Luxton JoJO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. This omnibus bill gives full effect to aspects of the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act 2017 by seeking to ensure that the benefits of the policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction are fully realised and addressing drafting errors in the 2017 Act. Mr Assistant Speaker thank you for the opportunity to talk on this important bill the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill in the name of the Minister for Children the Hon Tracey Martin.If I can I would like to firstly and very quickly commend the work that Minister Martin is doing in this space for our tamariki and young people. As I've said before on many many occasions I'm really proud of the fact that we are placing children and young people at the heart of policy and decision making in this country. Again this piece of legislation fine-tunes the definition procedures and processes surrounding interactions of young people and the justice system. This policy aims to give effect to two aspects. The first is seeking to ensure that the benefits of the policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction are fully realised and it does this by amending legislation to ensure the expanded youth justice jurisdiction is applied consistently across the justice system. I think that alludes a little bit to what my colleague mentioned before around listening to the children wanting to be treated the same as Anahila mentioned. The second is simply addressing some drafting errors in the 2017 Act including unintentionally broad provisions relating to interim court orders as well as correcting cross-referencing errors in the Children's Commissioner Act 2003. It is really important that these drafting errors are fixed up because often we see things happen within our legislation that have unintended consequences that we do need to look to amend from time to time.I also want to touch on a couple of points that other people have made. With regard to Mr O'Connor he talked about victims and that with this piece of legislation we're not wanting to minimise them and their need for justice to be done. It's quite the opposite in fact. I think as the Hon Louise Upston mentioned before this gives us also the opportunity for these younger people that are 17 to help put them on a different path than what they might otherwise end up on should they end up in our adult courts.It's important that we look to be restorative and not punitive when we deal with our young people of this age group and I'll talk a little bit about that a bit further on. But in particular in relation to youth justice jurisdiction the policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction was developed as a result of recommendations proposed by the modernising Child Youth and Family expert panel to expand the youth justice jurisdiction. In their report the panel recommended moving the upper age setting for the youth justice system from age 16 to 17 so that only those of 18 years and above would be considered to be adults for justice purposes and become part of the adult justice system. As per the report New Zealand is also out of step with the international community in excluding 17-year-olds from youth jurisdiction. It was actually really interesting to note that almost all Australian states—excluding Queensland—England Wales Canada and many American states include 17-year-olds in their youth jurisdiction.It's also worth I think pointing out and acknowledging that there's an evolving body of evidence about brain development and maturity and new brain science understanding of adolescent development which actually also supports the notion that we should increase the age at which young people are treated as adults. If we look internationally Massachusetts does not allow prosecution of children under 14 in adult court even for murder. However here in New Zealand we require that such charges proceed in adult court for children as young as 10 but whilst retaining the rebuttal presumption that the child could not form the intent to commit the crime. One thing that I also want to point out that is highlighted in the report is that evidence suggests that dealing with young people in the youth jurisdiction rather than dealing with them in the adult system is likely to reduce reoffending and reduce the number of victims in crime. And again that goes to the point that the Hon Louise Upston made about putting children on a different path which could potentially be a path to reoffending should they go through the adult court system.What this legislation also takes into account is the long-term impact that having a criminal record has on our young people's long-term prospects. So if we're thinking about restorative justice giving our youth the opportunity to make amends for the actions that they have undertaken the crimes that they have undertaken instead of putting them into the adult system whereby they could be led down a different path—one that enables them to commit further crimes going on into their adult life—and if we're wanting to give these children or young people the opportunity to make amends then we don't really want them to be going out into the world after they've done this with these long criminal records because that could potentially also hinder their opportunities for further employment the ability to even fit into their local communities and things like that. So we do need to think about those sorts of things thinking about the long-term prospects for our young people by having them tried as youth as opposed to adults. While there are suggestions that the current system of dealing with 17-year-olds in the criminal justice system is likely doing more harm than good what we know for sure is that a formal criminal record has long-term consequences as I said for employment and social engagement. I also wanted to bring up a point that Anahila made before about We can't wait any longer to make these changes." We've heard that it's being rushed but as she said before if we wait and extend this out longer and longer what happens to those young people who are nearly at the age of 17 now should they commit a crim? We don't really want them to be doing that obviously but should they commit a crime and we wait and we extend this out longer and longer and longer the chances of those young people obviously being tried through our adult court system and the chances of them ending up in our prisons and our jails is going to be really high. And it could also end up as we've said before in leading these young people down a different path one that could involve a lifetime of crime as opposed to changing the legislation as soon as we can—I think it's July someone has mentioned before—so that we're giving these young people the opportunity to be tried in youth courts which could provide them an extremely different outcome than what they may otherwise have if they were tried in an adult court. We should be supporting our people on positive pathways so that they can contribute positively to our communities society and to the economy."