Chhour KarenKAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to support this bill. I'd just like to congratulate Angie Warren-Clark for having the opportunity to put this through just before we rise. I really appreciate that we can have these conversations because they're often very difficult and people don't know how to have these conversations. This is the second time today that we've had a conversation around family harm and violence and ways that we can make it easier for people who have suffered at the hands of others and I really appreciate having a chance to discuss this matter.I'd like to begin by saying that the opening statements in your general policy statement say it all: Everyone deserves to live a life free of violence and all people should have the right to feel safe in a relationship and to leave that relationship if they experience family violence."—that says it all. It's really hard for a person to leave a relationship like this. There are so many barriers that are in place that make it very difficult to make that decision in the first place and it takes great bravery to walk away. There's the fear of the unknown. Often you have children in those relationships. Often you may not be working. You may be the main caregiver of these young people and the fear of not knowing where the pay cheque may come from—or living a completely different style. It can be quite a traumatic experience in itself. So if we can find a way to make it easier for that separation process to happen so that there is not an imbalance of power—somebody holding power over you and holding you closer for longer than needs be—that is a great thing.We need to be able to take control of and have self-determination over our futures. Family violence is not only harmful to the person experiencing that violence but it's harmful to the people that are seeing that violence as well. Many times that's our young people. We know that when our young people see violence within home life it can actually affect their futures growing up. We want to make sure that our young people have the best start in life and that we can empower parents to make those decisions. If we can allow a parent or a person who is a victim of family violence to have freedom a little bit quicker—I appreciate that.I have seen the devastation that family violence can cause. I know of many situations where it's gone on longer than it should. Applying for restraining orders and making sure that that person can't come near you sometimes just isn't enough. We want to feel like we can move on; move forward. The longer you're having to wait for this divorce process to go on you kind of feel like you haven't moved forward—there's still something holding you back. This is a great way to help those people to move on to heal and to create a better future for themselves.It also protects them from things I heard Angie Warren-Clark talking about: loans being taken out—joint loans—putting people into debt that they can't afford to pay back which makes creating a new future very difficult. So when that marriage is still there there's the opportunity for the perpetrator to punish you and to make your life very difficult. So this will help stop that problem and that issue. I hear that quite a lot—where debts arise that the victim did not know about and when they try and get a loan to rent or to buy a new property they're stuck with this debt that they had no idea about. So hopefully this can help with that problem also.So thank you. I appreciate that we've had the opportunity to speak to this and I hope this makes life just a little bit better for those who have suffered from family violence."