Roy Heather: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Roy Heather: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:4343] 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak to this estimates debate on behalf of ACT New Zealand and I will spend some time talking about children at risk in light of the estimates. Is money being spent in the right places and on the right things? 
I recently asked some parliamentary questions of the Minister for Social Development and Employment and the results were quite disturbing. The year 2006 has in fact been the most dangerous year for child abuse—the most dangerous year to be a child in New Zealand. The months of February March and June this year had the worst figures ever for child abuse along with August and November 2005. At the end of June there were 16173 people receiving social work services under the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act—an increase of 12 percent on last year 2005. 
Over one-third of the referrals to Child Youth and Family Services last year were for Maori families. But it should be pointed out that domestic violence is not just a Maori problem. It is a problem for the whole of New Zealand. There is no gene for domestic violence and that is something that we should remember. Domestic violence and abusing are learned behaviours. There is no gene for them; they are not something that people inherit. Like the last speaker I would like to refer to the release of the recent Ministry of Social Development  
New Zealand 
Living Standards 2004  
report. I will focus on different things than the speaker from the Maori Party did but the report itself was actually very enlightening and highlights some very important facts that I think we as a Parliament and as policy makers should look to for the future when we are planning our welfare services. 
 For many years for far too long in fact we have looked at the problem of risk for children abuse domestic violence—whatever we want to call it—as a problem that has been brought about solely by poverty. That has traditionally been the view of the left—and I do not really like using the terms left and right because they make the field very murky—that poverty has been something that people always blame child abuse on. If this was the fact then being more generous with money funding families that live in poverty more generously and making that funding more widely available should have seen a decrease in child abuse. But as I have just pointed out this is not happening. The figures are continuing to worsen and as I said 2006 has been so far—and we are only halfway there—the most dangerous year in which to be a child in New Zealand. So we have a much bigger problem. 
The only positive thing to come out of the Kahui twins disaster is that we can now legitimately talk about the role of welfare dependency in the problem of child abuse. The Ministry of Social Development living standards report was enlightening in the following way. Children who are part of a two-parent family where one or both parents work are the least likely to suffer abuse. We might say that there is nothing surprising in that. We have always known that children growing up in a one-parent family are more likely to suffer abuse. But the report showed for the first time that children growing up in a one-parent family where that parent works are less likely to suffer abuse than a child growing up in a two-parent family where that family is dependent on welfare for its income—dependent on a benefit. 
It seems as many of us have been postulating for quite some time that work is very very important when it comes to lessening risk for children in this country. So even if families are not receiving a great income but one of the parents or the sole parent in that family is working it is a much healthier environment for children to grow up in. When we are formulating policy for the future we must look very carefully at this. Making people independent of the Government not only benefits them as adults but also it benefits their children. 
There is no doubt that the Working for Families package has made more and more families dependent on the Government for their income. The fact that someone in those families is working is a good thing but the attention is being focused in the wrong area. Those families already have children who are much less likely to be abused. The focus needs to be on the welfare families where nobody is working.