Delahunty CatherineCATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I also want to speak about a dark secret in this country but it is a sadder one in many ways for our kids. I do want to challenge the Government on seclusion rooms; banning them is not enough. Seclusion rooms are a symptom of a broken system whereby some of the most marginalised children and the most stressed teacher-aides and teachers are struggling to deal with some complex issues. The Government needs to do a whole lot more than just putting out a Supplementary Order Paper—which we think we may support—banning this practice. We need to fix a broken system and support schools across the country because these children are hurt and have been hurt.For a minute I would like to think about the perspective of these kids themselves. Children who experience a range of learning differences and disabilities often do not find school easy and often have triggers that can result in behaviours that other people find difficult or confusing. There is no initial teacher training on this to make sure that these kids are taken care of. There are maybe a couple of hours. There is no professional development that is mandatory for teachers—they have to opt in to understand how to cope with the situation. What we have seen with seclusion rooms is that 17 schools are not coping and are using this strategy because they do not know what else to do—they do not know. Without resources training and a culture of inclusion this will continue to happen even if seclusion rooms are banned. These children will continue to be excluded from their rights in terms of safety and opportunity unless the Government seriously invests in the need for a programme of education around inclusion. Our society remains disabling and exclusive so I am not blaming the Government alone; we are all part of it. However it is the job of the Government to lead more than a piecemeal ban of an individual strategy that we all find frightening—and the children who have experienced it are traumatised.We have to do a comprehensive change. That is why I initiated the inquiry which we have just reported back on. That inquiry found a broken system. It found that there is no more money. The Government is not prepared to put more money in and it is not prepared to enshrine children's rights in law. So families have experienced things like seclusion rooms or like having only 1 hour of school a day and their child is seen as having a behavioural problem and they are asked to remove that child—which is exclusion as opposed to seclusion but amounts to the same thing. That needs to be addressed properly and that has not been addressed properly. The Education and Science Committee continues to hear on all kinds of legislation around education these families telling us story after story and piecemeal responses will not work. I am not attacking individual schools. I know that there are individual schools that are going through hard times over this as well as families that are going through hell and actually it is not their fault.We have not in the history of this country—and particularly in the term of this Government—invested sufficiently in building a culture of inclusion. Mainstreaming of children has become main-dumping" and that has led to some strategies that are less than perfect by people who have less than optimum training and support. There are schools doing a fantastic job—they know exactly how to avoid triggering meltdowns for children with high needs such as autism. There are many ways in which we can avoid seclusion or exclusion but those magnet schools tell us that they are using best practice without the Government's support without the funding and without the training because they have made a cultural commitment to do it.It is time that this Government and all of us step up. No more kids in dark rooms. No more excluding our children and leaving them at home because the school cannot cope. We must resource learn about respect and uphold the rights of our children—all of them no matter who they are—to a genuine experience of education and inclusion. We must teach every child that every other child has a right to be there. If that child is different then that is OK. We must support all teachers and teacher-aides to be able to cope with diversity in the classroom instead of doing piecemeal actions and an inquiry that disappointed me despite all the work I put into it and all the progress. It is not good enough. The system is still broken. Kia ora koutou katoa."