Stuff asked the following question
In the wake of a report into the death of five-year-old Malachi Subecz we’ve learnt there are more senior managers at Oranga Tamariki than ever before, getting paid on average $200,000 each.
Yet despite all these managers and money the agency meant to help children fails them repeatedly. Are the priorities wrong - should management be streamlined and money go to the actual front line workers who care for the kids?
Stuart Smith
National MP
Kaikoura
Below is Stuart Smith’s response.
Vulnerable New Zealand children need a strong, unconstrained voice that can fight for them. That is the role of Oranga Tamariki, and sadly, they are failing our children.
The death of Malachi Subecz is heart wrenching and tragic. He was an innocent child who was forced to grow up in an abusive environment, through no fault of his own. There were a vast number of failures from Oranga Tamariki – they were alerted but did nothing.
Undoubtedly, there were signs that Malachi was being abused but they brushed them under the rug until it was too late.
The 14 recommendations that have come from the report on Malachi’s death are wholeheartedly supported by the National Party. Ultimately the review found that agencies “could have done more” and might have prevented Malachi’s death.
We already know that we have a shortage of frontline health and social service staff in New Zealand. Yet the Labour Government is spending $2 billion a year more than in 2017 on hiring new bureaucrats. An even more staggering amount has been spent on consultants and working groups.
Unfortunately, these bureaucrats, consultants and working groups could not save Malachi.
What could have saved him was better processes and more frontline staff, who are out in their communities helping vulnerable children and struggling families.
This Government constantly confuses spending money with outcomes. Just look at the state of mental health in this country. At least $1.9 billion was spent, and there isn’t one extra mental health bed, New Zealanders have longer wait times for essential services, a worsening state of mental health facilities, and serious front-line workforce shortages.
It’s the same for Oranga Tamariki. We need to have all our public services relentlessly focused on outcomes for Kiwis.
Malachi deserved better. He was a five-year-old child, who was given to a someone who was meant to care for him and look after him. Instead, he was abused. Something like this should not happen to any New Zealand child again and a National Government will work tirelessly to make positive change.
Oversight of Oranga Tamariki is desperately needed to fix the dysfunction that is occurring and to prevent what happened to Malachi happening to anybody else.
Oranga Tamariki now needs to be solely focused on delivering outcomes for vulnerable children and ensure that they enact the findings of the report so that our children can live without harm.