Borrows Chester: Budget Debate 
Borrows Chester: Budget Debate 
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CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I rise to take a call in this Budget debate and I want to place on record my grateful thanks for the support and encouragement of the retiring member the Hon John Carter for the help that he has been to me personally as a junior member of this House previously as a candidate in several elections and as a fellow member of the Parliamentary Rugby Team and for being an all-round good mate. The House will be the poorer for seeing him head away from here and off to the Cook Islands in his new role as the High Commissioner to the Cook Islands. We are grateful for the legacy that he has left within the National Party particularly within the Northland electorate. So our thoughts and our care go with him and with Leoni. 
Tonight I want to speak about the recent Budget and the plight of young children in our country especially those who are the most vulnerable. I am pleased to see that young children in care have been given some significant encouragement and some ongoing support. The Budget directs money to young kids in the care of the State and I want to underline the huge responsibility we have as the State to care for the young who are far too vulnerable and far too at risk to leave in their own homes. As a person who has removed children from their homes I have been witness to the agony of making the decision as an agent of the State to remove a child from the care of his or her parents. It is done knowing that those parents love that child as much as they know how to love knowing that they care as much as they know how to care and knowing that in many respects they lack the skills necessary to be able to raise a child in the manner in which he or she deserves to be raised. 
When one has been confronted with the hurt and the pain while recognising as a parent the agony of what it must be to have your children taken from you one removes those children only as a last resort. We have about 5000 children in the care of the State at present and until now we have done very little to understand what their drivers their inhibitors and their risk factors are. This Budget provides $43 million to assess medically mentally and educationally the children who are in the care of the State. 
Of those whom we did assessments on—and this is only those with severe enough behavioural problems that flagged the need to do that assessment because until the provisions of this Budget assessments were not done as a matter of routine—we found some horrifying home truths. We found that 65 percent of those children had emotional and behavioural problems 41 percent had mental disorders 41 percent needed dental health treatment that had been withheld from them and 37 percent could not hear properly. Even without assessment we knew the plain obvious and terrible truth of those children: 50 percent had parents with drug or alcohol problems; one in four had a mother with a criminal conviction; one in five had a parent with a mental disorder; only half of children in care ate breakfast before they were placed into the care of the State; and half of all youth suicides in this country—God’s own country—were inflicted by children in care. They are killing themselves because we the State have failed to offer sufficient hope for those young people to see that their crack at life has a chance of success. 
It is not a surprise to look at the statistics. A child who has a parent who has been to jail has a seven-times-greater chance of growing up and going to jail. A child who has two parents who have had a custodial sentence has a 15-times-greater chance of growing up and going to jail. But a child growing up in the care of the State has a 17-times-greater chance of growing up and going to jail. The National Government does not accept failure on that scale. It rejects it and it has provided in this Budget the ability to bother about the kids who are in care to care enough to make those assessments and to find out the drivers of their situation and the inhibitors to their progression. 
Two weeks ago the Social Services Committee took its inquiry into child and youth offending to Australia as part of the committee exchange programme and we met with several Government agencies and 16 non-governmental organisations over 5 days. Australia struggles with similar risk factors and indicators of failure that we do in New Zealand. They fail their indigenous people especially the young in similar ways. They are gradually waking up to the fact that the ways of the past are failing the most vulnerable in their care. In New South Wales and in the Northern Territory 100 percent of Aboriginal children in the care of the State will go on to go to jail. 
We would think that given the wealth resources and responsibilities of the State a child committed to the care of the State would be better placed to succeed to live with more hope to have more aspiration surrounded by more care and more protection to have better health outcomes and to have better socialisation than another child because in spite of the rough start that they have had the focus of the State agencies is concentrated upon them. But it is not. In fact it puts them in a greater risk of danger. It places fewer protective factors around them and opens them up to even greater risk factors. I can say at this time thank goodness for a National Government. Children who are in the homes of the State can look forward under a continuing National Government to better care better situations and better prospects than what they have had until now. 
National is confronting child abuse. We are encouraging New Zealand to debate how we nurture and protect our children. Our green paper on children will invite Kiwis to have their say before forming a children’s action plan. It will help foster children to get a home for life and support to help parents and foster children into permanent care. Last year saw the launch of the Home for Life package by our Minister for Social Development and Employment the Hon Paula Bennett. It gives those foster parents who are prepared to commit long term to young people in their care the certainty of support from the State and the knowledge that they will not then be cast off and left alone. The support is not only financial but also emotional. It is ongoing in that they are able to call back to the State at any time. It ensures that things are in place such as respite care to ensure that foster parents get the breaks they needed so they can gather themselves and regroup because the commitment they have made to these young people is ongoing and for ever as far as that young life is concerned. 
In health there is more maternity support with a focus on first-time mothers and a 24-hour PlunketLine that is fully funded. We have seen PlunketLine under threat under previous Governments. We need to acknowledge this one fact: in this modern world that we live in we can identify an at-risk foetus. We have quoted it in this House before; I have done it myself. We can recognise an at-risk foetus. We know that the mother of a young child who grows up to fail in all those areas of social policy of a young child who grows up and goes to jail was pregnant at a very young age. She was pregnant three times before she was 20 probably to different fathers. We knew that she left school with no qualifications and she is either working on the lowest wage or she is on a benefit. We know that she smokes tobacco. We know that she is dependent on alcohol and probably some other substance. We know that she has no positive role models acting in the role of a parent or a mentor as far as parenting goes. We know if we can identify dad that he comes from the same demographic. 
We know that about 3 years ago this world with all its collective wisdom landed a spaceship on Mars yet it tends to do nothing about the early identification of the young people we know are most at risk. Thank God that this Government through this Budget is doing something about it. I am proud to be part of that Government.