O'Rourke Denis: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11546. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):At the first reading of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill I thought that overall it was a good bill but I said then that the devil would be in the detail and in particular in the costs that it would impose for the out-of-court processes. I said that the bill would fail to attract cross-party support if those issues were not reviewed and that New Zealand First would then have to reconsider its support.We in New Zealand First have carefully examined the detail of the bill and we have listened to the very large number—over 200—of extremely well-argued submissions in various parts of the country. We initially supported the overall thrust of the bill which was claimed to be as follows. Firstly it would encourage faster and less expensive resolution for broken families who have issues concerning the custody and care of children by requiring parties to participate in a new family dispute resolution process instead of having to go to court for determination unless that was necessary especially in cases of family violence. Also lawyers were not to represent parties at family dispute resolution but were able to give initial advice if a party was on legal aid.The bill would focus the Family Court on matters genuinely needing a court decision where protection of vulnerable people and children were prioritised. It would encourage parties to take responsibility for their own arrangements concerning the care of their children where possible. The bill would also seek to reduce the exacerbation of family disputes by making it not so easy to get to court because legal proceedings often make relationships worse but of course the court would still be there as a backstop.The bill would also seek to be more responsive to the victims of family violence. We note that the bill expands the definition of “psychological abuse” increases the maximum sentence for this from 2 to 3 years and improves delivery of mandatory non-violence programmes. The intention overall was to make the Family Court more efficient and cost-effective by refocusing its resources. It was always clear that the major objectives were to save money and also of course to speed up court applications by reducing the court’s rapidly increasing workload.But New Zealand First’s support was always on the condition that firstly access to lawyers and to legal aid was preserved from the beginning of a dispute including the family dispute resolution process; and that secondly access would be provided topublicly funded counselling prior to family dispute resolution—and that means preservation of the full system of counselling not just 3 hours—and of course that the costs of the proposed family dispute resolution process would need to be reasonable that children’s rights to separate representation would need to be preserved and that the effect of the bill would have to be to reduce and not increase power imbalances that would result from a party having financial means whether privately or through legal aid that the other party did not have.Debate interrupted.Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.