O'Rourke Denis: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13212. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): The Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill started out with some very good intentions and indeed there are a number of good things in it. Although there have been many worthwhile amendments—and I do think that the Justice and Electoral Committee did a very good job on it—there have in fact been so many amendments that the bill hardly resembles the one as introduced. I think the effectiveness of the Family Court system will however be somewhat compromised bythis bill so it therefore remains unsupported by New Zealand First. There are four major reasons for that: firstly because the bill fails to ensure the availability of adequate publicly funded counselling when it is needed most which is before any dispute takes hold; secondly because it fails to ensure that parties will have legal representation at all stages when we think they will need it; thirdly because legal aid will be too restricted; and fourthly because we think that the provisions concerning the appointment of a lawyer for the child are far too tough. So New Zealand First will be voting against the bill.I want to deal briefly with the Supplementary Order Papers at this stage and firstly with the Minister of Justice’s Supplementary Order Paper 349. The provisions in the bill relating to the fees and expenses of a lawyer appointed to represent the child to assist the court or to appoint it to write a report are amended in clause 21 so that the court may not order the parties to contribute toward the fees and expenses of a lawyer appointed to assist the court if the lawyer was appointed to provide independent advice “on any complex legal issue”. The words “complex legal issue” are highly restrictive but also very uncertain so it is not easily possible to tell whether this amendment will really help at all. But where complex legal issues are not the reason and where the court appoints a lawyer to assist the court the parties would have to pay for it and we in New Zealand First think that is wrong. The parties should pay only for their own representation not for a lawyer appointed by the court for its purposes whether for complex legal issues or not. There is a discretion for the court to exempt parties from this if there is serious hardship. Presumably one party might be exempted for serious hardship though the other might not be. But more important serious hardship is a high bar for the purposes of exemption from the obligation to pay and many parties will struggle to meet the costs. We think these costs should be met entirely by the State. So the Minister has simply not gone far enough to amend the bill in this way.However concerning appeals the Care of Children Act 2004 the Child Support Act 1991 and the Family Proceedings Act 1980 are amended to provide that no appeal may be made to the High Court in respect of a decision to appoint a lawyer to represent a child or to assist the court or in respect of a decision to request a person to write a cultural medical psychiatric or psychological report or in respect of a direction that the parties may or may not be represented at a settlement conference. New Zealand First does support those amendments. We think those are sensible and they are the sorts of decisions that should finally be made by the Family Court.Moving on to the Care of Children Act 2004 which is also amended so that the maximum number of counselling sessions is to be determined by regulations we do not really know what counselling would be made available because it is simply to be set out in regulations. We suspect that counselling services will in fact be severely reduced. New Zealand First believes that a more comprehensive Government-funded counselling service should be provided. The bill repeals existing provisions for Family Court counselling and replaces them with a new scheme involving mandatory parenting information programmes family dispute resolution of course and judge-directed counselling. We do not think those provisions are enough. It is clear that counselling now plays a very large role in avoiding disputes and that needs to be enhanced we believe and not reduced in the way that we see with this bill. Not all families will break up if first given the benefit of counselling before any other process is used. Family dispute resolution should come after counselling if counselling is not enough. The new section 46E inserted by clause 9 of the bill is therefore too restrictive. The parties should be able to decide for themselves to do this without having to get a judge’s direction.Finally regarding DavidClendon’s Supplementary Order Paper 254 we will be supporting that. It gives greater weight to the principle that protects the child from all forms of violence if there is any inconsistency in applying the principles in new section 5 inserted by clause 4. MrClendon’s amendment would insert a new section 5(2) to provide the courts with clear legislative guidance if the application of one or more of the other principles in the section conflicts with that principle. So I agree that new section 5(a) inserted by clause 4 which says that “a child’s safety must be protected and in particular … from all forms of violence … from all persons” must be clearly absolutely paramount and be explicitly stated to prevail over the other principles. New Zealand First will support that Supplementary Order Paper but for the reasons that I gave at the beginning of my address New Zealand First will not be able to support the bill as a whole.