Newman Muriel: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Newman Muriel: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:618;Page:13812] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak on behalf of the ACT party in this estimates debate and I would like to touch on the Department of Child Youth and Family Services as well. In the department’s statement of intent on page 10 it talks about the intended outcomes of its care and protection strategy which are to prevent the occurrence and reoccurrence of child abuse and neglect. The department wants to address the effect of harm and to restore and improve the well-being of children. The statement of intent then goes on to talk about youth offending outcomes and states that the department wants to reduce youth offending and to hold young people to account for their offending. I ask the Government where in that statement of intent there is any mention of holding the perpetrators of child abuse to account for their offending. 
I have been watching the child youth and family portfolio since I came into Parliament in 1996. The incidence of child abuse in this country has continued to rise relentlessly and the number of cases coming before the department has continued to rise. Just a couple of months ago a headline stated that there were some 6000 cases of potential child abuse waiting to be allocated to a social worker. I want to know why it is that as a society and as a House of Representatives we are not calling out for a zero tolerance to child abuse and saying that anybody who is responsible for it will be held to account and sentenced to a tough sentence so that firstly child abusers are not free to go out and abuse more children and secondly a very strong signal is sent out to the community at large that child abuse will not be tolerated in New Zealand. 
It seems to me that we end up with a situation whereby the department does all that work in removing children from their homes and trying to keep them safe. The department has already seen many of those children before; they are from families that cannot keep them safe. But nowhere do we hear that the people responsible for child abuse are in prison. Occasionally we do hear that—I should put the record straight by saying that occasionally we do—but not in the same volume as the number of cases that come before the department. I say it is time we woke up. It is time we said that we have a zero tolerance to child abuse and that that is what we want the department to have. When the department puts together its statement of intent for the next financial year I suggest that that be one of the outcomes stated in it. The department probably would not do that work—it should be done by the police—but the point is that it can put such a policy in the statement of intent and can work in a collaborative fashion with the police to ensure we have a zero tolerance towards child abuse. 
The previous speaker spoke about a case that happened recently. A mother has now been charged with assaulting her 6-week-old baby. She had previously had her other two children removed from her because she is incapable of looking after children. I would like to ask this House again why we are not saying that women who have children and who have a record of not being able to look after them should be encouraged to adopt out those children. I think that the decline in adoptions in New Zealand when we see the corresponding rise in child abuse is a scandal. If people cannot care for children we as adults have a responsibility to ensure they are put into a family that will love them raise them and care for them in the way that we would want our own children to be raised. 
We need to look at the whole way that we have organised the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. A number of us now believe that the department is outmoded and that we need to rebuild it as a community-based one-stop shop. I further believe that we need to have a long hard look at the welfare system which is encouraging people into long-term intergenerational dependency whereby child abuse goes down from one generation of a family to another. 
Hon Rick Barker 
: Rubbish! 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN 
: I challenge the Minister to come to the House and show us that that is not true. Most of those children have been seen by the department before and so have most of those families.