Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill

Third Reading Hon ERICA STANFORD (Lead Coordination Minister for the Government's Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions) (20:02): I move, That the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill be now read a third time. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Sorry, that legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website. Go ahead. Hon ERICA STANFORD: The Government is committed to supporting survivors of abuse and neglect in State care through a range of improvements to the State redress and care safety system. While we can never undo the harm and suffering survivors experienced, we are committed to addressing the wrongs of the past and strengthening the care system to prevent, identify, and respond to abuse in the future. The bill is an important part of our work to improve the State redress system. I want to thank the Social Services and Community Committee and my parliamentary colleagues for their thorough consideration of the bill, and I want to thank the 168 individuals and organisations who submitted. Submitters included survivors, survivor advocacy groups, legal representatives, and community organisations, and these submissions demonstrated care and concern about how the State responds to survivors who have experienced abuse and neglect in State care. I particularly want to acknowledge the survivors who submitted. Thank you for your courage and willingness to be part of the process. Specifically, I want to, once again, acknowledge Charlotte and the other survivors of abuse in mental health facilities after 1993, whose courage contributed to the change made to the bill in the committee of the whole House to extend the redress system to include claims for abuse in State mental health facilities until 30 June 2022. The change resolves a longstanding gap in redress where survivors of abuse in mental health facilities after 1993 faced bureaucratic dead ends and a lack of recognition. Charlotte’s change means that there will be a consistent and clear pathway for anyone who experienced abuse in State mental health inpatient settings between 1993 and 2022 to make a claim, alongside financial acknowledgement, and also be able to access supports and services and a personalised apology for the abuse that they suffered. I’d also like to thank my parliamentary colleagues across all parties for supporting this amendment, and for the survivors who have contacted me since we announced the amendment, letting me know how much this means to them. I’m able to update the House this evening that the Ministry of Health will implement this extension on 28 July, starting with the approximately 30 people who have already pre-registered their intent to make a claim. I hope that, for the others who were abused in mental health care settings, this will give you the confidence that you need to come forward and also to make your claim. For those of you who need some more support or just need someone to talk to, the Survivor Experiences Service, a survivor-led organisation funded by the Government, can provide assistance through their listening service and help with accessing your care records. The Government has made a number of other improvements to the State redress system in the last 12 months. We’ve increased the average redress payment by 50 percent, from $19,180 to $30,000. We’ve delivered top-up payments worth more than $25 million to over 2,000 survivors, and we’ve developed a clear, consistent, timely, and fair approach to payments through the implementation of a common payment framework. We’ll also be introducing the single point of entry, which will mean that survivors with claims across more than one agency will experience a more joined-up approach, rather than having to deal with each redress agency individually. The bill introduces a presumption against the financial redress for survivors of abuse in State care who were also serious, violent, or sexual offenders who were sentenced to more than five years for a qualifying offence, and the appointment of a redress officer to consider applications to overturn that presumption. I want to be clear that this legislation does not exclude serious offenders from redress. Alongside being able to apply to overturn the presumption, survivors who are also serious offenders can access other forms of redress, such as an apology and wellbeing support. Of the survivors who have lodged claims since 9 May 2025 and completed a criminal conviction history check, seven people have been identified as being in scope of the presumption. The bill establishes a process for those survivors to apply to an independent decision-maker, the redress officer, to have the presumption overturned, and we know from overseas examples, many of those who go through this process will indeed receive financial redress. The appointment of the redress officer is one of the key steps in the bill’s implementation, and I expect to be able to make an announcement on who that person will be in the coming weeks. As many have highlighted throughout the bill’s passage, the redress officer will need to make complex decisions, which will require a high level of expertise and knowledge from across a range of areas. That is why the redress officer must be a retired judge, a King’s Counsel, or senior lawyer, and have a range of skills and experience relevant to the role, including knowledge and understanding of the criminal justice system, including the impact of crime on victims, as well as knowledge and understanding of the royal commission’s report. They will also have the ability to make a balanced and reasonable assessment of community expectations, and to work effectively with survivors of abuse in care and people from a range of backgrounds and cultures. They’ll also be responsible for ensuring the process is fair and consistent with natural justice. The competencies required for the redress officer were strengthened during the select committee process. They will need to understand the impact of abuse and neglect in care on survivors and have the ability to work effectively with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Several other improvements were made to the appointment process during select committee, including specifying the grounds for removal of a redress officer, the inclusion of a duty to act independently, and provision for an alternate redress officer who can act when the redress officer is absent or otherwise unable to act. At the committee stage, alongside Charlotte’s change, other important amendments were made to the bill. The bill has been futureproofed to include a future redress scheme which covers abuse in mental health settings from 1 July 2022. It was also amended to address situations where survivors have a terminal illness or die before their claim is resolved. The redress officer will have the discretion to exempt a survivor from the serious offender process if they have a terminal illness with the prognosis of less than six months to live. This approach ensures survivors are not unfairly disadvantaged or delayed by procedural requirements associated with the serious offender process, and it will ensure that terminally ill survivors have an opportunity to settle their affairs before they die. The bill also now confirms that families and estates of survivors can continue claims through the serious offender process if a survivor dies after registering a claim. This aligns with how redress agencies already deal with claims from survivors who are not serious offenders. The commencement date for the provisions in the bill that implement the serious offender process was changed to 1 August 2026. This will avoid a gap between the legislation coming into force and the redress officer being appointed. The rest of the bill will come into force the day after Royal assent. Finally, the definition of redress was amended to include assistance accessing care records. This reflects that accessing care records is an important part of the redress system for many survivors. I want to acknowledge and thank the Hon Willow-Jean Prime for proposing this amendment. The changes to improve and strengthen the bill will help us to ensure that the process is fair, that it is transparent, and that it is efficient for all survivors. I now commend the bill to the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed to. Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) (20:09): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I want to start my contribution by acknowledging that it is almost two years since the royal commission tabled their final report, Whanaketia, in Parliament on 24 July 2024. Here in Parliament, we received 16 volumes representing years of work, thousands of hours of research and listening, all a testament to the courage of survivors who shared deeply traumatic accounts of their lives. Once again, I want to thank everyone involved in the royal commission’s work. I acknowledge and honour the survivors, those who came forward to share their stories, those who chose, for whatever reason, to not engage, and those who died before they were even able to make that choice. You deserve many things, but at the very least, you deserve proper redress. Nobody could read Whanaketia and not be shocked and saddened by what it said. Those 16 volumes clearly documented the unimaginable horrors that were inflicted on children and vulnerable adults by people who were supposed to protect them and care for them. In November that year, the Prime Minister gave an apology on behalf of the Crown. During that apology, he spoke directly to survivors, saying that for what occurred to them, “the Government must take responsibility”. This redress system bill does not take responsibility. It side-steps it. The bill places responsibility on the very people the State harmed, requiring them to make the case that they are due full redress for the significant harm, abuse, and trauma that was inflicted on them. This bill is ethically bankrupt, and Labour opposes it. Why this bill is wrong—we have traversed it multiple times in this House through the readings that have already passed in the House as well as the committee stage. But, in summary, I will say it again: abuse in care is directly connected to criminal behaviour and imprisonment later in life. The evidence is clear. It was the State that caused harm and triggered the pathway to prison; yet this bill removes the responsibility of the State to provide full redress to the people it harmed. Survivors who have been sentenced for serious, violent, or sexual offences have been receiving financial redress since the claims processes were set up 20 years ago, and this has not brought the redress system into disrepute. We do not need this bill, and that justification does not stand. What we do need is what the royal commission recommended: a single, independent redress system carefully legislated for, that is survivor-focused, trauma-informed, and accessible to all survivors. This system would mean that survivors no longer have to go back to the organisations that caused harm and seek redress from their abuser. This bill does not do that. The Minister did just speak about a few changes that have been made to the bill throughout the select committee process, and when we look at the detail of the bill and its journey through Parliament, some improvements have been made. Given it is going to pass into law tonight, any improvement we were able to achieve could make a positive difference for the survivors that this bill affects. I’d like to thank the Minister for adopting my amendment to include in the purpose of a redress system “assistance with accessing care records”. This is a fundamental change that means a great deal to survivors. As the royal commission found, requesting records is often the first thing that survivors or their legal representatives do when making a claim. Access to records is, for some survivors, the only redress they want. It was crucial that the purpose of the redress system included access to records. We know from survivors and advocates that records are of the utmost importance to survivors. Care Leavers Australasia Network New Zealand is quoted in the royal commission’s report, and I’d like to share that here. They said, for survivors, “being able to access their personal files and records usually represents their only hope in finding answers to the many questions that they have carried with them for a lifetime”. “Records” is a dry word and does not convey what these documents actually are for these survivors. For many survivors, official records hold the story of their lives. This is because survivors were often sent from place to place, separated from their siblings, and lost contact with their families, meaning there is no collective family memory about their lives. Being able to access this information can reveal information about their family and whakapapa that they had no idea about before. Being able to begin to understand what happened to them is a crucial part of healing and can be life-changing for survivors. Throughout the period of this inquiry, the royal commission found that records were not kept, inaccurate, incomplete, and sometimes destroyed or hidden. Many survivors have had to navigate several Government institutions and non-government entities to get their records, and even then, they may not get them. Things have improved. Access to records was one of the first actions the last Labour Government instigated in 2022, and work on this has continued since. However, obstacles remain for survivors wanting to access their records, and they need assistance. The royal commission recommended that access to records be something that the redress system did, and it is good to see that in this bill. The other amendment I welcome is the change that the Minister brought in amendments including survivors who experienced abuse in State care in State-run mental health facilities up until 1 July 2022. It enables more survivors to claim redress for harm they experienced. A provision being provided like this for survivors to apply to the redress officer for an exclusion if they are terminally ill is the right thing to do. These are improvements, yet the fundamental bill remains flawed, which is why Labour opposes it. In conclusion, this may be the last time that we talk in detail in this House about abuse in care in this term of Parliament. Given that, I want to take this opportunity to say how disappointing the Government’s response has been. Abuse in care in State and faith-based institutions is a dark time in our country’s history. The royal commission shone a light on half a century of systemic failures and the associated abhorrent treatment of people who were entitled to love and care. The abuse, harm, and trauma inflicted on people continues to shape the social fabric of our country today. It is a history that must be fully reckoned with if we are to properly learn from it and to move forward. Every royal commission in this country’s history has had the majority of its recommendations accepted in full and implemented; yet this Government accepted the intent of, or partially accepted, a mere 40 percent of this royal commission’s recommendations. This is despite the fact that the royal commission into abuse in care detailed a nationwide care system that, over several decades, harmed tens of thousands of people and their whānau across generations. Sadly, what we see in society today are the very conditions that the royal commission documented in Whanaketia: punitive attitudes towards people who experience poverty, racism, ableism, disablism, rigid ideas about gender roles, and homophobia. Yes, we have come a long way since the 1950s, but there is more that we must do to build an inclusive society. Now we have politicians and political parties who try to exploit our differences for the sole reason of gaining political power. They actively work to deepen divides rather than bring us and our community to a shared humanity. We are better than this. What the royal commission gave was a unique opportunity to work together to create a care system and a country where the royal commission said “every child, young person and adult … is loved, safe and cared for in a manner that supports their growth and development into a thriving contributor to society.” That’s the country we can all believe in. That’s a country I believe in, and alongside my colleagues, that is the country that we work hard for every day. That is why we do not support this bill. Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (20:19): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to also oppose the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill. I also want, first, to acknowledge all of the survivors who have worked tirelessly to ensure that such a dark part of Aotearoa’s history has been addressed through the royal commission of inquiry. I want to thank all of the submitters who have submitted on this bill and all of the people who are continuously working and fighting to address the historical wrongs that we have seen here in Aotearoa. I want to address first a couple things that the Minister has said. I think it is really, in many ways, disingenuous, the misrepresentation by the coordinating Minister in charge, when the Government thanked those who made submissions on this bill. I do want to remind this House that 168 submissions were received on this bill—128 individuals and 40 organisations. Out of those, 144 opposed this bill. Only three supported it, and four partially supported it. Out of the 35 oral hearings on this bill, 33 opposed this bill. For the Minister, on behalf of this Government, to get up and thank those who submitted is disgraceful, because, clearly, the Minister and the Government have not heard the concerns that the submitters and the survivors have made on this bill. Joseph Mooney: You’re just trying to get more votes—disgraceful! Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: I want to check with the member who just heckled and just ask what votes we are to gain when we are here speaking on behalf of those who have opposed this bill? This is the truth. This is the fact. These are the numbers that we have seen in our own department report. I’m not misrepresenting what we are seeing as part of the process that we’ve come to with regards to this bill. There are quite a few additional things that I think were important to address as part of the committee stage. I first want to, I guess, recap for the House some of the key areas that we discussed. I do acknowledge the Minister for putting forward the two Amendment Papers 581 and 582. I acknowledge the fact that the Minister has accepted the Hon Willow-Jean Prime’s amendment. I think those amendments are important, and they are amendments that the Green Party did support, because it is what the survivors have asked for. What the survivors didn’t ask for is what we see in, for example, clause 9 of this bill, where, if you are a serious offender, there is a presumption—a legal presumption—that you do not have a right to redress. That’s not what the survivors have asked for. That also flies in the face of the original intent and the recommendation by the abuse in care royal commission of inquiry. The royal commission of inquiry acknowledge and understand the vicious cycle of harm that we have seen as a part of that abuse in care. There are many complex factors in those circumstances that lead to a survivor’s offending. This was supposed to be an opportunity for any Government to take a more compassionate and restorative approach to how we look at this dark part of our own history. That’s not what we’re seeing in this bill. What we see is a bill where the power lies not with the survivors but with the Crown, the very people who have abused them and who have led to their abuse in the first place. We have heard from submitters that, yes, there is a process for the offenders to seek redress should they not meet that legal presumption. However, we have checked with, and also asked, the Minister over and over again during the committee stage—because, again, this is the will of the survivors—about the fact that those people who are being denied have to come to the same Crown, the same people, who have abused them in the first place, which, of course, continues trauma, shame, and re-traumatisation. How is that going to be addressed as part of this? There’s no response to that. Finally, again, the reason the Green Party opposes this bill—and I just want to remind everyone of the most egregious aspects of this bill compared to what the royal commission recommended. The royal commission recommended that there is no exclusion for serious offenders, whereas this bill creates a legal presumption against redress for those offenders. The royal commission recommends an independent survivor-led system. The bill keeps redress inside State agencies. The royal commission recommended no criminal record checks. The bill introduces criminal record checks, plus that legal presumption. The commission recommended access for all survivors and families. This is something that has been addressed, thankfully, and we’re seeing that there will be access to redress for some of the families and particularly families of deceased survivors. The royal commission recommended meaningful apologies acknowledging responsibility, but this bill makes that apology inadmissible in certain circumstances. The royal commission recommends a trauma-informed accessible process, but this bill adds new processes. Finally, the royal commission recommends a Te Tiriti - aligned, Māori-led design, and there’s no part of this bill that explicitly acknowledges Te Tiriti o Waitangi requirements. For the Government to say that this bill is in line with the royal commission of inquiry is simply misrepresenting, and also misidentifying, the pain and suffering and the desire of those survivors to move on. Whanaketia, as we have heard from the previous speaker, builds a vision as a part of that recommendation—he māra tipu, a growing garden. The survivors were hoping that this bill, on the back of the commission of inquiry, could have been one of healing, could have been one that restores the survivors’ mana, but as we’ve seen from the very onset, right after the apology, the Government introduced bootcamps, which is something that the report explicitly mentioned will continue the trauma that they have experienced as part of that abuse. Joseph Mooney: Shameful! Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: The member is right. It is a shameful day, and the Green Party will not support it. LAURA McCLURE (ACT) (20:29): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this legislation. Firstly, I’d like to say a huge thankyou to all of the survivors who contributed to the royal inquiry into abuse in care, and also the ones that presented to our select committee. I will be honest with you, I know that this doesn’t meet all of the expectations that the survivors and their families would want, but the truth is, this Government could have sat on those findings for some time, really thought about what to do, or they could have started the pathway to some kind of compensation for those that really suffered. While this isn’t exactly where a lot of those who submitted to us in our select committee wanted to land, I do think that there is a good compromise here. When you are setting up a redress system, yes, you do have to be mindful of those who were abused—absolutely—but you also have to be mindful of public perception, because we don’t want the system to come into any form of disrepute. One of those things—around putting a presumption in there for those that have gone on and committed serious crimes, particularly violent sexual crimes—doesn’t exclude them from other forms of redress; it just excludes them from the financial aspect. There are other ways that that presumption can be overturned, as well. Look, I’m definitely one of the first to say that people that are hurt or harmed, particularly in their youth, often go on to be a perpetrator as well. I think we need to do more around that preventative side if we are going to change and we’re going to break cycles. But, as far as the Government’s concerned and the obligations that we have, we have to make sure that we also think about the victims of the crimes that some of these survivors themselves have committed. I know, because I’ve talked to a survivor whose abuser was also a victim of State care, and so was she herself, and she would not be happy with that person getting some kind of financial redress. Support and help—100 percent, yes—but not financial redress. We need to be able to balance those views, so I commend this bill to the House. Again, I just want to thank all of those that came forward, whether it was in the inquiry or to the select committee. We heard you, and this is a good starting point, and I’m sure there will be many other things and many other actionable things to come in the future in regards to that inquiry. Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Minister of Customs) (20:32): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the third reading of the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill. There are no winners in this process. This has been a hard-fought, hard-worked process to get this bill to the House. I would like to commend the Minister, the Hon Erica Stanford, who has the coordinating responsibility for navigating this work. It was navigating a number of ministries, a number of agencies, as well as engaging with victims to ensure voices were heard and that we continued to move forward. It is completely inappropriate to use this time in this third reading to talk about who cares more or less, who wants more or wants less. This is about a process of moving forward. We all care. We were all devastated by what the Crown did, and we all want to ensure that we continue to develop a process that provides support, provides a better redress process, and provides a system that works and is robust, and that we continue to ensure that this does not happen again. To suggest that we are criticising Crown agencies today for things that have happened in the past is just a tragedy. It is an insult to the wonderful people that have worked so hard to ensure that we do better, that we deliver redress, that we provide support. To stand in this House and suggest that they shouldn’t be engaging with the Crown, that they shouldn’t be reaching out, is just cheap political point-scoring that they should hang their heads in shame about. We need to encourage victims to know that they can trust the Crown, to know that they can come forward, and this system will deliver that support. This is not a time for politics; this is a time for ensuring that we put our egos and our political aspirations to one side and actually think about what is good for these people. This system may not be perfect, but it is better than sitting in paralysed fear while we decide what is the very perfect situation, what is the very perfect system. What we are delivering in this bill is a process to move forward. Those that have worked on delivering this process, bringing this bill to the House, and ensuring that we do move forward should be commended. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The Hon Julie Anne Genter—five minutes. Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (20:35): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I want to start off by acknowledging our survivors. There are so many of them, and their stories are devastating. The apology was, we think, insufficient. It would be much better if the Government was willing to go further and implement more of the recommendations of the royal commission. It’s OK, I know that the people watching and the people who experienced harm in State care understand that we’re speaking up for their aspirations and that this isn’t about political point-scoring. If anything, the Government’s unwillingness to implement the recommendations of the royal commission is because of their own political ambitions and their unwillingness to truly listen to the people. It’s amazing the way we can tell—we can all tell—because the Government MPs are so fragile, even their Ministers, that at the slightest bit of legitimate criticism, they start saying we are disgusting and we are shameful. It’s a perfect example of the projection that comes from these people in power, that they turn their own inability to accept where they’re getting it wrong and to acknowledge that into attacking the people who are just trying to speak up for those who’ve been most marginalised, who’ve been harmed. We should, as representatives, be willing to do what’s necessary to make things right. No one is asking for perfect, but does this bill meet the needs and the support and the proper compensation of survivors of State care? It’s a pretty easy answer: no, it doesn’t. Is it a survivor-led response that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi and places survivors at the centre? No, this bill doesn’t do that. I want to acknowledge the work and the sacrifice and the emotional burden that survivors have undertaken to advocate for each other and to bring awareness into this dark part of our country’s past. The bill, as it stands, does not take into full account what our survivors of abuse in care deserve, and it does not represent justice. The royal commission of inquiry recommended that there should be no exclusions in redress for those who are serious offenders, as this creates presumptions against redress. Many of our survivor community have ended up in the justice system as a consequence of the abuse they endured. The royal commission called for an independent, survivor-led system that honoured the lived experience of survivors, and with this bill we do not have that. Access to redress is being kept inside the system that caused the harm in the first place—and we’re not talking about individuals who work in that system; we are talking about the system. A restorative justice approach has been shown to work in so many different places and times. It’s incredibly effective, but it takes time and it takes resource. That would be a true apology and redress. It would be properly resourcing the redress, properly resourcing a survivor-centred system that’s outside and independent from the Crown. The royal commission called for no criminal record checks; however, this bill includes that. To me that’s politics. That’s the politics of these parties in Government. It’s not politics to say—it’s not being political or being shortsighted to call out the fact the bill is literally not doing what the royal commission recommended. That’s all—it’s not doing what the royal commission recommended. I urge Government MPs to be a little bit honest with yourselves for once and acknowledge that we could have done better—the Crown could have done better—than this bill simply by implementing the recommendations of the royal commission. That would be the very least that we could do, and that still would not be perfect, but it would be better than blocking access for some survivors and some families simply for ideological and political reasons. Members of our survivor network feel the Government apology and redress is not enough, and it’s their voices that matter. JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland) (20:40): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the third reading of the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill. The bill provides a legal framework for providing redress for survivors of abuse in State care, and, particularly, it recognises the personal experience of abuse in care. It offers an alternative to litigation to provide for redress for abuse in care, including the provision of one or more of financial payments, an apology, counselling, or other wellbeing support. I want to just take a moment, actually, to acknowledge all those survivors who will be watching these events this evening or who will be watching them in the future; just to say