Everyone has the right to control their own lives and be free from violence. Children have a right to be safe. But Aotearoa currently has high rates of intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and child abuse. This causes both immediate and long-term harm.

The Green Party in Government has secured paid leave for victims of domestic violence, helping people keep their jobs while leaving an abusive relationship. Over three years, we committed over $440 million for frontline community services dealing with domestic and sexual violence. We’re also building an integrated response to family and sexual violence by bringing together departments, agencies, Māori, and service providers working across and outside government. This will help develop coordinated approaches that prioritise violence prevention, victim/survivor safety, whānau-centred responses, effective early intervention, and recovery.

We recognise that ending family and sexual violence will require challenging gender norms, colonisation, and other forms of discrimination within society and government. In the next Government, we will extend support for community-led and kaupapa Māori early intervention approaches, and work to address the root causes of domestic and sexual violence – so all families are safe and supported.

The Green Party will:

• Implement the recommendations of the Ko Te Wā Whakawhiti report to improve Oranga Tamariki.
  
  
• Establish enduring mechanisms for the Crown to work in partnership with Māori and people impacted by violence, and ensure specialist stakeholder and survivor voices inform responses to family violence and sexual violence.
  
  
• Ensure all people and whānau are at the centre of responses, and fund culturally specific responses.
  
  
• Fund comprehensive prevention education and early intervention programmes.
  
  
• Develop workforce capability plans so everyone knows their role identifying and responding to violence and has confidence to respond effectively.
  
  
• Ensure national leadership enables community-led responses for people, and whānau, while ensuring equity of outcomes and evidence based practice.
  
  
• Give community providers secure, fully funded, long-term government contracts to respond to the needs of the people they are supporting for as long as necessary.
  
  
• Fund family violence experts in courts, as recommended by the Family Violence Death Review Committee.
  
  
• Continue to explore pathways for addressing sexual violence beyond the justice system and reducing re- traumatisation within courts.
  
  
• Review emergency housing for victims to ensure all needs are catered to.
  
  
• Ensure emergency housing is available for men seeking to remove themselves from a situation in which they were at risk of harming others, or subject to a Police Safety Order.

Read more about our green vision for Aotearoa