Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill

I move, That the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice and Electoral Committee to consider the bill. The rate of family violence in New Zealand is simply unacceptable. It has a devastating impact on individuals and communities that can span generations and lifetimes. In 2015 alone, police investigated more than 110,000 family violence incidents, yet we know that up to three-quarters of violent interpersonal offences by a family member are not reported to police. Growing up with family violence is a major risk factor for our children and young people. We know that exposure to this abhorrent form of abuse has severe, long-lasting effects, including mental illness, substance abuse, offending, self-harm, and homelessness. It is time that this insidious intergenerational cycle ends.

That is why this Government has made reducing family violence a priority. A number of cross-agency work programmes are dedicated to improving the way we respond to family violence. The Ministerial Group on Family Violence and Sexual Violence brought together Ministers from 16 portfolios in an unprecedented way, with the aim of reducing the devastating impact that family and sexual violence has on people and communities across the country. The new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki, in consultation with the Ministry of Justice, is exploring options for changing the behaviour of young people who perpetrate family violence and are known to the Family Court.

The Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill I present today will underpin our response to family violence. It will strengthen the family violence laws and build the legal framework necessary to deliver the wider components of our work programme. The changes in the bill have been shaped by the hundreds of submissions I received in response to my discussion document. The bill makes these changes through a package of reforms of two main parts. Firstly, the bill amends the current Domestic Violence Act 1995. This core piece of legislation will be updated to ensure it is fit for purpose and aligns with modern understanding of family violence. Changes will also empower the Family Court to consider family violence matters and make temporary protection orders when considering proceedings under the Care of Children Act. Secondly, the bill will make important changes to criminal law, including the Bail Act, the Crimes Act, the Criminal Procedure Act, the Evidence Act, and the Sentencing Act. The changes to these Acts will seek to respond better to family violence in a criminal context.

I want to begin by touching on key changes being made to the Domestic Violence Act. When the Domestic Violence Act was first enacted in 1995 it was regarded as a significant advancement in dealing with domestic violence. Since then, expectations and understandings of family violence have developed, and new evidence about how to stop violence occurring continues to emerge. It is obvious that more can be done to recognise and reduce the occurrences of family violence. Changes to the law are needed to ensure that it can continue to support and guide best practice across the entire system.

Domestic violence is commonly understood as being violence against an intimate partner; however, we know that domestic violence affects more than just intimate partners. The bill will change the name of the Domestic Violence Act to the Family and Whānau Violence Act. Changing the term “domestic” to “family and whānau” more clearly acknowledges the violence that occurs in a wide range of family and whānau relationships. The amendments within the Act better reflect the many forms of violence and the harm that it causes, while bringing our legislation more in line with overseas legislation and research.

Responses to the discussion document indicated that people supported having principles in the law. They acknowledged that the principles can be used to guide decisions made by those in the sector, and identified the objectives of the Act. The bill introduces 12 new principles at the beginning of the Act. These place emphasis on the need to maximise the safety of victims and the importance of ensuring culturally appropriate responses for Māori. In addition, the principles focus on the requirement for effective responses for perpetrators of family violence.

An important focus of the reforms is to enable earlier, more effective interventions for both victims and perpetrators. Police safety orders (PSOs) were introduced in 2010. They enable a police officer to order a perpetrator out of the home for up to 5 days, to protect the safety of the people at that address. These orders have become an effective tool for police officers attending family violence incidents. The bill I introduce today will make better use of the opportunity that police safety orders create for early intervention. Police will be able to direct a person to a risk and needs assessment when they are bound by a PSO. This assessment is the first step in linking a perpetrator to the right services to help change their behaviour. If we can address the perpetrator’s violent behaviour earlier, we can better help to keep victims safe in the longer term.

Many who responded to the discussion document told me that applying for a protection order can sometimes be difficult. They supported the idea of having someone else able to apply for a protection order on behalf of the victim. Changes made by this bill will give the Minister of Justice the ability to approve third parties, who can apply for protection orders on behalf of the victims, and shifts responsibility away from solely sitting on the victims’ shoulders, for their own safety.

The bill also clarifies that special conditions can and should be imposed on protection orders in some circumstances. Special conditions are particularly important for people with additional vulnerabilities, such as older age or a disability. This change will enable orders to be better tailored to the needs of the vulnerable, making them more effective. We know that harm to victims can be prevented by changing the behaviour of perpetrators. This requires earlier and more effective interventions. However, perpetrators are not always connected to the right services, and protection orders create another opportunity to address this.

This bill makes changes that would allow perpetrators to be referred to a wider range of services when a protection order is issued against them. In the future they will be assessed according to their risks and needs, which will signal which services they should be attending. The court will be able to direct that attendance at those services is mandatory, as we know that targeted services can be important in addressing violent behaviours. Services will look to be culturally appropriate, incorporating tikanga and restorative approaches where relevant. By more directly addressing the specific issues a perpetrator has, we will be at a better place to protect victims and prevent future violence.

Responses to family violence are more effective when those involved have the full picture. Better access to information is necessary to prevent harm to victims and to better assess risk and needs. However, actual and perceived barriers to sharing information negatively impacts agencies’ abilities to work together, resulting in difficulties and delays for those affected by family violence. I am introducing a number of bespoke information-sharing provisions to enable the family violence sector to share information. The new provisions make it clear that those specified agencies and professionals are able to receive, use, and share information with each other for the purposes of better responding to family violence. Strong safeguards will ensure that only relevant and appropriate information is shared. The sharing of relevant information will enable quicker and more effective responses to those requiring support. These new provisions will help to provide a foundation for a more cohesive and integrated system.

The second part of the bill amends the criminal law Acts I outlined earlier, so that family violence is more appropriately addressed as a criminal matter. Three new offences will be introduced. Significantly, this includes a new offence of strangulation and suffocation. International evidence tells us that the likelihood of a person being killed by their partner is significantly increased when they have been strangled by that partner previously. We want to send a clear message that this type of behaviour should not and will not be tolerated. The offence of strangulation and suffocation will have a maximum sentence of 7 years in prison. Offences of coercion to marry and assault on family members will also be introduced. Assault on a family member will complement the existing offence of male assaults female. It recognises that, for example, violence against a daughter by her mother or violence against a brother is unacceptable, as is violence by a male against a female partner.

