1.15pm, Westpac Trust Central Court, Hamilton

Rau rangatira maa,
tenei te mihi ki a koutou i runga i te kaupapa o te ra.
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

[Distinguished guests, greetings to you gathered here for this purpose today. Greetings once, twice, three times to you all.]

1.Maori Abuse issues

What is the greatest challenge to your party in preventing child abuse among Maori?

Child abuse statistics in New Zealand make sobering reading. Ultimately every New Zealander has to take more personal responsibility for the well being and safety of our children.

In some cases, the potential for child abuse within a particular home can be anticipated, and well-established measures are put in place to remove the child from danger.

However, most cases of child abuse are not committed in homes that are identified as “at risk”, or by inherently violent people, but by people who, for a wide range of reasons, are unable to cope well when under stress, or with the demands of parenthood or caring.

So government policy can create the social conditions to reduce the likelihood of child abuse occurring.

It is recognised internationally that the key to preventing child abuse is to ensure that parents and caregivers are well supported.

By its nature, that is a very broad challenge, and Labour takes a broadly-scoped approach to addressing it.

Certainly across the health, education, and social sectors, there is a clear understanding that we expect government agencies to work together, to work with local government, and to work with the communities in which they operate.

To enable this to happen the government provides funding for a range of initiatives such as:

Family Start, to help families learn new skills to care for and nurture their young children. Labour has expanded this programme, which last year helped 4000 vulnerable families, and further new services are planned over the next two years.

Another initiative, the Ministry of Health’s Wellchild programme, is aimed at preventing abuse by providing experienced health professionals to work with families.

Strengthening Families brings together a range of organisations to help families having difficulty caring for their children.

Family and Community Services – a new Ministry of Social Development service – was set up last year to lead government and non-government organisations to work collaboratively to strengthen family support services.

Since 1999 we have increased Child Youth and Family baseline funding by more than 50 percent. Some of this money has gone towards employing more social workers, which will help in early intervention as well as dealing more quickly with current cases.
We have also expanded the Social Workers In Schools programme, which again enables early intervention of potential child abuse.

The initiatives I have outlined are not specific to Maori. As with all children, to support that access, the government is funding a range of inititiatives, including Te Pounamu, Iwi Social Services, Atawhaingia Te Pa Harakeke (Nuture the Family), and programmes such as Violence Free Hapu and Violence Free Marae.

We will continue to foster and support those types of initiatives as they are needed.

2. Child Abuse
What is your party doing to support the repeal of S59 of the Crimes Act?

This Government has given a lot of thought about the most effective way to address the issue behind Section 59, which provides a defence for parents who use “reasonable force” in physically disciplining their children.

There is no doubt that any changes to laws concerning the physical discipline of children will be controversial. It is time for all New Zealanders to think long and hard about the amount of violence that is aimed at children.

The horror stories we read about in the newspaper are just the tip of a large iceberg which sees far too many children hurt by the very people who are supposed to be caring for them.

Changing the way adults think about children and what is an appropriate way to discipline them is central to lowering the number of children who are scarred for life by violence.

In the many nations where this issue has already been considered, there has been a strong emphasis on education. The law cannot be changed without a very extensive programme aimed at ensuring parents and caregivers have positive alternatives to physical force.

Children need to be provided with clear boundaries for their behaviour and where parents have relied on physical discipline they will need to know about the other options open to them.

This Government has taken note of the international experience. We are concerned to prevent family violence, but government measures must support parents by giving alternatives to physical punishment, and avoid criminalising ordinary parents who may lightly smack a child.

Whether that is best achieved by repealing or amending Section 59 is still an open question that can only benefit from wider public debate.

That is why we have established the $10.8 million SKIP programme (Strategies with Kids - Information for Parents), which is taking a community-based approach to provide practical parenting knowledge and skills on safe, effective, non-physical ways of disciplining children.

The programme has three strands:

·providing national resources for training providers;
·strengthening and improving consistency of parenting programmes; and
·supporting local initiatives for reaching parents and caregivers who do not engage with existing programmes and services.

Our view is that changes to the law on the physical punishment of children should be considered once an early evaluation of the public education campaign is available. That is due in December.

In the meantime, of course, Sue Bradford’s private member’s bill to repeal Section 59 has been introduced into Parliament.

It is a disgrace that National will be blocking this debate by voting against the Bill going to a select committee. The public should have a well-informed debate about the issue, and have a say before any law changes are decided upon.

