Former Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard has admitted to a group of sexual violence prevention advocates that his work on consent legislation has not worked.
The group's petition for an overhaul of consent laws was presented to Parliament on Tuesday. They said the current laws are failing sexual assault survivors.
Current laws only define what consent isn't. There's no legal age for it and in a trial, the accused does not have to prove consent.
"They have to prove that they believe consent was given, not that it actually was, and that's extremely detrimental," said the founder of the Consent Law Reform Movement, Layba Zubair.
Mallard admitted he's partly to blame.
"I'm one of the people who, many years ago, did some work in this area. We thought we made progress and it hasn't worked," he said.
Various people who were at Parliament when the petition was presented said they had seen "the damage" that's been done to their friends and family and "enough is enough".
"It's very important to stop what's been happening," one person said.
"Everyone knows someone who has had an experience, so here to support them," another added.
The petition was launched in April and since then has gathered more than 12,000 signatures from people backing the reform of the consent laws.
There's also cross-party support.
"We know this is long overdue. We have an opportunity to make right what we should have made right a long time ago," said Minister for Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence Marama Davidson.
A survey of New Zealand high school students found that one in four girls experienced sexual abuse and one in 10 boys.
"This has been happening for a long time - it's about time we did something about it," Zubair said.
Their petition was formally tabled in Parliament on Tuesday afternoon.
