Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill

I’m very happy to take a call on this, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. I note that—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Someone does actually have to move a second reading, normally from the Government.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek leave for the House to progress to the next item on the Order Paper while arrangements are made for that motion to be moved.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, you can seek leave, of course.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I sought leave.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, that’s right. You sought leave. I’m putting the leave. Is—sorry, the leave is denied.

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

I’ve not been part of the discussion on this particular bill, but for me and for this Government, when we’re talking about the Family—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

—and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m sorry to interrupt the member.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Madam Deputy Speaker, this seems a little bit on the messy side. I wonder if you might explain to people who could be looking on, who might want to understand, just what has transpired here. You called the Hon Mark Mitchell after a period of silence from the Government. He began his speech, at which point you interrupted him and made it clear that the process was that there should be a Government Minister moving the second reading. Now, that has occurred, but does it naturally follow, on a second reading, that a Government Minister then has a speech? It’s normally the chair of the select committee that has the speech at that point.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Unfortunately, Mr Brownlee, in order to have something debated on the floor, there does actually need to be a motion. So we did actually have to call on the Government to move the motion, and only a Minister can move that motion. So I do regret having to interrupt the Hon Mark Mitchell, but we did need a motion for him to debate. His turn will certainly come.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Madam Speaker—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Speaking further to the point of order?

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yeah, I’m just wanting to be clear myself, because I’m still learning about parliamentary process. It would appear then that the motion was not initially put after that period of silence because the Government didn’t know what it was doing.

💬 Kiritapu Allan: Speaking to the point of order—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t need any further discussion on this. We now have a motion on the floor. The Hon Aupito William Sio is speaking to the bill at the second reading.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I’m happy to make a contribution with regard to the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. This bill is about the Government position on preventing and eliminating family violence, and is one of the greatest opportunities to improve New Zealanders’ well-being. I’m going to allow my other colleagues to tackle the specific parts of the bill.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak at a Faith2Move mountain conference. The first time it was held, it was organised by Affirming Works. At this conference, the Pacific communities had brought together a number of church ministers to look at what the Pacific community does about eliminating family violence, and, in particular, looking at how we go about eliminating sexual violence. It is the feeling and the belief of all New Zealanders that until we eliminate family violence, eliminate sexual violence in our families and in our communities, we are not going to be in a position to realise the fullest potential of this country of ours, and, in particular, provide opportunities for the next generation to achieve greater well-being than they have ever had.

One of the issues that I’ve been determined to raise with Pacific peoples, and that has been raised from time to time in my ongoing engagement with Pacific peoples throughout New Zealand’s regions, is that this is an area that many are afraid to talk about openly, because often it involves family members. Often both the offender and the victim are members of our family. For far too long—and this is the voice, certainly, that is coming from our young people, who often find themselves in situations where they are disassociated from families and their communities. We have one of the highest suicide rates. That is nothing to brag about, but they’re just hard truths that this bill attempts to address.

We often find ourselves, as members of the Pacific community, feeling that we disassociate ourselves when we’re talking about family violence and sexual abuse in the family because of the shame that comes upon us when we’re talking about family members. I’ve asked and will continue to ask Pacific communities throughout New Zealand, at all levels of our Pacific infrastructures and social structures, to provide the leadership that is necessary to enable the next generation of Pacific peoples in New Zealand to be able to achieve their fullest potential as contributors to New Zealand’s economy at all levels.

I have found that our Pacific communities have to move on from this space of feeling the whakamā, as would be the word in Māori, o le mā in Samoan, or, basically, just feeling a sense of shame to talk about these things. But until our communities confront these issues head on, until we recognise the harm that it causes our family members—our young people, in particular, and our mothers, our sisters, our aunts. Until we confront these head on, until we recognise the harm that it causes, we’re not in a position to be able to be receptive to the works that many, many organisations are involved with at the moment—namely, Affirming Works, Le Va, the work that Pasefika Proud are leading. These—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. We are debating the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill in the second reading, after the Justice Committee has given this bill extensive consideration. The Minister has spoken for almost five minutes without any reference to the bill, or any reference to the select committee report on the bill, and is out of order.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, I do understand the point of order, and I will say to the Minister speaking that the second reading is a really important part of the process, whereby the recommendations from the select committee, from the work that has been done in the select committee, are actually accepted by the House. Therefore, during his speech, he does have to make some reference to the select committee and the changes they have made, the recommendations they are making, in order for the second reading to then accept the work that the committee has done. So whilst he is making comments on the wider aspects of family violence, I do ask him, at this stage, if he would come to at least make reference to the work that the select committee has done, so that the House can then debate whether to accept those recommendations or not.

The point I was making in making the general reference is that in the Pacific communities this is a particular issue that is of concern to me. I have said, in the opportunities that I’ve had to speak directly with the Pacific community, that we need to take on board the thrust that this bill is now bringing forward.

So I make reference now to the specific amendments of this bill. The Supplementary Order Papers that will be introduced at the committee of the whole House ensure that victims have enough time and protection to seek support services they need, to better identify family violence offending, and to recognise the evolving status of society’s understanding of family violence—who it affects and how. The definition of family violence is being clarified and new offences introduced. A better recognition of the situation in which family violence can occur is also reflected in the Supplementary Order Papers—modernising the Domestic Violence Act by updating the structure and language.

While that is important, and while the work of the select committee is to be commended and, certainly, will guide the debate here and in the committee of the whole House, in terms of protection orders applied for by a child—and I make reference also to the programmes and the prescribed services and orders relating to property—many of the details of this bill will go over the head of many communities. I made reference specifically to the Pacific community because of my own responsibility in the portfolio that I hold. I see this as a matter that I called on Pacific communities for, that we have to be the authors of our own solution within the frameworks of this particular bill.

I don’t want to take too much time off the House, but, simply, I say that the statistics that this bill attempts to address speak for themselves. One in three Kiwi women experience physical or sexual violence from a partner in their lifetime. More than a quarter of our country’s children have witnessed family violence. Between 2009 and 2015, 194 New Zealanders were killed as a result of family violence. Whilst this bill provides some of the answers, ultimately the answers lie in our communities, because it will be our communities, our families, and our leaders at all levels who must pick up the mantle of what this bill produces and implement it.

I make reference also to the difficulty of some communities, particularly my own, where violence and sexual abuse in the families is a thing that is often kept in the dark because of the shame it brings. And, yes, we might feel confident in supporting everything that is in this bill and saying that this is going to be the solution, but I want to say to this House that this is only the start of the process. The real solution is when minds are changed. The real solution is when people recognise that there is a wrong being committed. The real solution is for all of us to do our part, not necessarily to rely on this House and the solutions that this House comes up with by legislation. But the real solutions lie when we’re able to change the mind-set of communities, that are often bound by cultural norms and will not allow them to see the darkness and the harm that are often caused. So, without further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the Hon Mark Mitchell, and you have the full 10 minutes.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Just to put it on the record in this House, the reason why I took a call while this House was waiting for the Minister to arrive or for a Minister to move a motion is because we take the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill extremely seriously.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams, who has been the Minister leading this work, and I just want to point out the fact that had I not taken that call, this bill, right now, would not be getting debated in the House. The Minister himself—the Minister of Justice—did not see fit to get himself into this House to move a motion to allow us to debate this bill. So don’t sit on the other side of the House—they might find it funny; there’s someone over there laughing. It’s actually not that funny. If you want to be serious, if you want to take this issue seriously, then show that you’re serious about it.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am actually quite serious about it.

💬 Kiritapu Allan: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. There’s a long convention in this House and as per the Standing Orders that we don’t make reference to members who are not within the Chamber, and—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m sorry; I’m going to sit the member down, because, actually, in this case, this House was held up because the Minister was not available to move a motion that was on the Order Paper. So it is not about someone being absent; it’s about the Government not being able—[Kiritapu Allan stands] You’re not going to argue with me. It is not a Standing Order.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. And that’s why I chose to stand and take a call on this: because, actually, I want to hear what the chairman of the Justice Committee, Raymond Huo, has got to say. I want to hear Greg O’Connor’s contribution—another member that has dedicated a large part of his adult life to dealing with family violence. I want to hear what Ginny Andersen has got to say—another member that has worked within the police system and has probably got a contribution to make and some comments to make around this bill. I want to hear what my colleagues have to say. I want to hear our police spokesperson, Chris Bishop, and his contribution on this bill, or the Hon Dr Nick Smith and what his thoughts are on it, because this is important.

