Family Violence Bill, Family Violence (Amendments) Bill

I move, That the Family Violence Bill and the Family Violence (Amendments) Bill be now read a third time.

Today marks a significant day for New Zealand. It’s a day where this House will pass two bills that say of family violence, “Enough is enough.” These are bills that say family violence has no place in our society. The Family Violence Bill and Family Violence (Amendments) Bill mark a major step in reducing this country’s horrific rate of family violence.

The statistics paint a picture of people from all walks of life being subject to family violence. This horrendous issue in our society knows no bounds, but let’s not forget also that this is mainly about violence against women. Let’s not forget that this violence leads to women and children dying each year. People in our society are suffering, and we need to do all we can to keep our mokopuna and their whānau safe. Dealing with family violence is complex, but we as a Government are committed to providing the sector, communities, and families with the support they need to address it.

As Minister of Justice, I often receive letters from people detailing their accounts of how family violence has affected their lives. These accounts are taonga and they drive me—and I know they also drive my officials and others in this House—to want to make change. These accounts provide a guiding light for our mahi, alongside the memory of those who have died, and for those who are with us but who have been or continue to be affected by family violence. One of the key things that we as a Government can do is make sure that we have an effective system to prevent, detect, and address family violence. These bills provide the foundation for that system and will drive the change we need.

These bills will collectively do three things. The first thing the bills will do is support a more integrated system. We need a system that provides tautoko for those in the sector, a system that empowers those who are best placed to make the decisions they need to to keep victims safe and address perpetrators’ behaviour, and a system that works collectively to address this issue, knowing that it is bigger than one individual or one organisation. To do so, one of the things that these bills do is enable family violence agencies, including specific Government agencies and social services practitioners, to share information when it is safe and appropriate to do so.

Sharing information can assist the sector to work together to build a more complete picture of the situation they’re faced with when making decisions and providing support for a family being affected by violence. Ensuring the right people have the right information to make decisions and plans will, ultimately, help increase the safety of victims. The bill also reflects our modern understanding of family violence. Family violence can occur between anyone in a family relationship, not just between those in an intimate partner relationship. It can be between parents and their children, or between people in a close personal relationship. Family violence can be individual behaviours that may appear minor or trivial in isolation but, over time, accumulate to form a wider pattern of behaviour. Often a feature of these patterns is that they involve coercive or controlling behaviour. The bill also clarifies that dowry-related violence is and will be treated as family violence.

The principles and definitions in the Family Violence Bill reflects this contemporary understanding of the nature and impact of family violence. These principles and definitions will foster a shared understanding of family violence and support consistent decision-making and ways of working in the sector. Consistency will also be supported through the new ability to issue codes of practice. Codes will be used to guide coordinated and consistent service delivery, which will ensure the sector can work collectively to the same set of rules and provide further clarity where needed.

The second key thing that these bills do is improve civil orders to better support victims. Protection orders can be an effective tool to support victims and keep them safe from further violence, but there are currently barriers to applying for an order. One of the things the Family Violence Bill does is make the application process easier. Sometimes people may not be able to apply for a protection order because they are particularly vulnerable and afraid. Following the passing of these bills, approved organisations will be able to apply on behalf of people who cannot apply for themselves because of incapacity, fear, or any other sufficient cause.

The bill also makes it easier for a young person to apply for a protection order. A child who is older than 16 years will be able to apply for an order on their own behalf, without a representative. The bill also acknowledges the importance of early intervention and 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 family relationships. It also helps prevent this pattern of behaviour being replicated by children, who can carry this trauma through their lives and across generations.

The bill now enables a person issued with a police safety order to be directed to a risk and needs assessment. When a police safety order is issued, it can be the first time a potentially violent relationship is registered with the police. This provides an important opportunity to assess the risks and needs of the situation and determine what support is required for both the victim and the perpetrator. We know it’s important that victims have the opportunity to access the support they need and put in place appropriate safety arrangements. A police safety order gives the victim the time and space to do this, with the perpetrator being required to leave the home. However, sometimes five days—which is the current period of time for a police safety order—is not long enough. A victim may need time to come to terms with the conflict that has occurred before putting safety arrangements in place, or they may have to work, or they may have other commitments to deal with.

