Maharey Steve: Family Courts Matters Bill — Second Reading 
Maharey Steve: Family Courts Matters Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:646;Page:15589] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 It is good to have an opportunity to speak in the House again. I will with the indulgence of the House begin with a couple of comments about the select committee process to pick up on comments that were made by Dr Hutchison during his speech. I have obviously just rejoined the select committee procedure after about 8-plus years away from it as a member of the executive and the observations I would make are these. I think the select committee procedure has matured quite a lot over the last 8 years. If people will think back to what we might call the bad old days of first past the post I can recall going to select committees and arriving to find that a number of members had brought their mail their papers or whatever they had decided to do because they felt that the select committee process was decided already because of the numbers that were on the side of whoever happened to be the Government. The Government members who were turning up knew they had the numbers and did not have to do anything and quite often they did not; that included walking out in the middle of submissions that people might be giving because they did not feel they needed to hear them. I remember saying to people at the time: “How can this be? We’re supposed to be professional people. We’re supposed to be doing a job of work here.” I was told by a chorus of people that the whole process was irrelevant anyway because the executive made all those decisions and that I should just relax. 
Now jump forward to today. I joined a select committee that Dr Hutchison is on and I found a pretty impressive process going on. It is well chaired by Russell Fairbrother. The leading person for the National Party is Judith Collins. We know that there are people on that committee who in other parts of their life would probably argue backwards and forwards about things but there is a culture in there that says we should do a job of work there because we are there to do that on behalf of the select committee. So we have people focusing on the issue; people have read the papers they ask questions and they are respectful to the people who have come along to make a submission. Those people feel well heard and go home happily. 
I think that is a great part of Parliament that I have rejoined. I would make just one plea. I think having got this far we should go further. I would hope that future Parliaments and their executives may decide to take the same pathway as the German Parliament and simply cut off the process of select committees from the executive to say: “You get on with your job of work. You have your own role to play and the executive will receive bills back and get on with them.” I know this is something that perhaps people who have come in during the MMP era would feel more sympathy for than those who were here during the first past the post era but I believe that as the balance of the House changes and more and more people are here from that time of MMP they will see the value in having select committees carry on down the road of doing more and more of their own work in the way that they appear to be doing now. I think it is a great transition that is going on; if it is given a little bit more of a shove then we will have very very professional activity going on in select committees. That will be appreciated by everybody once people get used to the independence of those select committees. So hopefully that will go on. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Well some are better than others. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I can hear a member of the executive saying well with a few reservations and so on. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Sounds like it’s already operating that way. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: It is to a degree and that is why I am saying I am impressed by it. 
Chris Tremain 
: He’s impressed by it now that they’re on the other side. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: The member on the other side if I can say says: “Now that they’re on the other side.” Actually I used to argue it when I was in the executive as well for the very simple reason that I think if we have select committees that are neither fish nor fowl it causes them a little bit of a wobble. It also causes everybody else that little bit of a wobble—what does a select committee do; how does it relate to the executive? My plea is it should be independent in the way that the German system is and the executive then receives back the committee’s work and gets on with it. I think that would create the right kind of atmosphere for what we are trying to do. 
Let me come back to the Family Courts Matters Bill itself because as I said I thought the bill proceeded through in a way that was exemplary. We had good submissions we had good discussions and I hope we have ended up with something that takes this matter forward. It is a delicate issue; I have no reason to believe it will not be revisited for the following reasons. We know that people have come to all of our clinics and so on to talk to us about the Family Court because it is perceived to be too closed. When we meet someone like Peter Boshier we think the court is in very very good hands and wonder what people are on about. Members will have read Peter Boshier’s papers where he quite rightly defends the court against a great deal of criticism; and of course a good deal of that criticism has come— 
Dail Jones 
: Judge Peter Boshier. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Yes sorry; Judge Peter Boshier is his full title. I am corrected by my friend Mr Dail Jones. Many of the critics of this are people who belong to men’s groups who on the whole are people who have come together because of their own bitter experiences around their own relationships and they translate that often I think a little unfairly into their criticism of the Family Court. They have some criticisms that they ought to make—I think we would all make them—but I think undoubtedly they go a bit far. In this bill we have to remember that we have to balance the fact that we want some more openness in the court but we also want to recognise that there are people here who are making criticisms that go a step too far in relation to the court. Also the court is dealing with extremely serious issues often—always in fact—dealing with children and often involving people who may have a disability of one kind or another as we were reminded in the select committee hearings. 
