Paul TamathaTAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Mālō e lelei Madam Speaker. I rise to support this bill on behalf of the Green Party and I want to begin by echoing the thanks given by my colleague my tuakana Hūhana Lyndon here thanking Angie Warren-Clark and Dr Deborah Russell and the Labour whānau for bringing forward this bill which will allow for a marriage or civil union to be dissolved where there has been family violence.I also want to acknowledge all of the people that work in the prevention of violence space here in Aotearoa. I myself was able to work in the prevention of sexual violence space while I was at university as a part of the Thursdays in Black kaupapa which seeks to end the prevalence of sexual violence within tertiary communities. It's hard mahi; it can be extremely traumatising. All of the people that I've met that work in this space are hugely compassionate and good people who do the hard but necessary mahi and we saw that in the submissions that were made on this bill by many different organisations who work on the ground and support people experiencing family violence and support people to be able to leave those abusive relationships.I want to acknowledge that within the prevention of violence space it is chronically underfunded and that I really do hope that the Government's approach to social investment will include strong funding for those organisations that have the specialist knowledge and the specialist experience to be able to prevent and eliminate family and sexual violence.I want to mihi to our beloved co-leader Marama Davidson the former Minister for prevention of violence who introduced the first ever cross-sector national strategy to eliminate family and sexual violence Te Aorerekura. In the Te Aorerekura strategy foreword Marama described family violence and sexual violence as two of our nation's greatest shames and I just want to reaffirm our party's steadfast commitment to move towards a world where family violence does not take place but acknowledge that this requires the efforts of all parties and leaders present in the House today.The main thing that I want to focus on with the brief amount of time that I have left is on protection orders and how within this bill protection orders are used as the evidence that someone can provide that family violence has taken place within their relationship. There were some really good submissions that were made and they were really advocating to broaden the threshold of what is counted as evidence within this bill. Protection orders are flawed. We know that many people do not pursue protection orders for a number of different reasons. The point was made by Women's Refuge that of the 52000 clients that they support each year within abusive relationships only a small subset were able to obtain a protection order in the first place. Clients that Women's Refuge have been supporting reported that obtaining a protection order is a hostile prohibitive and often unsafe process and particularly for people escaping an abusive relationship sometimes obtaining a protection order can actually increase the risk to their lives and to their safety.But there is hope. There have been lots of recommendations about how we can make the protection order process more accessible and more equitable and safer. Within the Turuki! Turuki! report by the Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group chaired by the late great Chester Borrows they recommended streamlining and reducing costs around obtaining protection orders and they also recommended that protection order applications should be free.But there's also some other regulations that we have that provide for broadening the evidence that people can provide to prove that family violence has taken place including the Residential Tenancies (Termination for Physical Assault by Tenant and Withdrawal Following Family Violence) Regulations 2022 which allows for broader allowances including testimonies from medical practitioners nurses midwives psychologists social workers police Māori wardens and even the victim-survivors' employers.So we just think that in the future—this is a good start but in the future we need to broaden the pathways for survivors to demonstrate that family violence has taken place so that they can dissolve a marriage and cut those ties that bind them to their abusers. Thank you.