Sepuloni CarmelCARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): It is with great regret that the Labour Party will not be able to commend this legislation to the House. I do want to go into some detail about the aspects that we do support in this legislation because I do not want the perception out there to be that we disagree with everything that is being proposed here. I will go into some detail on the reasons why we cannot support the legislation.But I want to start by acknowledging the submitters. We had over 400 submissions come to the select committee on this an indication of the passion and commitment out there to this to children. We had submissions from individuals academics lawyers social workers and also individuals who had personal experience of being involved with the care protection or youth justice systems as children parents or caregivers. We had submissions from NGOs iwi authorities and affiliates health and/or social service providers and a variety of other organisations. And they all submitted because they care. They all submitted because they are sick like so many of the public if not all of the New Zealand public of seeing stories of James Whakaruru Delcelia Witikā—stories like Isaiah Neil which we heard recently through the media.As legislators our role is to shape the legislative changes using an evidence base and to ensure that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. But based on some of the comments last night in the debate which did get quite heated I do want to say that we do not have the monopoly in this House on caring for children. There is no one party I think that cares more about children than any other. We just have different ideas on how we achieve the end result.Last night the Minister for Social Development said that every child deserves to be loved. Well no one in this House would disagree with that. But as far as we are concerned that love is not just confined to this one particular legislation that we have in front of us. So I do want to put it into context: when we are talking about love for children we are talking about protecting them from abuse. But we are also talking about ensuring that they do not live in poverty that they do have adequate healthy homes to live in and that their families have incomes and time so that they are able to provide the care that those children need. If we talk only about love in isolation with regard to this legislation then we are never going to be able to provide that overall care that the children we are talking about need and deserve. We have heard throughout the journey of this legislation through the House from the Minister that the focus has to be on putting children at the centre and again no one would disagree with that. We all want children to be at the centre of this legislation. But we cannot take that approach with regard to just this particular legislation if we are going to be able to provide the care that we want for those children. I am going to refer to an amendment that I put forward on the Social Security Act rewrite in respect of amending the principles. The amendment that I put forward included a principle about ensuring that the well-being of children is upheld and that would mean that every policy in the Social Security Act would actually have to be analysed in respect of ensuring that in no way is there any detrimental impact on children. But the Minister has already said she will not be supporting that. Again unfortunately what we see is a view on children that in isolation just in regard to the children who may be affected by this particular legislation really sets us up to fail and that is my point. If we do not have that holistic approach and we are not looking at every area that we can improve to improve the lives of children then we are setting ourselves up to fail and that is the concern that we have on this side of the House. A message that was really clear with the submissions that came through was that actually the consultation process in regard to this was less than adequate particularly in regard to Māori who were really only consulted after the fact—after they made some noise about the fact that they had not been consulted in the first place. So when we hear the Minister talk about the consultation that she undertook with Māori families with iwi with hapū and with Māori communities we do roll our eyes because she actually did that after the complaints came rolling in. She did not undertake that consultation at the get-go—Jono Naylor: Are they happy now?CARMEL SEPULONI: —which is what she should have done—please do not talk Jono Naylor—particularly given that 61 percent of the children who go into State care and 71 percent of those who end up in the youth justice system are Māori. Why did it not enter her mind to consult earlier? But she did it after the fact. So I do want to point out that the consultation was flawed on this and then it was even after the fact. One of the biggest issues that Māori and that we on this side of the House have with this legislation that the Minister has drafted was the removal of the whānau first" principle. It was so confusing in the Committee of the whole House last night because we had the Minister saying "No I did put it back in." and then we had tweets where we saw the Minister saying: "I will not put this back in." Then unfortunately our children's spokesperson and deputy leader Jacinda Ardern confirmed—and the Minister agreed—that it does not have the power of the original family-first principle. She has watered it down and there is a word in there—that is "preference"—that really does not push or hold the ministry to account with regard to trying its very best to actually place children with their whānau hapū or iwi if they have to be removed from their caregivers. The debate went back and forwards last night and I think the inference was that those of us who thought that the family-first principle should have remained intact were putting that above the safety of children when of course that is not the case. What we are saying is to look widely—look widely. Look widely amongst that child's family hapū and iwi to find an appropriate safe place for that child to go to. That is all we are saying and we want that commitment in our legislation. But the Minister for Social Development has removed that commitment. That concerns us and it is one of the major reasons that we on this side of the House cannot vote for the legislation. There are other areas that we have concerns about and I raised this last night—particularly given that I have been on it for about 6 months—and that is the issue around data collection and data sharing. There was a very strong submission made by the Privacy Commissioner on the flaws in this legislation and the dangers of the data-sharing provisions and yet again we see this Minister ignoring the Privacy Commissioner's recommendations. What happened last time she ignored the Privacy Commissioner's recommendations? She ended up having an IT system portal where she was doing her individual client level data collection—where that information was being uploaded—shut down because there was a security breach on it. If she had just listened to the Privacy Commissioner earlier then we would not have been in the position where we were putting people's information at risk of being exposed publicly or amongst people who should not have access to that information. So here we now find ourselves in the same position where the Minister is ignoring the expert advice because she thinks she knows best. The Minister has said that she wanted to hear firsthand from children about what their experiences were and what they wanted and none of us underestimate the importance of that—we all do. But can we also acknowledge that many of the submitters who put submissions in on this legislation were actually formerly in State care so they may be adults. She said that she did not want any adult political agendas to dictate what happened here. They may be adults now but they were affected. They themselves were affected by the legislation and the issues with the ministry. They have first-hand experience. The disappointment here is that we have a Minister who was all set for changing the legislation to fix the system when the reality is that there are cultural issues and there are resourcing issues that the Minister has yet to address. Unless those things are addressed then unfortunately—unfortunately—we are going to continue to see the cases we have recently seen like the Isaiah Neil case."