Barker Rick: Family Courts Matters Bill — First Reading 
Barker Rick: Family Courts Matters Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:11462] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister for Courts) 
: 
 I move  
That the Family Courts Matters Bill be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I will propose that this bill be referred to the Social Services Committee. The bill is largely technical. It is an omnibus bill that seeks to further increase the openness of Family Courts and to make improvements to processes and procedures. It is not designed to be a major overhaul of the Family Courts. 
Overall the Family Courts do a commendable job in dealing with sometimes very complex and difficult issues. A sign of the success of the Family Court is that approximately only 5 percent of applications are finally decided by a judge. The Family Court treats the welfare of the child as the most important priority. Who could disagree with that? The emphasis is on ensuring that parents put aside their grievances with each other in order to ensure the best long-term outcome for their children without resorting to a court hearing. A range of free services and information is provided to assist parents to resolve disputes themselves including counselling programmes and mediation. The Family Courts Matters Bill takes this even further by extending who can attend counselling and taking the first steps towards introducing family—non - judge-led—mediation as a permanent service. 
This bill extends the openness of the Family Courts to all proceedings in the same way as we have done for guardianship proceedings under the Care of Children Act 2004. It contains a number of other useful improvements and tidying-up of legislation designed to improve the processes and procedures in the Family Court. Many Family Court proceedings are restricted in terms of both who can attend and what can be written about them. This reflects the private and very often very personal information that might be raised and the need to protect children and other vulnerable people. However protecting people’s privacy has resulted in concerns about the lack of transparency in how the court makes its decisions and even allegations of secrecy and bias. I refute such allegations. I do not accept that restrictions on attendance and reporting have made it more difficult for the public to understand how the courts operate. 
The Law Commission examined the question of openness as part of its review of the structure of the courts and concluded that most exceptions to the openness principle in New Zealand are justified. However the Law Commission made some recommendations to improve the current provision that the Government has accepted. Support persons and accredited news media representatives are allowed to attend proceedings. There are no restrictions on reporting family proceedings other than those involving children or domestic violence unless the court orders otherwise. In cases involving children domestic violence and Youth Court proceedings media reporting is permitted but details of those involved in the proceedings cannot be published without the leave of the court. As I mentioned earlier the recommendations dealing with openness in guardianship cases were implemented in the Care of Children Act 2004. The remainder of the recommendations are implemented in this bill. I hope this leads to better-informed debate on how the Family Court operates. The Ministry of Justice will review the openness provisions after 1 year. It will look at the impact on parties and children and how the openness provisions impact on the judge’s ability to effectively manage proceedings. 
Non - judge-led—or family—mediation involves an independent mediator working with the parties to identify issues between the parties and to try to get agreed outcomes. The purpose of family mediation is to divert less complex family disputes away from the formal court proceedings and to resolve them quickly and inexpensively. Overseas studies indicate that mediation should reduce the demand for counselling and conciliation services and reduce the number of cases returning to the Family Court for further assistance. Agreements arising out of mediation should be more workable and people will feel a greater sense of ownership because they are involved in the decision making and know what will work best in their particular circumstances. People being directly involved also means that they are more likely to stick to the agreement. An added bonus of participating in mediation is that people can learn skills that will help them to resolve matters in the future so that they may not need to come back to the court. 
The Government agreed to a pilot on non - judge-led mediation as part of the formal response to the Law Commission’s report  
Dispute Resolution in the Family Court 
. It took place in 2005 and 2006 and an evaluation of it was published earlier this year. The pilot was successful with 257 couples participating on a voluntary basis. Of the completed mediations 59 percent reached agreement on all matters and 30 percent reached agreement on some matters. 
The Family Courts Matters Bill is enabling legislation that takes the first step towards non - judge-led mediation as a permanent tool to help resolve relationship disputes under the Family Proceedings Act and guardianship matters under the Care of Children Act 2004. Family Courts will be able to direct people to attend mediation for these proceedings. Children wider family members and support people will be able to attend and the children’s views and best interests will be represented. Following this legislation’s passage through the House the next step will be to explore options for funding. 
As an omnibus bill the Family Courts Matters Bill provides the opportunity to make a number of minor changes to improve processes and procedures in the Family Court and to tidy up legislation. Registrars already have a range of functions and responsibilities under different legislation and the Law Commission and Family Court judges have suggested that registrars could take on some of the administrative functions currently performed by judges to help reduce the demand on judges’ time. 
This bill extends registrars’ powers. It allows registrars to appoint a lawyer to act for the child under the Care of Children Act 2004 and the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 and to represent a person under the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988. They will be able to appoint a specialist report writer under the Care of Children Act 2004 or the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988 and will be able to make directions about serving copies of applications in proceedings under the Family Protection Act 1955. 
Family Court judges have expressed a concern that Family Courts are sometimes not taken as seriously as other courts. Although the Family Courts try to resolve matters in a less formal way there are times when defended hearings and binding court orders are necessary. To help ensure that judicial functions of Family Courts are taken seriously the bill removes the restriction on Family Court judges wearing gowns in court. The Principal Family Court Judge has indicated that he will develop guidelines about when it is appropriate for Family Court judges to wear gowns. 
Paternity testing is a complex issue and a number of issues need to be considered prior to the new law on this area being developed. Common law does not permit a sample of blood or tissue to be taken from a person without his or her consent. Taking a bodily sample against a person’s will raises issues in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 and common law rights about personal liberty and trespass and privacy issues. There are also broader issues surrounding legal parenthood issues such as the implication of assisted reproductive technologies and who can and should be recognised as a parent. 
Although the Government agrees in principle with the concept of paternity testing it is questionable whether the Family Courts Matters Bill is the appropriate vehicle to implement what would be a significant policy change. The Family Courts Matters Bill is not designed to be a major overhaul of Family Courts policy; it is a largely technical bill that focuses on making improvements to processes and procedures. Proposed changes surrounding paternity testing will have significant policy implications and as such the issues do not fit within the intent of this bill. The Ministry of Justice is currently undertaking policy work in this area and this will inform our actions in the future. 
This bill makes a number of other minor changes to improve court processes and procedures by allowing increased attendance at mediation conferences; allowing counsellors to make recommendations about what should happen next in family proceedings—these will be suggestions and will not be binding—extending counselling provisions to anyone who enters into or proposes to enter into an agreement relating to the day-to-day care contact or upbringing of a child to help resolve matters; allowing regulations to consolidate existing court fees to introduce filing and hearing fees for applications made under the Property (Relationships) Act and to enable the waiving of fees; and clarifying processes under the reciprocal agreement with Australia on child support to make sure that New Zealand orders can be enforced in Australia. 
Finally this bill provides an opportunity to tidy up a few incorrect references and inconsistencies in the legislation. I commend the bill to the House and its reference to the Social Services Committee.