Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Well it gives me no pleasure at all to be standing to speak to this bill the Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People's Commission Bill tonight at its second reading because I know that this bill is going to be train wreck. I know that this Government has closed its mind to delaying its progress and we've just heard that quite vehemently from the previous speaker Dr Emily Henderson. A delay would actually create a more fulsome consultation with children young people agencies and their families. A delay would also enable the findings of the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in State care to complete its work and to report back with its recommendations. That report back is due in June of next year and I imagine there will be recommendations for change that come back with that report. They will be relevant to what this bill is seeking to achieve and I argue that we owe it to the work of that inquiry and the people that have contributed to the information to wait until that inquiry is complete so that we can do a proper job and get it right the first time.The other reason that this bill needs to be delayed is because of the farce of the consultation process that was conducted. The outcomes are significant once they're implemented so those with the most to contribute needed time to gather their thoughts to discuss with colleagues to think about those that this bill will impact on and then to prepare and offer feedback. So what did the Government members on the select committee choose to do? They chose to put out the consultation open it up for submissions on 22 December and the submissions period closed on 26 January. To give full credit to those submitters the 374 submissions that the committee received thank you for giving up your Christmas break to put your thoughts into your submissions on this bill. And out of those 374 submissions eight submissions expressed their support for the bill. In fact one submitter told the select committee they were consulted in the preparation of this bill they were consulted about the aspiration and what they wanted to achieve but sadly they were not told what the mechanism for doing that was going to be. So there were a few boxes ticked in the consultation phase but the cold hard reality is that those with the most to contribute were excluded: the voice of care-experienced children and young people. I do give credit to VOYCE Whakarongo Mai for the time that they have put into their submission on behalf of those people.Now this bill seeks to dismantle the role of the Children's Commissioner a position that has been held for 33 years. It is extremely trusted it is well known to the public and I believe that it is of particular concern to those children and young people who are in State care. We do say and I support the fact that the bill's objectives are to strengthen the independent monitoring and complaints oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system because they are admirable goals but this bill will not get us there. If we compare this bill to other radical changes that this Government has implemented into systems across sectors like health and tertiary education we can have no faith that the changes in the oversight of Oranga Tamariki will be successful and deliver the outcomes that are suggested. The role of the Children's Commissioner is a precious one I believe and even the appointment of a Children's Commissioner is a very special position to hold. No one should be afraid of having someone who is completely independent of Government. I have to say in my observations over the years the former Children's Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft did no favours to the Government that appointed him and nor should he because that was not his role; his role was to monitor and advocate for children and that's exactly what he did. Sometimes those messages are difficult to hear but that is how you build a system that is in continual improvement mode and will always be open to that improvement.We had a lot of submissions to work through and that was done over a period of a few weeks but there are a few that I would like to particularly focus on—one in particular from one submitter. It has been talked about today—about the role of monitor and advocate—and the bill seems to assume that the two roles are completely incompatible. But if that is the case then we have to wonder why the legislation was designed in that way in the first place and has been operating in terms of the Children's Commissioner's role so successfully for such a long time. As my colleague Harete Hipango mentioned before it is only because of the resourcing of the Office of the Children's Commissioner that possibly their workload has been a bit hard for them to manage. But that has a simple solution; we don't need to set up a whole new bureaucracy in order to make that office more efficient.The issue around the advocacy and monitoring was pointed out to us in one submission and I'd just like to point to a couple of those—the Human Rights Commission for example. Its functions include to advocate and promote to be an advocate and to monitor and analyse progress. The other one the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission their functions include: to advocate for the collective interests of people who experience mental distress or addiction and to monitor mental health services and addiction services and to advocate for improvements to those services because robust monitoring leads naturally to advocacy. So I suggest that this is a bill looking for a problem to solve because there is no need to separate the functions of advocacy and monitoring. It's worked extremely well in other departments and I can tell you that this is not unique to New Zealand. Those advocacy and monitoring roles are used across Australia in many states over there as well.There were some submissions that I guess were quite blunt and I'm not surprised by that. When we heard from one submitter they talked about the independence of the monitor. In their submission they suggested that that was an abuse of the word independent" because by putting the monitor inside the Education Review Office—and we were told by the Minister earlier tonight that that's the backhouse support—the cold hard reality is that that is a ministry that is overseen by a Minister and it is at the will and whim of the Minister and the Government of the day as to how they operate. I would suggest that perhaps what is happening here is that the Government's abysmal performance across a range of their activities is the reason they're absorbing the monitoring of Oranga Tamariki into the Education Review Office so they can better control the results of that monitoring. This role needs to be totally independent of Government and its Ministers and it cannot have the confidence of the public when it sits inside an existing ministry—it's not even dedicated to this role.So I urge the Government: do not be afraid of honest feedback and criticism. This is how systems and processes are improved this is how outcomes are improved and that's what we want for our children. We want the outcomes for those kids who are in care to be better—always better. I don't believe the Government wants a watchdog; I believe it wants a lapdog."