Henare PeeniHon PEENI HENARE (Minister for Youth): Tēnā koe Madam Chair. Thank you very much. First and foremost can I take the opportunity to welcome the Leader of the Opposition back into the country. He must be slightly disappointed to come down here for a keynote speech and only find no more than nine fellow MPs to support him. I want to acknowledge first and foremost as we look at this particular part of the Estimates debate the role around Oranga Tamariki. Firstly can I acknowledge the voices across the country who have expressed themselves with regard to Oranga Tamariki. They want our young people to have a safe and good and prosperous upbringing and we support them in that. Madam Chair you will find in the Estimates a clear commitment from this Government with our tamariki. We want to make sure that our young people grow up safe in Aotearoa and are our number one priority. All New Zealanders want to see fewer kids hurt; they want to see more of our tamariki loved and cared for. Under the last Government we found lots of talk around legislation for Oranga Tamariki but actually no support and no delivery—no action. We remember much raved about change in the legislation but actually where the rubber meets the road there was a failure. This Government has come in to make sure that that failure no longer persists and we do that by making sure that our relationships with iwi aren't simply a memorandum of understanding because that's not good enough. A memorandum of understanding does not look after our tamariki. Strategic partnerships that allow iwi hapū and NGOs to be involved in the caring and the upbringing of our tamariki is where it's at and this Government has delivered on that. We are recruiting more families to look after our people so that our young people don't move into the institutions that have been pulled through huge debate over the past number of months with regard to the care of our young people in State care. We are proud about the work that Minister Martin is doing with Tūhoe and we are proud of the work that she is doing with Ngāti Kahungunu first to front the issue and second to actually put in place the kinds of resources that will make sure that the aspirations we have for our young people are met. Speaking of young people I want to now turn to one of my portfolios under Vote Social Development and that's for youth. We wanted to make sure that there was no division when we look at the way we care for our young people. We don't want to say that once you've met a certain age you're no longer part of the strategy. We want to make sure that children and young people are a part of the strategy and that there is a coherent one for them moving into the future. I'm proud that as the Minister for youth development we have grown our partnerships through the partnership board with communities far and wide. We made it clear from the outset that we wanted to have key focus priority groups for the Ministry of Youth Development. We understand we want opportunities for one and all but I've made it clear to the officials and in the work that we've done with regard to the Estimates that we must focus on the key groups within the youth population that have for too long fallen through the cracks. We know who those groups are—Māori Pacific people women ethnic migrants rural communities. We also know too youth with disabilities and one that I'm passionate about is rainbow youth. We've managed in the Estimates to commit dollars to make sure that as this country grows we also grow the awareness amongst mainstream Aotearoa of the rights and the aspirations of the rainbow youth community—and that's important. That's to make sure that we don't just support the sector but we actually grow the understanding across this country so that they can help support the sector too and they can help support the aspirations of our young people. We're committed to doing that.We do have lots of challenges; there is no shadow of a doubt about that. We talk about KiwiBuild. We talk about Oranga Tamariki. We talk about the aspirations of our people. We know that in the long run what we are doing is actually making sure that the long-term vision for our people is clear. Their aspirations can be found in this Estimates debate and their voices can be heard in the issues that relate to them. I'm proud that on this side of the House we're taking it seriously. Enough rhetoric it's time to put the hard work in.