Martin TraceyHon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister for Children): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to acknowledge the member in charge of the Minors (Court Consent to Relationships) Legislation Bill and to join with the voices acknowledging Jo Hayes and the bringing forth of this piece of legislation. I also wish to join with the other voices and acknowledge Dr Jackie Blue and the work that has gone on before. I want to acknowledge the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians association which attempted to have a name from every woman from every party in this House placed on this bill and then bring it to the House. Not only would this bill have made history but that would have made history and I just say that I think we need to continue to find that piece of legislation and we need to make that happen. My understanding is that there is no barrier to that. Therefore let's go at it ladies. I do want to say however—and it has been articulated by other speakers—that it's calculated that this bill might affect 30 young people here in New Zealand. There's two things I want to pick up on. First of all 30 doesn't sound like much but in my family we have one of them. So when it is somebody very close to you who with their sister has had to go through and actually reach out to Shakti and have Women's Refuge lift them up with the police and then bring them down here where Shakti Wellington—and we have not solved the issue of funding to Shakti Wellington yet. It is something we must solve and we must solve it soon. But when it strikes your own family in this way then you realise that it might be only 30 but it's 30 too many. The second thing I would want to just pick up on is that one of the previous speakers corrected herself when she started to use the word child" but changed that statement to "young person". In many other pieces of legislation that have passed through this House in the not too distant past a "child" is defined as anybody under the age of 18—in our court system now; in our youth justice system—so I absolutely don't want to take away from this piece of legislation and the fact that this is a step forward but it's merely a step forward. This is a step that we need to take. The next part of the conversation is that when these young people show up at the Family Court they go in with the judge and they come out and the judge has said "No we're not going to allow them to marry." who's going to be there to protect them from their family? Who's going to be there to actually stand up for them in front of their father and their mother against what is—and let's not put judgment on it but it is a cultural norm from somewhere else and we are trying to say "This is the line here." Who's going to be doing that? Is that going to be Shakti Wellington? Is that going to be Shakti? Is that going to be Women's Refuge? Who is that going to be because that's the next question here. The other part of the question is that there were at least three submissions that were made that never got mentioned in the select committee report. One of them was Shakti Community Council's position which was to "Raise the minimum legal age for marriage from 16 years … to 18 years (with or without parent consent) in line with the worldwide trends in Western countries." The Human Rights Commission: "The Bill aims to ensure that 16 and 17-year olds who wish to marry are not being coerced to do so. The Bill removes the ability of parents to consent to the marriage of children under 18 and replaces it with an application to Court and a decision of a Family Court Judge. The Commission believes that the Bill should go further than this in protecting the minors from coercion to marry by removing the ability for those under 18 years to get married at all." Family Planning New Zealand: "We raise questions about whether the law should include any provision [at all] for 16 and 17 year olds to marry. In its most recent evaluation of New Zealand the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women … recommended that New Zealand 'Revise the legal minimum age of marriage to 18 years without any exceptions for parental consent'." This is the next conversation we need to have. If under so many other pieces of legislation these are children why in this nation are children allowed to marry? Now that's not a conversation for today but it's the next one that perhaps ladies we might be able to put our signatures to. The only other thing I'd like to do—because I'm not going to hold this bill up any more—is I want to acknowledge Dr Parmjeet Parmar. She hasn't been acknowledged to date but she was in the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians association when I was part of it in the last term—I have been unable to go to the meetings since I've become a Minister—and she made very clear the difference between arranged marriages and forced marriages. I want to place that on the record because this is not about making a judgment on other people's culture across the board. This is about a statement inside New Zealand about where we believe the line needs to be drawn for our children and our young people. So I want to acknowledge Dr Parmjeet Parmar who made it very very clear that there is a difference between a forced marriage and an arranged marriage. But even an arranged marriage can wait until people are 18. Kia ora thank you."