Today on Newshub Nation, we ask the Children's Minister why Oranga Tamariki social workers are looking after foster children in motel rooms. He's a scientist and inventor and former New Zealander of the Year, but is he a bully? We ask Sir Ray Avery about his stoush with Helen Clark. And we look at whether New Zealand's missing out on a multi-million dollar opportunity to cash in on the global gaming industry. Kia ora, good morning, I'm Lisa Owen, welcome to Newshub Nation. The National Party says it's completely inappropriate for New Zealand First MP Tracey Martin to be in charge of an inquiry into the appointment of a new Deputy Police Commissioner. Wally Haumaha's promotion is controversial. He publicly supported former police officers and convicted rapists Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum. And he made disparaging comments about Louise Nicholas, after she lade a complaint against them. Haumaha, who recently apologised for those comments, had been a contender for a New Zealand First candidacy in 2005. I asked Tracy Martin how much contact she'd had with Wally Haumaha in the past. So it was news to me that he was a contender for New Zealand First candidacy, so that was news to me. And as far as contact I've had, I think I've met Wally once at Ratana, twice at Waitangi, probably 12 words in all three meetings is all I've ever said - like, 'Hello. How are you?' Because he's been introduced to me, and then I've moved on. Is there a conflict of interest, in your mind? No, for two reasons - one, I don't know Wally at all, but secondly, I'm actually setting up an independent Government inquiry. So I won't be doing the inquiry; I'll be appointing somebody under a terms of reference that are going as an oral item to Cabinet on Monday, and then that person will be inquiring into the process of which State Services Commission gangs and provides information to ministers for them to make a decision on appointment. So it's not actually into any individual; it's into a process. Can you understand how there might be a perception of a conflict of interest? No, I can't, because I'm setting up an independent Government inquiry, and that means that I will receive recommendations of a person to lead that inquiry from crown law. Based on details given to me, I will appoint that person, they will run that inquiry completely independent from me, and it's about a process, not a person. Okay. Well, the deputy commissioner has admitted that he expressed support for two rapists. He made disparaging comments about a complainant, Louise Nicholas. How comfortable are you with that kind of behaviour from a police officer who has now been promoted to an even higher rank? Actually, I'm not going to answer how comfortable I am as Tracey Martin, because I'm not doing anything to do with this as Tracey Martin. I'm actually the Minister of Internal Affairs, who's now been charged by Cabinet to set up an independent inquiry into a process. Into a process? Not into Wally Haumaha? That's right. So there's no conflict of interest in discussing Wally Haumaha? Because you're looking at a process. So this is important - are you uncomfortable with his position? I think that that piece of information was known by the State Services Commission, and it was not passed on to a minister for a minister to actually consider pieces of information like that. That is concerning. That's why we're actually setting up independent inquiry. Here's the thing, though - when the then-Prime Minister, John Key, pulled the hair of a female waitress, you said that was unacceptable behaviour from anyone, let alone the leader of the country. Yet now you have a deputy police commissioner who has supported a pack rapist who treated women like meat, who thought they would get away with the crime because they were police officers. All the while, Wally Haumaha said that one of them was a big softie and the other one was a legend with women. Do you think he deserves to be the deputy commissioner? I'm not going to answer that question. Why not? Because as the Minister of Internal Affairs or the Minister of Children or the minister of anything, it's actually not an opinion I need to express, quite frankly. I don't have any influence over it. I am setting up an independent inquiry into the information that was provided and should be expected to be provided to a minister to make these appointments. You've spoken out on issues like this before. You spoke out regarding John Key. How do you think it looks to sexual assault survivors to have this man in this position? I think that's a really interesting question. Let's go to the bits about speaking out on other things about John Key. So that was an action by Mr Key at that time, and it was an inappropriate action by Mr Key at that time, and actually probably at any time - to touch a female or anybody without their permission is inappropriate. With regards to... So Wally Haumaha's actions - are they not inappropriate actions to support these men, to say these things about an alleged victim? Again, I'm not going to wade into what is an attempt to get my personal view on something that as a minister, I am setting up an independent inquiry into a process by which whether those statements were passed on or not to another minister who had to make an appointment. All right. Well, let's move on to Oranga Tamariki. It wants to get a thousand new caregivers on board. So how many have been recruited since it was formed? At this stage, I think there's only been another 150 caregivers recruited. And there's a really good reason for that. Before we recruit caregivers, we need to improve how we support caregivers. And when Oranga Tamariki was formed just over a year ago, that was not in place. We still haven't got it in place. It's a piece of work that is being done right now to make sure, with the care standards being gazetted and 52 million and a number of millions over the next so many years being put into place. But can you afford to wait? Because we've talked to a number of social workers and caregivers. They are saying things like - these are direct quotes - 'We are desperate for caregivers, and yet a recruitment drive is still not even on the table.' So why aren't you recruiting? We are desperate for caregivers. We're desperate for caregivers that are highly trained, can support children with incredibly complex needs, that come from diverse backgrounds. But if we can't support them well, then we would be bringing them in only to fail again. And it has failed to this point, and that is exactly why Oranga Tamariki was formed by the previous government. So how long is it going to take, then? Because it's been over a year. You say you've got 150. Based on that figure, it'll be more than eight years before you reach your target of 1000. Well, that would be if 150 was the target. That's not the target. That's what we've recruited to date, because that's what our supports can provide. But we've also opened a 24/7 care line for caregivers so that they have, 24/7, somebody at the end of a phone with more direct access to social workers. We've also actually got the care standards - something that this country had never had, which was a minimum standard by which carers can hold us accountable for with the support that they receive, and children can hold us accountable. In respect to that fine line that you've