Prasad Rajen: Care of Children Law Reform Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Care of Children Law Reform Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 23 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14246. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour):Namaste. Is it not interesting that some people like to make comments but do not stop to listen to the response? That particular member Chris Finlayson who has not stopped to listen has done that before. He is the sanctimonious person he is the nasty person and he will not even face up. If he does I will remind him of his own sanctimony.That sets me up in a good mood for responding to this particular bill the Care of Children Law Reform Bill and the way in which Scott Simpson responded to this bill. I would have thought that the Government’s approach to the bill might be principled. What we got was surprising. It was indeed lazy. The Government’s response to the bill as articulated by Scott Simpson was one that paid no attention at all to the problem that this bill which Jacinda Ardern has put before us is trying to address. At least she did design something. At least she did put something before us which is more than that Government has done in almost 5 years of being in Government.Katrina Shanks: She’s doing nothing.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: The member had better stop to listen because she may learn something. She may learn something. The Government has not done anything. All it did was attack the proposer of the bill for no good reason at all. If the member Scott Simpson had wanted to be taken seriously he would have shown us what the Government has in train and we could have discussed that. The member did not do that at all. He simply called it—what did he say—sloppy and lazy. Well the response that Scott Simpson gave to this House would have been written by one of those lawyers who because of some principles unknown to me is actually against adoption the modern type of adoption that this bill would in the end regulate. I do not know who wrote that speech but it certainly was an unreasoned attack. It did not provide any solutions.It did do something and I wonder whether the member will stand by this. He said that the proposal that is in the name of a member of the Green Party is a better one. Well is the Government now saying that it is going to support that? Is the Government now saying that? I bet you that it is not. There is no programme of work. It has been a long time coming to this House. Here is a solution.I think that this bill proposed by Jacinda Ardern is actually quite elegant. It is quite elegant when you think about it because what it does is says that we should look to see what the problem is with an Act that was passed in 1955 the Adoption Act. I worked with the legislation in my first 10 years as a social worker in the field. It is still basically the same. It does not actually fit the modern environment that we have with adoptions. What the bill is saying is that we should go back and have a look at when the last major piece of work was done. Let us ask the Law Commission in this case to take all of the residual bits that have to do with adoption that were not taken up in the Care of Children Act. Let the commission have a look at it again bring all those proposals together and propose a bill to the House. At least that piece of work can start and would go alongside anything else that is happening in the House at the moment. That is quite elegant because the grunt work has already been done. The expertise resides there. It would have taken the considerations of modern adoptions a lot further.The members opposite have not done that. In fact all that they have done is pilloried the proposer and the proposal. No good reasons at all no arguments at all; it is just something that this Government does not have any plans about and if it has not got an idea nobody can have a better one—nobody can have a better one. So I think it is the response of Government members that has been lazy. I will say that the last member who took a call Paul Foster-Bell at least spoke about the bill and had somethingadditional to say but the others did not. I do not think that the third member from the National Party who spoke in this debate Katrina Shanks had even read the bill and understood it because she was talking about something that is supposed to be between clauses 6 and 9 without reading the preamble to the bill the explanatory note—that said it particularly well.The 1955 Act is old. It is now no longer relevant. How does it apply to open adoption adoption following care and protection step-parent adoption surrogacy intercountry adoption adoption for citizenship and a whole range of other arrangements that are now being developed around adoptions? Here at least was a proposal that could have taken that further and had some good good considerations. My final point is this: the Government could have said yes and let the Justice and Electoral Committee work through those things that the Government does not like. It could have been amended. But in fact the Government has thrown the baby out with the bathwater and in the process has shown and displayed its own ignorance. Thank you.