The recent changes to family law are likely to lead to much greater safety because (i) contact with children will not automatically be wrecked by allegations of partner violence, (ii) disputing parties will be required to undertake either mediation (when there are no allegations of violence) or joint counselling (when there have been allegations of violence), and (iii) lawyers will not be involved directly at the initial stages of Family Court applications. Domestic violence organisations have consistently opposed these changes and continue to try to undermine them. They have now threatened to boycott the tendering process for domestic violence programmes (does anyone have a link to the Dominion Post article about this yesterday?). Of course they won’t follow through with their threat because it’s just too lucrative to have people forced under threat of imprisonment to become your customers. News media as usual choose to give voice to feminist scare-mongerers (“Women and children will be subjected to more tragedies!”) and make no effort to seek other views, to ask challenging questions or to consider the matters objectively.