Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call very happily on the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill at its first reading and like others I want to commend both Minister Little and Parliamentary Under-Secretary Jan Logie for their work in this area. It is an important area and I certainly want to endorse what's been said to date and what my colleague the Hon Paula Bennett has said. I just want to reflect really at the beginning of this contribution that none of us can live happily in a world where so many women face sexual violence in this country and so few of the perpetrators face justice. There has to be something wrong at a system level when as we've already heard only 11 percent of the cases that are reported ever get convicted and we all know that actually the statistics of the unreported cases of violence are far far greater. It's been said that we do have to be careful of course of the rights of the perpetrators and I agree with that. I too am the father of a son—father! I am the mother of a son—well in this era I could be either I guess. I'm the mother of a son but I'm also the mother of a daughter—Hon Andrew Little: It's a non-binary world now. Hon AMY ADAMS: —that's exactly right; I could be either but I choose to be the mother—and I would hate to find myself in a situation where my daughter my sister my nieces my cousins or anyone who has found themselves the victim of sexual violence was being told as women in New Zealand are told Don't report it because the process is bloody awful." and it is bloody awful. But we cannot accept a world in which—and I have heard senior judges say publicly "I would tell a young woman who had been sexually assaulted not to report it because of the horror of going through the process." I don't accept that that's as good as it can get. I don't accept it I don't think anyone in this House should accept it and I don't think anyone in this House does accept it. I think it's one of those rare situations where everyone in this House I'm sure is united in their desire to want to improve that. I do want to reflect that it falls at that very difficult intersection that all Ministers of Justice know very well where Parliament has to be very careful in the way in which it directs how trials are conducted. We have a very clear separation of powers between the executive—that's the Parliament of course—and the judiciary and our approach in New Zealand in a Westminster system is very much that we enable the judiciary. We set the rules but we stay out of in the large part the conduct of trials and the way in which they work. I respect that and I know that that is a well-established principle that we have to be very careful to guard but we cannot simply continue with a system that has failed so many women. It shouldn't need to be said that for a woman—it doesn't matter how drunk she is it doesn't matter what she wore it doesn't matter how sexually active she is it doesn't matter if she was flirting it doesn't matter if she knew him it doesn't matter if she asked him out it doesn't matter if she was batting her eyelashes—consent is consent and no man has the right to take that away from any woman and any man who does has to be held to account. Now with that background I think it is fair to say that for any number of reasons the unquestionable importance of ensuring a fair trial and the presumption of innocence has gotten to a point where victim-shaming and victim-blaming has become endemic. Jan Logie talked about the Louise Nicholas case but you only even have to go back as far as the Roast Busters case where we saw time and time again comments being made around effectively whether the women invited it somehow because of what they wore or what they said or what they did or the fact that they were out drinking at a bar at night. That is just not OK and what astounded me when I did some research in this area when I was the Minister was the very clear evidence that's now starting to be put together around subconscious bias. I don't think any member of a jury or member of the legal profession or—certainly—judge ever thinks that they carry any bias in assessment around these matters but the incontrovertible evidence tells us that subconscious bias is a real thing. So we do now have to say it is time to look at how our court processes work to address these trials in a way that women are not being told "Don't report it because it's horrible." and when they do have the courage to report it we get a better reflection of holding those men to account. Now this is a piece of work that has its genesis across Governments. The Minister and Jan Logie have reflected that it comes back to the Law Commission report from December 2015. That's a piece of work that I actually restarted—it had been on hold in the Law Commission—and early on in my term I could see that I didn't have the answers and I don't think any of us pretend that we know all the answers but I could see we had to start asking these questions. I'm very proud to have done that and I'm proud to see the new Government picking it up and running with it on largely a non-partisan basis and we want to continue to help them in that respect. It's not of course the only thing that needs to be done and these things as Jan Logie mentioned are multifaceted. Again under my tenure I was very pleased to put a significant number of millions of dollars from the Justice Sector Fund into the judicial studies body to enable further training of the judiciary because I'm a strong believer actually that we need specialist judges and I would even go so far as to argue for specialist prosecutors and defence counsel who have got special training and understanding of these issues so that the rights of fair trial can absolutely be preserved and protected but in a way that doesn't unnecessarily traumatise the victims. So we certainly put funding into that from the Justice Sector Fund in our time in Government and I'm also very proud of—and my colleague Paula Bennett mentioned it—the appointment of Dr Kim McGregor as the first ever Chief Victims Advisor. One of the reasons that I chose Kim for that role is her very strong history and knowledge in this area of sexual violence. Kim has been a wonderful addition certainly to the advice stream that I got when I was Minister. I'm sure she's carrying on that role with the current Government and I'm very pleased to have her in that role. Her advice has been absolutely without parallel. So we do have to now look at whether further legislative direction around the conduct of trials is warranted and I think in my mind there is no question that it is. I appreciate as I said that we are treading carefully on that line between Parliament and the judiciary but there is an appropriate way of doing that and I think we have to look at where the sum of what has been previously permitted within the wider discretion is now made more clearly available and more as of right. When we work through the select committee on this process we certainly will be checking in to ensure that that balance is right. I've seen some suggestions in this field that I wouldn't support for what it's worth. I wouldn't support for example reversing the onus. I cannot support a system where a charged person has to prove their innocence. I think that is too high a bar. I know this is not in the bill—to be very clear I'm not suggesting it is in the bill—but I have heard suggestions from some that we should go as far as that. So we do have to be very careful that it doesn't become some sort of witch-hunt process. What I've seen in the bill is a very moderate step in addressing ways in which we can tangibly make the court process the trial process more supportive of women more respectful of the rights and wrongs of the situation and yet maintaining that fair trial.I also want to acknowledge that nothing in certainly my contribution should be taken as any criticism of a number of our judiciary who work very hard in this space. Again when I was the Minister I had the fortune of announcing the establishment of two dedicated sexual violence courts run led and really instituted by very very dedicated judges who worked a lot in this area and were very careful to think about how they could run their court and run these trials in a way that was more respectful. So I want to acknowledge that there's some tremendously good work going on within our judiciary but we have to acknowledge that at a system level too many women have been failed for too long by a system that has become very adept at destroying the victim as a means of gaining an acquittal for their client and that cannot be right.So with those words of caution I am very pleased to support the work in this bill and the continuation of the work of the Law Commission from my own time to select committee. I hope the select committee go into these matters with an open mind as to what is possible a respectful mind to fair trial processes but come back with a bill that makes it far easier for women victims of sexual violence in New Zealand to receive justice."