MARK PECK (NZ Labour—Invercargill) : I want to take just a very short call on this bill, and say what an extraordinary debate it has been, punctuated by quite a bunch of inaccuracies and scaremongering. I support the bill.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson) : This bill will be opposed by National because it is part of Labour’s dangerous social engineering that has the State assuming more and more control and power over children’s lives, at the expense of parents. The Minister stated last week: “This legislation is getting away from the language of parents having rights. Parents have responsibilities towards their children.” We take a very different view. [Interruption] Only a Minister like that member who is interjecting, a member who does not have any children, could make a statement in this Parliament that parents do not have rights.

Is it not interesting that members opposite are all very keen to have gay rights, they are all very keen to have workers’ rights, they are all very keen to have human rights, and they even want to have prostitutes’ rights, but when it comes to parents’ rights this Government is not interested? It is so revealing, when looking at this Care of Children Bill, to see whom the Government consulted. It consulted the Law Society, the Principal Family Court Judge, Barnardos, and the New Zealand Association of Children’s Supervised Access Services. But why did it not consult parents? If there is anybody who is important in the lives and care of children, it is parents. Where is the Federation of New Zealand Parents Centres, with regard to this bill? Why did the Government not talk to that organisation? Why has the Government not talked to any organisation that is representative of parents’ organisations? No wonder the Government came up with a bill that neglects the rights of the people who are most important in children’s lives.

National believes that rights go with responsibilities. They belong together like glove and hand. Judith Tizard can laugh all she likes. But I say to Judith Tizard that the people who get up in the middle of the night to attend to a sick child, like my wife last night, have rights. People who change dirty nappies day in, day out have rights. People who work day in, day out for the well-being of the children of this country have rights, and members opposite need to start thinking about that.

Ruth Dyson is trying to interject but I want her to get to her feet. The question of whether the State can make a better parent than the parents themselves goes to the core of the bill. This bill is all about extending the powers of the State. The Minister makes much of the bill’s stated purpose—the best interests of the child. Well, this is one of those warm, fuzzy statements that it is impossible to disagree with. It reminds me of a candidate who once stood against me, and said: “Well, I’m going to do what’s best for Nelson.” That does not say a lot, does it. It does not say anything at all. All it does is abrogate the responsibility of this Parliament to say how the best interests of children will be served.

The key issue is, who decides what is in children’s best interests? The Minister says the State does. That is why this bill gives increased powers to social workers, counsel for the child, psychologists, cultural advisers, and the courts. The National Party says that that is mistaken. These people are just momentary visitors in the lives of children, they can never make as important a contribution to the lives of children as parents do, and that is why they should be mentioned. The real way to get children a better deal is to strengthen families, and that will not come about by a bill that diminishes parents to being bystanders in the decisions that affect their children.

The second issue on which National takes a very different view is the Minister’s statement that the sex of parents is irrelevant. Whether a child has a mum, a dad, two mums, or two dads, in the Minister’s mind it does not matter. Well, I have a different view. We do not live in some sexless society. Men and women are equal, and they are different. No amount of wishful thinking from Government bureaucrats or politically correct Ministers will change those facts of life. This bill completely ignores the importance of children having relationships with their mother and their father. That is the significance of this debate.

Every MP in this Parliament will have had instances of responsible dads coming to see them, who are desperate to play a role in their children’s lives but are beaten by the costs, the bureaucracy, and the bias of the court. This bill ignores their plight and makes things worse. The parent not providing the day-to-day care of the child, previously known as the non-custodial parent, may, in fact, find it even more difficult when trying to get a role in the upbringing of his or her child. That is not in children’s best interests.

I want to make plain National’s position in respect of same-sex, de facto, and reconstituted families. We take issue with the ridiculous notion that this bill creates female fathers. That is a nonsense. However, there is a need to make better provision in the law for the wide range of family arrangements that exist today. Step-parents, gay parents, and de facto parents need to be recognised in law. However, an underlying principle needs to be recognised. Children need long-term, stable relationships. The way in which the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services moves children around, willy-nilly, is a total disgrace. The extent to which these parents have a say in the lives of others needs to reflect the degree to which they have contributed to a child’s well-being. The step-parent who has attended the odd birthday party has a lesser right to a say on the welfare of a child than a step-parent who has been the full-time caregiver for years. This bill makes absolutely no distinction in that regard.

