Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Madam Chair. It's my pleasure to speak in this committee stage debate on the Minors (Court Consent to Relationships) Legislation Bill. That's probably a good place to start given that that's a change in title. When our colleague Jo Hayes actually submitted this bill to the Parliament it was called the Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill. So it's really important I guess to focus on this concept of formal relationships and also legally recognise relationships which is in fact what this piece of legislation now does.I know that when we started on this journey actually it was about joining an international call to end child brides. In most jurisdictions we had marriage and so the original intention was to make sure that young girls—that is anyone under the age of 18 but over the age of 16—who could get married actually did so in a manner that reassured us that they had given informed consent and that no harm was being done to that young woman.Internationally we know that much harm is done to young women who marry early. A lot of the times young women marry early and have not good lives actually—lives full of abuse and family violence. And I'm speaking internationally" now from a global context which is why the UN and a whole lot of other organisations want to end child brides—there are a few others; I'll have to google and find them. But the reality of what the amendments have done within the context of New Zealand is actually to make it applicable to our country. So because we have more than marriage available to people who want to formalise their relationships obviously an extension to include civil unions is absolutely merited. And in some ways it made absolute sense and it was just something we hadn't thought about because we had only just thought about marriage. So everybody I think universally could understand why this bill then became applicable not only to marriages but to civil unions.I think a lot of people initially were not quite sure about the de facto aspect of it all because actually you don't need the law's permission to have a de facto relationship. But actually the relevance is in how we as a country view de facto relationships. And how we view de facto relationships which is a real quirk of our culture is that actually you can be in a formal committed relationship and not have been married. So the reason that we have chosen to include those in a de facto relationship in New Zealand is because they are legally recognised relationships. The State therefore has responsibilities to people who are in de facto relationships and what we wanted to ensure—and I should read directly from the Justice Committee report: "Excluding one legally recognised relationship could also be contrary to the Human Rights Act 1993 which prohibits discrimination on the basis of marital status." So I wanted to emphasise the rationale of the select committee and also the fact that we use human rights legislation and human rights principles when we're making these types of amendments. It was great to see the discussion and debate among the select committee. I know that my colleague Jo Hayes and I had a few conversations about this because when it was initially proposed we were a little bit unsure about where it had come from. But having read the report from the select committee and now understanding the rationale it makes absolute sense; so well done select committee for those particular amendments.I want to focus on the issue about requiring court consent for 16- and 17-year-olds wanting to enter these legally recognised relationships. Others have focused on replacement section 18 and the requirement now to go through the courts and I guess the jurisdiction of the Family Court and the Family Court judge in determining from my perspective whether or not the young person has the ability to give informed consent and to ascertain whether or not a young person does have the ability to give informed consent. There is a level of engagement between that judge and that young person and it has been outlined and highlighted within the select committee report—the age and maturity their views any views of the parties' parents and guardians that can be reasonably ascertained because at the heart of this piece of legislation is as my colleague Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki highlighted our duty of care to our children and we have to make sure that our children are not being abused they're not being coerced and they're not being I guess led down a pathway where potentially really negative consequences would follow them for the rest of their lives.Those ethical principles of informed consent and do no harm are fundamental to changing who the consenting entity should be in a situation where a young person aged 16 or 17 wants to formalise their relationship. So I wanted to acknowledge those ethical principles because I think when you implement principles and philosophies like that what they're intended to do is to keep people safe—keep the young person safe keep us safe as a society because we wouldn't want to have situations where actually our young people have been abused.We know that this issue is an interesting one because it has made us also look at arranged marriages or cultural marriages marriages where people are marrying overseas coming back to New Zealand and there are immigration issues. We know through our work with Shakti that some of those issues are actually quite complex in some ways but we are aware and need to be aware within that whole area what our obligations are I guess when we allow people to come into New Zealand under relationship visas—what the implications are particularly for those young women who then come because I have seen evidence recently of young women being dumped. They are brought in after arrangements in other jurisdictions. I think that there is more to do in this area to be quite honest. What this bill also does is provide a focus about what we think is important as a country.I too want to make a comment about the specific requirement of a cultural report. We should go back to the origins of this piece of legislation in 2012. It was presented initially to this House by Dr Jackie Blue who was then a National list MP based in Mt Roskill. Her whole motivation for bringing this bill to the House was her engagement with the Indian community—an ethnic community within a community that she served—and their highlighting to her the issues that that community have and her desire to do something about the situation that was currently happening. So the fact that we will require or the judge may obtain a cultural report is incredibly relevant to this area because we know that there are some communities within our New Zealand communities that are disproportionately affected by the current state. So we should acknowledge that and we should also acknowledge I guess the advocacy that we've seen from groups like Shakti—Hon Ruth Dyson: Priyanca's here.LOUISA WALL: And Priyanca's here. I can acknowledge my colleague Priyanca Radhakrishnan who's worked for Shakti. I know she can speak more eloquently about some of the stories she knows from our community.But again I just want to highlight that explicitly putting in legislation the value the importance of culture the relevance of culture again just highlights I believe how progressive we are as a country how inclusive we are as a country and I want to commend the select committee for the work that they've done to make sure that the relevance of these changes actually reflects the needs within our own society. Thank you."