The Family Violence Bill now enables police safety orders to be in place for a maximum duration of 10 days rather than five. This will provide victims with more time to receive the support they need and secure safety arrangements to help prevent further harm from occurring when the order ends. And I know, and it was right for members of the Opposition during the committee of the whole House stage to raise the cautious view about supporting 10-day police safety orders. That is right because that is an extraordinary constraint on the liberty of some, but in the end, when members on this side of the House considered it, we came down on the side of extending those police safety orders to 10 days, to come down on the side of the need to put the safety of victims first. But let us see how they work.

The final key change these bills will make is to ensure better recognition of family violence in the criminal justice system. Firstly, the bill introduces modern criminal offences to reflect the dynamics of family violence offending. One of the new offences is strangulation or suffocation. Non-fatal strangulation is a major indicator or risk of homicide. Evidence shows it is used as a tool of abusive, coercive behaviour. The new offence will allow the courts to better identify and acknowledge the seriousness of this behaviour and distinguish it from other violent behaviours.

The bills also prioritise the safety of victims of family violence. We know that victims of family violence are subject to a substantial risk of re-victimisation given the family relationship with the perpetrator. The Family Violence (Amendments) Bill amends the Bail Act to make the safety of victims and the safety of those in a family relationship with a victim the primary consideration in bail decisions for family violence cases. It also enables the courts to impose any bail conditions it considers necessary to protect victims and their family. This sends a very strong message to the community that victim safety is a priority in family violence cases.

I want to conclude by thanking everybody who has put their time and effort and energy into this. I want to particularly thank the Hon Amy Adams, who started the journey on this legislation, and started it by reaching across the aisle in the last term of the previous Government and getting all members on board and this House on board to support this legislation. I want to also particularly acknowledge the work of the under-secretary Jan Logie, for whom this has been her life’s work and has reached the culmination of this legislation. She’s dedicated to making a real change for New Zealand in this and in other work that she does as well. I want to thank everybody who has given their feedback to make this bill and bring it here. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it is also a pleasure for me to stand in the House today and take a call on this, the family violence legislation. Can I start by acknowledging the Minister of Justice, the Hon Andrew Little, and also the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Justice, Jan Logie, because I have been working quite closely with them over the last 12 months and they have taken a bipartisan approach in terms of recognising the work the Hon Amy Adams put into this bill. Fundamentally, it’s very important for Kiwis, and so I want to acknowledge the engagement and work that we have done.

I have to admit that when the 11 amendments came in as Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 116, I had a conversation with Minister. I read through them and I said “Would it be fair to say that these are the parliamentary under-secretary’s amendments?”, and he said, “Yes they are.” They came out of the Green Party minority view. The great thing about our democracy is now you have a chance to actually implement those, and some of them we can see great value in.

With some of them, as the Minister referred to—the police safety orders—we have had a debate around that. I personally have had some stakeholder engagement, and we accept the fact that we can watch it and make sure that it’s not used incorrectly, but, fundamentally, it may provide some more breathing space for victims to get orders in place.

I do want to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams because not only did she put an enormous amount of work into this bill—and her officials and her advisers—but she was deeply passionate about it. I think, Minister Little, that when you talked about a woman having hands put around her throat, you’re absolutely right that that is a first indicator that, actually, she could end up dead. I remember having that conversation with Amy, and it became apparent to me very early on, as her associate, just how passionate she was about this legislation and how important she felt that it was. So it’s great to see it in the House and coming through today. Can I acknowledge both of you—thank you.

I would just like to put on the record some of the work that has been done and to encourage Minister Andrew Little—and I hope that he will; I’m sure that he will—to pick up some of this work. If you will bear with me, I’d just like to run through it quickly, and that is that in 2016, we put in a package of $132 million worth of reforms which overhauled the family violence laws and the way the system prevents and responds to family violence. In Budget 2017, we invested a further $37.2 million into targeted family violence services, including the Integrated Safety Response (ISR) pilot and the Gang Action Plan pilot.

Can I just say, I visited the ISR in Christchurch about a month ago, and I spent the morning actually sitting in there while they processed the cases. Can I just say that across all agencies, everyone involved in that sees huge value in it. It appears to be working, and I’d appeal to the Minister that you continue to support and fund and actually grow that programme, because it’s delivering great results back to our community.

