Sowry Roger: Urgent Debates — Department of Child Youth and Family Services—Report  
Sowry Roger: Urgent Debates — Department of Child Youth and Family Services—Report  
[Volume:613;Page:9951] 
Hon ROGER SOWRY (National) 
: 
 It gives me no pleasure to speak in this debate. As a previous Minister of Social Welfare I want to start by saying how disappointed I am that the Minister has not seen fit to stay in the Chamber to listen to the debate. I cannot believe that the Minister would not stay here and take the medicine and the responsibility for that which he is paid to take. Instead he has decided to go and hide in his office. 
I was the Minister of Social Welfare in November 1998 when a young girl a child of 8 was seriously sexually abused after the department in south Auckland had been notified that she was seriously at risk but had not taken the notification seriously. I remember full well that the responsibility for that came home to me as the Minister and we instituted a couple of things. Firstly an independent inquiry was instituted which has not happened in this case. The office of the Commissioner for Children is having a look at it but we had an independent barrister come and have a look. We made recommendations to change the way that office operated—I will come back to those changes in a minute—and I apologised to the family. Yet here we are today debating not the rape of an 8-year-old which is hugely serious but the deaths of two young girls—and the Minister has not apologised. He has not seen fit— 
David Benson-Pope 
: This is pathetic. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: Oh Mr Benson-Pope thinks that is pathetic. He might think the death of two small children is pathetic but some of us take it seriously. I had the courage to sit in this House during the debate on that earlier case and I had the courage to apologise. The Minister should do the same and Mr Benson-Pope should stop laughing. Two young girls died— 
David Benson-Pope 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Mr Sowry just put a deliberate untruth into the  
Hansard 
. I ask him to withdraw and apologise. I was certainly not laughing. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member said he was not laughing. The member speaking will withdraw that comment and carry on. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: I withdraw. The member should stop smiling. Two young girls died— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No. We have ruled on that point of order. I want nothing further about it please. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: Two young girls died and the Minister should be here to listen to the debate and make sure he understands the outrage that this Parliament feels. I will not go through all the details of this case because others have done that but I want to say a few things. Firstly the notification went to the roopu team from the Masterton office. That is the exact replica of what happened in the south Auckland office. There are racially based teams of social workers who are unable to cope with a huge workload so a notification that comes into the office is classified not on need or danger but on race. 
We know that in this country we have an over-representation of Maori and Pacific Island children coming to notification in the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. We do not like it but it is a fact and we have an under-representation of Maori and Pacific Island staff in the department. That is a fact. I know that the department is trying to solve it but it will take time. So when political correctness overtakes common sense social workers end up being overworked. I am not blaming social workers. There are teams of them out there ripping their hearts out because of this case. It has probably ruined and ended some careers. But I am blaming a Government that is so hell-bent on instituting political correctness right through the State sector that when a young Maori kid gets notified to the department he or she has to be dealt with by the Maori social work team—not by the social worker who has the time and expertise to deal with the child. 
That is a nonsense; it is an outrage—and it may have cost those girls their lives. We must stop it. We must be big enough to say that we are not going to have social workers deciding in their offices to set themselves up in racially based teams. That is what they did in South Auckland and that is what as Minister I stopped. I apologised to the family concerned—but the Minister today has done neither. I would hope that the one thing that can come out of this—probably the only thing—is that the Minister will say: “I’m going to make sure we do not have racially based teams any more.” 
We instituted a red light system in south Auckland—some members will remember it—so that when the phone call came into the office was a serious notification and needed to be dealt with immediately the person who took the phone call switched on a red light. It was as simple as that. There was a great big red light on the wall and no one went home until it was switched off. That meant the case was being dealt with. It was pretty basic but it was recommended by the barrister who looked into the office and tried to make sure that we did not have cases such as this that fell through the cracks. Now we have another one. 
 This Government has huge surpluses. It pats itself on the back every day in the House about all the money it has but none of it has been invested in Strengthening Families. The report says that Strengthening Families was not even notified of those two kids. Why not? Because this Government does not like Strengthening Families. It is not politically correct to strengthen families and Strengthening Families teams get no resources. Does Strengthening Families get one dollar in the Wairarapa? No it does not and I have checked—not a dollar. Not one dollar anywhere in the region goes to Strengthening Families. No new Family Starts no new social workers in schools and not a thing to pick up cases early on—nothing. It is a disgrace an absolute disgrace. 
Those programmes might not have saved those two young girls. The tragedy is that family violence in this country is not the responsibility of an agency and I do not want to blame the agency because it is something we all have to take responsibility for. When we hear the neighbour losing it with the children how many of us walk inside and shut the doors when what we should be doing is seeing if things are OK? It is not a matter of being nosey parkers but there is stuff we can do. It is time we changed our attitudes about family violence in this country. All parties believe that. More important it is time the Minister at least apologised to the family concerned and it is time the Minister took some responsibility instead of hiding in his office.