Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Madam Chair. I too will make a small contribution to Part 3 of this bill. I think it's completely agreed across this House that there's nobody here that does not have a very strong interest in reducing child poverty in this country. I look forward to the day when we hold ourselves up against the likes of the Scandinavian countries who have very low rates of child poverty. I think we're taking a very good first step on our way to that in holding the Government to account for the measures that it will implement in terms of how we measure year on year the indicators that are being set down in this bill to measure the persistence of child poverty and therefore hold the Government to account on achieving those targets. Part 3 of this bill makes several quite significant alterations to other Acts of Parliament. Consistently throughout the bill we have seen that the word vulnerable" has been taken out of this piece of legislation and "Vulnerable Children's Act" has simply been replaced with the "Children's Act". There are several other significant changes that have been made to definitions and new inclusions in this bill and I speak specifically to clause 45 which as my colleague Alfred Ngaro has alluded to includes now the Treaty of Waitangi which was not included in the original draft. That was an issue that was raised by National Party members on the Social Services and Community Committee and was successfully included. There was a very strong argument in support of having the Treaty of Waitangi included and that is because we know that the stats indicate that that is a target group that we need to be continuing to focus on. Other definitions that have been changed or included in this bill relate to the definition of "child"—and that is now being included as being consistent with other Acts—and the other children's agencies that are included in here and the departments of which are now responsible in terms of this particular bill. They include the Domestic Violence Act the Education Act the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act the Oranga Tamariki Act the Policing Act the Social Security Act and any other Acts. So they are simply the providers who have an interest in delivering on this piece of legislation. There are also other designations in here that I would like to refer to and the Hon Alfred Ngaro has already referred to: our obligations as a global citizen to the conventions that we are connected with which are the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. During the select committee stage we heard quite strong arguments and debates around the special interest that we need to take in children with disabilities. It is very much acknowledged that families who have children with disabilities do require special attention and may indeed need special assistance to ensure that if they are in a state of living in poverty they are supported well to pull themselves out of that poverty spiral. So those obligations are now included in this bill and again the National Party members on the select committee initiated that discussion and we're very pleased to have the support of the rest of the committee to have those included. I also want to make note of some of the other indicators that have been discussed tonight. As other members of the select committee may well remember on a trip to Australia we visited some social service providers and NGOs and one in particular that stands out to me was a very broad survey that was done over there and the results of that survey of children—of all of the aspects of their lives that they wished to have as a priority to be loved and to feel safe were the two highest that were consistently brought up by children. Thank you Madam Chair."