Sepuloni Carmel: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sepuloni Carmel: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 September 2011. Volume:675;Page:21242. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) 
: 
 Malo e lelei Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. It really does sadden me to stand and speak to the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) not because we fail to support the bill—we do—but because it does not go far enough. There is much more that needs to be done; there is much more that is not being addressed. Also it forces us to reflect on the harm that has been inflicted on so many of our children in New Zealand. When looking at this bill we cannot help but think of the Kahui twins as mentioned by Mr McClay. We cannot help but think of children like Delcelia Witika baby Serenity James Whakaruru and many other children who have been treated incredibly badly. All of us who have children cannot even imagine what would drive someone to do that to their own children or to somebody else’s. 
Our concern really is that although we support this bill a lot of what the Government is doing will not address the issues that cause this abuse to happen. We have seen many reports put out recently that raise the awareness of and draw the correlation between poverty and child abuse yet nothing is being done to address the extreme levels of poverty that we as a country are facing. The Government is failing New Zealand on that front. It talks about child abuse and the neglect and ill-treatment that are occurring yet we see the Domestic Violence Reform Bill which was widely consulted upon continuing to languish at the bottom of the Order Paper. The last time I looked before today it was at No. 58 on the Order Paper. Today sadly I look at the Order Paper and see that it is now at No. 72. So it is difficult to take the National Government seriously when it talks about child abuse and the need to address the child abuse that is occurring in this country. Something that should be considered urgent something that should have been treated with a level of urgency has instead just been pushed further and further back down the Order Paper. 
We of course support any measures to prevent and mitigate the harm caused by child abuse. However we have reservations with regard to the ability of certain provisions to be effective in combating the problem. According to the Hon Simon Power the new offence of failing to protect a child or vulnerable adult will hold accountable household members who fail to notify authorities of abuse. It will no longer be an excuse for a person to say that he or she was not involved in the abuse: standing by and doing nothing makes people involved. This bill according to the Hon Simon Power makes that clear. 
I have to say that really the Government has an appalling record when it comes to looking after the most vulnerable children in our society. Multiple reports this year have highlighted the plight of children. Although we support any efforts to combat child abuse in New Zealand the Government has failed overall to protect children from poverty-related harm which extends to abuse. Just last week or the week before I attended the launch of  
He Ara Hou: the Pathway Forward Report 
 on getting it right for Aotearoa’s New Zealand and Pacific children. Some of the comments made there related to the poverty that our children are living in and experiencing. We know that with higher levels of poverty we are at risk of higher levels of abuse as well. So we wonder why the National Government is failing to address the level of poverty. Manuka Henare who did a lot of work on that report said the single most important moral issue that we face is the poverty that we as a country are experiencing. 
What concerns me is that although Maori and Pacific people make up only about 22 percent I think of the overall population we make up over 50 percent of the number of children who are in poverty. Just over 200000 children are in poverty and just over 100000 of them are Maori and Pacific children. There is something wrong there and that issue is not being addressed by the National Government. Despite its attempts to address the issue if it cannot address the real issue which is the poverty that our children are experiencing and the poverty that their parents are living in daily then this kind of legislation will do little to actually alleviate the problems that we face. 
We have heard from the Government about its green paper and we saw it all over the news when it was launched. But as one school principal in Waitakere said to me if this really is an urgent problem if the abuse of our children really is an urgent problem then why would the Government not push legislation that addresses it to its full extent—really addresses it—through under urgency in Parliament? That school principal knows that the National Government has no problem in using urgency in this House when it suits its needs: when it means pushing through things like national standards which had no evidence base whatsoever and which were not going to do anything to alleviate the problem of abused children. We have seen urgency used to push through legislation with regard to workers’ rights: the 90-day fire-at-will bill which again will do nothing to address the problem that we face in respect of abused children. We have seen the Warner Bros  
Hobbit 
 legislation pushed through in urgency and again that did nothing to address the problem that we as a country face in respect of child abuse. All of that legislation the National Government prioritised and deemed to be urgent yet it does nothing to address what should be the main issue of priority for any Government. That is to the National Government’s shame. 
I think we all saw the media coverage of that green paper when it was launched. Afterwards I had a few conversations with the people who were involved. Is it not interesting that the Minister for Social Development and Employment decided to send the woman who heads the organisation that is the nation’s advocate for the rights of kids the paper 3 days in advance? The Minister said that woman would be allowed to speak on the day that the paper was launched and that she wanted her to comment on the paper and tell the Government what she thought. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Oh really? 
CARMEL SEPULONI 
: Yes. When the leader of that organisation got back to the Minister for Social Development she said she did have some points to make about some things that she thought were not addressed or were not addressed well in that paper. She said she would like to comment on that on the day that it was launched because the Minister had said she could comment on it. Is it not interesting that the Minister for Social Development then held her here but no longer gave her the right to speak on that paper? 
This bill does not go far enough. Many things have been pushed through under urgency by that Government but there is nothing that addresses the issues that we are facing nothing that addresses the issue of child abuse which we should be taking seriously as a Parliament. 
Someone raised earlier the issue of the risk of increased family violence during the Rugby World Cup. That is another area in which the National Government has fallen down. It has done nothing to increase funding to the family violence prevention organisations over this period of time despite the fact that we know through all the research that when we hold big sporting events like this there will be increased levels of drinking and there will be increased levels of violence. Instead the Government is silent and nothing has been done to address that issue. 
I look at this bill and I think yes sure we are going to support this going to a select committee but at the end of the day we know that it will do very little to actually address the problems that we face. It will not help us to avoid situations like those we have confronted and experienced in the past and it will do very little to protect our children. Thank you very much.