Turner Judy: Family Courts Matters Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turner Judy: Family Courts Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18568. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 United Future is supporting Part 7 of the Family Courts Matters Bill which largely covers the issues of counselling and mediation. I agree with the previous speaker Chester Borrows that we need to start to look in family law to some of the rather fine progress that has been made in other jurisdictions around better ways of helping families weed whack their way through what is often a pretty appalling experience when a couple’s relationship has come to an end.  
If we are serious about moving away from a more adversarial approach I suspect we will need to consider at some stage the assumptions in law regarding parenting arrangements for children. Those assumptions allow lawyers to have a field day. If for instance there was an assumed starting position in law of shared care then I think we would find that the approach to working out the parenting and care arrangements for children could be very very different. One of the blocks to that is provisions in other law. Law is such a complicated thing and we quite often find it very difficult to amend one law without making adjustments in other areas of law.  
One of the areas of law I have come across that does deal directly to Part 7 is the fact that in New Zealand our benefit system is inflexible to the point that one cannot share a benefit. It means we are forced to establish a primary caregiver who is entitled to a domestic purposes benefit and a non-custodial parent—or a parent that has access only—who is not entitled to share a part of that benefit.  
United Future would welcome an urgent review of a number of issues to do with child support. Currently we use some very blunt instruments to calculate child support. All these issues add to a series of assumptions that facilitate an adversarial tone in our Family Court. After the election if any Government is serious about moving in a less adversarial way then it will have to realise that there are some very serious considerations—layers and layers of considerations—that will need to be taken into account.  
I also pick up the issue mentioned by Chester Borrows about DNA testing. The Law Society said that this was the great failure of this bill—that it was a wasted opportunity. I have a member’s bill on the Order Paper and I will be seeking to advance that—obviously after the election. The Attorney-General has already indicated there may be some areas of my bill that need strengthening and I am very open to that. My bill is currently focused on allowing a father who is involved in a dispute as to whether he is the father of a child—a named father or an unnamed father as the case may be—to have that clarified simply and quickly through a DNA test. The issue the Attorney-General has raised is whether for instance a child who would like to clarify that position is able to make such an application. I am perfectly open to the suggestion that we could strengthen what I am proposing.  
I think we have to understand that there are two situations that the Family Courts Matters Bill has failed to address when it comes to establishing who is the father of a child. There is the case of the father who believes he is the father of a child and would like to have meaningful contact with that child but because he is not named on the birth certificate cannot even apply to have any access. The other side of the coin is a gentleman who is named as the father and suspects that he is not but is now liable for sometimes quite hefty child support payments whilst all the time unconvinced that he is indeed the father. In fact when we talk to such gentlemen we find that many of them would be happy to pay provided they knew for sure they actually were the father.  
I think there is another important thing to note in Part 7. One of the things submitters asked us to be mindful of was that there is a huge difference between mediation and counselling. There was some concern that as we progressed we would morph these into one consideration and misunderstand the very distinct differences between those very important roles. The Social Services Committee was very mindful of that. We talked about issues around the participation by children in mediation and when that was age-appropriate. Who would decide that? Could counsel for the child attend mediation and counselling on behalf of their client the child?  
The committee had to weigh up and consider a number of issues like that and those are not small decisions. Many would have to be made on a case by case basis. The committee was reluctant to see a law that would set up a clear and demanding expectation on children to attend; nor did we want to provide a situation where children were blocked in a way that could be unhelpful for their ongoing well-being. United Future is happy to support Part 7.