Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a really important bill on a really important issue. Frankly it's embarrassing that it's taken a year to move the second reading. I was a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee in the last Parliament. This bill was introduced on 15 March 2017 and had its first reading on 11 April—kind of at the tail end of last Parliament we considered it with a number of very serious submissions from very august bodies. We reported the bill back on 16 August 2017.Now no one would expect Parliament to consider the bill on 16 August—in fact I think it might've been the very last act of the last Parliament before the election on 23 September—but fair enough to assume some progress would've been made between August 2017 and September 2018 yet none has been made. I agree with the remarks of the Hon Minister Stuart Nash about the importance of working in a bipartisan way across the Parliament about how we all need to take family violence extremely seriously. It would be nice if the Government provided some impetus for that themselves through the legislative programme. So that's my first point around the delay.I also want to deal with the Integrated Safety Response (ISR) pilot which he made much mention of. He said Well I've sat on an Integrated Safety Response panel and I've seen the great work that it does. No one in Christchurch has died as a result of family violence since the ISR was introduced." Well that initiative came out of the cross-Government work that the last Government was involved in was engaged in across various different Ministers. Stuart Nash said triumphantly "We meet weekly" as if this was some grand achievement that Ministers meet weekly. If he's only just discovering today a year in that Ministers meet on a weekly basis to discuss things I think he's got a few issues. That's not an achievement meeting weekly; actually outcomes are what matter. These guys in the Government love the meetings. We've just had a $1.5 million summit which was a very large meeting. You know actually the meetings are all well and good but you need to get the outcomes and the ISR came out of the various meetings that the previous Government did.Stuart Nash says "Well I've sat on a panel." and he said "Well we welcome the Opposition's support for the Integrated Safety Response panel." Well I tried to go and sit on a panel in Christchurch. I arranged it. It was all due to be arranged and literally just 45 minutes before I was due to go and sit on the panel to see first-hand for myself as a member of the Justice Committee and the Opposition spokesperson for police exactly how it worked the meeting was cancelled by the Minister's office. So look I welcome Stuart Nash's call for bipartisanship and for kōrero across the Parliament in order to make sure we take this problem seriously. I completely agree with him. It would be nice if he actually backed that up with actions and I'm looking forward to the next request to go and visit the ISR being approved by him rather than cancelled.He also needs to get to grips with his portfolio because the Integrated Safety Response is funded out of Vote Police. It's not a Budget bid from Jan Logie as under-secretary which is what he said would happen; it's a Vote Police funding line. He doesn't even know his own portfolio and the reality is—Clayton Mitchell: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Look you've been very clear in your rulings on people speaking to the bill and you had a quid pro quo in relation to a tit for tat at the start that has been seen around the House as the way to move forward. For the last three minutes we've heard a rant that hasn't been anything to do with the bill. It's been somewhat personal in an attack on the Minister.CHRIS BISHOP: Speaking to the point of order I've spent about as much time talking about Integrated Safety Response as the previous Minister did.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The difficulty that I have is that the previous Minister didn't actually address the bill either and talked generally and raised a whole number of points which this speaker is now addressing. So they're already on the floor. I'm actually wondering whether anyone in the House has actually read the bill and understands it and is going to speak to it but I call Chris Bishop.CHRIS BISHOP: Well Madam Deputy Speaker I'll take you up on your invitation because I have the read the bill and as I say I sat on the select committee in the last Parliament. I'm very proud to be a member of the Justice Committee—it was the Justice and Electoral Committee; now it's the Justice Committee.I want to talk about the name of the bill and in particular the reference to "Whānau". One of the interesting issues we considered—and if you read the select committee report you can see that the Labour Party minority view as there was a minority view was to delete the reference to "Whānau". It's Māori Language Week Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori so it's appropriate that we have a debate about that. There was a view that came through from some submitters that the reference to whānau in the bill was inappropriate and I think you can have a legitimate debate about that. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with that but the Labour Party certainly backed that view through their minority view so it'll be interesting to see whether or not they are going to change the name through that deletion.The second thing about the name is that we had an interesting debate the select committee about the word "family" and particularly whether or not there should be a reference to "domestic violence". At the moment the Act is the Domestic Violence Act 1995. It's quite outdated—it's now 23 years old—and this bill seeks to essentially replace the Domestic Violence Act by reference to "family violence". That's the new term—the new nomenclature is "family violence". There were some submitters who turned up and said "Well we don't actually see any problem with keeping the phraseology of 'domestic violence'. There's nothing wrong with it because it's violence that occurs largely in the home—it's family violence in the domestic setting—so we should call it domestic violence." There were other submitters who came and said to us that—and I found this submission very interesting—the reference to "domestic" implies and indicates that it's something that should be off limits to the criminal law. When people talk about a husband and a wife or family "having a domestic"—people used to talk about that. It's an old-fashioned term now but it's actually probably where the Domestic Violence Act 1995 got its logic from. People would talk about "having a domestic" and when they talked about having a domestic they meant you know "That's something that's nothing to do with me as a bystander or nothing to do with me as the neighbour next door or nothing to do with me as the person down the street who sees a woman go to the dairy with a black eye; they're just having a domestic." It implies that that's something in the private sphere that the State shouldn't pay any attention to. And more importantly than that it implies it's something that wider society should not have a view on or pay any attention to or report to the police or report to an agency that helps people who are victims of family violence—in most cases women. So you might say OK what's in a name? Actually the name matters. I freely admit I went into the select committee process at the start thinking: why are there so many submissions about the name "family" or "domestic" or "whānau" or whatever? And actually it became very clear through the submissions that it really mattered to the people at the front line dealing with this and it was really important. I listened to all the submissions and I listened to the various arguments put either way and actually I strongly agree that we should not call it domestic violence.It is not something that is just a domestic that neighbours and communities and society should have no interest in and the State should not have any interest in. Family violence is a crime. Family violence is a social scourge and it is absolutely right that the State takes an interest in that. And actually one of the most remarkable—or one of the most excellent things about the change in New Zealand society over the last 15 to 20 years is that we don't really refer to domestics any more. That terminology has become passé. We talk about family violence and having an Act that is called the Family Violence Act—or at least not the Domestic Violence Act—is actually really important. So that deals with what I didn't think would be a vexed issue the name but actually it is. In terms of the other really important changes other speakers have sort of canvassed some of the changes. We've recommended as a select committee making a series of changes to the bill as introduced. I don't think you would say they're outrageously wild changes to the bill; they don't really go to the substance. The select committee report endorses the direction of travel but there are some minor changes that are important. So for example with protection orders we've recommended simplifying the age-based distinctions in the bill to allow children aged 16 years and over to choose whether to make an application for a protection order in their own name or through a representative. We have recommended including a provision to enable a judge to interview a child at any stage in the process if the judge deems it necessary or desirable. That's because the courts are very intimidating to anyone but particularly to children so this is all about allowing children to better express their views. We've made some recommendations around the quite complicated issue of information sharing and disclosure between family violence agencies and social service practitioners. So it was a pleasure to serve on the committee considering this bill. I would have liked to have seen it come back before the House for a second reading before now but it's here now and I'm looking forward to its passage through the House in the coming weeks and months."