Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): It's my great privilege to rise and give a speech on this the Minors (Court Consent to Relationships) Legislation Bill and we look forward to it becoming an Act this evening.I want to begin as others have by congratulating Jo Hayes. It is a great achievement to steer a bill through its passage in this Parliament and to do so as a member's bill is a particular achievement. It's one certainly that I haven't achieved yet and that I hope to achieve in my time in Parliament. Congratulations Jo. In congratulating Jo of course I have to congratulate Jackie Blue and it is wonderful to see Jackie Blue here this evening. I think what the passage of this bill from Jackie to Jo shows is that there is great friendship between parliamentarians particularly when it can be in pursuit of common causes and objectives.In that sense I do want to dwell on the cross-party work that has allowed this bill to get to this point. It is a very positive sign of what is possible in this House that this is a bill that today we hope will receive a unanimous vote of support in this Parliament. I want to thank in particular the Justice Committee who I understand worked productively and constructively to ensure that this bill did what it set out to do without having adverse implications for others and who worked constructively to ensure that this could pass into law.As is so often the case with pieces of legislation like this I want to acknowledge all those men and women behind the scenes who advocated for its existence whose advocacy and tireless speaking for those who may not have otherwise had a voice ensured that the likes of Jackie and Jo knew that this was a cause that should be furthered. Of course the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians but other organisations like Shakti the National Council of Women of New Zealand Women's Refuge New Zealand Family Planning and those who have argued for the human rights progress that this bill represents—thank you to all of them.Of course while this bill rightly applies to both men and women pragmatically we can see that this is a bill whose application largely applies to women and in that sense we tonight take another step forward in women's continued progress of not only equal rights but equal opportunities in New Zealand. We reflect that 125 years ago women fought for the right to vote for the people of this Parliament and gained that right. I want to take a small moment of personal reflection to note that 125 years ago my great-great-grandfather in this New Zealand Parliament voted to support women's right to vote. I think he would be proud of us today to see women continuing to work together to ensure that our rights and opportunities are furthered.In this case of course what we are protecting is potentially as the previous speaker Tracey Martin said a very small group of people. In the previous year only 30 times did a 16- or 17-year-old marry and in 80 percent of those cases they were women. But this is an issue of the sort that Parliament should and must deal with from time to time whose impact may not be widespread in terms of numbers of people impacted but whose impact on those individuals is so profound that it behoves us to take action because the impact on those individual women if even one of those 30 were forced into a marriage or civil union or de facto relationship against their will with the threat of physical or emotional abuse with the threat of rape—if those things are the case then it is so abhorrent to this House that we are prepared to put in place legislation of this sort to prevent it. It speaks to the integrity of this Parliament that we will take measures like this even where the application may be so narrow because we realise the depth of the injustice at stake.What this bill protects against is of course young women who are vulnerable because of their age because they are only 16 or 17 and because they are still subject in many ways to the control of their family. It protects those women from threats that could be emotional psychological physical or financial by handing to the Family Court the discretion to apply judgment about whether or not that young woman needs to be protected from a marriage that may in fact be unjust. I think it's important that we acknowledge that this aligns with article 16 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.I would note also that in passing this law Parliament again acknowledges the role of judges in making sound judgments about what is right and what is proper because in this case judges must be satisfied that a marriage is voluntary that it is free from undue coercion that the applicant understands the consequences and that the applicant actually wants the judge to consent to it. It also allows for an objective assessment of the applicant's interests. It allows the judge to consider whether the person has the age and maturity whether the views of their parents are having an undue influence on them and whether there is any other information that may be considered. In this sense I want to congratulate the drafters of this bill and those who have worked on it because I think it gives broad discretion to judges that will ensure good decisions can be made and that people at risk can be protected.I want to take a moment because we are discussing a subject that is a little bit dark to reflect actually on the positivity of marriage and relationships and civil unions and de facto relationships because that is actually the institution that is at stake here. That is the institution in a sense that we are seeking to protect as well as the individual women. This bill encourages us to reflect on what the nature of a marriage should be what the nature of a committed long-term relationship should be and I would hope it would be to the agreement of all members in this House that what we expect from those relationships is love commitment forgiveness and kindness. For each of us in this House who have had relationships of a long-term nature with those elements in them we know how sacred those things are and we know that it is one of the ultimate expressions of human optimism for two individuals to enter into a relationship together seeking that those values be continued into the future. It is an institution that we should seek to protect from the kind of corruption that a coerced marriage represents because that is absolutely antithetical to what marriage is actually about. So I think that in furthering this legislation tonight we are not only protecting individual women but honouring what it is that we expect long-term relationships to be about.At this point in what could be seen as a slightly sentimental move I want to quote from a New Zealand poet—Jenny Bornholdt one of my favourites. Forgive me; I'm an English literature student. She wrote a poem called Wedding Song" in which she said "Now you are married try to love the world as much as you love each other. Greet it as your husband wife. Love it with all your might as you sleep breathing against its back." When we consider that sublime idea of what marriage is we then contrast it with the low of what marriage could be if we did not protect women and men as we are with this legislation tonight.If we want to reflect on that low I want to use the voice of a young woman who in June this year marched in Auckland in a march about a future without violence. She chose to stay anonymous but her voice should be heard in this House tonight because she spoke of being forced into marriage—an eventuality she avoided. She spoke of the devotion she had to her parents but also the psychological abuse she had been subject to as a member of that family. She spoke of being forced into a marriage in which she remembered feeling like she would never be happy again and she spoke of moving from a psychologically abusive life with one family to a psychologically abusive life with an abusive husband.That reality that story is what we here tonight stand up against. We say no one should be in that situation and we will use the powers of this Parliament we will give powers to our courts to prevent that situation. Just because we don't typically see situations like this occurring does not mean that we should not take great steps to prevent them from happening because the injustice of those things is so great and the corruption they do to practices we hold so dear is so great that we as a House will act to remove them.So I end by mirroring the whakataukī from Jo and saying that tonight with all of us present we weave together to make a great step forward. Congratulations to all of those who made it happen. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker."