Turei Metiria: Amended Answers to Oral Questions — Question No. 4 to Minister; Family Courts (Openness of Proceedings) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Turei Metiria: Amended Answers to Oral Questions — Question No. 4 to Minister; Family Courts (Openness of Proceedings) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:13891] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Greens do not support this bill and will be voting against it at this reading. The Greens understand the desire of the public and those involved in Family Court proceedings to have greater transparency in relation to the court’s process and decision making. The Family Court makes extremely important decisions and it is appropriate that its decisions are available for scrutiny particularly if they are precedent making. But we believe that that scrutiny can be achieved without opening the court to public hearings in the way that other courts are open. 
The Family Court process is different from other courts. For example there is a clear public interest in the administration of justice in criminal matters as part of the social contract between citizens and the State. When a person commits a crime that person technically commits the crime against the State and not the victim of the crime. Citizens have in effect given over the responsibility to hold the accused person to account to the State for conviction and punishment but consequently are entitled to hold the court as a State agent to public scrutiny to ensure that that obligation is being met fairly and properly. 
The matters that come before the Family Court are quite different particularly in cases involving the care of children. Many of these cases do not involve any form of crime or misdemeanour. Rather they involve the deeply private matters of family relationships that have so broken down that State intervention is needed to resolve them. We believe that the public interest goes only so far as to ensure that the process and decision making of the court is sound but not so far as to enable the public to inquire into or have access to the details of people’s private lives. Therefore we do not support the opening of the proceedings to the public nor do we accept that a presumption in favour of openness to the public provides sufficient protection for the privacy of families. Such a presumption requires the continual surveillance of the court and its assessment as to whether the privacy of the parties involved is of sufficiently high value that the public should be excluded. 
This bill takes that presumption even further in requiring that only in exceptional cases would the sitting of a Family Court be closed to the public. In the view of the Greens that presumption cannot be justified. The privacy of the parties involved should be presumed to be of a high value and deserving of protection. Because of the nature of the matters that come before the Family Court we consider that a presumption in favour of the privacy of the parties and the children concerned is a better balance. There are already provisions in law that allow for the reporting of cases without personal details being revealed so in our view this bill does not significantly add to the reporting abilities around the Family Court. 
The Justice and Electoral Committee has considered the matter of the openness of the Family Court in the Care of Children Bill and will report back to the House with its recommendations on the issue. We believe that the select committee process on the Care of Children Bill has enabled the public to have its say on the question of openness of the courts. Given the nature of the matters that appear before the Family Court and taking into account the competing public and private issues the Greens cannot in good conscience support this bill.