Dalziel Lianne: Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill — First Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:980] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am pleased to be able to advise the Government that the Labour Opposition will support the Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill. We are very pleased that this bill unlike all the others included in the urgency motions of the past 2 weeks will go to a select committee. But in saying that I have to also say that I am disappointed that the Government has decided to introduce a slimline version of the bill that the previous Government had on the Order Paper—the Domestic Violence Reform Bill. 
The reason I am disappointed is that the bill introduced by the Hon Annette King was far more comprehensive. It changed the definition of a child from a person under the age of 17 years to a person under the age of 18 years in order to align the age in the Domestic Violence Act with that in the Care of Children Act and also with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This proposal had flow-on effects throughout the legislation—for example increasing the age at which minors could apply for protection orders in their own right. It empowered the court to make interim care or contact orders to protect the welfare and best interests of the child in cases where an applicant with a child applied for a protection order. It required a judge declining a without notice application for a protection order to provide written reasons for declining the application giving the applicant time to decide whether to proceed on notice. 
The bill made provision for applicants to be able to attend information sessions that would provide information about making effective use of protection orders and on social assistance that may be available. It provided the court with the power to direct attendance at an addiction treatment programme. It amended the Care of Children Act to extend the definition of violence to include psychological abuse and extended coverage beyond when allegations of violence are made to any case where there is a current protection order in force against one of the parties for the protection of the child or the other party. It amended the Hague convention provisions in the Care of Children Act that were proposed in response to a recent court decision ordering the removal of a child from New Zealand even though considerable time had lapsed since the original order had been made. The court noted the absence of a mechanism to discharge a section 105 order implying that the order would have been discharged had such a provision been available—and I make a plea to the Government on behalf of the constituent in my electorate who is the subject of that court case and which our previous Government was seeking to address. That is why I am very keen to see that provision reinstated. 
Given that this bill is going to a select committee there is no reason why the Domestic Violence Reform Bill could not have been brought up the Order Paper with the Minister announcing that the Government intended to increase the number of days that the police orders would be good for and indicating an early report-back requirement for part or all of the bill given that this part of the bill was being progressed to meet the 100 days of action requirement. I have no difficulty with the new Government setting out an agenda such as this one has but I am deeply frustrated when I see the significant work being cast aside for nothing more than political expediency. I have taken an interest in domestic violence since I sat on the Justice and Law Reform Committee as it then was when I first came to Parliament in 1990. I remember the report commissioned by the Victims Task Force that was rewritten within the Department of Justice to soften the very powerful message it contained on behalf of women who had died at the hands of men they had once loved. 
I remember visiting the Hamilton Abuse Intervention Pilot Project as it then was and being impressed with the approach it had adopted—being built as it was on collaboration and a shared understanding of the nature of power and control against Government and non-government agencies alike. I remember returning there in 2005 and finding that the over-arching violence intervention project was struggling to make ends meet and that one of the most critical components of the Hamilton Abuse Intervention Pilot Project the court advocates who appeared for the victims of domestic violence had disappeared with its pilot status in the late 1990s and no one could tell me why. I could not even find an evaluation of the pilot project which meant that the real lessons were never passed on and despite the successful results the project could identify it was still not universally rolled out around the country to every place that needed it. 
By the time I was appointed as Minister of Women’s Affairs after the 2005 general election the Government had established a Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families. The task force was led by two State sector chief executives to signal to Government agencies the priority that was attached to this issue. The involvement of the judiciary the police and representatives of non-governmental organisations including the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges meant that the quality of advice from the coalface was second to none. Sitting alongside the task force was a ministerial group that met regularly to respond to ideas that came through from the task force and any other sources. In June 2006 one of the country’s top policemen Acting Assistant Police Commissioner Roger Carson raised the issue of police issuing on-the-spot protection orders when they attend domestic violence incidents rather than waiting weeks for the order to be issued through a court. He said at the time that he had picked up the idea during an Australasian conference in Sydney on policing family violence. 
Unfortunately the initial response from the most important stakeholder was very negative with Heather Henare chief executive of the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges saying the idea was not welcome and that the collective would prefer that the police concentrate more on lifting their game in dealing with breaches of existing protection orders. She also expressed concern that it would take some of the decision-making process away from women. The local Police Association said the idea should be looked at because in its view officers at domestic scenes were often in a better position to judge the need for protection than people in court who are viewing an incident after the accused had calmed down. As a result the then Minister of Police the Hon Annette King asked the police to undertake work on the subject. Because Women’s Refuge then raised the issue with me in my role as Minister of Women’s Affairs at its 2006 conference I asked the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to make some inquiries. 
Out of this I arranged to meet with police in Hobart Tasmania when I was there for the APEC Small and Medium Enterprises Ministerial Meeting. What I discovered was a programme called Safe at Home. This programme was designed to address domestic and family violence where the safety of victims is paramount and was unprecedented in Australia in terms of funding resourcing law reform and departmental culture change. The criminal justice focus on pro-arrest pro-charge and pro-prosecution was underpinned by an integrated coordinated service response and the cooperation and collaboration of the Department of Justice the Tasmania Police and the Department of Health and Human Services. Under Safe at Home the police were responsible for providing immediate intervention to secure victims’ safety manage the risk of repeated or escalated violence and to undertake risk assessments and safety audits. Specialist police victim safety response teams provided follow-up contact and support to victims. The pro-arrest approach was coupled with a presumption against bail and because this increased the likelihood that witnesses would be compelled to provide evidence this required the gathering of strong corroborative evidence. I mention this because the whole system was underpinned by weekly integrated case coordination meetings in each district; they were essentially forums for key stakeholders and service providers to share case management information from the family violence management system in order to monitor and respond to the changes to the level of risk and threats to safety. 
I make this point because what we need in terms of domestic violence relates to the whole question of an integrated response. It is not simply one response that is required; it is an integrated response that is required. I also make the point that some of the proposals in the original Domestic Violence Bill came directly from the Waikato University report that the Ministry of Women’s Affairs commissioned on women’s experience of protection orders. It will be an enormous disappointment to the ministry and the dozens of women they interviewed that in fact the whole bill will not be pursued. That is why I would like to seek the leave of the House at the conclusion of my address to have that bill referred to the select committee with no debate so that the provisions of that bill could be considered by the select committee at the same time as this issue is being considered by the House. I remember the closing words of the dedication of the writers of the Victims Task Force report to the women who had died when they wrote their earlier report. They wrote: “The days of your death were marked by the system’s trivialisation of the dangers you faced.” 
The Labour Party is willing to work cooperatively with the Government to ensure that we remove that risk of trivialising the dangers that are faced when the violence is so close to home. But at the same time we call on the Government to learn the lessons of the past. It is a multifaceted challenge to take on the scourge of domestic violence and I am disappointed that only the part of the comprehensive reform bill that made it into National’s election policy is being addressed in this bill. I urge the House to support my request to the House that we consider the other bill at the same time at the select committee. I seek leave to have the Domestic Violence Reform Bill referred to the same select committee as the Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there anyone opposed to that course of action? There is.