Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Today out on the steps of Parliament there was a gathering of men and women who had been harmed while they were in the care of the State. It was a very moving time to be out there amongst them. Many of them have had very damaged lives a lot of them have got criminal convictions and they all have a story to tell about how the State has been a poor parent to them. I got to speak to some of them. I have to say that it was quite moving because many of them are my age and in talking to them I felt there but by the grace of God go I. They talked about how their home lives while not perfect were their home lives where they felt safe and happy and how the moment that they were uplifted their lives changed and they were no longer the same.Many of them held photos of themselves as children before they were taken from their families. Now I am not saying that the family environments they were in were entirely adequate and appropriate but imagine if we had taken the time to deal with the issues that the parents were dealing with—perhaps the life outcomes for those people who were outside on the steps of our Parliament today may have been different.I just want to give you a couple of reflections from two of the men I spoke to. When I said that we were going to be debating the third readings of the Oranga Tamariki legislation this afternoon one of them said to me: How can you say now that you've got it right when you don't recognise what you've done wrong?". Another one said to me: "Gangs didn't make gangs; Governments made gangs." When his whānau was stripped from him his whānau became the gangs. So how can you say that it is right when you do not recognise what you have done wrong?Last night I was hoping to get another call during the Committee of the whole House in this debate because there was one aspect of this bill that was not examined and that was the criteria by which children would come to the notice of the State in terms of being uplifted. There is one significant difference between the previous legislation and this legislation in that what is included is domestic violence. So the experience of domestic violence in a child's life now becomes a criterion by which they could potentially be assessed for uplift into the care of the State.As Labour's spokesperson on family and sexual violence I have a little bit of understanding about what that might mean in terms of the numbers that may now come under the purview of this legislation. I just want to share this with you if I can—share it with the House. In a previous role as manager of Waves Trust a family violence network organisation a piece of research was undertaken whereby we looked at all of the police call-outs to homes where family violence had occurred in 1 year—a 12-month period—in the Waitakere police command area. So we looked at all the police reports. Of those police reports we identified that there were 3500 children in the Waitakere police area who were either present or normally resident in a house where the police had been called out to a family violence incident—3500 children in the Waitakere police area.There are 35 police areas across the country so if you extrapolate that there is a potential for 122500 children who would come to the notice of the police because family violence occurs in their house and the police have attended. This is what the police already know. It is documented. We already know it. We know also that there are about 46000 notifications to Child Youth and Family of which examinations are conducted and those children may or may not require support by Oranga Tamariki as it is now. But if we think that there is a potential for 122000 children to now come into the view of Oranga Tamariki—we did not get an opportunity to discuss with the Minister yesterday and like many things in this piece of legislation we have not had sufficient opportunity to ensure that there are safeguards for those families to deal with the issues that they face rather than run the risk of having their children uplifted from them.There is another statistic that came out of this research and it is important. If we think about those 3500 children in Waitakere who were identified as being present or normally resident in a house where police were called out to a family violence incident do you know how many of those children actually received any support or care? Well I know and I am going to tell you. Of those 3500 children about 10 percent were then notified to Child Youth and Family. That is roughly about 330 children. Of those 330 children less than half were then provided support in some form by Child Youth and Family—so they were allocated to a social worker. Of those only 55 children received any therapeutic intervention for the violence they had experienced in their home. Let me start at the beginning. A total of 3500 kids in Waitakere are identified as living in a house where family violence has occurred and only 55 get any therapeutic intervention. So what happens to those other children for whom family violence is a very real traumatic experience that is going to impact them for the rest of their life? What about them? So Minister I am sorry that I was not able to discuss this yesterday because I would really have loved to get an answer about that.This is the crux of our argument—the system is so broken that a piece of legislation is not going to fix it particularly if you are not consulting with the people who are going to be the most damaged by it. And they were out on the steps of Parliament today. They were the ones who have been uplifted into the care of the State and they have lived the consequence of our policies—of Government policies. And we all share the responsibility for that as politicians. Those are the people whom we needed to talk to about this legislation. The 3450-odd children in Waitakere who do not receive any support despite the fact that they are impacted by family violence—those are the people whom we need to speak to.There was so much promise in this legislation. There was so much opportunity and it has been wasted. It has been wasted because we have not examined what we should do. My colleague Carmel Sepuloni talked about this not being just about the experience of children but being about ensuring that the homes that they live in are warm and dry. It is about ensuring that their parents have sufficient funds to support them. It is about ensuring that there is food on the table and that there is enough money in the house to pay for the electricity bill to keep them warm. None of those systemic issues has been addressed at all and I am afraid none of the issues that those men and women told us about today has been addressed in this legislation. It is a shame to us all that we did not do better on this."