Faafoi KrisHon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I just wanted to make a few remarks at the outset of the Part 1 debate on the Family Court (Supporting Children in Court) Legislation Bill. The purpose of the bill is essentially to make the process for the Family Court for those going through the Family Court process and especially Care of Children Act processes more effective and efficient.The history of this bill is that there were some changes made by the previous Government in 2014. My predecessor Andrew Little asked an independent panel in 2018 to assess the changes and the impact that those Family Court changes had in effect meant for the effectiveness of the process and the impact on the participants. One of the aspects that is discussed in Part 1 is in order to make all the process of Care of Children Act applications much more effective and efficient.The theory behind the 2014 changes was that if you removed lawyers from the equation and allowed parties to a Care of Children Act application to try and sort out their differences that you would have fewer cases in court and therefore reduce the harm to both parents or caregivers or children. The reality was that we've seen the opposite happen because the number of what are called without notice applications for Care of Children Act applications has increased.I just wanted to make sure that we gave some context to that because before the changes that were made in 2014 we saw that there were a little under 7300 without notice applications being filed. What we saw after the changes coming into effect is the number of without notice applications for Care of Children Act applications increasing to 12182.Now obviously that increase on the face of it would be a concern to most. But some more investigation has shown that without notice applications actually take 2.1 times more court time than on notice applications. That means that the children involved in those cases and the parents involved in those cases in the increasing number of without notice applications are actually spending a lot more time appearing before the courts and it is taking a lot longer for those disputes to be resolved. Justice tells me that it takes on average 37 days to resolve a case through mediation while if the issue is going through court it can take close to 270 days.I actually think having looked at the minority report from the National Party that we actually do want the same thing: we want fewer people going through the court process and we want to make sure that that process is a lot more efficient in terms of time because we're reducing the harm on children when things aren't resolved and the stress and anxiety on parents.The other aspect of Part 1 that I might speak about more in detail in another subsequent contribution is the ability to give children more of a voice and an obligation again on how we appoint the lawyers for the children and what we might have to prioritise within that and then again an obligation from the lawyers to make sure that issues are dealt with as expediently and efficiently and effectively from the point of view of the parties as swiftly as possible.I do have some difference of opinion on some of the issues that were raised in the minority report about how we would go in affecting that but we do believe making sure that we can give children a voice in the process and putting more demands on making sure we can make that process more efficient and making changes to the system where we can reduce numbers of without notice applications will be a starter to making sure the Family Court process is a much safer place.