O'Connor GregJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I've been standing a few times in this House recently to speak to Oranga Tamariki - related legislation. The conversations have not been comfortable recently so it's a bit of a relief to be able to stand in the House in support of the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill today.I didn't have the luck or the time unfortunately to be on the select committee to hear all of the submissions. There were 24 written submissions and I have gone through those and I think there were 11 oral submissions. So I am really interested in the committee stages that are due to come to hear more of that nuance because I know so much of that detail comes in the conversations and I'm picking it up primarily from the written materials.In this contribution I do want to primarily focus on the subsequent child policy noting that most submissions also focused on that part of the bill. That part was introduced I think and came into law in 2016 under the then National Minister Paula Bennett. What it did was introduce a provision or a policy into the law that if somebody had had a child removed from their care because of murder manslaughter or infanticide or a child had been removed that Oranga Tamariki—then Child Youth and Family—did not believe would be returned then if they were to have a subsequent child then the social workers would have no discretion but to conduct an assessment of that child's safety and then must apply for one of two orders from the Family Court.So if they were satisfied that the child would be safe then then social worker would have to go to court for a confirmation of the decision not to apply for care and protection. So they'd have to go to court to confirm that they would not take that child because presumption was that they would take that child. Or if they were not satisfied that the child would be safe the social worker had to apply for a care and protection order.I was in Parliament at the time that that law passed. The Green Party raised concerns along with others in this House about the outcomes of that law. We understand as we've heard from other speakers tonight the sense of real-heart concern that we all have for the wellbeing and the safety of our children in this country and our duty to do what we can and have laws that will protect them. But there was a problem at the time around the practices within Child Youth and Family—and part of it links to that sense of wanting to protect and the images that we have in our head of who we need to protect children from and also a failure to acknowledge the prevalence and the intersection between intimate partner violence and child abuse as I think has been quite eloquently mentioned previously by Angie Warren-Clark.So in the first reading of that bill in 2013 it had just been the previous week where the former Police Commissioner Howard Broad had released a review into the complaints system of Child Youth and Family. At that time he raised concern that their practice—of the organisation—was failing to adequately meet their legal obligations of checking on the wellbeing of children and that court decisions relying on social work evidence suffered from pre-determinable bias because of the reliance on that information and a lack of consistency from social workers across the board. We have not resolved those problems and that policy exacerbated the harm from that pre-determined bias.And what we hear—I know that sounds like a complex way of putting it for some people. But to put it simply in some levels 48 percent of pregnant women—if I'm remembering correctly—whose pēpē Māori were taken into State care before birth had been in State care themselves. So if we're thinking about the biases that are built into our system as well as the harm that our system has created and that we compound through interventions this policy had a really significant role in causing harm.And we are still hearing—a social service provider up in Auckland was just telling me a few weeks ago about how every single day they are working with whānau who have had their children taken or have been threatened to be taken not because of abuse but because of poverty and struggle to get housing.So you think about this policy and where there's been a history of a child being removed and you're doing the assessment on whether that person is going to be safe and they're struggling to find permanent housing or space for their new baby or they're struggling to pay their bills it's an understandable leap for the social worker to go Oh actually no. They're not going to be safe."It puts the onus on that parent to do all the work of proving "Hey look I've done all of these programmes I've got off the drugs I've got my family support my abusive partner is now being dealt with by these people."—to make all of the cases to overcome that inherent bias is what we've heard in too many reviews just bloody impossible. And kids have been taken from loving parents.What we've also heard is that the problem with that policy is particularly when it's the babies that have been removed how long it takes after they've been removed to make your case to prove that actually now you're safe. This came up in the Waitangi Tribunal—and it might be six months it might be eight months or it might be a year. And when I say those numbers in the House that may not sound like a long time but you think about that the first period of life the absolute initial bonding time where that baby is attaching to somebody else to another family that you have disrupted—the Crown has disrupted that attachment to them and their mum and their whānau and the harm of that cannot be undone. So I am incredibly pleased to be seeing this policy amended. I want to note too to some of the points that were made previously that Judge Becroft's submission to the Waitangi Tribunal about the impact of this policy—and I will try and quote it here if I can find it—described the provisions as "pernicious" and "totally unnecessary piece of legislation" that "should be repealed tomorrow."He considered the introduction of the legislation had led to a culture shift within Oranga Tamariki that exceeded actual application of that statute noting that more broadly the onus of proof shifted to parents to prove their ability to safely care for subsequent children rather than the earlier onus on Oranga Tamariki to prove a parent could not safely care for subsequent children. And go back to that conversation and think about what it would take to prove to probably a Pākehā social worker for—Hon Todd McClay: That's so racist.JAN LOGIE: —a Māori woman struggling against poverty—Hon Judith Collins: What a racist comment to say.Hon Todd McClay: What a racist comment. Disgusting.JAN LOGIE: —to prove to a Pākehā social worker in a system that's made pre-determinations that she is going to be safe. And to try and pretend that it's inappropriate to say that when all of the data tells us—ha ha!—the Waitangi Tribunal has ruled our children's commission has come to conclusive conclusions that the system has inbuilt structural racism; I'm not even going to deal with a pretence that that is not real. We need to get rid of this policy and today is not a day too soon.DEPUTY SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday 13 September 2022. Thank you for your work this week members.Debate interrupted.The House adjourned at 5 p.m."