Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to stand and speak to the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill tonight at its second reading. Back in 2017 the then National-led Government introduced and passed the Children Young Persons and their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Bill. That was a truly transformational piece of work and this bill simply follows on from that work that was set in place. It's an omnibus bill and by its very nature impacts on several other Acts—we've heard tonight 11 or 12 of those other Acts and some regulations. The minor changes to those other Acts are mainly because of the references to the term young persons" or "young person" as it appears in those other Acts—as well as also amending some of the references around bail the taking of and retaining of bodily samples plus some transitional provisions about the jurisdiction that will apply depending on the date that this bill is enacted.For instance for a 17-year-old with proceedings under way in a District Court on 1 July 2019—next month—proceedings will continue in that court including for any related charges that may be brought or filed on or after that date. So for instance if this is an offence that has being referred to the District Court now and other charges are laid in relation to that offence they will continue to be heard in the District Court or the High Court.The purpose of this bill is to bring 17-year-olds into the youth justice system and that as we've heard tonight is something that's very non-contentious across this House—in fact is supported by the National Party. The direction of travel was in fact strongly recommended by Judge Andrew Becroft our now Children's Commissioner and it aligns also very well with UNROC the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child who referred in our report back to UNROC in 2016 that this was in fact a very suitable move for New Zealand to be taking. This work as I've said is a continuation of the work of the National-led Government back in 2017 when we did make those massive changes to the way that we deal with our young people and those changes now see us with Oranga Tamariki the organisation that's responsible for the wellbeing of our children especially our children that are at risk our youth offenders and children in State care.It's very pleasing to see this legislation being put in place now to ensure that our under-18s—our 17-year-olds—are no longer being dealt with in the adult criminal justice system but are now being dealt with in the youth justice system. By dealing with them within the youth justice system it does give the system another opportunity to wrap around the services and the support that these young people need. It gives them another chance at changing the direction of their lives because it is not a very healthy outcome for them to be dealt with in the adult court system and indeed in the prison system.The Social Services and Community Committee received 13 submissions and as we heard from the previous speaker Priyanca Radhakrishnan almost half of those were out of scope. Even for the ones within scope some of the comments that were made in those submissions were out of scope. But as the previous speaker has mentioned it was an opportunity for people to voice their thoughts and provide their feedback and we certainly value the contribution that they did make.We've heard articulated very well by the Hon Louise Upston earlier about the number of changes that were made to the bill during the select committee process. And as we saw the departmental report produced and delivered to the select committee—I did take note that it was a truly collaborative effort and cross-agency and I thought that was very indicative of the philosophy behind Oranga Tamariki that it is indeed cross-agency. So we saw the Ministry of Justice and the New Zealand Police working with Oranga Tamariki in preparing the final report to the select committee.One of the issues that I did have with this process and the changeover to the new system which was questioned during the select committee process was the capability and capacity of the system to cope with the extra workload that is coming on 1 July. We were given absolute assurance—in fact "absolutely" was the word that was used when I asked the question. So we have faith that the system is well prepared to take on the extra workload that will be coming as a result of this law change on 1 July. But it has brought up the questions around the legislative programme of this Government and why it is that we are constantly dealing with truncated processes when in fact at any time over the last 20 months this piece of legislation could have been debated in this House but here we are with the implementation date only three weeks away and we are still only in the second reading. So we were given good assurance that the system will be ready to cope.There were some technical parts of this bill that did receive a lot of attention from the select committee members. And as we heard from the Hon Alfred Ngaro earlier the Schedule 1 offences being at the high end of offending and those that would normally attract a sentence of 14 years' imprisonment—so at the very high end of offending. Now some members of the public may have thought that by bringing 17-year-olds into the youth justice system this may have been a way of being soft on crime. But actually those Schedule 1 offences will still be heard if they are committed by a 17-year-old. They will still be heard in the District Court or perhaps the High Court.There is an exception to that Schedule 1A offending if it's committed by a 17-year-old and they are jointly charged with a young person or child. We did have to give some consideration to how those two cases should be dealt with and it was agreed that the proceeding remain in the Youth Court should the 17-year-old be jointly charged with a Schedule 1A offence. The reason was that in that scenario it would save the duplication of effort in running two separate courts the Youth Court and the District or High Court but it was also better that we had the defendants and we had the witnesses also only having to be involved in one process. So if the offender does commit other related offences to the Schedule 1A offence—so for instance they're charged with a Schedule 1A offence and then other minor charges—those minor charges will also be heard at the same time in the District Court or High Court. So there is no separation of the charges where a Schedule 1A offence is involved. I thought it would be relevant to mention a report that was done by Judge Andrew Becroft the Children's Commissioner. Out of his report I note the following and I quote "To be involved in the Youth Court is daily to confront young offenders almost all of whom are not part of the education system. … anecdotally it is thought that up to 65-70% of offenders in the Youth Court (and only the most serious 20% of offending results in Youth Court charges) are not formally 'engaged' with the education system. … Technically many are not truants because they are not meaningfully enrolled at a secondary school to be a truant from. They are simply not in the formal education system. They are drifting. They are between schools. They may have been excluded are not now enrolled elsewhere or are awaiting placement in alternative education. Or they have drifted out of alternative education and are waiting for a course seeking employment or sadly and too often simply doing nothing".This bill is only one piece of a much bigger puzzle but it does give these 17-year-olds another chance and I commend it to the House."