Bennett Paula: Vulnerable Children Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett Paula: Vulnerable Children Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 15 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17262. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development): I moveThat the Vulnerable Children Bill be now read a second time. This bill is an integral part of a suite of measures I have introduced to prevent and better respond to child abuse and neglect in this country. This includes the Children’s Action Plan which is now truly in the action phase. The bill will bring into effect several initiatives laid out in the Children’s Action Plan. These include making Government agencies jointly accountablefor the well-being of vulnerable children and better screening and vetting of Government workers and Government-contracted workers who work with children. The bill also includes amendments to the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 and the KiwiSaver Act 2006 as well as minor amendments to a number of other Acts.At its core this bill enables a fundamental shift in how we as a nation protect our children from abuse and neglect. It will demand that these children and their needs complex as they are are rightly placed at the centre of measures and initiatives designed to protect them. We are a strong and enviable country with a proud record in many areas of social support but our record in protecting some of our most vulnerable children from abuse and neglect is shameful. This bill turns decades of talk into action to turn round that record.I thank the Social Services Committee for its careful consideration of the bill. The committee has made a number of worthwhile recommendations that I believe will help give best effect to the intent of the bill. I also want to acknowledge the members of the public who took the time to submit on the bill. The committee received 115 written submissions and 62 submitters made oral submissions. Each submission provided valuable input and a unique perspective which has led to the improvements to the bill.The committee recommended some minor changes to the child protection policies to help provide clarity and ensure the policy intent is maintained. Child protection policies will support better identification of child abuse and neglect. The bill requires organisations working with children to ensure that their staff have been thoroughly screened through a safety check and are safe to work with children. This approach will reduce the risk of children being harmed by those who are entrusted to look after them or work around them. Too many times we hear of people who have slipped through the net and been able to prey on vulnerable children despite people having concerns about them.The committee recommended several technical changes to children’s worker safety checking to clarify the intended scope of the requirements. That part is now clearer about which sectors and professions require safety checking. People who have committed serious violent or sexual offences have no place working with children. The bill places a restriction on employing or engaging people who have committed certain serious offences to work alone with children or to have responsibility over them. I must say it always surprises me that we even need this one but it is a fact that some employers even knowing the history of some people still choose to employ them and put them in a position where they are working with vulnerable children.The committee recommended adding a further 18 offences to the list of offences in schedule 2 relating to serious violent and sexual offending sexual offending against animals historical sexual offending against children and objectionable publications. I support this recommendation as it is important that this list consistently covers the range of serious violent and sexual offences that make a person unsuitable to work with children.Exemptions may be granted for those who have been genuinely rehabilitated but that decision will be made based only on the strongest evidence possible. I am sure some of the committee members might like to comment on that but that is where we may have people who have committed crimes in the past have then gone through a thorough rehabilitation and are working with youth and are able actually to use some of that experience to turn young people’s lives round. So that is where that kind of exemption can be and where we thought it was necessary.We want to get the correct balance between employees’ rights and those of employers while also ensuring of course that children are protected. To improve thisbalance the committee recommended some changes that strengthen the safeguards for employees and provide greater certainty to employers of what is required of them. I believe that once an allegation is made and someone is told that they may not be employed because of their past history they have 5 days to actually go back and make sure that that fits.The bill introduces changes that will make it harder for parents who have killed or severely abused or neglected a child to have another child in their care again. The changes to the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act will put the legal onus on these parents to prove they are safe before they can have or continue to have the care or custody of any subsequent children. I feel strongly about this one. Unfortunately past behaviour can be indicative of future behaviour. Someone can prove that they have turned their lives round with the right interventions but the onus should be on them to prove that. We should well and truly make the safety of the child paramount in the decisions we make moving forward. The Social Services Committee also recommended some other changes to the part of the bill that amends the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act to provide clarification and to ensure that the policy intent is maintained.Last month in March I announced that the Government had decided to put the proposal for child harm prevention orders on hold for the time being. This decision was not taken lightly. It was taken over a long period of time. The Government is already putting a range of measures in place to protect vulnerable adults and children from people who present a high risk of harming them. In recent years we introduced police safety orders and 24-hour GPS monitoring to track the movements of high-risk offenders. We also removed the eligibility for parole for repeat serious violent offenders and offenders who commit the worst murders. Initiatives that we are working on include new public protection orders covering offenders who pose a very high risk of imminent or serious sexual or violent offending.Under the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) the new Education Council and its disciplinary bodies will have more options for addressing serious misconduct by teachers including physical sexual or psychological abuse of a child or young person. As I said we carefully considered submissions to the select committee on child harm prevention orders. Given the extent of the other measures to protect vulnerable children I am satisfied that we can significantly strengthen the protection of our children without pursuing child harm prevention orders at this point.In conclusion this legislation marks a significant change in how we work with vulnerable children and how we respond to their needs. We acknowledge that the changes proposed are controversial for some and will take many people out of their comfort zones. I make absolutely no apology for that. To achieve an improvement in terms of the horrific problem of child abuse and neglect in this country we need to face the problem head on. What we have been doing is not working and is nowhere near good enough for those children who need us most so we need to take action. I believe that this bill is a significant step towards us having improved services for those children who need us most. I commend this bill to the House.