Ms Deborah Mackenzie, MNZM for services to victims of domestic violence
Deborah Mackenzie has advocated for more than 20 years to improve New Zealand’s response to violence against women and children. She co-founded The Backbone Collective, an independent charity which gathers victim-survivor insights to inform policy and practice. Backbone has published nine reports presenting women victim-survivors’ experiences of, and recommendations for, the New Zealand response system and made multiple submissions to international bodies. She co-authored a report by the Impact Collective proposing a new model for an integrated response system in New Zealand. Ms Mackenzie wrote an article documenting how accusations of ‘parental alienation’ undermine children’s safety in the New Zealand Family Court.