Stephenson ToddTODD STEPHENSON (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak tonight in the second reading of the Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill. I do want to acknowledge that this bill has traversed two Parliaments the 53rd and the 54th. I was lucky enough to be on the Justice Committee who actually looked at this this bill and did the commentary and the report which I'll talk about in a little few moments.I do also want to acknowledge the Hon Marama Davidson—her Green colleagues did just talk about her but Marama Davidson actually did come along to the Justice Committee and make a very valuable contribution. In fact it was one of the last times she was actually active in a select committee or in a parliamentary process before she took leave for her cancer treatment. I wish her all the best on that journey and I hope she is back soon. But I do want to acknowledge her great contribution.What I want to say about litigation abuse—and we've heard a little bit already but this is where the court system or litigation is being used by the perpetrator of family violence to really harass kind of control their victim. Really they're not trying to resolve the conflicts or the issues they're having between parties; they're actually just using the court system to cause further harm and damage. That really is quite upsetting and despicable. I actually had a brief legal career and have been to court a number of times and going to court is actually quite a stressful process in itself particularly in the family court. It can be resource-intensive time-intensive—and that's just if you're actually trying to resolve your dispute. Imagine when the court system is actually being used to punish you or harass and further victimise you—that's just adding another level of stress to your life.What we see with litigation abuse is multiple filings and of course courts and lawyers in particular—we love to file motions and put things before the courts. I mean there's always avenues to do that. But if that's being done inappropriately to just continue to victimise and control and harm the other person the other party to that proceeding that actually is not a proper use of the court's time. That's what we see you know: excessive filings making people respond to those filings file affidavits have to turn up to court sessions. Again if you're actually having to take time off work disrupt your life instruct lawyers—this is all actually very emotionally draining but also resource-draining and can cause a lot of additional harms to victims.I do want to acknowledge the Hon Ginny Andersen for bringing this bill forward. What we saw there is a bit of a gap in the law. Look judges do have considerable powers at the moment to actually deal with proceedings but some of those powers may not have been sufficient to actually stop this type of abuse particularly in these family proceedings and when we're seeing violence. So we wanted to make sure—well what this bill does try to make sure is that there are additional provisions for judges to be able to actually deal with this abuseWe did here—and I think it's already been touched on. We had 21 submissions and I do want to thank all the submitters to the select committee. Again I'll talk a little bit about what some of the submitters said but we were with listening to those submitters actually able I think to make some improvements to this bill. Five key themes came through from the submissions we heard. One was that this kind of litigation abuse occurs more frequently in these family violence and family court settings and maybe a bit more frequently than we had actually anticipated. It was good to hear that firsthand.There were several obviously comments making sure that while we were making these changes there was still a right to justice and again I think this bill has struck the right balance. We're trying to stop this abuse but also making sure that the right to justice and actually being heard is retained. We want to make sure that all parties continue to have that but make sure that both parties to proceedings and the court's resources were not being used inappropriately.Again about a quarter of the submitters raised various concerns about the bill's impacts on children and again we made a specific recommendation around applicability to the Care of Children Act—I can come back to that in a little minute. Submitters expressed concerns that victims could still be harmed and wanted to make sure that this bill does actually minimise that risk. I think again I want to thank the Green member Kahurangi Carter. Really this issue is about systemic change and we actually need to make sure that we're actually changing the justice system particularly in the Family Court setting I should say—particularly in the Family Court setting—to actually make that process deliver results and not be detrimental to the parties involved particularly when you've got children involved in those Family Court cases.Again I know the Minister has already outlined some of the changes that the select committee made but I will just touch on those again briefly. There was again this definition around abuse" which was changed while again not wanting to minimise it by using terms like just "harass" and "annoy" because "annoy" doesn't really sound that serious. What we are actually talking about is things that are far more than an annoyance; they're abusive and re-harming people. And so that was kind of dealt with.Again there was a lot of discussion in the select committee around conduct outside of proceedings and just wanting to make sure we're actually reflecting that. We wanted the judge to be able to consider what a party might be doing outside of the proceedings but also how that interplayed with the proceedings that were before that judge or before the courts.Another couple of quick things I did want to mention was really that ACT sees this—and the Government's been very happy to pick up this bill—as adding to the suite of policies that we're putting forward as a Government actually to strengthen the overall criminal justice system. And I know we've tonight heard some criticism about what we might be doing in various areas including Oranga Tamariki but I can assure you that we are actually doing those changes with the best of intentions. And Minister Chhour has said many times in this House that her focus is actually on the care and protection of children and she actually wants Oranga Tamariki to focus on that and deliver results which it hasn't been doing.And so we see the opportunity to support this as going alongside a lot of the other changes we're making in the criminal justice area—whether that's to strengthen gang legislation to strengthen a punishment for gang members and whether earlier tonight we were talking about firearms and prevention orders around them. You know we'd see this as complementing a whole bunch of things that we are doing in this space.I appreciate it was introduced by the last Labour Government and as I said I think we should pick up good ideas where we see them. I very much think that this is going to add to the overall strength of our criminal justice system by really dealing with an area we heard that submitters were very keen for us to address.I do note in the commentary from the select committee that we did raise this issue of stalking. And again as the Hon Ginny Andersen said it was outside the scope of this bill but it was important that it was noted that people still saw that as an area where more could be done. And I do believe Minister Goldsmith has committed to doing that. So I really just want to leave it there and say obviously ACT is very happy to support this bill and I commend it to the House. Thank you."