Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): We've had a number of speeches from the National Party MPs tonight which have passionately defended the rights of children. They have talked about the need for stability for love for the kinds of conditions which let children flourish and acknowledge those important things like whakapapa and a sense of identity for children. So how frustrating it must be for these National Party MPs to be championing an amendment to a law that was written and passed by the National Government in 2017 which had support from ACT's David Seymour which the ACT Party have now made into a political football which has chased votes of exactly the type of people who have rarked up a divisive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand that we did not have before this election campaign that ACT have drawn on for votes. How frustrating it must be for not only the National members sitting on the other side of the House tonight but also their Cabinet who have to put up with ACT using our country's legislative process to rark up a debate that is damaging for social cohesion. Even the official advice presented to this House points to Government documents which say that the kind of social cohesion and disruption that this bill and the Treaty principle causes will have long-lasting effects not only on our society but our democracy too. How frustrating that must be to be sitting in this debate tonight on the wrong side of history.The changes to the original Act that we are talking about tonight were made at a time when the care and protection system was in crisis by National Minister Anne Tolley. She had the right idea here. She was working with New Zealand First Minister Tracey Martin who called these changes that are being repealed tonight a circuit-breaker" because things weren't going right for Māori children in care then and we needed to try something different and that trying something different resulted in a care and protection system which for the first time was responsive to the needs of Māori children and whānau Māori who were engaged in the care and protection system.The Minister for Children now Karen Chhour has claimed that race-based factors set out in section 7AA create a conflict for the best interests of the child but the official advice—as you've heard from my colleague the Hon Willow-Jean Prime—says exactly the opposite. In fact the New Zealand First speaker tonight repeated those claims and said that cultural considerations were getting in the way of proper care and protection. That is verging on misinformation which is misleading to the public. The official advice says exactly the opposite of that. This House has a responsibility to pass law which is based on facts and evidence not on political reckons which are then used by a political party to absolutely scrape the bottom of the barrel for votes that they could not garner otherwise. Shame on them.There is a lack of evidence that section 7AA is leading to settled care arrangements being disrupted but again we heard those claims repeated by the Minister in this debate when the official advice has proved that wrong not once but twice. In fact on page 9 of the official advice which the Hon Willow-Jean Prime quoted it says "However due to Ministerial commissioning the identification and assessment of [other] options"—other than this option which we are being presented with now—"falls outside the scope of this analysis." So not only is this Minister coming to the House and presenting this bill as if it is the only solution she also commissioned the advice in a way that did not let her officials propose any other solutions to care for children.So when that side of the House comes here and says that this is about caring for the most vulnerable children we can see a paper trail of evidence where the officials are telling Cabinet that they were not afforded the ability to suggest changes that would actually have a lasting effect. This is about politicising our most vulnerable children and shame on that party for drumming up that kind of debate in Aotearoa where it doesn't belong.The proposed repeal of section 7AA would also remove the requirement for the chief executive to report on the impact of Māori children who come to the attention of Oranga Tamariki. This change was absolutely a good one. It allowed the chief executive to spotlight the treatment of Māori children in care. Those children have been on the steps of Parliament every year asking legislators to highlight their needs and this Government has removed a legislative requirement without any consideration for what they've heard over and over again from these children.This is a divisive piece of legislation designed to drum up divisive ugly politics. They're ugly politics for political end and they have no place in this House."