National further notes other concerns. We think that clause 5, which requires a child, regardless of age, to express a view on whom they might like to live with, and the requirement of the court to take this into account, reflects an impractical obsession with the rights of the child, not with the well-being of the child. We see no need to move from the current law that conditions this with the age and maturity of the child. We also believe there are some real risks in opening up the court to so many more parties—aunties, uncles, stepbrothers, stepsisters, grandparents. The more parties that are involved, the more difficult it is to get resolution, and in many cases it will make worse the work of the Family Court in resolving such issues. National comes from the perspective that the Family Court is a far from ideal environment in which to resolve family disputes, and that as much as possible issues should be resolved outside of that legalistic environment.

I want to say what is missing from this bill. It is noteworthy to look at the equivalent Australian law, which recognises the rights that parents have. It recognises that children’s most important players in their lives are the family around them. They almost do not exist in this particular bill. We note that the Australian law specifically connects responsibilities with rights, so that those parents who pay child support have rights of access. The Australian law also makes it plain that it is in the child’s best interests to have ongoing and regular contact with both parents, whether or not they are living with each other, and we should adopt those same sorts of principles in our law.

The last point I want to make is in respect of the secrecy of the Family Court. The Family Court needs to be opened up to the disinfectant of sunlight. Our present closed-court environment does not work in the best interests of children, or our country as a whole. Again I look to the Australian model, which provides for confidentiality of the parties but provides for an open court. We are far more likely to have successful outcomes in a Family Court environment in which there is openness.

This bill is a politically correct job of social engineering, and this Parliament should reject it. We need to go back to the drawing board and concentrate on a bill that puts the family at the centre, around the child.

JANET MACKEY (NZ Labour—East Coast) : I look forward to National supporting the bill, in the interests of increased transparency of the Family Court. One thing this bill sets out to do is to seek increased transparency. Anyone who does constituency clinics will know that Family Court matters and matters of custody in families are some of the most difficult, most complex, and saddest cases that come before us.

This bill responds to the rights of children to have access to both parents, and the responsibility of parents to ensure that in the breakdown of a marriage the needs of the children continue to be met. The bill also deals with the issue of the privacy and secrecy of the Family Court, which at the present time is causing grief to so many families. I support the bill, and I look forward to National doing the same.

DARREN HUGHES (NZ Labour—Otaki) : I rise to join my colleague the member for East Coast—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): That person in the gallery is a stranger in the gallery and has no part in this House. I ask the Serjeant-at-Arms to take remedial action.

• A disturbance took place in the gallery, and a member of the public was removed on the instruction of the Assistant Speaker.

DARREN HUGHES: I rise to join my colleague the member for East Coast, Janet Mackey, in supporting the first reading of this bill. It updates and replaces the Guardianship Act from 1968, and moves to recognise the changes that have happened in the 35 years since that Act was written. Of course, it also builds on the principles behind the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act, which puts the child first in terms of how the State deals with these issues. I believe that that is an important shift in looking after the children of New Zealand. I support the bill.

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) : Like many other people in New Zealand, I am a believer in the institution of the family in whatever form it takes, because the family is, and will remain, the seedbed of love, trust, and security. Whatever we might think about how the world has changed in 35 years, we know that most children are still brought up in families. Most of those families have two parents, even if there is some shuffling around among those parents. It is still a minority of children who are raised in families of one parent, and it is a very small proportion of our children who are raised in families after having been conceived by artificial means of human reproduction, or in families where they have same-sex parents.

This is not just a matter of looking at the statistics, although the statistics bear out what I have said; it is also the experience of parents. If one spends one’s time around schools and sports grounds, one does not find a huge variety in the living arrangements of children. One finds that children and parents tend to seek long-term, stable relationships—parents seeking them for themselves, and also seeking them as the best atmosphere in which to bring up their children. So I do not fear, in any way, that ill-judged legislation will undermine the institution of the family. It is, after all, the custom and the practice of the people. The institution of the family will persist, no matter what.

