Ball Darroch: Urgent Debates — Office of the Children’s Commissioner—State of Care 2015ReportText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBall Darroch: Urgent Debates — Office of the Children’s Commissioner—State of Care 2015Report[Sitting date: 27 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6264. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARROCH BALL (NZ First): I believe that this is one of the most important debates we have had in a while in this House because I do not believe that there is anything more important than ensuring the safety of our most vulnerable children. That is up there as priority No. 1.What I am going to do is actually go through a few of the numbers that fall out of the report. What those numbers do is actually give a cold hard sobering slap in the face about what is actually happening with the real people out there on the ground. Also I have got a few articles here that will give a little bit of commentary on the issues that fall out of it and most of those issues New Zealand First has with this entire review.So I would like to start off first actually with the front page of the New Zealand Herald. The first two words are quite apt. It says “Our shame”. If the Minister has not read this article—I am sure that she has—she needs to read only those two words in the headline and that is the position that we are taking. We should be ashamed of where we are right now.David Seymour: You should be.DARROCH BALL: Mr Seymour may want to make a joke of this. You may want to giggle and laugh over there but this is quite serious. What I am going to do is read to Mr Seymour four numbers and we will see if he is laughing after that. One hundred and seventeen—that is the number of children who were abused last year in the care of Child Youth and Family services. Sixty—the system is so stretched that children have had upwards of 20 40 and in one case over 60 care placements. Is that winning or is that failing Mr Seymour? Fifty-eight—Māori make up a growing share of all children in care up from 52 percent in 2010 to 58 percent in 2013 and 2014. The last number here is 5133—the number of children who were in State care last year. One-third of them were unhappy at not seeing their families.What it says there is that it is a startling figure. Well not according to the Minister for Social Development. The Minister says this has been happening for quite a long time and that this is not news. The Minister said that it makes for pretty poor reading or pretty bad reading—Hon Anne Tolley: Grim—“grim” was the word.DARROCH BALL: —grim reading—but this has been occurring for a while. This is New Zealand First’s perspective. This is the problem that we have got. This has been happening for the entire time that the Government has been in power and it has not reacted to any of the situations that have occurred throughout the entire 7 years. That was the basis of the questions that I had in the House today which the Minister could not answer.What has happened so far—the Minister has mentioned the 14 reviews actions or papers that successive Governments have gone through. But actually since 2011 there have been 10 papers reviews or actions that the Government has taken or attempted to undertake to deal with Child Youth and Family services. In 2011 there was a green paper on vulnerable children that was released.In 2012 the Children’s Commissioner announced the formation of the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. Again in 2012 the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children submissions were released. We had Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty options. We had a White Paper for Vulnerable Children and the Children’s Action Plan which was released in 2012. Again we had the final report of the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty.Moving on to 2013 we had the Government’s response to the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. In 2014 we had the Children’s Action Plan children’s teams and the Vulnerable Children Act. Now we have an independent panel established to review the Child Youth and Family services. Well the question that we have is: when is this going to stop? Let us get one thing straight: the Minister is talking about a complete overhaul of Child Youth and Family services but what this is—we are waiting until December for just the review so that then the Minister and the Government can have a look at the review and decide from there what is going to start happening.On The Paul Henry Show this morning actually the Children’s Commissioner was asked how many children will be abused between now and December. It is around 50. What the questions in the House from Labour from the Greens and from New Zealand First were asking was what the Minister is going to do to help the children who are in care of Child Youth and Family services right now whom the Children’s Commissioner has highlighted as the issue.The Minister refused to put any more investment in to put any more money in—Hon Anne Tolley: Not true. We’ve got a whole lot of money in the Budget.DARROCH BALL: —and to look at what the solutions are. We could talk about the Budget but the Budget is not working. The Budget is not working. It has not worked. It has not worked over the last 7 years—it has not worked over the last 7 years.David Seymour: The member’s confused.DARROCH BALL: Oh I am not confused Mr Seymour. The white paper and the green paper in 2011 and 2012 as New Zealand First is saying has been an absolute waste of time. In fact it is an absolute schmozzle. The Children’s Action Plan responds to the white paper and is based on nearly 10000 submissions sent in on the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children. And part of that is that it was showing—this was back in 2011—that best practice kept children safe from harm. That was back in 2011 and 2010.So what has happened between 2010 and 2011 and now? Nothing has happened. Of course there needs to be an overhaul of Child Youth and Family services. There needs to be a detailed review of what has happened and we need to have a look at it and we need to be putting investment into it. We need to prioritise things.Hon Anne Tolley: That’s what I’m doing. Isn’t that what I’m doing?DARROCH BALL: Why has that not happened? Why has it not happened? This is the question that New Zealand First has. Why has it not happened? Why has it taken this long? Why has it not happened? Why is it taking this long—7 years? The Minister stood up in the House today during question time and said that she wants to put the vulnerable children at the heart of State care and make sure that the safety of these kids is a priority. Well why has it taken 7 years? That is the question that needs to be answered—that is the question that needs to be answered.One of the other things that have been mentioned also is the possibility of privatisation. There is no doubt that that is absolutely an option on the Minister’s table at the moment because I have asked the Minister twice whether she can absolutely guarantee ruling out privatisation of the social services sector and using companies like Serco which she answered questions on and was quite positive about before the whole Department of Corrections debacle occurred. So that is one of the concerns from New Zealand First also.I have also got a statement here from the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development. What this shows is a chronic underfunding of the social services sector. This is just a manifestation of its underfunding. It states here—this was on 27 May 2014—that he said that “We’ve seen a six-fold increase in notifications into Child Youth and Family in recent years. … The pressure of this demand is considerable and right now Child Youth and Family holds the lion’s share of responsibility for what happens to these kids.”The reaction from the Minister to that statement from chief executive Brendan Boyle was to come up with an idea called the children’s teams. I have asked the Minister in the Social Services Committee what extra funding these children’s teams will have and the answer is zero. The Minister said that there would be no extra work for the NGOs involved in these children’s teams so I actually went out and asked the NGOs themselves what they thought of the proposed children’s teams.The thing that they said to me was that the only thing it was going to achieve was to have more hoops to jump through and more bureaucracy and that will act as limitation. It will act as a limitation to what their job already is. It is not accounting for any more work that they could do for example with children. All it does is it shifts and if it shifts that means that it leaves some children out.I just want to finish this by reiterating what New Zealand First’s concerns are. This has been happening and occurring and a problem and an issue for this country for years. The Government cannot sit there and the Minister cannot sit there and say: “This is the saviour. This is the solution. We are doing a good thing for the country.” when it has taken 7 years for this Government—which has been in power—to react. It has taken too long.