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Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) : For me, personally, it is a sobering experience to be in this Parliament addressing an issue that really has bedevilled, if you like, a part of my life and my professional role in working with families and children since the 1970s. It is really with a sense of sadness that I see that, in debating the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill, we are doing one of the very things that we as practitioners criticised. We tried to work with the laws that Parliament passed and, at times, wondered what real understanding the people had who had passed the legislation. We wondered whether those people took advice, whether they listened to those who knew the situation much better than them, and whether it would not have been more helpful and productive, if they, in addressing the problems that we were coping with, took all of that knowledge into account.
In the 1970s I was a senior social worker in west Auckland. I worked in Ōtāhuhu, Māngere, Ōtara, Papatoetoe, and Manurewa. We had a very, very punitive regime in operation. We took young people, often people with brown faces—and I recognise and identify immediately with what Hone Harawira talked about earlier—and we designed around these young people, who, yes, had transgressed, the most punitive, negative, and unhelpful series of responses possible. We gave them a chance at first; they would get a warning. They went to the children’s court and were put on supervision. We were not able to work with them, because we just did not have the resources. We then sent them off to—and some members will recall these institutions—Kohitere, Hōkio Beach School, Kingslea Residential Centre, and places like that.
These places were miles away from their own homes, and there young people were taught to keep their elbows off the table, to eat with their mouths closed, to brush their teeth in the morning, to comb their hair, and to exercise, only to return later to their homes where nothing had changed. Very quickly, these young people were on their way to the adult justice system, and they became problems down the track.
When we worked with those cases and realised that was happening, I promised myself that if ever there was an opportunity to reflect on those experiences and to, at least, have my say alongside people with the same views as we on this side of the House have, then I would speak and speak clearly. I am trying to do that tonight. Having realised what we were doing to young people who transgressed, I have spent my life since then trying to find solutions by examining social problems, by looking at the evidence in my own and other people’s research, and by searching the world for the ideas that work—those ideas that, at least, have the best chance of helping to design solutions that will address the very problems we are looking at again today.
We realised very quickly that we could not resolve the complex issues that occur in the adolescent period of young people’s lives by addressing a single aspect of those problems, because those solutions simply become single acts of conscience. Nothing changes, and somebody else has to come back and fix the problems a few years or a decade later. We realised that we had to look at the multiple systems that affected that situation. Much of what we have done since then has been due to realising that. More recently, when I worked in the Families Commission, we looked at what makes families successful. What did 4,000 New Zealand families tell us? Again, they told us not to address just one single aspect of what was in their interests. They asked us to talk to them about how they might live better lives, but also to talk about their communities, the institutions that service them, the policies that they benefit from, and, indeed, the values of the society in which they live.
If we have that realisation, I ask what we are doing now to address the current problem. Let us see how we have got to this particular bill. We have got to it through a very widely publicised set of cases and, yes, like members opposite, we on the Opposition benches are concerned about those cases. We are concerned that we should address them constructively so that those lives are put back together again, those families are put back on pathways to positive growth, and those communities are made strong again.
But we have, in a sense, fed the public’s desire for blood, if you like. It has become a blood sport. I say that advisedly, and not in a manner designed to attack what my colleagues opposite have said. I say that as sincerely as I can. This must not become a blood sport, yet it is becoming one. People have the opportunity, at election time and at other times, to tell us about the very things that concern them, and maybe even about some of the solutions they might propose. That does not mean that, in discharging our role in this Chamber, we should simply take that on board and deliver it. That might earn us some brownie points in the short term, and a few more votes, perhaps, but I ask members whether they want to look back 40 years from now and say that they had an opportunity to change something and did not.
I come here after 40 years of practice, so this is my opportunity to say let us change the things that bothered us fundamentally as practitioners, and that bothered our families. I say that I will listen to what our communities tell us, and to the worries that people have. But we must also engage with them about those ideas that will achieve positive change. I say to the ladies and gentlemen opposite that nowhere do we have evidence that Draconian measures actually work in addressing these social issues. I challenge anybody to show me where they work.
Craig Foss: Singapore.
Dr RAJEN PRASAD: I am sorry, but the member needs to go and study Singapore again. I am really trying to make a point—
Hon Paula Bennett: Oh, come on! Make it practical. All your theories.
Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Well, the Minister says “Make it practical.” You will know, Minister, what practical means. You have worked with these people—
Hon Member: You gonna let him do “you”?
Dr RAJEN PRASAD: My apologies. As the member knows—
Hon Paula Bennett: It’s time for action.
Dr RAJEN PRASAD: It is time for action. I say to the Minister that we are lucky to have an opportunity, as members of this Parliament, to really take some action. But that does not mean we should take ill-advised actions so that her next successor, whomever he or she may be, will have to fix it up. If we as parliamentarians want to address this issue fundamentally—
Hon Paula Bennett: Not interested in the Google-Boogle theories. Action.
Dr RAJEN PRASAD: You were trained well, Minister. You know how to do this, and this is not the way. My apologies again.
Nathan Guy: Talking about sheep again?
Dr RAJEN PRASAD: That is OK; I will get used to it. I say that there are other ways of doing this. Let us bring together the best brains in this country and the best evidence from around the world to address these issues. I say to members opposite that we will get a reputation for using in New Zealand solutions that have failed elsewhere. We did so with national testing.
Todd McClay: But you have a reputation for that.
Dr RAJEN PRASAD: I ask the member to listen to the argument, and he will soon follow it.
I ask the member to look at the evidence about boot camps. Let us take just one aspect of this issue. Where have boot camps worked? International evidence demonstrates that military-style courses, at best, have no impact in reducing offending, and, at worst, increase offending rates. That is the evidence. There is case after case from all around the world that tell us that. Overseas countries are now closing boot camps down. We can look at Florida, which has closed its boot camps. It did so because a young person died from the terrible treatment that person received in a boot camp, which used some outmoded ideas about military discipline. This issue is not about military discipline, it is about giving to young people the kind of discipline that will help them to put their lives together in the context of their families and their communities. The Government can be as punitive as it likes, but I guarantee—and I will put money on it—that the Government will be redesigning these solutions in a very short space of time.