Moroney SueSUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution to the Committee stage of the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Bill. At the outset I want to acknowledge that this debate is by its nature an emotive debate—and actually so it should be. We often talk in this House about how we are talking about the most vulnerable in our society. Well actually tonight I cannot think of a more vulnerable group in our society than these children. So if we are not emotive about this issue we probably will not be emotive about any issue ever.I want to acknowledge all the contributions that have been made. I know that they all come from the right place from everyone in this House wanting to make the very best legislation that we can because of what is at stake if we do not get it right. It is in that spirit that I want to support the issue that has been raised about how this legislation treats the responsibility to do everything we can for whānau iwi and hapū to have their responsibility of taking care of their own.I heard Ron Mark's contribution and I want to say I know how difficult it was for him to make that contribution. But I heard the hurt in the voice of that 3-year-old boy in his contribution—I heard the hurt in that voice. The thing that it prompted me to think about was that I heard that little boy being angry about being abandoned by his family by his whānau. That is what I heard.So the question I want to ask the Minister and have her consider is: if we had legislation in place for Ron Mark that meant that the system did everything possible to connect him with his family and not have him feel abandoned by his family—what if the system was required to do everything it could to say to his whānau: What do you need?" "How can we make this work?". Then how much better would our colleague be feeling about the experience he had? That is the question I have and I do not have the answer. I am not going to pretend to know all of the circumstances for Ron Mark and his whānau. I am not going to pretend to know that. It is not my business to know. But I am simply asking the question: how much more embraced would that hurt 3-year-old boy have felt if the emphasis was on the system making sure he did not feel abandoned by his family where it could be made so?I have not heard anyone in this debate say that 3-year-old Ron should have been forced into an unsafe situation. No one is asking for that to happen. What we are asking for is for this legislation not to let the system off the hook from not doing everything it can—everything we can—to connect that hurt little boy so that he does not feel abandoned by his family and his whānau. That is what we are asking for.So I want to support all the Supplementary Order Papers that attempt to do that because these are serious issues that we are dealing with. I do not want to be in a country where we end up one day apologising for the stolen generation like the Australians had to do. I do not want to be part of that. I certainly do not want to be a member of Parliament who sits quietly and lets that happen through this legislation and I do not believe for a minute that the Minister wants that either. But if we do not get this right if we do not put the requirement on the system to do everything it can to stop that 3-year-old boy from feeling abandoned by his family from the age of 3 to 17 then we have not done our job properly—and that Minister is what we are asking for.I hope that we can take the politics away from the situation that we do not get into a situation like some of the contributions I heard earlier where members stand up and try to portray this side of the Committee as trying to seek things that we are not. I want to get this right."