The 2017 investment fund for mental health saw $4 million go to a pilot programme around a culturally responsive therapy service for children aged 5 to 12 years who have experienced or have been exposed to family and/or sexual violence. You know, this is an enormously important programme in terms of when we look at that social investment model and actually making the investment in our young people much earlier to try and make sure we get them on the right track so that they have better outcomes as they grow.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’ll just remind the member that the third reading is a summary of a bill, and whilst you can bring in other issues, they can’t be discussed for a long period of time. So I would ask the member to come back to the bills in front of the House, if you can.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I’ll take your advice. I guess why I’ve raised these issues is because a lot of the investment that I’m talking about here relates directly to what is contained in the bills and what we’re going to see implemented after the passing of the bills. So there’s a direct correlation in relation to that.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: You just need to make that correlation in your speech.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker—thank you. So if I come back to that in terms of the bills and the investment that went into a new, 24/7 national sexual violence helpline, this was to provide nationally accessible information and support to people affected in any way by sexual harm.

I’d just like to say that in my own experience, I was lucky enough to have a 14-year policing career here in New Zealand, which I’m very proud of, and I spent 10 years overseas working in communities in countries that were living with deprivation and exposed to terrible violence, and, you know, the situations are always very complicated. When you walk into a household where there’s been some domestic violence, there can be a number of reasons. One can be as simple as the people don’t know how to communicate their feelings and frustrations arise, and all of a sudden you find yourself with violence. Or it can be financial, or it can be aggravated through drug use or alcohol use. There’s lots of complicating factors that we have to try and deal with and unpick, but, first and foremost, the justice system has to be there to react and to protect the victims that are created in that moment.

We increased the penalty for breaching protection orders, and I think that’s very important when we talk about what’s contained in the SOP around a police safety order. They don’t really mean much if they’re not actually backed up with some action if they’re breached, so we recognised that whilst we were in Government and took firm action around increasing the penalties and sending a clear message around the breach of protection orders.

We kept up to a thousand victims of family violence safe each year in their own homes with the National Home Safety Service. If I could again encourage the Minister and the parliamentary under-secretary to remain heavily focused in this area, because one thing that I found very difficult personally was going to a domestic violence situation and often having to remove the mum and the kids from the family home when, actually, when you think about it, that doesn’t really make sense—taking them to a refuge. We are making big steps in this direction, but it actually makes more sense to leave mum and, especially, the children, because you think about the disruption and the trauma in their life. They’ve already seen some violence taking place. They’ve probably already witnessed that, and now we’re actually removing them from their place of security, where they feel secure, and taking them to a strange place with a whole bunch of strangers, and that actually has a negative impact on them. So I would encourage you to please remain focused on that.

Because I’ve only got a couple of minutes left, I just wanted to talk—this is a little bit philosophical, so I ask for your lenience on this one, Madam Deputy Speaker—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, just relate it to the bill, and we’ll be fine.

Well, it’s definitely related to the bill in terms of—I saw some comments made in the media, about I think it was whānau, by the deputy leader of the Labour Party, whom I have a lot of respect for and who brings a lot of passion to this House in terms of what he’s trying to achieve. But the one thing that struck me about that was that he was deeply upset by the fact that the street that he grew up in in Kawakawa, Leonard Street—a lot of the families and a lot of the mates and a lot of the people that he’d grown up with had not been able to access and embrace the opportunities that this country of ours presents. The only point that I would make there, and I felt really strongly—and this relates back to having spent 10 years overseas actually seeing what abject poverty looks like, seeing what insecurity looks like, and having to deal with violence every day—is that a lot of those people would’ve given everything that they owned to have a house on Leonard Street in Kawakawa and to have access to the opportunities that exist for us here in New Zealand.

