Logie Jan; Rurawhe AdrianJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's with pleasure I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party on the Family Court amendment bill and I didn't have the pleasure of sitting through the select committee to hear the submissions on this bill but from the report I do want to commend the work of the committee. It's really obvious from the report that there was careful listening to the submissions and amendments made. While some may say it's not really significant actually I believe it will make a profound difference in terms of ensuring the outcomes of the intention of the bill so I want to acknowledge the committee.There's been a bit of mention of the origins of this bill being the work initiated by the Hon Andrew Little last term in Government and the establishment of the independent panel to examine the impacts of the 2014 reforms that we've heard from the National Party were really effective which was—strangely—not what that independent panel found which was no surprise to me I have to say. I got to sit in in the 2000s on some of the submissions leading to those 2014 reforms and it's not often you get such different organisations all up in arms about a legislative change. It was Women's Refuge it was children's organisations it was lawyers it was the judiciary. Everyone was saying basically—slightly paraphrasing—that this prioritising of saving money over safety will not work because actually it will incentivise people to take this track through the courts and that is exactly what we saw as a result: increased concerns coming from our communities about what was happening in our courts increased concerns around the safety of our children and definitely an increase of without notice cases going to our courts and a sense of them being overwhelmed.Just also to acknowledge you know I'm not that much into pegging things on previous people but there was an element of like you went to the Family Courts and you just saw these piles of paper because the previous National Government hadn't even resourced digitising that work—just how overwhelmed our courts had been by their neglect and prioritisation of cost-saving over the question of how do we provide the support that our families need to ensure safety and resolution at a time of conflict when families are not able to resolve things for themselves. That is a really important point for I think every member in the House to understand and I think it's been well understood by the committee that considered this and the Minister. Quite often we talk about families using the Family Court as if they're every family but actually it's only families that could not resolve things themselves. Inherently all of the families going there are at a point of breakdown and conflict. A very large proportion of those families will have a dynamic and history of family violence.While we support this bill I do just want to flag a concern that I have. I believe there's potential in our existing legislation to move some way but we do not have a test or an assessment for family violence or child abuse in the Family Court. That I believe leads to a lot of uncertainty and a failure and a muddying of our responses because we're responding to every case as if—people feel as if they're being judged as an abuser when they might not be or there's an assumption through the court that actually both of these parties are equal participants when in actual fact that is not true. We don't have a test to do that assessment whereas some other jurisdictions do and I believe that that would fundamentally strengthen our response and ability to keep our children safe. I do want to note and particularly congratulate the committee on the recommendation for the delay of the implementation of specific clauses in the bill. That is particularly around enabling the Ministry of Justice to do the work on the stocktake to help develop guidance and resources in identifying where further training for family justice professionals is needed because getting a child's voice is not something that most people have the skills to do particularly when we don't have an assessment of where there is a context of family violence or a history of child abuse. There will be for those children fear as a really significant player in their ability to develop a relationship with the person who is representing them and be able to articulate what they want and need for their family in the future so we need to ensure that our system trains and resources everybody to have the time to have those conversations and to be skilled enough to develop those relationships and gather that voice.I do just want to touch on too and acknowledge the Government for the work with Women's Refuge in resourcing Women's Refuge and the announcement this week—the story in the paper—about the work that they've been doing for the last two years around gathering the voices of children who have been coming into refuge. They are now working with Ministry of Social Development funding on being able to develop a pilot to respond to what the children told them that they need and this we have to build this in to every part of our system. The kids know what they need but it takes real skill and effort to enable them to safely articulate that and part of that being safe is being able to respond to what they tell us so that they know that if they say something people will listen and act. That is another part that I want to commend in the change from the committee in that they've strengthened that part around the push for the courts to listen when they're hearing this evidence. While we heard from the National Party that the lawyers should be collecting this information that it's just good practice for a lawyer and that it doesn't need to be in legislation actually that is not the case and for the court to take that into consideration it actually requires legislation. So I hope that through the process of this further consideration of the bill National will actually catch up with what the panel said and recognise that their reforms didn't achieve the results that they wanted and actually if they're wanting this outcome around safer families then our Family Court plays a critical—critical—role. These reforms are part of a massive programme of work that is needed.I also just want to touch on the point around the duties of lawyers and the changes made in the committee around promoting conciliation which was in the initial legislation. If we're thinking about just families in general and we put ourselves free of violence in that context we're like Yeah of course we don't want lawyers promoting adversarialness between parents. We want them to promote conciliation." but if we then think about what that might mean in the context of family violence I am hoping for everybody there are big red flags going up around the danger of that—of people who don't have power who don't have voice being pushed into agreeing to things that will not be for the benefit or the safety of themselves or their children. That is a feature of some of the practice within our courts at the moment that I believe we need to strengthen so it was really great to see that amendment providing a check on that. While supporting the principle generally I do think there is more work to do and what I would have liked to have seen is the recommendation from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women that we had restored the Bristol clause to the legislation that when there is an accusation of family violence there is a risk assessment that the court goes through in response to that in terms of considering the welfare of children. We don't have that—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired."