Flavell Te Ururoa: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 September 2011. Volume:675;Page:21239. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson 
. 
Malo le soifoa. Talofa lava 
ki a tatou katoa i tenei po. He pai enei korero. He pai ki te whakarongo ki nga take kua puta mai. Ko ta matou ko te ki atu e ko wai o tenei Whare Paremata ka whakahe i te hiahia ki te tiaki i wa tatou tamariki mai i te tukino a tetahi atu. Me tere whakatika i te ture ka tika. 
[ 
Greetings Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson and welcome to us all this evening. These contributions are wonderful 
.  
It is good to listen to the issues that are emerging. All we need to ask is whether anyone in this House of Parliament would really want to oppose the desire to have our children protected from any ill-treatment by someone else. The Act of course must be amended quickly. 
] 
It is unlikely that any party would oppose the concept of placing proposals to protect children from assault neglect and ill-treatment on a faster track than was originally intended. Certainly that is not what I have heard tonight. No politician no New Zealander I would hope could turn a blind eye to the wicked toll on our nation in respect of the horrific situations of abuse and neglect of our children. 
E ai ki te Ao Maori he taonga te tamaiti. According to Maori thinking at least every child is a treasure although sometimes we do not necessarily carry that out amongst some of our families. Every child deserves the protection of a safe home a secure upbringing and a healthy life. Of course it is interesting timing to be considering the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) in the wake of a report that we came across just recently. It is called  
Left Further Behind: how policies fail the poorest children in New Zealand 
. It is important to note from the outset that this report makes it clear that although most of the discussion in New Zealand about abuse and neglect is focused on the behaviour of individual carers a more useful discussion and analysis would consider the significance of economic income and poverty factors which were alluded to by my colleague Metiria Turei. 
The report makes two qualifying statements: firstly that child abuse is not limited to those on low incomes and those living in poverty and secondly that most children living in poverty and in low-income households do not experience abuse. Notwithstanding this analysis the report also goes on further to explain that there is an observed relationship between poverty abuse and violence—a relationship that has obviously disastrous consequences for some of the most vulnerable children in our society. 
So we come to this bill which seeks to amend aspects of the Crimes Act 1961 and to protect people from assault neglect and ill-treatment. We bring our comments to this debate with that in mind. This bill is very much focused on the roles and responsibilities of individuals. It extends the duties of parents and those with actual care or the charge of vulnerable adults and children and it broadens the offence of ill-treatment or neglect of a child or vulnerable adult. 
So what could we define as abuse? Well in that regard I came across a statement from the National Commission of Inquiry into the Prevention of Child Abuse from Ingarangi which states as a starting point: “Child abuse consists of anything which individuals institutions or processes do or fail to do which directly or indirectly harms children or damages their prospects of safe and healthy development into adulthood.” I thought that was a pretty good definition. 
I want to set out these comments as the context for our wider discussion on this bill because I believe that we cannot restrict our response to the child abuse crisis by simply placing the onus on the individual or in the hands of one person. All of us are implicated. It takes a village to raise a child. 
The Maori Party has supported this bill largely because the intention is for children to live in an environment free from violence and this is consistent with umpteen traditional accounts of tikanga of the care of children from Te Ao Maori. The Maori Party supports at least the clause in Te Tiriti o Waitangi in respect of taonga and of course children and indeed all people are taonga. The protection of our most precious resource—he tangata—also underpins the values of other groups such as the kohanga reo movement and the kura kaupapa Maori movement. In this context we believe it is absolutely appropriate that children and vulnerable adults are protected from the risk of violence by a third party or the failure of the third party to perform a legal duty. 
But I cannot stand here hand on heart and say that we agree with every aspect of the bill without question. There are some issues that we did want to address. In particular the issue that came through at the Social Services Committee was whether we have the balance right in the introduction of liability of people. The liability extends to those who are not actually involved in the mistreatment but have frequent contact with the child or vulnerable adult and fail to try to protect them from mistreatment by others. 
In this respect we share the concerns of submitters in terms of whether creating liability as the issue is the most effective course of action we can be taking to eliminate child abuse and violence against children from our lives. Surely the most searching issue for us all is how we can encourage all members of the community to create and maintain a violence-free society. 
The bill creates a new enforceable legal responsibility making a person criminally liable for the failure to protect a child or vulnerable person. Such an intervention was heavily criticised in some of the submissions from what I have seen. The Wellington Community Law Centre was opposed to the use of criminalisation and increased penalties as a means of addressing serious social ills. In its view the increased criminalisation of child abuse is not effective and it is an expensive response with no evidence to show that it actually works. 
The Whitireia Community Law Centre also considered that increased penalties for those who do not fulfil their legal duty to report child abuse may promote accountability but do little to assist those who are actually suffering at the hands of the abusers. In its view the Government should increase funding for agencies directly connected to help those in abusive relationships such as Women’s Refuge. 
I would be interested to hear the views of the Minister of Justice on these comments and indeed the views of whanau hapu and iwi. This whole area is highly contentious. It is complex. How do we ensure that every child is protected and free from abuse? Part of the debate brings certain assumptions to the discussion such as that child abuse will necessarily emerge out of relationships where domestic violence occurs and that child abusers are necessarily linked to adult relationships where violence is a factor. 
There is an assumption that all adults are necessarily able to intervene in the ill-treatment of a child whether or not they are in a relationship—violent or otherwise. What about the situation for women who have been battered and threatened by an abuser and who may not have the ability to protect the child or intervene on the child’s behalf? These are key questions that need some discussion and they were alluded to by Metiria Turei. 
Although the legislation may provide greater ability to identify a person or persons to be held responsible for causing intentional harm and/or injury of a child we are concerned as to whether it will provide protection to adult members of the household who may also be at risk of harm and/or injury. The last thing we want to see emerge as a result of this legislation is more women arrested charged and incarcerated for failing to protect tamariki. I ask the Minister for the evidence for and the analysis of the phenomenon of battered woman’s syndrome. 
The Department of Corrections has a very helpful statement on the definition of battered woman’s syndrome that I think bears understanding in this legislation. It describes battering as “[reducing] the victim to a state of fear and anxiety … that stretches her perception of fear beyond the timeframe of the battering incident. The relationship becomes characterised by ‘cumulative terror’ because of the constant state of fear that pervades the relationship.” It goes to state: “Repeated battering diminishes the woman’s motivation to respond she becomes passive.” Her “sense of emotional well-being becomes precarious” and in effect it prevents her “from perceiving and acting on opportunities to escape from the violence.” 
We also know that battered women will bear the brunt of violence in a household in an attempt to protect their children from harm. This comes through time and time again. So we seek assurances that their efforts to do so will not lead them into a situation in which they are criminalised as a third party. 
In closing I say that the Maori Party is very concerned and that we must take such analysis into consideration before progress can be made on this legislation. We will be looking to the Minister again for his advice on how such advice has shaped the bill. At this stage then we will not oppose the bill which is driven I hope by the need to keep all children safe. However our subsequent decisions rest on how these issues are raised throughout the debate. Kia ora.