Barker Rick: Family Courts Matters Bill — In Committee 
Barker Rick: Family Courts Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15689] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister for Courts) 
: 
 I thank that member Katrina Shanks for her contribution and for highlighting the difficulties we have in the area of publication of proceedings in the Family Court. I have always started discussion on this issue by saying that family matters are essentially private matters and private matters are not necessarily for publication. That is what makes the Family Court different from a number of other courts. 
A lot of family matters were historically held in open court and I think that members here who are a bit older than me would recall those days—Russell Fairbrother does—when divorce matters were reported on in great detail in the papers because there were salacious details that we could pick over and so on. What was happening was that the open public scrutiny of divorce proceedings was putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the family and the people concerned. There was a lot of distress and trauma and the publicity around these cases made the hurt and cuts much deeper for people who did not deserve it. The public gaze made things much more difficult. 
We have had a long history in New Zealand now of having the workings of the Family Court essentially stay private. There has been a lot of discussion about this matter because some elements have continued to argue that the private nature of the Family Court means secrecy and therefore secrecy means wrongdoing. They argue that the Family Court is not subject to public scrutiny and that public scrutiny would somehow improve the workings of the Family Court. Well I do not subscribe to that view. Personally I think that if it is a family matter then it is a private matter and that the Family Courts should be closed. 
But there are matters that need to be reported. The member Katrina Shanks has highlighted the difficulty in finding the line between what should and should not be reported. Of course we want to have material from the Family Court published so that people can understand what the case law is can understand the precedents being set by the Family Court and can therefore make judgments about how to handle their own cases. 
There are issues about publishing information about people who are under the age of 18. We have made changes in the Family Courts Matters Bill. We have made changes for people who are subject to other orders in care to make sure that their position is not exploited by other people. The concern of this legislation is to ensure that those who have their affairs managed by the Family Court are not brutalised by the unnecessary and often unwanted publicity that could follow if the court were to be open. 
This particular part of the bill has a number of other amendments being made to it in Supplementary Order Paper 201. The Supplementary Order Paper seeks to make changes to the Family Court by allowing the Family Court to appoint a senior Family Court registrar. This is a new position that has been sought by the judges in the Family Court because quite a large amount of their time is taken up in dealing with purely administrative matters. The Family Court judges want to be relieved or to have the potential to be relieved of these administrative matters so that they can concentrate their considerable powers energies and abilities on dealing with the important matters to be heard by the court. 
The matter has been raised with the Ministry of Justice it has been forwarded to the Law Commission for comment and the Supplementary Order Paper that we have in front of us has been drafted by the Law Commission. The Supplementary Order Paper sets out in new section 7B(1) to be inserted into the Family Courts Act by new clause 42A the matters with quite a degree of particularity that the senior Family Court registrars can undertake. It sets out the regulations that can be made by Order in Council. The qualifications the registrar will have to have in order to exercise these powers are also set out by Order in Council. 
I have spoken to a number of parties in the House on this matter. I recognise that the Supplementary Order Paper came late and I would have liked to have done it somewhat differently but the opportunity to amend legislation around the Family Court comes very rarely and it seems that this is an ideal opportunity to take this matter forward. As I have expressed to the Committee the Supplementary Order Paper has the blessing of the Law Commission and of the judges in the Family Court and it also has the support of the Ministry of Justice. 
I put forward this Supplementary Order Paper genuinely believing that it will lead to a considerable enhancement to the Family Court. This does not mean that we will have a senior Family Court registrar appointed in every Family Court; it means circumstances warranting and funding allowing that we have the capacity to appoint Family Court registrars who will be able to deal with interlocutory matters applications that are made without notice pre-hearing conferences uncontested applications applications for leave matters that are consented to by all the parties confirmation of orders that are made overseas—these are orders that come in from foreign jurisdictions which will outline what the circumstances are; the senior Family Court registrar will be able to deal with those—the holding of inquiries and the enforcement of orders and other directions.  
It is quite an extensive amount of powers and responsibility. Taking these matters off the Family Court judges will leave them free then to deal with cases that they need to determine and hopefully will leave the judges in a better position to deal with judge-led mediation where they will be talking directly to the parties and helping them resolve their issues. 
What is not widely understood is that about 94 percent of all the applications to the Family Court are resolved by the parties themselves. Only about 6 percent of the applications to the Family Court are actually decided by the Family Court judge. The whole emphasis of the Family Court in recent times has been to encourage the parties themselves to make their own decisions. The belief is that if the parties themselves—the mother and father and the parties to this disagreement—work through a process of mediation whether it be with non - judge-led mediation or judge-led mediation and resolve the issues themselves those decisions will then be much stronger and much more binding on the people involved because they will be their decisions. They will have made their own decisions about how they are going to lead their lives. It is important for us to give our most potent capacity in the Family Court the judges themselves the maximum opportunity to work with the parties who apply to the court. 
I would dearly love to see that 94 percent of parties resolving their issues themselves increase to 95 percent 96 percent or even 99 percent. If that were the case then we would have a Family Court that is working at its absolute capacity. I am sure that it would be lovely to see everybody making their own decisions about their future but that is unrealistic. There are cases that come before the Family Court where the parties are so intractably opposed and so entrenched in their views that it is impossible to negotiate a solution. The Family Court does all it can to solve that problem but it is not always within the capability of the Family Court to do it. 
The last point I will make while I am speaking about the Family Court is to note that a lot of emphasis has been placed lately on bringing the children into this process. A lot of material is supplied to the parties by the Family Court about the children how they are involved in the process and how it is affecting them. In the Family Courts Matters Bill members will see other changes where we are providing counselling for children in Family Court disputes. This is strengthening the Family Court’s capacity to engage with the children in these difficult circumstances. The belief is that by engaging the children in counselling while at the same time dealing with the parents we will actually bring about better decisions that will involve all the parties—the parents and the children—and with everyone being involved and agreeing on these decisions they will be more binding and more valuable to the family. 
That is the role the Family Court wants to play. It is not to be directive if it can possibly be avoided; it is to bring the parties together so that they themselves can make their own decisions about how they will lead and organise their lives.