Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill

It is a pleasure to stand again and speak on the Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill. I was a bit remiss in my first speech, so I will now also add my compliments to Chester Borrows for his excellent chairing of the Justice and Electoral Committee.

I will also take this opportunity to acknowledge the submitters. They include the people who work at the coalface in the many organisations who came and gave submissions. They did so because they are very, very committed to providing protection for victims of domestic violence. I not only acknowledge the submissions that they gave but also the work that they do on a day-to-day basis. I know that it makes a real difference to the lives of, predominantly, women and children in New Zealand, and I am very proud to acknowledge that in this House.

I also acknowledge the victims of domestic violence who made submissions. I believe, and I am sure that all members will agree with me, that that is a very brave action to take for people who have already been through very, very difficult situations, situations more painful than anyone in this Chamber can contemplate. For them to be able to come to the select committee and share their stories in a very meaningful way assisted us in our deliberations, and that was a very, very brave thing for them to do.

Again, I acknowledge the Hon Ruth Dyson and the points that she made in terms of the bill’s shortcomings, or in terms of what is missing from this bill. I acknowledge that another bill is following this one, but if we look at the domestic violence statistics, every hour is an hour too long. Every day is, by far, too long. That is why I am pleased that we are debating this bill under urgency. Let us get this bill through; let us get this bill into effect as soon as possible.

I will also talk about a couple of issues in Part 2, particularly those relating to the amendment to the Sentencing Act. We spent quite some time considering the effects of the protection order, and I am really pleased with one of the amendments that we made to new section 123D, to be inserted in the Sentencing Act by clause 9. The section states: “On making a protection order, the Judge or Registrar must explain to the offender—”. The initial draft of the bill talked about the effect and the consequences in a couple of lines, but select committee members discussed quite extensively how important it is in this situation that offenders understand what is required of them with regard to the protection order. It is not just the order that is important but also the direction to attend a programme that will assist offenders—well, we certainly hope so—to address their violence and the consequences if they fail to do so.

Where there is an order that offenders are required to attend a programme and they fail to do so, there will be consequences arising from that. I believe that that is a very sensible amendment. That direction is about protection and safety in the immediate instance, and also about looking forward and ensuring that offenders take responsibility for their actions.

I thank the member Lynne Pillay for her contribution to the debate on the Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill. A few johnny-come-latelys, though, are contributing to this discussion in the Committee stage. I myself have been an affiliate member of the Chester Borrows fan club for some time. Now everybody else seems to be rushing to the party during the Committee of the whole House to pledge their allegiance to Mr Borrows. I tell members of the Committee that I have been a fan of Mr Borrows for longer than most members, and I would appreciate it if there was more historic depth to their analysis of his contribution on this particular issue.

Part 2 of the bill amends the Sentencing Act 2002. It provides that when an offender is convicted of a domestic violence - related offence, the court may make a final protection order against the offender if it is satisfied that the making of the order is necessary for the protection of the victim and the victim does not object. When making the protection order, the court must explain to the offender the effect of the order and of any direction to attend a programme. Any protection order issued by the criminal courts is referred to the Family Court.

The Justice and Electoral Committee made two amendments to Part 2. Ms Pillay made reference, I believe, to one of those. The first is to delete new section 123B(1)(c), inserted by clause 9. That amendment clarifies that the criminal courts may make a protection order regardless of whether the victim has applied for one in the Family Court. That is a critical step and one that the committee should be applauded for taking. The second amendment is to new section 123D, also inserted by clause 9, and it requires the court to explain to an offender the effect of a protection order and the consequences of failure to comply with it. The court must also explain to the offender the effect of the court’s direction to attend a stopping violence programme and the consequences of failure to attend any such programme.

I am pleased to speak on Part 2 of the Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill. Part 2 focuses on the amendments made to the Sentencing Act, and the Minister in the chair, Simon Power, has already rightly pointed out the most significant changes that were made by the Justice and Electoral Committee. When considering this part I want to expand a little bit on the process that the select committee went through in determining those changes.

I think at the heart of this bill is the overall objective to streamline the process that a victim, in particular, may go through when using our justice system to obtain a protection order. There was one thing that I think came through quite clearly during the submission process.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Before the break I was talking about one of the primary objectives of this bill, which is to improve access by victims to such things as protection orders. When the Justice and Electoral Committee was considering one of the clauses in Part 2, it occurred to us that we could improve that objective if we allowed a court to order a protection order when it was considering a case, even if it was not the court to which a particular application had been made. In the end, we considered that a sentencing court should not be precluded from making a protection order if it considered that the protection order was necessary for the protection of the victim of the offence. We made that change after careful consideration and after hearing submissions made by, for instance, Family Court judges. It was a well considered and appropriate change to make.

