Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): This afternoon I want to speak about responsible government. I believe that responsible government provides a framework for all of our people and our environment to thrive and as compassionate and caring New Zealanders I believe we all want our children to get the best start in life to be able to thrive. Yet we know that in this country despite most of us sharing that value we have the fifth-highest rate of child abuse and neglect in the OECD and that there are on average 10 children a year who are killed by the people who are supposed to be looking after them. We know also that around 60 children every year die before the age of 1 of low-income - related diseases. When the Government last term consulted New Zealanders—close to around 10000 New Zealanders—on what the Government should be doing or what we should all be doing in this society to ensure the safety and well-being of our children New Zealanders young people and old alike gave the Government a pretty consistent message that they wanted the Government to keep families together by providing services and increasing household incomes addressing inequality and providing safe and secure environments for children. That was a very consistent theme from the people of New Zealand for what we wish for our children. Yet despite the terrible situation we have in this country for our children and a very common desire to create a strong safety net for our children this Government has over recent years raised the Child Youth and Family threshold which means that more and more families who are struggling with some really complex issues like alcohol and drug abuse domestic violence and intergenerational deprivation are being supported in a community. That may sound like quite a good thing for those people who have had a terrible experience with Child Youth and Family but there is a real problem with this because the Government has not increased funding for those organisations in the community since 2008. It is giving these organisations a lot more families with some really complex issues which they are supporting them with and it has effectively cut their funding. When I have been travelling around the country talking to some of these organisations and meeting the workers I have been seeing people who are visibly distressed—who are scared that their practice is compromised and that because of the overwhelming amount of work they are putting those children's lives at risk. They are scared of mistakes that may be made because of that lack of funding and the undue pressure on them. The Government has also taken money from established programmes to set up a bureaucracy. Its flash new toy of the 21st century the children's teams are kind of a replication of an existing model called Strengthening Families but they required a whole new layer of bureaucracy and the Government provided again no funding whatsoever for front-line services—the people actually working with those families. We are now hearing very very inconsistent stories about how that is rolling out in our communities and again our children are put at risk. The Government has moved funding from programmes like Parents as First Teachers which have been given great evaluations and Strengthening Families which indeed was inconsistent but in some places was working really well into this children's teams initiative despite it not having been evaluated. Although they say they are evidence-driven their practice is in opposition to that. The Government has cut funding to Child Youth and Family so 121 social workers have been lost from Child Youth and Family since 2010. When the Office of the Children's Commissioner said he was not able to properly assure the safety of children in State care and asked for more funding to be able to follow this up the Government said No we're not going to give you more funding on that because you're managing to advocate on child poverty issues so clearly you have got additional resources there." despite the fact that it was a philanthropic trust that funded the child poverty work. Sixty children a year in this country are dying from child poverty and it is absolutely in the Children's Commissioner's ambit to do that. The Government's future plans are even worse."