We stood in this House, and we debated a bill that the honourable Jan Logie brought through in terms of domestic violence. I had to tolerate the fact that I was continually attacked and challenged around my own commitment to dealing with and trying to address the family violence issue—and it is a big issue in this country—when, actually, I’ve dedicated most of my own adult life to dealing with that.

It’s not some sound bite. It’s not something that we talk about just because it’s politically convenient. It’s actually something, fundamentally, that’s very deep and part of my own DNA. I’ve spent and dedicated most of my adult life into trying to improve people’s lives and trying to get on top of family violence. So I find it pretty deeply offensive that I’m having to take a call in this House when the Government should be moving the motion to try and keep this bill debated. So thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to lay that out there so that people at home will actually understand exactly what did happen and what went on in this House. People can judge for themselves the actions of others.

This bill implements the decisions announced by the National Government in September 2016 aimed at breaking the pattern of family violence and reducing the harm and cost inflicted on those who suffer violence and the wider New Zealand society, including increasing access to risk and needs assessments and services and more accurately recording family violence. And I have to say that there’s been a very recent case that we’ve all probably been following, and that was the tragic case of the mother in a small township in the central North Island—her husband was convicted of it recently—where she was killed. She was left in the ute and was pushed off a boat ramp, and she sat there for almost 12 months.

One of the indicators that we know can clearly tell us whether a woman is in serious danger of maybe ending up as a homicide statistic is the fact the offender will often start to grab them around the throat and hold them around the neck. If you go back and if you have a look at the history in that case, you would have seen that, actually, he had started grabbing her around the neck and holding her around the throat.

So under this bill, that information has to be captured and has to be shared with the relevant agencies so that it’s a red flag and it becomes something that we can act on much quicker in terms of getting measures in place to provide the protection that she would have needed. Then, perhaps, we could have prevented a terrible and a tragic outcome for the family—and for her, obviously.

Some of the things that we have done, in terms of our term in Government—and I do congratulate the Government for bringing this bill to the House, although it was reported back by the select committee in August of last year, so it has been languishing on the Order Paper. I would have preferred to have seen it come into the House before the domestic violence in the workplace legislation, but it’s good to have it here now, and it’s good that we are debating it.

In 2016, National introduced a $132 million package of reforms which overhauled family violence laws and the way the system prevents and responds to family violence. In Budget 2017, we invested $37.2 million into targeting family violence services, including the Integrated Safety Response pilot, and I would make an appeal to the Minister—and I know that I put this to him today in the House—please, let’s see the funding switched on again for the Integrated Safety Response pilot, which we knew was working.

It also folded in the Gang Action Plan, and I see we have the Minister of Police in the House today. I know that he’s taken a very firm stand against the gangs and organised crime. One of the things that he could do is talk with his colleague the Minister of Justice and actually switch the funding back on for this programme. It was achieving results, it’s a good programme, it’s already been developed; keep using it.

In 2017, the investment fund for mental health saw an additional $4 million to pilot a culturally responsive therapy service for children aged five to 12 years that have experienced or been exposed to family or sexual violence. I think the one thing that we can all agree with in this House is that, very sadly, when we see family violence, often the perpetrators have been victims themselves. They have actually grown up in an environment where they’ve been the victim of serious violence, sexual assault, and psychological abuse, and I think we’re all committed in this House and in this Parliament to try and tackle those really tough social issues.

The only point that I would make, though, is that because you have suffered, because you have been a victim yourself—that doesn’t give you a licence to create more victims. It gives you a licence to seek help and seek support, and this is where the real investment is, what can really make a big difference in terms of Government’s investment: actually getting in much earlier in people’s lives and providing that support and that help, and maybe staying alongside of them for a lot longer, as well.

National took action across the board to better protect victims of family violence by a new 24/7 national sexual violence helpline to provide nationally accessible information and support to people affected in any way by sexual harm. We established the Ministerial Group on Family Violence and Sexual Violence. This was across 16 portfolios—so it reduces that risk of having people trying to operate across siloes—to oversee a work programme aiming to improve the current system and to deliver the best results for all those affected by sexual violence.

We significantly improved our investment in crisis support services for victims of sexual violence. The Ministry of Social Development and ACC have worked together to ensure service coverage across prevention crisis response, long-term care, and recovery.

We increased the penalty for breaching protection orders. This was really important. We identified that offenders were largely ignoring and breaching protection orders on a regular basis. So we looked at, number one—one thing that we did was we actually made it easier for a woman to get a protection order, which I think was really important, because we identified that a barrier was the complexity in the process that they had to go to to actually get a protection order put in place. So we made sure that it was easier for them to get a protection order in place. We also made sure that we increased the penalties so that the protection order was less likely to be breached.

We improved judges’ access to information in family violence cases by improving information-sharing regulations. This is really important because if you talk to judges, often one of their frustrations is they’ve only got bits and parts of information. They’ll often have to end up sending prosecutors or court staff away to try and gather and try and fill out, so the judges can get a holistic, whole picture of what’s going on in terms of that person’s life, and then they’re able to make much better and much more informed decisions. So this was actually a very, very good step and a very, very good measure that can make a genuine difference when a judge is trying to apply a protection order or a sentence, or is making sure that for the victims that are involved, their situation is properly considered.

So I’m very happy to stand and take a call in support of this bill. Thank you.

OK, so I think we’re one all now. Let’s focus on the actual piece of legislation in front of us.

Obviously, I’m standing in support of the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill, but, Madam Deputy Speaker, I think you’ll have to allow me just two seconds to say that I think Mr Little is actually one of the most committed Ministers in a generation to solve the scourge that is family violence. What I would like to say is that all the justice sector Ministers meet every week formally—that’s Minister Davis for corrections, myself for police, Minister Little for justice, and Minister Sio for youth justice—to talk about action plans we need to put in place and how we can all work together as a Government to solve the issue that is domestic violence. Jan Logie—you will find no one more committed in this country, let alone in Parliament, to deal with the scourge that is domestic violence.

So I do not doubt the previous speaker’s commitment to also coming up with solutions to domestic violence and I don’t think anyone would question the Hon Mark Mitchell’s credibility on this. We know he’s an ex-policeman, and he’s probably seen a lot of the effects of domestic violence, but what I would really like to say is—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Look, I’m sorry, but we’re now on to the third speaker and we’re still debating the same stuff. What’s happened has happened, but we have a bill in front of us, and I made it very clear that we’re going to be debating the bill. If the member does not come to the bill, then I will have to sit him down.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. For the last four minutes of the previous speaker’s speech, he sat here and he had a real go at the Minister of Justice, and I think that as one of the justice sector Ministers—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know—

—I have a right to defend that Minister.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, because we’ve already—previous to that—had a Minister who had to take the call who clearly didn’t know what the bill was actually doing, and we had almost 10 minutes of a general speech, given genuinely by the member, about domestic violence. I made it very clear that we were one all. We’re now going to address the bill.

Well, what does this bill actually do?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Damned good question.

Damned good question, and obviously that former Minister has no idea.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I do.

No, you—what this bill actually does is it seeks to break the pattern of family violence and to reduce harm and costs inflicted on those who suffer violence in wider New Zealand society, including by increasing the link and the needs assessment and services by more accurately recording family violence offending in the criminal justice system and by enabling the introduction of codes of practice and new information-sharing provisions.

Well, how bad are things? Let me tell you how bad things are at the moment. The police, every single year, attend about 125,000 domestic violence incidents. In the past, they would spend about five or 10 minutes on each incident; now they are spending up to two hours on each incident. This is taking a substantial amount of police time—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s just rubbish.

—a substantial amount of police time—and Dr Smith says that is absolute rubbish. I am happy to organise a briefing from police for Dr Smith about how seriously they take this and what they are actually doing.

I actually believe, and most people believe, that family violence is our nation’s shame. It really is. Five hundred thousand instances of family violence—500,000 family violence instances—are committed every year, and we need to do something about it. One thing that I would love more than anything is for Parliament to come together to work as 120 MPs to come up with a solution.

This is a good bill. I’m not saying that this is a bad bill. This is a good bill, but it is a start. There is no such thing as a silver bullet around solving the scourge that is domestic violence. This bill acknowledges that early intervention is key to addressing family violence—the need to identify and manage risks before they escalate to cause serious harm.

Early intervention helps disrupt what we now know is a pattern of behaviour in relationships. What we now know, for example, is that a child’s brain is wired differently if they have grown up in a house where violence is prevalent. Their brain is wired differently—this is this whole fight versus flight—and I do agree that growing up in a household with family violence is no excuse for them becoming a perpetrator. But what we do know is that those who have been victims of family violence, and certainly those who have grown up around family violence, are more likely to become perpetrators. We need to break the cycle, and there is a lot of work to be done—of that, there is no doubt.

Changing legislation and amending different Acts is important—there is no doubt about that. This is an ongoing challenge that we will all face, and I know that Jan Logie is spending an inordinate amount of time and effort and energy driving the change that we need to see. But this is only part of it, and I agree with Minister Sio that as well as legislation and as well as what this bill does, it will actually take an attitudinal change in our communities—that is, saying it’s not acceptable. I know we’ve seen the ads and all this sort of stuff, but it’s a little bit more than that. It’s when you’re hearing the screaming from the neighbours next door—instead of pulling the curtains and going, “Nothing to do with me.”, you actually call the police.

One thing I would say, Madam Deputy Speaker—and I know the Deputy Speaker is a former Minister of Police—is that the police are taking this incredibly seriously these days. I have sat in on an Integrated Safety Response (ISR) panel, and I have seen how inter-agencies work together to try and come up with solutions on how we’re going to put programmes in place to stop perpetrators going on and significantly—end up murdering people. In fact, since ISR has been going in Christchurch, no one has died from family violence.

Now, I know you’ve given direction, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I would just like to say to the former speaker that the ISR programme is still operating. There are still five months to go until the end of the year. We have not said we’re not going to continue with this pilot, but what we have said is that any programme that spends taxpayers’ money has to be evidence based. We are evaluating this programme at the moment, and if it comes out that it is a good use of taxpayers’ money, that it is really making a difference in this space and can continue to make a difference, then I have no doubt that Jan Logie will present something to us to say she recommends that this continues—I have no doubt about this—but it has got to be evidence based. Please, Madam Deputy Speaker and everyone listening, I would not like people to get the impression that this is no longer happening.

I would also really reiterate that we are completely committed to this. Police are absolutely committed to this. In fact, police fund ISR out of their own budget. Police fund Whangaia out of their own budget. Every single year, police see 124,000 instances of family harm, and it is not acceptable any more—it really isn’t.

So, as mentioned, we can change legislation, and that’s good. It is good that we can work together in a way—because this was the former administration’s bill. We’ve made a few changes, the Justice and Electoral Committee’s made a few changes, and there’s been a Supplementary Order Paper that’s been tabled. We will work together. Minister Little extended an invitation across the House to the Opposition spokespeople on police, on justice, and on corrections and said, “Come along and hear what people have to say. We would welcome your input.” So he extended an olive branch in a way that I haven’t seen in my time in this House, and I just do hope that we can work together as a Parliament to do something about the scourge that is domestic violence.

I have absolutely no doubt—I don’t want to speak on behalf of Parliamentary Under-Secretary Logie, but I have no doubt that if those from the Opposition parties are keen to participate in a meaningful and constructive way, then we will absolutely welcome their input, because this is something that we do need to get to the bottom of, and it’s not going to happen overnight. There is absolutely no doubt about that. In fact, as mentioned, this is going to take generational change, but it is one of those things where if we bury our head in the sand and say it’s all too hard, then we do the communities we serve a massive disservice.

So of course we support this bill. Of course we are going to implement everything in this bill, but there is a lot more to do. In fact, this is only the beginning. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a really important bill on a really important issue. Frankly, it’s embarrassing that it’s taken a year to move the second reading. I was a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee in the last Parliament. This bill was introduced on 15 March 2017, and had its first reading on 11 April—kind of at the tail end of last Parliament, we considered it, with a number of very serious submissions from very august bodies. We reported the bill back on 16 August 2017.

Now, no one would expect Parliament to consider the bill on 16 August—in fact, I think it might’ve been the very last act of the last Parliament before the election on 23 September—but fair enough to assume some progress would’ve been made between August 2017 and September 2018, yet none has been made. I agree with the remarks of the Hon Minister Stuart Nash about the importance of working in a bipartisan way across the Parliament, about how we all need to take family violence extremely seriously. It would be nice if the Government provided some impetus for that themselves through the legislative programme. So that’s my first point, around the delay.

I also want to deal with the Integrated Safety Response (ISR) pilot, which he made much mention of. He said, “Well, I’ve sat on an Integrated Safety Response panel, and I’ve seen the great work that it does. No one in Christchurch has died as a result of family violence since the ISR was introduced.” Well, that initiative came out of the cross-Government work that the last Government was involved in, was engaged in, across various different Ministers. Stuart Nash said, triumphantly, “We meet weekly”, as if this was some grand achievement, that Ministers meet weekly. If he’s only just discovering today, a year in, that Ministers meet on a weekly basis to discuss things, I think he’s got a few issues. That’s not an achievement, meeting weekly; actually, outcomes are what matter. These guys in the Government love the meetings. We’ve just had a $1.5 million summit, which was a very large meeting. You know, actually, the meetings are all well and good, but you need to get the outcomes, and the ISR came out of the various meetings that the previous Government did.

Stuart Nash says, “Well, I’ve sat on a panel.”, and he said, “Well, we welcome the Opposition’s support for the Integrated Safety Response panel.” Well, I tried to go and sit on a panel in Christchurch. I arranged it. It was all due to be arranged, and literally just 45 minutes before I was due to go and sit on the panel to see first-hand for myself, as a member of the Justice Committee and the Opposition spokesperson for police, exactly how it worked, the meeting was cancelled by the Minister’s office. So, look, I welcome Stuart Nash’s call for bipartisanship and for kōrero across the Parliament in order to make sure we take this problem seriously. I completely agree with him. It would be nice if he actually backed that up with actions, and I’m looking forward to the next request to go and visit the ISR being approved by him rather than cancelled.

He also needs to get to grips with his portfolio, because the Integrated Safety Response is funded out of Vote Police. It’s not a Budget bid from Jan Logie as under-secretary, which is what he said would happen; it’s a Vote Police funding line. He doesn’t even know his own portfolio, and the reality is—

💬 Clayton Mitchell: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Look, you’ve been very clear in your rulings on people speaking to the bill, and you had a quid pro quo in relation to a tit for tat at the start that has been seen around the House as the way to move forward. For the last three minutes, we’ve heard a rant that hasn’t been anything to do with the bill. It’s been somewhat personal in an attack on the Minister.

Speaking to the point of order, I’ve spent about as much time talking about Integrated Safety Response as the previous Minister did.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The difficulty that I have is that the previous Minister didn’t actually address the bill either, and talked generally and raised a whole number of points which this speaker is now addressing. So they’re already on the floor. I’m actually wondering whether anyone in the House has actually read the bill and understands it and is going to speak to it, but I call Chris Bishop.

Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, I’ll take you up on your invitation, because I have the read the bill, and, as I say, I sat on the select committee in the last Parliament. I’m very proud to be a member of the Justice Committee—it was the Justice and Electoral Committee; now it’s the Justice Committee.

I want to talk about the name of the bill and, in particular, the reference to “Whānau”. One of the interesting issues we considered—and if you read the select committee report, you can see that the Labour Party minority view, as there was a minority view, was to delete the reference to “Whānau”. It’s Māori Language Week, Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, so it’s appropriate that we have a debate about that. There was a view that came through from some submitters that the reference to whānau in the bill was inappropriate, and I think you can have a legitimate debate about that. I’m not sure I necessarily agree with that, but the Labour Party certainly backed that view through their minority view, so it’ll be interesting to see whether or not they are going to change the name through that deletion.

The second thing about the name is that we had an interesting debate the select committee about the word “family” and, particularly, whether or not there should be a reference to “domestic violence”. At the moment, the Act is the Domestic Violence Act 1995. It’s quite outdated—it’s now 23 years old—and this bill seeks to, essentially, replace the Domestic Violence Act by reference to “family violence”. That’s the new term—the new nomenclature is “family violence”. There were some submitters who turned up and said, “Well, we don’t actually see any problem with keeping the phraseology of ‘domestic violence’. There’s nothing wrong with it because it’s violence that occurs largely in the home—it’s family violence in the domestic setting—so we should call it domestic violence.”

