Dalziel Lianne: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDalziel Lianne: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13214. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): I want to support the comments that Labour’s spokesperson on justice Andrew Little began with which was that this was an amazing process. It was a fantastic process for bringing law reform to Parliament. That process was to develop a discussion paper that would set out all of the issues that everybody could engage in—understanding what all those issues were about. And this amazing process happened not far from this Chamber in the Legislative Council Chamber. The then Minister of Justice enabled all of the parties to come together and they basically held a conference here at Parliament with all of those external interests operating—with the Ministry of Justice with the Minister and with the Opposition parties. Everybody was there. Everyone had a say. Everyone made a contribution. We had the judges. We had external consultants. We had everyone engaging in a really really positive process. Then we had this external reference group established which was also able to engage in a much broader process that enabled many many more people to be involved in developing the way the law would be introduced for debate in this Parliament—fantastic.Except something went wrong. Something changed along the way. Instead of the bill that everybody thought would be introduced suddenly there was the bill that was introduced—the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill—and suddenly the game plan had changed. Actually what changed was that it became about the money instead of about the people who we are told—lectured I would suggest—by the Minister of Justice are the real subject of our debate. Suddenly it was actually about money. It was not about the children. It certainly was not about parents coping with the most distressing environment that a parent could possibly cope with having to disassociate themselves with the heartbreak of being left by a partner who has just told them that they have cheated on them for the last few months and have actually left them for somebody else maybe their best friend and are re-establishing their life with somebody else. They were prepared they were ready to go but not the person who was left behind—and suddenly she is the problem? Suddenly he is the problem if it was him? Are they the problem in terms of this process because they cannot focus their immediate and absolute utmost attention on the best interests of the child?How heartless this Government is that it actually leaves it to people at the most distressing moment of their lives to take care of how they resolve the issues in the best interests of their children. This Parliament has an absolute responsibility for the best interests of the children and we actually do have a role to play as a Parliament and as a Government to step in and assist parties to resolve disputes in the best interests of their children when they may not be in the best frame of mind to do so for themselves. That is why we have always had counselling.When this law was introduced—when the Family Court proceedings legislation came into play—I was studying law. When the Family Court was first established I was a lawstudent. We were studying the changes that were going to replace the law that existed before that and actually the Family Court process was much better. It was much improved in terms of what was there before and we were all looking forward to it.Yes there have to be changes—we all agree with that—but why would you take out counselling? I can find that in the regulatory impact statement. I know my colleagues will be shocked to find that I have read the regulatory impact statement. It says and I think all of you will know instantly what I am going to say: “Counselling costs the State approximately $9.7 million per year.” It is $9.7 million dollars a year. We are talking about a multimillion-dollar budget here and $9.7 million is a small chunk of that multimillion-dollar budget but what it saves is not mentioned here.What it means is that couples are referred away from the court. Yes they file under the court system—a section 9 referral—and up until now they have been receiving six different individual counselling support sessions so that they are able to work out their issues. The evidence that we received at the Justice and Electoral Committee—and yes we did sit on the select committee and listen to people who came and yes many of them were lawyers and no Minister they did not come out of a sense of self-interest. They came out of sense of public duty. They believed that it was important that they had the capacity to refer to counselling paid for yes by the State but the benefit in that conflict resolution was for the benefit of the country as a whole and certainly for those individual children. Eighty-five percent to 90 percent of those cases never came back to those lawyers. They never came back.The cases that the Minister keeps referring to are the very very hard cases—the ones that come to the attention of the legal profession at the first instance. They go off to counselling they get matters resolved and that is where the Government should be investing this $9.7 million. But it has already cut the number of counselling sessions in half and is going to reduce the number down to one session after this legislation takes effect. This is absolutely crazy. You can talk about alternative dispute resolution or family dispute resolution all you like; the first step is the counselling sessions that are there. They are the dispute resolution provisions that we have at the moment. They are fully funded. They were funded at the level of six sessions before and that is now reduced as we know.I cannot understand how the Minister can stand in this Chamber and say that the Government does not want nanny State nanny agency—whatever—to stand in the way of making decisions that might assist the best interests of children when parents are in a highly charged emotional state. Many children in this country get killed by a parent every year or get killed by a caregiver every year in this a developed nation. This is supposed to be the country that is the best country in the world in which to bring up children but we cannot find it within ourselves to fund $9.7 million worth of funding to assist parents work through these most highly charged issues.The Minister said that the UN does not bring up children. That is true. The United Nations gives an absolute statement of what a child is entitled to expect of its country in terms of his or her rights in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The rights of the child have got to be protected by our Parliament—or what the hell are we doing here? Why are we here as members of Parliament if we do not care about the rights of children? What are we in Parliament for other than to advocate for the rights of children? You know I have to say that I am actually not disappointed to be leaving this place right now because I am absolutely appalled that we would allow legislation to go through this House in order to take away from those people their actual reliance on this Parliament doing the right thing for their families and that is to protect children against what are perfectly normal human emotions at times of great distress and to enable themto come through and to achieve whatever they can achieve in their lives. But we will not do that by taking away their rights to our support at this very very very difficult time.So I have to say that we might have had a very good process going into this legislation. My difficulty is that dollars and cents have taken over from the common sense that actually drove the original reform process. Instead of focusing on the solution we have now started focusing on the problem but we have framed the problem as one about money instead of human rights children’s rights and the things that really matter. I would have thought they would matter most to a country like New Zealand.