Omer Ibrahim; Dean JacquiIBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. I wanted to join my colleagues in congratulating Dr Deborah Russell for bringing this piece of legislation to this House. Madam Speaker today while we celebrated a milestone of our Parliament reaching 50/50 and myself and you were part of the delegation that participated in the 145th Inter-Parliamentary Union conference where gender equality was part of the main topic there are also women out there who are being targeted just for being women. Iran is a good example and my heart goes out to them.Prior to coming to Parliament I was a union organiser and every day every week every month we dealt with issues such as sexual harassment. One of the biggest barriers for victims was the time frame that they are allowed to raise their grievance in. Because of that there were a lot of missed opportunities for justice and I do remember a lot of stories of the people affected. Victims are often quite slow to come forward. That could be due to lack of understanding of what happened to them. For many people it could be hard to grasp what really happened to them. But also the power dynamics play a role as well and the fear for their employment and the loss of income etc. etc. And there are also cultural norms and shame that deter people from coming forward.This bill is all about extending the time allowed for people to make their personal grievance from 90 days to 12 months in the cases related to sexual harassment explicitly. As my good friend Camilla has mentioned it's not going to be retrospective and the Education and Workforce Committee has done a good job making sure that it won't be retrospective. There are however some conflicting views and opinions that it should be more than 12 months and it should also include other aspects. For example some submitters wanted the deadline to be pushed beyond two years or more and others wanted the legislation to include bullying and racial discrimination and other forms of disadvantage. The member in charge Dr Deborah Russell however made it clear that this bill only deals with sexual harassment. If needed other work could be done in other areas.The select committee has scrutinised the bill. It discussed it thoroughly and it made some good recommendations such as the definition of relevant periods" of personal grievance versus personal grievance for sexual harassment for example and inserting "applicable employee notification period" and defining the true difference as well.This bill is very very important. It's common as we all know for victims of sexual harassment to wait a long time to come forward if at all. This bill allows employees to have time to consider and process their decision and make sure that their families understand what's happening to them—and their families probably even come on board with them. In general they have to feel safe to take a step. There are many reasons obviously for this and there are stories and evidence that back this. For example according to Zoё Lawton from MeToo—her quote—"It's really hard to speak out when the person who is bullying or sexually harassing you is paying your salary and controlling the type of work you do or you're getting and have the potential to ruin your career." There is a lot of evidence for this as well.That's why the Labour Government is taking a lot of steps to make sure that we deal with the violence and sexual harassment against women. For example Labour aim to end the violence against women. Women are not the only people obviously. I think the Hon Paul Goldsmith alluded to it before. He said that women are not the only ones. Yes that's the case but also women are the majority of the victims. In 2018 the Labour Government announced a joint venture on family violence and sexual violence a whole-of-Government response made up of 10 agencies. In Budget 2020 an additional $131.9 million was allocated to support a number of successful prevention programmes running in our communities. In December 2021 the Government announced Te Aorerekura: the National Strategy to Eliminate Family Violence and Sexual Violence. The strategy will span over 25 years tackling the cause of violence against women in New Zealand. This joint venture will utilise the cross-agency approach to ensure collective responsibility is taken for violence against women.Eliminating family violence is a long game. It's one of the greatest opportunities for improving the wellbeing of our society. But it is complex and doesn't fit neatly into individual agency boundaries. We need a spectrum of interventions that range across preventions recovery and healing. This needs to be delivered through a sustained collaborative approach across the Government where tangata whenua and the communities are engaged in decision making.The submitters were a big part of the select committee's process and they have done a good job bringing some real stories to the attention of the committee. But also a big part of the submitters were the unions. The first union conducted a survey on sexual harassment. They found approximately about 13 percent of those surveyed reported experiencing sexual harassment of some sort at work; 26 percent reported either witnessing or being reliably informed of someone being sexually harassed at work. In the final comments however many said that they all felt unsure that they had experienced sexual harassment where the other details provided did indicate that they had been sexually harassed. All of the 13 percent were under 40 with most being between 20 and 30. Of those that had experienced sexual harassment themselves about 17 percent reported having still not processed or understood at all what happened to them to this day.Most of the workers or 80 percent do not or did not know what a personal grievance is. This comes down to as my colleague Angela Roberts said education. It's very important that we educate our kids our tamariki starting from schools. At least 21 percent of the workers say that if given more time they would have definitely raised a personal grievance and another 17 percent believe they most likely would have.So this bill we know is going to be a game-changer. It's going to help a lot of people to have enough time to make up their minds to feel safe to consult with their families. And education is key. The workers most in need of protection in this format are not currently using this because simply they don't know. With most sexual harassment being committed against younger female workers enabling them time to process seek help and learn that the personal grievance is an option available to them is critical. It would also give us more time as a union on the other end to reach other people. So the longer the time given the better. Finally I wanted to touch—while this affects a lot of people it's also even harder for minorities who come from either migrant or refugee backgrounds. That's because simply they come from places where raising a voice against your employer is not an option. Because of that they tend to live with the same mentality here and we have to make sure that people know that this country is not what they come from. They have rights. There are a lot of laws that can step up and protect them. So with that this is a good bill and I commend it to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Melissa Lee—five minutes."