Bridges SimonHon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Thank you Mr Speaker. This bill is well intentioned and listening to the Minister of Justice it's hard to disagree. In fact I agree with all of his intentions in putting this bill before the House. It's the second of two bills seeking to undo 2014 Family Court reforms of the last National Government which sought to have more family disputes resolved out of court without lawyers. The Labour Government says those reforms aren't working. So through this bill it brings back counsel for the child right from the start and significantly strengthens that role throughout all processes. As I say from the well-intentioned motivation of being more child-focused—that's what this bill intends to be about.Nevertheless National will oppose this bill because we believe—overall—it will be a backward step. As the Ministry of Justice's evaluation of National's 2014 reforms found they were fundamentally sound. Out-of-court processes are more effective and produce more enduring solutions to family conflict. If justice delayed is justice denied" then the ministry's findings that out-of-court processes take on average 37 days to resolve whereas in-court hearings take 268 days—well they speak for themselves. Indeed as with the first bill in this package we believe while this bill will be great for lawyers it won't be so good for anyone else. It adds court process and cost to taxpayers and participants alike making an already unaffordable and clogged Family Court system worse.If there are issues with how the 2014 reforms are working today then strengthen the out-of-court processes but don't revert to more and more billable units from more and more lawyers. Sorry to be so mean to the legal fraternity. As a former lawyer I appreciate there's now a raft of new lawyers on the other side of the House after reaching a period when there weren't all that many. I don't subscribe to Shakespeare's view of killing all the lawyers and I'm glad to say that now—and not in the future. Once Kris Faafoi's hate speech laws are in place I probably won't be allowed to say that. But I sincerely know that wherever possible given the process and cost increases and civil processes—from family ones to commercial ones to other civil disputes—justice is better served without rather than with my former colleagues. Sadly more often than not if the dispute takes too long or costs are iniquitous that's no meaningful justice.The cost point is obvious but I've seen a number of Family Court proceedings where one side is legally aided—and that includes a lawyer for the child—and eventually with broken heart the other side must bow out because although not eligible for legal aid their own money runs out and they are left by the process itself dislocated from their own children. A similar point can and should be made I think for the process itself. It's a hard truth that with lawyers the incentives are for the dispute to go on regardless of what the letter of the law says. Lawyers seek to battle on for a theoretically perfect justice in too many cases in my view. What does this mean for the Family Court? Well it means hearings with lawyers at hundreds of dollars an hour in some cases arguing about school pick-up times; who said what when; and which house the sleepover can happen at this coming weekend. These things shouldn't be in courts of law—with judges paid hundreds of thousands a year listening to lawyers paid by the minute or the hour—they should be resolved out of court without lawyers.As my old civil justice professor at Oxford Adrian Zuckerman would say doing justice is much more than merely arriving at a judgment that is correct as a matter of fact and law—that is achieving in his words "rectitude of decision". Although all too often this is the only bit that lawyers and judges worry about. There are two other vital procedural imperatives for doing overall substantive justice: deciding cases within a reasonable time—as I've said "justice delayed is justice denied"—and using no more than proportionate resources. Actually costs matter because overall in New Zealand right now in civil justice and in Family Court justice there is no justice because it costs too much. My contention as I've said is that our civil justice system fails here overall and does in the specific bill as well. In theory it's producing the correct answer but with too high a cost in regard to the other two legs of the stool—the process and time and the cost. I've got friends—in fact I was with some last night—Dr Duncan Webb: I've got friends too.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —in Tauranga—more than the member over there by the way—who work in the Family Court both as lawyers and judges and I want to acknowledge what difficult important work it is that they do. I've not practised much in the Family Court only attending family proceedings on the rarest of occasions when colleagues couldn't. I must say I found the whole sitting thing—rather than standing as you do in other courts—a little disconcerting. I acknowledge that what I'm saying in this contribution will be anathema to most of those Family Court lawyers but over my years as a lawyer and then as a local MP where I have met I won't exaggerate but with dozens and dozens of constituents mortally scarred by the Family Court process I have to say I've developed a scepticism over the role of counsel for the child and the Family Court at some level more generally due to the systems and processes in place. Our tamariki aren't—as the law once said they were—our property. They're not a chattel. Such a view is not only antiquated but it's also repugnant to us today. It was my three-year-old's birthday yesterday and she's a precious gift that we treasure—and in her daddy's case she certainly knows that's so. But in cases where there aren't drugs alcohol mental health or violence issues—and I appreciate there are a significant number of those cases—does a small child really know enough to be fully represented as if they have fully formed views? Or are we just actually getting the lawyer's view for whatever it's worth in the case? Is there a risk of traumatising children by lawyering them up? And at the risk of sacrilege do we also need a minimum—which is what this bill enshrines—of three lawyers and a judge in a courtroom in all of these care of children cases?For the reasons I've given this bill may be well intentioned very well intentioned. I think though it's overall a backward step. The real task should be to strengthen—because there will be and I'm sure the report I know the report identifies flaws with the article processes but it's in strengthening that this is good for lawyers with more time and cost to resolve family disputes but not so much for the mums the dads and the children who'll be involved."