Borrows Chester: Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill — First Reading 
Borrows Chester: Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:993] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I rise to make a few points in respect of the progress of the Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill. We are all agreed across the House on a number of statements that have been made by various speakers and the one just made by Sue Moroney—that children should be at the heart of this legislation—is quite right. The fact is that if young children are growing up in a home of domestic violence girls learn that it is their role to be beaten and young boys learn that it is their role to beat them or their future partners. So that is why sadly when we look back at the victims of domestic violence we find that women frequently grew up in homes watching their mothers being beaten and that the perpetrators grew up in homes watching their fathers beating their mothers. We need to do something significant to stop that. 
Another point that needs to be made is that there need to be initiatives across pieces of legislation to enhance the ability of the victims principally women of domestic violence to be safe. One of the sad things that has occurred for instance with the Legal Services Agency provision of legal aid to those in dire need is that there is less and less of it available because the fees have never been increased. They have not been increased since 1996. There are a number of small towns where the catchment of lawyers providing legal aid services is getting smaller and smaller. For example in a recent case a woman on the West Coast of the South Island was unable to have representation through legal aid because no one was prepared to work for her. One of the things we need to look at at some stage will be the availability of legal aid for those people who would be seeking replacement protection orders for what has been a short-term protection order given by the police. 
It is also important to acknowledge some of the things we will have to consider about the way in which this legislation will be implemented. An issue that bothers me is that the police will issue a protection order on every occasion they attend an address. The problem we have there is that if that is done in an ill-considered way if it is done for fear of media reprisals if it is not done or if it is done as a result of a “cover your ass” sort of attitude then it could well be that the victims of family violence will be re-victimised by the imposition of the protection order if they do not have the ability to assert themselves in that situation. It will also have an effect on a number of men—and I certainly do not have any problem at all with that if they are the perpetrators of violence whether it be psychological or physical—but we have to ensure that the interests of justice and the rule of law are confirmed through this legislation as well. 
I also think that there is a slight anomaly because the imposition of protection orders in this legislation relates only to the situation where a person is not arrested. That person could have a protection order enforced against him or her where there has not been violence but if there is violence and the person is arrested he or she will be subject only to bail conditions that do not have the strength of a protection order. So a clinical analysis of it would be that offenders would be better placed in the long term if they used physical violence than if they did not because protection orders that would later be imposed against those offenders by the court would at least be done by judges whereas in this case they would be initiated by a member of the police without there being a judicial process. 
So there are a lot of things to look at and a very wide gambit of things that need to be considered. I look forward to the bill going through the Justice and Electoral Committee. It will be a bipartisan debate. Thank you.