Logie Jan: Urgent Debates — Diplomatic Incident Malaysian Official—Negotiations Regarding Waiver of Diplomatic ImmunityText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Urgent Debates — Diplomatic Incident Malaysian Official—Negotiations Regarding Waiver of Diplomatic Immunity[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19135. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):I rise with some trepidation actually to speak in this urgent debate because it is about real lives. There is a young woman who is at the heart of this and I wish to give absolute respect to her experience while being very sensitive around the legal issues in this debate. I also feel a responsibility in this House to convey some of the anger that I am seeing reflected in the community in response to how the debate and the discussion have been happening around this. It is a very sensitive issue and an issue that is reflective of much wider public concerns around what I think I could characterise as rape culture in this country and a concern that the response by this Government has been reflective of a rape culture and has actually fed the beliefs that justify and continue that culture.I would like to just go back to some of the core points. The Minister of Foreign Affairs has finished his speech just now talking about his apology to John Key about the Prime Minister not having the full information and about how the victim is due an apology. I would like to note in this House that the victim is yet to receive an apology. The apology to the Prime Minister has come first before the apology to the victim. Wrong has been acknowledged yet that victim at the heart of this situation is still to come up to the top of the priority list for this Government. That young woman was told only the day before the defendant was leaving the country that he was not going to face charges in New Zealand.We heard from the Minister in response to my questions during question time that he had been told by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade that it would apply for a waiver and then the Minister just I guess assumed that that was happening. The Minister has also told us that this is a once-in-a-decade type of event. My question is again to the Minister: you say you should have known and you did not know so why did you not ask? This is a once-in-a-decade event. They have come to you—Hon Murray McCully: No it’s not.JAN LOGIE: Minister those are your words you are now disputing. I guess that sums up some of the confusion we are getting from you on this issue because that is what you said and it is a rare event. They have come to you your officials and told you that this is the process and you did not even bother to check in to find out what happened. If a Government was putting victims at the heart of our responses if we were putting violence prevention at the heart of our responses that question would have been asked. Before that question was asked I would suggest Minister that you would have told the officials in that initial briefing that you because as you said—Mr SPEAKER: Order! You must leave the Speaker out of this debate.JAN LOGIE: Sorry Mr Speaker. The Minister would have informed the officials in that briefing that he expected them to do everything possible to keep the man here to face justice because as the Minister said in question time you had the assumption that that is what the victim wanted. Well if you had that assumption you should have called—Mr SPEAKER: Order!JAN LOGIE: The Minister should have called the department to take every means possible to make sure that happened and the Minister should have followed up—a simple phone call. What happened with that? How did that conversation go with the High Commission? Are they happy to waive it or not? I think that is the least that this country could expect in terms of putting victims at the heart of our processes rather than just providing lip-service to them.I would also like to note that in this situation and because that did not happen this young woman has been told by the police that she may well have to go to Malaysia to provide her evidence.Hon Anne Tolley: That’s one option.JAN LOGIE: That is the information she has been given by the police in New Zealand. We know how tough our court system is here in New Zealand. We know how brutal a process it is to give evidence in these cases. Everyone in this House knows that. Imagine putting ourselves in her place of having to go through what we can only assume is a comparable system in another country in another cultural context with another language involved and with no family support—not being able to go home at night put on the kettle and have a cup of tea and try to cope with what you have been through. If we were putting victims at the heart of our processes there is no way we would just fob this off as a side issue—that this may be what is required of this young woman—because that is not doing justice to our supposed commitment to survivors or victims of sexual violence.I would now just like to take this wider because I do know that there are some quite deep concerns about some patterns that are arising. Every country in the world is struggling to get on top of violence against women and children. It is a global problem we have to take it seriously and we need a whole-of-Government response if we are going to do it. In New Zealand we are hearing about family violence initiatives today interestingly enough. We heard last week from the Minister of Justice that it was going to be a few weeks before she announced her family violence initiatives. It was interesting to see it in the House today while we were asking these questions having been brought forward.Hon Anne Tolley: It wasn’t brought forward for heaven’s sake!JAN LOGIE: Well that is interesting. We were told it was going to be later Minister and it is interesting—Hon Anne Tolley: No you weren’t.JAN LOGIE: Yes we were. So we are now seeing this happening today while these questions are coming up. It is interesting. Although the Government is saying that this is a core priority for it just in the last short period we have seen a Minister resign because he had interfered on behalf of an abuser by calling the police on behalf of somebody accused of domestic violence. Now we are seeing a Minister who says that he should have known but did not know and never thought to ask around the situation of a victim of domestic violence in a diplomatic situation. We have also seen the case in the Ministry for Primary Industries where a senior director has been appointed to a position with a history of having been disciplined for sexual offending without any notice having been given to the staff and without any necessary information around whether that person appointed to that position had done any kind of personal development work to be able to change their values and behaviours to make them safe in that workplace considering that the previous offences had happened within a work context.We are seeing this pattern of the Government saying on the one hand that it takes this seriously yet across ministries we are seeing the core leadership missing the fundamental point and not connecting the dots that unless we actually make this a core priority in all of our work we are not going to start reducing the violence. In fact we will be and we are creating the environment and the culture that enables it to feed and grow. Unless victims know that they will be listened to and that their needs are respected and put first in all of our systems it is difficult for them to come forward and it is difficult to get justice. I think that this Government needs to be held to account for the choices it makes on whether it sees this as a whole-of-Government problem or just a one-off incident that the Minister does not even need to follow up on.