Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. This is the third reading of the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Advocacy Workforce and Age Settings) Amendment Bill and Labour is opposing this piece of legislation. However I do want to highlight that we do support the extension of the statutory age of care and protection to include young people under 18 and that makes sense to us because we are talking about children. I particularly want to acknowledge my colleague Jacinda Ardern who is not able to communicate this on her own behalf because she established the petition that asked for that exact legislative reform. I would also like to acknowledge Lifewise Dingwall Trust Youthline the Child Poverty Action Group the Wesley Community Action and Christchurch Methodist Mission because in fact they wanted the statutory age to be extended to 21. I do want to highlight that Minister Tolley has signalled that the next step in this process is to enable young people to remain with caregivers up to the age of 21 and also she has highlighted transitional support and advice up to 25 years. So we support that aspect of this piece of legislation.However the aspect that we do not support is that this bill also contains what we call a massive regression and dangerous set of provisions that will allow the chief executive to delegate statutory powers—legislative authority that currently can be performed only by Child Youth and Family social workers—to contracted providers. The Minister has been really interesting because she talks about this being about a multidisciplinary approach that there are many professionals involved and that you have to be appropriately qualified but she actually does not list who those appropriately qualified people should be.In fact what she did do was reference that the delegation needs to be supported by contractual obligations. So in fact what this House wants us to do is to enable the chief executive to delegate to any contracted entity the ability to take our children. And actually that is at the heart of our opposition because central to the functioning of the Child Youth and Family is a social work profession that already is supposed to place at the heart of that practice the best interests of the child. So what it really does for us is say: who should have the power to remove children? From our perspective it should be only qualified people. Those qualified people have up till today when this legislation goes through the House been qualified social workers. But what this piece of legislation does is open it up actually to anybody who has got a contract with Child Youth and Family. So we cannot support that.I guess in preparing for this speech what I am also interested in is that if any entity that has got a contract with Child Youth and Family can take children I want to know what the requirement is in terms of placing children within whānau hapū or iwi. I want to stress that this particular piece of legislation is hugely relevant for our indigenous community—in fact 61 percent of our children in care are indigenous children. The requirement in the current legislation is that those children in the first instance must be pleased within their whānau but they must be placed within their whānau who have the capacity to care for the children. If they cannot find whānau members then they are supposed to find hapū members. And then if they cannot find hapū members they are supposed to find iwi members.The reason that the legislation says that is that inherent to every child is the right to their whakapapa. It is the right to know who you are and where you come from and if you are an indigenous child who you are and where you come from is based on your pepeha: what your maunga is what your awa is who your marae is and your ability to actually create an identity through actively being engaged in that identity through participation at the marae. So I want to know actually currently how many children get a cultural assessment? And will these entities be able to undertake a cultural assessment to ensure that our children have as a right access to those institutions that help them form a positive identity? I think at the heart of this piece of legislation is: actually is it going to be more harmful to our children and not provide care and protection as they should have and are entitled to? Thank you.