Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I stand for the National Party in opposition to this bill. As the Minister has pointed out it was a split decision within the Social Services and Community Committee—a select committee that I have to say does tend to work very well on many of the issues that we deal with and in a collegial manner. But of course there are some philosophical differences around the table and this happens to be one of them.The Minister has outlined the changes that are going to happen as a result of this piece of legislation but I would just like to realise for the House's benefit and clarify the two main ones that are of particular concern.One of them is the subsequent child provision which is in the principal Act in section 18B and the consequential changes associated with that partial repeal which I will explain a little bit soon. And then there was another repeal which is considered to be redundant and that was information sharing which is contained in section 66D of the principal Act.Now this wasn't a bill that attracted a huge amount of attention from the public. One of those reasons may have been that the select committee was also dealing with the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People's Commission Bill which did attract a huge amount of attention. And so having these bills running concurrently I think distracted a little bit from this one actually reaching out to many of the submitters that may have otherwise been involved in providing feedback to the select committee.As a consequence only 24 written submissions were received by the select committee. Out of those 11 submitters presented orally to the select committee. So not a huge amount of feedback for the select committee to be able to gauge the interest nor to have provided to us some of the arguments for or against some of the provisions contained in this bill.The bill as I said contains a couple of parts. The first of those is around the subsequent child provision. The part of that that's being repealed does not apply to this one. This is the one that's actually being retained within the bill. And that is as it relates to parents who have a conviction for murder manslaughter or infanticide of a child or young person in their care which is the section 18B(1)(a) provision in the principal Act. The decision was made and the bill was not designed to exclude that so that has been the part of this section 18 that is staying active.The other part of it is the bit that is going to be removed and that is for parents who had a previous child or a young person removed from their care where there was no realistic possibility that that child would be returned to that parent.So these are the most extreme cases of concern around wellbeing and safety for these children. For many of those children they go on to be placed into homes for life where they are considered to be safe secure and loved by the adopted parents or the caregivers who provide those homes to them.So the part that is staying is the bit that is probably the most extreme which is around murder or manslaughter or infanticide. The bit that is being removed is the bit where a previous child has been removed from a parent and has no likelihood of being returned. So the design this provision was put in for in the first place was to ensure that where a child had been removed from a parent the children born subsequently to the same parent was an automatic consideration for the safety of that subsequent child—that second or third or fourth child or however many the parents went on to have. So in effect what it was doing was ensuring that there was a mandated and automatic response when subsequent children were born into that family. Basically what it was there for was to provide greater oversight of the safety of those subsequent children. So that is the National Party's view: it is that the reason that that provision was put there in the first place was focused entirely on the safety of subsequent children—and there is no argument that lots of work needs to be done with families that wraparound services are provided to families to ensure that they get the support that they need to make sure that they become safe loving parents providing for their children—but by eliminating this clause in this piece of legislation it simply removes a safety valve that is in place.It's interesting when we go back and look at some of the statistics this provision has been used around 19 times since the Act came into force which was in mid-2016. So it's not something that has been used without a huge amount of consideration and discretion. So when I look at the rationale for unwinding this provision within this bill—and I've heard the Minister express this in her opening remarks where we need to build relationships with families and rebuild relationships. And that's all very well but actually this isn't about the families; this is about the children. This is where we separated in the select committee when we were debating this bill. This bill is focused on the parents. It's focused on the system. It is not focused on the children. And we make no apology for taking that position.We have to remember too some of the children that have been victims of serious crime and it's a sad day for New Zealand when we have international rankings that refer to New Zealand as one of the poor performers in the world. We are ranked really lowly in terms of being able to provide for child wellbeing outcomes. I'm going to quote—this is outdated data; it was last year's data—we were 35 out of 41 in developed countries for child wellbeing outcomes. In 2003 which was the latest data I was able to source UNICEF ranked us as the third highest amongst rich countries for its child maltreatment death rates. That is a shocking record of abuse of our children. And the sad thing is this bill is not going to provide that safety net that safety valve that we need. So I think what we're doing with this bill—or what the Government is doing with this bill—it's setting out to improve practice within the system and it's setting out to make pathways easier for those that interact with it but it has lost its focus for the safety of children. We have to wonder whether it is actually with the practice that there is an issue or with the law. I would argue that the issues we have are with the practices that are employed not with the law. So I think we have found a separation in terms of where our focus lies. Our focus on this side of the House lies with the safety of children ensuring that the systems are in place. This bill does nothing to build the resources of our social workers who work tirelessly to support these families. It doesn't create one new social worker. It just makes the system easier. Thank you Mr Speaker.