Turei Metiria: Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Turei Metiria: Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:677] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be supporting this bill and I am very proud to represent a party the Green Party that has led the debate and indeed legal change for the protection of children from violence. It has done the hard yards on these kinds of issues and has consistently promoted the elimination of violence against children women and families. I pay tribute to my colleague Sue Bradford who would otherwise be here to address the issues in this bill and who herself was the architect of the repeal of section 59 of the Crimes Act and led the agreement of largely the whole of this House to support that legislation. 
The Green Party supports this bill because we support the recognition of the potentially vulnerable status of children around issues of violence particularly those children under 14. We all know and we have talked about this so far that violence against children in New Zealand is rife. Children are still considered largely to be the property or the chattels of adults and parents. That is an attitude that still pervades this country. We saw that attitude alive and well in the debate around the repeal of section 59. 
We agree with Labour members that section 9 of the Sentencing Act deals with this issue in a general sense so to some extent this legislation enhances if you like existing provisions. The extent to which it will make a specific difference is still a bit uncertain and because there will not be the opportunity for a select committee debate on this we will not get any information from those at the coalface of dealing with this kind of legislation whether it is the Law Commission lawyers those involved with family violence in the courts or judges who might want to have a say on this. They will not be able to give us the information we need to know the extent to which this bill would make a difference to sentencing outcomes in those cases of extreme violence and neglect against children. 
So it is very difficult at this stage I think to really understand the extent to which this bill will make a difference. We will support it in principle; we do not think that it will do any harm. But that is not a good way to make legislation—legislation should be much more considered than that. It should have a demonstrable impact; otherwise it is just a waste of taxpayers’ time and money. So we thought that a select committee process for something as important as this something as significant to New Zealand’s families as this an issue of violence and neglect like this should have been taken out to the public so that they too could have had a say about it. 
I want to refer to a Supplementary Order Paper in my name that will be tabled shortly and available to members. I have spoken to some members about it. It is to remove paragraph (a) from new section 9A(2) inserted by clause 4. This would remove the defencelessness of the victim as a factor. On the face of it it looks perfectly fine to include that in the legislation but after further consideration I am assuming that it is really about the vulnerability of the victim the child under 14 years. To that extent there is a lot of case law and law on the vulnerability of victims. But my concern and the concern of my party is that on sentencing it may lead to arguments in court that such children may not have been without opportunity to defend themselves or that they had a capacity to defend themselves whether or not they took it. 
We have had for example issues around provocation. In fact during the debate on section 59 before the section was amended many of the decisions in the court cases that allowed parents to beat their children with weapons were based on the fact that the child under the age of 14 had provoked that attack or response. It was a reasonable defence that beating a child with a weapon whether a piece of wood a piece of wire or a hosepipe was justifiable in the circumstances because the child had behaved so badly that such a beating was reasonable. Of course we have amended that legislation now so that defence is not possible any more which is a very good thing. But we do not want to see with this provision that somehow those arguments are being made again in the courts—that children might perhaps have provoked such a response or what is more likely were able to defend themselves in some way but did not take that opportunity and therefore that is a mitigating factor to be taken into account in sentencing. 
It may include issues such as the build of a child—some 14-year-olds are quite big; they are big kids sometimes—for a child’s relative age when between the age of 0 and 14 but there is also perhaps a child’s ability to tell someone. There might be some argument that a child is verbal; a verbal child beyond the age of 2 and a bit could have told somebody if that child had had an opportunity. Perhaps someone might have asked a child about the abuse or neglect but the child did not tell that person. Does that become an issue about the defencelessness of the child? 
These concerns are probably on the margins of the kinds of cases we are talking about; none the less we do not want to see this law allow for any kind of apportionment of blame to the child. In our view there should be no debate as to whether the child could have avoided that abuse or neglect by his or her own behaviour. This is the kind of argument that often happens in rape cases and sexual assault cases so it is not unknown for these debates to happen in the courts. In our view a child under 14 years old is by definition without defence—by definition. In our view there is nothing that children under the age of 14 could do ever to justify neglect and abuse—not a single thing could they ever do to justify abuse or to provide some kind of mitigating factor. So having criteria such as “the defencelessness of the victim” in the legislation may be interpreted as some kind of way of apportioning blame to the child in the courts. 
The role of Parliament is to make the best possible legislation we can for the protection of the vulnerable as we can but given the short circumstances we have in which to debate and analyse this legislation this might be a reasonable mistake to have been made. It may well not have been intended to have that consequence but with the risk that it might we say that wording should not be in this bill. I look forward to the further debate on that issue. There may be some assurance we can get that that is not what it will actually do. I am not prepared to accept an assurance that it is not intended for that to happen; that is not enough. It will not be enough for the child who has to suffer the consequences of counsel at a sentencing arguing as to whether that child itself could have done something about it or stopped the abuse or neglect. That is not acceptable. 
It would have been good as part of the process and perhaps this issue would have been raised in those circumstances to have heard from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner because I understand there was a great deal of consultation around this bill. It has been looked at by the Department of Corrections the Ministry of Social Development the New Zealand Police the Crown Law Office the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Te Puni Kokiri the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs the Office of Ethnic Affairs and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. They have all been consulted in the drafting of this legislation but the one parliamentary body whose responsibility it is to care for and protect the interests of children in legislation and policy making was not consulted on this legislation. The most important office—the one that has had the greatest impact on providing policy advice information and support for campaigns to protect children against violence—was excluded from the consideration of this bill. That was a very serious oversight— 
Hon Judith Collins 
: Was she in the country? 
METIRIA TUREI 
: Judith Collins is making smarmy remarks about the office but this legislation is about the protection of our most vulnerable children and particularly those in abusive households and environments. Judith Collins can be as smarmy as she likes but we are talking about protecting our babies from violence. I say: “Be smarmy all you want Miss but this is about protecting our children.” If she wants to play politics with this issue that is her business and the public will judge her for it. 
We should have had the proper agencies looking at this legislation to make sure that it would actually be effective. There will be no opportunity for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner to look at this legislation now. It will be passed on a Saturday afternoon under urgency. So that opportunity to really assess the impacts of this legislation on the lives of children by experts in that area has been lost. That is a very poor process for legislation of such significant input as this dealing with the issue of protecting our children our babies from violence. Thank you.