There were other submitters who came and said to us that—and I found this submission very interesting—the reference to “domestic” implies and indicates that it’s something that should be off limits to the criminal law. When people talk about a husband and a wife or family “having a domestic”—people used to talk about that. It’s an old-fashioned term now, but it’s actually probably where the Domestic Violence Act 1995 got its logic from. People would talk about “having a domestic”, and when they talked about having a domestic, they meant, you know, “That’s something that’s nothing to do with me as a bystander, or nothing to do with me as the neighbour next door, or nothing to do with me as the person down the street who sees a woman go to the dairy with a black eye; they’re just having a domestic.” It implies that that’s something in the private sphere that the State shouldn’t pay any attention to. And, more importantly than that, it implies it’s something that wider society should not have a view on or pay any attention to, or report to the police, or report to an agency that helps people who are victims of family violence—in most cases, women.

So you might say, OK, what’s in a name? Actually, the name matters. I freely admit I went into the select committee process at the start, thinking: why are there so many submissions about the name “family”, or “domestic”, or “whānau”, or whatever? And, actually, it became very clear through the submissions that it really mattered to the people at the front line dealing with this, and it was really important. I listened to all the submissions and I listened to the various arguments put either way, and, actually, I strongly agree that we should not call it domestic violence.

It is not something that is just a domestic that neighbours and communities and society should have no interest in and the State should not have any interest in. Family violence is a crime. Family violence is a social scourge, and it is absolutely right that the State takes an interest in that. And, actually, one of the most remarkable—or one of the most excellent things about the change in New Zealand society over the last 15 to 20 years is that we don’t really refer to domestics any more. That terminology has become passé. We talk about family violence, and having an Act that is called the Family Violence Act—or at least not the Domestic Violence Act—is actually really important. So that deals with what I didn’t think would be a vexed issue, the name, but actually it is.

In terms of the other really important changes, other speakers have sort of canvassed some of the changes. We’ve recommended, as a select committee, making a series of changes to the bill as introduced. I don’t think you would say they’re outrageously wild changes to the bill; they don’t really go to the substance. The select committee report endorses the direction of travel, but there are some minor changes that are important. So, for example, with protection orders, we’ve recommended simplifying the age-based distinctions in the bill to allow children aged 16 years and over to choose whether to make an application for a protection order in their own name or through a representative. We have recommended including a provision to enable a judge to interview a child at any stage in the process if the judge deems it necessary or desirable. That’s because the courts are very intimidating to anyone, but particularly to children, so this is all about allowing children to better express their views. We’ve made some recommendations around the quite complicated issue of information sharing and disclosure between family violence agencies and social service practitioners.

So it was a pleasure to serve on the committee considering this bill. I would have liked to have seen it come back before the House for a second reading before now, but it’s here now and I’m looking forward to its passage through the House in the coming weeks and months.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to rise and speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. It’s a pleasure to take a call on behalf of my colleague, the Hon Tracey Martin. She made a first reading speech back in the previous Parliament, but, unfortunately, isn’t able to be here for this today, so it has fallen upon me to take the call on behalf of my party, New Zealand First.

This is a fairly difficult topic for me to traverse, and I’d just like to give you, Mr Assistant Speaker, a little background as to why that is. I’ve been fortunate to grow up in a family—a whānau—with really loving parents, with educated parents, who gave us a really great foundation in life. However, circumstances changed in our family, and I then had a stepfather. And, unfortunately, although I had this fantastic base, which grounded me in great values in life, I ended up with a violent stepfather. What happened over the course of the next number of years was very much swept under the carpet. And during the 1970s, as what was considered a middle-class white family, you didn’t talk about those sorts of things. The type of violence that we suffered wasn’t just physical, although that was pretty horrific; it was certainly emotional and psychological. So I have quite an understanding of what those victims of family violence have suffered, not just at the time but ongoing throughout the rest of their lives.

One of the things that I really want to say to the victim is that whoever is the perpetrator of the violence, do not allow them to steal your power. What matters is how we treat people, and if we always have some kindness, then I’m sure that’s a really good guiding factor. It’s tragic to hear about family violence, and this bill certainly encompasses that. It is tragic to hear about not just the physical violence but the emotional violence and psychological violence as well, not just experienced by, predominantly, women—men as well—but also, most important, by children. At the heart of this it’s about protecting our children. The level on which this causes all manner of societal dysfunction cannot be overestimated. And if we take into account the rippling effect of violence for children throughout their lives, then that’s something that we as a Parliament certainly must ensure we can change so that we bring about a change for these people’s lives.

Looking at this bill, preventing and eliminating family violence is one of the greatest opportunities to improve all New Zealanders’ well-being. Between 2009 and 2015 alone, almost 200 people were killed as a result of family violence, and over half a million New Zealanders were directly affected by family violence each year. Looking at the number of women, New Zealand women—one in three of these women—experience physical or sexual violence from a partner in their life, and more than a quarter of New Zealand children have witnessed family violence. You know that kid that hides under the stairs in a cupboard, because they’re hearing the violence and the abuse going on upstairs. What are the ramifications for them? How can they live good lives and fulfil their potential?

With this bill, it’s really a framework for a more effective system, improving civil orders to better support victims, including protection orders and police safety orders. This bill, this framework, will enable better reorganising the dynamics of the family violence and criminal justice system, also creating a more integrated family violence system that promotes coordinated and collaborative responses.

You know, it was really unfortunate, listening to the speeches today, that I wasn’t actually part of the Justice and Electoral Committee hearing submissions on this bill. I think it probably would have been something that would have been really good for me and for my wairua as I look forward to ensuring that any leftover ripple effects from my situation are clearly and cleanly swept from me and swept from not just my mind and my memories but also throughout—physically and emotionally. It is really part of the healing process, so I think it would have been good for me to have been part of that Justice and Electoral Committee. However, it is good to read some of these submissions, to hear what people are saying, particularly the Human Rights Commission in their submission talking about and highlighting—in the commission’s submission to the committee on the Domestic Violence—Victims’ Protection Bill.

Domestic violence is so prevalent in New Zealand that it’s thought there could be around half a million victims. That is a very large group of people. It’s believed that only 20 percent of victims report to the police. That was certainly the case in my family history. We certainly never spoke about it outside the family. It went on under the carpet, and there was no way we would have ever spoken to police. I’m sure there are so many families that still feel that way: you don’t take this and take it outside of the family; you keep it hidden. Keeping it hidden keeps the mamae still enclosed inside the family. The Families Commissioner, in the submission, said currently the best indicators we have of family violence are reporting of family violence to police, and that’s also what the human rights commissioner noted. It’s a really hard thing to be able to admit not just to yourselves as a family but to the outside world that your family is broken.

Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children has been involved through this process, through this bill, and I’d just like to note some of the points that they have noted. They have been closely involved in the development of the bill. The bill widens the circumstances in which the police safety orders and the protection orders can be used. It will enable young people to be protected in their own right. Oranga Tamariki is working with police to develop guidance and support for front-line staff, to help ensure that the well-being and safety of children and young people are always paramount when police issue police safety orders.

It is important that there is information sharing, as well, and the Oranga Tamariki Act and the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill will both introduce information-sharing provisions to help ensure that those working with children and young people have the information that they need to keep them safe—and it is all about keeping the children safe. Oranga Tamariki, as well, is working with the Ministry of Justice to ensure the interaction between the information-sharing provisions in this bill and those in the Oranga Tamariki Act work together and are well understood by the sector.

Those are the ways that Oranga Tamariki is working through this bill to ensure overall that there is safety for our children, and that’s what it’s all about. We need to be a society that has greater heart, and any way that we can help and support families to break the cycle of abuse, we must do all we can. I commend this bill to the House.

The chaos, the confusion, the gap between promise and performance is so well illustrated with what we’ve seen in the Parliament this afternoon on this important Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. There isn’t any disagreement in this Parliament that violence in the home is one of the most important social issues for our country—on that we agree. But there’s somehow this view on the Government benches that if you give fluffy speeches saying you care about something, that somehow that makes a difference for New Zealanders. It does not. It is good quality action and good quality programmes that will address those issues.