just mentioned, we have been talking to people about that. They've raised it with us. They said they've asked for it to be independent - a totally independent service. They don't trust the ministry. Well, and trust has to be built. And, I mean, we all understand. I don't think anybody trusted CYFS at the end of the day, when Oranga Tamariki was formed. That's the reason the previous government said` They don't trust Oranga Tamariki either. Well, and that is because Oranga Tamariki hasn't had a long enough opportunity to rebuild that trust. So I would question an independent phone line when you're calling for assistance from social workers - if people call into that phone line and they need us to connect immediately to the social worker of that child and have them at their home, that would put another step through if we had an independent body. Okay. They have raised some serious concerns about the support that they're getting. A lot of foster carers are telling us there is a complete lack of respite care, and social workers are looking after kids in motel rooms to give people a break or because there's nowhere else for them. How often is that happening? I don't know how often that's happening across the country, because it's variable. I know in the Bay of Plenty , for example, that there are some- I met with the PSA delegates on Tuesday, I believe it was - Tuesday or Wednesday - and they articulated to me that this is a major concern for them. Is it a major concern for you? Of course it's a major concern. None of us want children`One, we want children to be in long-standing, caring placements if they are with us. So the fact that the placements break down because there isn't enough respite care, the fact that children with high and complex needs are being placed with some families that put them under excessive stress and we don't get in there fast enough to support them - that is a concern to us. That's why we are building another service. Well, do you think that Oranga Tamariki is fulfilling the promises that they made to those kids when they took them out of their homes if they're being put into a motel room with a social worker, rather than a family that loves them? Well, no, I don't. And I would have to say that Oranga Tamariki is working under the conditions that they'd somewhat inherited and has had one year to try and turn around what was a massively broken system. So for us to not be able to put young people in motel rooms, we need to have more caregivers. For us to have more caregivers, we need to be able to make sure they can be supported. One of the reasons I went to the United Kingdom was to look at how can we connect models like the Mockingbird model, for example, that's come out of Canada and the UK so that we can create respite care among families, among caring families, so that we don't have to lift children up out of a whanau that they already know? But what you are describing to me is a catch-22 situation. So at some point you have to break that cycle. So what can you do about this issue right now - the fact that foster carers say that they aren't supported, that there is not enough respite care? What assurances are you going to take right now for them? Well, that's what that $52 million`part of that $52 million that has been put into the next financial year's budget is for, is to make sure we build those services, working with our partners like Fostering New Zealand, like Barnardos and so on. We build those support systems. So how long will that take? Because you say it's only been just over a year, but the Rebstock report said that we could expect real change within five years. So you're actually 25% through that five years. That is true. And I had a meeting with Dame Paula Rebstock and two other members of the expert advisory panel only at the beginning of this week. I also sat down with the previous minister of Oranga Tamariki and had conversations with her about how we're doing, where we're going, are we on track with the road map. So how long? We're still looking at that four to five years, not to change the whole of the system; all the way through, the system needs to be changed. All the way through, we have to give more voice to the children` But are you 25% through that change? Because it doesn't sound like it when we talk to social workers and we talk to lots of people - social workers and foster carers. Are you far enough through at this point? For the first year, I think we are, because there were things that needed to be put in place - the Social Worker Registration Bill, the Care Standards Bill. We needed to build those supports, we needed to get the conversation in line with the NGOs that we're having. We've got 580 NGOs. Those were the bits we needed to do in this year. Okay, so` So in this coming year, I totally understand that our social workers want to see their caseloads drop and they want to see more support. So are you doing the` Are you saying that right now it's the best it can be? Right now, from where we started, it's the best we could get to in one year. But I have very high expectations, and it's my job to drive these expectations around the standard of care that our young people should expect, the level of carers and diversity of caregivers that we have and how they're supported. Okay, well, you mentioned caseloads there. What is the average caseload currently for social workers at Oranga Tamariki? Well, the goal, I suppose, what we were looking for is between 15 to 20, but it depends on the complexity of the case. That is not what is the average caseload, but I'm sorry, off the top of my head I can't tell you the average caseload. Okay, because what we've been told - one foster carer said that the social worker they were assigned to didn't meet their child for eight months. Another social worker wrote to us saying that social workers and psychologists are despondent, unsupported and fearful of the direction Oranga Tamariki is heading. Well, that's really interesting, and I'd really strongly encourage that social worker to write to me directly. Isn't it more concerning than interesting, though? Well, it's interesting because I actually just sat down with a whole lot of social workers only earlier this week who said they had left Oranga Tamariki. They'd left under CYFS. They'd come back under Oranga Tamariki and they could instantly tell the difference. They felt much more positive about the environment. So what I guess we're seeing is we're still seeing this massive variation across the country and we need to change that, absolutely - no question. So how many more social workers do you need in order to get the caseloads where you want them? That's a really interesting question from the perspective of it depends on the complexity of the caseload. But ballpark? If you look at`No, no. If I can put it this way, if you look at the Hackney model, where they decided to create hubs where you had four to five social workers, a practice leader, a child psychologist and a fully funded administrator so that social workers were able to do social work, that will have an effect on how many social workers you need. So those are the conversations we're going to be having this year. So you can't say how many more you need? No, off the top of my head I can't give you an exact figure, no. Do you know how many caregivers and how many social workers