Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to what is an incredibly important piece of legislation: the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Bill. Firstly I just want to acknowledge the Minister in the chair Anne Tolley. I do actually think she has a genuine commitment to making the lives of our most vulnerable children better and there are some very good things in this legislation in terms of extending the responsibility of the State in terms of its support for some of our young people particularly those who are in the State system up to the age of 25 years. The relevance of this piece of legislation as highlighted in the Children's Commissioner's submission is that it touches over 60000 who every year are captured within our care and protection and youth justice system. One of the other interesting pieces of information is that 83 percent of prisoners actually have care and protection histories. So we need to get this right and I would like to hope that this process is actually seen to be helping us get it right.I would like to talk to my Supplementary Order Paper 333 specifically because we genuinely want to ensure that this Committee stage debate has the potential to produce some amendments to this legislation that are going to better meet the needs as I said before of the 60000 young people who are in our care and protection and youth justice system whom this bill is incredibly relevant to. So what I would like to do and it would be great if the Minister responded is to amend in clause 6 new section 4(1)(e)(i). Currently new section 4 reads and this is in the purposes of the Act (1) The purposes of this Act are to promote the well-being of children young persons and their families whānau hapū iwi and family groups by … (e) ensuring that where children and young persons require care under the Act"—so this is their entry into the care and protection system—"they have—(i) a safe stable and loving home from the earliest opportunity;". So what my Supplementary Order Paper wants to do is to extend that to read: "(i) a safe stable and loving home from the earliest opportunity giving preference to placement with a member of the child's or young person's family whānau hapū iwi or family group;".Now why would I want to do that? Well actually what I want to do is recognise that the child is not born without their attachment to who they are actually—their identity. So they have a prior right; that word "preference" means that the whānau hapū iwi or family group have a prior right to care for that child. So when that child's parent or immediate family do not have the capacity to care for that child we would hope that the State would have relationships wide enough to find somebody in that child's whakapapa who could care for them.I want to bring us back to the definition of "mana tamaiti (tamariki)" which is in this bill which focuses on the inherent value and inherent dignity derived from whakapapa. The other thing that I want to highlight is that contained within this bill is a commitment to ensuring that we uphold the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 8 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is about the preservation of identity for that child and it outlines the State's responsibility in three areas: to preserve that child's nationality that child's name but also that child's family relations which is their whakapapa and their kinship. So I would like the support of this Committee to include that in this bill which will actually give effect to a lot of what the Minister spoke about before the dinner break.The other issue that I would like to highlight and have highlighted in my Supplementary Order Paper is a change to new section 5(1)(b)(iv) inserted by clause 8. When I sat in on the Social Services Committee there was a particularly robust discussion and debate about this very section. At the moment it says—and I know I am going to need another call please Mr Chair—that the principles to be applied in exercise of powers under this Act are "(iv) mana tamaiti (tamariki) and the child's or young person's well-being should be protected by"—and the word in the Act is "recognising"—"their whakapapa and the whanaungatanga responsibilities of their family whānau hapū iwi and family group:". "Recognising" means acknowledging the existence of or the validity of their whakapapa. What identifying actually does is make sure that we establish or indicate the whakapapa of that young person.The robust debate we had within the select committee was the difference between what "recognising" is versus actually knowing what it is. My contention was that in putting "identifying" in there would compel the department to do a cultural assessment of that child so that we actually know that child's whakapapa we know their hapū we know their iwi we know their marae we know where they are from and we know which family and which hapū and iwi we need to work with to provide an alternative safe caring loving home for that child for whom for whatever reason their family their immediate family their parents cannot provide that.Therein lies all the other changes that I want made—the "wherever possible"s and the "where practicable"s because "wherever" is just an emphasis on the possible able to be done or achieved; practicable "able to be done or put into practice". Well you cannot put into practice putting a child with their whānau hapū and iwi if you do not know it in the first place and therein lies the issue that I have with some of the words in this bill. This is because it says a lot about saying that as an organisation Oranga Tamariki is going to ensure that it places children with their whānau hapū and iwi if their family cannot look after them but you cannot actually do it if you do not know what that is. And you do not then develop I believe the opportunities for partnership with hapū and iwi to take some of these tamariki because their actual family cannot and do not have the resources to be able to care for their own.We know what some of those issues are. We know that some of our parents have drug and alcohol issues. We know that some of our parents do not have some of the skills to be able parent the child.Hon Ruth Dyson: It is not exclusive to Māori.LOUISA WALL: It is not exclusive to Māori absolutely not. And actually if you look at Māori—I was just thinking about this before I came in—we have got Treaty settlements in the morning and all those Treaty settlements acknowledge that Māori like in Ngāti Tamaoho's case are virtually landless. But what does virtually landless actually mean? It means we do not have a tūrangawaewae we do not have a home. We do not have an ability to stand on our tūrangawaewae and from there develop that sense of identity because we have a marae. Some of our iwi do not even have marae.And that is the point. How do we help our whānau to create homes so that they are safe and loving for our children? Well it is not by giving our children to somebody else to bring up. It is not by not ensuring that they have access to their birthright which is their whakapapa which is that intimate relationship to hapū and iwi. It is not a random process. So that is why I am hoping that the Minister and her officials if they are not going to support it will say why they will not.The other very important part of the Supplementary Order Paper is making sure that we keep siblings together because again in that particular new section 13(2)(i)(iii)(D) inserted by clause 13(2) we have got "where practicable". It should not be "where practicable". It should be a bottom line that we will never separate siblings. So I am challenging the Minister to remove those particular words "where practicable" from this bill because under no circumstances should children be separated. At minimum if they are removed from their families at least they have one another and together those children have an opportunity to develop some resilience.Carmel Sepuloni: They said that's what they wanted.LOUISA WALL: That is right. But "where practicable" as far as I am concerned actually does not make sense.I will be taking other calls because I do have another Supplementary Order Paper. I know that there are other people in the House who are incredibly passionate about this piece of legislation. So what I am hoping Minister is that you are taking some of these amendments at face value. We actually do want to work with you. We want to make this legislation work. I do not want our children growing up in the care and protection system but if we are going to have a care and protection system let us make sure that it is one that is inherently going to ensure the identity of our tamariki."