Davidson MaramaHon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence): I want to commend Karen Chhour and the colleagues across the House for being really centred on the problem that we are trying to solve here; indeed for the vision that I know we all genuinely want which is an explicit understanding that we can prevent family violence and sexual violence that we should not have to accept that it is going to be an inevitable reality that our mokopuna and generations to come deserve only that aspiration from all of us that we actually can make the changes for everyone to live free from violence to live their lives with dignity and peace.These are two pieces of legislation that both relate to victims of sexual violence and victims of family violence that are going to improve their protections in our legal system. I am going to refer to the both of them at a high level as many others have done. I am actually going to pull up some of the particular points that Karen Chhour made as well and expand on those because I completely agree with some of the broader work that also still needs to be done.So firstly with the protection that this legislation is wanting to improve for victim survivors I cannot stand here without highlighting and holding up Te Aorerekura the first ever nationwide intergenerational strategy to eliminate family violence and sexual violence. These legislative pieces of work—we all know and we all agree and there's broad agreement that these are not on their own going to improve the system but they are part of a very explicit and purposeful direction to finally centre victim survivors' voices expertise experiences and validate them in a way that they should always have been. But as the Chief Victims Advisor has pointed out on many occasions the current status quo system is an adversarial one that requires winners and losers. That is not a system that has been able to bring justice particularly to victims and survivors. However we still need to fix it up while we continue to do the work to build a far more accountable system of justice particularly centring victims and survivors and one that also gets the support and the help for people who use violence to change their behaviour and to be far more accountable for the harm that they have caused.I think a trigger warning stands and I'm glad that that stands for the entirety of this particular debate. It's really important that we are clear on the extent of the harm that has been happening particularly for victim survivors across our justice system. The protections for children that are included in the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill—as a prevention of violence Minister coming into this space I was disturbed and greatly disgusted that our system has been able to allow such repugnant questioning of young children as to whether they have consented or even invited in any way harmful sexual violence rape and sexual violent behaviour. That has been driven by the incentive within these laws. And I'm so relieved to see and wish it didn't take so long that we are going to remove the incentives that have unfortunately encouraged prosecutors to reach for a consent defence which has been allowed for in the legislation that we are trying to change.I do really want to emphasise and thank the sector advocates victim/survivors themselves the NGOs and experts who have for decades been yelling really clearly for this very change—also the Chief Victims Advisor whose work has been a part of this legislation coming to the fore and many others like those experts in this field. I think it's really important that we understand the extent of the harm in the example that Dr Kim McGregor used in one of her research reports. It was when a nine-year-old was being questioned about whether she invited or even enjoyed sexual violence. That simply has to change. It seems like there's broad agreement across the House for these changes. I think we can all agree that that is unacceptable and I'm really pleased to see those changes.I want to again be clear that were it not for the decades of deep hard work that the prevention of violence sector—for example the Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children backbone organisations and many many many others have been doing such incredible work that we have benefited from to really understand what are the changes and the levers that need to be pulled. So I'm pleased to be able to highlight their expertise and leadership in this space for these legislative changes.Of course we also all want to prevent the violence from happening in the first place. That is intergenerational change. I'm pleased that Te Aorerekura is an intergenerational strategy and action plan but the drivers of violence are so deeply rooted including in our system that we know this is not overnight work. However we can hold the hope of survivors and the communities when they can see us making solid concrete changes exemplified by the changes we are making today.I want to also touch on name suppression. Now what is important in prevention and response work to violence is the agency the mana motuhake the sovereignty if you like of victims/survivors. That has come through in exemplar practices that have been researched and reported on time after time after time about what is successful. Maintaining that agency and being validated as Karen Chhour said is part of the approach that we all have to adopt across all of our systems. So allowing for victims to wish to opt out without the financial and administrative burden of name suppression and upholding their right to automatic name suppression is a much-needed change.I just really quickly want to mention that of course we—actually for this and for the litigation of abuse part. So we're going to be far more explicit in not allowing the court systems to be used to continually harass victims and survivors. That's been going on for far too long. But I do want to mention of course we at the same time want to protect fair process. I do think it's right that this goes to a proper select committee process. I'm glad because a fair justice process is good for everyone. And I want to make it really clear that when we are speaking for victims we are wanting to uphold fair justice and fair process not destroy it because it is victims who will benefit from us holding on to those principles of justice as well. So we'll give that a good rough and tumble. We'll give that a good tearing apart to make sure we've got the balance right to make sure we are maintaining fair process. But I think it has been really obvious from the examples where it's just using the court in a hōhā way being explicitly hōhā in the court for no real justice or purpose. So we'll cut that out and we'll make sure we are cautious when we're doing it.Look Karen Chhour also picked up about providing support for particularly children supporters and this legislation is part of the overall victim-centred justice changes that are happening including the pilot at the Counties Manukau court and site which is we are basically affirming what they've already been doing which is co-located collaborative agencies on site with NGOs and experts providing proper support particularly around children victims of sexual violence and through the court process. So we need to keep that momentum for the good stuff that works and I'm pleased that we are supporting that.My final mention is we do actually want to see—because Paul Goldsmith mentioned it—an increase in reporting. Most violence is not reported. Nearly all of sexual violence is not reported at all. So we want to see the reporting go up but the prevalence go down. Taking the prevalence of violence down is the harder gruntier work but it's worth having that goal and I'm pleased there is a path for us to all support that. Thank you Madam Speaker.