have left since Oranga Tamariki was formed? I don't have the exact numbers on that, no. Not off the top of my head. Wouldn't that be essential information for you? I have that information, just not off the top of my head. Okay, well, maybe you can give that to us afterwards. So, we've also been told that graduate social workers are being advised not to join Oranga Tamariki because they will be sent into potentially unsafe, unethical situations without proper supervision. So how are you going to improve conditions to encourage more people into those jobs? Well, again, that's the first time I've heard that, so I'm not` Who's advising them not to come to work for Oranga Tamariki? When I've sat down with` Other social workers that we have spoken to. Well, I've been in many social`I've been in many Oranga Tamariki offices and speaking directly with the social workers, and they have said that they are the new graduates and, again, they are explaining to me that the feeling of the place is so different. So are all graduates supervised when they go into homes? I would have to want to clarify that for you. I don't do operational matters, so I would have to clarify that for you. All right. Well, it has been, as you say, more than a year since Oranga Tamariki was formed. I'm wondering what exactly has changed for frontline social workers and foster carers, because a lot of them tell us nothing has changed. Well, if I were to outline what has changed, I suppose the $3 million to actually raise the`raise some of the amounts of money for salaries of workers on the front line with our NGO partners; the greater co-design with some of our iwi partners around how we look after our Maori children that are in our care; the number of social workers has increased as a net, so we have got more social workers on the ground; the whakapapa navigators we put into some offices; and, really, the hui that we had recently to reach out to our NGOs who are supporting our carers and say, 'Let's work together and co-design and be really clear about what we need.' Because a lot of people in that answer would have just heard bureaucratic speak. They didn't hear you say that life is better for kids in care, that social workers and foster carers are getting more support and are less burdened with high caseloads. They didn't hear any of that. And some are. I mean, some of our social workers definitely have got better supports. We have put in a 24/7 line for our carers to try and give them greater supports, but are we there yet? No, we're not there. So I don't want to make a definitive statement and say that everything is fabulous one year in with Oranga Tamariki. It's not. It's absolutely not, but we're on a four to five-year pathway. Some people think it's worse than it was, and this again is a quote from a social worker: 'It is a shambles. 'everyone is running in circles.' We asked, 'Is it better than it was before?' 'Hell, no,' was the response. Well, that's interesting, because again, I've spoken with other social workers. And I say it's interesting because I don't want to discount that person. That's very likely their reality, but I'm also speaking with social workers who have said, 'The tone is different. I feel better-supported. I now have a purchase card so if I want something little for children, I can just go get it without doing three lots of paperwork.' Do you think you're getting a realistic idea of what is actually going on inside this organisation? Because everybody that we have spoken to - and we have spoken to a number of people - they say that social workers and carers are on the verge of - their word - revolt. I think I am getting a realistic perspective because I'm not speaking to these people with`They haven't been selected by the CEO of Oranga Tamariki. Some of them are personal friends that I've known for a long time. Others are foster parents who have come to see me in my office in Warkworth and tell me how things are. Is it perfect? No. Were expectations incredibly high that we would be able to, when Oranga Tamariki was formed under the previous government, would we make change like that? This is a system change that was so badly broken that it's going to take us time to turn it around. And I think people get that, but they are still concerned at the speed of change. Just before we go, the Rebstock report made about 80-odd recommendations. Can you tell us now how many you have actioned? How many have been actioned? And, again, I think if we were talking about the systems that we`the recommendations that were put into place for a four to five-year period, the fact that care standards have now been gazetted; the fact that the registration`the Social Worker Registration Bill is on its way; the fact that we have`we're working on co-designing transitions for our young people; the fact that we've increased the age` You don't have a number? You don't know how many? No, I couldn't give you an exact figure. I mean, if I'd have known before, I would have been able to bring you a sort of a little list, so I apologise. I'll come back to you with that. Thanks for joining us this morning, Minister. Much appreciated. Okay. Well, Oranga Tamariki did get back to with those numbers, revealing that between 20-30 children in it's care are housed in motels every day because a lack of foster carers. A spokesperson said in a statement, 'While we acknowledge this isn't ideal, 'sadly, for some children, a motel is the safest temporary placement while we find them a more permanent, 'loving home.' It also confirmed that while it hired 446 new social workers in the past 15 months, 246 social workers left the Ministry in that same period. If you've got something to say about what you see on our show, let us know. We're on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, NewshubNationNZ. Our Twitter Panel today is Lewis Holden and Lamia Imam. They're using #NationNZ. You can also email us at ` Up next, we ask inventor and scientist Sir Ray Avery if he still thinks New Zealand is the clever country, plus, gaming is a 200 billion dollar industry worldwide, so should New Zealand be doing more to get a piece of the action? Welcome back. Sir Ray Avery is many things ` an inventor, a scientist, a philanthropist and a survivor. This week, former Prime Minister Helen Clark called him something else too ` a bully. The pair clashed over Sir Ray's proposed charity concert at Eden Park ` an event that is aimed at raising money to build special incubators to save the lives of premature babies in Third World countries. Ms, Clark lives close to the stadium, and says the proposed event would pave the way for more noisy concerts there. Sir Ray Avery joins me now. Good morning, Sir Ray. Good morning. So, Helen Clark's comments. She said you were being bullying. What's your response to that? Well, if I came across as being bullying, I would wholeheartedly apologise. I think if you look at the initiatives that led to that position, if Helen had published` sorry, had just put in a submission like all the other people from Eden Park, nothing would have happened. What Helen did was to go up, not just on the parapet, but on the top of the parapet with the flag waving, saying 'I'm going to stop Sir Avery's concert.' Right now, in London, you've got a whole bunch of people getting ready to have a revolt against Trump. And in his own country, you