Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Firstly I just want to refer to a comment that Minister Tolley made before the dinner break about the need for this legislation because the previous legislation in her words is not working. I want to start my contribution by challenging that because it is obvious to me in my experience that there are some amazing people who work in child protection child support and in the youth justice system. They are working really hard to ensure that our children are safe from harm and when things are difficult for them they do the very best to ensure that our children are restored and placed in the best care. There are people working very hard for that.But what I have to say is I do not believe that the problem is so bad that we need to change the legislation. I think the real issue—and others have raised it—is around practice. I want to give you a practical example of what I mean by that. The social workers within Oranga Tamariki—what was Child Youth and Family—work extraordinarily hard. They have huge caseloads with some very complex issues. But when we get situations where we have within the legislation the ability to have family group conferences—which when they were designed were world-leading opportunities to get key parties together to wrap around that child and put in place plans to support not only the child but the family the parents to actually parent that child better and actually put in place all of those monitoring mechanisms such as the nannies the aunties the people with vested interests in ensuring that child's well-being. They were groundbreaking the family group conferences.The problem that we have today is that we do not resource them that we have to wait for months for a family group conference to occur and that when they do occur we are not getting the right people in the room because we cannot actually identify who they are. We have got social workers who are hampered in their ability to do a good job. How is that going to change with legislation?After the death of a baby a process was put in place called the child protection review panel made up of members of community organisations and members of the community which would spend some time every week reviewing those files that social workers had closed before an investigation could be completed. So at least there was a set of eyes on those children who may have gone under the radar. In terms of a notification it may not have seemed sufficient enough to even warrant an investigation so nobody would actually have gone out to have a look at that child. This panel was put in place because a child died because the practice was so poor. The community panel was put in place to monitor those notifications that were not investigated. The reason that was put in place was that Child Youth and Family could not resource that process itself not with paid professionals so it needed a community group to do that. So I go back to my point that before we look at changing legislation let us look at what our current practice is or is not achieving.Now when we look at the changes that have been made and the proposed changes in this legislation where are the voices of those people who are at the coalface? Where is the significant voice of not only social workers but Māori practitioners? One of the issues that has been raised in this is that of the children who come under the purview of Oranga Tamariki 60 percent of them are Māori so where are the Māori practitioners advising on this piece of legislation?I want to turn to the bill itself. We have had lots of commentary about clause 4 Purposes" because I think there are some inherent flaws in there. When we look at the very first part of clause 4 "Purposes" clause 4(1)(a) we look at the words "establishing promoting or co-ordinating services that—(i) are designed to affirm mana tamaiti (tamariki) are centred on children's and young person's rights promote their best interests advance their well-being [and] address their needs". Why are we addressing their needs? Why are we not actually meeting their needs? Why are we not establishing what their needs are and actually meeting them? Why do we use words like "address"? Why are we saying in this clause "establishing promoting or co-ordinating services that are designed to"? Every single word in a piece of legislation has value. Rather than saying "co-ordinating services that are designed to affirm" we must surely affirm. We do not need to design something to affirm; we must affirm. Why are we addressing needs? We must meet their needs.We look further down to clause 4(1)(d) and the words are: "(including their developmental needs and the need for a safe stable and loving home):". I will address the safe stable loving home shortly but "including their developmental needs"—what are the developmental needs of a child? Yes probably a safe stable loving home. It would be nice if it was a warm dry affordable home. It would be great if the families—Carmel Sepuloni: You mean not a car or a garage?POTO WILLIAMS: No not a car or a garage. It would be great if families and beneficiaries did not have their benefits cut if they could not make an appointment thereby cutting the potential for being able to feed their kids that week. Health needs—does that come under developmental needs? It certainly does.Where in this legislation are the responsibilities of Oranga Tamariki to ensure that that family is supported to meet these needs first and foremost—first and foremost? That does not appear to be in here. It is one of the big failings not of the legislation but of the practice that we are not wrapping services around those families first and foremost to address those needs. Government policy is actually leading some of these children into care Government policy is leading some of these families into distress so let us address that first before we start fiddling with legislation because let us face it the previous legislation actually needed to be fully implemented first before we could say it had flaws in it.I go back to my comment about family group conferences. It was groundbreaking when those were first instituted. When they are resourced properly they work well because what they do is they address the needs of that family to ensure that it can keep the children. They put in place all the community support that that family needs but address it up front before it gets so bad that you must uplift that child.The Minister's own Chief Social Worker came all the way from Wales to work in New Zealand because of the process of having family group conferences. He said that it is such a good process he wanted to be involved in the country that put it in place. You cannot tell me Minister Tolley that the legislation is flawed when your very own Chief Social Worker is saying that the processes that we have put in place if they are implemented right are actually going to do the job.First and foremost we need to look at ensuring that the family is supported to care for the child that the parents are supported to care for the child that the mother is supported and that Government policy does not get in the way of that. That is our first priority. So when we are talking about the need for a safe stable and loving home where is the Government responsibility to ensure that that happens? Let us face it many of our homes are not stable—they are pretty chaotic a lot of the time are they not—so what is the requirement? Why have we got this in there—"a safe stable and loving home"? Is the Minister implying that our families do not have loving homes? Is the Minister implying that we do not love our children because sometimes chaos gets in the way? I actually find that hugely patronising and it goes straight to the heart of why we have to get away from legislation that carves us off in terms of our race Minister. I am going to take further calls but—"