Family violence is prosecuted under a range of criminal offences. Currently, there is no way to accurately identify family violence offending, which can lead to inconsistent decision-making and responses. A new system of flagging family violence offences through the criminal justice system will be introduced. Identifying a perpetrator’s pattern of behaviour will be made easier and it will provide valuable information to decision makers, including the judiciary and police. Recording a family violence offence on the permanent court record reflects the seriousness of offending against someone that you are in a family relationship with. It will also provide the opportunity for the nature of family violence to be considered, for example, at bail decisions.

We know that New Zealand must do better to reduce family violence. Everyone should have the opportunity to lead healthy and fulfilling lives. Everyone should have a home that is free from violence. Effective laws are a cornerstone of how we can address family violence; however, legislative change cannot be the whole answer. To make a positive, long-lasting difference, we need behaviours and attitudes to change. Creating an effective, integrated system requires everyone who plays a part in preventing and reducing family violence to get involved. This bill will help to drive that change. Together we can develop an integrated family violence system that will support better practices, better outcomes, and better safety for the victims of family violence in New Zealand. I proudly commend the bill to the House.

I rise to take a call on the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. Firstly, I want to commend the Minister, Amy Adams, for the work that has been done on this bill. As she explained, it is a process that was commenced by her calling for submissions on the discussion paper in 2015, and I, for one, am really looking forward to the robust discussion that will happen at select committee and the submissions made by the experts who will come to speak to that from the family violence and sexual violence community. So thank you, Minister, for bringing the bill to the House.

I am really concerned—and I will be doing, along with my colleagues, my utmost to ensure that this is not a case of missed opportunities. We take every opportunity to update the legislation, which is over 20 years old, that will really go some way to supporting the safety of our families.

Some of the changes in the legislation that the Minister has outlined, I also want to put some responses to. Protection orders are part of this legislation, and there are changes to protection orders in terms of their accessibility. The legislation makes it easier for victims to access protection orders, but the counter to that is that it does not appear that the requisite support to enforce a breach of a protection order is put in place. While it is easier to obtain a protection order, will it be easier for authorities, like the police, for example, to enforce breaches of protection orders? This is a question that I hope we get some answers to at the select committee.

As a person who used to work in the refuge movement and ran a refuge, one of the things that used to concern us in our particular refuge was the six women holding a piece of paper to keep our women and kids safe. We would want, at this time, the examination of protection orders to be as thorough as it can be so that we can actually provide protection through this mechanism, with the requisite backup of community services and the police.

The Minister referred to police safety orders providing a mechanism for people who perpetrate violence to have access to anger management and change management processes. What I have to say about this is that this is actually returning us to a situation that used to occur prior to the changes in the prosecution guidelines. In family violence specialist courts it became a requirement that in order to arrest an offender for family violence, there had to be sufficient evidence that that offender could be prosecuted in court. So they raised the level of evidence that was required, and what happened was that people who went through the family violence court—who would normally access anger management programmes as of right because the court mandated those programmes—had their access to court reduced because they were not being arrested, because the evidence required to arrest had gone up.

Within this legislation, under the police safety orders, we are returning to a situation that already happened. I am really grateful for that. However, in terms of legislation, we should be moving forward. What kind of support do those community agencies that provide the anger management and change management courses require in order to be able to support perpetrators who come through the process, under the police safety orders?

I am really impressed that there is a focus on children. There is a very clear statement in this legislation that children who are in homes where violence is present are impacted by that violence. Regardless of whether they witness it or experience it themselves, they are impacted by violence. But again I say, where is the requisite support to support those children who experience the trauma of being in homes where violence is present? There is a focus on the new crimes under the Crimes Act around forced marriage, non-fatal strangulation, and the whānau violence aspect, where members of the family can be charged under this legislation.

But, in reality, what is family violence like for our families? Our families come presenting multiple issues. They come presenting issues that are created by the stressors on families, whether that is around poverty, jobs, poor housing, low incomes, poor health, or whether they have been the victims of family or sexual abuse in the past. Family violence is a bit like a black cloud that sits across the whānau, the families in New Zealand. Like a black cloud, it impacts every single person. So any solution that we have to family violence has got to deal with all of those affected—not only those who are harmed but those who do the harming and those who witness and experience the trauma by being part of a household where violence is present.

So, in reality, legislation only goes so far. While this bill hopes to deliver real change, there are some aspects that I believe are missing, which I hope that through the select committee process we actually have an opportunity to address. The first is: what is our overarching strategy to deal with family violence in the long term? Legislation alone will not do it, neither will just applying programmes. What we need to do is we need to have a strategy to deal with family violence, and it has to be a long-term strategy.

We used to have Te Rito strategy. Unfortunately this Government cut funding to Te Rito, which was a network mechanism that was a support for those providers of family violence services across the country. There were 27 networks across the country, and the evaluation of that strategy said that the most effective way to work in family violence was through networks, where services were networked and connected up to each other.

Education is needed. We need to have an ability to raise public awareness to have some support for young people, for example at school. We need to be discussing the issue of consent, and we need to be talking about respectful relationships. All of these things we have had in the past, but funding cuts to those organisations that have delivered that have meant that those programmes no longer exist, or exist at a very low level.

We need to provide support for our police to do the work that they need to do, and we need to support our community organisations. We need to have appropriate public awareness, like we do with White Ribbon or It’s Not OK. Those programmes need to be supported.

I just want comment on one other aspect, and that is around integrated responses to people who experience family and sexual violence. There is currently a pilot running in Christchurch called the Integrated Safety Response. Funding was taken out of full-time equivalents in the community sector and reinvested largely into the statutory agencies, into their response to family and sexual violence. We know, from reports from the pilot in Christchurch, that that is not entirely working as it was designed. Those community agencies that lost funding to support this programme have now been asked to pick up that work.

There is a lesson we must learn, and it is about taking the opportunity to get this right. At the select committee we must ensure that we examine this bill thoroughly and that we speak to the experts. The experts tell us what they would like, and we listen. We take the opportunity to craft a piece of legislation that actually will, at the end of the day, keep our family and whānau safe. We in Labour are supporting this bill. We hope that the select committee process will add some real meat to the legislation. We are commending the bill to the House. Thank you.

