Harmonisation of laws, policy strategies and co-ordination/monitoring 15. There have been substantial developments in this area since 2016. On 1 July 2019 the full amendments to the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 came into force. These amendments harmonised the age thresholds of New Zealand’s child protection and youth justice jurisdictions with the Convention. This addressed what was the most glaring inconsistency between the Convention and New Zealand’s legal framework, a matter noted by the Committee in each of its periodic reviews of New Zealand. In addition, as noted in the introduction, the Convention is now directly referenced in the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, which provides that a child’s rights under the Convention must be upheld in decisions made about them.6 16. Recent amendments to the Children’s Act 2014 also require the government to introduce a policy strategy “intended to help New Zealand meet its international obligations relating to children, including those [under the Convention]”.7 This constituted another significant government response to a long-standing Committee recommendation.8 The Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy,9 launched in August 2019, is a comprehensive strategy covering 75 actions across 20 government agencies. 17. It should be noted that, together, these reforms have discarded the term “vulnerable children” from the name of the responsible Ministry and the statutory lexicon, as the Committee recommended in 2016.10 The new Ministry is named Oranga Tamariki/Ministry for Children and is overseen by New Zealand’s first Minister for Children. 18. The Deputy Chief Executives Group continues to act as the de facto government co-ordinating mechanism for the Convention11 and, as part of its work, regularly meets with the CMG monitoring mechanism.12 The status of the DCE Group and its relationship with the CMG remains relatively informal and is governed by terms of reference rather than a legal instrument. In this sense, the status quo has remained since 2016, although the profile of the DCE Group and the work of the CMG is now more visible. There appears to be no immediate plan to change this approach. It is, however, possible that reforms to New Zealand public service legislation, which seek to introduce new “inter-operable” ways of working in the public sector, may have some impact upon the current DCE Group-CMG arrangements.13 Allocation of resources and data collection 19. Perhaps the most fundamental structural developments that have occurred since the 2016 review have been the amendments to the government budgetary processes under the Child Poverty Reduction Act 2018 (CPRA) and the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Bill. 20. The CPRA has introduced a Parliamentary reporting mechanism to the annual budgetary process. It requires annual reporting on progress made towards reducing child poverty and on budgetary 6 Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, section 5(1)(b) – the section also refers, not-exclusively, to children’s rights under the CRPD 7 Children’s Act 2014, section 6A, which came into force in December 2018. 8 See CRC/C/NZL/CO/5, paragraph 7(a) 9 https://dpmc.govt.nz/our-programmes/child-and-youth-wellbeing-strategy 10 Para 7(b) 11 CRC/C/NZL/CO/5, paragraph 8 12 See paragraph 4 above. 13 Public Service Legislation Bill, Part 2, section 21-39 5