Faafoi Kris: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13508. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to Part 3 of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill. I do want to point straight to clause 60A of the bill which sets out the duties of family dispute resolution providers. In subclause (2) of clause 60A it says “… the family dispute resolution provider must … (a) identify the matters in issue between the parties; and (b) facilitate discussion between the parties in respect of those matters; and (c) assist the parties to reach an agreement on the resolution of those matters that best serves the welfare and best interests of all children involved in the dispute.” On the face of it you cannot have too much of a problem with that but as always with the National Party the devil is in the detail.To get to family dispute resolution you have to pay as Mr Goff says $897. That is going to be very restrictive to many many families and certainly to a lot of families in my constituency of Mana. I just want to commend a number of the family law specialist lawyers who came to me almost instantly because of their concern around access to justice for families who could not afford it when they found out that this piece of legislation was going to be introduced to this House. Those lawyers believe that this fee of close to $900 to go through this family dispute resolution service will be prohibitive for many families in Porirua and that it will cause a lot of families who cannot afford to go through family dispute resolution to actually have more problems between the two parties involved—the issue being that if you cannot afford to go through family dispute resolution the issues between those two parties will be left to fester and then things between those two parties could actually get worse. Those lawyers did point out that the system that is currently in place gives the two parties the ability to go to six court-funded counselling sessions. That was very very valuable to those parties in making sure that they could hopefully come to some agreement before they get to the serious stages of negotiation around separation.As Phil Goff mentioned in his speech it is not necessarily the case that this Government wants to help families who are separating by introducing this piece of legislation. It is actually looking at cutting costs within the court system to make sure that it can meet its needs. To look at some of the savings that the Government will find by moving to these family dispute resolution services and changing the system within Family Court proceedings you only have to go to the regulatory impact statement where it does quantify some of the savings that will come about by introducing family dispute resolution services. On page 9 of the regulatory impact statement one of the options that the advisers look at is repealing the existing obligations and replacing them with a focus on the court carrying out its primary function in a way that produces the best outcomes for children and vulnerable people. This is a recommended option from the advisers who put the regulatory impact statement together. It is revealed in that document that this will create a saving of close to $10 million based on the 2010 and2011 expenditure for all court-funded counselling. In black and white that is what the real motivation of these changes is. As it says in clause 60A family dispute resolutions may be being introduced for what would seem to be a good purpose but the real motivation for setting up the family dispute resolution service is to cut costs. Another measure that will save costs as pointed out in the regulatory impact statement is to limit the number of those counselling sessions that I mentioned before which currently is set at six to—it says here in the regulatory impact statement—an option of one or three. That will save up to $4 million based on current expenditure over the next 2 years.We are very concerned about this family dispute resolution service and about the cost that it has set up because it does create a situation where the have-nots cannot access a fair justice system when it comes to resolving family disputes. They cannot do that. That was a concern that was also held by the New Zealand Law Society. That is a society the opinion of which this Government does not seem to care about any more because a lot of pieces of legislation have been through the House and the Law Society has given its frank opinion on that legislation but this Government seems hell-bent on ignoring it. In a submission that the Law Society made on this bill when it was introduced it had two very major concerns when it came to the family dispute resolution service. If I can just read from its submission: “Firstly imposing a large fee puts a big barrier in front of those who want to resolve issues that they are unable to resolve themselves. Access to justice is a fundamental mark of a democratic and fair society. That access will be impeded in New Zealand by the fee.” So we do have the Law Society very concerned along with the Labour Party that this fee will restrict the access to justice of a lot of families who are not only going through financial hardship but also going through very tough times within their own families themselves.The second concern that the Law Society had and I am quoting again is that “… requiring the parties to split the fee provides one party with the power to delay matters control or even prevent the process by refusing to pay their half. FDR needs to be encouraged. Its strength is in early negotiated settlement. Giving one party the ability to stifle the process by simply refusing to pay a fee is to deny the other the opportunity of resolving matters in a timely child focused way.” So the fee that you need to pay to access the family dispute resolution service could actually be used as something against one party in a dispute within a family. I think that I would like to hear from the Minister of Justice about that concern that the Law Society has and certainly as to whether this could have the effect of making things worse within families. Certainly I know that the local family lawyers in my area have concerns over that because they are going to be in plenty of situations where families will be accessing this service. As I said in a previous debate on another part of this legislation where there is financial abuse going on in a situation this concern from the Law Society could certainly come to fruition.I do want to note some of the ardent opposition in Porirua to this bill.Catriona Doyle a family lawyer in Porirua moved very quickly to make sure that the Law Society locally and nationally spoke out very strongly against the changes that are in this bill because they will restrict access to justice for families who cannot afford to access justice. We do not believe that is a good thing. As Mr Goff said it is fine for people who can afford it but it certainly does hamper the process for families who are not in a financial position to be able to access justice and the family dispute resolution service. On the face of it clause 60A points out some very good things that family dispute resolution sets out to do but in this legislation this Government is not really seeking to make things easier for families who cannot afford to access justice. At the moment they can do so and it is cheap or free and they do have access to six free counselling sessions but under this legislation it makes access to justice much muchharder. It imposes close to a $900 fee on those families who want to enter into the family dispute resolution service and it is my submission and also a submission of the Law Society—and I would like to hear from the Minister in the chair on this—that the fee to enter the family dispute resolution process could actually be making things worse for families not better.