But this bill shows that this particular Government has a stunningly vacuous neutrality about how human relationships work in our community. It is one of three pieces of similar legislation. It is no wonder that my colleague says it does not place the family as the important framework for a child, because—

Government Members: It puts the children first.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Just hear me out. The reason this legislation does not place the family as the institution in which the child will have the best framework is that the Families Commission Bill, according to this Government, defines a family as a group of people with a psychological attachment. That is a bizarre definition of everything from a nation State to a “bikie” gang. If the Government feels that it has to go to the extent of defining a family, as if it matters what the Government thinks a family is, and if it feels that it has to put that definition in legislation, as if that will make any difference to how people behave in reality, there is no doubt that it is unable to put the family into legislation, as part of the Care of Children Bill.

This bill, like the others—the property relationship bill and the Families Commission Bill—is completely devoid of support, encouragement, or recognition for the family. In fact, all that legislation bears a deep, ideological imprint of a group of people in a Government who want to go as far as they believe is politically feasible to eradicate the words “family”, “parents”, “husband”, and “wife” from legislation. But, as I said, it is the custom and the practice of the people to live this way.

I come to the bill itself. The Associate Minister of Justice and the Government are in an interesting situation. They are interested in everyone’s rights—except the rights of parents. We spend all our time acknowledging the rights of almost anyone else in the community except parents. This is what the Minister has to say about parents: “This legislation is getting away from the language of parents having rights.” And so it should. Let me say that again: “This legislation is getting away from the language of parents having rights.” And so it should.

Darren Hughes: What’s the name of the bill?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: —Lianne Dalziel is the name of the Minister—“Parents have responsibilities towards their children.” Well, they do, and they do not need the Associate Minister of Justice to tell them that. Parents face their responsibilities to their children every day. What backs this bill is a philosophy that goes like this: the first relationship of a child is with the State.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Nonsense!

Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is. The State determines the parents’ responsibilities, then puts in place a mechanism to ensure those responsibilities are carried out. [Interruption] Well, Government members can wobble their heads, but that is absolutely the corollary of what the Minister said—that parents do not have rights; they have responsibilities. Then it can only be the State that defines those responsibilities. I say it is wrong. I say the family and the rights of parents exist prior to, separate from, and despite the State, and the State performs a secondary, not a primary, role in looking after our children—the children of parents. So parents do have rights.

It is precisely the problem with the Family Court that it has trouble recognising those rights. At times it has to make difficult decisions about distributing parental rights. We accept that that is part of its job, and there are provisions in this bill that will certainly improve procedures that constituents of mine have had to deal with—and improve them quite considerably. But it is not up to the Family Court to decide who is a good parent. It is not up to the Family Court to hear from anyone with a connection to the child who might want to question the parenting that is occurring. I have looked through this bill to try to find the trigger or threshold that brings these provisions into effect, and I cannot find one. The threshold—

Hon Lianne Dalziel: It’s called a relationship breakdown.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: So where is that in the bill?

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Oh, for goodness’ sake!

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Actually, a colleague of mine is in trouble with the Solicitor-General because he is dealing with a case where there is not a marital breakdown, and where the Family Court has simply decided that the parents do not have the choice of raising their own child.

We ought to be very suspicious, as parents and as parliamentarians, of the agents of the State that this bill gives greater power to. The counsel for the child and the cultural adviser are already there—we know that. It is not my experience that they always have good judgment about the conditions that children need. We should be careful that the bill does not give them much more power than they have.

As Nick Smith has pointed out, the Australian legislation is much more practical and much less ideological. This bill is the ideological child of the Labour Government and the Family Court industry. The Australian legislation reflects much more the reality of how people live their lives. For instance, it acknowledges families, the important role that families fulfil in raising children, and the job of the Family Court to ensure that it supports and strengthens the family around the child. This legislation is based on the presumption that we remove the family; that it is just a wider pool of applicants for parenting orders, and that the child is there wholly and solely on its own, with its rights. That is not how people live, and that is why this bill will certainly need to change. It has to change in some quite obvious ways, such as the female fathers issue. Some people say it is a trivial point, but I say it shows an attitude. Even the Prime Minister has now acknowledged that it was unfortunately drafted. That needs to change.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Associate Minister of Justice) : I move, That the Care of Children Bill be referred to the Government Administration Committee.

Mr SPEAKER: An amendment has been received from Metiria Turei to omit the words “Government Administration” and substitute the words “Justice and Electoral”.