3.Domestic Violence
What are the intentions of your party to reduce violence to women and children?

Our work in reducing the incidence and impact of family violence through Te Rito: New Zealand Family Violence Prevention Strategy.

The Strategy, which was launched in March 2002, takes a broad, multifaceted approach in preventing, reducing and addressing family violence. It was developed by the Ministry of Social Development in collaboration with a large group of government and non-government agencies.

Strongly reflecting this input, the strategy contains the government’s key goals and objectives for preventing family violence and sets out a five-year work programme towards a vision of a New Zealand where families are living free of violence.

Both government and non-government organisations have important roles to play.

Addressing domestic violence requires the collective expertise of a range of disciplines, working collaboratively, including teachers, nurses, doctors and early childhood workers, as well as social workers and a host of NGO support organisations.

For the Government’s part, collaboration between government ministries and other organisations has been happening on a number of significant family-focused projects, including the Care and Protection Blueprint, the Strengthening Families programme, Social Workers in Schools, the High and Complex Needs Strategy and Family Start.

Government ministries and agencies are also working together on parts of the Family Violence Prevention Project. The Ministry of Health-led project, which has been running since 2001, aims to improve health sector responsiveness to family violence through staff training and to achieve long-term family violence prevention through a public education programme as part of the Te Rito Strategy.

So far, under this project, more than 2000 health professionals have been trained in the identification, support and referral of victims of child and partner abuse.

Other specific initiatives include the Employer Response to Domestic Violence programme, which supports victims of domestic violence in a variety of ways and has been successfully established in businesses and in local and central government.

This year’s Budget has committed $3 million to strengthen, improve and expand services in elder abuse and neglect prevention. This means annual funding for each prevention service will increase by 39%.

The Budget also included a $12 million investment in services for children who witness family violence. This will pay for a child advocacy service, run by NGOs, and will increase the availability of effective services for these children, such as education programmes and therapeutic intervention.

The most important way of achieving accountability for offending is through restorative justice processes, where the offender has to acknowledge and face up to the effects of their offending. For example, attending reducing violence programmes in addition to any judicial penalty that may be involved. Punishment without acknowledgement and behaviour-altering support is just pointless.

In this way, Labour is not only planning to continue to develop this comprehensive range of work to address family violence, but also to step up the intensity.

4. Poverty
What action is being taken to specifically focus on the elimination of child poverty – the Working For Families package does not do that – what else is proposed?

Labour’s goal is to eliminate child poverty, and we have made significant progress to that end. Let’s spend a moment on the recent history.

Poverty in New Zealand became a big issue in the late 80s and began to spiral out of control with the 1991 benefit cuts. By the mid-90s, 34 percent of children were living in poverty.

Making the situation worse were the constant cuts to vital social services and the low take-up of the Accommodation Supplement and family income assistance, because families got no help to get the assistance they were entitled to.

Today the story is much different. Recent data shows that the 34% child poverty rate of the mid-90s had dropped to 21% by 2004, with nearly half of that reduction happening in just the last three years.

There are a number of reasons for this. Economic and employment growth has steadily increased since Labour took office. In addition, we have implemented a range of policies that have made a measurable difference for low-income families. They include:

·income-related rents for state housing, and increasing the number of state houses after a decade of sell-offs and neglect;
·access to low-cost primary health care; and
·big increases to child care subsidies.

21% is still 21% too high. But the downward trend will continue as those policies continue – and I haven’t even got to the Working For Families package yet, which will have a further major impact.

Three stages of Working For Families are yet to be implemented, but already nearly 200,000 families are gaining from the increases to family assistance rolled out on 1 April.

By the time the package is fully implemented in 2007, Working for Families will lead to further significant reductions in child poverty rates.

To wrap up, we need to consider the full range of policies that will lead to the elimination of child poverty. The likely mix will be continued proactive employment support and targeted assistance for those in greatest need. In other words, the job is to build on the progress we’ve made over the last five years.

This progress – in fact, all of the work and progress that I’ve mentioned today – is threatened by calls for tax cuts, calls to cut benefits, plans to halt positive initiatives such as Working For Families, and the desire of opposition parties to reinstate the failed economic fundamentalism of the 80s and 90s.

My primary message is that the way forward in beating child poverty is to continue with the work of the past five years: to build the economy, foster employment, and make the social investments that lift living standards and ensure equity for our most vulnerable children and families.