Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill proposes changes to the Marriage Act 1955 and the Care of Children Act 2004. The subsequent changes mean that this bill’s title will also change to the Minors (Court Consent to Relationships) Legislation Act. I needed to say that in the opening of the second reading of this bill.

I’m very pleased to have this bill make it so far into the House—the second reading. I want to thank the Justice Committee for the rigorous analysis that was done on this bill, and the submitters that came in and gave their views on this bill, as well.

The bill is quite narrow-focused, because the bill that was developed, authored by Dr Jackie Blue, came about because of issues with migrant women being forced into a marriage by their parents. So, therefore, the bill started all the way back then, around about 2013, whereby Dr Jackie Blue brought it to the House. She put it into the draw, and I was fortunate enough to have it in my name just recently. I want to acknowledge the Hon Maggie Barry, who also was a holder of this bill, caring for it until such time as it was pulled out of the ballot.

As I said, the bill is quite narrow-focused. The reason that the title of the bill had to change was because during the deliberations within the select committee, there was a big discussion around the inclusion of civil unions, because we wanted to block off various areas where coercion of marriage could actually slip in. So civil unions were included in this bill. There was also a big discussion around de facto relationships, and I must admit that I too almost overlooked the area around cultural marriage and how that was viewed as a de facto - type relationship. So, therefore, I was very pleased to get some advice and have a discussion with Priyanca Radhakrishnan from out of the committee over this. So, and so that’s why de facto relationships have been included, and hence the changes to the two Acts.

So some people may say—and even when the bill was drawn out, I had phone calls saying—“So that means my 16- and 17-year-olds can’t get married?” That’s not the guts of this bill. What it does—and I did say this—is that young people aged 16 to 17, if they wanted to be married once this bill becomes legislation, that consent would have to come through a Family Court judge, and that was the final way of actually blocking out a forced marriage or coercion to marriage.

I want to make my contribution quite brief tonight, because I know that there are others that also want to contribute their pieces to this bill. I want to acknowledge the women of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians, and I think that they have done a great job in actually supporting this bill and helping to shepherd this bill through. I’m really pleased that tonight we’re starting a celebration of a bill that has—from my last discussions across the parties—cross-party support. I think Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians have done a great job in supporting this bill right through.

There are lots of contributions that I look forward to hearing from tonight and, most probably, the next time we have this bill to carry on the second reading, so it is without any further ado that I wholly support this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I begin by congratulating that member, Jo Hayes, for being the lucky holder of the bill at the time that it was drawn from the ballot, and for shepherding the bill through to this stage of the House, and to say that Labour will support the bill. The bill addresses a very important issue that won’t affect people in huge numbers, but we know that with the changing make-up of New Zealand society, there are some cultural practices whereby certainly older members of families wish to see younger members married at an early age.

It is incumbent on this House, as the Parliament of a liberal democracy such as ours, to make sure that those in the community and the more vulnerable in the community—and that includes younger people—have appropriate protections, so that where there is a possibility that young people may be vulnerable to forced marriages because of family and other cultural expectations, in this country they are afforded some protection, and this bill takes the right steps to provide that protection. So for young people who are 16 or 17 years of age and who are under the pressure of family expectation to marry at that age or to enter a civil union, they cannot be compelled to do that. There will be a requirement for the Family Court to provide some supervision and for a Family Court judge to go through a process to ascertain the genuine wishes of a partner to such a marriage or civil union, and, if necessary, to call on a cultural report or take whatever other appropriate steps, and for a Family Court judge to give their blessing, so that we can be sure and the community can be sure there is appropriate consent. That, I think, and the measures contained in the bill provide an appropriate protection that will apply to the small number of people who will be under this sort of pressure.

I think the honourable member Joanne Hayes adverted to this herself, and that is concern about the application of these processes to potential de facto marriages. The reality is, unlike with a marriage and unlike with a civil union, where the partners to those arrangements have to apply for a licence or go through a formal process, you don’t have to for a de facto marriage; it’s just a question of living together in a relationship that looks like marriage. That’s what a de facto marriage is. That can happen without the intervention of the State or any agency or organ of the State, and so I suppose I am just left wondering what the mechanics would be of a process that would bring a party, or parties, to such an arrangement before a court to seek consent for a de facto arrangement.

