Turei Metiria: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turei Metiria: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7035. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Although it is good to see that the Government has made some changes to this legislation the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill from its original review and proposal we are none the less opposing this bill because we think it is going to cause significant harm to families and to children and particularly to vulnerable women who are in situations of family violence. We are looking forward to seeing what changes might be made at the select committee and in the Committee stage of this bill and we certainly make no commitment beyond the first reading. 
This legislation is going to harm our people not help and this is because the safety of women and children is being placed at even further risk. The reforms as has been set out so well by the Hon Phil Goff show that they are strongly focused on saving money and much less focused on saving women and children from the risk of violence. There is an obsessive user-pays ideology that pervades these reforms and of course that is what will hurt these families. 
Not a single thing that the National Party has said about this bill justifies the extreme increase in costs—not a single thing about children about families or about simplified processes. None of that justifies the extreme cost. 
One thing that we agree with in this bill is the decision to make economic abuse part of the definition of domestic abuse. We agree with that change; it should be part of it. Economic abuse economic control by one partner over another does cause serious harm particularly to a protective parent in a family environment and to any children in that relationship. A person who is without financial resources is highly vulnerable is trapped in a dangerous relationship and is locked out from the support services they may need. 
It is therefore quite ironic to see that that same level of economic abuse against vulnerable women and children is now being played out by the National Government through this legislation. The new cost structure imposed by this bill is a form of economic abuse in my view against those people who need this system the most. You place a barrier of $1000 as an entry barrier to accessing support and dispute resolution for vulnerable families. That is a form of economic abuse against those most vulnerable people. 
This bill could have been much better. It could have been much more responsive to the needs of families and children. It could have met the principles that the National Government says it wanted to set out but instead it is imposing massive new costs and will lock people out from justice. As has been said the new compulsory Family Disputes Resolution process will cost around $1000. There is a $220 filing fee and there are also additional costs to a family—to parents—as they go through the process. For example the payment for psychological reports or for specialist report writers will be imposed on the families going through this process. The court will also decide whether to charge the parents for the cost of a lawyer for the child. 
These last two costs around report writers and costs for the child could be charged under the existing system but they seldom were because the inference was that these were services that should be supplied to families and to children where they are needed. Now they will be imposed unless the family can make a case for serious hardship and there is no real evidence as to what criteria might be applied and how that process might work. All of that is being dealt with elsewhere not necessarily through this legislation. 
If you add up all of the expected costs that will now be imposed on families and children during a very stressful and difficult time in their lives we are talking somewhere around $5000 for a family to go through the compulsory Family Disputes Resolution process—$5000. Families simply cannot afford that. I understand from what the Minister has said previously that legal aid will be available in some cases to those on very low incomes but as the Hon Phil Goff said those on low and medium incomes simply will not be able to afford it. They will not be eligible for legal aid and they will not be able to afford something between $1000 and $5000 just for those initial costs of going through the compulsory process. 
I guess it is just that maybe people in the National Party just do not understand what it is like for an ordinary family to live an ordinary life. Maybe they do not understand how much $1000 is to a family who is on the minimum wage or to a family who is on the median income. When a family breaks up and one of the partners has to go and set up a new household and make sure that they have got a big enough household so that their kids can come and sleep there on the weekends and when they want to set up a decent family home—so that in that family you now have to have two good quality decent family homes to take care of your kids in the way that you want to—the costs of that process alone can be extraordinary. But then these additional costs are imposed by the Government for no reason and for no justification. It does not help the children to charge a family $1000. It does not help the vulnerable mother to charge her $1000 for this process. It is simply a cost recovery process by this Government—by people who do not understand what it is like to live an ordinary life. 
But of course cost is just one of the major concerns that we have about this bill. The new Family Disputes Resolution process could be a good thing for some families but certainly not for all. It will be compulsory for most families unless there is some reason why you can get an exemption. Making people go through a process that could be painful and making it difficult for them to access justice is just wrong. It is just wrong. Having a compulsory Family Disputes Resolution process relies on women having the support that they need to speak up about domestic abuse in their relationships. Those women would be able to get an exemption and move straight through the court. But there are hundreds if not thousands of examples of women who are living in situations of serious family violence who because of that family violence are too frightened to speak out when it comes to the court process. They will not reveal that violence to the registrar because of fears of what might happen afterwards. So those people will not get an exemption from the $1000 charge or get an exemption from the dispute resolution process. That means that those women—and it is women in the main—who are in situations of serious family violence and are too frightened to say so will not only have to pay but also have to face their abuser in a personal dispute resolution process. 
Not only that but this legislation will make it much more difficult for parties in this process to get access to legal support. So in a situation—and there are thousands of these in New Zealand—where a woman is living in a situation of family violence has very few economic resources as part of that relationship is wanting to go to resolve some of these issues is too frightened to say so and does not have the money to afford a lawyer to prepare for her legal argument that she can take either through the dispute resolution process or through the court she is left out in the cold. She has nowhere to go. This system traps her out of justice. This is the system that is supposed to work for her and her kids. What does it do? It locks her out because there is no understanding in the way that National has written this legislation on the Family Court—no understanding of that real lived life. Thousands of women—[ 
Interruption 
] David Bennett is sneering as he does when it comes to talking about women in vulnerable situations— 
David Bennett 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I ask the member to withdraw and apologise. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No that is not a point of order. 
METIRIA TUREI 
: These women are turning up to refuges every day and they are ringing up the helplines—which might still exist after funding cuts every day—asking for help and support. Now the Government is changing the Family Court system to make it even more difficult for them to get help either through dispute resolution or through the Family Court to establish their legal rights so that they can go forward and live a well life with their kids. This is a Government that would rather take $1000 from the poorest women in this country than provide them with real justice. Thank you.