SpeechCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): It gives me great pleasure to stand on behalf of New Zealand First to first of all acknowledge you Jan Logie for bringing this bill to the House. With tongue in cheek and with serious sincerity I think divine intervention has played a little part in this. Being International Women's Day today says a lot and the only time I have seen that happen again was with Sue Moroney's bill when it was to do with paid parental leave. It was just again that the stars aligned so well done and great courage. It just goes to show that the passion that you have for resolving this comes through with your speech and you speak very very eloquently of that.I would also like to acknowledge the Minister for her words and her sincere thoughts along with all other members who have spoken here today and it gives me great pleasure as a male to stand up and speak to this. The fact is that New Zealand First wholly supports this. We certainly would encourage the conversation to continue in select committee. I think there are some potential drafting issues but that is not here nor there. We would like to hear from small and medium sized businesses to see what their take is with regard to the period of time the 10 days that has been allocated for people who are suffering at the hands of domestic violence.Let me just go to a couple of statistics because people back home may not be aware of how big this problem is. Currently in New Zealand the Government puts $1.4 billion a year into dealing with domestic violence and sexual violence in homes. It is a problem that is probably costing the taxpayers $8 billion and that is made up of a raft of things. A study that was done—New Zealand research—shows that for every 100 workers experiencing family violence and domestic violence 94 percent will take 1 extra sick day 78 percent will be unable to concentrate at work 60 percent will be late by more than half an hour at least five times a month 60 percent will also be harassed at work via the phone 50 percent will miss on average 3 days a month of work and 44 percent—nearly half of them—will lose their jobs because of domestic violence. This is a huge problem for New Zealand.I think in the 1990s when we saw a terrible depiction—well a good depiction but a very horrific and brutal depiction—of family violence at its worst Once Were Warriors for many people it was categorised as just in a certain group but it is not in a certain group; it is actually very very broad reaching within our communities. It does affect women particularly but it also affects men. I do particularly like that this bill does have a neutral gender bias. It is about domestic violence in its entirety and not specific to women although we all understand that the larger sufferers of domestic violence are women and that needs to be addressed in the way we deal with it.Certainly what we have been doing for many many years is clearly not working. In the OECD New Zealand is the worst for domestic violence and it does not seem to be getting any better—the statistics we have access to have shown that. We would like to see a new fresh look at the problem and we know that workplaces are in many cases a sanctuary for people who go from their home where it is unsafe and they feel very very vulnerable to a workplace where they can confide in workmates and work colleagues their bosses. This bill allows them to actually deal with it in their own space and time giving the person suffering at the hands of domestic violence the flexibility and security at the same time to deal with this problem absolutely upfront.This is a situation that I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and hero" the businesses in New Zealand and internationally—but specifically here in New Zealand—that have taken a forward-thinking approach in dealing with this problem and have already implemented this policy within their business. That is the ANZ bank here in New Zealand. The Warehouse has also got that. Countdown is also very very aware of this problem and I believe in Australia it has actually got an app that you can push which is a confidential alert to senior management with regard to dealing with it. We have got the University of Auckland which has addressed this problem and the bill has certainly been very well supported and certainly supported through to the select committee by Business New Zealand and the chamber of commerce in Auckland.We hope that this progresses through. I see the absolute genuine passion that Jan has and congratulate her on bringing this bill to the House. We are very pleased that this has got 100 percent support throughout the House this evening. It does not often happen but when it does it is for good reason so congratulations."