Worth Richard: Relationships (Statutory References) Bill — In Committee 
Worth Richard: Relationships (Statutory References) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:624;Page:19084] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National—Epsom) 
: 
 On behalf of National or perhaps I should say more appropriately on behalf of myself because this is a conscience vote I would like to speak to the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill in the Committee stage. This of course is our opportunity to look clause by clause at particular parts of the bill. In this case we are talking only about two parts. Part 1 is concerned with a raft of statutory changes and Part 2 is concerned with a raft of changes to regulations. I am not wrong in saying “raft of changes” because the scope of this legislation in terms of the changes to be made to our statutory and regulatory regimes is indeed breathtaking. 
Others have said and I simply repeat that this bill is really about two things. It gives legal effect to civil unions but much more significantly in the context of the Government’s determined social engineering anti-family plans it takes the view that all relationships should be protected—marriages civil unions and de facto relationships. 
In this particular call which I hope will be the forerunner of many more calls that will be able to be taken by National Party members on Part 1 I want to concentrate on de facto relationships. It is easy to say when a marriage starts. It is easy to say when a civil union relationship starts. It is much more difficult in the case of de facto relationships. Is it the first furtive hand-holding in the darkened picture theatre or is it some later active sexual coitus that enables those who must make these judgments to say: “We have a de facto relationship under way.”? 
 I always thought it was helpful to provide some indicia as to what a de facto relationship might be and although I condemn this bill for what it seeks to do and in particular for its anti-family stance when it was initially introduced it postulated some indicia to determine whether in fact a de facto relationship existed. In the development of those indicia there was help gained from what had gone on in other countries in a similar task of search and also of course in what was already contained in some New Zealand statutory material. 
So the sorts of things that one would expect might be looked at to determine whether a de facto relationship has sprung up include duration of the relationship nature and extent of common residence whether a sexual relationship existed degree of financial dependence or interdependence ownership of property degree of mutual commitment to a shared life care and support of children and performance of household duties. Now all that has been swept away by this determined Justice and Electoral Committee majority membership to provide instead it is said a more simple test but a more simple test that will in reality be hugely hard to apply. Now a de facto relationship means a relationship between two people whether a man and a woman a man and a man or a woman and a woman who live together as a couple in a relationship in the nature of marriage or civil union. 
What we are seeing of course is very much part of determined Government policy and that is to blur these concepts. It is all being done in a very deliberately anti-family way. There is to be a much degraded significance in terms of the difference between a relationship in the nature of marriage a relationship in the nature of civil union and a relationship that might be called a de facto relationship. Whereas it might be quite reasonable to fix rights and responsibilities in respect of marriage and civil union it is far more difficult assuming one can establish the status of a de facto relationship to do so in the context of that latter relationship. That is because people enter into de facto relationships for a real mix of reasons ranging from companionship to love to simply transient convenience.