Labour attacks bill on power to detain children

Press, 3 December 1982, Page 26

Labour attacks bill on power to detain children

PA Wellington Legislation extending the powers of the authorities to detain children has been strongly attacked by the Labour Party, which pledged to oppose the measure at every stage. The Children and Young Persons’ Amendment Bill contained "serious and unprecedented legal defects” in the way it involved the rights of children and youths, Labour's constitutional lawspokesman, Mr G. W. Palmer (Christchurch Central) told the House. Moving to delay the bill until next year, he said that while the measure had been wisely held up to await the results of reports on social welfare institutions, it had then ignored the recommendations made by the Human Rights Commission report and the- later report by Archbishop Johnstone. The Government's thinking was “quite out of tune" with both reports, he said. The bill had originally been reported back from select committee examination in August and the committee had been given no opportunity to look again at the bill in the light

of the two reports. Labour agreed there was a need for legislative change, but it should have been made in the context of what was now known about the Social Welfare homes. The Opposition would move a “barrage of amendments" during the clause-by-clause debate on the bill which would follow the second reading. The debate was held in Parliament well after the normal broadcasting hours had ended and Mr Palmer said the Minister of Social W'elfare, Mr Young, was trying to "muddle through" with the measure in the middle of the night, to escape public scrutiny. The Government should have got its whole policy in order then proceeded in an integrated wav, he said.

“The bill does not add to the rights of children and young people. It erodes them,” he said. It would add to the problems society was now facing, in dealing with children and young people in need of care. Mr Palmer moved to amend the bill, to delay it for six months so that the basis of the bill could be

reconsidered. Adults in prison had their rights defined by law, but there was no provision in the bill for a children’s bill of rights — one of the main recommendations in the Johnstone report specially commissioned by Mr Young on the state of social welfare homes. That report had shown that while changes had been made since the practices complained of in the Human Rights Commission report, all was not yet well in the homes. The bill was not an adequate response to the sweeping changes proposed by Archbishop Johnstone. It would put more people into institutions and was “a confession that the problem is one he (the Minister) would rather ignore," Mr Palmer said. But the bill was given a second reading after Mr Young had dismissed Opposition criticisms as “crocodile tears” and "absolute nonsense." A division on the bill was won by the Government, 3736.