Speech: No child should be raised in a prison

Tena koe Mr Speaker, tena tatou.
The Maori Party comes to this Bill, believing, that when we focus on the intersection between mothers and babies in the criminal justice system, there should be one essential principle which guides all others and that is the principle of whanaungatanga.
Whanau is whakapapa (genealogy), whanau is kötahitanga (being united), whanau is manaakitanga (looking after one another).

In fact while ‘whanau’ in Maori means to give birth, ‘whanau’ also means family.
Whanau, to be quite frank, is more than merely a mum.
A child who is born to a whanau, he or she belongs to us all.
I have personal experience. I wasn’t raised by my mother, I was raised by my grandmother and two aunties and I don’t recall there ever being any disadvantages to this. In fact, it gave me greater opportunities possibly than if I had been raised by my mother.

While we of course support the importance of bonding between the mother and the child, we also believe that the strength of whakapapa must not be undermined by reliance only on one birthparent.
In my own situation, we are raising a mokopuna who knows her mother, she knows her father, but I am her Mama. I am the one that does everything for her, and she is the light of my life.
I have to say from the outset, that it is sad enough that tamariki get caught up in their mothers’ offending. Those children have committed no crime and yet they pay the price anyway.
No child should be raised in a prison. It is a volatile and hostile environment, the very antithesis of what we would expect our children to grow up in.

And so I support the korero of Phil Goff, the Minister, and Steve Chadwick that ideally these children should be raised at home with their mothers, serving a home detention.
Prisons are hardly a safe and positive environment for women, babies, or young children. It is not the best place to support the mental, emotional, and physical development of a child.
But some women will offend and some will end up giving birth and having to take pepe into that environment and so we acknowledge Sue Bradford for thinking of those women and those children.
The Maori Party recognises that there may be some women who don’t have family to call on, and yet who seek to maintain contact with their children while they are incarcerated. Those women need all the support available to guide them in such a vital role.

The well-being of our children depends on support and education being readily available and on hand to ensure their needs are met.
Let me return to the notion of whanaungatanga. This is that collective investment in the generations; that genealogical commitment towards the well-being of the whanau, hapu and iwi.
This should be uppermost in our consideration of how best to provide for children under the age of 24 months.

Children should be able to benefit from the unique bonding, caring and nurturing of their mother and also their father - whatever setting they are in – but the question I would to ask is does it have to be in a prison?
Every new baby born provides every whanau with a new opportunity to protect and respect the cultural heritage they have emerged into.
The sad thing for me is that too many of our parents become parents without ever having had the privilege of receiving the kind of support, the kind of parenting that enables them to be the very best parent possible for their child.

The Maori Party welcomes the opportunity in this Bill to give practical support to positive parenting.
We were interested that the Select Committee gave emphasis to the facilities, the accommodation, the treatment of inmates, and the institutional context in which these mothers with babies are found, but surely the key priority is in thinking about to promote the value of being an effective parent.
There is also another critical component of this situation, and that is that our children will not be our children forever.

They will eventually become other people's husbands and wives, the parents of our grandchildren, the grandparents of our mokopuna tuarua. And so it is important we get it right for their sakes.
The absolute irony in all of this is that we are discussing the beauty of having children, child-rearing and childcare within a context of incarceration.

We know that Maori women are disproportionately represented in the penal system. And it stands to reason then, that Maori babies are going to be over-represented, and therefore, more likely to benefit from the provisions of this Bill.

We were pleased to see some flexibility added in as a result of the select committee stage.
Mothers who are not breastfeeding are included into the Bill.
Caregivers who may not be the children's biological mothers are also able to apply for eligibility on this programme.

This Bill focuses on the best interests of the child and certainly that would be what the Maori Party would expect. In a Maori world view, the best interests of the child include nurturing and promoting connections with whanau, hapu and iwi.

We wonder whether the parenting agreements, while currently fixed on the circumstances of the individual, could be expanded to include the wider whanau and hapu responsibility, not just for the child, but for the mother as well.
We noted the advice from the Law and Order Select Committee that the agreements only be limited, in effect, as far as our vision determines. If the list is to truly serve as a starting point, we would expect whanau responsibility and obligation to be inserted into the template.
And so in segments of the proposed parenting agreement where 'the mother' or the 'alternative caregiver' is referred to, we would be very keen to see a broader approach taken here also, to transform the parenting agreement into a whanau arrangement.

We note the importance of international evidence to this debate. In New York there is a correctional facility for a woman that enables newborns to stay with their mother until the age of two. At two years of age the child is then transferred to their extended family or the state system where they can continue to visit their mum. The research concludes that this process is far healthier than taking the baby away say at six months.
Some sceptics may say that babies will remember that they were born behind prison walls and they will never be able to get over the limitations of that early start.

This Bill gives us all an opportunity for another view – to believe that these babies may know that they were nurtured, breastfed, held and loved by the person who brought them into the world.
What this Bill doesn’t deal with – and what we must attend to – is the impacts of life after incarceration for children.

In the state of Oregon they have opened three centres called the Centre for Family Success.
The centres deal with parents who have been incarcerated ad provides services such as parenting, employment, mentoring, and counselling. The Centres have also started parenting classes in both the male and female prisons; classes which have been so successful that the waiting lists are apparently legendary.
We must do all we can to ensure that the children of the incarcerated become the children of family success. While the state can do so much, our greatest opportunity is to commit to family decision making, to family success, as our most important goal.

Mr Speaker, this Bill values the significant relationship between mother and child, and giving honour to the unique foundation such a relationship provides for every whanau, and their future.
So will be supporting this Bill - but we do do so with reservations.

Our key priority is in supporting children to be raised in loving whanau, and we simply do not accept that a prison – no matter how much effort is made to humanise it – will ever be an appropriate environment for a child, and we believe all circumstances should be traversed.