once again that what happened to them is unforgivable. It should never have happened, and it should never happen again. This Government is taking steps to acknowledge and provide redress. This bill does not do everything, and it does not pretend to do everything, but it is providing a redress system for abuse in care, which is a very important step forwards. I have seen and heard many distasteful things in my years in this House, and, frankly, the behaviour of the Opposition on this bill is, I think, the most distasteful of them all. This is something that is nationally significant and nationally important. It is incredibly important to the future dignity of our country, and they have not brought dignity to the discussion of this issue. They have focused on a very small part of the bill, which is intended to ensure that it retains credibility in the eyes of New Zealanders going forwards and that we are getting this balance right. Ninety-eight percent of survivors will have a direct, simplified path to redress as a part of this bill—98 percent. Two percent—2 percent—will need to go through a more robust vetting process. Why? It is because they have been convicted of a serious violent or sexual offence. It is one of the offences that is in the three-strikes legislation. These are serious offences. Not only that, they must also have been sentenced to five or more years in prison. That is a long time in prison. That indicates they have committed a serious offence against another human being and that there’s another human being in our country who is deeply victimised by their behaviour. Now, that does not take away the survivor’s and, simultaneously, the abuser’s own experience as a child in faith or State-based care, which should never have happened. To retain confidence in the system, we have put in place a balanced regime to ensure that they can still get it redressed. There will be a redress officer who carefully assesses that application. This is really important and requires a sensitive, deliberative discussion, which we have not heard in this Parliament. I would call on the members of the Opposition to put aside politics and think really carefully about how we shape our future and how we have a responsible discussion about an issue that is incredibly important to all of us. There is much more to say, but I think I’ve made a point that really needs to be carefully thought about. Thank you, and I commend this bill to the House. Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) (20:44): While I was listening to the member Joseph Mooney, and I think there is obviously some sincerity in what he’s saying, the reality is that we’ve got some really disaffected communities out there and we just can’t get away with what has happened to so many people through the years, who felt let down by what the Government did after the original promises from the Government, which many of us supported and celebrated with them—well, not celebrated, that’s the wrong term, but certainly came together with the Government through the initial process. The reality is that things didn’t go to plan, and we, as an Opposition, feel absolutely let down by the actions of this Government. Up to 200,000 kids and vulnerable adults were abused or neglected in New Zealand’s State and faith-based care between 1950 and 1999. Almost one in three kids in State care over this period suffered some form of harm, with Māori disproportionately affected; 80 percent to 90 percent of members in Maōri-majority gangs were all in State care—I’m talking about the Mongrel Mob, Black Power. But the reality is, a survivor is a survivor. Trauma does not disappear because someone later on entered the criminal justice system. The harvest of pain that the State has caused these people, our people, is an obscenity that demands a response that respects those survivors’ mana. Instead, so many of these people feel they have been betrayed. In my view, despite what some of the Government speakers have said, the Government should be embarrassed with this response. The State didn’t just abuse and hurt those 200,000 vulnerable kids and adults. It was an unprincipled campaign of legal warfare against the many brave survivors who tried to speak their truth. The Government now, right here, it seems, is abusing those victims and has certainly disappointed many of them. Something victims have said to me is that they feel their mana has been betrayed for legal barriers to protect the State’s liability. This Government should be embarrassed. They should be embarrassed by this deal. This is a redress bill that fails to deliver the redress survivors were promised. The bill does not create the independent, survivor-led redress system recommended by the royal commission. Instead, it creates a presumption against financial redress for some survivors with serious violent or sexual convictions. It establishes a process to assess exemptions and gives legal process to apologies made by State agencies. The royal commission called for a comprehensive, independent redress system, and this bill is not that. By excluding those who’ve gone on to commit serious crimes because of the abuse that has plagued them, it’s punishing those victims twice. This bill is more about protecting the Crown than survivors by narrowing access to compensation. Disability advocates and survivor groups have argued it reduces access rather than expanding it. Because Māori were disproportionately represented in State care and among abuse survivors, this bill continues historic injustices rather than repairs them. The Crown abused Māori kids, ignored Māori voices, and now wants Māori survivors to accept this second-rate apology. The bill spends more time deciding who should be excluded than how survivors can receive justice. The Government listened to survivors’ stories and then ignored their recommendations. Many of the people this bill excludes were first failed by the State and then criminalised by it. Many survivors wanted an independent body, but what they’ve been given is a State-controlled system. Survivors are still being forced to seek redress from the same institutions who’ve been responsible for the abuse. This bill protects the Crown’s reputation more than it restores the mana of survivors, and that must be something really upsetting for everyone tonight. The royal commission spent years listening to survivors, but this bill does not implement the redress system those survivors asked for. What was the point of making the apology if all the State wanted was the performance and none of the responsibility once we had said “Sorry”? We, some of us on this side, believe that the apology was hollow and history will judge this Parliament harshly for the insult. I want to go to what some of our members have said tonight. This is what the royal commission said: “We consider there should continue to be no exclusion for serious offenders or any extra criteria for them to meet. A large number of those in prison have been in care and the tūkino they suffered may have contributed to their offending. Most of Maori, and they and their whānau, are likely to be among those most in need of help through the scheme.” This is what the commission was saying. This was clear to everyone, but this was ignored. I want to address what the Prime Minister said just one year ago. The Prime Minister of this country stood in this House on behalf of the Crown and apologised to survivors of abuse in State care. We all applauded that. He said, and I quote, “For many of you, it changed the course of your life, and for that, the Government must take responsibility.” Take responsibility—that was what the Prime Minister’s words were. So I asked the Prime Minister and other members sitting on the other side: what does “take responsibility” look like in this bill? Surely, that’s got to be the question. Does taking responsibility look like a bill that creates a presumption against paying the very survivors whose lives were mostly changed by what the Crown did to them? Does taking responsibility look like