Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure to speak on this the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill in its first reading. I am a proud member of our Justice and Electoral Committee so I look forward to scrutinising the passage of this legislation through the House. I too want to pick up on the title of the bill and just make some comments about the relationship between family violence and sexual violence. A lot of people will not know that of women who experience family violence 80 percent of them also experience sexual violence. I am already putting to this House a proposition that this should be the Family and Sexual Violence Bill". I do want to commend Minister Adams for her leadership of this issue to date. She has been very generous in her collaboration across the House and so I do feel this is an area where we have cross-party support for actually creating something that is going to make a difference. I want to commend all the speakers before me because I think we have kind of traversed the variety of opinion about how important this piece of legislation is.As a member of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians—actually for the last 5 years I have co-chaired that group initially with Dr Jackie Blue—I want to acknowledge my colleague Jo Hayes who is in the House today and also Maureen Pugh who has just taken over that responsibility on behalf of the National Government. In a letter that we actually put out on 18 September 2015 we noted our support for global action petition Girls Not Brides which was being presented to the United Nations. I want this House to acknowledge that 80 percent of the MPs in this House pledged to end child brides.One of the particular issues I know we are all incredibly passionate about and that Jo Hayes has a bill in the ballot about titled the Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill is actually related to some of the changes that the Minister of Justice is proposing in this legislation around coercion to marry. Coercion by definition is about persuading by using force or threat—persuading someone to do something or coercing them to do something. One of the missing elements in this section of this piece of legislation is actually to give effect to Jo Hayes' bill. That bill was originally Dr Jackie Blue's bill. I note that Claudette Hauiti had it in her name when she was in the House and now Jo Hayes has that bill.I want to put on record that this House would support specific amendment to the Marriage Act in addition to some of the other legislative changes to ensure that 16- and 17-year-olds can get married only with the consent of the court. At the moment it is with the consent of parents but given that section of the legislation is about coercion to marry we should actually recognise that in some circumstances that coercion is by parents of their children. It was particularly highlighted by the National Council of Women of New Zealand in 2013 and by the United Nations that New Zealand had to do something about this particular issue and so I am hoping through this process we will get consensus to make that particular amendment.I also would like to highlight that in the coercion to marry area there are actually some other issues and those issues are relevant—and it is good to see the Minister of Immigration in the House—to international marriage. A lot of New Zealanders will not know that there are about 400 partnership visas issued every year. These are New Zealand residents or citizens who go over mostly to India and get married and under a partnership visa their wife or spouse is allowed to stay in New Zealand. After a year the husband then has the opportunity to apply on behalf of their wife for permanent residency but in some situations that application is not done. We know women who are living in incredibly abusive situations who end up fleeing to providers such as Shakti because the family violence is so intolerable that they actually end up risking their whole life. They get alienated from their families and they get disowned by their communities. It is an issue that we need to deal with and that I want to put on the table.One of the other things that our cross-party women's group did was to write to the Minister of Immigration and ask whether or not this was a form of trafficking. From our perspective women are being coerced into coming to New Zealand. They end up being slaves in their own homes. They are not allowed to leave. I expect that this piece of legislation will provide an opportunity for us to deal with that particular issue. I also want to put on the table that as a cross-party group this issue has actually been the only issue that we as women across the House have identified as an area of collaboration.One of the other issues that needs to be addressed in terms of our international marriage context is around dowry abuse and also honour-based abuse. We have had instances in New Zealand where women have been burnt and have suffered acid attacks. If we are going to futureproof our legislation we think these are also issues that should be created under a new section of the bill titled "International marriage".From a personal perspective I would like to highlight some of the issues in my electorate particularly with the ability to get protection orders. In doing so I would like to acknowledge Women's Refuge which does a fantastic job of advocating for our women who need protection orders. This piece of legislation when it goes through will now allow Women's Refuge and other third-party NGOs to apply on behalf of women to get those protection orders. For all intents and purposes we take the issue of educational issues of having to fill in the forms or resource issues because people do not have access to lawyers to complete these forms on their behalf. So we will have greater access to protection orders.One of the other things I want to put on the table is the ability for police to apply for protection orders on behalf of victims and for those protection orders not to be contested. I have a particular constituent who was going through the process of getting a protection order and the person she was getting that protection order against actually fought her every step of the way and made it incredibly difficult for her to get her protection order. I think if the police actually think it is serious enough—and I am looking at my colleague Stuart Nash who leads that particular area on behalf of our caucus—that is a Supplementary Order Paper that I think with consultation with the police we can also advocate for.Just in summary I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge all the providers who work in this area. In South Auckland—and I know my colleague Aupito William Sio and I have for the last 3 or 4 years now been invited to our White Ribbon dinner which has been run by Safer Aotearoa Family Violence Prevention Network: Raewyn Bhana George Ngātai and people who every day of the week are advocating and ensuring that those families who are living in family violence situations have the support that they require.I would also like to acknowledge Gandhi Nivas which has actually created another opportunity which is embedded in this legislation for the police to be supported through their police safety orders and now having community providers that are able to take men for up to 5 days. They allow the women and children to stay at home and the men are then given accommodation and support through these other providers and Gandhi Nivas is one of them.Finally I also would like to acknowledge the work of our police. I think our police do an incredible job to keep not only children and families safe but also communities safe. I know that our police are doing a lot of work to make sure that services are wrapped around families and that we ensure that families who come in to the system are given all the support that they require so that we can actually start addressing some of the cycles of family violence that happen in our communities. This is a very important piece of legislation and I look forward to being part of the process. I encourage as many people as possible to make submissions. Thank you."