King Annette: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
King Annette: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:8779] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 The Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill had a very very poor start on its journey in this House. In fact the Minister of Youth Affairs was in such a hurry to make her name and have her photo in the paper that she brought in this bill half an hour before Parliament was to sit at 1.30 in the afternoon. Nobody including the public or other political parties had an opportunity to look at it before she rushed it through under urgency to the Social Services Committee. So it had a pretty poor start. It was not because it was not ready; in fact the bill was ready 2 days before she tabled it half an hour before Parliament sat. 
Todd McClay 
: That’s enough; what about the children? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Half an hour before Parliament sat Mr McClay says is long enough. Well it might be for him but the people of New Zealand and the other political parties in this House deserved to see that bill when it was ready to be seen. 
Katrina Shanks 
: You had 9 years—9 years. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: And to the member sitting across the House saying we had 9 years—well of course the changes that the Minister is making in terms of the length of sentences were in the bill that we introduced plus changes for children in New Zealand. All of that was dumped for this hastily drawn-together bill. It has become clear that this bill is more about hype than it is about substance. It is about slogans and not about good policy. It is about political expediency and not about sound decisions based on evidence. If we wanted proof of that we needed only to sit and listen to the submissions at the Social Services Committee. Her bill is not based on sound evidence and that was told to us over and over again as we questioned the submitters. 
I also think it was a shame that the Minister tried to pull the wool over the eyes of this Parliament and the public when the bill was introduced. She told this House that her flagship boot camps would not be implemented until the end of 2010. The bill was not even finished in the select committee before she set up a pilot of boot camps at Burnham. We had not even finished the most important part of this bill to make boot camps part of the options before she went ahead and started to implement them. Now she has once again told us what a great thing this is based on a few months of a pilot without proper evaluation and without proper research. It is that sort of sloppy thinking that really has tarnished this bill that the Minister has brought in. 
This is a lightweight bill. It received very little support at the select committee. It received very little support for the main parts of it particularly about lowering the age at which children would go into the Youth Court. There was almost overwhelming opposition to boot camps. There was some agreement on the extension of the range of sentencing options. We support an extension to sentencing options. However we also are rather worried about how effective compulsory mentoring would be. We do not have any evidence that making people have a mentor is necessarily effective. We also do not think it addresses the fact that 80 percent of the young people who appear in the Youth Court now are under the influence of alcohol and drugs. The Minister is saying that they will be able to get some help with alcohol and drugs. But we have not seen where the resources the training and the services are going to be provided from so that the young people who have those problems will receive those services. That information was not shown to the select committee when we asked for it. It was not shown to the public of New Zealand or the submitters. It is hot air. That is what we have had from the Minister. 
The submissions on the bill were overwhelmingly opposed to lowering the age at which children could appear in the Youth Court. It is significant what Judge Becroft the Principal Youth Court Judge has to say. After all Minister Bennett paraded Judge Becroft around as the pin-up boy for her policies before the election. So she ought to take some notice of what he said when she brings in legislation. He said he believed that this constituted the most fundamental change to the system since its inception in 1989. Judge Becroft also highlighted: “there is a real concern by Youth Court Judges that the Court will be assuming responsibility for the worst child offenders who by definition will have the most serious care and protection issues yet the Youth Court will not have the necessary statutory ‘ammunition’ to deal with the inevitable care and protection issues at the root of offending.” 
So when the Minister talks about this bill she talks about making sure child offenders get the appropriate punishment but she does not talk about the root of their offending: dealing with their care and protection issues. Labour raised the issue in the select committee that if the concern is that the Family Court does not have the tools why do we not give a greater range of powers to the Family Court rather than transferring child offenders to the Youth Court? But we could not even consider that. We were told it was outside the scope of the bill. It did not need to be outside of the scope of the bill. The Minister wrote the bill. She could have said “Yes why does the select committee not look at that?”. Now she is saying “Won’t the select committee inquiry be good looking at youth offending and the range of tools that the Family Court might have?”. Why close the door after the horse has bolted? Why not do it first? Why did she not look at those issues before bringing in this bill? Judge Becroft has made it clear that this bill does not deal with those issues that address care and protection. The right approach would have been to look at extending the powers within the Family Court. 
The other major issue which I think most submitters submitted on was the issue of military-style camps. John Key before the election campaign did call them boot camps. Unfortunately either because people from National had forgotten that at the select committee or they did not agree with it they believed that calling them boot camps was a misnomer. But that is what John Key called them in the run-up to the election. He did it for a purpose. He did it for political expediency. That is what they were called. That is what every submitter who came to the select committee called them: boot camps. 
We set about pulling apart the reason why New Zealand ought not to go down that path why we did not need to have military-style camps set up in New Zealand in the style of a boot camp. Submitters pointed out the failures overseas. They pointed out the failure within New Zealand when we had that sort of approach and the recidivism that came with it. They pointed out that there were other approaches. It was also pointed out—and was quite clear to us—that we did not even need to include a provision in a bill to be able to have military-style camps because ho we have one set up at Burnham without this legislation. So if the Government wanted to put in place military-style camps we did not need to go through the expense and the time of calling on submitters from all around New Zealand to tell us they think it is a bad move. 
Does the Government really want to do something in terms of the most serious offenders? After all we heard from the police that we are talking about 80 apprehensions—not 80 offenders not 80 arrests but 80 apprehensions—and some of those are children who have been apprehended more than once so we are talking about a very small group. Why not I ask the Minister keep open Te Hurihanga? Why not put Government resources into that programme which has shown a huge success? But for political purposes the Minister has decided to close Te Hurihanga even though it is showing that it is working. What is so sad about this is the shonky figures that the Minister has used to justify closing it. The Government has tried to put the entire cost of establishing one programme on to eight kids. As somebody said why not put the entire cost of Wellington’s maternity hospital on to the first birth that came out of it? I say to the Minister that this is a poorly designed bill. It is not based on evidence and Labour will not support it.