Clendon David: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11568. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green):I would like to begin by acknowledging and referring to the petition that has formed part of the report back from the Justice and Electoral Committee the petition of Christopher Perry and 4470 other ordinary New Zealanders who have signed their name to a petition that sought to have this House not impose certain reforms on the New Zealand Family Court. I think it is significant. It is a representation of considerable public disquiet and concern about the direction that this bill the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill is taking. I do not think there is particular concern about the fact of a reform or a review of the practice of the Family Court but about the way in which it has been carried out particularly the cost-saving focus and the fact that it will disadvantage many many people that it will reduce access to the court for many people and that it will give worse outcomes for some of our most vulnerable citizens not least of all our children.The petitioners sought to get four key things. They sought to protect the right to a lawyer for parties in the court and we have lost that frankly. We have qualified access to lawyers now and that is very unfortunate for all sorts of reasons not only because the right to legal representation is a constitutional underpinning if you like—it is absolutely essential to our judicial process and in this instance it has now been compromised—but also the fact that even to the extent that perhaps we might seek to take some cost out of the court having self-litigants in the court will slow the process down. They will impose costs on the courts. There will be significant cost both personal and financial when people try to represent themselves in the court which they will typically do quite badly.The petitioners sought protection for lawyer for child. They wanted to see no barriers to the appointment of lawyer for child. Again we have a qualified situation here where a judge may appoint lawyer for child but it will not be as automatic or as spontaneous as it has been up to now. The children in this of course are the innocent parties invariably. They are not the ones who are having disputes or relationship failures but unfortunately their interests will not be as well served as they might otherwise be.The petitioners sought the protection of legal aid in the Family Court and of course that has been reduced. Of course later this afternoon we will also be debating the latest onslaught against the provision of adequate legal aid to people who might need it in order to be fairly represented in the courts.The fourth and final thing these petitioners required was to have no fee no financial barrier to people entering the dispute resolution process. Unfortunately that barrier does still exist to the tune of about $1000 or so which is a significant barrier to many people and of course that is only the beginning of the cost.I think it is unfortunate that there seems to be a key presumption from some of the Government spokespeople or in speeches we have heard from Government members on this bill that the intention of the bill is to ensure that people sort out their own problems without recourse to the courts. But that is nonsensical in a sense because as one of the earlier Government speakers made the point something like 90 percent of relationship breakups marriage failures or whatever it is are resolved without recourse to the courts albeit on occasion through using the counselling service which is extremely good value for money and an inexpensive way to assist couples to deal with their issues. But the notion that we are dealing with hordes of people who could otherwise deal with their own problems outside of the legal process simply is not borne out by the numbers: 85 to 90 percent of couples do resolve their own issues without coming to the court. It is not a matter of overuse of the court; in fact it is underused if anything.By definition the court sees only the hard cases the difficult cases. The idea of requiring couples to go straight to dispute resolution rather than going into the court process overlooks the fact that there are a whole host of issues of circumstances that may make that inappropriate and some of those circumstances could be family violence hidden family violence which means that a person who has been subjected to some form of physical or psychological abuse could be required to sit in a room and engage in a dispute resolution process and that is simply unacceptable. On paper it might look nice and clear-cut; in practice it will not work. Neither will this bill and we will continue to oppose it.