Moroney Sue: Vulnerable Children Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Vulnerable Children Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17887. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): I have been thank you Mr Chair. In rising to speak to Part 3 of the Vulnerable Children Bill I just want to let those listening to the debate at home know that if they were listening last night heard us debating Part 1 and are now wondering why we have suddenly gone on to Part 3 the whole of Part 2 was entirely struck out. That is because it was dedicated to the issue of child harm prevention orders. Obviously a lot of effort had gone into drafting up this new concept but it was ditched. We on the Labour Party side are pleased that that sensible approach was taken but a little worried that there was so much effort and I guess ministerial time and drafting resources going into something that was clearly never going to work. It is a bit sad that it took so long to actually get as far as it did before it went away. But the good thing is that that approach which was going to be extraordinarily difficult to actually bring about has gone from this bill.In this debate on Part 3 I want to address some of the issues that were raised with us by submitters that unfortunately have not been dealt with by Part 3 as far as I can see. I would be interested in hearing from the Minister for Social Development on the issues that were raised with the Social Services Committee. One of them was the issue which was traversed a little by Jan Logie when she spoke around children with disabilities. Itis something that I had never even thought about to be honest until submitters came before our committee to tell us of the plight of children with disabilities who are treated differently and not given the same rights under our current legislation as children without disabilities. They asked us to use the opportunity of the Vulnerable Children Bill to address that because they said—and I think they were quite right—who better fits the definition of a vulnerable child than a child with a disability so severe that their family cannot cope or chooses not to cope and who is therefore committed to a lifetime in a residential care facility? Who could be more vulnerable than a child in that situation?What the submitters—and there were three or four of them from memory—asked us to consider was why these children should not have the same right as other children whose families had given up on them or perhaps not been able to cope with them or not treated them well and to have the opportunity that other children have under the same legislation for a family who did want to have them in their lives to take care of them. It was a really salient point I felt that the submitters made because it was one that I certainly thank goodness had never come face to face with before. But it made a lot of sense. Why is it that children with disabilities in that situation do not have that right if there is a family that would like to take care of them? Why can they not have a home for life that is not in a residential care facility? If their own family is unable to provide that for them why not another family? I think that is something that I would like to hear from the Minister on because it would have been under Part 3 that that would have taken place had we been able to take the opportunity to use this bill the Vulnerable Children Bill to actually address that issue.I want to support the amendments to this part proposed by my colleague Jacinda Ardern and my colleague Dr Rajen Prasad as well because they are both very very sensible and really important amendments for this Parliament to debate tonight. The amendment from Jacinda Ardern that I particularly want to address is the concept of actually fixing the problem where at age 17 children who are in the care of the State are suddenly out on their own. That submission that Jan Logie again referred to—it was incredibly powerful to hear from that young man. What an amazing effort he had made. He was able to describe very eloquently to our select committee how he felt abandoned—how he felt abandoned by the State and by the country effectively at the age of 17. It was really poignant for me because I have sons of my own who are rapidly approaching that age and the idea that they could be cast out into society without any backup and without any ability to find—as he said he did not even have the legal right to sign a tenancy agreement—