Let’s firstly begin by reciting what happened in the Parliament this afternoon. We had the Associate Minister of Justice giving the first speech on this bill, the biggest reform of our family violence legislation in a generation, and the Minister didn’t have the foggiest. He had no idea about the bill. It clearly has been a screw-up on the Government benches. The Minister couldn’t even get to the House on time. But it’s more serious than that. You only need to read the minority view in this bill to see the failings of this just 11-month-old Government. Let’s cite the record: Amy Adams, a committed, competent Minister, announced the biggest batch of changes to New Zealand’s domestic violence laws in late 2016, and drafted this over - 100 page bill. It took her three months from the announcement to get the bill into the House. It then took four months from when this bill was introduced in the House for the very capable Justice and Electoral Committee in the last Parliament to report it back in August of last year. My question for Government members is: what have you been doing for 11 months?

💬 Hon Member: Ha, ha!

Because you cannot, I say to the member who is interjecting, beat your chest and say that issues of family violence are the most important issues for the Government and then allow this bill to sit on the Order Paper and make absolutely no progress for 11 months. Then to hear three speeches from the Government benches on this bill, without anybody having any idea of what it actually does, shows how shallow—how shallow—and inadequate the Government is on this important issue.

Let me talk about the important reforms that are contained in this bill. Let’s firstly start with burying the language that “It’s just a domestic.” It is not just a domestic. It is violence against New Zealand citizens that needs to be treated seriously. The first part of this bill makes a really important change. It says that issues of violence in the home are actually not just about the two adults; it’s about the children. The provisions in this bill, as they relate to giving children a real voice in dealing with issues of family violence, is absolutely critical if we are to change the cycle, that we all know, of children growing up in family violence and then going on to be violent partners in a relationship.

Here is the second really important change in this bill. We all know that when there are instances of family violence, so often the victim, for whatever psychological reason, will not be prepared to take out a protection order. The existing law only allows a protection order to be triggered by that victim. What this bill absolutely, appropriately does, both for protection orders and for police safety orders, is it gives the capacity for the police and others that are involved in domestic violence to be able to trigger that process and to get those orders in place, and that will make for safer families.

There’s also the issue around the harm and the intimidation that goes around family pets. I was surprised to find out that, actually, more than 60 percent of New Zealand homes have a pet. So often when there is tension in a relationship, sometimes that intimidation is taken out on pets, and that issue is dealt with within this bill. The process for being able to obtain a police safety order is made far more simple and quicker by the amendments that are provided in this bill. There are changes to our Criminal Procedure Act and also in respect of our Sentencing Act, to ensure that where that are perpetrators of family violence, they cannot continue that intimidation from inside the prison, and that is an important and appropriate change.

I also want to point to the very difficult and challenging issues in this bill that make changes to the Evidence Act, because in the select committee’s consideration, you’ve got this fine balancing of rights—ensuring that we are serious about addressing the issues of family violence but, equally, ensuring that there are rights of fair process. I was particularly interested in and wanted to hear from a member of the Government about what their view is on this National bill around increasing the penalties and changing the bail laws in respect of improving safety when there is family violence. I’ve heard lecture after lecture from members on the Government benches that they are opposed to firmer sentences and ensuring we hold people to account where they commit acts of violence.

Every single bill that we have on the Order Paper that attempts to hold people to account and imprison them has been proposed to be watered down by members of the Government. And that’s where I say there is such a confusing agenda from the Government. I want to know, because I didn’t hear from either of the Ministers, whether they support the provisions in this National bill that tighten up the bail procedures in respect of the perpetrators of domestic violence. If I was to listen to the Minister of Justice, Andrew Little, he has consistently opposed and rejected National’s provisions to make our communities safer by tightening up those bail laws, and I would love to know from him as to whether he is going to support this well-constructed bill.

This is a complex bill. It has over 100 pages of changes in all of those laws that I have mentioned. It is the most comprehensive rewrite of our family violence laws in 25 years, and so I have a question for the next Government speaker. Where have you been for the last 12 months? Why is it that this bill has been such a low priority for the Government? The Government cannot go on pretending that if it just beats its chest and says that issues are somehow important, that that somehow is a substitute for actually getting on and addressing the issues.

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Good things take time.

Oh, “Good things take time.” I hear from the member. Well, can I read from the Labour Party’s minority report, in the report back? It criticised the National Party for taking eight months to draft the bill, develop the policy, and get it to a select committee—eight months. What has the Government done with this bill in nearly 12 months? Absolutely zip—again showing both the chaos and the confusion within the Government on these important issues: the confused way that this bill has sat on the Order Paper, and the disgraceful conduct of a Government in not even bothering to give a second reading speech. That second reading speech on this bill would be the worst that I’ve ever seen from a Minister, and shows that this Government is proving to be all talk about these important issues of family violence rather than getting on with the action. We need to get on and pass this good National bill.

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Ahiahi pai ki a koutou. I’m very pleased to stand in the House today and support the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. The levels of domestic and sexual violence in our country are, frankly, an indictment on all of us. Every year over 500,000 New Zealanders are directly affected by family and sexual violence, including over 120,000 children. And behind every one of these numbers is a human story: the story of someone just like us, or, indeed, one of us. The dynamics and circumstances may vary, but this blight affects people of every socio-economic class, age, ability, and gender.

A survey released by Women’s Refuge yesterday showed a high prevalence of suicidality and self-harm amongst victims, and this mirrors international findings. In the words of Dr Ange Jury, the head of the Women’s Refuge—she said, “If you … think about the experience of being abused by a partner, someone who is supposed to love you and care for you, the obvious potential for at least severe depression is really, really clear.” We cannot continue to accept such high levels of violence. We must ensure family violence becomes an absolute aberration rather than something that is commonplace, as it is now.

This legalisation is an important step: a mix of relatively simple updates and clarifications of the law, and more transformative fundamental changes. I would like to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams, the previous Minister of Justice, for her work developing this legislation, and putting family violence back on the political table, and getting to some pretty fundamental, gnarly problems with this legislation. And as previous National members have been indicating a real sense of wanting to get to the detail and the importance of action, I’d like to indicate that I look forward to working with them in the not-too-distant future on that programme of work.

I was part of the Justice and Electoral Committee, which considered this bill, and I would like, too, to acknowledge the committee members and all those who made a submission. The Greens have always supported this legislation, but at the time when this was reported back I did note my concern that the response was not proportionate, necessarily, to the size or the complexity of the problem. So I do want to thank Minister Little and this Government for seeing the value of this legislation and also recognising that we need to do more around this.

This Government has created my position to integrate our response across Government, to ensure that this remains a priority. This Government has increased funding and reset the relationship with our front-line services who are so essential in our response. They’ve initiated a review of the 2014 Family Court changes that prioritised money saving over the safety of victims and survivors, and they’ve put money in the last Budget towards a central agent to properly coordinate Government action to ensure that we all know what our role is in responding effectively. So now is the time for us all to work together and play our part to break the cycle of violence.

The Family Violence Death Review Committee noted in their fifth report that we have a family violence system in name only. Rather than a coordinated or integrated response, we have, to quote them, “a fragmented assortment of services and initiatives - islands of practice - commonly underpinned by old ways of thinking about family violence”. They noted that “Real help for victims of [intimate partner violence] within our current system is sporadic, unpredictable, and frequently not available. There are few strategies to address their partner’s abusive behaviour.”

Now, this piece of legislation provides for a more integrated family violence system, a greater ability to identify and manage risks before they escalate, and better identification of family violence within the justice system, and it creates modern language to reflect our modern understanding. It creates a concrete definition of the family violence sector, involving most of our key Government agencies, and it enables, by Order in Council, the development of codes of practice right across that family violence sector to ensure that everyone’s practice is informed by best evidence. That is truly potentially transformative. It gives us a framework to ensure best practice and consistency, recognising the complex and cross-cutting nature of family violence. It is a Government priority to address—and ultimately, I hope, end—family and sexual violence. This bill shifts our response from the bottom of the cliff, adding early intervention as a core role in the response to family violence into the principles of the legislation, and acknowledges that we need to identify and manage risks wherever possible. Early intervention interrupts and disrupts what we know is a pattern of behaviour.

So a key provision in this legislation is the ability to obtain a risk and needs assessment when a police safety order (PSO) is issued. A PSO can be the first point at which a potentially violent relationship is registered with police, and it’s a critical opportunity to assess the situation and determine what support is required for both the victim and the perpetrator.

