Turner Judy: Family Courts Matters Bill — First Reading 
Turner Judy: Family Courts Matters Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:11493] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to support this first reading of the Family Courts Matters Bill. We do so with some reservation but we are happy for the bill to go to a select committee where the appropriate opportunity for change is in place for these issues to be addressed. We welcome for instance provisions that make the court more transparent. We think that is great. We also welcome any attempt to improve access to mediation services for families facing this sort of process. 
I will mention a family lawyer in Palmerston North Penny Clothier who recently handed in her ticket as a Family Court lawyer. One of the things that impressed me in a conversation I had with her and in correspondence I have shared with her is her belief that lawyers are not equipped to mediate between warring members of a family trying to determine sensitive things like custody and access to children. She believes that this sort of work should be handled by people who are qualified more in the area of mediation and counselling rather than by the adversarial approach of court lawyers. I am very interested to see whether there will be any submissions on that. 
I also noted a column in the  
New Zealand Herald  
recently by Terry Carson a lawyer with more than 35 years’ practising experience in the Family Court. He was commenting on this particular bill and he explained: “… I would suggest that the problems with the Family Court and how it is viewed by the community run much deeper than the issues the bill might address. The court suffers from being the only court in our legal system that appears to frequently operate in a moral vacuum.” He continued by saying: “Nowhere is this more evident than in the Family Court’s property relationship jurisdiction. It is ironic that if one enters into a business partnership with a total stranger the law requires the partners to act towards each other with the utmost good faith and a civil court will enforce that requirement. However one can lie cheat and betray a spouse civil union or de facto partner and the Family Court usually will order the payment of half the family wealth to the offending partner without making any moral judgment. Indeed if the other partner brought a house or more wealth into the relationship at the outset the effect of the law means the Family Court can richly reward a partner whose actions may have been morally reprehensible and have destroyed their family.” 
Issues surrounding parenting orders and the day-to-day care of children are even more important than property and are another area where the Family Court operates in a vacuum. The court is simply directed to act in the best interests of the child when determining custody arrangements. Although this is a noble guide it effectively leaves total control of families’ future make-up to the whim of an individual judge. 
United Future believes that this bill looks like a lost opportunity to make greater improvements in this area. There are lots of technical changes. I think the National speaker made reference to them. Some of them are probably positive and we have no problem with them. Knowing that the Minister Rick Barker was considering amending the Family Proceedings Act I sent him a member’s bill I have drafted that would allow judges in the Family Court where there was a dispute over the paternity of a child to order a DNA test. Currently if a dispute exists and a man believes he is the father of a child and wants his name on the birth certificate so that he can contribute to the well-being of the child and have access to him or her—or it may be the reverse that he is named as the father and he has some doubts about that and would like to have it clarified—under the current Family Proceedings Act the judge can recommend that a DNA test is done but the mother can block it. 
What has happened historically in family law is that the father then has to undergo a lengthy and expensive court process—taking 4 or 5 years. In one case I noted the only way in which the judge could bring justice to bear was to remove the said child from its mother’s care for 2 hours and place that child in Child Youth and Family Services care. Child Youth and Family Services then went and got the DNA test done which proved what the father had contested all the time: that he was the father. He wanted to pay child support and to have some access to his child. That process took him 4 years. It was 4 years of lost contact. He had no ability to have any contact at all with his child despite the fact that he had lived with the mother for many months was with her at the birth of the child and had lived with the mother for 3 or 4 months after the birth of the child. He knew he was the child’s father but was blocked from timely contact with his child and lost time with the child. 
 This is a recommendation of the Law Commission; this is not some flaky idea that Judy Turner has dreamt up. In the Law Commission’s paper on legal parentage it recommended that judges be able to order that a DNA test be done when it is in the best interests of a child for this to be determined. The test would not be something that the father could sneak around behind the mother’s back and get done; it would be in an open and transparent way. Where paternity is contested surely the Family Court should be able to get this very simple procedure done. In this day and age it is not even an invasive procedure. A buccal swab from a child’s mouth is all that is required to determine whether the father is the father. 
As a father cannot even begin the process of applying for contact with his child until he has determined that he is the father it seems archaic that the Family Court cannot order this procedure done. I am disappointed that the Minister for Courts has turned down this chance to include what is an already drafted provision. I will be taking the provision to the select committee to see whether there is any openness of the committee to consider this and openness for the provision to be added in as an amendment to the Family Proceedings Act. I think it is something that is long overdue. 
As I say the recommendation came from the New Zealand Law Commission as part of a very substantial paper and body of work that the commission has done around the issue of legal parentage. It is one of the easiest of the commission’s recommendations to implement. I cannot for a moment understand why the Minister would have turned down this offer. I am not precious about the way I have drafted the provision. If it can be improved so that it can be included I am very happy for that to happen. I call on the select committee that will be viewing this bill to consider the provision. I will be making a submission to that end to see whether there is any willingness on the part of the select committee to consider it. I am hoping yet again that the Minister will reconsider it. 
However this is not all that this bill deals with. We are happy with the basic opportunity that this bill provides for further discussion around the Family Proceedings Act. Therefore we are happy to support this first reading. 
Bill read a first time.  
Bill referred to the Social Services Committee.