have all these people who think that what he's doing is morally wrong. And I think that, in my personal view, what Helen is doing is morally wrong. So I felt that I would have the right to have that same position. Why do you think it's morally wrong? Well, because Helen's been involved in women's rights in the UN and so on, and she knows better than most the effect that not having neo-natal care for babies` every woman in a developing country, one in four will know what it's like to lose a baby, and she knows that, and yet the issue for her is that she actually wants to get rid of Eden Park stadium, and she wants a new stadium. So her driving force is that, and so it's a non-negotiable thing for her. It doesn't matter if you're going to save a million babies or so, that's not the point. So what the point I was making was that her values are not my values. Why can't you have your concert somewhere else, Sir Ray? The reason for that is that the guy that's coming down is an icon, and it takes millions of dollars to` The guy? So it's a man? It's a guy. OK. I can tell you it's one of the original Band Aid people, and they're coming down. It'd be a bit like Elvis. If Elvis was alive, he's coming, so it's huge. But to do that, it costs millions of dollars. And the only way that that can work is with the seating capacity that Eden Park has, but more importantly, the 50-odd personal suites that they have, so we can actually monetise the thing, which we couldn't do at Mt Smart. The other thing, of course, is that we're getting the stadium and things for free. That's the contribution by the Eden Park board. So I can't go down to Mt Smart and say 'Can I do that concert? Can you find me this icon?' So that arrangement now is in place, and we'd really have to go the wire on it. How much of the money raised from the concert will go to funding the LifePods? Because that's another issue that people have raised. Right, well it's all interlocked, of course, because we couldn't do the Telethon if we didn't have the concert, because the sponsorship wouldn't be there. The people wouldn't put their money in for the sponsorship. So, all up, we think we can raise at least $4 million from the collegiate events. The other things that are going on, which is important for people to understand, is we're actually doing a whole series of things up and down the country celebrating who we are as a country, because this is a special day for us, and so we're having all these Telethon events, and what you don't know and what your audience don't know is that we invented things like instant coffee. We invented the use of the whistle at the end of a rugby match. We invented spreadable butter. We want to go up and down the country showing all of these things ` the Sealegs boats, Rocket Man ` and we want to go around the country on Telethon and say, 'On this one day, let's celebrate who we are as a country.' We're the cleverest country in the world per head of population, and nobody knows it. You're inoculated with a sterile hypodermic syringe which was invented by Colin Murdoch. He's touched more people than anybody else in the world. I want to celebrate that on this wonderful day, and so, for me, it's kind of horrible for people to say 'We shouldn't do that.' Well, it's interesting you say that in the context of the fact that you settled here in New Zealand because you called it an 'open can-do country with a can-do attitude'. Are you still feeling that we've got a 'can-do' attitude? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think the support that we've had that came out of this is phenomenal. But the bad side of that is all my staff, which work as volunteers, we've had to shut down our website, because of the complaints that have come in from some small portion of society who see things a different way. And because we're covered by NZA, we have to treat those as an internal assault, and then we have to file a code for NZA. So that's, you know, been a difficult thing. You know, for me, it's been disappointing in the sense that anybody would feel like that, you know? So moving on to the invention part of things and wanting to celebrate that, do you think that you're born an innovator or you're taught it? I was born an innovator in the sense` I think we all come with a CD. You know, you've got your own personal CD. (CHUCKLES) But, no, I had the benefit that I wasn't educated in the current` A good friend of mine is a professor of education, Ken Robinson, and he says that we actually take innovation out of kids by getting them to learn stuff. So, for instance, if you're predicated on learning maths ` a good example with my daughter, she came to me the other day and she said, 'Dad' ` she's only six ` and she said, 'Dad, I'm having trouble with my seven times table'. And I said, 'Well, see this thing here? It's called a calculator. And I'll show you this.' And she looked at me and she said, 'Why am I learning this shit?' (CHUCKLES) And she's got a point. You see, the thing is, we focus on the metrics of trying to educate children. The reality is that kids have the most virulent and innate sense of creativity. And when we put them into preschool, they can play with all the toys, and they may invent something` So how should we be teaching them, then? Well, what you do is you do applied learning. So you can still teach them maths, but what you do is you make it relative to something. And a good example is Dio ` when you do an art class at Dio, you don't just` You know, in my day, when you did an art class, they'd say, 'Draw a dog'. But now they're drawing 'Draw as many brand icons that you know'. So they're teaching them to connect with the world. That's how that knowledge becomes useful. So, going back to my original question, then ` you say, it was born in you, but can you teach it? Oh, absolutely. I mean, every single invention known to man comes out of one single moment of observation. There's a guy in the Swiss Alps, and he's playing with his dog. Dog came back and had all these cockle burrs on it. And he picked one off, went home, looked at it under his microscope, could see all these cockle burrs, and they were just full of hooks. Yep, like a biddi-bid. Well, he invented Velcro. So that's it. And that's all you need to do. But teaching people the power of observation is a key determinant. And I had that, because I was at school in orphanages in the UK, needed glasses ` was short-sighted ` had acute glue ear ` couldn't hear what they were saying ` so the only thing I had was visual cues. So that taught me to be a perfect observer. And from that, I can become a clever scientist and see things that other people might miss. Yeah. Well, you did have a rough upbringing, as you mention. You were homeless for a period of time. You opted to go to college over a youth detention centre. I mean, I've just been speaking to the Minister for Children, who is talking about kids who have been taken out of their homes, because they're not up to scratch. I'm wondering ` how do we instil resilience like the kind you have exhibited in our kids? I'm not sure you can, unfortunately. One of the reasons for me running away when I was 14 was my friend committing suicide. And we were both subjected to abuse, but he just couldn't deal with it. And it was just his nature. And I knew that I couldn't stay` I stayed a lot of the time