Logie Jan: Vulnerable Children Bill Children Young Persons and Their Families (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill KiwiSaver (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Vulnerable Children Bill Children Young Persons and Their Families (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill KiwiSaver (Vulnerable Children) Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 19 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18746. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):It is with genuine sadness that the Green Party is opposing these bills arising from the Vulnerable Children Bill. The Green Party and its MPs are absolutely passionate about making New Zealand a great place to grow up in for all of our children. We believe that the State has a key role in keeping children happy healthy and safe. But in order to do that the Government must be prepared to do what our children need them to do to keep them happy healthy and safe. Human rights are a Government’s obligation and not just a good idea. The National Government had that opportunity. Its White Paper for Vulnerable Children generated a huge volume of submissions from experts and workers on the ground who told Ministers what children needed them to do in order for them to be able to grow up healthy happy and safe. But faced with all of that evidence the Government closed its eyes and then closed its heart.Today we saw the Minister for Social Development admit to Parliament for the second time this week that she was unaware of research showing that children in the most economically deprived families were five times as likely as children in the least deprived families to die from sudden unexplained death in infancy. One baby dies each week in New Zealand from conditions associated with low income. You might think that the Minister responsible for child welfare would make it her business to be aware of the health impacts of poverty. Instead she remains wilfully ignorant and that is outrageous. The thing is we know and this is backed up by history as well as current research that if we guarantee the essentials then we will guarantee the opportunities. Our institutions have been teaching for years this concept of the Maslow hierarchy of needs. At the base of basic needs are our physical needs for warmth rest water shelter and safety. They are universally—I thought except for the jeering from the other side—understood to be our basic needs.The Green Party wants to ensure all of our children have their basic needs met. We want to address the causes of vulnerability so that all of our children can thrive. That is why we put child poverty on the political agenda last term and we have been continuing that through this term. That is also why we have been working so hard to put domestic and sexual violence back on the political agenda. Poverty is created by and can be eliminated by Government policy. Child poverty and deprivation escalated in the 1990s due to Government policy. It is not out of our control. We continue to unashamedly call for action at every single chance we get on this issue because it is at the heart of the welfare of our children. Although violence is not quite so easily amenable to Government intervention and no one thing is going to solve it we can still significantly reduce it. This bill is not going to do that.Over 17 percent of children in New Zealand regularly go without essential items like fresh fruit and veges shoes that fit their own bed and warm dry houses. Think about that for a moment in this land of plenty. More than one child dies every single week in this country of plenty from illnesses related to poverty. When I was working at the University of Otago Medical School the Scandinavian head of paediatrics who had recently arrived left her position early because she had thought she was coming to a developed country. She could not match that expectation with the prevalence of what she considered Third World diseases all around her. The level of disease in our children because of Government policy is shocking. It is a national shame and I use the word “national” in both meanings.Violence is a major issue of ours in this country as well. It is estimated that more than a quarter of New Zealand children are affected by domestic violence. Between one in three and one in five girls are victims of sexual violence and between one in six and one in 10 boys are sexually abused and there are much higher levels of risk for children with disabilities and within other minority groups. This week we heard again from the Owen Glenn report about how our system is failing on the most basic level to provide protection and safety for our children and to provide pathways out of violence. They do not exist for many people in this country and the State is complicit in blocking people’s pathways out of safety in actual fact. The Government’s response to those experiences those experiences from agencies on the ground is to say “Oh look! We’re on to it. We’ve reformed the Family Court. We are doing this.” when in actual fact those reforms are undermining the protections of those very people they purport to care about.You put those two realities of poverty and violence together and it is no surprise that the Government got around 10000 submissions in response to the call for submissions. How amazing! So many people in this country care about these issues. There was so much hope and time put into these submissions and I want to thank New Zealand for that.But when we now look at the legislation that has come to us in this House out of that process I feel genuinely angry. This Government had the chance to respond appropriately to those submissions. The Government could have created a child poverty Act that would set targets and measures for eliminating child poverty at the base of the welfare of our children. It could have established a Minister for children to advocate within Cabinet for children. The Government could have reformed our Family Court the Child Youth and Family service and justice systems and ensured that there was funding for the support agencies that are so crucial in the response and the safety of children to address the myriad issues that are compromising their safety at the moment.And what did it do? You know this legislation is not any of those things. I acknowledge that both of those actions those bills that could have come to us would have been big calls but I think that the tenor of the submissions and all the reports we have had over the years into these issues would have justified a big call. What this Government has given us instead is this legislation and I am now going to reference the Parliamentary Library’s analysis of this legislation. It says that there are two main things that this legislation is going to do. One is that it is going to create child harm protection orders. Well that turned out to be a bad idea and has been taken out of the bill. Two it is going to institute safety checking for children’s workers. So there were two big ideas in response to the appalling rate of death and poverty of our children. It boils down to safety checking for children’s workers which we had no evidence is needed and is going to make any difference and is going to be coming out of the pockets of our community organisations which are struggling to provide the absolutely essential social services to protect the lives of our children.Excuse my emotion—it is because New Zealand deserves more than that. We are a country of plenty. We have the evidence from the experts from our community and from our children telling us what we need to do to make a difference for them and yet this is all we are given. It is an absolute travesty and I am disappointed in this House that we could not deliver what our children need.