I rise in support of the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. I rise in support of its principles and the movement to get on top of this insidious issue that is rife within New Zealand. I rise in support of the Hon Amy Adams who, with a group of other Ministers in this Government, has spearheaded this cause. She has spearheaded extensive consultation with NGOs and people in the sector. I myself ran a family violence legislation review workshop in Invercargill, and I thank the participants for showing up to that workshop and participating and putting submissions into this process to help bring about this reform.

This is a reform that is long overdue, in respect of our 20-year-old domestic violence laws. As the Hon Amy Adams says, it is legislation. It is the platform for us to springboard, to hold perpetrators to account, to put victims and survivors of domestic violence at the heart of bail conditions and the heart of this issue, and to wrap around services so that perpetrators get the help that they need to form appropriate behaviours moving forward. But it is also to support the victims and the survivors and their children, to empower them to make the right decisions, and to put in place measures to support them to move forward and live happy and free lives so that they too can reach their potential.

As we have heard from the Minister, domestic violence is absolutely rife in New Zealand. There were 110,000 call outs in 2015. Of that number, 76 percent of intimate partner violence-related deaths were perpetrated by men. This piece of legislation creates a platform, as I have said, to hold perpetrators to account and, in doing so, creates a new offence of strangulation. There is also a new offence of coercion to marry, and, of course, assault on a family member, which goes right to the heart of this issue—that any type of violence towards a family member is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

We are making it easier to apply for protection orders, and, again, we want to make sure that the appropriate NGOs and wraparound services are provided to victims and survivors of this intergenerational crime that must be got on top of here in New Zealand.

With that, I look forward to the select committee process. I know that the Justice and Electoral Committee is quite united on this issue of making change for the better for New Zealand citizens. I commend this bill to the House.

I certainly share the view that the debate and discussion around the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill by the select committee, where it will eventually be referred, will indeed be constructive. That is because this process, to date, has been constructive. We acknowledge that when Amy Adams, as Minister of Justice, first flagged her intention to do review work in this area, she offered to members of this House to engage with her in that process. Labour was quick to take up that offer, as were other parties. In fact, we reached out to the Minister. We wrote the Minister a letter co-signed by myself, Poto Williams, Kelvin Davis, and other caucus members who had an interest in the area. We all reached out to the Minister asking for an opportunity to meet with her. She accepted that offer, and, to her credit, brought in other members of Parliament to sit down and have an initial briefing with her.

At that point we put before the Minister some real areas of concern, some of which I will touch on today and some of which my colleague Poto Williams has also expanded upon. In large part, our view was that the preventative work that we need to do is still really under-resourced, the ability of people to access services without having been referred through the formal justice system is still inadequate, and, ultimately, that throughout our justice system there still needs to be competency built around identifying and working appropriately with those who are the victims of domestic violence. There are a range of elements that we will be seeking to really flesh out to build upon some of the initial suggestions that have been made in this legislation. Having said that, we also, as a party, put in a submission into this process because we did want to use every opportunity we have to be constructive, and will continue to do so.

In my opening comments, as well as acknowledging that openness by the Minister, I also want to acknowledge that family violence affects everything. It affects absolutely everything. To be honest, as a member of Parliament, I did not grasp that in its entirety until I really had the opportunity to work in the children’s portfolio to the degree that I have. I have seen the impact of family violence on children, and then on children as they grow into adolescence, and then on as adolescents go on to be parents themselves.

I think probably one of the points when it really hit home—and I have spoken about this before—was the moment when I put in an Official Information Act request to the coroner’s court to access all of the reports that the coroner had done on children who had died in Child, Youth and Family’s (CYF’s) care. Actually, at that time, I was seeking further information on the way that we had failed our most vulnerable children. It was off the back of a horrific case of a child who had committed suicide while in CYF’s care.

I had an expectation of seeing cases of, perhaps, sudden, unexpected death in infancy, of abuse—of a range of things that you see in our media reports. I did not expect to see the number of cases of children who had been known to Child, Youth and Family who had taken their own lives and who had witnessed, on an ongoing basis, domestic violence in their home. I did not expect to see that. When I saw that, I remember asking, down the track, a police officer who worked intensively in the area of family violence—I raised with him that correlation. He said it was a correlation he had seen in his own district to the point that he had gone back through the files of the call outs that related to mental health or distress call outs, and then linked them to domestic violence call outs. The correlation was undeniable—undeniable.

This is not only pervasive, but it affects a child’s brain development. We have the research and evidence to tell us that now. I raise that so that we do not look at this issue in isolation and we understand that investment in this area is investment in a child’s future—in particular a child’s future—as well as their protective parent’s future. That is why I feel so very, very strongly about the work that we are doing here.

I want to pick up on a couple of the specifics in the bill, just to give an example of where we will be seeking extra work. We raised early on that it was our view that protection orders—at the moment hundreds of protection orders are denied when there has been an application for legal aid. That would surprise a lot of people—the idea that someone who is seeking financial support in order to seek assistance with a protection order might be denied that. It was our view that the process of accessing a protection order should be free. The mechanism we can discuss—be it a community law centre, be it an automatic legal-aid process, or be it whatever. The mechanism is up for debate, but the principle was the same for us. The idea that a partner, for instance, who might be financially bound to the person who they are seeking to get a protection order against—how can you asset test that person against what might be the assets of their abuser from whom they are seeking a protection order? It made sense for us to make that as accessible as possible.

The second point was that a protection order is only as good as the enforcement of that order. We have a long way to go for individuals to have faith in the system and faith that if they seek help when a protection order is breached, that help will be swift and uniform in response—that is where I refer back to the idea of competency. I remember asking a legal-aid lawyer to give me some examples once of cases where they had seen breaches of protection orders that had not been followed through appropriately. Their example was that, if in isolation, a police officer has a protection order being breached alerted to them—and it might be in the form of some flowers being left on the doorstep. If a police officer sees that, in isolation, as an individual case, they might just simply take sympathy or empathise that it is someone trying to make amends without seeing, perhaps, the markers of stalking behaviour and the abuse that has happened in the lead-up to that event. Actually, really building an understanding of the different markers of domestic violence in abusive relationships is incredibly important when it comes to effectively enforcing protection orders.