It may well be that those arrangements will simply happen by dint of happenstance and no one will get to exercise an appropriate consent. It doesn’t mean to say that at least one of the parties to such an arrangement might not be under some sort of coercion, might not be under some sort of force. Unless that person has the means to bring themselves before the court, I think that would pose some difficulties. Nevertheless, let the committee of the whole House tease that out a little further and explore it and examine it. It may well be that there’s an opportunity for some appropriate change by way of a Supplementary Order Paper, but I simply raise that point.

The principle of the bill, the objective of it, is absolutely correct, and we want to see these measures taken because that is important. A bit in the way we did when the legislation we’ve just passed before the House in relation to domestic violence, a coerced marriage or a coerced relationship is simply another form of domestic violence, and if this provides protection to young, vulnerable people to prevent them from being the victim of this form of domestic violence, then it is another entirely appropriate and sensible bill for this House to promulgate.

Like the previous member, I acknowledge that this is a very focused piece of legislation and it does not require, I think, me to pontificate much further. So I will bring my contribution to an end and confirm once again that the Labour Party supports the bill. It will do good things for that small number of members of our community who might otherwise be vulnerable to this, and it is yet again another plank that you would expect from a Parliament taking its responsibility seriously to reduce or eliminate the prospects of domestic violence.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this, the Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill. I’d just like to acknowledge the sponsoring member, Jo Hayes. She has done an outstanding job of shepherding this bill through the Justice Committee. I’ve only recently come on to this select committee, but Jo has been at every meeting and she’s done an outstanding job of explaining the bill—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Full name.

Jo Hayes—sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. So I just want to commend her for bringing this bill to the House.

Can I just say that the only real issue that I had with it—and there was a fair bit of debate on the committee about this—was around de facto relationships and whether or not we were going to require 16- or 17-year-olds to have their de facto relationship approved and recognised by a judge. Initially when I looked at this, I was against it, because what I was concerned about was that if a young lady entered into a de facto relationship that wasn’t approved by a judge and then, for some reason, the relationship fell apart, she would lose any rights in terms of property rights or legal rights because the de facto relationship would not be legally recognised. So we had quite a big debate around this, and where we landed on it was that—and Priyanca Radhakrishnan was actually very good at pointing out the fact that in some cultures, they could actually use a de facto marriage as a vehicle to having and recognising it as a type of formal marriage. They were going to find a way to get around the spirit of what the bill was actually trying to achieve, and so I personally recognise that.

We landed, I think, in a very good place where ultimately we decided actually that to protect the young people, their marriage and their de facto relationship should go in front of a judge and the judge should sign off on that and authorise it. But we had a fair bit of debate on it. It went back and forward and through quite a few of the meetings. We had the advisers come to us, I think, on two or three different occasions so that we could really test it, but I’m very happy with where we’ve landed on this.

So, overall, the bill is a very, very good one. It puts in place the protections that we, as a country and as a nation, should feel very proud that they have been put in place, and I recommend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is indeed a privilege to stand and take a call on this bill, and it’s actually quite an emotional one for me because a lot of the work that I did in the sector, in the refuge movement—a large part of it, at least—centred around the issue of forced marriage, and it’s one that, personally, I’ve been part of years of lobbying, along with the Shakti Community Council, the organisation that I worked for at the time. This is a bill that is reasonably simple. It makes quite a simple change to the Marriage Act, but it has a long history, it has a complicated past, and it has an absolutely transformational future.

At this point, I want to thank the member Joanne Hayes, whose name the bill is in, and also Dr Jackie Blue, whose name the bill was in formerly, I understand. Of course, as the Hon Mark Mitchell pointed out, we had some very robust discussions at the select committee about this. We nutted out the various bits of the bill that we thought might potentially be problematic. I actually want to thank all the members of the Justice Committee for the part that they played in that process.

This bill is about keeping minors safe. It may not impact the lives of a large number of 16- and 17-year-olds, but, for those that it will impact, it will play a huge role in keeping them safe.

