Family Safety Community Consultation Forum

Wednesday 7 December 2005

This year we set ourselves the ambitious goal of working towards making Christchurch New Zealand's safest city.

As the Chair of the Safer Christchurch I helped shape that goal. I took on the role because I think real public safety should be a core job for city leaders.

The sad reality is that for those living in shelters and for those who are refugees, Christmas is very far from the season to be jolly. Far too many families find that Christmas is a time of terror and trauma.

I strongly support the idea of an integrated approach to tackling family violence. It is an idea that is way overdue and I'm sure will quite quickly turn up some good results.

We can't afford to stick with the old compartmented approach to dealing with lives in chaos and crisis. We need these holistic systems that look at the whole picture if we want to get some good results.

We have already got good results with ideas like Project Early and our joint venture with the police on taking on not just youth offenders but their wider family and whanau as well.

Safety is one of our core issues as a city and as a society.