a bill that gives the Crown legal protection when it apologises, so that the apology cannot be used against it in court? Does responsibility look like a bill where 92 percent of public submissions opposed it, and the Government brought it back anyway? The questions just go on and on. Does taking responsibility look like ignoring the royal commission, ignoring the high-level design group, ignoring survivors, ignoring iwi, ignoring legal experts, ignoring the privacy commission and ramming it through the Parliament before the election? That’s not responsibility; that is the opposite of responsibility. The Prime Minister’s apology, every word of it, has been made a mockery of by this bill. Let me now speak about the what the bill actually excludes. The estimate in the original Cabinet papers was that it will exclude 110 people, or roughly 5 percent of the claimants—110 people. The Crown is going to twist itself into knots, change its legislation retrospectively, change everything. They’ve changed everything to deny access to 110 people. It just seemed to be such a waste of time, to have these people, mainly Māori, excluded; disabled survivors, most of them placed in State institution as kids—all of them survivors of abuse, every single one of them broken by the very institutions that they were supposed to protect. The original Cabinet paper said it plainly impacts on the estimated 95 percent of claimants who did not have a record of serious criminal offending. So just summarising the Government’s logic: they’ll make every survivor wait longer, every survivor go through more checks, every survivor experience more delay, and the entire system grinds slower so that they can deny payment to about 100 Māori men in prison. It’s just so sad and insulting and upsetting because we could have had so much more. We want a system, in terms of Labour, that’s independent, that is trauma informed, that is inclusive, that is holistic, that recognises people and their community and the contributions that they make. We want a society that is more balanced, that recognises what people have gone through, and I assure you that when a new Labour Government comes in, we will be relooking at this kaupapa. And I assure everyone who’s listening tonight that all our aroha goes out to you tonight. We’re sad, disappointed about this bill, but under a Labour Government, things will be different. Kia ora anō tātou. DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast) (20:54): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take this call on this Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill. Look, nothing will ever make up for the trauma and the harm that was inflicted over the years on to so many New Zealanders, and whilst this bill does go some way to addressing the wrongs of the past, they will never be forgotten and that will never change what happened to many of our people. The bill aims to strengthen the care system to prevent, identify, and respond to abuse in the future as well as dealing with the past. I want to thank the Minister and all those who worked hard to get it to this point so everyone can move on, including the colleague Willow-Jean Prime, who brought in the amendments at the end to include the access to records, which has been such an important part for the survivors. I want to thank my colleagues on the Social Services and Community Committee, who dealt with this bill and made good improvements, made changes, and helped to get it to this point. You listened and provided good advice. I think the big thankyou, however, must be to the survivors, to the families, the groups, and everyone else who contributed, and who gave such brave accounts of their stories to help us understand in some small way what they have been through and how it’s affected their lives for ever. This has been a long time in the process, and I know it’s been challenging for so many who live with the trauma every single day. I do hope that it will come some way to dealing with some of that for them and that we can move forward together and look towards the future. With that, I commend the bill to the House INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (20:56): This is called the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill; it probably should be called the “Sorry But Not Sorry Bill”. What we have heard tonight is about a system that talks about not bringing this system into disrepute. My question to the Government members is: in whose estimation? Because let’s think about what happened. There was a royal commission of inquiry where, for years, people had known that there were things happening in faith-based institutes and in State care. Finally, there was a royal commission of inquiry, and people were encouraged to come forward to the very system that had let them down, to the very system that had robbed their childhood, that had caused them trauma and unimaginable horrific abuse and experiences. And yet, they were enticed forward because there was this royal commission of inquiry that was going to give them an opportunity to be seen as whole people, to be seen in all their trauma, to be seen in all their humanity, and, for some of them, to also be seen in the scars that they carried through some of the crimes they committed. At that point in time, nobody from this House said to them, “But don’t do this if you’ve committed a serious offence because you will be rejected and marginalised further at the end of the process.” Nobody said that to them. If we were going to do that, we should at least have done that at the beginning of this process. But instead, we encouraged them forward. We told them they’d be safe. They took witness stands and they shared the most personal stories, the things they had never revealed to anybody. They shared those with the royal commission thinking they would be protected and they would be seen in their totality. And now, under this Government we are saying, “No, we want to protect the so-called reputation of the redress system.” Well, whose reputation? Because certainly it’s not enhancing the reputation of the royal commission. The next time we have a royal commission, people are not going to want to come forward because they will not be trusting that they will be treated in the way that they were when they were enticed at the beginning of this process. We looked at the people who are most marginalised by this: there are Māori, there are disabled, there are Pasifika people, there are all the usual groups who are at the most invisible end of society. And yet, we are saying to them, “You have to go through extra hoops if you want to be accepted, because we’re sorry, but we’re not sorry. We’re sorry, but we’re sorry in a kind of middle-class, privileged way. But we’re not sorry and we don’t relate to the worlds you come from because we have no idea about your experience, because if we did, we would accept you as human beings or we would have told you at the outset, we would have put more thought into this process, and we would have made it very clear that you are not safe to come into this process.” That is what is such a shame about this bill and this whole process. We are further traumatising the most marginalised people. Now, I am not making excuses for the crimes that they committed or for the hurt that they caused, but to not make them aware at the beginning of the process about what was at stake and what it would cost them is, I think, grossly unfair. Again, I ask: whose reputation are we protecting? Is it the Crown? Is it the State? Is it privilege? Is it the royal commission? As I’ve said, I don’t believe it enhances the reputation of the royal commission at all, because it calls into question what will happen in future royal commissions when people are treated in this way: where the playing field has changed, where the goal posts have changed, and when they are not safe to reveal the things they give in evidence because the rules at the end of the process are changed and taken from under them. Then, to add insult to injury, there