Sepuloni CarmelJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. There are a few points to make in relation to this part of the bill and I certainly will start by acknowledging the change that was proposed from the Social Services and Community Committee to have a chief commissioner put into the legislation. We've been told that it was possible anyway but to actually ensure that there will be at all times a known face—at least one—for this organisation and to be able to hold that voice and make that connection to our young people and our children is a really important change as far as it goes. I would say that I have been disappointed with these changes which were not part of the primary consultation. While I understand there has been some consultation the consultation with young people to my knowledge around this part of the bill has been very limited. The reality is that the Office of the Children's Commissioner is their office—it's the office of children and tamariki around this country—and they need to have confidence in that institution. I would have thought that any changes of this nature really should have been from a quite considerable consultation and a deep consultation. I know that there were issues that came up at one point in discussion around diversity which possibly led to the idea of a board and that's absolutely something that the Greens are keen on but this was not a proposal that was tested against other proposals. Really it was hearing some ideas—or this is how it's certainly come across to me—and then coming up with This is a solution." as opposed to really working through with young people on what they wanted their organisation and their voice to be looking like. So on that foundation alone the Green Party don't support these changes. There were very strong concerns raised at select committee around this and I'll raise just a couple. One from Starship Hospital during the select committee was saying that they "felt the change would stop any efforts to fix the system which would largely be felt by whānau Māori." and the "Separation of these functions will disperse relevant information and processes and will create more layers of bureaucracy delaying outcomes for tangata whenua/mana whenua and their tamariki." Judge Eivers and other Children's Commissioners—who know the workings of these agencies and the possibility of them as opposed to the limitations that they've experienced through what I would describe as starvation funding for many years—have opposed these changes really strongly and I do want to link this to the point that there were many other possible solutions. One of them could have been just—and I'm recognising that none of us are standing here and saying that actually we didn't want to strengthen advocacy and the voice and monitoring for children. Nobody in this House or in the community is saying that. But people are saying that they wanted it to be independent and that there was trust in the Children's Commissioner whereas there isn't trust in our other Government agencies. There is a concern so that is a clear point but also funding—they're running on $3 million a year. So of course the detail of monitoring for all of their functions on $3 million a year was not enough. I remember raising this when National was in Government and we heard from the then commissioner Russell Wills clearly telling us at the time that as commissioner he was having to prioritise their monitoring into specific areas because they did not have the resources to be able to cover the whole system and that is on the previous National Government to be held accountable for that. He produced some very impressive reports at that time and the Māori Women's Welfare League in their submission clearly argued that we would not have got to the point of public awareness of the problems within our child protection system if it had not been for his monitoring and reports. However they were constrained—and he admitted that—and the Children's Commissioner has been in front of the royal commission apologising for those failures because of a lack of resourcing. So how we get to the point from acknowledging that as a problem to removing those functions in effect by diminishing those functions and putting them in other places is a bit beyond me and people are really a little bit hōhā over seeing so much money going to the monitor and the Ombudsman—I think it's another $18 million—in the face of the fact that the Children's Commissioner who's managed to do such a great job on $3 million. What they could have done with that money would have been truly impressive. I just want to speak to some of the other possibilities that have been on the table that could have been possible. One of them was just doing that increase in funding and doing a consultation—like a proper consultation—with young people across the country to hear their voices about the agency and how they wanted it to represent them or to even increase the independence of the Children's Commissioner further by making it an Office of Parliament and to have them funded by Parliament rather than by the Government to remove that sense of them becoming a political football. What I would say from my perspective is that under the National Government they actively—actively—starved the agency of funding to be able to reduce their advocacy. We don't want that happening but this bill is not solving that problem and in fact I would argue as others did that by the dismantling and separating out of functions it actually creates more risk in that sense. We could have implemented the Waitangi Tribunal's recommendation for a Māori transition authority that would have had monitoring and accountability—not to the Crown—that would have enabled that independence as well as ensuring Te Tiriti obligations were met. There's a real concern that came through in terms of submissions about the sense of this view about advocacy and monitoring being in conflict and we've heard the Minister articulate it as not being consistent with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—that is they monitor and they advocate. The newly established Health and Disability Commissioner also has those dual functions and the view of many submitters was that making that statement was actually saying that people will lose their functions if they advocate too strongly in a way that the Government doesn't like what they're saying. This is a very strong concern and I haven't heard anything that allays my concern about that. Jonathan Boston made some quite strong statements in select committee—which I'm not going to repeat—that showed a very real concern of people who know the functioning of Government which is that Government is in this instance silencing an advocate for children because it doesn't fit with the Government's agenda to maintain and tinker with the status quo as opposed to delivering real transformation and that they're prioritising the trust of the public in the status quo over delivering for our children. That is being done through I still say a gutting of our commission. Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): I'm going to speak to the points that were made by the member but I will point out the ones that are relevant to this part and the ones that are broader. The point around the form and the ask I guess that was made by the member Jan Logie to consider that the Children's Commissioner become an Officer of Parliament needs to be responded to. Officers of Parliament are not allowed to be advocates. They have to provide objective information and it is explicitly stated in their roles that they are not able to be advocates so we would not want the Children's Commissioner to be an Officer of Parliament. They have maintained their absolute independence through this legislation the same independence that they had prior to us bringing this bill to the House. The one thing I will say that is one of the things that has changed is that they now have more extensive powers to get information or to require information than what the Children's Commissioner was able to gather before and that is to bolster what informs the advocacy of the Children and Young People's Commission. The member asked about consultation around the system. Again that's perhaps traversing slightly beyond what I am meant to here but I will respond to it. When the consultation occurred with the Beattie report and in the lead-up to the Independent Children's Monitor being established it was consultation about the whole system that was in place which of course is what we're talking about today: the monitoring the advocacy and the complaints and investigation function. So all of that was traversed and children were consulted during that process. One of the things that came out loud and clear was that children wanted diversity in the advocacy that they were able to access and what we've done with the Children and Young People's Commission is to bolster the advocacy by requiring a governance board that must have people on it who—and this is referring to clause 92 "Experience and knowledge of board members" in Part 5. It states "(1) The Commission must have on a collective basis among its board members—(a) experience and knowledge of children's and young people's rights and issues; and (aa) knowledge and understanding of te Tiriti o Waitangi … and (b) the required skills and leadership expertise to reflect the needs of children and young people of interest to the Commission." So it is actually bolstering the representation that will be able to inform the advocacy. This is so important. The previous Children's Commissioner Judge Becroft actually was so concerned about the need to have particularly Māori advocacy present that he created a position which was the assistant Children's Commissioner for Māori. We're going beyond that with what we are proposing here. He recognised that there was a lack of diversity. Despite the fact that our Children's Commissioners have been amazing advocates for children—and I say that about them wholeheartedly—when we reflect back on the Children's Commissioners that we have appointed in this country seven out of nine of them were Pākehā men. Now that is in no way a criticism but that is a reflection of the lack of thought that went into diversity in the Children's Commissioner for the representation of children the vast majority of whom have always been Māori children with an overrepresentation of disabled children. So the governance board is in no way taking away from the role of the Children's Commissioner depleting its powers or undermining the role of a chief Children's Commissioner. It is extending its ability to advocate effectively for the children that end up in the care system."