Martin TraceyHon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister for Children): Kia ora Madam Chair. Thank you very much. It's an honour to speak in the annual review debate. I'd just like to actually speak about Vote Vulnerable Children Oranga Tamariki. I want to acknowledge the Hon Anne Tolley. I want to acknowledge the Budget bid that she obviously put in and managed to fight for inside the Cabinet that she sat in at the time that she created Oranga Tamariki which we all know has just celebrated its first birthday.Around about $50-something million was set aside for Oranga Tamariki and its creation in the last financial year. We need to acknowledge the fact that the expert advisory panel said that for the creation of this new department to truly deliver what is needed to be delivered the change that needs to take place the transition that needs to take place the extension of the age that was passed in legislation during the same financial year so that all young people under the age of 18 would still be part of Oranga Tamariki's care and observation that was with the lifting of the youth justice age—this organisation would need $500-plus million to do what it needed to do. It has to be acknowledged: I have no doubt the Hon Anne Tolley went inside that caucus and fought for the money that the expert advisory panel said was going to be needed to be delivered to change the operations that actually deny some of our children in most need which was $500 million but she was able to get secure 50—I think $54 million.So that's $54 million. Well done her. It was obviously a hard fight. But it was woefully short of what was needed. And this was the previous Government in the previous Estimates saying that they were doing so much to protect these children. The vision was a good vision. The pillars that were set into place under Anne Tolley were good pillars. Unfortunately the funding was not there to deliver on the operating model that needs to be placed around this organisation. The funding was never secure. There was no contingency. There was no forward planning. There was no decision made when this idea when this vision was put down on paper about how it would be funded by the previous administration. So that's unfortunate.But what Oranga Tamariki has done in the year that it's been in existence with the money that was secured under the previous financial year is that they have begun that transition. This Government will have to take many major decisions over the next six-month period. We will have to find the money that the previous Government did not set aside so that we can ensure that New Zealand becomes a place where when the State has to support families when the State has to uplift and take care of children that we are able to provide both those children and their families with the best possible outcomes for them and their circumstances.We also need to make sure that those that are caring for these children are well supported and that has been failing in previous administrations. We need to make sure that our youth justice facilities are trying different things so that we don't have a churn through our youth justice facilities as we had before. The money that was set aside in this last financial year unfortunately went no way towards making sure that we could make those changes that we needed.But again just in closing I want to acknowledge that Anne Tolley in my view obviously went into her Cabinet and fought as hard as she could to get the money that she could in the previous financial year. There were some hard decisions made. She made them. She started to make that circuit breaker that we needed and with the small amount of money that she had and that the organisation had they have moved forward. There are some things that we need to be proud of but going forward there will need to be certainly a lot more focus around the finances and the resourcing that will be needed for these children. Kia ora.