I think that too quickly, instead of looking at the good things and at the opportunities and at exploring ways of accessing those, we almost fall into a psychology of victimhood where, actually, we can’t see a way through. We don’t actually appreciate what we have in front of us. We don’t actually look for ways of being able to unlock that and pursue that. With hand on heart, I’m just saying that I’ve come across and dealt with hundreds, if not thousands, of people overseas that would give anything to have a house on Leonard Street in Kawakawa and to have the opportunities that this country would offer them. I think sometimes we just need to switch our thinking up and we actually need to look at things through a different prism and say, “Let’s embrace the opportunities that we have as a country. Let’s go for it, rather than sit back and wait for it to happen.” In my view, in my experience, not much will happen if you sit back and wait for it to happen. You have to go out and make it happen for yourself.

So that’s a little bit philosophical, but it does relate to this, because this relates to family violence and getting trapped in a cycle where you can’t see a way out. If this Government works hard and carries on with the work, then maybe a way out will become apparent to them. Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, and I will do my best to stick to the bill. Today, we take a huge step to address a critical problem facing Aotearoa New Zealand. As the Minister of Justice has said, in passing these two bills today we are demonstrating our commitment to doing what we need to do as a Parliament, as a Government, and as a country to, ultimately, end family violence in New Zealand.

We’re all too familiar with New Zealand’s horrific rates of family violence. In 2017 alone, police attended 122,000 family violence incidents—one every five minutes. Statistics suggest about 76 percent of family violence incidents go unreported, and between 2009 and 2015 there were 194 family violence deaths in this country, an average of 28 a year—28 people killed by a member of their family, most of them women killed by their partner.

We cannot underestimate the impact of family violence. It doesn’t just affect victims; it affects their whānau, communities, businesses, and our entire society. It has a lasting impact on people’s psychological and physical well-being—those that survive. It poses significant threats to children’s development. Research shows that children and young people living with violence in their families are at greater risk of experiencing physical or sexual abuse. Preventing and responding to family and sexual violence represents one of our best opportunities to improve the well-being of everyone, and it’s really pleasing that, today, Parliament is united in this endeavour. And I love the energy of trying to up each other in terms of how much we care. I want to encourage that in the future.

I do want to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams for getting this work on the table and for engaging members of the House, communities, NGOs, and people working in the sector. Her initial work has paved the way for where we are today, and I also, of course, acknowledge the Minister of Justice, the Hon Andrew Little, for his absolute commitment to addressing family violence and for bringing these bills to their third and final reading. I also want to acknowledge the officials who have lost sleep along the way to getting us to this point. They really have put their hearts and souls into this work as well.

This family violence legislation provides much clearer direction on the nature of, and appropriate response to, family violence. It clarifies that many forms of family violence conform to a pattern of coercion and control rather than acting as isolated incidents, and it clearly states the risk of lasting harm to the future well-being of children, and it directs decision makers to, where appropriate, intervene early and ensure appropriate sanctions and services for perpetrators as well as services for victims.

These changes, as well as elevating these factors to the level of principle in the legislation, provide clear direction based on concerns from the community that decisions were not consistently or adequately safeguarding victims. We need to get better at recognising and developing appropriate responses for all victims and the specific dynamics they experience. Organisations like Shakti have long raised issues like forced under-age marriage, coercion to marry, and dowry abuse as dynamics of family violence that they were concerned often went unrecognised by mainstream services and the State. These bills now include dowry abuse as an example of family violence and create a new offence of coercion to marry. The intent is that this will help ensure we all recognise and respond appropriately to protect the victims from these abusive practices.

I also want to mention that disability groups and people representing older New Zealanders have also been working hard to educate us about the disproportionate risk of violence faced by these communities, and the failure, again, of mainstream services and the State to protect them. This legislation adds a new principle that acknowledges that people with disabilities and the elderly are particularly vulnerable, and so they should, for example, have access to targeted services; it clarifies that withholding aid, care, medication, or other support that might affect their quality of life is also a form of family violence; and it states clearly that the caregiver-client relationships can be covered by this legislation if it is a close personal relationship, because we’d heard that that was unclear for people, so we needed that to be clear.

While we’ve renamed the bill to remove “whānau” from the title, and we’ve shifted from domestic violence to family violence—and we’ve removed whānau because we don’t want to support a stigmatising narrative—I do want to specifically address the definition of “family relationship”, because there was some concern that the change in title might limit protection to those in what we traditionally understand as a family relationship. It does not. It offers protection to whānau, flatmates, people in dating relationships, and people with an ongoing care relationship, as well as partners and child-parent relationships.

