Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Well this is my first Budget in support of a Government and I must say it's quite different. I might not go quite as far as the forever modest Minister of Finance and call it perfect because I'm a little more impatient for change but crikey when I look back over things I've written in response to previous Budgets over the last six years it's quite a different perspective of looking at this. When I was looking at some of the things that I'd written in response I was looking at a blog post from 2014 where I was looking particularly at the area of family violence—how changes to legal aid under that previous Government had meant that women were paying thousands of dollars to get protection orders that changes to Housing New Zealand and Work and Income had made it increasingly difficult for women and children to get and stay safe and that we heard that the funding had been cut for women's refuge from $9.3 million in 2019 to just $7.3 million in 2012-13 despite an increase in demand. We had been talking about cuts to the It's Not OK programme and White Ribbon being told they needed to be self-funding and treatment programmes for people using violence had also been cut by millions of dollars despite increasing demand and increasing intolerance for this kind of violence in our society.I will admit there was a moment of reprieve after the parliamentary select committee inquiry into funding for specialist sexual violence services prompted a $46 million injection of funding from the previous Government but the pattern was just years and years of bleak struggle in our communities. They wanted to wipe out family and sexual violence from their communities but were just not being given the resources from the previous Government to be able to do that.So it is an absolute pleasure to see that starting to turn around with this Budget. I want to take a look at at least some of the Budget announcements in the area of family and sexual violence and what they might mean for people in my community—and communities all over New Zealand but my community in Porirua. The increase in funding for front-line services—of women's refuges as an example—will mean that people in my community will be able to get the help they need from the local staff at their women's refuge because those staff will have more time to help them work through what they've experienced and unpack that violence in their head and help them find a pathway to a new life free of violence. To me that's worth celebrating.It means if they separate from their abusive partner and are still at risk in their home they'll be able to access security advice and security monitoring with locks and alarms. That's a programme I was initially critical of because it seemed to me that just providing a security service around your house wasn't really doing enough but I've heard of instances where that absolutely saved women's and children's lives when women had a safe room and had been taught to have that space in their house to be able to escape to and to be able to be safe from the person—their ex-partner—trying to break in. I believe that it is important that women and kids who are trying to re-establish themselves away from the violence have that peace of mind to sleep at night. I think it's the least we can expect.The additional money for the police will also help make sure that the police can attend call-outs and have the time to properly assess what was going on and be able to look at everyone's safety needs in terms of a family violence call-out instead of just arresting the person in front of them and having to move on quickly. It also means that the additional funding for the sexual abuse assessment and treatment service will mean that if someone is sexually assaulted there will be trained medical people to sensitively collect the evidence for a case to proceed to court and to provide the right medical and specialist help regardless of whether they're going to court or not.It will also hopefully ensure that the courts can keep victims safe and reduce the trauma of having to give evidence in court by enabling victims of sexual violence—and domestic violence hopefully one day—to have a quiet and restful room to give evidence via audiovisual link rather than having to go into the courtroom and face up against that person who has been torturing them and hurting them previously. It will mean that delays caused because there hasn't been enough funding or people available to do expert assessments for the court are a thing of the past. This Government is working to ensure that those who go to court are supported rather than revictimised and that the process is as easy and as efficient as is helpful and that people choosing to use violence are held accountable and given the support to change their behaviour.So they're some small but very very significant interventions that have come through in this Budget across this Government that I am pleased and grateful to see. There is another item in this agenda though that I really am very excited about and that is $2 million for a central agent for a new response to family and sexual violence. While I can imagine right now that my mother's eyes are glazing over at the sound of the words central agent" I just want to explain it for a minute.We know that many victims of family violence—and it's also very similar for sexual violence—may tell people multiple times. There's an example that came from the Family Violence Death Review Committee that's been mapped out where a woman had initially sought counselling for alcohol and drug support. She'd been a victim of family violence. She told that counsellor five times before she got a referral. Nobody checked that that referral was followed up that it was appropriate for her. She never followed up on it. When the police were called out they never arrested her partner who was hurting her and again she didn't get the help she needed and he wasn't held to account. Then it went to court and he was sent to a programme but again nobody followed up and checked whether she was safer and whether he had stopped using violence. Ultimately there were many many chances for us to intervene through our health system through the education system through the police and through the courts and we failed to do it. This is what we see happening over and over again. Sadly in that case that woman was murdered by her partner.This happens on a regular basis in this country and even if it doesn't end in death too many women's and children's lives are so deeply compromised by the trauma they've experienced through their relationship or through the sexual violence because we didn't respond when we could have. Her partner had shown signs of violence right from his early stages having been a victim living in a household with family violence as a child. We didn't intervene.So that thing called a central agent is how we pull together our response to make sure that every single chance we have to be able to step in and make sure that somebody gets the help they need we take that chance and we get it right—to make sure that they can be safe and that the person who is choosing to use violence is held to account and stopped from using violence again. That for me is the real hope in this Budget: it is the hope for a society that is free of family and sexual violence where we are all able to thrive and live and experience healthy relationships. That to me is something worth putting all of our resources towards. I look forward to seeing this develop over time."