Moroney Sue: Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill — First Reading 
Moroney Sue: Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:991] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise to speak in the first reading of the Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill. In looking back over our society during the course of a number of years I think that today’s debate should give people great encouragement that over a period of time we can with strong legislation backed up by strong education actually change the attitudes and views of society. I think that today’s debate really does demonstrate that because so far no one has got up in the House during its course and said that the Government should stay out of people’s bedrooms. No one has got up and said that the Government does not have and that society does not have a right to set standards and expectations in this area. I imagine that if we had been having this debate some decades ago we would have heard those very speeches being delivered in this House. There would have been elements in society arguing that it is not anyone else’s business to interfere in the family home to talk to families about how they behave or to set the standards society expects. This demonstrates to me that we as a society have moved on quite significantly. 
The best that any of the naysayers in our society can do in respect of domestic violence is to somehow diminish it by not accepting there is a gender imbalance in this equation. That I think is as close as naysayers will get to not acknowledging the real issue that exists. Yes although there are men who are affected by domestic violence overwhelmingly those who suffer are women—women and children in fact. If we do not acknowledge that then we will set out down a pathway that does not address the worst of the problem facing this country. When the select committee looks at this issue of domestic violence I hope we will not get into a big argument about the gender implications of it in our country because clearly the issue here is the outcomes of domestic violence for women. The Hon Pansy Wong said in her speech that every 26 days a woman dies at the hands of her partner her ex-partner or someone she was once in a relationship with. I think that demonstrates that the outcomes of domestic violence for women are so much more severe and although that does not excuse any other element of domestic violence I think it puts the real context into the discussion. If we do not focus on the very real outcomes of domestic violence then we will get the wrong solutions to the wrong problem. 
The Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill before the House at the moment is supported by the Labour Opposition because of course we must make steps forward on this issue that is an indictment on our country. But I want to reinforce what the nature of the issue is and how large it is. It is incredibly sobering to read the statistics in the explanatory note of the bill remembering that statistics are numbers and that behind every one of them is not only a victim but also people close to that victim who are also affected by this terrible scourge on our society. In 2007 and 2008 family violence accounted for approximately 39 percent of homicides 42 percent of kidnapping and abductions 44 percent of grievous assaults and 64 percent of serious assaults. The connection there I think is that although we have seen an increase in the reporting of serious crime these figures tell us the basis of that. The awareness-raising exercise by the It’s not OK campaign has led to a higher level of reporting domestic violence. That of course is not something we want to celebrate necessarily but we see it as a very important step forward. People now acknowledge that assaults are not OK and they do report them these days. But the most damning part for New Zealand in the explanatory note is the statement that precedes those statistics. It states that for a significant number of victims of violence the most dangerous place they can be is in their own home. In their own home is where people should feel safest and clearly that is not the case. So I applaud this bill. 
However I want to point out that there is a lot of room for improvement and I am so pleased that this legislation is going to a select committee. I think it is the first of the bills we have been dealing with under urgency to do so and I applaud that because there are many many issues that I think need to be added to it. Again this is a little bit about numbers but I have with me a bit of a visual aid. It is the Domestic Violence Reform Bill worked on and introduced by the Labour Government which deals with the same issue but in a much more comprehensive way. The bill before us has 12 pages the previous bill has 34. Although numbers are not everything the content is. In the case of the bill before us it means that significant content which I hope the submitters who come to the select committee will argue for has been missed out. The issue of domestic violence is not a simple surface issue; it has many many layers to it and we need to take a comprehensive approach. I hope the select committee will get an opportunity to discuss some of the issues in the bill that the Hon Lianne Dalziel was denied leave to table—issues she was concerned about being missed out of the bill before us. 
One of the things that could be added to this bill is a change to the definition of a child from being a person under the age of 17 years to a person under the age of 18 years aligning it in that respect to the Domestic Violence Act the Care of Children Act and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Another issue is that previously the legislation empowered the court to make interim care or contact orders to protect the welfare and best interests of the child in cases where an applicant with a child applies for a protection order. I think we must put children at the heart of this because when children witness domestic violence we know that it has implications for them for the rest of their lives. Another issue I hope that the select committee will get to discuss concerns the requirement for a judge declining a without notice application for a protection order to provide written reasons because I think we need to improve the way in which our justice system responds to issues associated with domestic violence. I also hope that the select committee will get an opportunity to talk about making provision in the legislation for applicants to be able to attend information sessions which would provide information about making effective use of protection orders and providing advice on social assistance that may also be available to them. There are a number of other issues that I will not go into in great detail because a number of my colleagues have already canvassed those details and as I said I hope that the select committee will get the opportunity to do that as well. 
But I want to acknowledge the work that is happening on this issue out in our community. Many speakers have referred to some of the very fine initiatives that happen to be operating in the Waikato area. I am not sure why we have such a focus on this in the Waikato area. Certainly the statistics would show that we do not have a worse problem with domestic violence than any other part of the country but we tend to have a significant number of people who are focused on this issue. I acknowledge the work of the Hamilton Abuse Intervention Pilot Project and the work that it has been doing. I hope that the project will make a submission to the select committee because it has a lot to offer. 
I also acknowledge the work that has been done by the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges. I had the opportunity to meet with Heather Henare from the Women’s Refuge just in the course of this week actually and she was urging the Labour Opposition to ensure that this new bill has a speedy passage through the House because of its importance. In terms of timing I think it is a great shame that we have not been able to deliver the outcome in relation to the orders that could be made immediately before the Christmas - New Year period because that is a time of particular stress on families; unfortunately that is the time when domestic violence tends to increase. Certainly during the course of this year—the Women’s Refuge has informed me—there has been a 16 percent increase in the number of women and children being referred to its service.