Pillay Lynne: Child and Family Protection Bill — In Committee 
Pillay Lynne: Child and Family Protection Bill — In Committee 
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LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) 
: 
 I stand and speak obviously in support of the Child and Family Protection Bill because Labour certainly supports any bill that provides more protection for children and predominantly for women in New Zealand. So we support this bill but we support it with a little bit of sadness in that it does not go far enough. 
I have said it before in this House and I will say it again: there is a more comprehensive bill languishing on the Order Paper at the moment. That bill the Domestic Violence Reform Bill was introduced by Annette King in 2008 and it was following extensive— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I remind the member that that is not a provision of the bill. Leave has been sought for the provisions of the bill to be debated and it is a very tight debate. Although the member can mention that legislation she cannot dwell on it because it is not part of the bill we are debating. 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: Thank you Mr Chairperson. I will just finish what I was saying—but I certainly will not dwell on it—because I want to talk about an amendment. 
One of the provisions of the Domestic Violence Reform Bill which is languishing on the Order Paper is one that my colleague Jacinda Ardern put forward. It is an amendment that puts the definition of “child” in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Currently a child is defined as a person under the age of 17. Jacinda Ardern’s amendment seeks to raise the age to 18 so that young people—I think they are referred to as adult children—have the protection they need and deserve. 
I will now speak about the amendment I propose. It relates to young people being covered by a protection order when they are no longer residing at home. We had considerable discussion on this matter at the Justice and Electoral Committee. An amendment was made to provide that when young people are still residing in the home the protection order would still apply to them even when they reached the age of 17. We want to amend that to 18 years of age. 
Regrettably despite some very eloquent points raised by us we were not able to achieve in Committee an amendment to provide that young people were still covered by a protection order if they left the family home. That was something that many many submitters to the select committee said was really important. Logically a young person who has been in a home where a protection order is necessary has been subject to much acrimony and to violence and that does not simply go away by virtue of him or her leaving the home. 
We are asking the Government to reconsider this amendment and we are asking that young people opt out of protection rather than opt back in so that if they were to leave the family home at over the age of 18 they would still be covered by that protection order. If protection was deemed necessary when they were residing in the home and when they had their parent with them why would that protection be deemed unnecessary when they are not in the home? They could still be in a very very vulnerable situation and there may be a number of circumstances as to why that young person is not living at home. 
We really urge other parties in the House especially the Government to listen to what the submitters said. Many agencies who are involved in the protection of children and many submitters felt that it was a really important point. I urge members to support this amendment. I can see that Simon Bridges is listening attentively and I am hopeful that once again he will bow to my wisdom and that he just might support this amendment. If that were the case I would take the opportunity to acknowledge Simon Bridges. Although we do not always agree on a lot of things he has many times been very helpful.