Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): It is with a heavy heart that I rise to speak on this bill the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Bill at second reading. You know this is incredibly important legislation. It is legislation whose intent is to protect children in this country and I am sure that protection of our kids is dear to the heart of every single member of this Parliament. It is our duty as members of Parliament particularly to be interested in the well-being of our children. They have no ability to vote so that puts a particular onus on us to be looking out for their interests; often they do not even get a voice in the process and hardly did and nor do they get directly to us as the Social Services Committee.I just want to express how profoundly upset I am at the Government screwing this up so badly that this is probably going to pass with one vote. This legislation that should have every single person in this House in support of it because it is so important is going to just get through. The Government did not consult and did not listen and the issues that it is trying to pretend do not exist in this legislation have not been addressed despite some progress through the committee.The Children Young Persons and Their Families Act was introduced in 1989 and for many years after that people came from all over the world to look at how our child protection and youth justice system was working and many countries have looked to us for leadership because of that piece of legislation. I am not in any way saying that the way it has been implemented has been perfect. We have just heard from the last speaker Stuart Smith actually about some of the challenges that we are facing but the problem we heard from submitter after submitter is not fundamentally with the legislation. Of course there are things—since we signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—that needed updating in this legislation and we certainly could have got behind legislation that did that. But it is such a shame that actually this legislation does not even make us compliant with those conventions. It goes some way—some way—and then puts in some massive structural changes that risk the good things in the system which could work really well if they were properly resourced.As for the you know comments that people are actually supportive of this I do just want to quote some of the submitters and the comments that were made about the legislation as it was first introduced. It was variously described as a dog's breakfast" "more confusing" "taking us back to the 1950s" "a tractor rolling over Māori" and "poorly drafted poorly thought-through and consulted". I do acknowledge that there has been some significant improvement in the legislation from the bill that was first introduced particularly around provisions for protection of tamariki Māori and their cultural identity. But even in that area where there has been significant progress made as Louisa Wall pointed out so eloquently previously the key measures that we looked at to see whether the changes had got the bill over the line did not get it over the line. We do not in this piece of legislation have the assurance that when a tamariki Māori is removed from their whānau for their own protection they will then be placed into a whānau hapū or iwi home where they will be safe. I did take offence in turn from the Minister saying in her opening speech that she had been offended by a sense that adult agendas were taking precedence over the needs of children. Well for the people whom I heard presenting that was not what their opposition was. This was not about adults' needs; this was an acknowledgment that the well-being of our children is integrally tied up with their family. You cannot separate those things. If a family and the extended family is unwell then the child will be unwell regardless of whether they are living with them or not.It is actually just fundamentally racist—to me—to suggest that children will not be safe or could not in any instance be safe within their extended whānau hapū or iwi. These are large groupings. The fault is and the truth is that the institution has not developed the systems to be able to work with iwi to find those safe places. Here we are punishing those children by virtue of suggesting that their families are not safe because the institution has not been resourced to be able to create that safety.The history of racist practice within this institution has to be acknowledged. We heard it leading up to the development of the original legislation and we heard it again through these submissions. It was heartbreaking to hear the stories that were presented to us about the loss and the hurt and the deep mistrust that has developed as a result of the Crown's failure to protect tamariki Māori which is kind of part of the burn of this. The sense that has been coming from this Government is that it is going to protect these children when Māori have failed when the truth is that children have been taken from their families and put into State care and hurt and that we have hurt those children by our failure to ensure that those systems were appropriate and looking out for those interests of those children and their whānau.There are many things to be able to say about this bill and I have run well over time already for the things I wanted to say. I did want to point out some of the things—an annoyance about where there is progress in this bill and yet it does not go far enough. As an example: we support the—well no actually I want to go to the information-sharing provisions because this is a really critical point of our opposition to this bill.One of the submissions was a note that the provisions were consulted on with the Privacy Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner opposed them and yet they were brought before the committee and they have not been fundamentally changed at all even though the Privacy Commissioner opposed these changes. The Hestia Rodney Women's Refuge Māori Caucus submitters noted that they are seeing now that whānau are starting to lie to them because they are scared of losing their children. They also noted that women are often given an 0800 number to call if they are concerned for their safety as victims of domestic violence but they will not call it if Child Youth and Family people are going to be called.So this is not a side issue. This is central to ensuring that victims are able to protect themselves and their children and that people who may represent a danger to their children are able to seek help early. We have to create a system that is going to work for them and this legislation—we are also considering the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill at the moment which has alternative information-sharing provisions that actually contradict this. So clearly not even the Ministers are talking to each other and who is going to fall through the cracks? It is our children and we are risking them being in more harm after this legislation goes through."