Hague Kevin: Vulnerable Children Bill Children Young Persons and Their Families (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill KiwiSaver (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Vulnerable Children Bill Children Young Persons and Their Families (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill KiwiSaver (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 19 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18755. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green):I guess I agree with a lot of what my colleague Andrew Little has just said but we disagree on one point. He said that something is better than nothing and I do not think that is always true. In this case we do not agree and we are opposing the bills arising from the Vulnerable Children Bill. My colleague Jan Logie has explained our reasoning behind that.I want to talk a little bit about what the Green Party would do about this situation. If the country gives us a chance later this year we will be looking to address the basic needs of children in New Zealand—those unmet needs that are currently causing the environments that are driving this vulnerability and the problem that we are seeking to address. We would create a children’s Act with targets and measures around child poverty and by measuring the problem we would be able to manage it. That is a basic maxim is not it? Measuring the problem would enable us to make some progress.Our Home for Life policy will provide a genuine pathway to homeownership and would address the declining rates of homeownership especially amongst lower and middle-income New Zealanders while also providing secure rental tenure for those New Zealanders who are renting—and many vulnerable families are—and also a warrant of fitness for rental housing which again addresses some of the conditions that drive poor outcomes.Our Schools at the Heart programme will help with removing the barrier of inequality in the place where kids are 5 days a week—their school. Our hubs will offer disadvantaged kids health care social services at school and school lunches and will connect families to their children’s learning. Our NZ Power scheme which we share with the Labour Party will stem the flow of power price rises that we have experienced under this Government and will also cut $300 from household power bills. Our solar homes package will liberate Kiwis from rising power prices and deliver real sustainable energy freedom. We will actually resource Child Youth and Family Services so that it is up to the job of actually protecting children. Under-resourcing has been one of the causes of failure here.Ultimately what we are talking about is meeting those children’s basic needs and Jan Logie has spoken about the hierarchy of needs that was developed by the psychologist Maslow. Basically what that says is that if you are actually interested in children or any individual being able to maximise their potential you first of all have to address basic physiological and safety needs—food water warmth rest security safety. Until you actually address those factors we are unable to deal with the more advanced psychological and self-fulfilment goals that we have for every New Zealand citizen.It was a cause of great distress for me today to hear Paula Bennett saying that she had not actually read the basic research that links children’s health outcomes. In this country we have health outcomes including child abuse outcomes that are amongst the worst in the OECD and that are strongly linked in fact to our extremely high rates of child poverty. Those are the factors that we have to address. We have to address empowerment of the communities that children live in and we have to create supportive environments around those communities and that means addressing those factors that I have just talked about.It means addressing poverty. It means doing the things that the Children’s Commissioner’s expert advisory group told us we had to do—provide health services antenatal and throughout childhood; affordable safe healthy homes; stable nurturing families; supportive communities; adequate incomes to meet basic needs; and engagement and learning from early childhood education onwards. Those are the things that will actually make a difference. It was most distressing I think to hear Paula Bennett faced with a mountain of evidence from experts about the link between child poverty and those poor outcomes saying that she could not in fact name a single expert who would endorse her view that the Government is doing enough. It is not; this legislation is inadequate.