The signs are bad for planned law changes concerning family violence. This ‘fact’ sheet produced by our Ministry of Justice safer-sooner-factsheet provided misinformation right from the start by claiming “We have the highest reported intimate partner violence in the world”. That statement is utter nonsense and the NZ Herald recently had to retract the same claim following our successful complaint to the Press Council. We understand the NZ Herald got the claim from the Ministry of Justice.

The World Health Organisation produced a paper dated 20 June 2013 titled ‘Violence against women: a ‘global health problem of epidemic proportions’: New clinical and policy guidelines launched to guide health sector response’. It tells us:

For intimate partner violence, the type of violence against women for which more data were available, the worst affected regions were:
South-East Asia – 37.7% prevalence. Based on aggregated data from Bangladesh, Timor-Leste (East Timor), India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand.
Eastern Mediterranean – 37% prevalence. Based on aggregated data from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine.
Africa – 36.6% prevalence. Based on aggregated data from Botswana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

New Zealand is not even included in this list of the 28 worst affected countries.

We left a message on the voicemail of one of the people we understand were responsible for this document, informing them it was incorrect, but they have ignored this.

The ‘fact’ sheet also claimed that strengthening protection order laws will lead to 2300 fewer violent incidents each year. The basis of this absurd prediction is unknown. There is no evidence that our protection order laws have prevented or reduced violent incidents at all; on the contrary, they appear to have resulted in murders that otherwise would not have occurred. Strengthening those laws is most unlikely to improve matters.

The Ministry of Justice was also responsible for spreading false statistics about family violence deaths. When we requested they take down, amend or annotate the document concerned the Ministry refused to do anything, claiming that it didn’t matter that the statistics were wrong.

It’s unfortunate that the public can’t trust what our Ministry of Justice says. This Ministry is entrusted to manage one of the most ethically complex areas of government yet keeps making these ridiculous errors and spreading false feminist propaganda. Feminism has corrupted the Ministry of Justice which in turn appears to have misled our government. We would be surprised if the Ministry even put forward the points made in our submission last year concerning changes to family violence law.