We also need to have a conversation about how we are talking about the ability of others to make applications on behalf of individuals for protection orders, but we still, ultimately, rely on the victim to enforce them. That is hugely problematic as well. So these are all things that we would like to debate and discuss in a select committee.

The other issue that I want to raise is that I think it is absolutely right that when making parenting arrangements in the Family Court that we require the court to consider whether a protection order has been made. We have cases—and I know this because I have seen them—where there have been medical files demonstrating the substantiated physical abuse in a relationship and there will still be a shared custody order, which forces the protected parent to have an ongoing relationship with their abuser. The issue I take here is that that makes an assumption that as soon as you remove the intimate partner from that relationship that that individual poses no threat or risk to a child. That is the assumption that we are making there. We have got to have a debate around the way that parenting orders work when there are protection orders in place. There are a lot of contradictions when there is substantiated abuse in relationship where there is still ongoing contact with the abuser and a child.

I want to add to that that if we are going to have that discussion, we actually need to go back and review the way the Family Court reforms are working, or not working. We were promised a review this year, and I would say to the Minister that if we want the domestic violence legislation that we are reviewing now to be comprehensive and fulsome, we absolutely—I would say first—need to review the family law court reforms because they are hugely problematic. They are hugely problematic and are contributing to this problem tenfold. It is very hard to separate them out in the way that we are being asked to do as a Parliament. So I would really endorse that need, again, for us to review those reforms.

A second connection point is that this legislation, with the way that we operate our care and protection system—I think that we have to acknowledge that there are cases where there is domestic violence and Child, Youth and Family, as it was known, has gone to a protected partner and, essentially, said: “Unless you leave, we will remove your children.” We know that is happening. We know that is happening, and the trauma that that creates. We make an assumption that that removes a child from harm, without acknowledging the trauma of removal for a child, who in some cases will view themselves as the protector of the parent in that abusive relationship. It is a really simplistic view.

I understand how many practitioners may have come to that place, but it lacks a full understanding of what is happening in those relationships. We need to have a conversation about what is happening to children in those homes, and take a systemic response to children who are living in homes where there is pervasive domestic violence.

While we are currently experiencing in New Zealand an all-time low in a long time in terms of our crime rates, the big blot on that is the increasing amount of family violence. I think we would all agree, right across this House and right across New Zealand, that that is absolutely unacceptable. It is something that we do need to take a system-wide look at. Over the last little while, Minister Amy Adams has taken the lead on that, and I think it has been great to see what has come out so far.

What we have today, though, in this Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill is an omnibus bill that actually says we are not going to just tweak around little bits of the edges. Today, as we start this bill on its journey through the House, we are going to see six different Acts amended and that will change over 30 pieces of law. I think that is really critical at this point in terms of us actually putting another stake in the ground to say that we are not going to tolerate this any further.

Amongst those 30 changes to the law there are a number of things, and I will look forward to debating them all, particularly as we go through the select committee process and through the other stages in the House. But today I just want to focus a little bit on the fact that while it is absolutely appropriate that up to now we have been focusing on victims, there is actually something within this legislation that says we are going to look to have earlier and more effective interventions with perpetrators. That is not to excuse their behaviour. It is not to make allowances for them. But if we are actually serious about stopping this, we need to get in earlier with people to look at what is causing them to perpetrate, and we need to get that intervention in place so that we can actually either prevent victims from being revictimised or have people be able to detect early the signs that they might go down this path so that they may be able to seek help.

So, right across the board, I agree with this bill. I am looking forward to it coming to the Justice and Electoral Committee, and I am sure that we will have a really interesting time looking at the various issues. I look forward to seeing it come through.

It has been widely acknowledged tonight that we have a real problem in this country with sexual and domestic violence and child abuse. I think it is uncomfortable to say it, but we do have an epidemic of this violence. You know, I have got no doubt that if 2.5 percent of this country at any one time, or 15 to 20 percent of people over a lifetime in this country, got a virus that was completely debilitating for years and might even kill them, then we would have had a different response. But that is actually the exact situation that we are in in this country with the levels of intimate partner violence alone. Domestic violence is that serious a problem, and the good news about looking at it in that way is that it focuses our attention on the fact that if we intervene properly, it is something that we can change. It is an epidemic that we can turn around.

The Green Party will be supporting the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill—of course we will. Just in the last term of Parliament I gave over 30 speeches in this House advocating for reform of our laws and policies relating to domestic and sexual violence, so, in many ways, for me at least, it is a real relief to be able to get the opportunity to start debating this legislation. It is well overdue. While I was giving those speeches last term, and again in this term, I have to acknowledge there have been some small, discrete pieces of legislation that have passed that might be helpful. But also we have seen very significant erosions to our Family Court protections, housing, and social security, which all provide vital protections for victims and, when done right, provide measures of accountability for perpetrators, and those things together over time have fundamentally undermined protections, which we need to be addressing. I do want to just briefly go through some of those areas of concern so that people who are listening can consider whether the legislation that is in front of us today is going to address the clawbacks that we have seen over recent times.

Under the National Government we have seen changes to the police prosecution guidelines, making it harder for victims to get cases to court and for perpetrators to get access to programmes to change their behaviour. We have seen reforms to the Family Court that removed protections for victims of domestic violence and that were roundly criticised as focusing on money saving rather than on safety. I am now hearing in the community—which has absolutely horrified me, if I am honest—refuge advocates saying that they are now at times advising victims not to go to the Family Court because the decisions that are coming out of some of our Family Courts are putting those victims and their children in more danger than if they were not going to the court. We have been promised a review on this, as has already been pointed out, but we do need to be considering those things at the same time. It does not make sense to be looking at making changes to domestic violence legislation and not considering those reforms and the impact of them on the Family Court.

Because of part of those reforms, we have seen a loss of 25 percent of family law lawyers, which has made the systems of support much more difficult to access, and the restrictions that were put on legal aid resulted in some women paying thousands of dollars for protection orders, which they cannot even guarantee will keep them or their children safe because the courts are not consistently responding to them and acting on breaches. In some cases, the police are being told off for bringing minor breaches to the court and wasting the court’s time because they are under so much pressure. Then the perpetrators are seeing that as a kind of free card, and their violence is escalating and we are seeing much more harm. So we really have to be looking at those things in a package.