just because of him ` to look after him. And we actually went to the teacher and said, 'This guy's abusing both of us'. And I convinced him to come with me. And that caused this teacher then to take some recommendations against both of us. And he just couldn't take that, so he committed suicide, and I left. So I don't think it can. I think one of the reasons I've been so successful is that I'm innately a survivor, but I don't think you can teach anybody that. So for me, this is the thing with my own kids` So, I look at my own kids, and what worries me most about the discussion we're having now is the acrimony that goes on in the world. I want my two girls to be brought up in a world that's full of joy and love and caring. And I do worry about what's out there in the outside world. In our house, it's full of love and caring and so on. Well, funny you should say that. You have also said that global leaders could fix all our global problems. So what do you see as some of the biggest issues that we're facing in the world right now? Well, I think the issues for us are to use our intelligence and our corporate capacities to apply what we do to things that are good for us and our planet, rather than things that, maybe` something that's just for entertainment. So, for instance, we could play with those hundred balloons till the cows come home and just put latex all around in the landfills. Or we could actually do what I'm doing. I get up in the morning, and I make medical products. Cos looking after the sick and the halt and lame is one of the most primary, important things that we do. The next one is education. If we can educate` So if it doesn't have a social conscience, don't do it, is that what you're saying? Yeah, I'm saying if you think about how we started as a society, how we started as a society was there was a guy growing wheat in a field, and he got good at it. And the field became so big that he needed to get people in to actually get the crops in. And then from there, we needed to transport them. So you needed to get cars. So you've got cars, and you've got all this infrastructure. Then it all got so big that he couldn't manage it, so he abdicated responsibility to a local council and now to government. So the things that are important to us as a family have got all diluted. And what I'm trying to do is get back to that, say, let's do things that are good for us and our planet. And it goes right through everything that you do, whether you're in advertising` I mean I work with some really groovy advertising companies, and I went to them one day, and I said, 'Look, I know that you're one of the best creative advertising companies in New Zealand, 'because you've won awards for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Jim Bean and Carls Junior, and you're not going to heaven. But if you work for me for nothing, you will. (BOTH CHUCKLE) All right, well, seeing as you raise heaven, by your own calculations, you say you've got around 2000 days left. Well, it's 4793. (LAUGHS) Ok, all right. Well, is that enough? Is that enough to do what you need to? None of us, normally, have an exit plan. Most people don't realise they were born with 30,000 days ` that's what you've got. So you need to have a plan with what you're going to do with them, cos your exit strategy is the same as mine, you know? You're going to die. But for most people, it'll be a big bloody surprise. But for me, I know what I want to do with those years. And the answer is, I hope so, because I hope I can get this incubator out at scale, and save millions and millions of people's lives. And what we're doing now is planning my exit strategy, because my lovely wife Anna is now coming on board, doing the marketing. And she will be the face that will continue the charity afterwards. We're actually rebranding my charity, Medicine Mondiale, to the Sir Ravery Foundation as part of that exit strategy. So I plan my life and try and make it worth` You know, the only way that I can try to justify my life is that that horrible life, when it was really horrible, nobody can really imagine what it's like to be brutalised for 14 years, systematically. But what it did do was to make an animal that is fearless and knows what it is to do good work. And the only way that I can make sense of that is to do something extraordinary. If I can change the world, that makes that worthwhile. I want to ask you some very quick questions in the time we've got left. A lot of people find you inspirational, but who inspires you? My children. My children, because I realised how stuffed up I am. Because although I preach trying to be imaginative and creative, when my kids come back to do stuff` Once at a talk I said, 'I don't interfere with my kids.' And that came out so wrong, but what I meant was I let them play. And so they play in the garden. And this is true, if I saw them walking past today with a chainsaw, I'd say, 'Where you going with that?' And I wouldn't interfere, because they're doing something creative. And, not surprisingly, they've broken most of the bones in their body. But they're happy, and they're imaginative, and they've got great` They're not in cotton wool, clearly. No, well, my eldest daughter came to me, and she said, 'I'm fed up with this modelling. 'I've written a code, Dad, for this model on a computer. But now I actually want you to make it. 'Go out and find these motors.' Wow. And I love that. And one last question, what do you think is the greatest modern invention? Modern invention? Yeah. Um,... the one I'm going to do next. (LAUGHS) Oh, watch this space. No, we were doing these nutritional products, which we're launching. And we think that'll impact positively on half a billion kids in sub-Saharan Africa in the next 20 years. Back yourself. Sir Ray Avery, thanks for joining us this morning. Still to come ` we dissect the week's political news with our panel. Plus, could New Zealand become a bigger player in the multi-billion dollar gaming industry? We find out why a growing number of people want the government to step up. Welcome back. Over the past two decades, the video game industry has exploded in to an entertainment economy worth $200bn. Yet, despite Kiwi developers competing on the world stage, the sector has largely been ignored by successive governments. So if we're potentially sitting on an intellectual property goldmine, why aren't we investing in it? Finn Hogan finds out. From an inauspicious office in Henderson, a virtual world is being built by a handful of Kiwis and inhabited by millions of people worldwide. We were way more successful than we ever imagined. Jonathan Rogers co-founded Grinding Gear Games straight out of university in 2006 with his friend, Chris Wilson. Their sole product? A fantasy action game, Path of Exile. GAME CHARACTER: A hunter must know his prey. So we sort of have, what they call, monthly active users of around 2 million. I mean, you know, there's larger numbers you can do, like the number of people who have ever played, which is you know, sort of up in the 20-ish million area. Path of Exile has received international acclaim, attracted a loyal fanbase, and now employs close to 130 people, working around the clock to maintain and update the game world. All the while not charging players a cent. So the game is free, but we sell cosmetic micro-transactions. So, basically, these