There are only two other aspects of Part 2 that I wish to draw attention to. One is new section 123D, which requires that after the issuing of a protection order, a judge or registrar must explain to the offender the effect of that order. That change was based on submissions made by the Family Court, which pointed out the rate of non-compliance with some of these orders. It was the view of the select committee that we should do everything we can to ensure that orders for individuals to attend programmes to stop violence, for instance, should be enhanced in any way available to us. I think there is still more we can do in that particular area. It struck me during our consideration of the bill that, although we were using all the tools available through legislation, the surrounding areas—the support programmes and community networks aimed both at victims and at turning round the behaviour of offenders—perhaps needed the greater attention of the House.

The final point I will briefly talk to relates to consent for protection orders. The select committee had some discussion about the issue of consent in issuing a protection order. We had considered that very same issue in relation to the awarding of police safety orders. The committee decided, rightly so, that these were quite different tools. A police safety order is a short-term order that is intended to diffuse very heated situations and prevent violence from occurring. Women’s Refuge, after seeing how those orders work in Australia, agreed that applying them without consent appeared to be of value to victims, who would acknowledge that after the fact. Of course, the reason then that we thought police safety orders should be able to be applied without consent was that it gave victims time and space to consider whether they wished to apply for a full protection order. A protection order has many larger, longer-term ramifications than a police safety order. In order for protection orders to work in the long term, I believe they require the buy-in of victims, which is why we have, in the end, rightly differentiated between those two forms of protection for victims or potential victims of domestic violence.

Those are the main aspects of the amendments to the Sentencing Act that I wish to draw the Committee’s attention to. I look forward to discussing further in the Committee stage the amendments to the Bail Act, and to the third reading.

I am looking forward to hearing the Minister of Justice, the Hon Simon Power, take a brief call. I encourage him to do so because he still has not addressed the questions I raised earlier in the debate on the Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill, and those same questions apply to Part 2, which we are now debating. I heard the earlier contribution from the Minister and I thought that it was considered in the main. Some parts of it were quite amusing, especially the Chester Borrows fan club section of his contribution, but I have serious questions. The Minister is well regarded for taking issues from whatever political party as seriously as they are presented to him. So I say to him, quite directly, that I am still puzzled about the Government’s reasons for omitting four quite important sections from the Hon Annette King’s Domestic Violence Reform Bill.

I will refresh the Minister’s memory from the earlier debate. The application of this bill to the Sentencing Act will be very well known to him; he will be familiar with the Sentencing Act, I am sure, and he will understand how the four points I raise apply to Part 2. These are provisions that the Hon Annette King included in the Domestic Violence Reform Bill. That legislation was well consulted around the country and had overwhelming support from the experts and key players in this area.

Four provisions of that bill have been omitted from this bill. The first omission is that this bill does not change the definition of a child from a person who is under 17 years of age to a person who is under 18 years of age. The definition in the Domestic Violence Act, as noted in new section 123A of the Sentencing Act, inserted by clause 9, still applies. The opportunity to align this legislation with the Care of Children Act should have been irresistible. The proposed provision made sense and had wide-ranging support, but the Minister decided to leave it out. That makes no sense, at all. The second omission —again, a specific decision made by the Minister—is that this bill does not require a judge to give reasons in writing when he or she declines a without-notice application for a protection order. That was not an oversight; it was a deliberate, specific decision that was signed off by the Minister. From my perspective, it is extremely puzzling. The Minister has made no attempt to explain why the decision was made to omit that.

The third omission is that this bill does not introduce information sessions. In my earlier contribution, I explained the importance of that aspect in the protection of women, in particular, who do not necessarily understand the relationship they are in and the different tack it can take. It is very hard for people who have not been in a violent relationship to understand how a person can still live with somebody who is violent with him or her. An information session is critical for people in their understanding of their relationships and in being able to determine key risk factors for the future. The fourth omission is that this bill does not introduce funded addiction treatment services, despite overwhelming evidence about the association between domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse.

I know that we are in urgency and that the Government is under a huge amount of pressure from the extensive legislative timetable it has ahead of it, but I consider that the Committee would benefit hugely if the Minister were to spend 5 minutes of his time explaining what he has against those four provisions of the Domestic Violence Reform Bill—and it is still on the Order Paper—that have been omitted not just from this bill but also from the related bill that the Minister introduced.

Those provisions should be in this bill; those amendments should be consistent with the provisions of the reform bill. The Minister did not need to pass over the Hon Annette King’s bill. He could have short-cut all the systems and just put his name on it. He must have a good reason not to give those protections to women and children who, right now, right at this very minute as we debate this bill, are living in dangerous situations. Why has the Minister not taken that chance?

Part 2 agreed to.

Part 3 agreed to.

Schedule

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 72 in the name of the Hon Simon Power to omit the schedule and substitute a new schedule be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Schedule as amended agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2