Mark RonRON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I do love passion because it tells me that a speaker firmly believes what they are advocating and you cannot ask for more than that. But I guess of the points that have been discussed here today if I was to categorise them New Zealand First would be saying that it would pass the general thrust of this legislation. New Zealand First will still continue to support the bill through this Committee stage. With regard to the five points that are enunciated in the commentary on the bill New Zealand First has already put on the record that it supports four of them but it is concerned about the fifth bullet point.There have been a couple of other things raised here today in regard to which I need to put our view squarely on the table. The first one is around Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 248 which effectively raises the age of criminal responsibility from 17 to 18. New Zealand First will not support that SOP and New Zealand First will probably draw the Committee's attention back to 27 May 2008 when the second reading of my youth offenders bill was held in this House.New Zealand First has reviewed all of the data. In fact I have to commend Darroch Ball who has picked up the social services portfolio for New Zealand First in his very first term. He has done a sterling job. One of the things he has done—and it has surprised even me—is to go back through and have a look at the data that we argued was clearly available to everybody in respect of youth offending. That data is very very clear. Sometimes we gloss over these things and forget victims and we do focus on the offender.I guess what we would say of that data which is the reason we would not support this SOP is that we challenge the statements being made by certain people—namely the former Judge Becroft—about how wonderfully successful the youth justice system is because we would say that the evidence shows that it is not effective. We know that back in 2008 43 percent of all violent offending was carried out by youths—43 percent of all apprehensions across all crimes all categories and all age groups came down to the age group of 10 to 20. That in itself begged questions about the effectiveness of the youth justice system and questions as to what it was we were doing right and what it was we were doing wrong.In fact the evidence showed that all the 18-year-old adults of whom Judge Becroft was saying Well they're adult offenders." had all been through the youth justice system and had been failed within the youth justice system. They had gone in there at the age of 10 11 12 15 16 and had all been subjected to the wonders of this world-leading youth justice system and the result was they were in prison at the ages of 18 19 20 21. Of course people used to argue back and say: "Well that's about adult offenders. It's adults that are going to jail." No these adults were the graduates of the failing youth justice system.So we would put on the record that we are happy to have this conversation in the context of the age of responsibility in a more holistic form that examines coldly and clearly on facts the effectiveness of the youth justice system the parameters of its jurisdiction and what types of punishments or rehabilitation programmes it might be able to utilise or put into effect. We would say of this conversation around raising the age of criminal responsibility—accepting all of the arguments about the development of the brain. I have spent a lot of my time between my stints in Parliament involved with fostering kids and have had the privilege of listening to many clinical psychologists talking about the development of the brain. I understand those arguments. And by the way I was a foster kid myself and was a kid who went through State care as a ward of the State. If you want to have this conversation about raising the age of care to 18 I am happy to endorse that because I was one of those kids who were put out at the age of 17. In fact I often tell the story about how I got home and my parents had run away. Well in actual fact my foster parents no longer had any responsibility for me and therefore I had no home. In actual fact when I joined the army at get this the age of 16—uh oh! I was able to be subject to the military justice system with everything that goes with it because I was smart enough bright enough and intellectual enough and my brain had developed to the state that I could understand the difference between right and wrong. But no today 16-year-olds are not it would appear.So I was in the military at the age of 16 but as a ward of the State in the care of the army. At the moment I turned 17 I was discharged as a ward of the State. I was out of the army's care I was out of the parental care of my foster parents and I was on my own.To find that we are sitting here in 2016 discussing this is a little sad but I compliment—and I have done so privately—the Minister for Social Development on having the courage of actually making this move and raising the age of care up to 18.We could probably have a conversation about going further than that for some young people who have gone through specifically traumatic events that have shaped the way they think and behave through no fault of their own. But you cannot move the age of criminal responsibility and ignore the fact that age of 17 young people are fully entitled to make a decision around being parents and are fully entitled to drive a vehicle and make split-second decisions about how they manoeuvre that vehicle at speed on a highway where thousands of other people are driving. We cannot say that they do not have the compos mentis or the intellectual ability or the cognitive skills or that their brain is not developed enough to be held responsible for their criminal behaviour but they are able to be given a firearm and given a firearms licence and they are allowed to drink under supervision—or not—and allowed to drive a vehicle of any cc rating on a motorway. That is a conversation that we are prepared to have. We would like to have that conversation around the age of responsibility because there does need to be consistency right across the law and we have failed to address that.We will not be supporting the legislation. We would support a thorough in-depth examination of the youth justice system. If we could get some improvements in there then we would be open to a further conversation—but not one without the other.On the issue of tamariki Māori being ripped from their iwi and put into ward care let us just put on to the record James Whakaruru "Lillybing" Moko—there are a whole bunch of Māori kids out there. Me and Ria Bond another ward of the State in the New Zealand First caucus—we know exactly what people are talking about. I had six foster parents all of them Pākehā. Did I miss out on Te Reo Māori? Did I miss out on tikanga? Did I miss out on those things? I probably did. Was I given the opportunity to pick it up later on? Not when I would have liked to. But those things can come to you and they have come to me. I ended up being Chief Executive of the Federation of Māori Authorities and I have done a whole bunch of Treaty settlement work beyond that.What is more important than anything—and this cuts across any decision to place people with a particular race of people because they think they will be better off there—are three things: that the home that they go into is a home where they will be loved that the home that they go into is a home of compassion and that the people who have chosen to put their hands up to take those children into their care want them in there and they are not an accident and an inconvenience. That is all that matters and it does not matter whether those caregivers are Chinese Scottish Irish English or South African—it does not matter. For me as a Māori the only thing that was important was being cared for and brought up in a safe home in a loving home in a forgiving home because boy I made lots of mistakes and I caused lots of people a lot of heartache and heartbreak and yet those foster parents stuck with me. That is what matters.That brings us to the other point. We do have concerns about outsourcing and the opportunity for privatisation of care and the corporatisation of it. That worries us. We have no issues with dealing with NGOs like Fostering Kids the Salvation Army and some of those other NGOs that have been giving care like the Open Home Foundation for decades. But it would worry us if this legislation was used in some way in some part in some form at a later stage down the line to introduce a more corporatised model and for the State to be devolving itself of its ultimate care and responsibility to those children."