are items that don't make you more powerful, but they do make you look cool. Even though only a fraction of overall players opt to buy these extras, it has been enough to grow Grinding Gear Games in to a company valued well over $100 million. I mean, part of the reason we went free originally was because we thought 'Oh, you know, we're just some shmucks from New Zealand. Like, we could never actually sell a game.' Retrospectively, were you like, 'Damn, we should have charged $120 for it'? I mean, it might have been better, but, you know (LAUGHS) The New Zealand game industry has come a long way in the past six years, with the total value of the sector now estimated at $524 million. But Stephen Knightly from the New Zealand Game Developers Association warns that these numbers don't tell the whole story. So the New Zealand games industry looks like it's doing fantastically well because people hear nice, big, round figures like 'We are worth half a billion dollars to New Zealand, 'and $100 million of that is exports.' That sounds like big, impressive figures. What I think people just don't appreciate is that is peanuts. We only have to look overseas to understand what Stephen means. Finland's population and GDP aren't much larger than our own, but their game industry dwarfs New Zealand's. While today, the total value of the New Zealand games sector is well over $500 million, for comparison, the Finnish game sector went from being worth around $147 million in 2009 to $4.2 billion today, following a period of direct investment by the Finnish government. They now produce global sensations such as the Angry Birds franchise. (CAWS) People just don't realise how serious and good it is as a business, or how profitable it really could be for New Zealand. Green Party spokesperson for IT, Gareth Hughes, agrees, saying investing in gaming can be better for both our economy and the environment. Unlike dairy and tourism, where there's a limit to how many tourists we can put down in Fiordland, or dairy, where we're literally seeing the impacts when we cram too many cows in our paddocks, there's no limits to the exports of software, of code, of games. The global gaming economy's growth in recent years has been staggering, from $102 billion in 2012 to around $200 billion today. For comparison, global box office sales last year totalled around $57 billion, with music revenue coming in at around $25 billion. The biggest game in the world right now, Fortnite, earns hundreds of millions of dollars every month by itself. So who's playing all these games and spending all this money? The answer may surprise you. The latest Digital New Zealand study estimates over two thirds of Kiwis play some form of video game. Of those, the average age is 34, with almost half the gamers being female. Older Kiwis are also playing, with 44% of New Zealanders 65 and over playing games. Despite its broad appeal and economic potential, the games sector has largely been ignored by successive governments. Minister for Digital Media, Claire Curran, recently commissioned a study to profile the New Zealand gaming sector, but admits government help could be overdue. Gaming has fallen between the cracks, to be honest, in terms of its eligibility for getting any assistance from government. Yeah, I think it has been neglected. Developers say that lack of support for small studios is one of the biggest things holding the industry back. Maru Nihoniho founded Metia Studios back in 2003. 15 years ago, it was all done by maxing out credit cards. One of their flagship titles, Sparks, combines fantasy adventure with therapy techniques to help treat depression. While these days, she has her own team and studio in Auckland, Maru says there's still not enough support for small studios as they start out. The sad thing is, in 15 years, things haven't changed that much, and it's still a struggle. Stephen shares her concerns. We've got one generation of successful game studios, but they're all 10 years old. Our level of entrepreneurship has gone backwards in the last 10 years, so that's my concern. For some reason, our number of start-ups is actually declining or they're not scaling as much. One possibility is giving gaming companies more access to funds from the New Zealand Film Commission, which received $300 million last year alone for domestic and international grants. If you're looking at it in terms of pure investment, that games are actually better, because the IP tends to be owned by the studio that's doing the creation, which means that games that are created in New Zealand actually generate IP that is benefitting New Zealand. And developers aren't the only ones crying out for more. From the arcades of the 80's right up to today, fans have wanted to watch their favourite games being played. (CROWD CHEERS) In 2018, sports stadiums worldwide are sold out to watch the best in multiplayer gaming digitally duke it out. Last year, The International, an e-sports tournament for the game DOTA 2, had a prize pool of NZD$35 million. That's close to double the total prize pools for the Tour de France and the Masters golf tournament combined. Our very own multi-million dollar e-sports studio opened in SkyCity just last year as a place where New Zealand's electronic athletes can compete on the world stage. Some of our more traditional athletes have even made an appearance. TJ PERENARA: And then I converted to Fortnite, and now I don't play PUBG at all, really. 27 countries worldwide already officially consider gaming a sport, and Duane Mutu from Let's Play Live says we could be next. Now, Sport New Zealand, in late discussions with the New Zealand E-sports Federation, are looking at recognising it as a sport, so that is very, very close. But like the development arm of gaming, Duane says e-sports needs more investment. Yet, there is absolutely zero funding towards the space from an e-sports perspective, so, to me, that seems like, you know, it seems crazy in that sense, because reality is, if you put it in, it'll go back out tenfold. Whether or not you'd call the players 'athletes', their audience is immense. Take Fortnite for example. At any one time on popular game streaming site twitch.com, there's up to 1.5 million people watching it be played. Last month alone, fans of Fortnite watched 123 million hours worth of gameplay, translating to roughly 14,000 years worth of total viewing time. Duane says being formally recognised as a sport in New Zealand is only the start. Whether we agree rightly or wrongly whether it should be an Olympic sport, it's not gonna be 'if', it's gonna be 'when'. One of our own pro gamers, Sean Mascarenhas, recently travelled to America to compete in a World of Warcraft tournament, with a top prize of nearly NZD$300,000. Sean says New Zealand produces competitive e-sports players, but they're all travelling overseas due to a lack of opportunities at home. I think if America is a seven out of 10, which I think it is, and I think no ones a 10 out of 10 yet, in terms of where e-sports should be, I think New Zealand's a two. So we're quite far behind. And pro gamers aren't all we're losing to other countries. Last month, Grinding Gear Games sold a majority share to Chinese gaming giant Tencent. Jonathan assured me that the game would still be made by the same team ` he'll just be spending someone else's money these days. It's