Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): There are some bills that are more important than others in this House and this should be one of those bills. I just want to start by acknowledging that I am sure and I assume that everyone in this House cares deeply for the children of this country and that we all want to end child abuse and that in the meantime we want to ensure that the children who are in our shared care are safe and have every opportunity in life. The Green Party certainly believes that and wants that for our children.The Green Party supports albeit with caveats three provisions in this bill. But the fourth point and the Government's strategy is of such concern to us that at this point we will be opposing this bill at this reading. We know that there are the numbers for it to go to a select committee and we look forward to engaging with the community on the bill but we believe it is important in our vote to reflect the concerns that have been raised with us. I hope that through the select committee process our concerns and the concerns of people in the community are abated to the point that we can support the bill.Let me start by outlining the things that we do support. We do support extending the provisions of statutory care and protection to young people aged 17 at the very least. We advocated for this along with other parties and many many people in the community when this House was considering the Vulnerable Children Bill about 3 years ago now. During that process we heard compelling and I have to be honest completely tear-jerking evidence from young people about their experiences of being aged out of care at 16 becoming homeless ending up in trouble with the police and having addiction problems that would never have happened if they had had the support of the State until they no longer needed it. We listened to them and wanted to make the change then. It was so sad that the Government chose not to actually acknowledge their needs at that point. However 3 years on here is the Government with this provision and we will support it.The Green Party also supports calls to have this bill cover youth justice as well. Very often these are the same young people so it really is a nonsense to have the age of 18 for care and protection and the age of 17 for justice when often they are the same young people. Including care and protection with youth justice is important to ensure that our legislation is consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It would be a really good move I think ahead of the UN committee examining New Zealand in September for us to get consistency on this minimal level.The Green Party also supports the establishment of an independent advocacy service with a particular focus on children. I understand that this idea came from a hui of young people advocates in the philanthropic sector some time ago. It is wonderful in this instance to see the Government actually picking up on the innovation that is happening in our community and putting some legislative support behind that innovation. We do have concerns as some others have expressed that although philanthropic funding can often go into seeding and developing ideas it is often not the best model of funding for the long-term sustainability and assurance of something that is part of a legislative system so we will be interrogating that aspect of it during the select committee process. This will be an advocacy service and it will be very important for enabling us to hear the voices of young people and for looking at ways that we as a society can include these young people more. However that advocacy service will not have a monitoring role to ensure the safety of young people and it is really important that we get that those things are distinct—that that safety monitoring role still fits with the Office of the Children's Commissioner.I do want to register again our deep deep disappointment that the Government has failed to increase the funding for the Children's Commissioner to fulfil that monitoring role when he has clearly told the country and this Parliament that he is unable to fulfil that duty properly because of a lack of resource. Although there are significant changes as heralded by this Government coming into force over the next period that actually increases the risk for those young people. As change happens people can fall between the cracks so that monitoring role is actually critical at this very point. The fact that the Government has chosen to not increase the funding to enable the commissioner to fulfil that critical role actually sends a message that its priorities are wrong. Its priorities are not with ensuring the safety of our children as the first priority. That worries me deeply.We also support the embedding of the views of children and young people at an individual and system level. That was clearly an intent of the 1989 legislation. The paramountcy of the child was there in the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act and through cost pressures and political and ministerial risk aversion we lost it in practice. It is good to see that that will now be built back into the system.I would like to flag here though as well that children exist in families. Actually we heard from members on the other side that they had listened to service providers and social workers and children; we have not once heard a mention of families. The expert advisory group was very clear about telling stories and every single member in this House will have heard harrowing stories from families who feel as if their children have been taken off them where they have not been given support where it was not in the best interests of their children. We hear this particularly from Māori and we see this reflected in terms of the statistics. Almost 60 percent of children in Child Youth and Family care and protection are Māori. That I think means that this system should be building in advocacy and support for the voice of parents. There are some amazing examples from overseas actually of that parental involvement coming in and advocacy sitting alongside the youth involvement changing the whole system the reduction in the need for children to come into care a result. The lesson out of that is that if you actually involve the parents the children are better off and we get sustained change. Sadly we have not got that yet.I do also want to raise some points now to get to our primary concern and what we cannot support in this bill: the single point of accountability being held with the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development and the delegated authorities. The reason to explain this is that the single point of accountability takes accountability away from the social workers where it is held at the moment. There is some confusion and I do get that there are some tensions we need to work out in this but having the accountability sitting with the social worker means that it is based on their judgment from analysing all of the different variables in every family situation. What we have seen over time with Child Youth and Family—and nobody I think denies this—is that political risk aversion has resulted in really negative impacts on the practice of the social workers within Child Youth and Family.If we put the single point of accountability on the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development who is directly responsible to the Minister there is an absolute danger that we are going to increase that result and have very perverse outcomes. When we delegate the responsibilities out into the community and have other people participating in the system rather than Child Youth and Family social workers that delegation and authority and accountability from the chief executive will apply to them. When the Minister talks about Māori being keen on this—if Māori are picking this up they will still be under the chief executive of the ministry's delegation. That is not tino rangatiratanga; that is colonisation. That will not represent the needs of Māori in their community and their ability to actually practise in a way that they believe in. It will in effect have them under the direction of the Minister which is of deep concern to us.