SpeechSUE MORONEY (Labour): At the outset can I first of all acknowledge that this is International Women's Day. What better day to be debating this bill than International Women's Day which is a day when we all stand in solidarity with women right across the world in order to yes celebrate how far we have come but also to pause and think about what we have yet to do. This bill clearly falls into the latter bracket. I want to congratulate the member Jan Logie on her foresight in bringing this bill forward. As we all know with the luck of the draw of the ballot—I think this is the ballot goddess at work again today. It is the ballot goddess at work again to make sure that this got debated on International Women's Day because sadly this is an issue that does affect women in more numbers than it does men. In fact what we would wish is that it affected nobody.I agree with the last speaker Jono Naylor in that all of us would want to not be dealing with this end of domestic violence. All of us would want to be putting our energy into preventing it from happening. That is the world we really want to live in: where there are respectful relationships and people can deal with the pressures in life and the stresses in life without battering the people closest to them—the people who should be able to rely on the love and support of family members but instead are hurt and have violence meted out against them from the people whom they should have the most trust and warmth and understanding from. Sadly that is not the world we live in and I will not rest until we actually address the front end of this and actually stop that domestic violence from happening in the first place. But it does happen and so this bill is going to be something that will be a huge relief for those people predominantly women whom this happens to.Imagine how distressing that situation is of having to deal with that hurt having to deal with that destruction having to deal with all of the things that happen in a family unit when that occurs and then having to turn up to work put on your smiley face pretend it is not happening and get on with life. Actually that would be an excruciating thing and so to have this provision in place where people know that they are not required to be subhuman and pretend that things are not going on that are; where people know that their jobs are not at risk because they are a victim of domestic violence and that they cannot be victimised all over again because they are having to deal with the fallout of that and therefore their job is at risk so they get victimised all over again; where people know that they can attend court hearings; where people know that they can find alternative accommodation—and boy I do not know whether in this day and age 10 days is quite enough for that quite frankly.I am dealing at the moment with a situation where a woman who has been a victim of domestic violence has lost her home as a result of that—actually because the violence damaged the house and so she has been kicked out of the house. She is in so-called emergency housing and has been for 4 months now—moving from motel room to motel room to motel room with her daughter for 4 months. Imagine being in that situation and keeping your job going and supporting your family while all of your belongings are in a car and you are moving from motel to motel. These are the very sad situations that exist for far too many New Zealanders today. That is the harm we have really got to address. We have got to stop those situations from happening.But in the meantime I am very pleased to stand to support this measure today. Thank you Jan Logie. Thank you for thinking of the most vulnerable in our society and the ability that everyone should have: the ability to be able to continue in their employment and to be able to do that with dignity and with respect. This will be a very practical measure that will help out some of the most vulnerable in our society—help them to keep their jobs so that they can actually build that future for their families that they all deserve and that we all want them to have. I really look forward to continuing this debate. I look forward to the bill's speedy expedition through Parliament. I want to see this in place before the election so that it is voted on all the way through and we can know where the Government stands at every step of the way along this journey.