is a requirement that, if they don’t declare a qualifying conviction, they will carry a maximum fine of $5,000. Again, there is this burden of disclosure on people who have gone through a process, who have had it changed, and who now face further marginalisation if they do not declare. I imagine that this burden of proof will probably fall on lawyers, but not all the abuse in care people had lawyers representing them. There are many, many more points that I could make about the recommendations that the royal commission said—many of which have been ignored—which calls into question: why did we have a royal commission if we’re going to ignore their recommendations? My fundamental question is: whose reputation, right now, are we protecting? PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn) (21:01): Thank you, Madam Speaker. There can be nothing worse than young people, children, the vulnerable in different circumstances, coming into an abusive situation by the State or in other institutions, in whose care they were placed in, and in whose care they were supposed to have trusted. There can be nothing worse than being abused by the people that have been placed to care for you, but this has happened in a very, very large way. The approach of the New Zealand Government has evolved and developed over time—over more than two decades—with the court cases in the 1990s clearly not being appropriate, over time. This redress of abuse in care has been developed as a solution outside litigation. It spares many people and their families from the horror of going through litigation. For this reason, and through the royal inquiry, we must say to the people who have been abused and who have shared their stories through the process—it would have been unimaginably difficult that they would have gone through this, so I thank them; I thank each and every single person who has shared a very personal and deeply vulnerable story of abuse. Also, I thank the Social Services and Community Committee—all the members who have gone through the submissions. Through this, this bill seeks to ensure that the people who have suffered abuse—the survivors—are given redress in the most effective manner, without dragging them through a court process, and bearing in mind that some may have committed serious violent or sexual offences or offences involving firearms. There is a list of these offences. For them, the redress would not be automatic but they would have to apply to a redress officer, who is an independent decisionmaker. It’s important that the public understand that this is less than 2 percent of those who have gone through the inquiry and who have submitted claims. I echo the chair in his statement that 98 percent are going to be given redress. Not every person who has suffered abuse in care has gone on to commit serious violent offences; just less than 2 percent, and for that there must be accountability. This process aims to make sure that all of the survivors are treated in the best possible way and redress provided in a very standardised manner. Thank you, Madam Speaker. HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (21:06): I want to start my speech by talking about this issue that is a dispute between the Opposition and the Government, but I want to do it within a wider context and try and take a pretty different lens to it. One of the things that I think we have to do is begin at the beginning. This inquiry was about abusive behaviour from 1950 through to 1999, and when the inquiry first began, it was going to be just the State, and then it moved to the Church. Now, we’re not alone. Other countries have also had their children subjected to terrible abuse in care, so we can look to places like Canada, where they’ve dealt with this very differently, and not in a way that I think we should be critical of our own approach at all. I think we have done, in lots of ways, a much better job than places like Canada, which worked on class action systems and buried a lot of the evidence and prosecuted very few people for what happened. I’m not saying it’s all rosy somewhere else. I think we started well. We had an inquiry that was quite an in-depth inquiry. We gave that inquiry to very trusted people that I deeply respect, and they walked through the process with about 3,000 survivors. Those survivors told their stories, and they were traumatic stories. They had to buy into trusting the State to that extent. I think they were heard. The recommendations that came out of that inquiry were from wise people; they were considered recommendations. One of the things they talked about was a system for redress. Now, what we know is that in, the interim, people had tried to sue over the abuse that had happened—sometimes torture, often violent sexual abuse. They had tried to sue, and our legal system had failed those victims badly. We had a controversy before the apology that was delivered in this Parliament about the Crown prosecutor and the aggressive attitude that she had had, and that was something—I don’t want to blame a particular person for that. That’s an attitude I’ve seen far too often in litigation, of minimising what’s gone on and trying to get away with things at the least possible cost to the State. Actually that did terrible damage. There were things like the hiding of evidence, the failure to disclose. There were real issues about putting people under pressure and denying what was undeniable under that system. So legal systems don’t work that well in this situation because you take vulnerable people and you put them into a space where power is often imbalanced. The lawyers in the room probably all agree that that system is flawed when it comes to victims. It does not work well. The system that the commission proposed for redress, the one that was the beginnings of the one we look at today, that was a system where thought was put into who would be able to claim redress. The people that I trust, who were the commissioners, said that it needed to be a system that was all-enveloping, that made no distinction between people. Now, what I want to say to those who have made claims that people on this side of the House are doing this for votes, or that they are disgraceful, is I genuinely believe there’s a flaw here in the thinking of the Government on this. I think it’s really important that we see the people that have been abused as victims. That’s why they’re getting the redress. They are victims. It doesn’t mean that they’re saints. It doesn’t mean that they haven’t gone on to do harm. All of that can be true because we don’t live in a world of cartoon characters, and there are correlations between abuse and going on to abuse. Horrible, ugly, evil as it is, that’s the reality. And that is irrelevant to whether the State harmed and victimised those people. Let’s just have a think about this for a minute. We are talking about sexual abuse. Is it ever something that we shouldn’t see the person who was sexually violated, the person who was brutally hurt—is it ever something that we should let ourselves off the hook for? Because my concern with the other lawyers who stood up in the room today is that they’ve left out the little logical piece that is redress itself. My concern is we owe every victim that we made, as the State, the same duty of care. It’s incredibly important we never cloud this issue with public opinion, because guess what? We are moral leaders. That’s part of our job. And we shouldn’t ever, ever step away from our responsibility to lead public opinion. That’s our job. We are here because we get the nine reports that came out, we get to read them. Most of the public, they’re getting on with trying to make ends meet at the moment, but we get the great privilege of looking at that material, of sharing it with those victims. And we know that it’s important. We lead, and we lead maturely. Now, this is going to lead to my last point, which is that we need to talk about what an apology is. Because on the day the apology was made, there was actually an inclusion of what the Crown