Strengthening protection for victims is at the heart of this relationship. This is why we have enabled police safety orders to be used for up to 10 days to allow police to require a risk assessment when they issue the order, and police can now arrest and issue a police safety order, which means that if a case falls over and isn’t able to make it to trial, there’s still an opportunity to intervene for the safety of victims. This provides us with a real opportunity for earlier intervention, that we lacked before.

The bill also includes provisions to promote child and victim safety and parenting arrangements. It requires judges to take the existence of a protection order into account when assessing a child’s safety and care of children proceedings, and empowers judges considering care of children cases to make temporary protection orders and to impose protective conditions for handover arrangements. This is all to strengthen the direction already in the legislation that the use of family violence against a partner poses a profound and potentially lifelong risk to children.

Putting the safety of children first requires us all to demonstrate to children that their safety is paramount to us and no violence is acceptable, and we will work to protect them from it. The Family Violence Bill enables everyone involved in the family violence sector to work together to get people the help that they need. As we hold the people who choose to use violence accountable for their actions, and as we support them to recognise and change their behaviour, we must still bring the voices and lives of victims and survivors to the centre of everything we do.

On that matter of coordination, we all know there’s a real need for behaviour change so that people both inside and outside of Government are working together more effectively as part of an integrated, responsive system. There is so much we need to do, and this bill enables codes of practice to be able to get us all on the same page and address the concerns raised by the Family Violence Death Review Committee that all too often practice and understanding is unsafe and is not adequately protecting our victims and children.

So I look forward to working with my colleagues in Government, with my parliamentary colleagues, and with the community to ensure the effective implementation of this legislation, because we need to maximise this opportunity to address family violence in order to start transforming our system, making a difference for everyone in the society, but primarily to work towards the end of this violence in our communities. Kia ora.

Before I call the next speaker, I didn’t interrupt the member who’s just resumed her seat, but she is an experienced member and she read the entire speech. I refer her to Speaker’s rulings 46/5 and 6 in particular, which were placed on record by the current Speaker, and probably 47/2, which says a Minister, by convention, is normally able to read a third reading but that’s the only member who can. OK?

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise to talk to this piece of legislation, which has been a long time coming. It’s a very rare piece of legislation, in my view, in this House, because from the time that National was in Government in the last Parliament, and into this Government, there has been a level of cooperation and sharing between the parties, and also between the ministries, which I think has informed a piece of legislation like this, which we can trust and have confidence in, and which will protect our vulnerable in a way that is more meaningful, more efficient, and more effective than it ever has been.

I will confine my remarks, pretty much, in the call I’m taking today, to the effect that it has on our older and more vulnerable and disabled people in New Zealand. Other colleagues have dealt with a broader range of domestic and family violence, all of which are very good points, but as a former Minister for Senior Citizens, with responsibilities now in that area, I feel that one of the silent issues which was emerging in the last Parliament around the formation of this legislation—the discussion papers and the community engagement have meant that those silent voices of particularly elder abuse are more able now to be talked about. Unless they are talked about openly, they will continue to proliferate behind the scenes, because elder abuse remains one of the more difficult challenges.

This bill, I think, addresses many of the aspects that we’ve been working on to try and break down the silos between not only the ministries but also the various agencies that are involved with trying to protect people and trying to react and have mechanisms in place that are sensible and commonsensible and will allow them to intervene in a meaningful way and to protect vulnerable people from the risk of being re-offended against. I think that in terms of the measures in this bill, the general principle is that New Zealand has a very bad track record in this area. We need to address it, and I think this bill really goes a long way to doing that.

I would like to commend Amy Adams, who began this legislation and brought together something like 16 ministries—in itself, I would suggest, a miracle. I would also like to commend the Deputy Speaker, the Hon Anne Tolley. In her former capacity as the Minister for Social Development, she worked in partnership with the Hon Amy Adams to ensure that the various agencies came together. Heads were knocked together where appropriate—never violently, of course; I use that term metaphorically. But people were required by a firm hand to ensure that they listened and rid themselves of their desire to keep their own territory safe. So safety, co-operation, and intelligent, reasoned, compassionate discussion is what we saw with the 16 portfolios over many, many months leading up to this legislation.

