Radhakrishnan Priyanca; Williams PotoPRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Ha ha! Thank you Madam Chair. It is actually pretty amazing to be able to rise twice in one evening in this Chamber and take calls on bills that I am incredibly passionate about. So it is a privilege to stand and speak at the committee stage of the Minors (Court Consent to Relationships) Legislation Bill. I read that with some care and deliberation because indeed the title has changed over the course of the life of this bill. Actually there is quite a large substantial reason that sits behind that title change and I'm going to go into that a little bit.This bill was previously known as the Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill and it's taken I'd probably say close to a decade for it to get to where it is this evening. There's been a lot of lobbying from the domestic partner violence prevention sector particularly Shakti which is the organisation that I used to work for; Dr Jackie Blue who initiated its process in this House; and of course the member Joanne Hayes in whose name it is today and of course I acknowledge the member for all the work that she's put into this bill as well. The way this bill came about—and the reason for its previous title of course—is because definitely at Shakti and at other refuges as well I understand many of us worked with young people who'd been put into this position which is of young people being forced into a marriage largely by their parents. I guess the genesis of this bill was because those of us who worked with these young people wanted to put an end to it quite understandably.Now at this point I just want to make mention of the fact that there is a huge difference between forced marriages and arranged marriages and the difference therein is the element of choice. In an arranged marriage typically your parents will introduce you to somebody. They look at the other person's educational background likes and dislikes—things like that from the viewpoint that marriage is difficult and so let's try to level the playing field let's try to match two people as best as possible. But then we give them the choice to make that final decision. In a forced marriage there is no element of choice. There's often a different motivating factor at play.Under the current Marriage Act—and I have to confess that I used my own wedding as a bit of a test case for this because I did do my Master's thesis on the issue of forced marriage in New Zealand and I happened to get married at about the same time. I found out that under the current Act only one party that's entering into a marriage needs to provide a written statutory declaration which is basically the only formal way of determining consent before you're actually at the ceremony. What happens today if a 16- or 17-year-old wants to get married? Well they need to get parental consent before they can do so legally and therein lies the issue. That's the loophole because in many cases it is the parents who are forcing them into this relationship into this legal union and so of course they will give consent. That is what this bill addresses. It closes that loophole. It takes away the requirement for parental consent and instead it puts in place a requirement for Family Court consent. So the Family Court judge has to be satisfied that both parties consent to this marriage and then it will proceed.Now the title change came about because of quite an involved discussion that we had at the Justice Committee stage—and it was indeed a privilege to be part of that conversation as well having worked on this issue from the other side for many many years. We had quite an in-depth discussion about the fact that closing this one loophole in the Marriage Act inadvertently then left a couple of other loopholes open because there are other legally recognised relationships namely civil unions and de facto relationships. Actually officials who did a very fine job at that select committee brought that to our attention and I realised at that point that I had also worked with many who had undergone customary or cultural marriages that were typically conducted at places of worship and for many within the communities that I worked with that was seen as a legitimate marriage. If we didn't then close the other two loopholes—namely civil unions and de facto relationships—what could eventuate is that 16- and 17-year-olds wouldn't be able to get parental consent to get married but their parents if they wanted them—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member; the time has come for me to leave the Chair. This committee stage will resume at 7:30 p.m.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.