Clark DavidDr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): Labour has been clear in its position. Jacinda Ardern has outlined previously that the bill contains a change that we have pushed extremely hard for and that is the raising of the age for care and protection. It is something that we believe passionately in and it was the basis of our support for this bill at every stage up until now. But also within the bill is a regressive and dangerous set of provisions in my view that will allow the chief executive to delegate powers that can currently be performed only by Child Youth and Family (CYF) social workers. There is no ability in the new legislation for Parliament to have the kind of oversight of these powers—the checks and balances—that has previously been in place. We cannot support that provision when it could allow any professionals at the whim of the chief executive to hold powers like the removal of children.I want to speak a little to that because my experience with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child provisions goes back a way to when I was working in Treasury a number of years ago. It has been a source of some embarrassment to New Zealand that we have not met our obligations internationally in this respect so it is good that that age is being addressed but it is also a concern that we have been slow to act to meet our obligations. In part I think this is motivated by the fact that we do not fund this area as well as we might. It is an incredibly difficult area to address because it deals with complicated problems. When we have children who are vulnerable who are in trouble and who come from families where things are not as they should be something has to go very wrong before the State intervenes and so by definition the problems we are dealing with here are complex.My concern is about the accountability loss for Parliament. If we enact these clauses we will not have the same oversight that we have had. The danger that we have seen repeated in this House—and it has happened in the healthcare sector too—is that we delegate responsibilities down without allowing the funding to follow. We delegate to the community the care for vulnerable people—often in the mental health sector—without allowing adequate funding for that care in the community. It may well be that in many cases that delegation is appropriate—that community care agencies are the best people to handle the care of vulnerable children. But there must always be accountability at the parliamentary level in my view for the quality of that care because it is incumbent upon the State to look after all of its citizens and especially its most vulnerable citizens.If we look closely at the history of the cost pressures within CYF we can see that CYF is struggling already within its current budget. In 2016-17 for example it is forecasting a deficit of up to $36 million due to demand-driven costs. That has a very real impact on its ability to deliver services. What I am concerned about is that this framework that we are looking at here in the Committee which is likely to go through will facilitate something that has the best of intentions behind it but upon which the State cannot deliver and cannot then be held accountable for. It is a basic principle of public policy that the State ultimately—particularly in these matters—should have a care and protection overview and accountability function to know that it is discharging its duties properly.So I would be interested in the Minister in the chair perhaps addressing how those accountability measures are going to be put in place so that the public can be reassured that this legislation really will achieve what it is going to achieve on what is already a very limited budget. Thank you.