We have tried to arrive at a reasonable balance between openness and the need for privacy when it should be there so that we do not have open disclosure of somebody who is quite young for example. It may be said: “The child is 18. Let’s allow the disclosure. That’s a reasonable age for the child to be able to tell their own story.” But as someone else pointed out that child undoubtedly has a brother or sister who happens to be 11 and is that younger child to be put in a situation where his or her life story is being told when he or she is not really of an age to understand the situation or to defend his or herself? We need to make sure those privacy provisions are there. 
There are three other issues in the bill I would not mind just touching on because they are quite important developments I think. One of those issues is counselling. The issues that arise in the Family Court are almost without exception ones that are highly emotionally charged. By the time they get there anybody who has a connection with the family concerned is likely to be involved in some way; grandparents grandchildren—all sorts of wider networked people for the family will be involved. 
One of the things I like about the bill is that it extends the provision of counselling to a wider range of people and allows them to have access to that. Unless people have been through—or close to—these processes it is hard to understand the level of meltdown that a family can get into once it gets to the court process. The court process often focuses on the immediate family but there are many other people with a serious stake in a family by the time it gets to this stage of debate and they too often find themselves in situations where they do not cope so well and need to be able to turn to somebody—there is certainly nobody left in the family they can turn to because they are all busy arguing through the court process by this time and it has become quite bitter. I think extending the provision of counselling was a very good development on behalf of the Government and it has been well supported by the select committee. 
We talked for a while about mediation and whether we ought to have a situation where mediation was compulsory so that people were forced to go off and have a discussion. In the end the select committee came to the same conclusion that most of the submitters did—that it is impossible to have people go off to compulsory mediation when they feel this badly about each other. They should be offered the voluntary chance to go and do this with an experienced person. If they can be made to understand that by sitting and talking about these issues with experienced mediators allowing when it is appropriate their children to be part of that process they could arrive at an answer that will settle them and there is a real chance for some forward movement. But if they do not go voluntarily by the time they have got to the court process they are not going to do anything in the mediation process; they will just sit and wait until they can get back into court and have a legal go at each other once again. So hopefully people understand that the select committee was not averse to the idea that people would go off to counselling—it just felt that if it was not done by choice then nothing of merit would come of it. 
The last thing I have to say is this. When I was Minister I extended the payment for supervised access to families and I am pleased to see that we are extending it even further here. It is an extraordinary problem for families many of whom have spent every last cent on the battle with each other so that by the time they get to the point where they are having supervised access they find they simply cannot afford to carry out the kind of orders that have been set down by the court because they cannot even drive the car from Masterton to Palmerston North as one woman told me. That was because she could not afford a car and even if she did she could not afford to put the gas in it. She had spent everything on the process of getting the whole thing settled. 
Whatever happens it is our responsibility as a society to ensure that those orders can be carried out. In many ways I do not have a lot of sympathy with the parents by the time it gets to that point but I certainly have sympathy with the children and they should not be the ones who suffer from the activities of their parents. If the parents have bled themselves dry I still think I am happy as a citizen of this country that some of my money is spent on making sure those children can have access to their parents who no doubt love them—they may not love each other but they probably love their children and want to have access to them and those children deserve to have it. I am pleased to see that supervision being extended. 
I thank you Madam Assistant Speaker for allowing me to speak today and I thank the Social Services Committee. It is pretty heartening to see how this legislation can be treated. It has been done well.