Harawira Hone: Child and Family Protection Bill — First Reading 
Harawira Hone: Child and Family Protection Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:8808] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. When I heard that during all the chaos and carnage of the recent earthquake in Haiti a bunch of dodgy American missionaries was stealing more than 30 babies and whipping them back to the US I really wanted to puke. All the talk about them being adopted to escape the devastation was really just a ruse to enable a bunch of crooked Christians to steal kids and brainwash them and possibly worse. I say big ups to the Haitian Government for putting a stop to that human trafficking. 
Of course the link between them and us is that the Child and Family Protection Bill which we are considering tonight will hopefully amend our own Adoption Act to bring it into line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child because our laws simply do not deal properly with the international movement of adopted children. 
The situation in Haiti is a case in point. More than 2500 children are stolen and illegally removed every single year. It is a brutal reminder of the vulnerability of children being targeted on the back of a natural disaster with people capitalising on a crisis to separate children permanently from all they know: their families their culture and their land. Hopefully this bill will help us to protect our children from such abuse to strengthen our compliance with the United Nations convention to improve court responsiveness to domestic violence and to enhance the protection of children and families. 
This bill also gives me the opportunity to put on record my support for some of the really positive work being done in Te Tai Tokerau through agencies like Amokura and its family violence prevention strategy. It is a community-based initiative to address family violence and promote whanau well-being that has the support of the chief executives of iwi who have made a long-term commitment to preventing whanau violence: Aupouri Te Rarawa Ngati Kahu Whaingaroa Ngapuhi Ngati Whatua and Ngati Wai. It is also an opportunity to remind ourselves of some of the practical things we can all be doing: supporting parents and whanau establishing our own tikanga about how we care for our mokopuna and trying to see things through their eyes keeping their space alcohol and drug-free and free from the dire consequences of domestic violence. 
While we are taking these steps up north it is also good to see that legislation is being introduced to ensure our children are protected from all forms of violence including psychological abuse to bring the Care of Children Act into line with the Domestic Violence Act to move to a point where lawyers act for children involved in proceedings under the Domestic Violence Act and to break down the barriers to registering protection orders. Children suffer from the impact of violent and aggressive behaviour so we need to keep their voices always in our mind remembering always that even if our mokopuna are too small to put their fears into words we know the impact of such trauma on their development and their learning and how unchecked it can lead to a whole raft of other major problems later in life: teenage violence suicide attempts learning and behavioural problems mental health problems and drug and alcohol issues. So this bill is timely. It is not perfect and hopefully the select committee will help to flesh out some of the more important issues like court referrals for drug and alcohol and opening up eligibility for domestic violence programmes to ensure that the whole whanau learn from the experience. 
The Maori Party is happy to support this bill in the knowledge that we are all part of the village that helps to raise the many wonderful and gifted children and mokopuna that live in this wonderful land that we all call home. Kia ora tatou.