We have seen an increase in the number of domestic violence cases going to restorative justice, even though virtually no restorative justice practitioners in this country have been trained to safely work with victims and perpetrators of domestic violence, and there is nothing in this legislation that is actually acknowledging that or providing any guidance on the appropriateness or, indeed, a level of skill that should be required for doing that work. There has been a reduction in baseline funding for specialist agencies, which means that they have had to reduce paid hours, cut services, and spend money on a national fund-raising campaign to try to raise money to have a child advocate in refuges. This is why we are talking about this more. Demand is going up and we are seeing the police deal with this more, and the very services that are able to provide the support are having to cut back. It does not make sense, and the legislation—in the context we have been given for it—is not addressing that.

We have seen a further loss of specialist kaupapa Māori services, which we know are essential for effective processes for Māori, and we have seen the introduction of a presumption of shared parenting in the Family Court and a provision in the Vulnerable Children Act that makes it easier for children to be separated from their protective parent as a result of the behaviour of an abusive parent. That has already been touched on by Jacinda Ardern, but it is really critical to understand that while the outcomes of that are deeply profound—and that is part of the reason for the cycle of violence, because one of the things that results from that reality is that a child is left not understanding who was wrong. Often they will think that they are wrong and that the person who had the power and who used the abuse is no worse than the parent who was trying to protect them. It sends children no message about the direction and where we stand in our values as a country. It is critical that we change that, and there is very little in this legislation that does that.

On top of all this, we have seen changes to Housing New Zealand and Work and Income that make it much, much harder for victims to re-establish themselves after leaving a violent relationship. Of course these have just been more barriers in the way of victims being able to get and become safe. This system has been described by various reports as broken, fragmented, and inconsistent with gaps and overlaps and no infrastructure to hold together all these services and outcomes. I am certainly going to be interested in the conversation that we have in select committee to test whether this is going to provide that structure. Is this legislation the answer to that broken system? Because on my first reading of it, I have a concern that maybe it is not. We have an epidemic; we need a response worthy of that to actually let New Zealand know that we can turn this around. We can build safety in our communities, and we need this response to seriously start doing that.

However, considering all of those terrible changes that we have been seeing over the last few years, I do particularly want to acknowledge the Minister, Amy Adams, and offer her my wholehearted congratulations on getting this work on the Table. It is a turn-round from what we have been seeing, and I do not at all underestimate the amount of work and the political skill that must have gone into her being able to get this across the line. As inadequate as I might think it is, it is a very significant change in this Government’s approach.

There are just a few other points I want to touch on. In the regulatory impact statement it is pointed out that there is other allied work going on and that this is not everything. It talks about the Child, Youth and Family reforms as allied to this. But that for me is quite problematic because that legislation adds domestic violence in a completely token sense. It is not at all integrated and does not address the problems that victims of domestic violence have been reporting to us for years.

I also want to say that people I have spoken to about the bill are quite disappointed that there is nothing in here that is significant around the reforms of the Care of Children Act or the Vulnerable Children Act. It also talks about the work that is happening around sexual violence and the court processes there, and I would like to point out to this House that we have been waiting almost a decade for that work and we still have not got it yet, so it is pretty difficult to have confidence in that.

I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to address the House on the first reading of the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. First of all, can I add my voice to the congratulations to Minister Adams. As Jacinda Ardern mentioned in her contribution, the Labour Party and the Green Party did write to the Minister and sent her a letter asking for the opportunity to work with her on a piece of legislation like this and on the review that she did prior to this bill coming to the House.

The Minister was kind enough to include New Zealand First as another member of the Opposition in those conversations, so we appreciated that. I also note that some of the work put in by New Zealand First has found itself inside this piece of legislation. So we appreciate her openness and her invitation to participate, and we actually support the comments by our Green colleague Jan Logie that we do not underestimate the amount of effort that has had to go into bringing this bill to the House, even if we support it with reservations—and that is the comment that needs to be recorded from New Zealand First’s perspective. We are supporting this bill at its first reading but we have some severe reservations, and we hope that, like others have mentioned, the select committee process will bring out all those who are affected by what is this awful secret.

It is something that we try to keep secret about New Zealand society, and I think of Jan Logie’s description—if this was a disease, if this was an epidemic of typhoid, for example, the amount of effort and the speed with which it was being addressed, the money that was being put in, would be instantaneous. There would not be a conversation about it. There would not be a conversation about whether it was necessary or not to invest money into an issue such as that, and yet this is an epidemic inside New Zealand.

Inside the bill some of the concerns that we have are these. First of all, and I am going to say this, the title interests us. What is the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill? Nowhere else is the word “whānau” actually mentioned inside that bill, so we do not understand what that is about, and if the bill needs to be called the “Whānau Violence Legislation Bill”, then let us do that. I see that we have seen grandmothers in the Hawke’s Bay stand up recently and say: “We’re being beaten about by family members who are P addicts.” So that is family violence. That is whānau violence. If that is what this bill is about, then just name it for what it is.

The two names are a duplication of a name, and it either shows a lack of understanding about what the words actually mean, or, for some other reason, somebody has decided they have to tack this on in there. So we would like to know what the story is with the title. It is completely unnecessary and, although it might seem a really small point in what is a big issue that we are trying to address, in our view it starts to reinforce some negative stereotypes and some separation. And there is no separation here; this is a New Zealand issue.

There are a couple of other things around the wider range of safety, non-violence programmes, and prescribed services to be ordered when a safety order or a protection order is imposed. We are very pleased to see that. We are very pleased to see that because we have to—and the Minister spoke to it—change behaviours here. The majority of this bill deals with the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. The majority of what is being invested in this issue at the moment deals with what happens after violence has occurred and we have to shift our focus and our investment.

