Our submission on the anti-stalking bill

Ma te kotahitanga e whai kaha ai tātou
In unity we have strength  

The Auckland Women’s Centre “Aotearoa Free From Stalking” submission on the anti-stalking bill (aka the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Legislation Bill) made 15 recommendations urging critical changes to ensure the bill meets its goals. 

Our submission is informed by the 90 anonymous responses to AFFS’ dedicated submission questionnaire (thanks again to the Backbone Collective for questionnaire support). It includes powerful lived-experience taonga, insights and testimony in victim-survivors’ own words gleaned from questionnaire responses.  

We selected quotes which highlighted particular issues and/or which represented common themes – so every response to the questionnaire, whether quoted or not, contributed to our submission by informing our themes. 

We are immensely grateful to all the people who did the hard yards and shared their time, experiences, insights, wairua, emotional energy, labour and effort by responding to our questionnaire. Your mahi was vitally important and made our submission far stronger and more powerful. Thank you!  

Please be aware that our submission includes lived-experience details that some readers may find difficult to read. All questionnaire responses in the submission are presented in italics. 

Read our submission (PDF)

The AFFS team are now turning their attention to the oral submission in early March, and toward raising awareness of stalking in order to increase prevention, so that as few as people as possible need to use the new law at all.

See our oral submission guide (for any bill, not just stalking) here.

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