Pillay Lynne: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Pillay Lynne: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:672;Page:18320] 
LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) 
: 
 Firstly I would like to agree with a couple of issues that my friend and colleague Charles Chauvel raised around this bill the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) and it relates to the piecemeal approach that the Government is taking to issues of addressing violence and the neglect of children. As I have said in many speeches in this House we are still seeing piecemeal bills when we have the very comprehensive Domestic Violence Reform Bill still languishing on the Order Paper that would give much more enhanced protections to victims of domestic violence. As my colleague said and I know the Minister is listening attentively I hope that the Minister will consider sending this bill to the Justice and Electoral Committee. Regrettably I am not on that committee any more but it is a good committee. This Government does not see the strength of continuity but I think that continuity would be very much enhanced by sending this bill because it is comprehensive legislation to that committee. 
The bill deals with several issues but a particular focus is to ensure that children are adequately protected from assault neglect and ill treatment. It is on the Law Commission’s recommendation in terms of mandatory reporting that creating a new offence or a failure to protect a child or vulnerable adult from the risk of death grievous bodily harm or sexual assault as a consequence of the unlawful act by a third party or the failure of a third party to perform a legal duty—failure to take reasonable steps to protect a child or vulnerable adult knowing they were at risk—would result in charges with a maximum penalty of 10 years of imprisonment. 
We certainly support any measure that would prevent and mitigate the harm or abuse of our children. I acknowledge that New Zealand has a shameful record in terms of some of the abuse cases that we have seen and that we see in the media. We on this side of the House would support any legislation or indeed any other means or policies that would serve to give more protection to our children. Labour will support this bill going to select committee but although we are doing that we want to put on record that we are very keen to hear from submitters at the select committee on some of the concerns that have been raised. 
One of the concerns was that some mischievous and false reporting had been made. I know it would not happen in many cases but it may lead to an overloading in those circumstances of social service agencies which we know are struggling to do a very good job with considerable cuts to funding and resources under this Government. That could put considerable pressure on people at the front line who are addressing and investigating concerns about our children. In fact I draw the House’s attention to the comments of the Children’s Commissioner John Angus who has said that mandatory reporting of child abuse could swamp Child Youth and Family. He said that New Zealand already has a high level of reporting on abuse incidents and we need to respond better to those cases rather than bringing in mandatory reporting. That was the view of the Children’s Commissioner. 
Of course we in Labour will support this bill going to select committee but we feel a concern that this bill with the best of intentions may not have the best results. I know that the members on the select committee be it the Justice and Electoral Committee or the Social Services Committee—wherever the bill ends up—especially the Labour members will be listening very carefully to submissions that are made on this really important issue. 
I turn to the other provisions of the bill on reducing knife crime. The Ministry of Justice conducted a review and it made several recommendations including more education of young people as they were identified as the group that engages in the possession of knives. We think this law will do very little to combat the problem of possession and use of knives in criminal activities and as in the Ministry of Justice’s recommendation we believe that more education is needed. Work on putting more resources and education into the misuse of knives is needed more arguably than work on limiting their sale as is done in other jurisdictions. As I said earlier we in Labour certainly will not stand in the way of this bill going to select committee. 
Debate interrupted.