This is the biggest overhaul of our family violence laws in 20 years, so it is utterly appropriate that so many people for so long have laboured so hard on this. The Ministerial Group on Family Violence and Sexual Violence have proposed changes, which have then been added to in a very meaningful way by other members in this House who have spoken, and others who will come next, to discuss the various aspects. Earlier and more effective intervention to change perpetrator behaviour is at the heart of this. Unless we can engage the people who are perpetrating the violence, it is going to be very difficult to change the behaviour. Making the property orders more effective and keeping victims in their homes, and keeping children and all adult victims safe after separation—these are the kinds of things that will make an enormous difference.

It is a particularly shameful secret in New Zealand that so many of our older, vulnerable seniors are predated upon—often by members of their own family, in three-quarters of the cases. Getting data, which is another element of this legislation, is a very important part of what we do, because it dictates how we operate and where our priorities are when it comes to elder abuse. The financial abuse is as real and as devastating, and, absolutely, it brings people to the point where they don’t want to live any longer, and I can’t say it more firmly than that.

I have personally, in my capacity as a Minister and now as a spokesperson, heard far too many cases where people have not known where to go or who to turn to to help them through the financial abuse. The mechanisms and the changes that have been put in place will, I think, be significant for them. There also needs to be, I think, hand in hand with this legislation, comprehensive public education to ensure that people know what they can do to avail themselves of it.

As legislators, we need to know what is happening, and this bill does allow for data to be collected. At the level of bail and sentencing, to enable police and others to build the case, I think it is very important that we have guidelines and that we are able to do as much as possible. I think that in terms of protection orders, the mechanisms in this case will enable them to be better tailored towards vulnerable New Zealanders, who are often isolated and at home and don’t know what their rights are. For people with disabilities and people who are financially constrained, we need to be able to intervene earlier, and the earlier and more effective interventions that are laid out within this legislation will enable that to happen.

Perpetrators need to change their behaviours. The intergenerational cycles also need to change. The tendency to blame, point the finger, or incarcerate—these are blunt instruments. The nuanced approach that the various measures within this legislation take will, I think, make meaningful changes and big differences. Intervening earlier is also essential, and being more effective in helping perpetrators change those behaviours is all about trying to get them at an age and stage where they are able to do things before they harm people too much. The bill makes property orders more effective. These are the kinds of things that are spelt out in this legislation, and all the relevant agencies being able to work together and being held to account puts the focus where it needs to be, which is at the heart of where the vulnerable people are.

To me, this legislation is long overdue. It’s now here in its third reading. I won’t take up the time of the House any longer to ensure that it has safe and swift passage, because it needs to go through, to be enacted, and to be available to the vulnerable people in New Zealand to stop the scourge of family violence as soon as possible.

Kia ora, Madam Deputy Speaker. Like many of my colleagues, I’d like to acknowledge those who started the process: the Hon Amy Adams and the previous Government who called together those across the House to actually start to pick up on this issue. It’s good to see that that collegiality has continued, because obviously this is an issue that’s too big to us to make politics of. So I just acknowledge those who started it and have continued that on.

I want to talk a little bit about the 10-day police safety order. That was a point of concern for New Zealand First—it was part of a conversation that we had. We understand why there was that increase around police safety orders. The concern we expressed was to make sure that there were places available when, predominantly, men are removed from their homes. We wanted to make sure that there were places for them to go to.

During my time in Opposition I visited Gandhi Nivas, the initiative that started in one place in Auckland and has now spread to become three or four. I think there are other models throughout the country. When the police remove an individual under a safety order, they take that individual to a Gandhi Nivas house so that they—as I say, they are mostly men—have somewhere to sleep, they have somewhere to be, and they get access to services. You know, without being flippant, there are two sides to this, and we must make sure that we keep the balance. We have to support the victim, absolutely, and any children inside the house that witness domestic violence or are victims themselves, but we also have to make sure that we go to that preventative side, to that early intervention side, to that intensive intervention side, where we make sure that those who perpetrate are well supported to understand that there are other ways to manage this. Again, I acknowledge Gandhi Nivas house and the work they have done and the success they have had in that particular area.

