Faafoi Kris: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13490. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): I will take just aquickish call on Part 2 of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill. I want to start off where the Hon Phil Goff finished and that is on clause 35 which extends the meaning of domestic violence. I am taking the opportunity here to pose a question to the Minister in the chair the Minister of Justice. For the benefit of those watching I say that this bill changes the meaning of domestic violence to include “financial or economic abuse (for example denying or limiting access to financial resources or preventing or restricting employment opportunities or access to education);”. I am pretty sure that a number of us in this Chamber may have had constituents come to our offices about this. I think this kind of thing is happening more and more—I guess more in the case of denying or limiting access to financial resources. We are seeing much much more of that. It is more common in my experience with women where their former partners are not giving them access to the money they had together or any other kind of property and they find themselves in a situation where they are trying to get access to that.Although we on this side of the Chamber think that it is generally a good thing to be able to include that meaning of domestic violence within this bill when you couple that with other things that happen in this bill we do have some serious concerns about the ability of those people to get access to some of those financial resources. I have had someone come into my office who is in the situation of trying to get access to money from a relationship she had and if she had to represent herself which is one of the options available to her within this bill she would be at a considerable disadvantage. So a question that I would like to put to the Minister in the chair is how we can help people like that out there who are trying to get their hands on money who do not have the money to be able to fight to get that money and who are going to be forced to represent themselves and may not have the knowledge of the systems within the courtproceedings to be able to do a decent job of that or a job that might be able to get them access to what they think they are rightfully owed.We do have concerns around the resourcing as Andrew Little said and the cost cutting that is going on in this situation because in another area where there is the ability to self-represent in the aspect of care of children there looks to be a saving of about $41.3 million over 3 years according to the numbers here in the regulatory impact statement which I have before me. If the Government wants to set out to save money in this area around self-representation I think a fair enough question to ask the Minister in the chair is whether we are going to expand the definition of what family violence is and that includes financial abuse and denying financial resources. I think we are going to find predominantly women in the situation of trying to get their hands on that financial resource. They are going to come from a very low financial basis. They are trying to get hold of that money. How are they going to effectively represent themselves to be able to get their hands on those resources for which the definition in clause 35 expands the meaning of domestic violence? I know there are certainly some people whom I have met who would be in that situation so if the Minister sees fit and is able to respond to that question I would appreciate it.