When I talk about investment—and, again, we hope that this is something that will come forward—right now it is estimated that family violence costs New Zealand between $4.1 billion and $7 billion per year. At the moment we spend $60 million per year on a response to family violence, and most of that is after the event. In the bill, the budget that has been set aside for the new conditions that are going to be implemented here suggests that it is going to increase the costs to around about $130 million over 4 years. Well, that is just another $32 million per year and it is just not enough.

If we compare this with what we do around road accidents, we see that road accidents cost $3.4 billion per year and we spend $297 million per year on trying to prevent them. Domestic violence costs us between $4.1 billion to $7 billion per year and we spend only $60 million and it is going to go up only by $32 million under this piece of legislation. It is not enough, and the select committee needs to look at widening the education programmes under that particular clause in this bill.

I want to mention programmes, for example, and education has been mentioned. Can I just say to the member Sarah Dowie with her contribution that under the umbrella of what was domestic violence, which is now called family violence, one of the recognised bullet points under that description is that if a child is present when violence takes place, they are a victim. So they are a victim. When we look under that umbrella, we have got several levels of victim and they must all be addressed.

We would suggest programmes like the women’s refuge in Rodney, with regard to the healthy relationships programme, where year 10s participate in the ability to recognise coercive control in themselves and in others—coercive control being the lowest-reported but probably the most insidious level of violence that we have in this country. It leads not only to just control but, generally, to violence. If we can stop coercive control or minimise coercive control through education programmes in our schools, which need to be funded by the State for every student, we have an opportunity to change the culture within a generation.

We have a crisis of anxiety inside our schools at the moment that counsellors will tell you about. There are young people who do not want to come to school. It is not because they do not want to come to school; it is because they are too frightened to leave home. Their very presence—and again it has been suggested in here—puts a chilling factor on violence, so they feel responsible to stay inside their homes to protect the parent who could possibly be the victim. There are opportunities here for this to be addressed and invested in further, and we hope that the select committee will actually raise those issues and go forward with them.

Again, we have complimented the Minister on the fact that she has brought this to the House. But let us be clear: this has been coming for a long time. I want to acknowledge the National Council of Women and what was in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) account. The CEDAW report, which the National Council of Women noted in 2007, had a recommendation that has finally found its way into the bill, which is great: “The Committee recommends that training be enhanced for the judiciary, public officials, law enforcement personnel and health-service providers”.

We would suggest that the select committee have a look at funding Women’s Refuge across New Zealand as the provider of that training. They should be funded in a similar way to how the School Trustees Association is funded—as experts having to deal on the front line, as trainers that are providing it now are doing so on a piece-by-piece basis, predominantly for free. Actually, the select committee should look at them as an organisation along, perhaps, with the Māori Women’s Welfare League or others who have been on the front line of this issue for so long, as being the training providers, and finally funding Women’s Refuge to a level that it should be funded at.

We also note that in 2012 it was reported that “High levels of violence against women are still evident, and NGOs consider that more women are disadvantaged by violence than any other factor. While a Government campaign has raised awareness of domestic violence and led to increased reporting to police, funding cuts have impacted on refuge services and women face higher barriers to accessing legal protection.” Jan Logie mentioned it. Only today the police have come out and said they do not have the numbers or resources to deal with what is a wave of reporting around family violence. This cannot be done in isolation. This will require investment and it will require more investment than $32 million on top of the $60 million per year that is currently happening.

The select committee, I hope—and perhaps I will be able to sit in on it—will need to look at numbers and make a recommendation for the Government—whatever Government sits on those benches—to put into the Budget the amount of money that is going to be required to shift this issue in the New Zealand culture. We need to do it. We need to do it now. We have talked about it too long. New Zealand First will support the bill to the select committee, and then we hope that the select committee will flesh it out a bit further. Kia ora.

Last week—or was it the week before; I think it was the week before—I was in Australia with my colleagues on the Justice and Electoral Committee, ably chaired by Sarah Dowie and Louisa Wall.

💬 Peeni Henare: Sounds like a junket.

Well, Peeni Henare says it sounds like a junket. We actually ran into him in the Australian Parliament, and I can say for sure that while we were doing work, he most definitely was on a junket. So one needs to be a bit careful when interjecting, Mr Henare. We were not on a junket; we were meeting with officials from the Office for Women in Canberra and the Attorney-General’s department—the federal Attorney-General’s department. We met with the ACT Legislative Assembly—various members from one of their standing committees dealing with family violence—and we had very productive discussions. Louisa Wall, I see, is nodding away.

It is interesting to see some of the challenges, actually, that Australia is grappling with, and the federal nature of Australia makes that quite tricky. We had quite extensive discussions around the difficulty of enforcing protection orders between states in Australia. Actually, that applies to New Zealand as well. One of the issues we canvassed with some of our colleagues over in Australia was trying to develop a better mechanism for the enforceability of protection orders issued in New Zealand against people in Australia, and maybe that is one of the issues that the committee will be looking at.

As we were over in Australia it was very clear that this is not a party political issue, I do not think. Obviously, it is an issue being considered by the Parliament and we are made up of political parties, but, actually, this bill is going to go to the select committee unanimously, I believe. I think it is going to be a good thing that we look at it on the Justice and Electoral Committee in a fairly non-partisan way. That tends to be how that committee works, actually. It certainly has been in the time that I have been a member of the committee.

Various speakers before me have canvassed all the issues. This bill is a start, and I echo what Tracey Martin says. I am looking forward to examining it on the Justice and Electoral Committee. Kia ora.

The next call is a split call. Mojo Mathers—5 minutes.

I rise to speak to the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. I commend the Minister for bringing this bill to the House. Other speakers have addressed the bill and spoken about why it is needed, and they have the concern that it does not go far enough. What I want to do is talk about a very specific clause that has very deep, personal significance to me, which is that the bill, in new section 3B in clause 9, updates the definition of family violence to include harm and ill-treatment to pets as part of that definition, and it recognises that as psychological abuse. There is no doubt that that change is needed.

In 2012 there was a ground-breaking report by the SPCA and Women’s Refuge called Pets as Pawns: The Co-existence of Animal Cruelty and Family Violence, which brought to public light the prevalence of cruelty and harm to family pets as a means of controlling partners and children in violent family situations. More than half of the respondents had partners who had threatened or actually harmed a family pet, more than a third had had a family pet killed at some point, and the report described the psychological impacts of that both on partners and children. It described how there are some women who could not leave their partner for fear that their loved family pet would be killed.

