Cameron Mark; Chhour KarenMARK CAMERON (ACT): Mr Chair thank you. Minister thank you very much for your quite emotive and emotional remarks. Do you want to tease it out Minister for this committee? I'm quite frankly sick and tired of the politicisation of what looking after children in New Zealand looks like. Minister you used core business"—core business. What does that mean for everyday children irrespective of race irrespective of ethnicity? Aren't we all just Kiwis here? I am fascinated that in a modern country this becomes a political football. It's certainly becoming a political football on the left. Minister can you talk about core business and give this committee some assurance that we're all on the same page when it comes to children and their betterment and welfare?Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children): Thank you Mr Chair. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of reports of concern that come in in regards to where people are concerned about a young person being safe in their environment of where they're living. Usually that comes from another Government organisation so it will come from education it will come from police it'll come from another Government agency. So Oranga Tamariki's first core responsibility is to make sure that we are triaging those phone calls and make sure that we are responding in an appropriate time frame to make sure that that young person has been either sighted or we have triaged to know that that young person is safe. We haven't been doing that well over the last few years. We have not been hitting a target that I think is acceptable. Every time we see that a young person passes away or a baby passes away and there may have been a report of concern about that young baby the immediate reaction from the public is "Oh here we go again. Oranga Tamariki has failed."What I would like to say—and I just want to make this perfectly clear: Oranga Tamariki's job is to step in at the worst moment of a young person's life and a family's life sometimes. That is what they do on a daily basis. They step in at the worst moment of a young person's life. We can't afford to get it wrong because if you're a young person and you're reaching out for help and you're asking the very agency whose core purpose is to protect you to protect you and they don't what are the chances of you actually sticking your hand up again and asking for help again? So we need to make sure that we are getting that right from the very beginning. That is what I see as the core purpose of Oranga Tamariki making sure our children and our young people are safe.What I would also say is I know and I see the devastation in the eyes of some social workers when even when they have done absolutely everything right and they have tried absolutely everything to protect a young person we can get a bad outcome. That is not the responsibility of Oranga Tamariki. They didn't hurt or harm that young person. The only person responsible for that hurt or harm is the person who was the perpetrator of that harm. We can do as much as we can in resourcing front line so they have the tools to step in and do what they need but I want to put it on the table here that those social workers that step up every day for the core purpose of Oranga Tamariki which is the care and protection of our young people their safety and their wellbeing at the forefront of their decision making I just want to thank them for all the hard work that they do because it's not easy when you are blamed for the hurt and harm that happened before you even arrived."