National leader Christopher Luxon. Photo / Mark Mitchell
National leader Christopher Luxon. Photo / Mark Mitchell
National leader Christopher Luxon says there needs to be a "bipartisan, cross-party approach" to addressing Aotearoa's "shameful" record of family and sexual violence.
The Government today launched Te Aorerekura, the country's first strategy to eliminate family and sexual violence.
An average 30 people are killed by family members annually. Women and children bear the brunt, with Māori and Pasifika and the disabled disproportionately impacted.
Yet it has been almost two decades since the last national plan to combat family and sexual violence, Te Rito, launched in 2002.
Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence Marama Davidson took on the task over the past year in her newly-created role to get the strategy and its 25-year vision over the line, after it fell over under the previous government largely because it had no ministerial power behind it.
Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence Marama Davidson. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The strategy pulls together perspectives from tangata whenua, sector representatives, victims, survivors and perpetrators, to create 40 action points, with wahine Māori at the centre.
Luxon said the strategy looked "great" and he was "highly supportive".
Asked if he'd commit National to supporting it if in government, he said he and his team needed time to digest it, but it was a "shameful record" that needed "bipartisan, cross-party support".
National doesn't have a specific portfolio for family and sexual violence, but social development spokeswoman Louise Upston said she supported a "cross-agency" approach.
While she supported the strategy Upston said there needed to be "action now".
She said she agreed racism and colonisation were contributing factors and needed to be addressed.
"But a lot of kids are locked down now in households suffering."
Davidson said the aim of the strategy was clear - "to eliminate family and sexual violence" - but it would take time to see the impacts.
There was a heavy focus on prevention, and within a year Davidson said she wanted to see a marked difference in people feeling more comfortable reporting and getting help.
"We know that we have to have sustained focus and vision and discipline on prevention for quite some time before we will see harm itself dropping.
"But I want to see reporting go up. Majority of violence is underreported at the moment, I want to see people feeling safer within the six months, that they can actually put the hand up for help when they need it."
The Government launched a joint venture in 2018 to start work on a strategy, bringing together 10 agencies and six ministers.
It included a group of Māori leaders and experts called Interim Te Rōpū, tasked with developing the draft strategy.
Women's Refuge chief executive Dr Ang Jury. Photo / Mark Mitchell
However, as reported by Stuff, it fell over in September 2019, written off by senior ministers as too focused on Māori, and not applicable to all demographics in New Zealand.
Davidson said the difference about this strategy was that it had pulled so many different groups and voices together with the same goal.
There was also a strong focus on prevention, including training for police officers through to including healthy relationships in the curriculum.
The strategy itself was not receiving any extra funding and funding for agencies and action points would come from existing baselines, Davidson said.
Some actions would require additional funding, and that would need to go through normal budgeting processes.
"There is such strong agreement to that action plan, I'm really confident that we can turn around and deliver on it out of baseline. A lot of it is already happening."
It put wāhine Māori, who are more likely to be impacted by violence than any other ethnicity, at the centre and acknowledged the impacts of racism, sexism and colonisation.
"We need to address the intergenerational impacts of colonisation and racism in order for us to eliminate violence," Davidson said.
"Violence that impacts whānau is rooted in the marginalisation of tangata whenua and societal changes enforced during the colonisation of Aotearoa.
"Violence and sexual violence were not traditional."
Davidson said the strategy would give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty) and a Tangata Whenua Advisory Group would be established.
National Collective of Women's Refuges chief executive Dr Ang Jury said it was important to acknowledge this strategy was "just the start".
"It feels big. It has taken so bloody long to get here. But at the moment we've got talking and a nice document. The hard part is when we actually try and do something that is vulnerable to political change."
Jury said there needed to be cross-party political consensus for the strategy to be successful.
"That last strategy was consigned to history after a change in government. I don't want to see this go the same way, because I don't think we can afford to."
Kirikiriroa Family Services Trust CEO Dr Nicole Coupe said the strategy had been written by the community and those involved in the sector and then been enabled and supported by the Government.
Coupe, whose programme looks after about 700 children, said its focus on prevention would help break the cycle of violence.
Coupe was also part of the tangata whenua advisory group and said it was important to have a focus on the role racism and colonisation has played in violence today and how Māori-led, Te Tiriti-centric solutions could address it.
"It's an opportunity to look at reconnecting people with their whakapapa, looking at their ways of being as a solution to preventing harm continuing.
"If you've got a sense of belonging, are connected to something, people around you supporting you."