painful to spend money when it's all your money, if you know what I mean, so having some other people on board just means that we can feel a bit more comfortable. However, Jonathan's gain is New Zealand's loss, as the majority of profits for Path of Exile will now be heading overseas. The results of the government survey in to the gaming industry are due out later this year, and gaming advocates warn we shouldn't wait much longer to grab the opportunity. SEAN: It's here to stay, and it probably will get larger and larger and larger, and the more we avoid it or try to ignore it, I think the further we fall behind the rest of the world. So for the policy makers out there, I'd say we should jump in to this, embrace it 100%, and it will obviously only bear bigger fruit for everyone in New Zealand. It's everything we want to diversify the New Zealand economy and truly embrace the knowledge economy. It's a tremendous, literally unlimited, economic opportunity. And still to come, we catch up with our panel ` business broker Vernon Tava, former lawyer Olivia Wensley, and former Green MP Sue Bradford. Welcome back. I'm joined now by our panel, business broker Vernon Tava, former Green MP Sue Bradford and former lawyer turned victim advocate, Olivia Wensley, good morning to you all. Vernon, if I can come to you first, Oranga Tamariki, it was launched last year with such hope, after hearing Tracey Martin this morning, the Minister for Children, does it sound like things have materially changed? I think it's important to remember for context of how central this should be to the Government's consideration ` our new Prime Minister told us that helping our most vulnerable children and dealing with housing were the two most important things, and that helping vulnerable children was her very reason for getting into politics. So, what we're seeing is, we're hearing from person after person, and what was clear in that interview is that not only have things not changed, but things seem to actually be getting worse. There seems to be` One of the rebrandings that we do get from time to time, it was CYFS, and before that it was Children and Young Family, and before that it was something else. And every, sort of, decade or so, there's a rebranding. But we're seeing a net, sort of, 50% loss. It's, sort of, two steps forward, one step back as far as getting carers, as far as retaining social workers and so on, so there wasn't anything I heard in that interview that gave me any great confidence, not only that things are getting better, but that they're not getting worse. So the revelation there that on any given day, up to 30 children are being kept in motel rooms, because there are not enough caregivers, what do you make of that? And then she, on the other hand, said that they're not pushing a big recruitment drive at the moment because they don't have the resources to back those foster parents up. It's horrifying to hear this. It was certainly the first time I've heard it. And then to hear the figure that they've got an over-50% loss rate between recruitment and loss of social workers. So clearly things are not healthy in there despite all the restructuring And I'm old enough now to have lived through so many reviews of what was CYFS, so many restructurings, so many promises, the same promises are made again and again. And I remember the Mick Brown review, which was very good. If that government, that was a Labour Government back then, if they actually picked up and enacted Judge Mick Brown's recommendations back in the day, in the 2000's, I think we'd see a very different sort of department now. But no government of either stripe seems able to actually address it in the fundamental way it needs to be. And for example, this morning I heard the Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft, who's doing such a good job with so few resources, if you, for example, gave the Children's Commissioner and his people the resources to be an effective review and appeal and oversight system for all children in care, rather than just the 200 in lock-up care, in judicial care, but all the children in care, that would be a really good development. There's so many things they could do. How they treat their social workers, how they treat their frontline staff, how they treat the foster carers, and behind it, of course, this Work and Income system where the fear of Oranga Tamariki is so huge among beneficiary mothers and fathers for the fear of having your children taken. Yeah, and that's what we were hearing when foster parents were talking to us. Yeah, absolutely. So this fear of what was CYFS, is now Oranga Tamariki, is huge. And there's a huge trust-building exercise which everyone involved has to go through before you're going to have enthusiastic foster carers or enthusiastic social workers. Yeah, Olivia, the other thing we talked to her about was Wally Haumaha who's been appointed to a Deputy Police Commissioner's role, it turns out that he made some disparaging comments against a sexual assault complainant and he also spoke in support of two men who were later convicted of a pack rape. Is he the right man for the job? Well, I understand Louise Nicholas' frustration with his appointment. I see it at the moment when I've been speaking out about abusive power within the Law, I see a lot of powerful men are getting away with horrible things. And if he was involved and supporting men who did atrocious acts, I just don't see how he's the right person to continue the Police's hard work in changing its culture. Do you think it matters, the comments were made 14 years ago, and he has apologised in the last couple of weeks. So, is there a point that he can move on from that? I'd like to think so, but in my experience, when someone has those beliefs, it's pretty hard to change such core values. Vernon, what do you reckon? The apology, well, there was a 14-year time span, then there's the apology. But it didn't seem to resonate, it didn't seem to satisfy the people who expected an apology from him. And the thing is, nobody's talking about, 'he should lose his job and never work again,' it's that he holds a very, very senior position. And the Commissioner, the Deputy Commissioner, these are the people at the top of an organization who set the culture. Just as the partners in a big law firm set the culture and say what is and isn't acceptable, what attitudes are and aren't acceptable, he's one of those people. So, yes, it is 14 years ago, no, he didn't obstruct an investigation, or obscure information or anything like that, But if that information was available to Louise Nicholas, if she was to access the files and see what he had said, then that must have also been information that was available to the people that appointed him. So, really it's about setting the culture, and those are the questions that need to be asked. Then there's this weird complication around the New Zealand First candidacy, and so on. But that's a bit of a side issue. Yeah, and she says no conflict there, which she stated very clearly. Do stay with us, we'll be back after the break. Welcome back to Newshub Nation and our panel. Thanks for joining us this morning. Olivia, the report in to Russell McVeagh and the claims of sexual assault, sexual misconduct, at that law firm came out this week. It was variously described as scathing and