Brown Simeon; Dean JacquiSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Madam Speaker thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call on the Family Court (Supporting Children in Court) Legislation Bill. The National Party believes that this bill has good intent but the National Party will not be supporting this piece of legislation due to the fact that it will make very little difference for children and young people and is more likely to see more cases being seen in the courts rather than being sorted out out of court and that is something that we and many submitters see as being of very serious concern.The history of this legislation goes back to 2011 when the National Government directed a Ministry of Justice review of the Family Court which resulted in major reforms to the family justice system in 2014. This bill is essentially trying to unwind those pieces of legislation and the impact that they did have on resolving family disputes in what was a relatively quick time frame. There was a 2014 report which was done to look at the outcomes of those reforms which showed that in-court processes for these resolutions took approximately on average 268 days. Out-of-court resolution could be achieved in only 37 days on average—a far better outcome in these cases. This legislation seeks to unwind some of these reforms and has in my opinion and National's opinion been something which effectively is an outcome of what has been a long and meandering process by the Minister of Justice to effectively look at unwinding these reforms.In 2018 the Minister of Justice established an independent panel to evaluate the 2014 reforms. It's now 2021—three years later. After this working group put together its recommendations we're finally here at the second reading of this piece of legislation. This piece of legislation is very inconsequential but it is going to make a difference in that it will make things more timely and will make things more difficult to actually get resolutions. What we're talking about here is effectively after three years a two-page bill which is seeking to make substantive changes but effectively makes very little but it will have very poor outcomes.Listening to the submitters there were a number of concerns raised about what evidence there was and what research there was to show an evidence-based model for children's participation and guidelines about the circumstances where children should be involved. There were also concerns raised about the impact of having more lawyers involved in their situations and what that would actually do to get these things resolved. There was particular concern raised by some organisations which said that In terms of successes experienced by out-of-court mediation it is proven to be the optimal way for resolving disputes. Court can be disruptive and destructive for relationships and should only be used in a small number of cases. Mediation provides the opportunity for relationships between parties to be healed."So on this side of the House we're saying that actually what this piece of legislation does whilst it has a good intent of trying to provide a stronger voice for the child—what it effectively will do is mean that the situation and the conflicts which are trying to be resolved become more lawyered up and take longer to be resolved and that will lead to worse outcomes in these circumstances.There was particular concern raised about new section 7 in clause 7 which puts in a requirement that when appointing a lawyer to represent a child the court or registrar must take into account a range of different factors such as the personality cultural background training and experiences of the lawyer to ensure they're suitably qualified to represent the child. The question was raised: what is the training that is given to the registrar to actually ensure they are able to take into account all of those factors? Where's the confidence going to be in the system to actually ensure they're going to be able to take into account all of those factors that those children have so that they can actually appoint the right lawyer? There's also a concern around the lack of training and lack of skills of potential lawyers in this case to take into account matters such as child development psychology and sexual violence—serious issues which need to be faced in these circumstances. So whilst we agree that there are concerns around this we want to ensure that if the professionals are getting involved we want to see the right professionals with the right training and we don't feel this simple piece of legislation which makes simple changes is actually going to deal with the complexity and the real serious live situations that these children are facing. So this piece of legislation whilst well-intentioned effectively takes us back rather than taking us forward and it doesn't actually address the real issue which needs to be addressed which is ensuring that these resolutions are dealt with in a timely fashion. Our fear and our concern is that it's going to increase those time frames which means young people and families are not getting their disputes resolved in a timely fashion. The old saying is that "Justice delayed is justice denied". We want to see these situations resolved as quickly as possible for the benefit of all parties involved. Thank you Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."