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There's an argument to be made that there needs to be more upskilling of those who would supply the information. Unfortunately—I won't say the name of the particular victim—there was a case not that long ago where a centre was aware of injuries to the child and didn't report them. There needs to be some consideration of how we address that situation, rather than pulling back on the dataset provisions, I would suggest.

I certainly have seen, unfortunately, in my time practising, that there are often a lot of little indicators that lead up to a serious crime of violence committed against a child. Those little indicators can build over time, people can excuse them and say, "Well, it's not that bad", but then it just builds and builds, then something really bad, unfortunately, happens. So we need to be able to pick up on those small indicators and those little warning signs, those little warning flags, before it gets to a serious stage. I would suggest that we need to actually look at how to improve this provision, improve the ability of organisations to utilise that provision effectively to ensure we can pick up on those flags before it becomes a serious issue and children suffer.

I would say that the National Party absolutely values children, as I'm sure every single member of this House does. We deeply value the wellbeing and welfare of all New Zealand children, and of all New Zealand children who have to, unfortunately, I would say, end up in State care. I say unfortunately because, ultimately, we want children to be in a safe and caring environment among those who are their family and whānau—that is the ideal situation. We want everyone to be able to get there. The reality is, unfortunately, that we are not in that position and we do have parents who are, unfortunately, unable to properly take care of this children in this country. Those earlier statistics I quoted, it's not things I'm happy to say, because it's a sad moment, it's a sad statistic for the country, but it is one that we need to really have at the top of our mind, I would suggest. It's not acceptable that New Zealand has the seventh highest rate of child homicide in the OECD. Underlying that is the serious damage being done to children before it gets to the point of homicide. There's, unfortunately, a very high rate of child abuse in this country.

So that is the reality that we have to grapple with. We have to work out the best way to address that, to improve the strength of families and the ability of parents to take proper care of their children. And we have to have the relevant law in place so we can ensure that the relevant agencies that are charged with taking care of children in cases where those who should be their caretakers are not able to—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, sorry, speaker, my apologies. There's been a leak of the clock, and it's to your credit that you've been able to speak so nobly and with such good vocabulary for that time, but, actually, I have to say to the speaker, the time is up.

Joseph Mooney: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER:: But well done carrying on.

ANAHILA KANONGATA'A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It's always an honour and a privilege to make a contribution in this House. Today, it's the second reading of the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill and I'll make a short a short contribution.

I want to acknowledge all the submitters. I want to acknowledge the Minister and his leadership in shepherding this important bill—which is partial of what he intends to deliver in his portfolio as the Minister for Children. I want to acknowledge the officials and the select committee.

We've heard the Minister clarify what the bill does, but I will focus on two matters that the bill does. So the bill amends the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 and it partially repeals the child provisions so that subsequent provisions will only apply in respect to parents relating to murder, manslaughter, or infanticide of a child in their care.

What happens now is that if a mother is pregnant, it has to be reported to the State and the Family Court has mandatory oversight if the children in the care of the parent have been permanently removed by the State. So what this bill does is that it only will apply for parents who have been convicted of murder, manslaughter, or infanticide of a child in their care. A Family Court conference is held to make decisions about the care of the unborn child before the child is born if it's reported in the subsequent provisions.

What happens? Currently, the Family Court conference allows for family deliberations to be private, but it doesn't actually clarify that Oranga Tamariki must not be present. What clause 6A does is it actually says that that Oranga Tamariki, the chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, or its representatives, must not be party to private family deliberations at Family Court conferences unless it's invited.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge the Oranga Tamariki Māori rōpū, the

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especially, the leadership of Danny Thompson, Maureen Rapata-Kemp, and Foulis Foster, because for years they have been championing the fact that the Māori engagement and decision making for mokopuna who are reported to Child, Youth and Family—Oranga Tamariki now—must involve family deliberations without the State.

That's what this bill will do; it will enable family deliberations at family court conferences not to have Oranga Tamariki or its representatives present during those deliberations. And in those words, I commend the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I've been standing a few times in this House, recently, to speak to Oranga Tamariki - related legislation. The conversations have not been comfortable recently, so it's a bit of a relief to be able to stand in the House in support of the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill today.

I didn't have the luck or the time, unfortunately, to be on the select committee to hear all of the submissions. There were 24 written submissions and I have gone through those, and I think there were 11 oral submissions. So I am really interested in the committee stages that are due to come to hear more of that nuance, because I know so much of that detail comes in the conversations, and I'm picking it up, primarily, from the written materials.

