Ardern Jacinda: Child and Family Protection Bill — In Committee 
Ardern Jacinda: Child and Family Protection Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:667;Page:14755] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is always a pleasure to follow on from Simon Bridges who called the Child and Family Protection Bill a worthy bill. He is probably the only person in Parliament who could patronise a piece of legislation in such a way. 
Before I begin there were three things that came through strongly for me that this bill was trying to achieve. Some things had greater focus than others but the first was obviously the extension of protection to children who are victims of domestic violence. Another element to a certain degree I believe was expediency. The third element was fulfilling our international obligations although that was not the only catalyst for the sensible provisions contained in the bill. But it is still my view and the view of Labour that we could have gone further under each of those headings. 
I will touch on them quickly but before I do I shall make a quick general point about children coming through our justice system. Whether it be under the provisions of legislation such as this or as witnesses through our Family Courts or our criminal courts it is becoming more and more obvious through work by academics that our justice system takes too long when dealing with young people in whatever facet—as a victim or a witness. It is incredibly important that we process children through our justice system as rapidly as possible for lots of reasons: if they are a witness it is due to their ability to remember a particular circumstance; if they are a victim of domestic violence it is for the obvious reason that that is traumatic. 
Under that heading I absolutely endorse anything we can do to speed up the process and there are elements of the bill that do that. But at the same time legislation has been passed in the past in relation to the use of judicial officers in the Family Court which also could speed up the process when children are involved. I implore the Government to take up that opportunity. It already exists in legislation and it is something that the Government could pick up tomorrow if it chose but I believe that it currently is not a priority. 
The second quick point I would like to make is that when it comes to domestic violence legislation I think this House has a tendency to implement and forget. That is a very natural thing. We are legislators and often we rely on people on the ground to implement the policy that churns out through this process. But when it comes to domestic violence legislation in particular I have heard reports that recent domestic violence legislation that the Justice and Electoral Committee has been involved in including the police safety orders may not be working in the way in which Parliament intended. I would like to add to the record my hope that for such pieces of legislation future select committees including the Justice and Electoral Committee could review the way that the legislation works on the ground perhaps in 12 months’ time. If indeed the legislation is not performing in the way that we intended if victims are not being protected and children in particular are not being protected in the way that we intended that is something that Parliament should be involved in reviewing. That goes for the police safety orders if the reports I have heard are anything to go by. 
Focusing specifically on those elements that I have touched on—the protection the expediency and the international obligations—I will touch on some of the points that the Associate Minister of Justice made. Obviously he pointed to the fact that this bill was about extending the protection for children. The select committee honed in on that point when it considered amending clause 6(2). When the bill came to the select committee protection orders that covered children were set to expire by virtue of their age rather than their circumstance and rather than their family’s circumstance. The select committee considered that and decided that instead it felt it was important that the protection period be extended to cover the time period that a young person was resident in the home of the person who originally made an application for a protection order and I think that is right. 
But we also should have gone a step further. If the Associate Minister is correct in stating that this bill is about protecting young people and children I hope the Government will vote with us on the amendment that I have put forward in this regard. Our view was that once young people even those beyond the age of 17 leave a residence they are more vulnerable than perhaps they are when they are still in the home of their family member. For instance they could be going into an independent living situation. There is very little harm in empowering young people currently covered by a protection order by saying that if they choose not to be covered by it they may opt out at any time. In fact that feeds into this idea of expediency and efficiency which I would have thought the Government would also support. So our preference was to have an opt-out situation that was not bound by age or circumstance but was simply left up to the young person. I see very little harm in having such a provision in the legislation and a lot of things sit in favour of operating the system in that way. I implore the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Justice to speak to that point in particular and to tell me why the Government does not support it. 
However if the Government wants to stick with age-based provisions we would also like to see the definition of a young person changed because one element of this bill is our international obligations. It is very good that we are picking up on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children Child Prostitution and Child Pornography but it is disappointing that the founding document the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child continues to be neglected at its very core and that is the point at which New Zealand continues to treat the definition of a young person. I know that all the politics sits around the idea of the criminal age of responsibility but we continue to contend that there are enough elements now of our legislation that give flexibility for the courts to deal appropriately with the severity of an offence. We should now move to increase the age to 18 and to fulfil our obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This would be a prime time to do it; that is why I am giving the Government that option by putting forward an amendment by which it can change the definition. It would be a bit of a saving grace because I imagine that the Government will be coming up for a review of how well it is fulfilling its obligations under that convention very very soon. There is no doubt that this will be a point on which the committee will ask the Government questions at an international platform and my amendment provides the opportunity for the Government to rectify that wrong. It would have many positive spin-offs not just for this legislation in terms of widening the protection for children and young persons but in other areas where we currently have gaps in our service provision of care and protection. I implore the Government to take up that fine wee opportunity. 
The Associate Minister also talked about the processing of orders. Again this bill was an opportunity to pick up something that the Family Court judges have raised with us which is their inability to enforce some of the orders issued by the court. I had hoped that the Government would have taken the opportunity to give greater powers in that regard because in some cases those provisions are being flouted directly. The Family Court has brought that to our attention and this bill was an opportunity to rectify that situation. 
I also bring to the attention of the Committee the fact that time and time again when we come up with domestic violence legislation such as this we hear quite personal stories of women in families who feel that they have not been adequately provided with the information they require to understand the process they are going through and to understand the protections they do or do not receive through our domestic violence legislation. I think we could have improved that issue in two ways through this legislation. One way was to give applicants the ability to attend information sessions so that they could make better use of the protection orders that are being issued. That comes right to the core of safety for the applicants—and their children in many cases. We could also have added a provision that would have required any judge who declines a without notice application which would be an extraordinary circumstance to at least give the applicant written reasons as to why it has been declined. That provision would give applicants the ability to determine whether to go ahead and proceed on notice with a protection order. If this bill was about processing quickly and giving greater certainty to victims and families that would have been a sensible provision to include in it too.