Turei MetiriaMETIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): The Green Party will oppose this legislation. There are some positive aspects to the bill that we do support such as extending the youth justice age—albeit with the restrictions that are in it and we would like to see those restrictions moved—and extending the age of care assuming that the care is safe and we can understand the provisions for that. We support early intervention for families and whānau where children are unsafe and need to be protected. We do not support the permanent removal of children from their families. It is an absolutely outrageous proposition in this bill. It is typical of National to combine it with a couple of other provisions that will be supported. But the fundamental provision in this legislation is the deliberate intention to remove Māori children from Māori whānau for good. It is an assimilationist policy in this legislation. It is a crime against the rights of the child and their whānau. It is a breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It is extremely serious.As a result of the seriousness of these proposals for Māori whānau I have proposed an amendment to the motion that the bill go to the Social Services Committee. It should go to the Māori Affairs Committee—absolutely this bill should go to the Māori Affairs Committee. Those are the provisions. We all generally agree with them. They are not that controversial. The fundamental premise of this bill is to take from whānau our babies. So the bill should go to the Māori Affairs Committee which is the only safe committee for Māori whānau to speak to about the consequences of this legislation. I hope that other members if there is an opportunity will support that amendment to the motion.There is a very abusive and difficult history of State intervention with Māori children through the whole colonisation of this country. Right from the very beginning there were requirements for whānau to send their children to school—send their Māori children to English-speaking schools—where they were required to learn English based on the theory that assimilation was better for those children. What it led to was a significant destruction of our own language and our own tikanga. Beyond colonisation itself that was the first of those serious interventions against Māori children and their right to be Māori in their own country. Much later the mokopuna of that first wave of assimilated children suffered from Government policy in the 1950s 1960s and 1970s. That was a slightly softer version saying that Māori whānau particularly because so many of them were poor and rural were not able to provide for their children the kinds of lives that Pākehā had decided were better for them and so those children were taken and put into Children Youth and Family (CYF) care—some for superficial and terrible reasons but reasons that were largely about prejudice and racism against Māori whānau.Those children were taken and put into State care into institutions that were largely occupied by Māori children and run by Pākehā Government agents and those children suffered appalling horrific abuse in those institutions—all the children Pākehā and Māori who were in those institutions. We have seen the results from the Confidential Listening and Assistance Service which has only skimmed the very surface of the crimes committed against children in care of just how appalling State care was for those children. They were taken they were placed in institutions and with foster families and they were horribly abused—particularly Māori boys. That Confidential Listening and Assistance Service report highlights the particularly nasty attacks on Māori boys. Now another generation later the mokopuna of those children are being subject to another legislative Government intention to remove those babies from their whānau.Anne Tolley and her people think that it is better that we do not take care of our own kids. That is the only excuse for removing the whānau-first" placement priority that has been in legislation and was hard-fought-for and has now been taken out. It runs alongside the existing legislation that actually was put in place by Paula Bennett the new Deputy Prime Minister some years ago which allows for even more babies to be taken from their mothers at birth in the birthing unit. So there has been a significant increase in Māori babies being taken from their mothers at birth and with this legislation which removes the kin in placement priority those babies will never go home. It does not matter how well that whānau is it does not matter how much work that mother has done to get herself well it does not matter what else is going on—those babies will never go home. It is a stolen generation again. We have had waves and waves of the State telling Māori that the way we raise our kids and our love and our connection to our babies do not matter as much as they do for Pākehā families.The trick to this is of course the numbers. More than 60 percent of the kids currently in care are Māori children. We know that the kids today in State care are not safe. There are hundreds of them missing. There are hundreds of them on the street because CYF does not know where they are—all right? They are being kept or taken into inadequate places. There was a report last Thursday about a CYF worker who took a kid—14 years old—and placed him in a well-known Mongrel Mob home. That kid then committed a crime—a burglary—and was convicted in the Youth Court as a result of being placed by CYF in a Mongrel Mob home when his grandmother had said: "I will take him." His grandmother said: "Give him to me. I am his family and I will help to take care of him." And even under the existing rules which are supposed to prioritise kinship placement that child—because at 14 you are still a child—was placed in a Mongrel Mob environment committed a crime and has suffered the results.If any provisions in the law change so as to reduce the priority of having our kids placed with our whānau and our hapū those kids will suffer terrible consequences from that State intervention and assimilation. They will be left out. They will suffer abuse. They will have nowhere to go to have their lives repaired. And the whānau will have lost our whakapapa. After all this time does the Government really have zero concept of the importance of whakapapa? I do not understand it actually because Government members would not do it to their own kids. They would not do it to their own—Jacqui Dean: Oh come on.METIRIA TUREI: No it is true. They would not do it to their own kids.This is a policy that the Government members know will have its greatest negative impact on Māori children and Māori whānau. They know that it will mean that more of our kids are taken and more of our kids will be unsafe. It is one of the most disgraceful policy decisions by Government I have seen in a long time. We will oppose it. We will support the Māori Women's Welfare League in its Treaty claim to oppose it on that basis. But as a family person with kids of my own attached to other families with kids of their own I say there is no way that this legislation should proceed. There will be a fight on the Government's hands. It will not keep taking our babies off us. Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker."