Allan KiritapuKIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai ōtirā ki a koutou ā tātou nei mema o Te Whare tēnei te mihi. [Greetings Mr Assistant Speaker and to my fellow parliamentarians greetings.]Actually it's a real delight to be able to speak in respect of this bill. To you Joanne Hayes I just really want to acknowledge the work that you've done in stewarding this bill to this phase and obviously you inherited it from or worked alongside the Hon Jacqui Dean so I want to acknowledge Jacqui and some of my parliamentary colleagues from across both sides of the House. I know the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians were very instrumental in the support that's been provided to you. But also to Chris Bishop and his team over there in the Justice Committee I'm sure that they've spent many hours debating the nuances and I was actually really pleased just to hear some of the challenges that you've had to wade through when I guess trying to strike the right balance with this piece of legislation that does exactly that: it goes to the heart of what we're trying to do here as members of this Parliament—make good law to protect our children in this circumstance against coercion and abuse.I didn't know a whole lot about child marriages growing up and I was preparing some remarks this evening and you know you look to the experts amongst your own colleagues to help give you a bit of a steer and then it was quite interesting to stumble across the work of my colleague Priyanca Radhakrishnan who wrote the first ever comprehensive research in New Zealand on child marriage here in New Zealand in 2012. Some of the issues for me that I was trying to grapple with in the brief period that I had to try and understand the complexities around how we make laws to protect kids that come from this particular circumstance and background she helped to really put in context for me. I think for me I was coming at it from you know how we can avoid applying a Western cultural lens to things that can be inherently quite culturally complex issues. So I think that's where I was coming from.Anyway I read her thesis. She said The interconnectedness between families and culture is an important aspect to consider when examining structures that contribute to the perpetuation of violence against women and more specifically honour-[bound] violence and the influence of 'culture'." She goes on to say that "It must be understood that 'violence against women is not an inherent part of anyone's culture' … It is an issue of power and control that in the case of immigrants may be exacerbated by issues such as isolation changes in the economic status and language barriers. Forced marriage is a reality in New Zealand as it is in many other parts of the world." I want to pick up on some of the comments made by previous speakers in this debate. It's almost less of a debate but a discussion or an affirmation of New Zealand's values actually when it comes to the role that children play or the value that we see of children in our society. I think that there was this—I think we're unanimous across this House because you know I read through just story after story. Yeah there's some confusion—that's where I was going—as to whether or not child marriage was in fact really an issue here in New Zealand. The argument was made that "Oh it doesn't happen so much here." Well Shakti the organisation that has been the main promoter of getting rid of child marriages here in New Zealand said that over a five-year period approximately 300 young people had been forced into under-age engagements to be married as soon as they turned 16 or 17. There were 300 here in New Zealand over a five-year period and I was really surprised by that significant number. So to me this is really very much so a New Zealand issue and it is very much so that this bill here and the work that's been done in this House is going squarely towards protecting some of the most vulnerable members of our society. In order to place those young people that we're trying to protect with this piece of legislation and put their voices at the centre of this debate I want to pick up on a couple of stories that were shared through the select committee process and to have their stories told here in this House.So this is a story from 2016. We'll call her P and this is a story that was shared by Shakti. She was a 14-year-old child of South-east Asian descent and she was referred to Shakti by a high school counsellor. Her mother had been verbally and physically abusive towards her since she was a 10-year-old child. When she was referred to Shakti she disclosed that her mother was going to get her married at the age of 16 years old. Her mother did not ask for her consent but told her that it was going to happen. She didn't feel like she had a choice in the matter. It was a decision that had already been made. Since Shakti spoke to her counsellor she said that her mother had changed and that they'd be allowed to continue with her education. Now she's aware of Shakti's services if her mother changes her mind. So that goes towards the work that Shakti's doing but then the stories keep going. In 2017 there was a young woman of Middle Eastern descent a survivor of forced under-age engagement and marriage. She migrated to New Zealand when she was a six-year-old. She grew up in a Western country and her views were relatively liberal. However her family had very Eastern traditional values. At the age of 16 she was taken to her country of origin under the pretext of visiting her homeland. Once there she realised that her parents wanted her to marry her first cousin so that he could come back to New Zealand. She was not interested in getting married but was stuck in a situation where it looked like there was going to be no hope. She knew that if she were to get married then there would be no turning back. She convinced her parents that she would agree to the wedding if they let her finish her studies. They relented and agreed to an engagement only and she was engaged to her first cousin from her father's side. After the engagement the couple were left to talk ostensibly. In that room that young woman's fiancé who was considerably older than her tried to force her to perform sexual acts and so on. They didn't go well. She was abused and that continued into the marriage.I read story after story of this ilk and I was so heartbroken to know that that's happening all throughout for young children here in Aotearoa New Zealand. So to the members across both sides of this House thank you for recognising the harm. Thank you for being I guess bold enough to tell the stories of those that may not have had the opportunity to have somebody be the voice for them. Thank you too for the work of organisations like Shakti.I must say that if this wee exercise just in preparing some brief remarks has given me any personal insight it's just how fascinating some of our colleagues are and the working history that they come from. So I really do want to acknowledge too just the work of Priyanca Radhakrishnan. It was a leading piece of research that she commenced and this is back in 2012 I think—the first piece of work in this area. A fantastic occasion I say to our colleague Joanne Hayes across the House. May the passage of the rest of this bill be successful. So nō reira ki a koe e Te Māngai. I'm glad to stand in support of this bill."