Thorough risk assessments are necessary to ensure the safety of victims, and we haven’t had them in place before. Needs assessments help us support victims and remove barriers in the way of perpetrators changing their behaviour. A PSO, with this legislation, will be able to be issued alongside an arrest, which will strengthen our response in cases where there may not eventually be enough evidence to proceed to prosecution. There’s no intention for PSOs to be used instead of charges where there is evidence of family violence, but this ensures that no matter what happens, there are pathways for supporting people to stop using violence, rather than just leaving us with a blunt choice between prosecution and total inaction.

This bill also creates new long-awaited family violence offences: non-fatal strangulation, which is a serious act to gain power and control over a victim, which is significantly indicated as a higher risk for suicide. It also creates assault on a person in a family relationship alongside male assaults female, acknowledging other forms of family violence, while continuing to recognise the gendered violence within and outside of family relationships.

We’ve heard the particular challenges of women in ethnic communities and people with disabilities when it comes to engaging with services and feeling as if their needs are covered by the legislation. This bill strengthens our response for people with disabilities and people from migrant communities by the clarification that their needs are covered by this legislation when, in practice, they haven’t been for far too long.

This bill also clarifies that some behaviours that appear trivial in isolation can have a cumulative impact, and we highlight the use of coercive and controlling behaviours in family violence to ensure that our courts really understand the dynamics of this violence. There is much, much more that it does, and I am looking forward, in my role as Parliamentary under-secretary, to overseeing the implementation of this to ensure that we get really strong, consistent practise, so that every victim is supported to safety and every person who uses violence is given the absolute opportunity to change their behaviour and to be held to account for their violence.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. E mihi ana au ki ngā tāngata o Aotearoa mō te kaupapa o tēnei wiki, Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. Ka huri au mō te kaupapa o tēnei wā e kōrero au ki Te Whare Pāremata ōku whakaaro i tēnei pire.

[Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I greet people around New Zealand with regard to the focus for this week, Māori Language Week. I now turn from that to the present matter where I shall present my views on this bill to the House.]

My greetings to all of our citizens of Aotearoa in acknowledging that this week is a celebration for us to embrace Te Reo Māori—our Māori language—as an official language of this nation. I do that as I turn to speak about the kaupapa, the purpose, of the korero before the House this afternoon. These are my thoughts that I share in relation to this bill, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. I’ve not been a member of the Justice Committee. Although I have sat on it on several occasions, I wasn’t able to at the time that this bill came before the Justice and Electoral Committee. My colleague the Hon Nick Smith commented that it is a comprehensive rewrite of family and violence legislation—a comprehensive rewrite that was last done 25 years ago.

I will address the House on my experience of 25-plus years of not only talking about this type of legislation and all the other laws that this bill, as an omnibus bill, is addressing to make amendments to, but I will also share my journey, my walk of the talk within all of these laws. Those laws that this bill is amending include the Domestic Violence Act 1995, including changing its name from the Domestic Violence Act to the Family and Whānau Violence Act. This bill will also amend the Bail Act 2000, the Care of Children Act 2004, the Crimes Act 1961, the Criminal Procedure Act 2011, the Evidence Act 2006, and the Sentencing Act 2002. In all of this legislation, I have either represented clients, be they perpetrators or victims, and also children before the courts—for every single piece of that legislation that is being amended under this omnibus bill.

Now, an oversight that I have made, and I wish to turn to this, is that the honourable Minister Sio mentioned that this bill is about addressing wellness—bringing back to our nation the responsibility of wellness being embraced by our communities. Law is but a tool that provides the levers for a solution. It is not the solution. The wellness within our communities is about our communities taking responsibility to provide those solutions, but this law is about enabling the tools for the courts to address some of those concerns.

I turn specifically to some of these aspects that have been talked about in addressing family violence. This bill is focused on reducing rates of family violence. It is a comprehensive approach prioritising early intervention and prevention. It has three main features. The first is: “Establishing a framework to support a cross-government response”—cross-government response—and that is about “increasing people’s ability to access risk and needs assessments and services, providing for codes of practices, and new information-sharing [provisions].” That is one of the three main features, and I will come back to address the House on that. The second is about: “Making changes to improve accessibility and effectiveness of civil orders”. The House has been addressed on police safety orders and protection orders. Time permitting, I will return to that. The third main feature is: “Improving the criminal justice response by creating three new criminal offences and providing for more accurate recording of family violence offending in the criminal justice system.”

If I may return the first of those features—“a framework to support a cross-government response”. As counsel advocating the plight, particularly for children who have been caught up in cross-party fights and the fuelling of fights between their parents on either parenting orders or protection orders or bail applications, we have had difficulty accessing necessary and crucial information from Government agencies to provide and put as evidence to the court, reasons why either bail orders should be made, why certain conditions of protection orders should be made, or why certain conditions of parenting orders could be made. And the frustration that we, as advocates for our child clients, have had is Government agencies not providing the disclosure of that information to provide as evidence to the courts. This will free that up.

I turn to the second of those three main features—improving the accessibility and effectiveness of civil orders. The bill—and should the opportunity be presented to me to address the House again, perhaps at the committee stage, I will speak more in detail around that—does address the fact that police safety orders can now be such that in the event that there is a child, and that is defined as a person who is up to the age of 18, a police safety order can be made against a violent child.

I have represented mothers of violent children, and there’s been no provision for them to seek the support, by way of a court order, to be protected from that violent child, unless their child comes before the Youth Court system and is detained. Where there are clear grounds to believe that family violence has occurred by a child who is aged 16 years or over but under the age of 18, the police are able to issue a police safety order for the benefit of the mother or the woman.

I turn now to the third of those three main features: improving the criminal justice response by creating three new criminal offences and providing for more accurate recording of family violence offending in the criminal justice system. One of those has been alluded to by my colleague the Hon Mark Mitchell, around the creation of a new offence of strangulation. Over many years, I’ve advocated representing women who are the victims of domestic violence, and one of the critical—critical—features of that assault, male assaults female, has been strangulation. It’s been evident that that is the precursor to more serious criminal offending. This will now enable and create that in its own right as a criminal offence—strangulation.

The other is coercion to marry, and that has been canvassed in previous legislation by colleague Jo Hayes with the introduction of her bill to the House now to be made into law. We talked about the protection of vulnerable young persons around coercion to marry.

Then the other, the third, is a specific offence created: an assault on a family member, not just either a summary offences common assault charge or a male assaults female charge under the Crimes Act but a specific notation of assault on a family member. What many people won’t be aware of unless they’ve traversed the criminal justice system on a regular basis is that judges are often restricted to have noted on the record the nature of or the specific status of a person as a family member—for that to flag with any future appearances that may come about before the court.

So this bill addresses those aspects that I have raised before this House. Opportunity permitting, there will be so many more. It is comprehensive, it is detailed, it has been 25 years before there has been this, as I say, comprehensive overview, and I certainly commend this passage from its second reading through to the third reading. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Tēnā koe. Thank you for the opportunity of speaking on this bill, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. The key reason why I’m so happy to see this bill is that it addresses two really important areas, and the first is early intervention—the ability to get in early and provide support to New Zealand families when they need it the most. The second reason that underpins this bill, that is so important and closely tied to the first, is the impact it has on our children and the impact it has on the next generation of New Zealanders—the ability to break the cycle of family violence within New Zealand, and that is important.

I remember quite clearly when the It’s Not OK campaign first started. I was a stepmother and my 6-year-old son came home wearing a white ribbon on his shirt. I asked him what he thought that meant and he said, “It means you don’t hit girls.” I thought, you know, he wasn’t quite right; there was a bit more to it than that—he probably shouldn’t be hitting boys either—but there was a really clear message to me that gave me hope that the next generation of New Zealanders can learn to do differently. I believe this bill provides that same opportunity of hope for the next generation of New Zealanders.

There are four key points I’d like to briefly speak to. The first is the change to police safety orders, the second is the definition of “family violence”, the third is the new offence of non-fatal strangulation, and the final and probably the most important is a more coordinated response to protection orders going forward from here.

