Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Madam Speaker. That member Arena Williams spoke for one minute and 11 seconds. Congratulations!It's great to take the opportunity to take a call on the Family Court (Supporting Children in Court) Legislation Bill a bill which the National Party will not be supporting. But I do think it's important here to highlight that this is dealing with a very important and a very complex area of law and one which does have a huge impact on many many New Zealanders. I think it's important to acknowledge all of the different people who play such a critical role helping families helping children through these situations trying to seek resolutions in these difficult times.The National Party is not supporting this bill because effectively it is not actually going to provide much of a solution to the challenges which we do face in our Family Court. Effectively we have a situation whereby this bill simply does one simple thing which is it seeks to put in place more legal representation without trying to deal with the underlying issues which need to be dealt with. Nor does it seek to actually try to ensure that those lawyers representing the child who are now put in place will actually have the necessary qualifications or experience or tools to be able to do this.It ignores the I think very important submission from the Law Society which said that the bill should be deferred until more appropriate participation models are researched in order to ensure that the child's voice is actually given a voice appropriately in the process.So we've heard lots of impassioned speeches—very short speeches I must add—from the other side talking very briefly about their passion to ensure that children have ability to have lawyers and representation and talking about the people that they know of who they know are lawyers and can do this job. But effectively what this bill does is it says in clause 7 When appointing a lawyer to represent a child the court or Registrar must so far as is reasonably practicable appoint a lawyer who is by reason of their personality cultural background training and experience suitably qualified to represent the child." Nothing in this piece of legislation does anything to ensure that there will be lawyers available with the appropriate personalities cultural backgrounds trainings experiences or qualifications to represent those children.Effectively it's putting in place a situation where it says "These children must have a lawyer and their lawyer must be able to do all these things." but no ability to actually ensure that lawyer can do all of those different things. So this piece of legislation is a piece of legislation which to put it kindly like the Law Society says "Should be deferred." Or to put it bluntly as the National Party says "It will make no difference." and therefore we will not be supporting the piece of legislation. I think it's important to point out that the Ministry of Justice review of the 2014 reforms that the National Party did undertake showed that out-of-court proceedings take on average 37 days whilst in-court proceedings take approximately on average 268 days—a substantial increase in number of days where proceedings are taking place in court rather than outside of court. And therefore the Government's role and the Government's focus should be in seeking to try to see as many cases being dealt with out of court as possible because we are dealing with family situations where there are children and where 268 days—whilst it might not seem a long time to Kieran McAnulty on the other side it is a long time for a young child like me! No no—like the children elsewhere.Hon Member: They are awake.SIMEON BROWN: And now they're awake. I was just checking to see if he was actually listening and he is listening so that's fantastic.Hon Member: Five minutes till bedtime!SIMEON BROWN: Five minutes till bedtime Kieran. Five more minutes.Arena Williams: Five minutes of this!SIMEON BROWN: Five more minutes of this that's right. You have me to keep you awake Kieran before your bedtime.Hon Member: Or lull you to sleep!SIMEON BROWN: Or lull you to sleep. So the priority here for the Government should be about ensuring that the process is undertaken in the most time efficient and effective manner and as that Ministry of Justice review found that the out-of-court proceedings was the most timely and most effective way of dealing with these situations. Our concern on this side of the House is that by simply inserting more legal representation into these situations—particularly without ensuring that they have the adequate training or qualifications in these situations and without as the Law Society says actually having the research basis to ensure that this is the most appropriate form of trying to deal with these situations—that all this piece of legislation does is change the law. It means that the Labour Party MPs can say they've done something ticked a box. But actually the families and particularly the young people the children who are involved in these situations are no better off at the end of the day and in fact we may see more cases going through the court proceedings which we know will take that much longer and with much more difficultly and challenges for those young people as they go through this process. So the National Party will not be supporting this piece of legislation."