President: Laura Carter | Vice-President: Josie McNaught
AWLA launched its promotion of women to partnership and online tracker.
AWLA submitted on the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill.
During a parliamentary committee considering the Abortion Legislation Act 2020 on 10 March 2020, ACT Party leader David Seymour successfully moved an amendment deleting the definition of “safe zones” from the legislation while voting for the proposal to remove the regulatory power to create safe areas. The Abortion Legislation Act subsequently passed into law with Seymour’s amendment on 18 March 2020, and received royal assent that same month.
In response to the scrapping of the safe area provisions, Labour MP Louisa Wall entered the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill (Safe Areas Bill), proposing their restoration, into the member’s bill ballot. The bill was drawn from the ballot on 28 July 2020. The Safe Areas Bill was drafted in line with the recommendations that were made by the Abortion Legislation Committee when it considered the safe area provisions in the Abortion Legislation Act.
Karlene O’Halloran and Erica Burke, on behalf of AWLA, drafted, wrote and delivered oral submissions to the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Safe Areas Bill submitting that safe areas around abortion care facilities should be automatic. The Safe Areas Bill provided that the Minister of Health could recommend the making of regulations establishing a safe area was necessary and could be demonstrably justified as a reasonable limitation on people’s rights and freedoms.
AWLA submitted that this would render safe areas reactive, rather than proactive. It required that abortion providers must prove that the safe area is necessary and justified before the security was granted. The effect of this meant that providers and patients would suffer actual harassment, intimidation or injury before they could apply to the Minister for a safe area, in order to demonstrate that there is a “necessity” for the safe area to be imposed. This system created a two-fold problem. It would deter pregnant people from seeking abortion care and practitioners from providing abortion care.
AWLA argued that the automatic establishment of safe areas around abortion facilities is required to ensure the safety, dignity and privacy of pregnant people seeking abortion care and does not threaten a person’s freedom of speech or expression. The automatic establishment of safe areas around abortion facilities would not prevent anti-choice activists from exercising their right to protest; it would only prevent them from doing so in certain places.
“Prohibited behaviour” under section 13A(3) of the Safe Areas Bill was defined as “intimidating, interfering with, or obstructing a protected person with the intention or frustrating the purpose for which the protected person is in the safe area; or in a manner that an ordinary person would know would cause emotional distress to a protected person.” It was submitted that it was wrong for the section to require the patient or provider to prove the intention of the person contravening the section or prove their emotional distress. The Harassment Act 1997 does not have a requirement to prove the intention of the harasser. Harassment can be found simply when a person does a specified act on at least two separate occasions within a period of 12 months. It was unclear to AWLA why Parliament would impose a higher legal test on someone being harassed while seeking health care, than someone seeking protection under the Harassment Act.
AWLA suggested the Safe Areas Bill be amended to align with comparable jurisdictions where the legal framework for safe areas is built around public health policy, rather than arguments round freedom of expression. It was submitted that the proposed regulatory framework provided no obvious benefit to people accessing or providing abortion services. Legislation that prioritised the opinions of others, to any extent, over those of pregnant people seeking health care, is inherently detrimental to the advancement and position of pregnant people, women and children within society.
The Safe Areas Bill passed its third reading on 16 March 2022 and received royal assent on 18 March. The requirement to demonstrate the intent of the harasser was removed from the final version of the Safe Areas Bill. However, safe areas are not automatically created around any premises and providers have to apply for one to be established to the Governor-General, by Order in Council, on the recommendation of the Minister of Health, in consultation with the Minister of Justice.
AWLA also submitted on the Harmful Digital Communications (Unauthorised Posting of Intimate Visual Recording) Amendment Bill, arguing that the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 was the appropriate legislative framework for addressing the issue of the publication of digital communications of intimate visual recordings online to provide victims with relatively streamlined and expeditious access to the courts for prompt determination.
Hon. Justice Melanie Harland spoke at the annual President’s function.
AWLA wrote to the Chief District Court Judge requesting policy be implemented to all courts to allow breastfeeding, and to consider actions which could be taken to improve the ability and minimise obstacles for children to attend court.
A seminar on building careers through confidence, rōia wāhine panel, and a meet the District Court judges panel were held.
Ranjna Patel ONZM QSM JP presented at the annual Dame Silvia Cartwright lecture.