Changes to police safety orders are important. Initially, they were used as a cooling-off period. When police come to a home where there’s been an incident, it enables—usually the male—to be taken outside of the home and given time for things to cool off. What typically happens in those situations is that that person then heads to the pub, continues to drink, and more violent offending occurs outside of the home, but it does not address the underlying reasons why that family violence occurred. So this bill enables risk and needs assessments to be taken and for the victim to be provided support—again, addressing that early intervention that is so importantly needed.

The definition of “family violence”—a very important area that’s been well traversed, but it’s important to identify coercive and controlling behaviour to be included in that. The recent survey by Women’s Refuge has shown that depression, self-harm, and suicide are key areas where women are seeing issues again and again. So including that and also including a better recording of family violence data will enable that to happen far better than it was already.

The new offence of non-fatal strangulation—this is a common mark of abusive, coercive behaviour—to enable both police and the courts to better identify that behaviour at an earlier point in time offers real hope to stop abusive behaviour early on in relationships and to provide support to both the offender and the victim.

Finally, I’d like to briefly speak on the more coordinated response to protection orders. Probably one of my most harrowing times in police was being responsible for the family violence death reviews: going through police files of homicides one after the other and identifying the reasons why that person’s life could have been saved. The key area was in protection orders: that Government was not joined up with NGOs, that people did not speak to each other, and that there was a fear of sharing information that, quite truthfully, would have saved lives.

I’d like to highlight the change that will enable a more coordinated response. These changes will provide police with more information about the violence that led to a protection order and clarify that police are able to share this information with other agencies where appropriate. It also enables the family violence sector—which provides such an important role—including specific Government agencies, those NGOs and others, to share information that is relevant to creating safety plans, assessing risk, and doing so when appropriate. It is important to be aware of privacy, but at the same time the ability for Government and NGOs to share information holds the ability to save women’s lives and protect our children’s future.

So thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m very happy to commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora. It’s great to be able to speak to this bill as well, and I think the speeches around the House indicate that there is strong support in this House for this bill. I think it’s because everybody here recognises the importance of the work that this Parliament and Government need to do in regard to families and especially violence within the family environment. That is something that probably could have been undertaken by the current Government a lot earlier in the process, rather than having to wait till 10 or 12 months into their term before we get to this bill, but it is a bill that was set up by the previous Government and reflects many of the reforms that were set up at that time, and it’s good to see that the current Government is going to fulfil those ambitions and see this bill passed as well.

There are some changes there—or some parts of this legislation—that have been thoroughly traversed through the speeches this afternoon, but one of them is a better understanding of family violence and how to respond. We all understand the need for that in our communities, and it’s part of a new way of dealing with family violence. It reflects those decisions made by the previous Government on how to reduce harm and the cost inflicted on those that have suffered family violence and also the wider New Zealand community.

The bill amends the criminal and civil law and the legislative framework around keeping victims of family violence safe. It holds perpetrators of family violence to account for their behaviours, ensures adequate resources to family violence in all forms, and promotes consistent and collaborative practices. So those are important principles that nobody would deny or debate, and those principles are seen in the legislation, where victims must be protected from all forms of violence, the disruption to everyday lives of victims is to be minimised, responses are to be culturally appropriate, responses to Māori must reflect the community, and practitioners are to work together to protect victims’ safety.

So those are all very nice words, and those are all things that we want to see happen, but the reality is that family violence can be a very difficult situation to deal with. It can reflect a number of social problems going on in our communities, and it can be something that is ongoing and not a one-off incident. Some of those situations can be tragic in the sense of what it does to the family environment as well, and that can have longstanding influences on the next generations of New Zealanders that suffer from family violence within their family and their community. So while we are talking about very abstract and wide terms, it actually has a real impact on families, communities, and especially the children that have to grow up in those environments, so it’s important that we do this legislation to support those people that suffer from family violence.

There are also some initiatives in the bill around perpetrator behaviour, trying to get in earlier in the process, to basically be in front of the problem. That is something that all political parties have now adjusted their thinking to, and they are supporting intervention rather than at the other end of the scale. We see that through this bill as well, in protecting victims by making it easier for police to issue orders and to prove a breach. Those protection orders are an important tool that the police have in the situation to deal with family violence, and this bill is important in providing more support for those protection orders, enabling them to be used more effectively, with the aim of reducing the fear of violence.

There are also more reforms in the bill around keeping victims safe, and that is something that we see emphasised in the previous Government’s approach to criminal justice, and we would encourage the current Government to carry that approach on, because often the victims are forgotten about in situations in the criminal justice system, and it’s really important in legislation that we actually make this a focus and look at the victims, and this bill does do that. Thank you.

Tēnā koe. It is a real pleasure to stand tonight and to talk about the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. This has indeed been my life’s work. I remember back—in the beginning of time, it almost seems—when we were working under the Domestic Protection Act. That then became the Domestic Violence Act, and I worked for 11 years as a domestic violence adviser in the Ministry of Justice—my role was to know that Act inside out. So it is a pleasure to stand tonight and to talk a little bit more about this omnibus bill that is before the House tonight.

I want to talk very briefly on three aspects. The Criminal Procedure Act amendment inserts new section 16A, specifying that an offence is recorded and listed as a charge for family violence. Why have I picked on that particular provision? The Criminal Procedure Act 2011 is important—as I know, having worked in the Family Court and across the jurisdictions of family and criminal law, the two jurisdictions do not speak to each naturally. As we know, the Family Court is a quiet, closed, and private court, so the relationship between the two jurisdictions is not naturally and easily breached. So it is noted, on the record, across the jurisdictions. This assists the judiciary in making decisions around the process of conviction and the information. It is relevant and interesting information. It is important information, particularly where there have been charges in the criminal jurisdictions, which would not naturally travel across to the Family Court, particularly in matters of custody and day-to-day care. So I want to make reference to the amendment to insert new section 16A.

I’d also like to talk—and others have—around the amendment to the Crimes Act around strangulation. I have spoken in this House previously about my work in both the Family Court but also as a manager in a refuge. Strangulation is defined as “blocking that other person’s nose, mouth, or both:”. It’s extremely important that this aspect is put in, because people do not understand that they have been strangled, often. We would ask the question quite a lot, “Have you ever been strangled or choked?”, and they’d say to us, “No. No I haven’t.” “Did he hold his hand over your mouth?” “Yes.” “Did he hold you down and prevent you from breathing?” “Yes.” That is the highest and most risky indicator of death and it is extremely serious. So I wholeheartedly support strangulation going into the Crimes Act through this bill.

I’d also like to very, very briefly talk about the meaning of family violence. It is with great pleasure that I see the extension of the family violence definition. Now, the reason I talk about that is that, clearly, under the Domestic Violence Act we had physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, but what we have now is an extension, and it’s an important extension. It is the cumulative effects. It can be one act or it can be the cumulative effects of patterns of violence. That coercive control is recognised and acknowledged.

I do have to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams for bringing the original bill to the House. We will be making some changes through a Supplementary Order Paper. However, she has done this House and our country a great service in the work that she has done to bring this to the House. I also want to acknowledge the select committee in this process.

So, very finally, in my concluding statement I would like to recommend that we, as a House, stop the petty politics across the floor and start voting for these bills, including our previous domestic violence leave bill. I say to the Opposition, please just start supporting the changes that this Government is bringing in. We all recognise domestic violence is an evil. Just start supporting us. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in the second reading of the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill, as it will be renamed, no doubt, in due course. I’d like to acknowledge the remarks that others have made across the House more generally about the evils of domestic violence, or family and whānau violence. I don’t wish to belabour the point of the particular evil that is indeed the scourge of our society, except to say that, of course, like every other member of this House, I do acknowledge the importance of that and, therefore, the need to do something about it. It is something, therefore, that we must do if it is a useful and worthwhile thing in itself—and it is. But it’s also worth acknowledging, I think—and, again, I believe that every member of this House does acknowledge—that there is much more that can and should be done in this arena.

Let me begin, sir, please, by noting that a number of different Acts will be changed by this bill, and it seems to me that that reflects the fact that this is a complex area. It’s an area of our legal system where a number of different facets—for example, bail, the care of children, the Crimes Act, and so forth—are touched by this legislation. So I acknowledge the work of the officials and also the members of the Justice and Electoral Committee, who have considered all of those very diligently, and, of course, the previous and indeed current Ministers for taking that comprehensive view to our legislative framework and our statute book to do the things that are necessary in order to make this bill work.