In this contribution, I do want to primarily focus on the subsequent child policy, noting that most submissions also focused on that part of the bill. That part was introduced, I think, came into law in 2016, under the then National Minister Paula Bennett. What it did was introduce a provision or a policy into the law that if somebody had had a child removed from their care because of murder, manslaughter, or infanticide or a child had been removed that Oranga Tamariki—then Child, Youth and Family—did not believe would be returned, then if they were to have a subsequent child, then the social workers would have no discretion but to conduct an assessment of that child's safety and then must apply for one of two orders from the Family Court.

So if they were satisfied that the child would be safe, then then social worker would have to go to court for a confirmation of the decision not to apply for care and protection. So they'd have to go to court to confirm that they would not take that child, because presumption was that they would take that child. Or, if they were not satisfied that the child would be safe, the social worker had to apply for a care and protection order.

I was in Parliament at the time that that law passed. The Green Party raised concerns, along with others in this House, about the outcomes of that law. We understand, as we've heard from other speakers tonight, the sense of real-heart concern that we all have for the wellbeing and the safety of our children in this country and our duty to do what we can and have laws that will protect them.

But there was a problem at the time around the practices within Child, Youth and Family—and part of it links to that sense of wanting to protect and the images that we have in our head of who we need to protect children from and also a failure to acknowledge the prevalence and the intersection between intimate partner violence and child abuse, as I think has been quite eloquently mentioned previously by Angie Warren-Clark.

So in the first reading of that bill, in 2013, it had just been the previous week where the former Police Commissioner Howard Broad had released a review into the complaints system of Child, Youth and Family. At that time, he raised concern that their practice—of the organisation—was failing to adequately meet their legal obligations of checking on the wellbeing of children and that court decisions relying on social work evidence suffered from pre-determinable bias because of the reliance on that information and a lack of consistency from social workers across the board. We have not resolved those problems, and that policy exacerbated the harm from that pre-determined bias.

And what we hear—I know that sounds like a complex way of putting it for some people. But to put it in simply, in some levels, is 48 percent of pregnant women, if I'm remembering correctly, whose pēpē Māori were taken into State care before birth had been in State care themselves. So if we're thinking about the biases that are built into our system as well as the harm that our system has created and that we compound through interventions, this policy had a really significant role in causing harm.

And we are still hearing—a social service provider up in Auckland was just telling me a few weeks ago about how every single day they are working with whānau who have had their children taken or have been threatened to be taken, not because of abuse, but because of poverty and struggle to get housing.

So you think about this policy and where there's been a history of a child being removed and you're doing the assessment on whether that person is going to be safe, and they're struggling to find permanent housing or space for their new baby or they're struggling to pay their bills, it's an understandable leap for the social worker to go, "Oh, actually, no. They're not going to be safe."

It puts the onus on that parent to do all the work of proving, "Hey look, I've done all of these programmes, I've got off the drugs, I've got my family support, my abusive partner is now being dealt with by these people—like to make all of the cases to overcome that inherent bias is, what we've heard in too many reviews, just bloody impossible. And kids have been taken from loving parents.

And what we've also heard is that the problem with that policy is, particularly when it's the babies that have been removed, how long it takes after they've been removed to make your case to prove that, actually, now you're safe. And this came up in the Waitangi Tribunal; and it might be six months, it might be eight months, it might be a year. And when I say those numbers in the House, but that may not sound like a long time, but you think about that, the first period of life, the absolute initial bonding time, where that baby is attaching to somebody else, to another family that you have disrupted—the Crown has disrupted that attachment to them and their mum and their whānau, and the harm of that cannot be undone. So I am incredibly pleased to be seeing this policy amended.

I want to note, too, to some of the points that were made previously, that Judge Becroft's submission to the Waitangi Tribunal about the impact of this policy—and I will try and quote it here if I can find it—described the provisions as "pernicious" and "totally unnecessary piece of legislation" that "should be repealed tomorrow."

He considered the introduction of the legislation had to lead to a culture shift of Oranga Tamariki that exceeded actual application of that statute, noting that more broadly, the onus of proof shifted to parents to prove their ability to safely care for subsequent children, rather than the earlier onus on Oranga Tamariki to prove a parent could not safely care for subsequent children. And go back to that conversation and think about what it would take to prove to probably a Pākehā social worker for—

Hon Todd McClay: That's so racist.

JAN LOGIE: —a Māori woman struggling against poverty—

Hon Judith Collins: What a racist comment to say.

Hon Todd McClay: What a racist comment. Disgusting.

JAN LOGIE: —to prove to a Pākehā social worker in a system that's made pre-determinations that she is going to be safe. And to try and pretend that it's inappropriate to say that when all of the data tells us—ha, ha!—the Waitangi Tribunal has ruled, our children's commission has come to conclusive conclusions that the system has inbuilt structural racism; I'm not even going to deal with a pretence that that is not real. We need to get rid of this policy, and today is not a day too soon.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 13 September 2022. Thank you for your work this week, members.

The House adjourned at 5 p.m.