Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm very pleased to be able to stand and support the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill. This is a bill introduced under the Standing Orders so that it provides for an omnibus bill to amend more than one Act. What I'm going to use my contribution time for today is to pick up on the part of this bill which seeks to ensure that the benefits of the policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction are fully realised.Many years ago while I was working at the Human Rights Commission I was fortunate to attend the opening of the marae Youth Court which at that point was only the second Youth Court in the country; we've got a number of them now. One of the things and why it was to be celebrated back in 2016—and in fact I acknowledge the Hon Anne Tolley who was bringing forward that change a change that we had long been advocating for advocacy groups like UNICEF JustSpeak the Human Rights Commission and even the police and courts themselves realising that a rehabilitative restorative justice approach was certainly more effective better for young people for victims for community building and for whānau and that extending that to 17-year-olds was something that had long been called for and something that actually put us out of kilter with many other countries around the world who had already gone ahead and made sure they had done that.One of the major changes in this bill is to make sure that we are fully realising that policy announcement that was celebrated some years ago and I actually did want to properly acknowledge those advocacy groups who had been calling for this change for quite some time. Now we're at the point where we have to make sure we've got our i's dotted and our t's crossed and make sure that the law is also up to date because it's about to come in on 1 July as is my understanding. When I was able to attend the opening of the marae Youth Court that day picking up on what my colleague Ms Radhakrishnan also mentioned about the effectiveness and efficiency of a restorative justice approach and not just a punitive approach particularly for young still-developing minds—if I'm being aspirational here that can actually continue well past 17 well past 18 and that can go right up to and research is very clear 23 or 25 years old. So this is a good useful start.I just want to be very clear in this contribution that a restorative justice approach is absolutely centred on true accountability—on true accountability directly to victims to account for and restore the harm and the imbalance that perpetrators have committed to that person their family and their own communities. So I'm pleased to see this Government taking some leadership and some moves to understand that the evidence has been very clear for a very long time that putting younger people into the adult court system is a path to reoffending and that the rehabilitative restorative counselling focus for the less serious crimes—because let's be clear the young people in the age group up to 17 are included except for when those crimes are of a serious nature; then they still go through the ordinary adult justice system. But the evidence has been very clear that when we can actually address the root causes—my colleague Ms Radhakrishnan highlighted the example of a young person with a learning disability. That was a made-up young person. I also want to caution against the stigma of young people with learning challenges being the same as criminals. But what we do know in prisons today is that if we had provided enough proper support in the education system and around a whole host of challenges and social difficulties for that person we would actually be avoiding terribly high incarceration rates.And so I did want to say that while this legislation picks up making sure that we are enabling the proper realisation of that policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction I think my colleague Greg O'Connor also mentioned that we need to make sure the resourcing for that policy is put in place properly and so we will need those monitoring services drug and alcohol services and counselling family group conferences. We will need to as a Government make sure that we are resourcing the impacts of this legislation and bringing that 17-year-old policy change into play.I wanted to make a short contribution but I will also pick up the Minister's initial address put here in the House today to flag some of the wider work that isn't part of this particular bill. I did want to acknowledge the Minister herself making it clear that she is very cognisant and acutely aware of the need for iwi Māori communities and marae and hapū to be involved with custodial options. This is something that has long been called for something the Greens have been strong advocates for as well. And the Minister mentioned that community-based custodial options with iwi are part of the plans going forward which will also help with the capacity of Oranga Tamariki but more importantly for myself is that this is also about putting over understanding the value that iwi and Māori communities have to be able to take care take that responsibility and us as the Government being able to put over more trust and resourcing and support for them to step up and take that responsibility. They want to know where their mokopuna are they want to know who's having trouble and where those whānau need help and they are willing to step up and help us to do that work.Of course others have mentioned that there are other technical legal changes and in particular fixing up some flaws in previous legislation. So of course I'm very happy to support us getting that right fixing that up and am looking forward to continuing the discussion and making sure that we are properly resourcing a truly restorative justice approach that first and foremost is about proper accountability to victims their families and communities. Thank you.