Ardern Jacinda: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Ardern Jacinda: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
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JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure as a member of the Social Services Committee to speak on the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2). I would not want to do a disservice to members on my side of the House by misrepresenting any questions they may have raised over why this bill is going to the Social Services Committee because I do think it is a curious decision. This is the kind of bill that would generally go to the Justice and Electoral Committee. Of course I do not say that as a slight upon myself as a member of the Social Services Committee but given that generally these are bills drafted by Ministry of Justice officials—indeed they are the ones who have had involvement here—I think it would be interesting to have an explanation from the Minister of Justice about why this bill is being directed elsewhere. Perhaps it is because of the heavy load that the Justice and Electoral Committee currently has. As a previous member of that committee I can attest to the amount of work it is currently dealing with. 
Some of that part-way goes to my first point which is that no one in this House disputes that child abuse is an issue of critical importance for us to be addressing as responsible legislators. We have an abhorrent level of child abuse in New Zealand and of course we should be dealing with it. The debate comes down to whether we are using the best tools and policy available to us in order to address this issue. That is the question I wish to raise. 
Labour will be supporting this bill’s referral to a select committee so that we can further query that issue—so we can look into what options are available to us. Will lifting the penalties for someone who neglects to raise an issue actually prevent children from being abused in this country? That is the key question. If not what are the alternatives and are we doing enough there? Firstly though we cannot neglect the fact that there are some other elements to this bill. It is a bit of an omnibus bill which I think seems to be the modus operandi of this Government when it comes to justice issues—slightly scattered very reactive and knee-jerk and not always coherent. 
I will go back to a key point given that Simon Power is available to hear this message. I ask when we will go back to the drivers of crime that were much heralded by this Government. With great fanfare the Government announced that it would finally be looking into the drivers of crime in New Zealand the things that cause people to offend or that cause reoffending. It was a piece of work we were excited by but it seems to have disappeared into nothing. I would not mind hearing a little bit more about that in the mix of this omnibus bill. 
I give my thanks though for the ongoing work that groups like ECPAT International and the Department of Internal Affairs do around the first issue this bill addresses which is sexual grooming. That area is an incredibly difficult area to work in. I got a small idea of that when I worked for the Minister of Justice many years ago. What an incredibly draining personally stressful and difficult area those officials work in! My thanks go to them and of course I say that we should be doing anything we can to support them in the work they do. 
The second key change in this bill has already been touched on and that is the idea that under section 195 of the Crimes Act previously called “Cruelty to a child” the maximum penalty is substantially increased by this bill from 5 years to 10 years. The provision is also altered so that those who have the care or charge of children will be liable for being grossly negligent in their standard of care in those circumstances. The point I wish to make is that if a child is being abused in a family environment there is a strong correlation I would wager between that and the potential levels of domestic violence in a family. If that is the case there is a whole range of services that we should be making sure is available so that those who are in a situation where there is abuse or domestic violence will have the best opportunity they can have to exit that relationship. Exit points will be the first things they will be thinking about above and beyond the idea of “What kind of prison penalty will I be facing if anyone finds out about the abuse of my child?”. The first things they will be thinking about are “How can I exit this situation what support will I have and will I be safe?”. Those are the things that I think we should be considering if we want to ensure that children are taken with speed out of a situation where they are being abused or that those who are aware of the situation feel safe enough to raise that with either external family members or external services and agencies. 
Support for Women’s Refuge has to be a major part of that cohort of services but what we have seen recently is a slashing of funding towards Women’s Refuge. The Government has tried to claim that that has not occurred but it is yet to disprove the claim by Women’s Refuge that refuges are losing $700000 worth of funding. That is incredible for an organisation that from memory has about 300 staff and already about 600 volunteers. It is already substantively a voluntary organisation and now it has lost a considerable amount of funding. It is absolutely disgraceful to claim that this Government is addressing child abuse and domestic violence issues on the one hand by lifting prison penalties but doing nothing to ease the path to try to remove children from vulnerable situations with appropriate services on the other hand. It is disgraceful. From my perspective simply throwing in a new law that increases a penalty will not necessarily make any great change without those wraparound services being in place in the community where they are needed most. It is the same with the Te Rito coordinators the police and domestic violence advocates. All of them have said that these services make a difference on the ground. Instead the Government is slashing them and saying that it will increase a prison penalty. Where is the evidence that that will make the difference we need? 
I have not found any evidence in the regulatory impact statement. I point out that it is interesting that bills do not include regulatory impact statements any more; they just include web addresses. I ask whether that is some way of trying to make it a little more difficult to prove that the Government is not fully providing evidence for the bills it is putting before this House. But I went to the effort of looking up the said web addresses. Members will be pleased to know that I could not find the regulatory impact statement for this bill on the Treasury website but on the Ministry of Justice website I found a clear point about teenage parents in particular because the Government has made the decision that this legislation will apply to those parents under the age of 18. I will not dispute that but the point was made that very little is known about the children who are raised in the care of young parents. It strikes me that that is as area where we make a lot of assumptions and that some evidence would be useful. 
The second point is that this bill does not include under-18-year-olds who do not have a biological relationship with a child. I query that and I would like to hear the Minister of Justice point out the reason to us perhaps via officials at the select committee or in the Committee stage. If a de facto happens to be the one who has the knowledge of child abuse and is under the age of 18 then surely there should be a level of equality in the way that he or she is treated in the eyes of the law. As far as I read this— 
Chester Borrows 
: It’ll be under a different section of the Crimes Act. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: The member is telling me that under a different section of the Crimes Act that person will still be— 
Chester Borrows 
: Failure to provide the necessities of life. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: But for consistency’s sake I ask why there is an exemption for an under-18-year-old who has any other relationship other than biological— 
Chester Borrows 
: Special relationship for a parent of a child or a de facto parent of a child. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: Well that is something I would like to look into further at the select committee because I do not think it is overly clear here because of the fact that we have created an exemption within that clause. But I look forward to having that discussion with Mr Chester Borrows at the select committee. We always have a good robust and useful discussion. 
It is also good to see that the protections for children have been extended to vulnerable adults and I hope that that will include those in aged care. Of course Labour and the Greens produced a comprehensive report stating that there were issues with neglect and abuse in the aged-care industry. This might be a way that we can actually progress that review because the Government seems utterly uninterested in taking that review forward through any other means. 
Those are the substantive points that I will make on this bill. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss these matters further and perhaps to also hear a contribution from Chris Finlayson who I am sure will have some very uplifting and positive statements to make about this bill—and not at all something nasty. Thank you.