So at this junction, actually, I just wanted to begin with an excerpt from a poem by a Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran, “On Children”. He says:

“Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

for they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”

That, in essence, in a sense, is what this bill is about. So what does it do? I mentioned that it’s reasonably simple, in terms of what the bill does. Currently, under the Marriage Act 1955, 16- and 17-year-olds who want to get married have to get parental consent in order to be able to do so. This bill, if it passes into law, will change that, and it will take away the requirement for parental consent and replace that with Family Court consent. So what that means is if you’re a 16- or 17-year-old and you want to get married, you go to the Family Court and get consent.

That takes away the loophole, in a sense, because when we’re talking about forced marriage with regard to 16- and 17-year-olds, in most of the cases that I have seen and in most of the cases that front-line service agencies have seen it is the parents who force those children into marriage. The reasons are diverse, and I’ll go into that a little bit.

My Master’s thesis was on this topic—on the topic of forced marriage more broadly, and it included underage marriage as well. So forced marriage sits squarely within the continuum of violence against women, and it’s often closely linked to honour-based violence.

Forced marriage occurs for many reasons. Sometimes it’s to do with immigration, because if a young girl here is a New Zealand citizen, then there are some cases—and I’ve worked with a case that falls into this space as well—that, basically, parents would try to get her married to someone from overseas because there was an immigration aspect to it and there was money involved as well.

Sometimes parents are mortified when their children—especially their daughters, who have been exposed to a different set of norms and practices here in New Zealand—want to, say, date or dress in certain ways that are considered unacceptable. In some of those cases, and, again, not all—at this point, I just want to make the point that we’ve got to be very careful that we don’t tar entire communities with the same brush. This doesn’t happen across ethnic communities, and it’s actually a human rights violation rather than an aspect of culture, as it were.

So in some of those cases that I mentioned, girls are coerced into marriage to preserve a sense of honour, as it were, and that of their families. Sometimes it’s actual forced marriage; sometimes it’s threatened, and that’s used to control the sexual interest or behaviour, or to protect perceived cultural or religious ideas and ideals of honour.

A forced marriage is different from an arranged marriage because the concept of choice is not there. Duress is not confined to just physical coercion. Sometimes, and oftentimes, it’s huge amounts of psychological and emotional coercion that are at play as well, and that’s actually very often much harder to detect than the physical coercion. Sometimes parents actually think that they’re acting in the best interests of the child because that’s the mind-set—and I don’t want to go into too much detail because this is taking a little bit away from the bill, but it is the context within which the bill sits. Sometimes that emotional and psychological coercion is not seen for what it is. It’s seen as looking out and trying to protect the best interests of that child.

I worked with a young woman who was dating someone who was from a different religious background to herself. The family didn’t want that relationship to continue and didn’t want that marriage to happen, and in some of those cases, forced marriage is then used to ensure that a marriage doesn’t take place or that a relationship is broken.

Now the issue of forced marriage is often positioned as cultural rather than a human rights issue, yet in 2005, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said, “Forced marriages and child marriages constitute serious and recurrent violations of human rights and the rights of the child. It is an outrage that, under the cloak of respect for the culture and traditions of certain communities, there are authorities which tolerate forced marriages and child marriages although they violate the fundamental rights of each and every victim.” The position that I adopted—and I continue to adopt, throughout the work that I have done in this field—is that it is important not to succumb to cultural relativism by turning a blind eye to the issue of condoning it as a cultural or religious practice, because it’s really not.

Forced marriage is practised in many societies around the world. It’s not confined to specific cultures or religions. No major world religion condones the practice of forced marriage. Finally, profiling it as such is actually detrimental to the women who are trying to get out of such practices, because whole communities don’t condone this practice. It’s only an issue amongst those who choose to exert power and control over the women in their family, and, as the Hon Andrew Little pointed out, this is actually a form of domestic violence.

So this bill—we had I think it was close to 30 submitters on this bill. Eighty percent were in favour. As I mentioned before, it’s taken an incredibly long time—years of lobbying and advocacy from the sector—to get to this point. So I just want to thank everyone, once again, who has been involved in ensuring that this bill has reached where we’re at today, where I understand there’s unanimous support across the House for it. We have worked well together. This will actually impact the lives of people, and especially the 16- and 17-year-olds we’re talking about, who are more vulnerable, who struggle just to survive, and whose voices are often not heard in this House.

So I thank everyone in the sector who’s worked to ensure that those voices are heard, and I thank everyone for supporting this bill. It’s a great pleasure and a great privilege that I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.