Penk Chris; Andersen GinnyCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you Madam Chair and it's good to have the opportunity to speak on the subject of the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill. That's the full name of the bill by the way unless anyone should think I have a stutter—a stutter.The background to this bill—as members will know and as members of the legal profession and more importantly even families throughout New Zealand and children particularly will know—is that we have in this country a Family Court system that is creaking under the strain of a huge demand. The supply—if I may put it like that—of the service namely the Family Court processes simply does not keep up. It's well accepted and understood—and it's not a matter of debate I think—that changes are needed and we owe it to New Zealanders who find themselves in the situation of needing the Family Court services that improvement in this space is needed. It's been a longstanding problem. The members of this House—some of them have spent considerable amount of their professional lives dedicated to working in the Family Courts researching them too in at least one case. I myself am not particularly familiar with the operation of the Family Court—certainly from the perspective of not having practised in that area much at all—but it's obvious enough to anyone who pays even scant attention to the matter that change is needed.The National Party has supported from the outset this legislation because it does promote some change and a positive change at that. It will we hope and expect provide at least some benefit in terms of timeliness of outcomes for those who are proceeding through the Family Courts.I do have a series of questions and a few comments too of the Minister in relation to how and what is expected to be achieved and these will be offered in the spirit of constructive engagement to try to understand how much help the Government thinks can be provided in this space because it seems to me—and it seems to National—that while this is a positive change it does not nearly go far enough to help the Family Court system get over the difficulties that it's facing. So to quantify at least the help that will be given by the creation of this new role the Family Court Associate will be helpful I think.So my first question then is: whether the Family Court Associate is a—well it's a creature of this legislation; is that person designed to be more of an administrative-type role or a judicial role? And the reason I ask is because the concept came out of a report into what was needed to improve Family Court processes and it was noted that a significant proportion of Family Court judges' time was being occupied with effectively administrative functions. So it seems reasonable to create a new role to relieve the judges proper of some of that burden but it seems to me looking at the provisions of the bill that most of the work is of a judicial nature. Now that's not a problem in itself because of course if we have effectively more judges or more judicial officers conducting the work that is currently done by this certain number of Family Court judges we have then there's a benefit.So I don't offer this as a criticism but just to try and understand what the Government thinks is going to be achieved in relation to whether it's administrative or more in the judicial realm that the work will be done by associates. I'll just pause to see if the Minister is minded to answer that question at this stage and I think that she is.Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you to the member. Look I think that's a really important discussion to have in terms of when we were establishing a new role particularly in the court room that we're clear about what that role is and how it will operate. The way the new role—the Family Court Associate role—will sit is in between a judge and a registrar. So it will sit there to take away some of the more administrative work that judges are doing in order to free up judges to focus on the more meaty issues.The aim of this bill really is to reduce some of those delays that we have seen build up in the Family Court so that the process works better for participants—and particularly children—to make sure that if there are some of those lower-level decisions they are able to be moved through the court at a quicker pace without requiring the time of a judge. The bill does this by amending the primary Act—the Family Court Act 1980—to establish a whole new role. And it spells out quite clearly what those powers are of the new role. I see this as a good change. I think it enables our courts to be freed up to be using our judges in the right spaces at the high level while the more day-to-day administrative work that doesn't require that level of expertise should be—these roles will take up that part of the work. I hope that addresses the member's question.