White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour): It's a pleasure to take a call on something like this because I was an employment lawyer. I have seen a change in the attitude in this area over my practice and it gives me a chance to really look at that.That change in attitude to sexual harassment directly relates to the nature of a rethink about the limitation period because we've started to understand the real harm that can be done by this kind of behaviour but we've also understood that part of that trauma is that people take a while to process these particular things because of the nature of them and so they actually do need more time.I would like to start by just talking about a woman called Mary Koss who did some studies in 1987. She's an American academic and she did these studies into sexual assault. It's a really interesting story as to how that happened. She was coming into a new university and she got approached by one of the male academics. He wanted to do a study on bra size and how it affected the reaction that men had to women. He wanted her to put her name on the study so that he could do that study. She took the study and changed it into the first survey of sexual assault that really had taken place.Originally she had very direct questions I think but she ended up changing the way that she asked the questions and she got a really different response because most of the women answering the survey didn't understand that what was happening to them was sexual assault. They could describe what happened—and that included things like date rape—but they just couldn't actually name it as such.I think that I reflect on that as an experience that has actually ramifications for this area too. I don't think that for a long time we understood what was going on in these circumstances in the workplace. Obviously we've come to terms much more with the power dynamic in an employment relationship. I think that all of us on every side of the House we now understand that.When I was practising law I had a friend who was practising at a big firm—and I'm not going to name anybody in the speech—but actually it was a well-known person to probably everybody in the situation. It was a partner in the firm and he invited her to lunch with what she thought was the team. When she got there she was alone. It was one of those things that meant that—she was in her first job. Can you imagine what that does to your confidence when what you think you've been employed for is actually your desirability sexually which is clearly what she thought and what he thought at that point. So it totally undermined her first experience as an employee.Many years later we had a very interesting situation where she was practising as a lawyer and she was very good at her job and she had a confrontation with another lawyer. He was a rather unusual person who started to do things that were less and less acceptable one of which was to get her to bend down to sign a piece of wood in a short skirt. She made a complaint and it went through a complaints process. I ended up with her supporting her through that process.At first we put that process through as a professional conduct process. When we were doing the evidence at some point my friend said in her evidence This wouldn't have happened to me if I wasn't a woman." I've got to say my reaction to that because I was trained and I was generationally challenged on this was actually my heart sank that she had said that it was about being a woman because that was going to be so much harder to fight than just simply calling it professional misconduct. I'm ashamed of it. That's what I felt.In fact we found really good evidence email evidence that there were lots of comments that were directed at her as a woman and actually compared her car to the wife's car in the situation etc. It was very much laid on and in the information. There was a finding in that situation and it went through a process and actually it all became disclosed—actually quite a lot later in the Me Too movement as these things move through our profession.There was a situation where the Law Society said that there were no complaints of this nature. This became a complaint that was thought about and was talked about because in fact at that point the lawyer's code of conduct didn't really have a category for sexual assault and sexual harassment. Everything went through a very much sanitised channel—and it's changed. The Law Society's changed and so has our approach to this kind of behaviour in every workplace in New Zealand.It is no longer acceptable but we also need to give people time because these are extremely traumatic events and actually they need time to process it. They need time to articulate it. They need somebody to be able to say "Well that's just not acceptable." They probably need to get into their next job and realise that the behaviour wasn't normal wasn't acceptable and wasn't their fault. So that's how it relates.Now I've got to say that Mary Koss has got some really interesting views and one of them is actually that she doesn't think things have got much better. She at this point doesn't think that she actually achieved her ends in the change in behaviour in the United States. I actually don't agree with her. I think I've seen a change in myself. I now look at those things quite differently. It wasn't that I didn't see them. It was that I suppressed them and found other ways of trying to deal with them. In the case that I've described I did see them but I didn't feel that they were par for the main course of society. Now I'd be much more straightforward about that. I'd simply see it as a case of sexual harassment.I just want to tell you one final thing about that story because it broke in the newsletters that go to lawyers. When the story broke the article went up on the website and it had a cartoon of a woman bending down with a short skirt. That was what the journalist thought it should do with that story. They put up that cartoon which was a cartoon of my friend in that situation. Now that's part of the journey through. I appreciate it but I would urge people to reflect on that kind of response to the situation because it certainly did harm.What did good was actually being able to win in that situation being able to hold that man to account. It actually took several years because he asked for name suppression. It was possible to go through that process because my friend is like a terrier she is tenacious but not everybody in the situation is a terrier. It really isn't a case of actually having to be the most aggressive person or the most confident person because the victims in this situation are often the opposite of that. They are often the gentler people the ones that won't necessarily take their cases on. I take the point that has been made by my friend Melissa Lee and about this: that this is a problem that we get in different cultures and we have to really make sure that we're very straightforward in our rules.Now there are of course options under the Human Rights Act to take these cases and there have been and it's been the preferred method. That's because it has a longer time that you can take the cases. So this brings us much more into line between the two places to go. I think it's very important that the Employment Relations Authority does its job in these cases extremely sensitively. I think it's really important that people are handled with care in these situations. That would be my only other reflection from practice. I saw far too many harsh dealings with these cases and a tendency to settle at mediation for fear of the trauma that would be caused by the case itself and the way it was conducted. So it's incredibly important that this sends a signal to the Employment Relations Authority that it must absolutely treat people with respect—which I'm sure it intends to do.I would just finally like to congratulate my friend Dr Deborah Russell for having brought this to this Parliament and for the Parliament for actually I think universally accepting that this is a good idea. Thank you. I commend this to the House.Motion agreed to.Bill read a second time."