damning, but you're actually pretty disappointed with it, aren't you? Why? I think, overall, the report is a cop-out, and what's interesting is not what was said, but what hasn't been said. So, importantly, it glosses over the fact that... That there was no reporting of a criminal act which occurred in the workplace. The partners at Russell McVeagh have a statutory obligation to report, to the regulator, the Law Society, when there's cases of misconduct, and in this case, rape ` alleged rape ` is clearly a misconduct. So it's really alarming that this was never reported for years. Do you think that they got off lightly in the tone of the report? Because Margaret Bazley seems to have given them a pretty big serve. Yes and no. I think that there's still an element of` it's a PR spin. There's some window dressing, they get praised as well for all the things that they have done. It doesn't mention historic sexual assault cases which have allegedly occurred there as well. There's a lot of glossing over, which is really disappointing. Another thing that's disappointing is there's 34 references to alcohol, and alcohol doesn't cause rape, rapists cause rape, and I think that there's this real emphasis on alcohol and the interns were given alcohol training, but it's just totally missing the point here. So, yes, so that's my view. So they identified in the report bullying and excessive hours. Can we expect, do you think, pushback from workers in other industries, or will it just go away again? Because Margaret Bazley talked about the fact that they were working really big hours, and not just these allegations of sexual assault or harassment, but workplace bullying. Mm, well anyone that works with workers or, in many workplaces in this country, bullying is endemic in this country, and one hears about the law profession. I mean, it's good it's being opened up a bit, but there's surely a long way to go, and I hope that lawyers who, on the whole, I would say are not unionised, find the strength to actually stand up in a concerted way to the level of bullying that's clearly happening in these big law firms. But, actually it's across the whole workforce, from people on $16.50 an hour to people on $2000 a day, probably, that they put up with this and we need, as a country, in workplaces across the nation, to actually become stronger and to work together in workplaces to stop this happening. And we're incredibly weak at doing it, for some reason. We're not good at standing up for ourselves, and even in professions that are comparatively elite. Do you think so, Vernon? That we're not good at standing up for ourselves in the workplace? Well, I think, yeah, that's often the case, and particularly when you're talking about when you've got asymmetries of power, and very strong asymmetries of power, when people's very career and the likelihood of advancement is determined by whether or not they 'make trouble', or, 'make things hard for people', particularly within law firms, and the big law firms, by their very nature, anyone who's dealt with a lawyer from a big firm will know that they tend to be quite positional and aggressive in the way that they do things. That's what people are paying the big money for. That culture filters all the way through the organisation in to a sort of general inconsiderateness, bullying attitudes and so on, and I certainly understand the disappointment that a lot of people are feeling about Margaret Bazley's report, which is obviously not dealing with clear issues of criminality that we've been hearing about, because, of course, that wasn't the re-med, it's in the court system, and so on, but, you know, she was dealing with and addressing the culture, but I really do take that point too that saying, 'Well, people are working hard and drinking a lot, 'so these tings are going to happen.' I think, perhaps, we need to take a bit of a stronger stand than that, and say 'No, this is objectively wrong, and there are no excuses.' So, Olivia, how do we turn this kind of culture around, then? Well, the culture needs to be driven from the top-down, and ultimately, that falls with the Law Society. However, I've been really disappointed with their response. They have been very reluctant to accept that sexual harassment is endemic in the profession. We've now got the results showing that 30% of women experience it. They need to drive it really hard, because it's unacceptable, and too many people have suffered for too long. So do you think that they need to censure lawyers who, it becomes clear, did not report incidents that they were supposed to? Well, that's what the statute says, and they have power to do this, and this happens in Australia. So, in Australia, if there was such allegations, the Law Society would actually go in ` they do go in ` physically investigate, and they discipline lawyers that are withholding information that they are required to disclose under their statutory obligation. This hasn't happened. There's been no repercussions, which is really disappointing. So Russell McVeagh has apologised, but do you think that the firm has actually been hurt in any ongoing way by this? Uh, I think they may become the new leaders of the best practice. They'll be conveying this 'Oh, we've been through this terrible time 'and now we're gonna have best practice in every respect', and they may actually gain business and gain` I can just see them becoming the leaders. Kudos from the` Yeah, from actually having been the subject, without, as Olivia has been saying, without the underlying criminality and the underlying culture ever being seriously addressed as the top people with all the power, and that's the problem here is the power held by the people at the top, whether it's in law or anywhere else, and the sheer power of that makes it so hard for the workers or interns to stand up for themselves. All right, we need to leave it there, but Labour list MP Kieran McAnulty joined us on Facebook Live this week to talk about why he should represent Wairarapa, and we had to ask him about rumours that he thwarted a wannabe ute thief in Masterton. I did wonder if this was gonna come up. Whoever put this on my Wikipedia page ` you've caused me a lot of grief, cos I've had to explain myself (LAUGHS) But I was in the midst of the local body elections in Masterton. I was looking to be re-elected on to the Masterton Licensing Trust, and I popped out of work at smoko time and went to jump in my ute, and realised that there was some guy in the drivers seat. My initial response was 'I've got the wrong ute, that's embarrassing,' and I realised that I didn't. I opened the door, and sort of, in one way or another, asked him what he was up to, and he got quite aggressive, which I thought was an unreasonable position to take, and so, we ended up having a bit of a scuffle. Here I am in my suit, in the main street of Masterton, rolling around... yeah. So in the end, I got him, and, yeah, he got some jail time and I kept my ute. So that was quite cool. I've told this story a few times, and if I'm honest, the bloke gets bigger and bigger each time I tell it. Yeah, of course. Seven foot, right? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know. And that is all from us for now. We will see you again next weekend. Thanks for joining us. Captions by Able. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2018