My colleague Harete Hipango, who has serious credibility and experience in this field, has talked about the main features of the bill. So I won’t belabour that point, except to say that I would like to focus on some of the aspects that go particularly to the definition of violence. That seems to me very germane, or indeed crucial, to the way that the bill operates and the way that it will be executed, so to speak, in the field—indeed, in the home, most often.

I’d like to focus in particular on clause 9, which talks about amending the definition within the Act of psychological abuse. This is very interesting to me as a matter of lawmaking, of course, in addition to the very serious substantive issues that are discussed and raised in relation to the type of abuse that would be covered by this bill. One of these is the definition of psychological abuse as it reflects forms of abuse in relation to the elderly and also disabled people. So, if you’ll allow me, sir, I’d like to go through some of the detail of that because it seems to me very important to the issues that we are at least trying to rectify by passing this legislation, if, indeed, we go through to the third and final reading.

In new section 3 in clause 9, we look at the meaning of family violence. It says in this proposed legislation that “(3) Violence against a person includes a pattern of behaviour (done, for example, to isolate from family members or friends) that is made up of a number of acts that are all or any of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and psychological abuse, and that may have 1 or both of the following features:”, and then it goes on to list two features.

I’d like to pick out the words “pattern of behaviour” because it seems to me very important that we are acknowledging as a Parliament and as lawmakers that sometimes the nature of abuse is that it is, effectively, cumulative. The bill is quite explicit about the fact that a number of acts when viewed in isolation may appear to be minor or trivial, and yet the cumulative effect of those—or the “pattern of behaviour”, to use the wording of the bill—is such that that is serious enough that we should consider it to be abuse and, therefore, we should offer to those who are suffering such abuse the protections of this bill. For the sake of completeness—and, I think, very wisely—the bill also does say quite explicitly that a single act may amount to abuse. So, of course, it’s not just a pattern, but it might be a one-off instance of sexual or other physical or, indeed, psychological abuse that would be covered by the bill.

Psychological abuse is somewhat complex. I suppose it’s less obvious, potentially, to those who are becoming involved in helping the victims of such abuse. It might also be less obvious to those who are suffering the abuse that they have, in fact, been subjected to psychological abuse. So it includes threats of physical or sexual abuse, and it also includes particularly, we find in this bill, in relation to people who are already vulnerable—of course, by definition, a victim of abuse is vulnerable, but the bill does actually set out that there are particular categories of people who are already vulnerable and whose vulnerability is, therefore, multiplied by the situation of being abused in such a way as, for example, where a person is unable to withdraw themselves from the care or charge of another. There might be the removal or hindering, or the threat of a removal or hindering, of an aid or device that affects or supports that person’s quality of life.

So that example is important. It is important that it is an example and that we’re not narrowing the effect of the legislation. There’s been some considerable effort, I note from reading the commentary, to ensure that the examples don’t limit the scope of the bill. That shows to me that some care has gone into this piece of legislation that an as wide as possible application will be had, and that is indeed a positive thing.

I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the fact that there are factors that are outside the ambit of the bill, but not by reason of it having been drafted in a way that is limited, except to say that all law is limited in the sense that as a society, as a community, and, indeed, as families and whānau, we must, as the saying goes, own the issues in a way that acknowledges that with all the best will in the world of the Parliament—and it seems that the Parliament does so far unanimously support this bill—there are factors outside the ambit of the law that are things that we do need to take ownership of and do outside of the legislative framework. With that in mind, I note that in the regulatory impact statement, there are a number of key constraints set out. Non-regulatory options were considered, but the scope of the review that had led to this bill being crafted was not focusing on those explicitly or exclusively.

There was some discussion as well about the quality of the evidence base. It was noted that there’s a range of factors that contribute to perhaps a lack of understanding of what family violence might be. An obvious reason for that might be because such violence takes place behind closed doors almost by definition, and that there has been historically low reporting of such incidences.

Looking further down the agency disclosure statement, we see that it’s noted that there will be, no doubt, an increased demand for services as a result of this bill. That is a good problem to have in itself if it’s the case that more services are required to give effect to helping those who are in situations of abuse, but we do then face the conundrum of being unsure whether an increase in services being required reflects the fact that there is better reporting, greater acknowledgment, and, indeed, better assistance being given, as distinct from an increase in the rate of violence or abuse.

So that is something that we must remain vigilant about as lawmakers and, indeed, as a society as a whole. It goes to the point that was highlighted, I think, very well by various colleagues earlier about the name of the bill, and acknowledges that a disagreement including physical, sexual, or psychological abuse is not merely a domestic matter and is not merely behind closed doors, and that a man’s home, or, indeed, a person’s home is not his or her castle in a way that should preclude us from taking an interest and taking action in these cases.

With my remaining time, I’ll simply note that the bill has undergone considerable scrutiny in its time so far, having reached us now over a period of some months. No doubt there will be more. That’s appropriate for such an important area of legislation as this, and I look forward to hearing from other colleagues and continuing to see this bill’s passage through the House.

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. I rise to take a call on the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill, which is a step that the previous Government took towards strengthening the legislative fabric that exists around family violence, or to address family violence here in New Zealand, and I commend them for that. In fact, I’ll begin my speech by commending the former justice Minister, the Hon Amy Adams, for the work that she did to get the bill to where it’s at today. I will also acknowledge and commend the current justice Minister, the Hon Andrew Little, and also the under-secretary to the Minister, Jan Logie, for the work that they’ve done and continue to do to address this issue, as well.

Now, previous speakers have talked about what an issue family violence is and quoted some of the stats around why it’s such an issue for us here in New Zealand. I won’t relitigate some of those points, but I will make this point: the Social Services and Community Committee recently, over the last recess, visited Australia. Now, the focus of that trip was to look at Australian initiatives that addressed poverty—poverty reduction—and also homelessness. The one point that I want to make is that in every single meeting we had over there, whether it was with Ministers and members of Parliament, Government departments, or, indeed, NGOs working at the front line to address either of those two issues, the issue of family violence was brought up as a driver of all of those issues, as well. So it is a complex issue. Family violence is not just a justice issue; it’s a human rights, health, and social issue that we must, indeed, eliminate here in New Zealand.

This bill is an omnibus bill which overhauls the Domestic Violence Act, and that’s a good thing. I’ll just quickly go through, in the time that I have, some of the main points or main changes that this piece of legislation, once passed, will enact. The member Jan Logie talked about the fact that when a police safety order is issued, the ability to obtain a risk and needs assessment—which is what this piece of legislation will allow—is incredibly important so that both the victim and the perpetrator get the types of support that they need for the victim to stay safe and for the perpetrator to actually be supported to stop perpetrating violence. We have to get to a point where the perpetration of violence stops for us to be able to eliminate this scourge.

The second change that this bill makes is that it changes society’s understanding of what family violence is. Previous speakers have touched upon this as well, so I will keep it brief, but it acknowledges the fact that family violence can be one incident of physical, sexual, or psychological violence that is significant, but it is also a pattern of power and control, of coercion and control. I’m excited that this bill makes that point, because it’s not one that many have acknowledged previously, including those who work in the sector as well.

The introduction of a new offence of non-fatal strangulation is critical, is crucial. I remember reading somewhere that victim survivors who have been strangled are seven times more likely to be killed—to be a victim of family violence homicide. It’s a major risk indicator for homicide, and I’m pleased that it’s included in this bill.

At the end of the day, this bill presents us with an option for a more coordinated response to address family violence and a whole host of changes that I won’t go into in more detail, but it is a good bill, and that’s why there is cross-party support for it.

The one point that I will make is that the member Jan Logie touched upon the fact that this bill does include an element on, or criminalises, coerced marriage or forced marriage, and therefore touches on some of the issues that relate specifically to women from ethnic communities. Submissions have been made during the select committee process that indicate that this needs to go further—that there are other issues, like dowry abuse, that exist in New Zealand that must be addressed as well.

Finally, I will say that this bill sits alongside the work that this Government is doing to eliminate family violence in New Zealand, which includes the position of the under-secretary to the justice Minister that focuses on domestic and sexual violence—because it’s the first ever, internationally, to focus on the elimination of these forms of violence—funding for front-line services that was in Budget 2018; and, indeed, prioritisation for a central agent that will implement the coordinated response to eliminate family violence. It is indeed my pleasure to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Bill read a second time.