Brown Simeon; Faafoi KrisSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the committee stage of this bill. I have a couple of additional questions for the Minister in relation to clause 7 which is in relation to the new provision which says that 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." Now a number of submitters submitted on this point and made some submissions around what they felt was a lack of training or a lack of skills of lawyers for children when it comes to these areas. So I guess the question is: it's all well and good to put a requirement on the court or the registrar to say that they must do their best to try and ensure that the lawyer for the child has all of these things but the reality is from a skills perspective—the argument put from submitters was that there's not necessarily the right skills base actually amongst lawyers to actually be able to adequately fulfil this. So there are two questions to the Minister. The first one is: is there going to be any additional resourcing or support given to try to actually ensure that there is adequate training for lawyers so they're able to best provide for children in this way to actually give effect to this clause? And I guess the second one is whether the Minister considered whether other professionals who do have skills and training working with children could actually do that in a better way to be an advocate for the child rather than necessarily having to be a lawyer as well. So a couple of questions there. I look forward to the Minister's response to those.Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): Thank you Madam Chair. Very good questions so thank you for asking them. It does go back to the stocktake process that I just mentioned to Mr Penk. I think upon reflection around making sure that we do have a solid framework—I think that was a valid concern raised by I think the Law Society during that select committee submissions to say that in some instances depending on place and time the ability of someone to have the requisite skills may not necessarily be available. I do think there is time available now while we do some of the work on the stocktake and while the provisions of the bill will come in when that stocktake is in place and the resources are ready to be able to do that. Further to the point that the member has raised in order to reflect the best interests of the child of the lawyers acting on behalf of the child I do think it is important that we do have an obligation in the process for the lawyer to understand all the vagaries that the child may have. And if that means understanding the cultural context of which they are coming from I think it is also important. I do think again with the aim of the bill trying to make sure that the efficiency and effectiveness of the Family Court process is enhanced that if we are able to do that we're able to do that in the context of what is best for the child and what both parties mean. We may be able to either skip the court process—which I think everyone agrees would be the preference—in order to get a quick resolution and understand what is best and have two parties that agree as opposed to dragging a court process through 270 days which is happening more often now and I think putting families and children in more vulnerable positions for longer than when these changes were made in 2014."