I agree with the Hon Maggie Barry on elder abuse. It is good to see that that conversation is getting wider and that we are recognising it, and, as the current Minister for Seniors, it’s something that’s very important to me. I want to concentrate mostly, though, on some new parts—from the Supplementary Order Paper—that were included and are now parts of the main bill. I’m really focusing, I suppose, on coercive control. I have brought down to the House the fact that it was a piece of work that I was doing for New Zealand First prior to the election. The United Kingdom put it into legislation on 29 December, 2015. They were the first nation, I believe, to put coercive control into legislation so that it could be a crime. That was the first time we really saw it recognised. Many times, coercive control is the start of a pathway to much greater violence, and we need to stop that. If we’re talking about prevention and early intervention, we must focus on coercive control.

I want to clearly describe what coercive control is, and I want to do so not for members of the House but for those listening or watching this so that they can hear what they need to keep their eye out for, either in themselves, in others, or in their lives. The term “coercive control” spans a broad range of actions that are intended to intimidate, restrict, and control a partner’s behaviour. This can include restricting access to money, refusing to socialise with family or friends, threatening to release intimate details or pictures, monitoring e-mail and social media accounts, and even tracking somebody’s movements through smartphone software. Now, if you’re happy, each of you, for another to know where you are at every moment of the day, that’s not a problem at all. But if somebody requires you to download an app on to your phone and actually activate an app so they know where you are every minute of the day, then you might like to consider that that’s a problem.

The only other thing I do want to say here, though, is that if anybody out there recognises that behaviour in somebody they know, please don’t rush off and go and take action in your own right. Certainly create an environment where you can talk to the person that you are concerned about and support them, but please don’t rush off and take action without, first of all, making sure that you have spoken to that individual about what they want to do. Because, at the end of the day, with the best will in the world, we can put people we care about in danger if we decide that we know better. We must empower those who find themselves in circumstances not of their own making to know that we will support them, that there are services out there, and that we will help them as we can but we will not take further power from them by making that decision on their behalf. So, while I want people to recognise what that looks like, I don’t want people to decide that they know better for somebody else’s life, but, please, just to support them.

I think what’s really interesting—and I looked up how many people have been charged under coercive control since 2015—is that of 35 police forces in the UK in the first six months, 798 people were arrested and 130 were charged; if we go to 1 January 2016 to 30 June 2017, 3,937 arrests were made and 666 charges were laid. Now, that might be only 16 percent of those that were arrested but the point is it became something that was watched for. The areas, as Associate Minister of Education, I have responsibility for are healthy relationships, student well-being, anti-bullying programmes, and so on and so forth, inside of our schools, and coercive control is an area where I believe we can do greater work to educate our young people to recognise the behaviours in themselves and in others.

Now, before I sit down, though, I want to ensure that we don’t think that this is just about men or, on the other side of it, just about women, because I don’t want our young men to, firstly, not recognise the behaviours in themselves, but also not recognise when those behaviours are being used against them. And when I was just looking up how the UK model was going, on 16 April 2018 the first woman was actually convicted under that law. “The university graduate is believed to be the first woman convicted under the new domestic abuse laws after scalding her boyfriend with boiling water, stabbing him, and keeping food from him.” Interestingly enough, this young man was actually disabled. So it goes to what we’re talking about. We can’t make assumptions about who this population is. We can’t make assumptions about whether it’s a social demographic over here or an ethnic background over there. We must not make these assumptions, because assumptions lead to judgment.

But what we must do is be aware. What we must do is educate the next generation, so that we can turn the tap off at the same time as we are making sure that the population that we have at the moment we are holding to account but also supporting to find other ways. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a good bill and it’s been through a thorough process. I do want to start by talking about the process. It started off with a good process. I have to say, the last year or so has been appalling. This came out of the cross-party, or cross-ministerial, group in the previous Government. The Hon Amy Adams, as Minister of Justice, led that—Madam Deputy Speaker, you’ll be well familiar with that work as well in your previous role—and the discussion document was issued, I think early or mid-May 2015. There was a series of public meetings around the country led by the Minister, led by officials, and a huge amount of engagement from people involved in the sector: non-Government organisations, charities, Government agencies, as well. I hosted a meeting in Lower Hutt and about 150 people turned up. Probably the best thing about the meeting was actually just the consciousness raising in the community along with some good ideas. From that publication of the discussion document, we had that public discussion and then the feedback went into the ministry and a bill was fashioned. It was then called the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. It came into the House and was then sent off to the Justice and Electoral Committee.

