Ardern JacindaJACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I want to take the opportunity to respond to some of the comments that Minister Anne Tolley made from the chair and to seek a little more clarity from her. It is always helpful to hear directly from the Minister around the intent for some of these clauses. The Minister responded to some of our calls around clause 4—about having a split definition for the age of care and protection and then a split definition for youth justice as this bill now contains—by saying that she had worked through the number of young people who would be brought into the system and there simply was not capability within the system to deal with an extra 5000 young people.I have two quick responses to that. Firstly not all young people under those circumstances would need to go into a youth justice residence. They would not all by default be given supervision with residence as was implied and so we would not suddenly have 5000 people needing to go into the system. Even then there would be a way to deal with that. The implication was that there was not capacity within the youth justice system to deal with it. Even then one simple way around that would be to phase in the commencement of that element of the bill. On this side of the House we would have supported that. We are absolutely pragmatic; we understand that it would take time to build what capacity might be required. I would for instance encourage the Minister to shut Te Puna Wai ō Tuhinapo tomorrow and start again when it comes to services in the South Island. If that means building in a later commencement date so that we have services that are not dangerous to young people we would work alongside the Minister for that. We have the capacity in this House to build in commencement dates that are staggered so we would support that. I do not think capacity within youth justice is a justification to have what the Children's Commissioner has described as a very difficult logistical way to deal with young people in two systems.The second point that I want to make is—the Minister talked about this bill being overall about trying to do things differently to make sure we improve outcomes for kids. Look no one is saying that the outcomes we have now are good. Even the former Children's Commissioner Russell Wills pointed out that in some circumstances the point at which we intervene is not necessarily an improvement on the environment that these young people are in. That is a staggering comment to make and should give us pause for thought. No one here is arguing that we have got great outcomes and we do not need to do anything.However making the argument that this bill we have before us for instance is going to be the thing that changes everything fails to acknowledge that we never actually really gave the current system we have a very good shot. The analogy I would draw is that it is like driving a brand new car around for 10 years and never servicing it never changing the tyres and never putting oil in the car and then when it breaks down saying: Well that car was stuffed. Let's chuck it out." If you do not service a system properly or resource it properly or work alongside to build the capacity of your professionals properly of course you are going to have problems. Taking powers away from professionals and giving them to others carte blanche with a blank cheque changes nothing about the way you originally resource the system. That is just an analogy I wanted to make.I also want to absolutely acknowledge that when the Minister talked about clause 7 which has been the most controversial of all of the clauses that we are discussing she talked about the need to make sure that we do the work properly. I absolutely agree. In fact had the Minister wanted to take a bit more pause over this bill—maybe keep it at the select committee a little bit longer and spend a bit more time putting more definitions and constraints around the delegated powers—we would have been able to give that clause proper consideration because some of the examples I have heard of how we might want to delegate powers have been reasonably innocuous. For instance I have heard the idea that psychologists might want to have the ability to put a report directly to the Family Court rather than via a social worker. That is a reasonably innocuous thing to do. If that was what the bill said yes we would have been able to consider that and probably look quite favourably on it. That makes sense.That is not what this bill says and I must be absolutely clear on this. In fact what the members on the other side of the House referred to when talking about other community organisations—[Bell rung] Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Jacinda Ardern.JACINDA ARDERN: Mr—oh my name right. In fact when the members on the other side of the House have talked about other community organisations being able to carry out functions obviously we support the ability of those organisations to be part of the differential response model. We implemented that. We implemented that but we clearly defined what our intent was and what power those organisations should have and in fact they are powers that those organisations were comfortable with. We had a scenario at the select committee in which we had organisations that might have the professionals the Minister describes as taking over these powers which said (a) "We don't know what they are." and (b) "If they are as big as this bill implies we don't want them. We don't want those powers."Let us be absolutely clear. Given that the Minister talked about the need to take a multidisciplinary approach to working with children that makes it sound like we are going to have psychologists and social workers working alongside each other to formulate a plan for a child. That is what it sounds like. But what the bill says about this multidisciplinary approach—let us be very clear—means that they might have the power under section 39 of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act given to them. What is that power? That is the power to remove a child. That is the power to go and uplift a child. What about section 40? That is the enforcement of access rights—that is taking possession of a child and taking them to an access arrangement. You do not need a multidisciplinary approach to uplift a child under those circumstances. What you need is accountability responsibility and oversight. That is what you need.What about ensuring that a child is at a hearing? Or search warrants to recover a child who has absconded or is absent? Or safety warrants? None of these are things that are about for instance trying to give psychologists greater access to the Family Court or for instance giving a paediatrician a say in a care plan for a child. All of that we would probably have sat down and considered very reasonably. That is not what this bill does.Minister I would just like to highlight again that we absolutely agree that we want to of course work towards the best outcomes for children. But there is a reason that since 1989 the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act has been very specific that only police officers and Child Youth and Family (CYF) social workers—not even differential response social workers not even contracted social workers but CYF social workers—have those roles. That is because we have to be the ones with the care the responsibility and the accountability. If we make a mistake collectively as the State then we are the ones who must take responsibility.The closest example I can draw is that you would never want these powers to be held by the likes of Serco. The Minister might say that that is an extreme example but actually I have got nothing here in clause 7 to demonstrate to me that it could not have that power delegated to it. In fact new section 7C(2)(b) in clause 7 explicitly states that you could have someone who has contractual obligations and who sits entirely outside the State have these powers awarded to them. That is significant and if that is not what the Minister intended to do then the Minister should have been explicit about that. We might then have had a position where all of us could have supported this bill because the Minister knows how hard we campaigned for some of the elements that are in this bill.I am being honest. It breaks me that we are going to be in a position where we are going to have to vote against it because the powers that we are giving to just about anyone are too great. That is the true test of how far this bill is going.Just to perhaps also draw on one of the Minister's points to finish on—she talked about as an example contracts with iwi and how the delegation powers would enable I am assuming a greater role for iwi in working with children in these situations. Well actually (a) we are able to do that now (b) have you asked iwi whether they want the ability to remove a child or to investigate a child abuse allegation involving a child and do they want those powers—it is a genuine question; I have a big question mark over whether they would want those powers—and (c) you cannot say with one breath that we want to enhance the relationship with iwi and then put out a Cabinet paper that says we are going to fundamentally remove the presumption that they are going to be the first place we go to when we place a child who has been removed from their whānau. That is in direct contradiction with all of the principles the Minister claims she is trying to uphold."