King Annette: Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
King Annette: Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:683] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 I first of all commend the House for the quality of the debate on the Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill. I think there is nothing like a bill where children or vulnerable people are being discussed to bring the House together. It is true that across all parties we care for our families we care for our children and we care for our community. At times we like to have the political debates and the rumble of Parliament but when it gets down to tintacks we really do believe I think in the common good of our fellow human beings. I commend the House for this debate. 
I say to the Minister of Justice that Labour members will support this bill. We will vote for it. In fact the whole of Parliament will vote for it. But as has been said that is not because it will prevent a single child from being abused maltreated assaulted or killed. We know that this bill is about what happens after the event. It is about what we do about the event. As Judith Collins said it is not tackling the causes; it tackles what we do to the people who have committed the crime. So of course we will support the bill. The National Party manifesto states that National wants to send a message that violence against children is abhorrent and is not to be tolerated. There would not be a member in this House who does not support that message. During the debate on the Bail Amendment Bill yesterday all sorts of claims were made about what it will do; we all know that this bill will not stop the abuser from abusing. 
We all know as well that the reasons why people abuse and perpetrate violence against others are very very complicated indeed. It is a complex issue. As Phil Goff said if there was an easy answer every party in this Parliament that had been in Government would have put that solution in place. It is a complex issue. Abusers will not stop their behaviour just because today a Saturday at 3.15 in the afternoon and under urgency we amend an Act of Parliament and put in place some window-dressing changes. It will not change the action of the abusers. They do not believe they will get caught anyway. The behaviour of many of them is long term. For many years they abuse young people often throughout their young lives and they use their position of power to suppress and frighten their victims into silence. Their whole aim is to ensure that nobody knows what they are doing. They are certainly not thinking about what the aggravating factors will be. 
As we have heard today this bill does not make a great deal of difference in terms of the existing legislation. David Garrett said it may not do much but it does not do any harm. I agree with him. But I wonder why the Minister of Justice did not broaden his consultation even though he was not going to refer the bill to a select committee and allow the public to have a say. Why did the Minister in his consultation on and putting together of this legislation not go outside Government departments and seek advice from somebody like Professor Geoff Hall? Why not approach people like him? Why not go to some of our extremely good non-governmental organisations in New Zealand that deal with children every day? Why not go to the Children’s Commissioner? Why not go to people who have great knowledge of what is happening to our children or who work on the front line in terms of providing support and programmes? I am very disappointed that the Minister saw fit to ask only Government departments—the same Government departments that many of the members of his party have called useless Wellington bureaucrats. Why not go further in terms of his consultation to find out what others thought? 
I think it is a shame that the Minister if I heard him correctly intends to bring another bill into Parliament next year to deal with sentencing for crimes against children. The Minister is nodding. We have to ask why we are here today under urgency passing this legislation that people know will make very little difference—and that no one is not going to support—when a larger piece of work by the Minister will be introduced next year and hopefully sent to a select committee. The Minister is affirming that. Why could they not be done together? I can think of only one answer and unfortunately I do not really like it. It is because this bill is a political manoeuvre part of the Government’s promise of 100 days of action. That can be the only answer. The Minister knows that this bill will not stop an abuser today tomorrow or next week from abusing a child. So why not do the proper thing? Why not bring in the bills together? Let us across this House work on child abuse in New Zealand. Would it not have been a great start to the forty-ninth Parliament for us to genuinely take a cross-party approach to child abuse? 
The Ombudsman in his report of December last year said that one of the problems we have in terms of crime and criminal justice is that it has become highly politicised and the subject of a lot of uninformed comment. He said further that we have two opposing philosophies driving policy matters in New Zealand at the moment: one called “penal populism” and one called “soft liberalism”. What we really want and what he called for is a rational debate on criminal justice. But he very much doubts that that is possible. Well I believe that it is possible with goodwill but it does mean that on a bill like this and on other bills that the Minister will bring in next year he should open the door to other parties being able to debate the issue; he should genuinely extend an hand across the House and say: “We want to find the best solution to these incredibly complex issues.” 
You see it is not only New Zealand that faces the problem of child abuse. Professor David Fergusson who is the director of the Christchurch Health and Development Study has followed around 1200 children who were born in Christchurch in 1977 for all the years since. He has also been part of a special report based on 8 years of studies in New Zealand Australia Britain the United States and Canada. Those studies show a similar pattern in all the countries we like to relate ourselves to—that 4 to 16 percent of children are physically abused that one in 10 suffers neglect or psychological abuse and that it happens every year year in year out. So it is not just a New Zealand issue; it is an international issue. 
But I believe we are better placed than most countries to deal with this issue. The reason is that we are small. We are a small country we have many nationwide services and we are relatively well connected. I think we have many good policies and programmes in place. I do not care whether the National Party started some of them in 1953 or whether the Labour Party started them in 2000; we have some good programmes in place we can build on those programmes and we can take the best of them and make them work. 
But that does mean having a commitment. It means having a commitment to dealing first with the most vulnerable in our society. We know that over the last 8 or 9 years the number of children who live in poverty in this country has been halved. We are left with about 150000 vulnerable children living in families. They are the hard core the children who are likely to appear in crime statistics in the future. That is where we need to start now. That is where we need to continue the work that is being done and we need to commit to that work. I was pleased to see Paula Bennett identify those children. I will be interested in her putting out her programme and her plan to tackle them because there is so much good work being done. I hope she does not treat that work in a political way—does not disregard a programme because it was Labour’s work or work that was done in the past—but picks it up and runs with it. 
My only question of Paula Bennett would be to ask her to assure me that despite her commitment to reduce the staff of the Ministry of Social Development—500 staff over the next 4 years 80 percent of whom are frontline workers—not one of the people who deal with vulnerable children will lose his or her job. It will not be easy getting rid of 500 staff without those people being affected. I would like that commitment because we can deal with this issue if we deal with it across this House and work with our communities.