Dalziel Lianne: Child and Family Protection Bill — In Committee 
Dalziel Lianne: Child and Family Protection Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:667;Page:14761] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 There are a couple of issues that I want to raise on the Child and Family Protection Bill. The first one relates to the question of a discharge of order under section 105 of the Care of Children Act for the return of a child which is amended byclause 28 which inserts new section 122A into the Act. The issue relates to a case that occurred in my electorate. A constituent of mine had the circumstance where she had had her child in New Zealand but she had become pregnant while she was travelling internationally. She had the child in New Zealand. She made a fundamental mistake: the father of the child followed her back to New Zealand and persuaded her to return with him—I cannot remember to where; the Canary Islands or somewhere like that. She did that with the child. 
By the time she decided she needed to leave she had been in the country for 12 months and a few days. That meant that the usual or habitual place of residence was at that point the new country where of course the main language spoken was Spanish not English. The father was English and his mother helpfully for him was a lawyer who represented him at no cost. She tried to track them—at the end of the world—to New Zealand to bring that child their only grandchild back to within their son’s area of protection. 
It was a very very difficult case. All the circumstances were quite devastating. In the end she came back to New Zealand. She did not originally plan to come back to New Zealand for ever; she came back for a bit of time out. She then decided not to return. At that point the question became where the habitual place of residence was located. It was not located in New Zealand even though by the time the father was insisting upon his rights under the guardianship provisions that exist in those circumstances—because both countries are signatories to the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption—the child was I think 4 years old and had spent most of its life in New Zealand. It had spent more years of his life in New Zealand and fewer in a country where the first language was not his own and he could not speak a word of Spanish. It was a very very difficult case and it went to court. The court was extremely sympathetic to the circumstances that were described. It said that we had to look to Parliament for a resolution of the problem because the court could interpret the law only as it was. There was no capacity to discharge the order. 
This legislation has the provision for discharging the order for the return of a child. The grounds as set out in new section 122A(3)(a)(i) in clause 28 are that the court has to be satisfied that “the child is now settled in his or her new environment in New Zealand; and (ii) having regard to all the circumstances of the case the discharge of the return order is warranted;” or that “(b) every other person who was a party to the return proceedings consents.” That was not an issue in this case because there was no consent but it was an issue of great concern to the family of the child as well as some of the wider issues involved. 
I am very very pleased to see that provision finally go through. The one criticism I have is that it was in the original bill introduced to the House by the Hon Annette King which languishes at the bottom of the Order Paper. This provision could have been included in an earlier bill but it was not because it did not meet that 100-days-of-action mantra that the Government used in those early days. But the Government did use that mantra when it pushed through very urgently part of the original bill. How long is it since the last election? It is 2 years down the track. We finally have this bill going through Parliament but we have waited a little too long for that provision to go through. 
That being said this bill is welcomed. It is very good law and is reflective of many other jurisdictions. Other jurisdictions that are signatories to the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption have adopted the practice of having a provision that allows for discharging the order for the return of a child to occur. I am very very pleased to be able to speak on the bill because this is a particular concern to me.