This is something that is close to my heart because I know personally the harm that that causes. When I was 9 years old my grandmother gave me a kitten. It was a beautiful tabby kitten with white paws and a pink nose. I can see that kitten now in front of my eyes. Of course, like all 9-year-old children, I loved that kitten and I played with it whenever I came home from school. I named that kitten Mittens, which is not very original, I know. But one day I came home from school and Mittens was not there, because during a family argument with my mother, a member of the family had taken a piece of wood and bashed my kitten on the head to show how angry they were, and it killed my kitten. Of course, I was devastated. I was 9 years old and I was as upset as you can imagine any 9-year-old child could be.

But the consequences of that are more than the tears that I shed on the day, because they become the deep and abiding fear of what people will do, of what members of your own family who are meant to keep you safe will do, when they are angry and want to control other members of the family. That an innocent animal, a pet, should be harmed in this way is just outrageous. So it is well overdue for this to be recognised in the definition of family violence, to recognise that this is psychological abuse, and that it needs to be recognised in the court in applications for protection orders and so on—that actually it is an incredibly controlling mechanism.

So I am very pleased to see this in the bill, and I applaud the Minister for making these changes. It will be very interesting to see what other stories come out at the select committee around family violence and around the many multifaceted aspects of it in New Zealand.

I call Stuart Nash—5 minutes.

John Clarke wrote one of my all-time favourite songs, and it starts out: “At the dawn of the day in the great Southern Ocean, when the world’s biggest fish was being landed”—and we all know the chorus. It goes on to say: “We don’t know how lucky we are, mate. We don’t know how lucky we are.” But the thing is that for around about 525,000 Kiwis, they would listen to this song and go: “Where is this paradise that Fred Dagg is talking about?”. For 525,000 Kiwis, domestic violence is a very real part of their lives, of their community. They do not see the wonderful country, the fantastic image that we sell ourselves to the world with, because, for them, they are living with violence day in, day out.

The tragedy is that only about 20 percent of domestic violence is actually reported to the police, and there are still around 110,000 call outs to the police. About 3 or 4 months ago I went to the police watch station on a Monday morning. What the police did was they had the three major districts in the Hawke’s Bay. They had Hastings, they had Napier, and they had Wairoa, and they had lights on each of these areas. They said these were the domestic violence call outs they had had over the weekend. I said: “What, per month or, you know, whatever?”. They said: “No, no, just on the Saturday and just on the Sunday.” You are kidding me!

You know, I do not think many New Zealanders understand. Obviously, 500,000 New Zealanders do, but I do not think many New Zealanders who live in the sanctity of a nice, warm, dry home and go to work etc., understand the epidemic that is domestic violence in this country. The police attend 279 calls each day—on average about one every 5½ minutes—for domestic violence. Children are present in 80 percent of all domestic violence instances, and a number of MPs have talked about the damage this does to the nation’s children. About 32 Kiwis are murdered every single year—13 women, 10 men, and nine children are murdered. You know, this is a really serious problem.

We are supporting this bill—I must say that—the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. We are supporting this, but there are a number of things in the bill that I have real concerns about. Let me tell you one thing: in 2015 there were 4,624—4,624—proceedings against people who had breached a protection order. That was up by nearly 20 percent from 3 years earlier. These are court-ordered protection orders that are supposed to keep Kiwis safe when they are in a violent relationship. We need the teeth here.

There is an organisation in Napier called DOVE. It runs programmes that give men, basically, strategies for dealing with their anger, as opposed to smacking their women or their kids. It gives them strategies on how to deal with this. It is really concerned, with the directive that it must provide all information to the Ministry of Social Development, that a whole number of men will not self-medicate and come along and end up with these strategies. So while this is good, you know, to put the measures in place, we cannot forget that there are a whole lot of other agencies and other measures that we need to do.

The National Government has announced that there are going to be 880 new police. Police actually said it wanted 1,165, but with the 880 new police the Minister has said that what she wants to see is a 10 percent decrease in murders as a result of domestic violence. That is only three murders a year. We need to resource the police in a way that allows them to deal with this, because this is a real issue. Let us not sweep this under the carpet. Let us not think this is just someone else’s problem, because it is not. Domestic violence is at, I think, epidemic proportions in our communities. We need to deal with this. We need to fund the agencies in a way that allows them to provide the interventions. We need to ensure that the police have the resources to protect people with protection orders and protect our community. This is a start. This is a start, but it is not enough. We need to do a whole lot more, and what I would like to see the Minister do is commit to the next stage, which is really resourcing the police and the community organisations that will make a difference.

I too stand in support of the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill in the name of the Hon Amy Adams. This bill is the biggest overhaul of our family violence laws in 20 years. The new principles within the bill will guide decisions in protecting victims from all forms of violence and minimise disruption to their lives. It will guide practitioners to work together to protect families and victims. Another aspect of this bill is the improvement to access for victims to protection orders. Those orders will be better tailored to the vulnerable victims. They will have an easier application. Those more vulnerable victims I speak of are our older people and people with disabilities. This bill provides a new foundation in tackling the unacceptable level of domestic violence in New Zealand, and I have great pleasure in commending it to the House.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure to speak on this, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill, in its first reading. I am a proud member of our Justice and Electoral Committee, so I look forward to scrutinising the passage of this legislation through the House. I too want to pick up on the title of the bill and just make some comments about the relationship between family violence and sexual violence. A lot of people will not know that of women who experience family violence, 80 percent of them also experience sexual violence. I am already putting to this House a proposition that this should be the “Family and Sexual Violence Bill”. I do want to commend Minister Adams for her leadership of this issue to date. She has been very generous in her collaboration across the House, and so I do feel this is an area where we have cross-party support for actually creating something that is going to make a difference. I want to commend all the speakers before me, because I think we have kind of traversed the variety of opinion about how important this piece of legislation is.

As a member of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians—actually, for the last 5 years I have co-chaired that group, initially with Dr Jackie Blue—I want to acknowledge my colleague Jo Hayes, who is in the House today, and also Maureen Pugh, who has just taken over that responsibility on behalf of the National Government. In a letter that we actually put out on 18 September 2015 we noted our support for global action petition Girls Not Brides, which was being presented to the United Nations. I want this House to acknowledge that 80 percent of the MPs in this House pledged to end child brides.

