Andersen GinnyHon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Labour supports this bill because it was ours and we're pleased that the Government is continuing to support this bill.It's been an interesting process to hear the submissions on this bill and it's really important that we've made some changes in relation to some of the views that we heard. The idea behind the Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill is really to prevent someone who is the victim of ongoing abuse—whether that be stalking physical violence psychological pressure so that the court system is not used as an additional tool to continually make their life insufferable; it can be quite debilitating. We saw some instances of that through Justice Committee submissions where partners had made their former partner's life and their children as well a misery through prolonged litigation prolonged court processes.So this bill which was actually one of the issues initially raised by a former member of Parliament:Emily Henderson—it was one of her views after being a Family Court lawyer and working in this space seeing how specifically women are often targeted through the court system and had various types of different processes through the courts laid upon them to make life almost intolerable.So it's really good to see under the new provisions that the court must take a broad view of conduct both in and out of court proceedings to determine whether someone is in fact abusing the court's processes in a family proceeding. And if an order is made any further attempts by the abuser to engage the victim in family proceedings will be reviewed by the court before it can progress. Of course there needs to be some careful weighing up of instances such as these. We know that the Family Court is a problematic place. When people reach the Family Court it is usually a pretty traumatic experience all round.So this bill is one of the many changes that Labour did in order to strengthen the rights of victims and also strengthen the courts process for victims particularly for family violence for sexual violence and to give victims of family or sexual violence more of a voice through our court process which is typically quite an adversarial process in general.The committee heard through the process that stalkers are increasingly using litigation abuse to target their victims. It's also encouraging to see that the Government's made a commitment just this year to pass legislation specifically making stalking a criminal offence. I know that the sector of advocates in this space—for women's rights and who work in the family violence space—are particularly pleased to have that and we're eagerly awaiting that on this side of the House. The Minister does know that there's a bill in my name in the ballot ready to go—if you just wanted to pull that one out and vote for that we could do that one even quicker than his own Government bill.We are satisfied that the amended bill would minimise some of the risks that were raised by submitters. Several submitters expressed concern that the bill would provide abusers with a tool to engage intimate partner violence in using the courts to prevent victims from raising safety concerns. So we see that that is a possibility and we think that we've got the balance about right for the judge to be able to make those determinations given the evidence that comes before them.It's really encouraging to see that the Government is taking a positive stance on this and voting for a bill that does good things for family violence particularly in the face of the fact that the family violence track record under this Government has to date not been fantastic. So it's good to see some progress.We have seen as we all know in New Zealand around about 20 percent of family violence is currently reported to police. Research from the Ministry of Justice and from NGOs such as The Backbone Collective showed that the reason why people in New Zealand don't report family violence is that they've previously either called police and had no response or called police and had a poor response or reached out for help and not had a positive experience. That's the main reason why people don't report family violence. If now we're in a position where a decision is being taken by this Government to only send police if it's threat to life that that doesn't meet that threshold of high-level family violence all of those people who are ringing up and calling up and asking for help and not receiving it because it doesn't meet the threshold—my question is: what does that do for the reporting rate of family violence in New Zealand? It would be great if we did have teams that were able to go out and take up that work. I agree. If we want to get on top of family violence police aren't specifically trained in that space. But there is no additional funding for Women's Refuges or other counselling services or those family-support providers to go and take up that work and to fill that space that has been left. And that is a real concern for the reporting rate of family violence.This bill is really a drop in the bucket in terms of getting on top of the issues of family violence that New Zealand faces right now. The big problem is not just reporting rates but it's the next generation of young people in New Zealand who grow up in homes where violence is normalised as part of their daily lives. This contributes we know to negative factors in their development their ability to be whole cooperating happy functioning members of society and to live full lives. So we have it I think as an obligation to make sure we're doing everything we can. And so it's for that reason if we're serious about family violence that the roles of a lot of the Oranga Tamariki providers who have now had funding cut because the Minister will only fund kids in State care—nothing more nothing less. That's her words: nothing more nothing less. So if they're in State care they get funded but if they're not in State care there's no help and there's no prevention services now going on. North Shore Women's Centre is closing and Kōkiri services in the Hutt. We can list some more.They're all services that go into those homes and that support whānau who are going through tough times. Through counselling through support and through budgeting advice they enable whānau who are experiencing family violence to deal with their own problems and to keep their children within the family and to have a home that has a hope of living without violence.So my concern is that with a police service that is stepping back with front-line NGOs that have been cut and family who are calling out for help and are not receiving it it's great the Government is voting for this bill. But long term it's a bleak future for New Zealand families if we're going to try and have a violence-free Aotearoa.