prosecutor had done, the aggressive approach that had been taken on behalf of the Crown, that was included in the apology. And she said, “We’ve moved on, we’ve learnt, and we’ve changed our culture.” I expect when somebody says that they are apologising, especially a moral leader, I expect that they will give a fulsome apology, a heartfelt apology, a real one. If anybody wants to look at any literature on what an apology has, it actually has a significant part of it which is to make amends. We can’t simply say the words, we can’t even just feel the remorse; we have to make amends if that’s what’s required. In this piece of legislation, one thing that I just can’t handle is that we actually enrich the State every time we decline one of the claims from someone who was victimised, who was raped, who was brutalised. We decline it and guess who is enriched? The State, because it doesn’t hand over the cash. In the select committee, I sought to look at this issue. I said, “Well, couldn’t we put it into victims’ funds? Couldn’t we do something for the next generation of victims?” I was open minded about this and I got told it was too hard: “No, no, no, we can’t do that.” I am sick of hearing that the system cannot cope with humanity. Our job here is to always remember humanity, and if there are victims out there who were raped, who were brutalised, who were harmed by the State or churches, I want to look at them in that light as victims and do my end of the bargain as a representative in this House. Actually what happens next, that’s important to understanding the ripple effect of evil. That’s really important, but that’s the important bit. I do not want to follow some shallow, public opinion fear because we make that opinion happen. Our job as moral leaders is to lead this country in a way that we can be proud of. And, unfortunately, tonight, I’m not proud of this law. DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth) (21:16): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s fair to say that I stand to participate in this debate with a sorry heart, really. I would believe that this is one of the more sombre debates that I’ve experienced in my time during this term itself, and it’s very obvious as to why. There’s not a smile on anybody’s face around this room, and we all deeply empathise with the situation that we’re all presented with. I think we all would wish that we didn’t have such a bill like this in front of us to have to pass to provide a new beginning, potentially opportunity, redress—that word “redress”—for these individuals that have been abused in care. I think about the word “care” and what it actually means. And you could think about the fact that it’s providing health and wellbeing and, I suppose, protection to humans itself. And yet what we’re discussing here this evening, tonight, is exactly the opposite to what’s actually occurred. It’s absolutely appropriate that the Government does something about it. I’m trying to get my head around the fact that the Opposition are not supporting this bill with what it’s endeavouring to do with this step. I understand it’s not perfect, but surely it’s a step in the right direction to some degree, and I would measure that by the fact that I’m sure the Opposition’s not going to repeal this bill if they come into power. It’s a bill that’s needed. It’s subsequent to a huge amount of work in a very, very large report that many individuals brought their experiences, their unreal experiences, to light within the report, and it almost beggars belief to think that other human beings transpired the ill-doings on over a couple of hundred thousand people in this way within our country itself. It’s not a good situation for us, any of us, to be in with this here, and I think this bill, which has been through its process, parliamentary process—I empathise with the select committee members that had to listen to probably many, many stories that were brought before them. It must have been a very sombre experience; I wasn’t there myself. In some ways, I’m pleased that we’ve actually got a step to be taken here, but I also empathise that you can never fix the wrongs of what this whole situation is. With that, I commend this bill to the House. MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Tai Tokerau) (21:20): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. The title is about the redress system for abuse in care. Obviously, the collision between abuse in care or in State care, or in faith-based care, for that matter, are probably the things that should shock us into reality. The reality, as I know it, having worked in the sector for many years, is that it has been going on for a very long time. It’s sombre, but it’s a sobering reality that I remember well, so I’m less sombre and, I guess, in a perverse way, glad that we are having this debate, though it’s at the third reading and though I have my own sense of where I think we have not gone far enough. I’d like to just read a quick excerpt from a poem that was written by one of the survivors, if I may. In the third reading, I think it’s relevant and important and I’d like to share that. She writes: Where does the story end? Who gets to call time on my life? I knew the telltale signs of what was coming next, So I’d run until I could no more. Forgive him, Forgive me, But some I never will. They need to pay. They all must pay, For that is all I say. Don’t walk around in the light that is not yours to see. Still fighting for myself and all we need to say, With love now surrounding me. A path there still to travel, Deciding now where I go and what I do, To claim back all our innocence that was always meant to be. That was by Neta Kerepeti. I wanted to bring this into this particular moment in the conversation, because I certainly recall, when the apology occurred, I stood in this House and referred to the fact that it is one thing to make an apology, of course, and good on us, but I also said that none of the survivors had to accept it. The gallery was full. None of the survivors had to accept it, and they don’t. Whether they do or not, kei a rātou tērā tikanga—that is up to them—but it must still be up to us to continue to correct the harm. From what I see when I look at the changes—and I do, I acknowledge there are points in it where we talk about the key changes, formalising access to apologies and payments, restrictions on financial compensation. All of those things prevent apologies being used as admissions of liability in court. They’re all words, and though they’re important, they’re not anywhere near as important as the act of remorse and the acting on apology and to going further than we should, to keep going. So I don’t support this, and I don’t support it, coming right back to the time in which I used to work in this field. I used to sit across from children that had been sexually assaulted, and would take the story from women, from grandmothers, from sons, from fathers. When I hear this kind of conversation—and, might I say, intention has never been enough, and, in this context, it fails even more. I mean, I sat on that committee, as you all know—sorry, I didn’t mean to bring you into this, Madam Speaker—and, of course, when I heard many of the submissions that came in the hearings, they break your heart and they should remind us of the harm that we—and I mean this in the enduring time in which all this harm occurred—are responsible for. We are responsible for that harm. In fact, I might even say that we did that. How do you undo that and how do you redress it? You do more, and you do that based on what the perspective—and, just in closing, it is the perspective of the survivors which is the thing that I think is fundamentally missing— ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to. Those of that opinion, please say Aye. To the contrary, No. The ayes have it. Hon Member: Party vote. Hon Member: No, the noes have it. Party vote. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I’ve called the vote. Motion agreed to. Bill read a third time.