One of the particular issues I know we are all incredibly passionate about, and that Jo Hayes has a bill in the ballot about, titled the Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill, is actually related to some of the changes that the Minister of Justice is proposing in this legislation around coercion to marry. Coercion, by definition, is about persuading by using force or threat—persuading someone to do something or coercing them to do something. One of the missing elements in this section of this piece of legislation is actually to give effect to Jo Hayes’ bill. That bill was originally Dr Jackie Blue’s bill. I note that Claudette Hauiti had it in her name when she was in the House, and now Jo Hayes has that bill.

I want to put on record that this House would support specific amendment to the Marriage Act, in addition to some of the other legislative changes, to ensure that 16- and 17-year-olds can get married only with the consent of the court. At the moment it is with the consent of parents, but given that section of the legislation is about coercion to marry, we should actually recognise that in some circumstances that coercion is by parents of their children. It was particularly highlighted by the National Council of Women of New Zealand in 2013, and by the United Nations, that New Zealand had to do something about this particular issue, and so I am hoping through this process we will get consensus to make that particular amendment.

I also would like to highlight that in the coercion to marry area there are actually some other issues, and those issues are relevant—and it is good to see the Minister of Immigration in the House—to international marriage. A lot of New Zealanders will not know that there are about 400 partnership visas issued every year. These are New Zealand residents or citizens who go over, mostly to India, and get married, and under a partnership visa their wife or spouse is allowed to stay in New Zealand. After a year the husband then has the opportunity to apply on behalf of their wife for permanent residency, but in some situations that application is not done. We know women who are living in incredibly abusive situations who end up fleeing to providers such as Shakti because the family violence is so intolerable that they actually end up risking their whole life. They get alienated from their families and they get disowned by their communities. It is an issue that we need to deal with and that I want to put on the table.

One of the other things that our cross-party women’s group did was to write to the Minister of Immigration and ask whether or not this was a form of trafficking. From our perspective, women are being coerced into coming to New Zealand. They end up being slaves in their own homes. They are not allowed to leave. I expect that this piece of legislation will provide an opportunity for us to deal with that particular issue. I also want to put on the table that as a cross-party group this issue has actually been the only issue that we as women across the House have identified as an area of collaboration.

One of the other issues that needs to be addressed, in terms of our international marriage context, is around dowry abuse and, also, honour-based abuse. We have had instances in New Zealand where women have been burnt and have suffered acid attacks. If we are going to futureproof our legislation, we think these are also issues that should be created under a new section of the bill titled “International marriage”.

From a personal perspective, I would like to highlight some of the issues in my electorate, particularly with the ability to get protection orders. In doing so, I would like to acknowledge Women’s Refuge, which does a fantastic job of advocating for our women who need protection orders. This piece of legislation, when it goes through, will now allow Women’s Refuge and other third-party NGOs to apply on behalf of women to get those protection orders. For all intents and purposes, we take the issue of educational issues of having to fill in the forms or resource issues because people do not have access to lawyers to complete these forms on their behalf. So we will have greater access to protection orders.

One of the other things I want to put on the table is the ability for police to apply for protection orders on behalf of victims, and for those protection orders not to be contested. I have a particular constituent who was going through the process of getting a protection order, and the person she was getting that protection order against actually fought her every step of the way and made it incredibly difficult for her to get her protection order. I think if the police actually think it is serious enough—and I am looking at my colleague Stuart Nash, who leads that particular area on behalf of our caucus—that is a Supplementary Order Paper that I think, with consultation with the police, we can also advocate for.

Just in summary, I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge all the providers who work in this area. In South Auckland—and I know my colleague Aupito William Sio and I have, for the last 3 or 4 years now, been invited to our White Ribbon dinner, which has been run by Safer Aotearoa Family Violence Prevention Network: Raewyn Bhana, George Ngātai, and people who every day of the week are advocating and ensuring that those families who are living in family violence situations have the support that they require.

I would also like to acknowledge Gandhi Nivas, which has actually created another opportunity, which is embedded in this legislation, for the police to be supported through their police safety orders, and now having community providers that are able to take men for up to 5 days. They allow the women and children to stay at home, and the men are then given accommodation and support through these other providers, and Gandhi Nivas is one of them.

Finally, I also would like to acknowledge the work of our police. I think our police do an incredible job to keep not only children and families safe but also communities safe. I know that our police are doing a lot of work to make sure that services are wrapped around families and that we ensure that families who come in to the system are given all the support that they require so that we can actually start addressing some of the cycles of family violence that happen in our communities. This is a very important piece of legislation, and I look forward to being part of the process. I encourage as many people as possible to make submissions. Thank you.

I was not expecting to take a call on the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill but I am very pleased to do so, not only because it is a subject that is dear to my heart but, actually, because I think it is a subject that is dear to the heart of every member of this House. It has been encouraging to hear such intelligent and sensitive contributions from members across the House, and I do thank them for that.

I am very mindful of the fact that the galleries are filling, and I would flatter myself to think that they are here for me, but I know that they are not. Nevertheless, given the fact that the main act appears not to be quite present at this moment—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Keep talking.

—ha, ha!—I shall oblige the Opposition on this occasion by assisting them out of their little predicament while my very good friend the senior Opposition whip sees whether he can rectify the minor problem that exists at this moment.

In all seriousness, this is a very important bill, and I endorse the comments of Louisa Wall, the member who spoke before me. In particular, as she did, I want to acknowledge the tremendous work that women’s refuges do around the country and to sincerely thank them, because what incredible challenges—what heartbreaking cases—they sometimes have to deal with. In my own electorate, in Hamilton West, I want to acknowledge the fine work that our women’s refuge does.

We cannot do enough to try to get on top of this problem, because it is an astonishing blight on our society that such a terrible situation exists in a country of such wonderful opportunity, where we have so much going for ourselves and where there are so many wonderful things happening.

I am delighted to be able to say now that the other reason why the galleries are so full has emerged. I therefore have great pleasure in commending this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee.