The officials know what the knowledge is about and could give her a lesson on what that knowledge ought to be and where it leads. There is a man fishing and as the man is fishing by the riverside he sees a child drowning. He jumps in and saves the child—resuscitation and the child is fine. The child is on his way and the young man starts fishing again. In a little while there is another young person a young child coming down the river in the same state. The man saves that one as well. Then there is a third one and then there is a fourth one. What the man does is find somebody else to save the ones who are coming down the stream but he goes upstream. The people watching ask him what he is doing and he says he is going to go upstream to stop the person who is pushing these children into the stream.That is a very simple analogy that explains the views that Jacinda Ardern was stating. Is the Minister incapable of doing both—rescuing the children who are the most vulnerable and at the same time going upstream and stopping those processes that are pushing these children into the stream? Any sensible policy would do both things. That is called primary secondary and tertiary intervention. It is well written about Minister. And yet in the Minister’s own response to Jacinda Ardern what she was showing was the politicisation of this particular issue that this Minister and this Government have done. They have politicised these issues in this way. They have simply looked at the headline-grabbing events the headline-grabbing kinds of ideas that would somehow show to the Minister’s own supporters that they are doing a great deal. In fact they are not doing a great deal. These policies will not fundamentally change the outcome for vulnerable children.What Jan Logie Jacinda Ardern and Sue Moroney have just been talking about is that there is a whole complex of factors that have to be addressed. Part 1 does not address that complex of factors. That is what we are trying to point out Minister and that does not deserve those kinds of personal attacks by you. It is not sexy to talk about the fundamental causes that lead children to vulnerability. It is probably sexy in her frame—that actually gets others to somehow see that they are making a fundamental difference. In fact they are not. It is much more integrated to look at both the provision of services to those who are most vulnerable right now and to ensure that those who are becoming vulnerable or are at risk of becoming vulnerable are also prevented from entering that stream. This bill does not do that.