Ardern JacindaJACINDA ARDERN (Deputy Leader—Labour): I want to speak directly to the issue that the Minister just raised because she talked about doing everything within our power to make sure that that child is supported. Presumably that includes within whānau hapū and iwi because the Minister has repeatedly claimed that her new clause as set out in the amended version of the bill is essentially the whānau first" clause that was in the old version of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act. That is patently not true. It is patently not true for two reasons: firstly the Minister herself in March made it very clear and I quote from Twitter: "To be clear—we're not going back to the drawing board. Through the select committee process some of the wording of the Bill may change but its intent won't. We will not be reinserting the whanau first principle." That was what the Minister stated.So her claim that the "whānau first" principle is in this legislation is not correct; she has put something else in. I acknowledge Minister that you did make a change; you accepted the select committee argument. You have used the word "preference" but there is a considerable difference to the word "preference" in the legislation that came back from the select committee and what was in the original Act. The original Act talks about not just placing the idea of whānau hapū and iwi first but actually resourcing it doing everything we can to make sure it can happen. Simply saying "preference" means that you can do a quick search see whether or not someone comes up on the system and if they are not there move on—move on. Even then actually we know that that is predominantly what happens anyway. But the legislation as it was drafted in 1989 went further than that; it put the onus on the State to make an effort to put support around whānau hapū and iwi—to do everything within its power not just to put preference but to actually put some basis behind the principle. It was not just words on a page. Now we have words on a page. We have lost the "whānau first" principle fundamentally. So that is what we object to Minister and that is what I wanted to clarify.For the purposes of the moving speeches that have come from the members of this House who have been in care the first thing I would say is that I do not make any assumption about any of the lives that anyone in this House has had—no assumptions. I do not do that for anyone outside of this House. We do not know each other's stories—we do not know each other's stories. So I would never prejudge anyone's contribution as being from a place of privilege or a place of harm. They come from a place though in most cases of very goodwill. They come from goodwill and I acknowledge that most members of this House—actually I would hazard a guess and say all of us—want the right outcome for kids for rangatahi; that is ultimately what we all want. We just have some very different ideas about how that is best achieved. That is probably the thing that defines this debate rather than our intent.Minister there is another point I want to make and it has been touched on by some of my other colleagues and that is that actually the bill fundamentally moves us away from the old legislation of a minimalist State approach to an early intervention approach. We would argue that that has always been the basis of our beliefs: that actually early intervention is best—the idea of never having a child removed is best. But actually by using that language in the bill we are moving some way on. And actually we never really codified what it means. The bill talks about it but it does not tell us how. The threshold for intervention for instance has not changed. We are still waiting for significant harm to be done before we have any legal footing to move in to support a whānau. We have not actually talked about what it means to provide early intervention.Minister if I was going to say what the research tells us that if we want to support any whānau from preventing it from being in a situation of harm or neglect—if we want to prevent that—the first thing we would do is make sure every family has the basics they need to survive that they have the resources to provide for their family and that they are not living in a state of material deprivation. That is the reason the children's covenant that Judge Caroline Henwood worked up which has been integrated into some of the principles of this bill and has been supported by iwi leaders talks about making sure that we will strive to provide children with a proper standard of living. That is a fundamental and yet that is the one principle that does not make this legislation.We cannot talk about creating an environment of well-being and of making sure whānau hapū iwi and family have all they need to provide for their kids so that we do not end up in a situation of harm without acknowledging the best way to do that first and foremost because the best determinant of child well-being is poverty and deprivation. Every time we have raised that in the House members on that side have claimed that we are saying that families who live in poverty harm their children. That is utterly deplorable. We have never argued that—we have never argued that. But what kind of situation are you putting family in if you ignore the economic circumstances they live in?Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Sleeping in cars.JACINDA ARDERN: If they are sleeping in cars and they have financial stress and pressure—that every payday is a choice between whether or not you are putting food on the table or a uniform on your child's back—that causes issues for families. Of course it does. We would be ignorant to ignore that and we would be ignoring the evidence.Under a Labour Government Oranga Tamariki will have a legislated obligation to care about material deprivation because you cannot have families who are focused on well-being unless you care about poverty and deprivation too. We would make sure that Oranga Tamariki would have a board—a child poverty reduction board. It would have members from every single Government department on that board who would have a legislated requirement to set targets to reduce the impact of material deprivation and harm on kids because that is what a genuine focus of early intervention looks like.Instead the Law Society has pointed out in their submission: "It is unclear how the Bill is intended to intersect with the Vulnerable Children Act 2014 and the [overall] establishment … of the Ministry for Vulnerable Children". It also talks about how there is a need for "a complete redrafting … to ensure a clear process for early intervention and to ensure the government's objectives are achieved. Instead the Bill makes a range of complex amendments to the Act that will inevitably create difficulties as the philosophies of the Act and Bill are in many respects inconsistent." That is what we are left with. Again I do not doubt the intent of the Minister but what we have been left with does not achieve her goals. That is why it should have been drafted very very differently and with a very very different value set.I want to finish my contribution by coming to something that Michael Wood was just speaking on. Yet again to me this speaks to the lack of aspiration in this bill. We have a situation where Youth Court judges now are frequently in the media commenting on how unsatisfactory it is that children and young people are being held in police cells not just at the point they are apprehended but on remand as well. And that is unacceptable. The Children's Commissioner rated it as probably the most significant issue in his contribution. In 2016 there was a total of 150 young people and children detained in police cells for more than 24 hours and now what does this bill do? This bill allows us to put them in prisons as well—in prisons. It does not actually get rid of anything; in fact it extends the ability to use those provisions. If we were truly aspirational we would have got rid of it. Or even if we thought we did not have the resource to get rid of it straight away we could put a sunset clause in it. But we are breaching our obligations with a clause that allows children—children—to be held in police cells.Look my father was a policeman. I remember one day being briefly locked in a police cell. It may have been a joke but even in that brief moment—in that briefest of moments—I saw what it might be like to be in a place like that and it was pretty horrifying. I cannot imagine what it would be like for a young person to stay in there for longer than 24 hours. Those police cells are not made for adults to stay in for longer than 24 hours; and in fact they do not. They are moved on quickly into prisons and held on remand outside of a police cell environment. This speaks to the lack of resources within our youth justice system.Minister I want to finish though on a note of congratulation to you. I am so pleased that we see in this bill an increase in the age of the youth justice jurisdiction. That is an incredibly positive move—incredibly positive move. I do not doubt and I accept that that—Darroch Ball: You just said there was a lack of resources.JACINDA ARDERN: I accept that causes resource issues and they should be faced but it is not a reason not to do the right thing Mr Ball. But also I would say though that we are not being consistent if we increase that age and acknowledge that a young person is not an adult at that age and yet we continue to hold them in an adult environment. That is inconsistent. So Minister thank you for that. I know it would have been met with some opposition by your colleagues. I applaud your doing it but we must make sure that when we give with one hand we do not then lose with the other and I am afraid that overall that is exactly what this bill does."