So that very thorough process—that’s exactly how bills, particularly where you’re aiming for cross-party consensus, should be developed, with public discussion in advance of the bill being created. Frankly, I think in New Zealand we don’t do that enough. That is the status quo in other countries like Australia; a lot of pre-consultation done. It needs to happen more in New Zealand; too often it doesn’t happen, but it did happen in this case.

Where I do want to throw a brickbat at the Government is in the last year, where we have been waiting for this bill to progress. I mean, the Government has now been in place for a year. Nothing has happened. It turned out we were waiting for the Government Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), which is largely the Green Party’s minority view. OK, that’s fair enough, the Government can put SOPs on the Table, but I am surprised it took a year, and I’m surprised that it’s taken a year to pass this very important piece of legislation.

The other thing I do want to comment on from a process point of view is it is disgraceful that that SOP, a very large Supplementary Order Paper, was dropped on the committee of the whole House stage and the Minister rejected the Opposition’s pleas for that SOP to be sent back to the select committee for further consideration, given we basically waited a year for the bill to come back for the second reading, committee of the whole House, and the third reading. One doesn’t think it would be too much to ask to send it back to the Justice Committee for a month or so to consider their Supplementary Order Paper. The Greens are usually the paragons of virtue when it comes to process, and the dropping of Supplementary Order Papers at the committee of the whole House stage—so it’s very disappointing that wasn’t agreed to. It was very important that it was considered properly, because there’s quite a large expansion of the power of police safety orders, from five to 10 days in that process, and it was just dropped into the committee of the whole House stage. The Government and the Opposition are both supportive of it, but I’ve got to say we do have some misgivings over the process. That’s the first point I want to make.

The second point I want to make is that this is just one part of the solution. I don’t think anyone pretends that the Family Violence Bill, which will soon become an Act, is going to overnight solve the scourge that is family violence in our communities. Legislation can only do so much. As former Prime Ministers and Ministers and MPs have noted, we need a cultural shift, we need a cultural change, we need Government agencies to work together more co-operatively, work in the community more co-operatively. There’s a lot of great stuff happening. My colleague Mark Mitchell talked about the integrated safety response pilot as just one example of good things happening in the community; innovative solutions to old problems. We need more of that. We need new fresh thinking—legislation can only do so much. And that’s the second point.

The third thing I want to mention before I wrap it up before the lunch adjournment is just some really good things that are happening in this legislation. The first is the name. I’ve talked previously in the House around removing the phrase “domestic violence” from the legislation and calling it “family violence”. That sounds like a small thing. Actually, it’s quite an important symbolic change. Domestic violence is redolent of the idea that what happens in the family home should remain in the family home and it’s not the concern of the criminal law or not the concern of Government or not the concern of everybody else—that people are just having “a domestic”, and therefore they can be left alone. It’s very important we send the message that things that happen in the family home can be illegal, should be illegal, and are rightly the concern of neighbours, other whānau, friends, and the wider society. So the first thing is the name change.

Updating the definition of family violence is good. Other members have talked about expanding it to psychological control and other things. Increasing the effectiveness of protection orders, intervening earlier in order to try and change behaviour, so expanding the tools that can be used when it comes to protection orders. Those are very good.

One thing that hasn’t really been mentioned that I think is very good is greater powers for the courts to consider family violence when it comes to child safety and Care of Children Act proceedings when it comes to custody disputes. That is a very, very significant and important change. Better flagging of family violence in the system, both virtually and physically. Our courts have got a long way to go, I’ve got to say, when it comes to technology and it comes to the way in which things are tracked and flagged within the system. And other members have talked about the significant increase in penalties for non-fatal strangulation, and members previously have talked in the House about—and I’ll sit down as we commend the bill to the House.

I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. today.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 1 p.m. (Thursday)