Hayes JoJOANNE HAYES (National): I rise to take a call in the second reading of the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Bill. I want to thank Minister Anne Tolley for the work that she has done to get to the place where we are at today—to get the bill to where it is. The Minister and her team have worked very hard to consult widely from the top of the North to the bottom of the South and from the East to the West.They went out to consult a wide range of organisations including Iwi Leaders Forum on the parts within this bill. As I understand it that was one of the most challenging hui as the Minister and her team listened carefully to what the Iwi Leaders Forum had to say. Along with my colleagues on this side I was very pleased when the result was that the Iwi Leaders Forum with the changes made in this bill said it would come and support this bill.The other group that I also want to thank for getting this bill to where it is now are our members on the Social Services Committee. We all worked hard. We had our raruraru in the select committee but we were able to come together and agree on the report albeit the Labour Opposition members are opposing it.We all know that this is the biggest reform in 30 years for Child Youth and Family and the bill proposes a number of things. It allows young people to remain in care or return to care up to the age of 21 and be able to transition from care up to the age of 25. That is really important because that is what a group of young people whom we heard from said. They came from the Youth Advisory Panel to the Minister to discuss how they had been left out. We also heard from those young people through the Youth Advisory Panel who said that at times there was always an assumption that they should return to their whānau when some of them said that they did not want to return to their whānau.So this bill had to be able to cater for those who wanted to return to their whānau and for those who did not want to return to their whānau who did not want to return because they still felt vulnerable and felt at risk there. Centring this bill on children and young people was the best thing to do for the way forward. I really do have to applaud the Minister and the team that she worked with and the advisers and I applaud the panel of youth who gave that advice on the way that this bill was going to actually work for them.I think that extending the youth justice system to include lower-risk 17-year-olds was also a gap that was found in the review of the legislation and so we were able to extend it out to 16. We had just a couple of submissions that said that they did not want that to happen. But we as a committee said No no. This is where we will go with this." and we listened to the argument.So as I said before the bill actually places children at the centre—children at the centre. I heard in another contribution just before that it was children and whānau but they are actually children. They are the most precious things in our lives. They are our future. It is our responsibility to make sure that they are safe and this bill does that for those young people who are at risk.I want to extend my thanks to the 442 interested groups and individuals who took the time to submit to the select committee and to the 98 individuals and organisations that came along and gave oral submissions to us. They were very interesting and very thought-provoking and I just want to extend my thanks to them.So without any further ado I am very proud and very pleased to commend the bill to the House. Kia ora."