Radhakrishnan PriyancaPRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. Now before we broke earlier I spoke a fair bit about the title and the need for the change which came about really through some pretty involved discussions that we had at the Justice Committee around the three different types of legal relationships that this bill will address or make changes to. I spoke a little bit or briefly about the history the journey that this bill has undertaken to get to the committee today so I won't reiterate any of that.CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Good. That's encouraging.PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: But what I will say—I wanted to touch a little bit on the intent of this bill in its three different forms. I think I had just started to talk about the fact that marriages and civil unions are more straightforward examples of legally recognised relationships but it was really that third area that we talked about and we discussed at select committee which I've got to say didn't really enter our consciousness in a sense. And I'm speaking on behalf of those I've worked with the women I've worked with who have been in this position prior to when I entered Parliament. De facto relationships are less clear. Legal recognition of de facto doesn't usually include the State and that's the discussion that we had at select committee that led to the change in what this bill is called today basically.I started talking about why that's important and I thought I'd just like to finish that bit as it were. The reason that it's important to include de facto relationships in this bill as it does now is because there were and there are cultural or customary marriages that still take place within a number of the different ethnic communities in which this practice is predominant. And I guess the danger of leaving de facto relationships out of the ambit of the bill is that if we close two loopholes—namely marriages and civil unions—such that a Family Court judge has to be satisfied that there is consent on both parts but we don't touch de facto which is where initially we were going at the select committee level that means that there is another loophole wherein parents who want to force their children into marriage could then ensure that there's a cultural religious or customary marriage that takes place—generally in a place of worship—and a de facto relationship ensues and the two 16- to 17-year-olds live together. That would actually allow for some of the motivations that sit behind forced marriage at the start.There's often a sense that parents who force their children into marriage are doing so for some sort of monetary gain. In some cases that is true but I just wanted to outline some of the reasons or some of the rationales that sit behind this—not condoning the practice at all because forced marriages are a form of violence against women a form of gender-based violence.I just want to make clear at this point that it's not a cultural issue and it's not a religious issue. No major religion in the world condones this; neither does any culture per se. There are women's rights groups from all the countries where ethnic communities hail from in New Zealand. There are women's rights groups within those countries and within those communities here in New Zealand that fight against this issue. So it's not a cultural or a religious thing and we need to make sure that we don't tar entire communities with the same brush when we're talking about this. As in any form of domestic violence or gender-based violence it's a small group of people from those ethnicities that promulgate this and there are a few different reasons that sit behind it. I've worked with a number of young people who might have come to New Zealand at a young age. As they grow up here in a culture in a society that may be quite different and might have very different norms to what they're used to or what their parents were used to back home they fall into a space where in a sense they're caught between these two worlds. I've worked with young girls who've gone to school here have gone to work here—different ways of dressing maybe going out with boys that may be frowned upon by sort of more strict more rigid gender norms that are practised back in the family or in the society that they come from. Therein lies issues—not always; it doesn't always result in violence but sometimes it does and it's used as a means to control. [Time expired]Madam Chair.CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Priyanca Radhakrishnan—and can we confine that a little bit more.PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Yeah yeah; sure. This also does go a little bit to the cultural report aspect of things because it's often used to control women and girls.CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I have stated I don't need any more argument on cultural report. We've had sufficient. If you could find some other arguments that would be great.PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Yeah—no that's fine. I will move on. So anyway that's part of what sits behind the intent of this bill. The other thing of course is there are immigration ramifications and there are monetary ramifications as well and I've worked with young women who have been in that situation as well. There is one point that I wanted to seek clarification on or to make. So Part 1 of this bill amends the Marriage Act and that was to close the loophole that I mentioned earlier where parental consent will no longer be required but it would be a Family Court judge who would provide that. Now it says in replacement section 18(4) in clause 8 that A Family Court judge may on receipt of an application made under subsection (3) consent to the intended marriage only if the Judge is satisfied that for each party to the intended marriage aged 16 or 17 years—" and it goes on to paragraphs (a) (b) and (c) which basically say that both parties are free of coercion that both parties understand the consequence of the application and want the judge to consent to the marriage and that it's in the interests of both parties. I wanted to bring to the attention of this committee the fact that submitters at the select committee stage had made the point that this bill should potentially look at outlining what the Family Court judge should look into and what constitutes being satisfied in the Family Court. At the select committee I think we felt that that was probably not within the ambit of this bill particularly but it is an important point. I say this because there is very limited understanding generally about the definition the nature and the context of forced marriage. I know that because that's actually what led to the Master's thesis that I wrote because with every young woman I worked with when I worked with Government agencies or non-governmental agencies we always started from ground zero because no one quite understood how it was different from an arranged marriage or the context in which it happened which then meant that these agencies couldn't undertake a robust risk analysis. This means that young women's lives are in danger so we do need to make sure that Family Court judges do understand the context of forced marriage what it means and how much of a risk these young people's lives are often in when they're in that situation and this bill doesn't lay out how the judge will do this. So I am interested in getting a little bit of clarification around how that will happen. I know that we have already talked about cultural reports quite a bit but I just want to make one quick point if I may which is that usually Family Court judges will ask for a cultural report from someone from that culture whether it's the ethnicity or the religion that the applicant is from. But whose version do we listen to because even within for example the Indian community there have been numerous media reports over the years where people from some of the cultural organisations are unaware that this is happening because it's so under the radar. So if there's a cultural report from someone who's not aware that this is an issue that report will look quite different from the report of the women's rights activists for example who are dealing with this issue day in day out. So that's the second point that I wanted to make and both are incredibly important because they deal with the safety of young women and at the end of the day women's lives. Thank you Madam Chair. Parts 1 to 4 schedules 1 to 4 and clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.House resumed.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted."