Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Justice) : Part 3 of the Criminal Procedure Bill amends the District Courts Act. It gives the District Court jurisdiction to try all indictable offences expect those in the schedule. The jurisdiction of the District Court will not change very much, but the new schedule does correct some anomalies.

The new schedule also permits changes to be made to the middle band of offences by way of Order in Council rather than by legislative change. This provision was added at the select committee and, if passed, will allow some class A drug offences to be put in the middle band to be dealt with by the District Courts rather than by the High Courts. This would ease pressure on the High Courts arising particularly from the volume of methamphetamine cases that are now being heard. One of the reasons we now see so many more methamphetamine cases is the very strong policing approach that the New Zealand Police takes to methamphetamine clan-labs. If we look at the number of clan-labs that were found by the New Zealand Police in 1999, we see that it was around three or four for that year. If we look at the number being found now, we see that it is around 200 a year. A lot of work is going into catching those who produce methamphetamine, which means they are appearing in the High Court. There is now a large backlog of those offenders in the court, and this part would allow their cases to be heard in the District Court. This is something that judges have been asking for, for some time. They believe that it is an imperative change to be made in this bill, and they have asked us to get on and make that change.

I am pleased that we are now back to debating the Committee stage of this very important bill, which, in my view and in the view, obviously, of the select committee, who made no amendments to this part, would make the workings of our courts much better. It would make access to justice fairer and faster, and surely that is what most legislation should reflect.

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) : As the Minister has just noted, this is very far-reaching legislation that has been delayed for a very substantial period in this House. It was first introduced in June 2004; it had its first reading in that same month and year. It went off to the Law and Order Committee, but since it came back it has languished in the Committee stage. So I am certainly pleased to see the legislation being advanced.

In the context of Part 3, the part we are talking about, there are clearly two strong, underlying themes that are core elements of policy. The first relates to transparency, and the second really relates to management processes in the courts. The reality of the present is that there are very significant delays in the courts, with consequences for accused persons facing trial, for the courts themselves, and, of course, for those who give evidence. I will make some particular comments on Part 3, reflecting some of the points that the Minister has made.

Part 3 is concerned only with amendments to the District Courts Act 1947—old legislation. In general terms, the Minister made the point that the District Court is being given jurisdiction to try all indictable offences except those listed in new schedule 1A, inserted by schedule 3 of the bill. That may not significantly increase the jurisdiction of the court, but, as the Law and Order Committee made very clear in its commentary on the bill, changes to the schedules are to be made by regulations. In constitutional terms, that is generally undesirable. It is not appropriate for subordinate legislation to make changes to the work of this House—for delegated legislation to change primary legislation. That is why the issues that arise in Part 3 were considered by the Regulations Review Committee. It was because two of the clauses, clauses 62A and 92A, contained regulation-making powers. It was certainly the view of the Regulations Review Committee that new clause 62A raised a fundamental issue of principle in respect of the delegation of law-making powers by Parliament. In constitutional terms, we are in a world known as “Henry VIII” clauses, where the involvement of the executive trespasses on the work of this Parliament.

I think that, with some degree of sophistry, the Law and Order Committee sought to get around that constitutional difficulty, because it argued in the report it made to Parliament that the decision as to where a case is committed for trial will have no bearing on the rights of the person charged or on the sentence that may be imposed. Doubtless, it was buttressed in the belief it took by dint of the support it had from the Chief Justice. I guess a better answer with regard to those issues might be that the Regulations Review Committee—because those changes will be made by regulation—will have jurisdiction to look at the issues, and I hope that those who are at present on the committee and those who in the future will be members of the committee will take up the challenge to look at the regulations in a critical way.

It gives me no pleasure to say that under this Government the courts have become truly choked. We have seen, sadly, a number of cases where accused persons have been able to walk free by dint of the substantial delays, because they have succeeded in persuading judges to grant stays of proceedings. I hope that Part 3, with the other parts contained in this legislation, will substantially ameliorate the delays that are occurring, and that now that the issues between the major parties have been resolved, we will see this legislation be put in place at the earliest opportunity.

• The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 97 in the name of the Hon Mark Burton to Part 3, and the following amendment in the name of the Hon Annette King to clause 60, be agreed to:

to omit from subparagraph (ii) of section 28A(1)(c) in clause 60(1) “to any”, and substitute “for any”.

• Amendments agreed to.

• Part 3 as amended agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs): The debate on Part 4 includes debate on the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 97 in the name of the Hon Mark Burton.

KATE WILKINSON (National) : I am delighted to take a call in relation to Part 4 of the Criminal Procedure Bill. I find there is some irony that a bill designed to address delays, albeit in the judicial system, has itself been delayed more than 4 years. Having said that, it is my pleasure to address Part 4, which in essence refers to juries and, in particular, to changes to the current requirement for a unanimous verdict in criminal jury trials to a majority verdict of 11:1. If the jury has deliberated for at least 4 hours and the jurors have been unable to reach a unanimous decision, the foreman has stated there is no probability of the jury reaching a unanimous decision, and the court considers that the jury has had a reasonable time to deliberate, bearing in mind the complexity and the nature of the trial, then in that case a majority verdict may be allowed.

It was interesting to look back at some of the anecdotal situations way back in 2004. I have here an article from the New Zealand Herald about a situation with a jury, in which comments were made that “ ‘People wanted to get home to watch Coronation St or see the kids or whatever they do. After 5 o’clock, the whole situation became irrational beyond your belief.’ The last two to desert his viewpoint were smokers, one of whom had been more adamant than himself at the outset that the accused could not have committed the crime. ‘But after 10 hours without a cigarette, he would have locked his own mother up.” I think if one looks at anecdotal situations like that, one can certainly see the merit in not requiring the unanimous verdict of a jury. There are obviously situations where one of the jurors may be intransigent for whatever reason, or may not be responsive to logical argument—and often we see that even in this Chamber—and this amendment may certainly overcome that.

In civil cases under the bill the majority verdict may be by at least three-quarters. I note that the New Zealand Law Society submitted that juries should not comprise fewer than 10 jurors, but this submission was not carried forward in the bill. I would certainly be interested in the Minister’s comments as to why that recommendation was not listened to.

There are also provisions for certain persons to be excluded from jury service—for example, lawyers, which is a fairly obvious exclusion—and for restrictions on the use of the jury panel list in an attempt to address juror interference or intimidation. Defendants in the case may be shown a copy of the list but it may not be left in the possession of the defendant or any witnesses or victims, and reasonable steps must be taken to ensure that the list is not copied. Again, anecdotally, we hear of instances of juror intimidation, which is a situation that really should be avoided wherever possible.

There are also provisions whereby judges may discharge persons being summonsed for jury duty on the additional ground of having difficulties understanding or communicating in the English language. Again, anecdotally, we have heard of jurors who have sat through the duration of a trial but are unable to understand what is happening. That situation should be remedied by Part 4.

Also of note is the reduction in the number of challenges available without cause. That has gone from six down to four, although we are not sure why. Under the bill the jury districts are being expanded and the pool of jurors is being increased, so why then reduce the number of challenges? Again, I would appreciate the Minister taking a call on that point as well.

I return to juror interference. If the Law and Order Committee and others were concerned about the possibility of juror interference or intimidation, then the provisions of clause 82 in relation to sequestration of juries seem somewhat anomalous. Why let jurors leave before reaching a verdict and return to resume deliberations? Surely that is the very time that they may be subject to intimidation and subject to influence. They may be subject to uninformed opinions of family and friends. They could be swayed by external influences. Again, I ask the Minister in the chair to take a call on the benefit that he perceives there is in abolishing that sequestration requirement, which has worked in the past.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs): Before I call Dr Worth I will just say that there is a change in the sound in the Chamber, in that people having conversations in here are much louder today for some reason. I think it is to do with the changing of the sound system. It makes it hard for me in the Chair to hear the speeches being made. I ask members to lower their voices or keep away from those very sensitive microphones. It would be a very good idea. Thank you.

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) : Kate Wilkinson has skilfully sketched out the changes in Part 4. I just want to focus on one particular aspect, because it is a huge change in the criminal law. That is the entitlement to be judged by a jury of one’s peers, and that all 12 of them must reach a unanimous verdict. This bill proposes a major change in that regard. The present law in New Zealand is that in all criminal cases the verdict of the jury must be unanimous. Now we are to contemplate this change to majority verdicts in criminal cases. The proportion we have chosen is 11:1. So to convict, 11 jurors must say “guilty”, but one may stand out.

It is interesting to look at other jurisdictions to see what they have done. There is no doubt about it: there has been an increasing trend towards majority verdicts. I will pick a few illustrations. In the United Kingdom the proportion is 10:2, in the Northern Territory it is 10:2, in Tasmania it is 10:2, in South Australia it is 10:2, in Victoria it is 11:1, in Oregon it is 10:2, in Hawaii it is 10:2, and in Alaska it is 10:2.

These majority verdict changes are just part of a raft of changes in this legislation. There are also changes relating to the very existence of juries in complicated cases, and cases where juror intimidation might be an issue. I thought it was interesting that the Law and Order Committee heard some arguments to the effect that there was no evidence of rogue juror problems in New Zealand. The Law Commission took a quite contrary view in that regard and said that there was. It is difficult to identify the incidence of rogue jurors in New Zealand because, in terms of the Juries Act, what goes on in the jury room is not to be disclosed. But certainly my experience as a lawyer before entering this House was that rogue jury outcomes were not at all uncommon.

I tell the Committee of one such illustration, which I think is typical. An accused person faced charges of being a drug mule. This person had brought substantial quantities of cocaine into New Zealand for a dealer, and was apprehended by the Customs Service and charged. My informant sat on that particular jury. That informant told me—and there was a hung jury in this case—that several of the jurors were not prepared to convict the accused person because the accused person had not admitted to the offence. Because there had not been an admission to the police, the jurors were prepared and determined to stay out of a deliberation of “guilty”. It just shows what can go on in the closed confines of a jury room.

I think it is interesting, too, that the Law Commission has apparently “found that in a study of 48 jury trials, five were hung, two of which involved rogue jurors refusing to participate in deliberations, and three with rational dissenting jurors.” Members of the Committee may know that the reality of jury selection, with rights of challenge, is that defence lawyers seek to construct a jury of malleable and simple folk. That is a reality of the jury selection process. The reality is, also, that a number of jurors have had brushes of one sort or another with the police, and often quite clearly have no sympathy for the police or Crown view of events—for the prosecution view of events. So I do not doubt for a moment that there is real merit in this plan to have majority verdicts as we stay with the jury system—a system that both English common law and the United States constitution recognise as a fundamental civil right.

DAIL JONES (NZ First) : I will speak briefly about payment of jurors, referring to clause 82B. I think we should give a great tribute to all those New Zealanders who attend and take up the role of jurors, sometimes for some considerable length of time. I think we probably all believe they do not get paid anywhere near enough for the wonderful contribution they make to our society. Clause 82B gives some recognition to the role of the juror, and provides that the principal Act is amended by adding the following subsection: “The jury rules prescribing those fees and expenses may authorise the chief executive, if satisfied in a particular case that it is desirable to do so, to increase a sum otherwise payable under those rules.” I ask the Minister what consideration has been given to giving effect to this provision from time to time. I ask that he clarify just who the chief executive is—whether that is the chief executive of the justice department or of the courts department. There is no interpretation section here—the phrase “chief executive” must be in the main Act, I presume. As I looked at it I was wondering about those words and just what they meant, because we should do all we can to reward jurors as much as we can—and that is still nowhere near enough—for the wonderful work they do.

Apart from that, of course, what we are doing in New Zealand is amending the provision of the Great Charter of 1215 in Runnymede, which provided for the beginnings of trial by one’s peers—the barons in those days—and which has developed through history to one’s fellow man and woman. New Zealand First supports Part 4 of the bill, and I look forward to any answers forthcoming from the Minister.

Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice) : I will just pick up on a couple of points. I thank Dail Jones for his contribution. I reply to him, simply, that the chief executive he refers to will be the chief executive for the department, which is the Ministry of Justice. He asks when this has been done in the past—well, it is only about 2 years ago, I think, that we increased jury fees substantially. I guess it is time to look at the matter again. This legislation makes the system to do that much easier than it was previously.

The second point I make to Mr Jones is that if someone is quite distressed about the level of fee reimbursement they get, and they are suffering financial hardship as a consequence of their service, they can apply to the registrar of the court, who can make an individual decision about that. So there are ways of relieving the pressure. But I would pick up on the point that he has alluded to, which is that being on a jury—being part of a panel of people who sit in judgment of one of their fellow citizens—is, in my opinion, a very important part of citizenship. I think we sometimes need to remind the public of that—that if we want to have a justice system and to be tried, and made judgment on, by our peers, then we have to make a contribution to that as well. We should see it not as an onerous burden but as a privilege of citizenship. The contribution by Richard Worth was, as usual, well made. He traversed the world, as he is wont to do, giving out the list of facts and figures on who has what—

Hon Judith Tizard: And the whole of his lifetime back to Henry VIII.

Hon RICK BARKER: —and as usual delved into history. I am surprised he has only gone back as far as Henry VIII on this particular occasion. But Mr Worth makes the point very plain that many other jurisdictions have moved to a majority of 10 for and two opposed. We have taken a more conservative approach—11:1—which I think says that we are being cautious in this regard. I support that.

Kate Wilkinson made the observation that we could go down to 10:2 and asked why we did not make changes in that area. I refer her to page 24 of the commentary on the bill, which states: “New section 22A does not permit juries of fewer than 10 except with the consent of both parties.” That is a sensible thing. It continues: “We considered specifying that a majority verdict should be permitted only if there are 12 jurors, but decided against it. If defence counsel has concerns in any particular case about a verdict from a majority of fewer than 9 out of 10, they can choose not to consent to the trial’s proceeding.” So the decision rests with the defence in that particular case.

The last observation I make is that the Criminal Procedure Bill is a bill that I think members generally agree is full of many good points. The debate shows the constructive discussion we have had, and the constructive discussion we have had about significant reform, and I welcome that. Just to recap, I note that this particular legislation will do quite a lot for our juries in New Zealand. It will extend the jury districts from 30 to 45 kilometres from the courthouse. It will update the list of persons who do not have to serve, or cannot serve. It will make the penalties for not serving go up, so there is a bit of carrot and stick in here. It changes the rules around challenging juries, and there are many other changes. This is a significant package of reform, which, I think, will improve the jury system quite significantly.

• The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 97 in the name of the Hon Rick Barker to Part 4 be agreed to.

• Amendments agreed to.

• Part 4 as amended agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs): Part 5 covers clauses 84 to 98. It includes debate on schedules 4, 5, and 6. It also includes the Minister’s typescript amendment to omit proposed new clause 98A set out on Supplementary Order Paper 97, the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Papers 97 and 206, and the typescript amendments to clause 92.

KATE WILKINSON (National) : Again, it is my pleasure to stand and take a call. Part 5 basically relates to the abolition of oral preliminary hearings, commonly known as depositions. We have heard arguments both for and against depositions, and on whether they should be retained or abolished. Even the law profession itself is somewhat divided on this point. On the side of retaining depositions, it is argued that oral pre-trial hearings frequently remove complexities, thus narrowing the issues and often shortening trials. The display of evidence often results in guilty pleas by defendants, and/or accommodations by the prosecution, which may also lead to guilty pleas or withdrawals of charges. As a result, there may be fewer trials, trials may be shortened, and the entire process may be streamlined.

I was interested to have a response from the Minister for Courts to a question I lodged. In cases where depositions have been heard, I asked how many of those cases resulted in the defendant, or accused, pleading guilty, and how many proceeded to a hearing. In the 12 months to 30 September 2006, in the District Courts there were 1,044 guilty pleas resulting from the depositions, there were 485 guilty pleas after the defendant had been committed for trial, and 736 cases proceeded to hearing or trial.

On the side to abolish depositions is the argument that they are less important since the Official Information Act was passed, and also since the Pearce decision relating to pre-trial disclosure. The arguments were also made that eliminating mandatory oral hearings will make the system more efficient and will eliminate preliminary hearings being used as delaying tactics and fishing expeditions, and that witnesses will have to testify only once in court, so the victim is not put through the ordeal twice, thereby extending grief, especially for families of murder victims.

Further reasons to abolish depositions are that preliminary hearings are currently being used as a forum of disclosure—effectively, a mini-trial—and that is not their intended purpose. I note that in other jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and Canada, mandatory preliminary hearings have been abolished in favour of a robust disclosure regime. So if we are to abolish depositions, we must ensure that our disclosure regime is also sufficiently robust.

I also note the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper in relation to depositions, which provides for the parties to apply for oral evidence orders and also for a review in 2 years’ time of the Summary Proceedings Act, and we welcome that review. Bearing in mind, however, that this bill passed its second reading over 2 years ago, it is not exactly the ideal example of how to reduce delays. An article in the Dominion Post nearly 2 years ago, on 10 October 2006, referred to the number of court hours spent processing depositions hearings as having almost doubled in the last 10 years, consuming an estimated 8,500 hours of court time in 2005. That article in the Dominion Post went on to say that depositions “have been accused of clogging the court system, delaying justice, and costing New Zealanders millions of dollars annually.” In fact, the latest figures—which, again, I have obtained from the Minister—show that judicial JPs spent, in the year to 30 September 2006, something in the vicinity of 5,118 hours nationally on depositions. So those are somewhat interesting figures in the context of this debate.

One of the issues, however, is really that this bill is designed, if you like, or is intended to reduce the delay in the court times. If, as one senior law lecturer at Auckland University, Mr Scott Optican, suggests, we should be focusing on trial delays, then one would have to peer very hard at this bill to see any suggestion that it addresses such trial delays. We have horrific statistics of trial delays, and we have horrific statistics of stays of prosecution, and, unfortunately, they do not seem to be getting any better. Although I support the good things in this bill, it is unfortunate that there are some opportunities that, I think, have been missed. Certainly, the Government has missed the boat on addressing the issue of trial waiting-times. In fact, the recent figures in relation to those trial waiting-times do paint a fairly grim picture. The median waiting-time for High Court jury trials increased by 70 percent to 304 days—that is almost a year—since 2003, and 10 percent in the 5 months from July. Waiting times in District Courts have increased by 27 percent to 270 days since 2004, and by 11 percent in 5 months. I am hopeful that avoiding the need for depositions may reduce some of that waiting time, but I would have to say that I do treat that with some scepticism, although also with some hope.

Some courts have waiting times of more than a year. The High Court at Wanganui has a median waiting-time of 383 days—that is over 12 months. Whangarei has a median waiting-time of 382 days. Those times have doubled since 2003 in Auckland, Blenheim, and Gisborne. District Courts in Rotorua have a median waiting-time of 389 days. Blenheim has 384 days, and Invercargill 369 days. The longer the waiting list, the longer the victims have to wait for justice, and the more chance there is of people avoiding trial, as happened in 2006 and 2007 when 18 people walked free, 10 of them because of systemic problems in the justice system.

I would like the Minister for Courts to take a call and not just tell us how much he has spent on the justice system but give some explanation as to why trial waiting-times are not being addressed in this bill. Having said that, that answer may be self-explanatory, because, with respect, if I may quote the Minister, on 7 September 2006, he said: “I do not agree with the member’s assertion” that justice delayed is justice denied. I would have to say that, for a Minister for Courts, that comment is a very sad indictment.

Under this Government, waiting times in outstanding cases have got worse and worse. The Government is failing to ensure that justice is served in a timely manner. This bill was introduced 4 years ago, but frankly I would have to say that this Government simply does not regard efficient, effective justice as a priority. After 4 years it is good to see that this Criminal Procedure Bill is before the House. I understand that it will pass by a majority of the House, and I hope that it will make some difference to court waiting-times and to the effective, efficient delivery of justice.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) : I rise in respect of Part 5 and I have to say that, in offering these few words in respect of it, the issue relates to a belief I have held very closely for a long time. Members will know that Supplementary Order Paper 50 in my name sought to remove this part from the bill. The reason why I wanted to do that was that it was part of the stuff that I believe I bring to this House, and for me it is fundamentally a question of justice. It is not a popular or sexy thing to want to extend justice and rights to those people whom society abhors. I want to live in a country where people are innocent until they are proven guilty, and where black-letter law supports that ideal. I believe that people should have the opportunity to be able to cross-examine those who would make assertions against them.

In response to the people who have come to me and said that we are only wasting time and dragging our heels through the court process, I guess that my question would be to ask them what we are trying to do here. This part of the bill has been sold on the basis that it will speed up the court process. In fact, court delays are down to a number of things, not to the existence of depositions hearings. If we look at the statistics supplied by officials from the Ministry of Justice, we would think that 95 percent of the matters that went to depositions hearings went on to trial, but, in fact, they do not. When we look at those statistics, we see that 47 percent of them go on to trial, but the rest of them fall over for one reason or another. Either the prosecution is found to be wanting and the charge is dismissed, or guilty pleas are made at depositions hearings because witnesses come up to brief and defendants get the frights, realise that they will be convicted, and realise that it is best that they grab hold of the discount for pleading guilty at depositions hearings rather than waiting until trial. Or else, as a result of counsel listening to the evidence, after the committal has happened there is a discussion between the prosecution and defence counsel, and pleas are made then. So around the country about half the matters that are defended initially and would go to trial fall short of going to trial.

That means, obviously, that depositions hearings actually speed up the court process, because without them, and without the opportunity to examine some witnesses before the court, there would be more trials. If we go on to remove depositions hearings in the form they are in now, and if people are not able to cross-examine witnesses orally, people will make section 344A applications and section 347 applications before judges. Those applications will have to be heard before the trial judge, who is paid a heck of a lot more than the two justices of the peace who sit there for free, listening to a depositions hearing. For instance, if this had happened in the Jhia Te Tua homicide case, which is travelling through the court process at the moment, there would have been 3 weeks of applications in respect of those two sections, and in that case the depositions hearing lasted about 8 days.

There are probably four reasons why there are significant court delays. One is that judges frequently lack the force of personality needed to hold either the defence or prosecution counsel to account as far as timetables and disclosure rules go, to ensure that they are met and matters rattle through the court process in a speedy way, which is what the system is designed for them to do. The second reason for court delays is that prosecutors, principally police officers, do not disclose the information they are required to disclose. If we look at why depositions hearings are adjourned time and time again, we see that one significant reason comes out more commonly than any other: a lack of disclosure on behalf of the police.

The third reason for court delays is that some defence counsel within the system are milking it. They believe they have a right to milk the system because of inequities within the legal aid system—between the rates of pay between legal aid lawyers and Crown solicitors, for instance. Crown solicitors are paid at the intermediate rate, as per the legislation; in respect of depositions hearings they are paid for 15 hours’ preparation time, and they also have 8,500 sworn officers of the New Zealand Police to go about doing their bidding in terms of making inquiries. Legal aid lawyers are paid for 3 hours’ preparation time, and if they want someone to make inquiries on their behalf, they have to go back to the Legal Services Agency and ask whether they can employ a private investigator to make those inquiries. So there is a huge inequity of arms. I do not agree with having legal aid lawyers milk the system—nobody does—but that is the third reason. Another reason why some trials lag on is that there is an under-resourcing of the Institute of Environmental Science and Research in relation to methamphetamine trials.

I think that the fundamental question is whether we want to live in a country where one is deemed to be innocent until proven guilty. If we do, then this is the system that we would stick with. If we do not, then we could go and live in a place like Zimbabwe or Fiji and, no doubt, we would be on the right side of the M16 and we would not have to worry about it. But I believe that this is a fundamental question, and that what we are doing here today is extremely significant with regard to jurisprudence in this country.

The reason why I have withdrawn my Supplementary Order Paper is that we have managed to get from the Government a couple of concessions. One of them relates to the provision where a person makes written submissions for an oral depositions hearing and is allowed to make only written submissions and not speak to them. It is fundamentally incongruous in what is supposed to be a judicial system that one cannot even speak to one’s submissions. The only other place in the criminal law where one does that is when the judge is deciding a banding in terms of which court the trial should be held at. To suggest that we could have something that is so fundamental to equity in this country and within our jurisdiction and that one could not speak to it is absolutely abhorrent. So, thankfully, the Government has rolled over on that provision. The second point is that after 2 years there will be a review as to how well the system works. I am, somewhat reluctantly, resting assured that there will be a review. Given a successful outcome at the election that is coming up, I hope very much to be around and to be able to hold the Government, and the Solicitor-General in particular, to account as to how that review will be managed.

I intend to ask questions of the Minister in the chair, the Hon Rick Barker, shortly—so I hope he is paying close attention—about the measures he will put in place now so that when we want to look at this matter in 2 years, we do not get the dumbarse response we get from a lot of officials, saying they do not collate certain information and have never collected it. We will want to know which trials have been proposed and which trials have been abandoned for one reason or another. We will want to know the reasons given for that abandonment. We want to know which measures there will be to ensure that when we come to that review, we will know how many were proposed, how many were abandoned, and how many guilty pleas were entered and at which stage—at depositions hearings, or prior to depositions hearings, with the threat of those hearings looming. For instance, we will want to ask how many pre-depositions conferences were put off, or would have been put off, because the police failed to adhere to the disclosure laws as they exist under this legislation. At the moment no one can tell us about that. At the moment if we ask the Ministry of Justice why pre-depositions conferences have not occurred or why depositions hearings have been delayed, no one can tell us whether it is because disclosure has not been lived up to by the officers in charge of the case.

I want the Committee to realise that what is happening today is truly significant. I know this issue is not sexy; I know it flew under the radar as far as popular opinion out there goes. I know that damn near all the judges who lobbied members of Parliament—particularly the Government members—in favour of this part of the legislation have never stood in a criminal trial in their lives.

DAIL JONES (NZ First) : That is a very good point at which Mr Borrows concludes his remarks, because I wholeheartedly support him in that respect. Listening to Mr Borrows and Ms Wilkinson, one would almost take the view that they will be voting against Part 5 of the Criminal Procedure Bill. I know where their hearts lie in this matter—there is no doubt about it. New Zealand First will be voting against Part 5 of this bill. That was our policy at the last election, and when we set out a policy we keep that policy.

I was very concerned at the delay in this bill going through its Committee stage. After all, I was a member of the Law and Order Committee, from time to time, at the end of its deliberation and consideration on this bill—way back in 2005. When I came back into the House in 2008 I expected this bill to be well and truly passed, but, lo and behold, it is still on the Order Paper. Of course, in one of the press statements Justice Randerson is quoted as saying that he wanted the bill passed because of the part that will allow methamphetamine trials to be moved down to the District Court. As we have heard today, that is in Part 3 of the bill, which was passed in 15 to 20 minutes—it went through in no time whatsoever. That could have been done quite easily in 2006. New Zealand First is delighted to have taken part in that work.

One of the issues that has cropped up has been the great concern about giving evidence twice. Well, as members have heard today from Kate Wilkinson—who made an excellent point—of those cases that go to depositions, 1,044 end in guilty pleas. Without depositions, that means 1,044 cases will now be going to the High Court for trial. What will be cheaper? What will be quicker? Instead of 1,044 cases being considered by two JPs in a little courtroom somewhere, hearing the evidence and, at the end of it, a guilty plea, there will now be fully fledged High Court trials lasting for days with all sorts of discovery tying up District Court judges, and possibly High Court judges. Well, that is no saving. Treasury has got that one all wrong. It sold the Minister a pup on that particular issue. We have heard that another 485 defendants plead guilty before the trial comes to court. Well, that is another saving as a result of doing a very simple depositions case. Then 736 cases go to a High Court hearing. That is fair enough. The evidence has been put before people in terms of our system. I make the point that in our system, with our belief in the rule of law—and New Zealand First wholeheartedly supports the rule of law—every person in this country is innocent unless he or she is proved guilty. As the two National Party members have just indicated, that type of situation is likely to go out the window.

One of the issues raised by people concerned about having to give evidence twice was apparently in regard to a prosecution relating to a Mrs Elliott. But as has been made clear—Mrs Elliott was giving evidence on behalf of another person—it was revealed that Mrs Elliott was not required by either the prosecution or the defence to appear at the hearing. Her evidence could have been given in the hand-up paperwork, meaning that she had to appear only at the trial. Her personal request to appear was granted by the prosecution, yet she complained about having to go to the depositions hearing. If I look at this case, my prediction is that her evidence will be used as part of an insanity defence and that is the reason why she did it. So there is more than one way of looking at things, and I suspect the Minister cannot be using that as an example—and other people should not be using that as an example—of how one should consider this part of the legislation.

I have appeared as counsel in depositions hearings. I have been involved in a depositions hearing as a victim. I had to give evidence at a depositions hearing where I was the victim. I was cross-examined by my assailant, not by a lawyer. So I know what it is like to be a party to a deposition hearing and to be cross-examined not just by a lawyer but by the defendant. I know what it feels like to be there. I say to all of those people who say they know what it is like to be there that I sympathise with them, but as I mentioned when it comes to making oneself available for jury service, it is part of being a citizen of New Zealand to be ready to give evidence in a court, to tell the truth as one sees it, and to let the jury decide ultimately what will happen. In my case, the person concerned had finally instructed a lawyer—I think the lawyer was sort of forced upon him—and we were going up to the High Court for the trial. When we were ready to go into the trial—I was waiting to give evidence before the case started—the lawyer was able to convince that person that the evidence was so overwhelming that the best thing he could do would be to plead guilty, which he did, and fortunately I did not have to go through the High Court jury trial. The point, again, is that the evidence was there at the deposition hearing, it was there for counsel to advise the defendant on the facts, and the lawyer was able to tell the defendant that he did not have a dog’s show in hell, or whatever the phrase is—he was guilty. The defendant pleaded guilty and we did not have a time-consuming, expensive jury trial.

I heard in the submissions that have gone before that the New Zealand Police would like to do away with depositions. I have appeared at a depositions hearing for a person who was the subject of an armed offenders squad call-out. His house was surrounded by the armed offenders squad, all the lights were put on it, megaphones were used to order him to come out, he came out, he had a gun put at his head, etc., and he was charged. We appeared at the depositions hearing, where half the evidence was dismissed, and the other half was dismissed before we got to the High Court hearing. That person was a police officer, but when it comes to one’s own self it is a different story is it not? It is all very well for the police to say that they do not want depositions, but if the people in the system happen to be police officers, and they are charged by the police, there is no doubt that, as in this case, they want depositions. In this instance it was a dreadful case that should never have been brought. The JPs tossed out some of it and the High Court judge finished off the rest.

As I hope I have indicated, what we are eliminating here today is a system that saves time and trouble. On the evidence and the facts given to us by the National member, we will now move into a system that will be much more complicated. When I first saw this bill at the Law and Order Committee I was concerned that the only application that could be made was in a written form. As Mr Borrows has pointed out, that can be strung out for a long, long time if one wishes. Ultimately, of course, all of those cases that would have been dealt with at depositions hearings on a guilty plea basis, or subsequently, will now all have jury trials. That is an utter waste of money. I just cannot understand how that system could be permitted.

Mr Borrows might be a little bit more up to date on this than me, but as far as section 347 applications are concerned—which is when one can lodge an application with the judge to say there is no evidence and that the case should be tossed out—how will one get one’s evidence before a judge to lodge an application under section 347? There will be a whole lot of affidavit evidence and suchlike, whereas now we have the deposition evidence at least to put before the judge, and any other evidence that might be able to be provided, to get rid of the case in terms of an application under section 347. That will be much more difficult and much more costly, and a lot more legal aid will be involved in supporting Part 5.

We oppose Part 5. We support the right of every person to be innocent, unless he or she is proved guilty, in a system that is totally transparent, which is our present system—rather than what we are moving into, which as far as I can see is really Treasury-driven and very little else. If Parliament had been keen to move things along on the methamphetamine situation, that could have been done years ago, and raising that as an issue recently is really just a very sick joke.

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) : This issue that we are now debating—Part 5 of the Criminal Procedure Bill, which National supports; National supports the whole bill—has deeply divided the legal profession, and if it can be justified, it can be justified only on the aspiration that it may speed up the criminal process. There is no doubt about it, at all—the Government has realised how wrong its approach was either in the course of the Law and Order Committee hearing or more recently. The relevant provision is section 180 in clause 92, and is headed “Determination of application for oral evidence order”. Subsection (1) is the critical provision: “Before a District Court Judge makes an oral evidence order on an application … the Judge must be satisfied,—(a) if the proposed order is for the oral examination of a witness who has provided a formal written statement that it is necessary to hear the witness in order to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to commit the defendant for trial;”. There are other provisions that are not relevant to the issue that we are now talking about. The reality of what was in that drafting is that no oral evidence orders would ever have been made; no oral evidence applications would ever have been granted. The reason for that is that there is always a substantial amount of material that would generally enable a judge, or a justice of the peace, to conclude that there was sufficient evidence. The Government has recognised that; it has made changes now by way of two Supplementary Order Papers, and, significantly for this particular part, it has provided that where it is in the interests of justice to hear the witness, such orders may be able to be made.

Although I accept what the previous speaker has said, and has said eloquently, we need to look at the Criminal Procedure Bill as a whole. I think that National’s misgivings would have been even deeper if there were not these wide-ranging provisions for better criminal disclosure. As Chester Borrows has said, with all the experience that he has as a lawyer and as a very senior police officer, there are huge deficiencies around the criminal disclosure process. I hope that this Government, in the short and further time that it remains in office, gives urgent consideration to that issue and ensures that, when this legislation is passed, insufficiency of criminal discovery will warrant clear attention by the Parliament if it continues. We see some provisions in this bill that go some way to dealing with that issue. There are, of course, statutes such as the Official Information Act that bear on criminal discovery, but unless criminal discovery has a true integrity then the arguments that have been so well urged on us by Mr Borrows will be real threats to the integrity of the legal system.

I just say that this proposal, which initially had as its object the elimination of mandatory preliminary hearings, would mean that witnesses would testify only once in court. The argument was that by so limiting witness involvement it would free valuable court time. We have heard, I think, a credible argument that that in fact may not be so. Certainly, there has to be a judgment made in the future as to whether these changes have merit, and that is dealt with in the second part of Supplementary Order Paper 206 with the provisions relating to the review by the Solicitor-General, or a person nominated by him or her.

I leave the issue by saying that those who have listened to this debate will judge that National has some real concerns about supporting this part, even in its amended form. It may well be that the review indicates that what has happened today was, in fact, an error.

Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice) : I rise to make a contribution on Part 5, and, firstly, to say that sometimes a lack of balance is shown in debates in this Chamber. In this debate it has been claimed that if this part of the bill is passed, then New Zealand will be somehow comparable with Zimbabwe and that one would need to be on the right end of an M16 rifle. I say that any sane New Zealander who is listening to this debate today will know that that view is extreme and irrelevant, and that it devalues the currency of the contribution. We have heard also that out of the window today will go the rule of law and the principle of being deemed innocent until proven guilty. I assure the public that that is simply not the case whatsoever. Such extreme comments do not reflect particularly well on this very important debate. We should debate the issue, as we have done.

Richard Worth elegantly put his finger on the central issue. The central issue is about disclosure, and speaking as someone who is not as deeply immersed in the law as some other members are, I was somewhat surprised to learn that the rules on pre-trial disclosure vary across the country. They are unclear and not as specific as they should be. I was amazed at that. I was interested also to learn about, and to get clear in my head, the purpose of depositions hearings. The purpose is to give to the defence all of the available evidence that will be brought forward by the prosecution, so that people can hear what will be put before the court for it to consider and have the opportunity to prepare themselves for the trial. It is so there will not be trial by ambush. I think that every New Zealander would reject trial by ambush. People are entitled to know what evidence will be presented at a trial. The central theme of depositions is that if all the evidence that has been presented were to be believed, would a reasonable jury contemplate a conviction? The purpose of depositions was not about testing the veracity of the evidence; it was not supposed to be about testing whether the person was believable. The purpose of depositions was simply about disclosure.

But over the years we have seen a change whereby, in fact, depositions hearings became a pre-trial. The witnesses were being tested as to the veracity of their evidence; it was tested in various ways. One has only to read the book by Louise Nicholas about her experiences in depositions hearings to come to the conclusion that some defence teams were using depositions hearings as a way of intimidating witnesses as best they could, in order to make sure they did not turn up.

Dail Jones: Aw!

Hon RICK BARKER: Mr Jones groans, but I say that central to our justice system will always be the idea of being deemed innocent until proven guilty, and that everybody is entitled to a fair trial. There will be a fair trial. What is being changed here is the structure. It is being changed so that there are much more rigorous proposals for disclosure, and the rules will be tightened up so that the defence can be assured that it has all the information.

Some people are saying that if we do not have depositions hearings, then somehow the information will not get to the defence. That is not true; the defence will have all of the information. The default in that logic is saying that if we do not have depositions hearings, then those people who are contemplating their future at trial will not make the decisions that they did at those hearings and that somehow they will automatically go to trial. I say that is not necessarily true. Kate Wilkinson has put forward a figure of 144 people who have pleaded guilty prior to going to trial. It is very conceivable that an individual, when presented with all of the weight of evidence by the prosecution, will make exactly the same decision regardless of whether he or she gets the information in writing or orally. The information will be the same; there will be no difference in it. Those individuals who are likely to decide that the weight of evidence against them is so overwhelming that they will plead guilty now and not go through the process of the trial are likely to make exactly the same decision. Some members have argued that people who are given the information in writing, as opposed to orally, will make a different decision. But those members have not put up any evidence, or made a case, in order to argue for that view.

We have also had the argument put that this bill will not improve the speed of decision making in trials. I want to put forward several things about that. Firstly, Kate Wilkinson has identified, from questions that I supplied the answers to, that about 8,000 hours of court time is taken up with depositions hearings—maybe the figure is closer to 6,000 hours. Whatever the figure is, the majority of that time will not be required for depositions hearings. Some time will still be required, because from time to time someone will be required to present his or her evidence orally, as the Supplementary Order Paper provides for. If thousands of extra hours of court time are to become available, it is not a leap in logic to say that thousands of hours of extra court time that are not available today will then be available for court sittings. I expect that the availability of thousands of extra hours of court time will lead to cases coming to trial more quickly. I believe that this will speed up the process. There is no doubt that it will put more pressure on the prosecution to make sure that its evidence in a case is put together well, or else it will suffer the consequences of failure to do so.

The other part of this issue, which I think is very important, is that it has been made public by numbers of people that a pre-trial depositions hearing is a traumatic experience. People do not mind going to trial for a trial, but to have to go through it twice is incredibly damaging to the family. It traumatises people again. We have only to look at the television coverage over the last 12 or 18 months to see case after case of that happening. To those people who want to keep the pre-trial oral depositions hearing, I put this challenge. If it is so worthwhile, they should put forward a case that justifies retraumatising the victims of crime twice—once, completely unnecessarily. That is it. If there is any justification for doing that, let us hear the evidence. I have not heard a particularly compelling argument for it.

Putting that to one side, we then come to the other key part. There are various opinions about this change, but time will be the test of it. I come back to the point that has been made about the review, and I give the Committee an assurance that the review will happen in 2 years’ time. It will be led by the Solicitor-General, and it will be thorough. At the start of this process there will be a requirement for those who are to carry out the work to set out the information that needs to be collected and captured so that we can make a serious analysis of the situation. In 2 years’ time—or 6 months after that, by the time the report comes forward—we will have a very clear picture of the situation. My prediction is that cases will come to trial more quickly, that the processes will be improved, and that a large number of people will still plead guilty prior to going to trial because the weight of evidence against them will be such that they will see the inevitability of the outcome.

I personally do not think there will be a great deal of change, but I do predict that it will be much better for the victims of crime. People in this Chamber have often talked about the victims of crime, and here is one occasion when this House can do something to improve the circumstances of all victims as they have to pass through the criminal justice system. This is one area where I think we will make a significant difference and a very big positive move for the victims of crime. I think this Committee should welcome that with open arms.

Having said that, there is an acknowledgment by me and by others in the Chamber that there are serious reservations about this proposal. I do not treat them lightly. I accept them as serious and genuinely held views. We will come to a point in 2 years’ time where we will then assess those predictions against the reality of the outcome. If we find that the circumstances that the naysayers have put forward have come true, then the House has its own power to make changes. I am absolutely confident it will do so if the weight of evidence supports doing that. If, on the other hand, the predictions made by those who promote the bill and the changes are true, then I look forward to people such as Mr Dail Jones saying they did not think so at the time, but they now accept that it was the right thing to do and was certainly the right thing to do for the sake of victims. Thank you.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) : I rise to make a couple of clarifying points in respect of comments made by the Minister, Rick Barker. Initially I made a comment in respect of people who believe that people who are arrested and brought before the court do not deserve to be called innocent until proven guilty, and that was that it was they who should go and live in Zimbabwe or Fiji, as I asserted. I stand by that, but it was not said in respect of this legislation. That would be to inflate the issue far beyond where it was.

I want to make two or three points. One of them is that I was earlier described as a senior police officer. Well, I never was. I got one rung off the ground, as a detective sergeant. But what I did do, as an officer in charge of a case, was appear before 50 or 60 depositions hearings, if not more. Later on, as a prosecutor, I probably ran another 30 or 40 depositions cases, and then as defence counsel I probably appeared in something like 20 or 30 of them. I have got my head around depositions. The Minister said that the purpose of depositions was to lay out all the evidence before defence counsel and before the court, but that is not true at all. All the prosecution has to do is supply sufficient information to prove there is a prima facie case to answer; that is it. As a prosecutor in a rape case, for instance, especially given the law as it was amended in 1985, I would put the statement of the complainant. I would probably call the mother to prove age, and then present the case of the officer in charge of the case, and that was it. I had only to prove a prima facie case. I did not have to trot out all the evidence.

I want to say a few words for the Hansard record. When the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 came in, the police lost a number of cases because they did not adhere to that Act. I predict that when this legislation is enacted, the police will lose a whole lot more cases because they will not take this legislation seriously as it relates to disclosure. If the public thought it got its ears bashed around with three not guilty verdicts in the last few weeks, they had better be prepared to lose a lot more. I cite, for instance, the Kāhui case. On the Thursday before the trial was due to start on the Monday, the defence counsel found that there had been very shoddy disclosure, in the form of toll records from a cellphone that was in the company of Macsyna King. The dates of all the cellphone transactions were listed on the jobsheet, except for the one that showed one particular transaction that happened in Māngere in the window of time that could have allowed somebody other than Chris Kāhui to have committed the offence against the children. That was not disclosed. The police did a number of inquiries. They interviewed Macsyna King and her friend at length. They made a number of jobsheet inquiries. None of it was written down, and it was never disclosed. I do not know when that was brought out before the jury, because I could not interrogate them and neither could anyone else, and I say “Good job.” to that. What was the effect of finding out that that fundamental fairness around disclosure was shown not to have happened in that Kāhui case? I wonder how that played on the mind of the jury members who, having adjourned for lunch and then deliberated for 10 minutes, came back and gave a not guilty verdict?

I just want to have on the Hansard record that there is an expectation, I believe, that where the police do not adhere to disclosure laws as they are written—and let us face it, at the moment the police are already bound by common law; they are already bound with heaps of jurisprudence, and they tend to ignore those from time to time in significant cases—where it is in black and white within this Act that it is the expectation of the Parliament that the police will adhere to those laws, and where they do not adhere to those laws, then the cases could easily be dismissed. There is a public expectation of the police acting in fairness on this issue.

DAIL JONES (NZ First) : I wholeheartedly support what Mr Borrows had to say. I sincerely hope that the police and the Ministry of Justice take his comments to heart, and that we do not have endless problems with jury trials in the future. From the point of view of procedure, New Zealand First will vote no only once and that will be against Part 5 as amended, rather than voting on all the amendments. We will be supporting the bill as a whole, because in principle the bill as a whole is sound, apart from Part 5.

• The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Annette King to proposed new clause 98A set out on Supplementary Order Paper 97 in the name of the Hon Mark Burton be agreed to:

To omit this clause.

• Amendment to the amendment agreed to.
• The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 97 in the name of the Hon Mark Burton to insert new clause 98A as amended, the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 97 in his name to Part 5, the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 206 in the name of the Hon Annette King to Part 5, and the following amendments in the name of the Hon Mark Burton to clause 92 be agreed to:

to omit from section 178(1)(c) “sections 109, 110, or 111 of the Criminal Justice Act 1985, or”;

to omit from section 180(1)(c) “section 109, section 110, or section 111 of the Criminal Justice Act 1985 or”; and

to omit from section 181(1)(b) “section 109, section 110, or section 111 of the Criminal Justice Act 1985 or”.

• Amendments agreed to.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) : I rise in respect of clause 1, which is the title of the Criminal Procedure Bill. As has been said several times in the last few minutes, this legislation is going to change significantly the way the courts do business in respect of matters going to trial in this country. It is obviously a step that is not taken lightly by any of the parties in the House. Over the last 2 years we have had discussion after discussion in relation to what is going on here, and we have sought to make accommodations at various times.

I guess what really drew matters to a head in the last few weeks was comments made by the Chief High Court Judge, Judge Randerson, in respect of this bill and the fact that it has, in his words, languished before the House. It was disappointing for me to find out today that New Zealand First was actually voting against the transition of Part 5 of this bill, because previously when I spoke to its members they indicated that they would not be supporting my Supplementary Order Paper, now withdrawn. Over the last 2 years there has been a cross-party understanding on how this legislation would proceed, so one had an unusual example of the Green Party, the National Party, the Māori Party, United Future, Taito Phillip Field, and Gordon Copeland all supporting the premise that depositions should remain in situ as they were. The ACT party had not declared its hand at that time, and as far as we knew New Zealand First was voting for the bill in the form as it was presented. It is interesting to note that of all the parties within the House, in the circumstance as it was before we knew how voting was going to go today, in fact it would have been Labour and Jim Anderton voting against it.

I think it is a bit of a shame, really, that it has taken as long as this to have the sort of measured debate that we could have had. We tried to have the debate, and when the judge made his comments he was talking about banding of methamphetamine trials, because this bill—or Act, as it shortly will be—allows for methamphetamine trials to be run in District Courts and go through the court process a lot quicker than they should, because they are not horribly complex, they just have serious consequences, and that does not necessarily mean that they are complex.

Then we had the argument around double jeopardy, which also came up in the last couple of weeks, and the speculation, for instance, from the Prime Minister that if National would only get off its bum and vote for this legislation, then the double jeopardy rules would be in it and they would be relaxed, so if evidence could be found against someone previously found to be not guilty, then he or she would be able to be tried again. Neither of those issues had anything to do with depositions at all.

Then we had an example played out on television of a lady who had witnessed a tragedy—the murder of her daughter in horrifying circumstances—and she made the point that if depositions were to be only in written format, then she would not be retraumatised. But I think it is only fair to point out in a very measured way that in that particular case neither the prosecution nor the defence required her to give evidence. In fact, quite bravely, she chose to give evidence so that she could do good by her daughter, and to nail home the strong evidence that they had against the killer. In that case she took the opportunity to give the evidence that she very dearly wanted to give, and I believe it was her right to do so. If I were the officer in charge of that case I would be very proud that she did. But I do not believe that one incident should create the law. I believe that in the jurisdiction that we have, which is about justice, justice should also be extended to those who do not deserve it, because the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in our country actually extends to everybody. It extends to the most despised and the most hated, and to the least deserving within our community, just as it extends to those who deserve it the most. Thankfully, that is something we can bask in, in this country—that we actually live in a country with a justice system that allows us to have all the privileges and freedoms that a Western democracy can have.

But it is interesting to point out that one should not bend the law on emotions. As much as we can relate to the emotions, and as much as we can try to understand, thankfully most of us will never have to undergo the sort of tragedy that Mrs Elliott had to witness, which she then bravely gave evidence for, or the point that Louise Nicholas made when she made the same call. Hopefully, our loved ones will not be involved in those traumatic events. The fact is that one should change laws because it is right to change them. One should not be swept along on some tide of wanting to speed up a court system because it is expensive, or because it reflects badly on a ministry, or because it reflects badly on those who are administering it. I believe—and I am sure members of this House believe this in their heart of hearts—that if we are going to change something as fundamental as the criminal law, we should do so because it is right to do so.

• Clause 1 agreed to.

KATE WILKINSON (National) : Thank you, Mr Chairperson, for the opportunity to speak in support of Part 1 of the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill. In speaking in support of this bill, it is easy to say that the bill is symbolic, because it does not really add to the wilful damages offences that currently exist under the Summary Proceedings Act, and perhaps that is right. But, then, perhaps this bill will send a message to those vandals out there who take great delight in defacing other people’s property that this is unacceptable behaviour, that it is a cost to society, and that it needs to be stopped.

This bill is a step in the right direction, although the Law and Order Committee report in the accompanying commentary on the bill states: “We do not expect this bill alone to solve the problem of tagging and graffiti,”. But the public, I think, has had enough. We have not heard very many submissions on the bill, and I would have to say that the Law and Order Committee worked in a very constructive way on it. The majority of submitters were in favour of the bill. Some, of course, were not in favour of the bill.

We heard along the way that graffiti is art. Well, my view is that graffiti is not art. Admittedly, some of it may be quite clever, but when it is done on someone else’s property, without that person’s consent, then it is pure and simple vandalism. If a tagger or graffiti artist wants to draw on and deface his or her own property, then that may well be art, but when the tag or graffiti is on someone else’s property, without that person’s consent, it is vandalism, it is a scourge, and it is simply not acceptable.

Graffiti has a huge cost for our society. We heard amongst the submissions from Local Government New Zealand, for example, that the annual public cost of graffiti alone is about $10 million. That is not the private cost; that is the annual public cost to ratepayers. We heard, for example, that the Manukau City Council deals with about 300,000 tags a year, and that costs the ratepayers $1.2 million in that council district alone, and it is estimated that a further $5 million is being spent by the private sector. We were advised that the cost to the Hamilton City Council was in the vicinity of $500,000, and that the cost to Wellington City Council ratepayers was about $600,000. The figures go on and on, and they reflect the monetary cost alone of taggers and graffiti vandals. This money could be better spent on positive youth activities, rather than on trying to combat negative vandalism by a few.

The bill itself is quite simple and straightforward. When we come to Part 2 I will put forward an amendment in relation to the storage of spray-cans. Part 1 relates to the offence of graffiti vandalism and tagging, and, as new section 11A in clause 4 states, it basically covers anybody who “damages or defaces any building, structure, road, tree, property, or other thing by writing, drawing, painting, spraying, or etching on it, or otherwise marking it—(a) without lawful authority; and (b) without the consent of the occupier or owner or other person in lawful control.” The penalties imposed for that offence consist of a community-based sentence, or a fine not exceeding $2,000.

When the bill first came to the Law and Order Committee, there was an omission that the committee felt fit to address, and that was in relation to the offence of having in one’s possession graffiti implements. Accordingly, new section 11B, in clause 4, has been inserted at the recommendation of the select committee so that: “A person is liable to a sentence of community work or a fine … if without reasonable excuse he or she has in his or her possession a thing capable of being used to commit an offence against section 11A in circumstances in which it can reasonably be inferred that he or she intends to use it to commit such an offence.” That covers a wide array of implements. Part 2 is more narrowly defined to spray-cans, because, again, we heard from submitters than an estimated 90 percent of graffiti is spray-can - related.

JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) : On behalf of the National Party I am pleased to rise to support the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill and to speak to Part 1.

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Without seeking to question your decision at all, I was wondering whether you could offer an explanation to the Committee as to why you have chosen to take two National Party calls one after the other.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member will be seated. The member should look at Speaker’s ruling 25/4. Once I have called a member, that is it. The member should also look at the issue of proportionality.

Ron Mark: Point of order—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): If the member is challenging my ruling, he had better be careful.

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It is a new point of order. How can you assume that I am challenging your order before I have even opened my mouth?

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Mr Mark, I made a decision; you rose to question it. Please make your point of order.

Ron Mark: My point of order is that you rabbited that section off so rapidly. Could you please repeat it so I might be able to read it.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): 25/4.

Ron Mark: Thank you, Mr Chairman.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you, Mr Mark.

JUDITH COLLINS: In rising to speak to Part 1, “Graffiti vandalism”, I say that it is with a sense of sadness that we in this Chamber are dealing with an issue like tagging and graffiti vandalism in the wake of three brutal murders in Manukau. I know that other MPs in this Chamber—the Hon George Hawkins, Ross Robertson, and Pansy Wong, for instance—feel very deeply that—

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Did you say Speakers’ Rulings or the Standing Orders?

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Speaker’s ruling 25/4—which relates to the fact that once I have called a member, I cannot take the call away.

JUDITH COLLINS: I am sorry that Mr Mark wishes to interrupt all the way through my speech. Perhaps that is an indication—

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Just for my clarification, is it perfectly acceptable for any member to ask the Chair at any time about a reference to the Standing Orders?

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Well, the member can go one too many sometimes. One has to be careful about how one raises issues in the Chamber.

JUDITH COLLINS: I was referring to the issue of the three appalling deaths in just the last week in Manukau. Certainly, I know that other MPs would join with me in saying that this is a blot on the landscape of New Zealand. People like me who live and work in South Auckland are disgusted that other people have to live with this sort of threat hanging over them. I know that there are people who will say: “Well, graffiti doesn’t kill people. This isn’t killing people; this is just a little bit of resistance painting.” I do not hold to that view, because the graffiti is being done to mark territory in relation to street gangs—street gangs that currently swagger around the streets thinking they control them; street gangs who have the audacity to go to a liquor shop and kill a father because that is, apparently, what people do when they run out of booze at a child’s birthday party. That is the sort of disgusting behaviour that we do not want to see in South Auckland, or anywhere else.

There are people in my electorate who say they do not want to be referred to as South Aucklanders any more, because the words have such a bad connotation. Well, I say that I rejoice in being a South Aucklander. I am one by choice, because South Auckland is full of really good people. It is full of people of different ethnic backgrounds, people of different incomes, and people who respect other people. But there are a few others—the people who wish to tag areas, the people who wish to intimidate. The reason these “graffiti artists”—and I use that term in quotation marks—wish to mark their territory is to show who runs the place. They think they run South Auckland, and they think they run Manukau. Well, they do not, and it is about time this Parliament stood up to them.

I know that restricting the sale of cans will not stop all these people, but it does send a signal to the people of South Auckland and elsewhere in New Zealand. It sends the signal that we care enough to say that it is not OK to do this to other people. It is absolutely not OK. I congratulate George Hawkins, because his member’s bill was the forerunner to this bill. His Government did not back him; George backed himself—and good on him! We over here backed him, and I congratulate him. I know that civil libertarians will be deeply worried about someone’s right to mark someone else’s property. Well, too bad for them! They should get with it. All they need to do is let them go and mark their own property, and they should be very happy.

I suggest to people who do not understand what it is like to live and work in this area—and to fear, as so many people do—that they come out of central Wellington and come to South Auckland to see the good people who live in fear on their own properties. They will see the good people who have decided to rent out their properties because they are too scared to stay there. That is what I saw yesterday. And I suggest they go to Mrs Singh and explain to her, as I did, what we can do—which is not an awful lot.

I also think that they should back the police and not bag them. The police do their very best. We do not have enough police in South Auckland. The other thing we do not have enough of is people in the hierarchy of the police who are caring enough to have less political correctness. I think it is funny that Ron Mark should make all sorts of gestures across the Chamber. We know that he is known for that, but I say to him that some people in this Committee care a lot more than just making silly gestures. Some of us care enough to think that Part 1 is extremely important.

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. For clarification, and in my own defence, I tell the Committee and you that the only gesture I was making was the signal that you yourself often use to indicate to a member that the debate is narrow. Part 1 is narrow, so I ask you, Mr Chairperson, whether you would bring the member back within the range of Part 1. She has not spoken once, actually, on either of the clauses in Part 1. She was rambling on as if she were making an election speech, and my hand gesture to her was simply to say “Please narrow your comments to Part 1.” It was not meant to make some other sort of statement, as she seemed to be implying, quite mischievously and quite erroneously.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you, Mr Mark. The member’s time has almost expired.

JUDITH COLLINS: I will end with the comment that the people of South Auckland and the people of New Zealand have had enough of graffiti. I congratulate the people who are voting for this bill on having the courage to do so.

RON MARK (NZ First) : I think, having travelled to Auckland quite frequently, and quite often into that member’s electorate, that I can tell that member that what people in Auckland are sick of is piety, pomposity, and snobbishness. People in her electorate are saying to me that they are sick of pomposity, piety, and snobbishness, and the higher-than-mighty attitude that she exudes all over the nation and the airways. And her comments about my hand gestures—

Dr Jonathan Coleman: Where’s this in Part 1, Ron?

RON MARK: Well, I tell Jonathan Coleman that we get what we deserve. He does not need to blow smoke in our faces over here to get away from the fact that his party’s speaker—the one who has just resumed her seat—was not even on the committee, did not understand a piece of the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill, and did not even bother to read it. Part 1, I tell Dr Coleman, is quite clear and quite specific.

Judith Collins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Mr Mark might think he knows a lot, but he does not know the fact that I have read the bill. I do understand the issue, and—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): No, I am sorry, the member will be seated; that is not a point of order.

RON MARK: Perhaps in relation to National members’ speeches we could have given some recognition where it was due—that is, to Chester Borrows. If Ms Collins had bothered to read Part 1, she would have seen standing out there new section 11B, inserted by clause 4, “Possession of graffiti implements”. Ms Collins would have known, had she read the report, that her colleague Chester Borrows was the person who instigated and initiated much of the debate on this Part 1 as it resulted. The section there is quite clear for Ms Collins to read because it has a big black line underneath it, and the big black line, I tell Ms Collins, indicates that it is a new section. I tell the member that it also indicates that Chester Borrows argued very well and very clearly. He drew upon his experience as a front-line police officer and as a lawyer who understands that simply prosecuting people and making illegal the activity of spraying someone else’s property with paint is not going to cut it. He pointed out quite clearly to the committee that we needed the powers to actually charge people who were found to be in possession of a can, who were holding the can up to a wall, but who had yet to press the button and begin their vandalism. It was a point that was well made, and there was a lot of discussion in the committee about that. Hence we have the “Borrows clause”, and it will sit there for all eternity. As the chairman of that committee, I am very confident that that one clause in itself will do a lot—a great deal—to empower police officers to arrest, detain, and successfully prosecute graffiti vandals.

Clause 4(1) deals with the issues of making it an offence—and it is making it a specific offence. I have to hand it to Mr Borrows again, because here once more he made very clear to the officials who came before us that it was no longer acceptable just to deal with this issue under the Crimes Act, but that we needed to be specific and clear that this act stands alone as an offence against property and people. The great thing about the Law and Order Committee is that it has an ability to work across parties very well and cooperatively. Again, I thank the National Party team for its contribution in those two areas, because it has added substance.

The area where I tried to make some input was in dealing with the question of community-based sentencing. I have sat in this Chamber for 12 years now, and time after time I have seen various members of the Opposition parties raising the question of unpaid fines. It seems ludicrous to New Zealand First to continue to impose more and more fine ceilings on people when we know full well they will not pay the fines and that simply, eventually, they will have those fines remitted. So taking away from young people who graffiti and vandalise walls the one thing they value more than anything—that is, their time by requiring them to do community work—makes sense. I say at this point that I would hope we see them in pink vests. I would hope that the officer out in Porirua, whose good work has been so severely undermined by the do-gooder critics there, is able to continue doing what he has been doing—that is, putting graffiti artists in pink vests and making it very, very clear to the community they have vandalised that they have been caught tagging and have been sentenced to community service. We should give these people a taste of what they definitely need: a bit of humiliation.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Justice) : First of all, I thank the members of the Law and Order Committee for the work they did on this bill, the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill. The bill has come about because, at the end of the day, this Parliament and the people of New Zealand have had enough of graffiti vandalism. I agree with the member Judith Collins that graffiti is not art; it is vandalism.

There is a difference between graffiti art and graffiti vandalism. No doubt, members of this House have seen some wonderful graffiti art done by artists. But what we see on the properties of New Zealanders—individuals and businesses—around this country has nothing to do with art. It is offensive, and it is a violation of people’s property. There is a cost to it, and it leaves people feeling very angry indeed. They do not know why someone would come along with a spray-can or a felt-tip pen and write mindless rubbish on their property. They cannot understand what it is about.

This bill tries to address the graffiti vandalism problem we have in New Zealand. It is not peculiar to South Auckland; it is found in all parts of New Zealand. The problem is worse in some of our big cities and we see a greater cost in those places, but no area is free of it. This bill builds on the work done by George Hawkins, and I say to Judith Collins that he was supported. His bill came to our caucus and it was supported. But the problem with the bill was that it related only to Manukau, and, as I have just said, graffiti vandalism is an issue for all New Zealand. A bill that dealt with only one area was not going to work. As we know, people can cross the boundary of Manukau City, go into another area, pick up spray-cans, return to Manukau, and spray as much as they like. This bill, however, will have a nationwide effect.

I say to Ron Mark that I agree with many of the comments he made about the work done in the Law and Order Committee. I thank Chester Borrows for his contribution in terms of adding to Part 1, and, in my view, making it better. I agree with imposing community sentences. We know that many young people will not and cannot pay a big fine. This bill allows for a community sentence and/or a fine to be imposed. I imagine that in many cases where young people go out and violate somebody’s property they will, if they are caught, be carrying out a community sentence.

The police officer who has put a lot of effort into this issue comes from Miramar, which is in my community—my constituency. I support totally what he has done in cleaning up graffiti in Miramar. We had a real problem there. He went out as a community constable—in my view, a front-line officer—and helped clean up graffiti in that area. I do not apologise to anyone for the way he has gone about doing it, because the people of Miramar are delighted to see that those who were committing graffiti vandalism in the area have got their just rewards for what they did.

Part 1, as members have already heard, introduces two new offences relating to tagging and graffiti vandalism. I think it is part of the solution, but it is not the whole answer. It can be only a part of the strategy, as, I think, Kate Wilkinson said in her contribution. There is more to this issue than legislation, but legislation is part of the answer.

RON MARK (NZ First) : I recognise that very often when the law is being interpreted there are those who seek to defend actions by asserting what they believe was the intent of Parliament at the time the legislation was passed. I want to take this opportunity to add to the comments from New Zealand First about community service sentencing. I want it to be absolutely clear in the minds of those people who will prosecute, defend, and adjudicate on the crime of graffiti vandalism exactly what was in the minds of the people who are passing this legislation through the House in respect of community service sentencing.

There is much debate out there, and there was even when submissions were being taken on this bill, on what denotes community service sentencing, or what community service sentences can comprise. We have, in the time I have been in this House, discussed a range of initiatives around the country that were implemented by police officers and were part of diversion programmes. These were sometimes later pulled to pieces by people whom I would describe as hand-wringing liberals as being offensive or humiliating for the poor souls on the receiving end. I think the power and strength of Part 1 is that we in this Parliament are making it clear that judges have the ability to give a community service sentence to these people—to take from them the time they would use to go out, ironically, to vandalise other people’s property by graffitiing them; to take from them the time they would use to enjoy themselves with their friends and their cobbers. New Zealand First expects judges, in the enforcement of this law, to give people community service sentences that are quite substantial. Where the judges think of a heavy fine we would like them to think of “heavy time”—time on the streets of the offenders’ communities, cleaning up the vandalism.

We heard from various district and city councils. Auckland is a classic example. Anyone visiting Auckland who gets into a taxi, drives out of Auckland airport, and heads into town is struck by the amount of graffiti. Imagine how many people hours could be involved in cleaning it up; imagine how many labour hours would be needed to fulfil the task of cleaning it up. We in New Zealand First ask the judiciary who will be applying this legislation and who will be making the decisions to please focus on the man hours, to please focus on community service sentencing. We see the ideal solution as being one where all those young people—or old people, if they are tagging—are out there in their pink vests, being seen by the ratepayers of the area as they paint over and clean up their mess. We agree with Kate Wilkinson that this bill is not the be-all and end-all. It will not solve it all, but the sight of so many people who have been caught tagging out there cleaning up the mess would be an encouragement to ratepayers and citizens. We believe that it would actually send them a message giving them confidence that things are working in their favour, that the House does recognise what they are being subjected to, and that the judiciary and the courts are doing something about it.

We would despair if we saw the judiciary handing out $2,000 fines. We know that they are meaningless. Boy racers take it as a badge of honour and a mark of pride if they have a glove box full of tickets and are able to tell their mates “Yeah, I’ve got $30,000 worth of fines racked up.” At a certain point, the level of the fine is meaningless to them because they have no intention of paying it. There was an example on the West Coast about 3 years ago of three young men who had $250,000 of fines remitted and written off. Well, we would say what an absolute waste of time that exercise was. By how much did it undermine the justice system? They should have been given community service right at the outset, that community service should have been enforced, and it should have been done in such a way that it was humiliating for them, in such a way that they were seen by the wider public, and in such a way that they themselves decided that they never ever wanted to be put in that situation again.

This provision is very powerful, and is a very useful tool in deterring people from continuing their vandalistic behaviour. We hope to see it being used to its fullest extent. We would despair if we saw taggers being reported in the paper as owing $15,000 worth of fines, when actually community service was the appropriate sentence.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) : I rise to take just a short call in respect of Part 1 of the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill. Members will realise that there are already a number of provisions within our law that deal with criminal damage—that is, wilful damage or intentional damage as it is called under various pieces of legislation. There is section 33 of the Summary Offences Act, which this legislation alters; there is section 11 of the Summary Offences Act, which relates to “wilful damage”; and there is section 269 of the Crimes Act, which relates to “intentional damage”. Obviously, it is sort of a graduated scale.

Section 11 of the Summary Offences Act, as it is at the moment, allows for a penalty of imprisonment, and this falls short of that by providing for community work or community service. My question—and I wonder whether the Minister can help me here because we did raise it several times within the select committee process—is this: when a young person under the age of 17 appears before the Youth Court, and the court wishes to impose a penalty that involves community work or community service, does that young person have to agree to it? I cannot remember which section or subsection it is in, but there is a provision that states that if the Youth Court wants to sentence an offender under the age of 17 to a penalty that involves community service, the young offender, currently, has to agree to it.

I understand that there is a clause in the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 6)—which, I think, is currently before the Social Services Committee—to remove that subsection so that they can be sentenced to a term of community service. I guess the question for the Minister is whether under this piece of legislation the young person would still have to consent, at least until that legislation is transacted through the House.

• Part 1 agreed to.

JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) : I rise to speak to Part 2 of the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill, which deals with spray-cans. The sale of spray-cans to people under 18 is to be prohibited, except in certain circumstances. Some concern has been expressed about the extra costs this will bring and the extra trouble it will put on retailers to lock these cans away. I can tell people that in my electorate in South Auckland many people already do this—they already lock them away, they already put them behind the counter, and they try not to encourage spray-can usage by young people in any way. As well as trying not to encourage spray-can buying by young people who might then commit graffiti offences, they are actually trying to protect their own property, too. These spray-cans are often stolen—shoplifting is rife, particularly by the people who do not think anything of vandalising other people’s property. Why would we be surprised that they have no respect for the property owned by shopkeepers going about their lawful business?

The fact that graffiti has moved on to etching and other sorts of damage probably says to many of us that restricting the sale of spray-cans will not stop graffiti vandalism. Again, the point can be made that we know it will not stop it, but it will certainly slow it down. It will, in fact, send a signal that we take this offence seriously. It is important, because although we in these premises at Parliament do not indulge in graffiti vandalism, and are lucky enough to work in a place where we do not see it all the time, the fact is that many other people do. Many other people have to live in it, and they have to work in it. Many shopkeepers have to. I noted the comment from the Minister of Justice before about the cost to businesses, and she is quite right. The cost to businesses is huge. It is not just the cost of the paint to paint out the graffiti, it is also the fact that it has to happen every morning—it is the person time that is used when dealing with it.

Then there is the time spent trying to make complaints to the police and taking photographs of it so that the police can add it to their catalogue of vandalism, and there is the wasted police time spent having to deal with the offenders. I think the idea that was used in Wellington of putting the little graffiti artists into pink vests with “tagger” on them was excellent, and I am glad that the Minister supports it. When I first became the MP in Clevedon in the Papakura area the police there put young taggers into orange outfits with “police” on them so that people knew what they were doing—cleaning up the graffiti. It was also a safety issue. They were stopped from continuing with it because a Queen’s Counsel came through town, obviously on the way to something important, saw this, and decided it was humiliating the children who were dressed in their orange outfits. Too bad about the humiliation of the people whose property they had been defacing! We would not want the children’s little tender hearts hurt.

Actually, the parents of those young people supported the police in their actions. The parents gave permission for this to happen, yet they were overruled by a namby-pamby outfit that thought we had better not upset the civil libertarians. Well, I am all for civil liberties. I am all for people being allowed to live in their own homes without them being defaced. I am absolutely all for people being able to go to their local dairy without getting their handbag snatched off them and then being run over. I am absolutely all for people having the civil liberty to go about their lawful business of selling their goods from their shops, and I am certainly not for people trying to stop it. That is what we are about here—we are trying to say that it is not OK for this to happen, and it is not OK for people’s property to be threatened and vandalised.

Of course, it is not just about property. It is about what it does to people living in fear. The restriction of the sale of spray-cans says that people should not have to live in fear in their own homes. Although the legislation may upset some people who lawfully want to buy a spray-can, and who may have to go through a slightly longer rigmarole because of it, I do not think there are any good New Zealanders who will resent that. I do not think their civil liberties will be offended one bit. In fact, I think they will rejoice in the fact that it will make it more difficult for people who want to buy these cans so they can deface other people’s property.

On my way from the northern part of my electorate to the southern part, I go past a fence in the country that is routinely targeted by taggers. Almost every week it is painted over. I know that a comment was made today by the Rev. Mark Beale, a person for whom I have a huge amount of respect. He runs the Manukau Beautification Charitable Trust. He said that businesses have to get out there and get them cleaned up. He is absolutely right. However, he is not saying, and I am not saying, that it is the business people’s fault if someone tags their property. All they can do is try to make it less likely that the taggers will want to come back again. What he is saying is what we are trying to say with this legislation. We are trying to make it more difficult for them to get the implements. We are trying to make it something they have to put their names down for and show some ID for, so that it is more unlikely that they will go ahead with it. Maybe it will restrain them from tagging every fence in the neighbourhood, or, in our case, in Kirk’s Bush in Papakura, every tree in the bush. I see my colleague thinking: “How can that be?”, but that is what happens. There are also streets where the actual asphalt is covered in graffiti. That is the sort of thing we are talking about here. We are not talking about graffiti art, legitimate art for people to view and have pride in; this is about vandalism. It is about tagging and marking territory. Although restricting the sale of spray-cans to people over 18 will not stop graffiti, it will slow it down, and it will send a message that people in New Zealand care enough to say that our civil liberties—the civil liberties of people who go about their business, are law abiding, do not vandalise other people’s property, and do not threaten them—are worth something too, actually, and it is about time people recognised that.

It is all very well always hearing about someone standing up for people who do not care about other people’s civil liberties but we deserve to have the civil liberties of good New Zealanders recognised and celebrated. People should be able to live in communities that are free of this sort of menace. I know that being a graffiti artist or a graffiti tagger will not necessarily make someone a street gang killer, but show me a street gang member who has not started off as a tagger. Show me one. I do not think we will find too many. Show me one who has not, at some stage in life, started off that way. That is what they do to show they are part of the gang, and they do so to show the gang’s territory. Well, there should be only one gang in our country and that is the gang of good New Zealanders who abide by the law. It about time we said that and it is about time we supported other New Zealanders who want to live in peace and within the law. I am pleased to be able to speak on this part, and I am pleased to be able to support the bill all the way through. We have supported the bill all the way through, and I am proud of the fact that the National Party has put the rights of good New Zealanders first.

Hon DAVID BENSON-POPE (Labour—Dunedin South) : I thank you, Mr Chairman, for the opportunity to make a brief comment about this admirable bill. It is a quite short bill of five pages, but I think it will be very effective. I think the discussion on it has been useful and instructive, and I would like to begin by thanking the Minister and Cabinet for bringing this necessary legislation before us. This is the sort of thing that we often do not address when we should, because of concerns about people’s liberties, because of concerns about education, and because of concerns about other ways of controlling these issues. But I think that what a number of other speakers have said is correct, in that we have had enough of what is only vandalism and quite offensive vandalism at that. I think the Minister’s earlier comments differentiated most appropriately between art—which some organised graffiti can be—tagging, and graffiti vandalism, which is really the substance of this legislation.

I am delighted to see the National Party support the bill, although not without some contradictions, but we are used to that in this place, and I will come back to that in a moment. During this call I want to focus on the restriction of access to spray-cans, and the extensions in this part to other graffiti implements. One of the obvious things we can see when we look at how other jurisdictions have dealt with these issues is that tagging and graffiti vandalism are not restricted just to the ubiquitous spray-can. In fact, during the course of the hearings and discussions at the select committee, I heard that my own Anglican cathedral in the Octagon in Dunedin was vandalised by young men and women with large felt-tipped pens. Although I will not give the reference to the website just now, it is not hard to find when one looks on the web that there are sites solely dedicated to bombing and the implements involved in bombing. It was quite important that we did not focus just on the spray-can, because, although it may be the main implement of choice in Manukau, it is certainly not the main one elsewhere in the country. I think that the inclusion of the category of graffiti implements, including glass-etching devices, is welcome. Had we not included that extension to the bill, we would have had to do so at a future date.

The matter that was of the greatest concern to submitters on the bill is the matter I want to dwell on. It has been interesting to hear the soft human face of the National Party in terms of the previous speaker talking about the hard line the National Party will take on this, but I am disappointed to see the amendment that has been put forward by a member of the select committee. The issue of how people access these cans is absolutely key to the whole debate. Young people who are about to go out tagging do not tend to buy these implements. That has been said to us repeatedly by the people who end up paying for it and the local authorities who end up doing the cleaning up. One of the concerns was about further restrictions potentially on the availability of spray-cans around building sites, where they are used for road marking, marking construction points, and so on. A lot of those fluorescent paint spray-cans, it is claimed, are stolen by taggers for their later activities. So I think it is really important that we put meaningful restrictions in place around access to cans, and I will focus just on cans in that respect.

The initial bill did cause some alarm. I do not think it had problems necessarily, but the wording, which was that cans need to be secured, did send expensive shivers about the redesign of displays, shop configurations, and so on, around a lot of the submitters. I am sure—and I will explain why in a moment—that the rewording agreed to unanimously by the select committee is entirely desirable. I think it was agreed to unanimously; the chairman can correct me if that is not the case. In my view, the wording confronts not only the shoplifting issue, which is why I was so surprised to see the hard-line comments from Mrs Collins, and the soft-on-shoplifting comments from Ms Wilkinson—both in the select committee and in the amendment she will subsequently put forward. In my view, the wording we ended up with—possession, and needing the assistance of the shopkeepers—is likely to cover all their concerns, including the concern around shoplifting.

When I have discussed this around the traps with people who have very large displays of these products, they have explained to me some of their surveillance materials. In my home town the major retailer, who has a very high level of trade in these products, has in place, in addition to quite extensive video surveillance of the spray-can area, other security methods that ensure that those products cannot be removed from the current shelving in the shop without the support and assistance of the retailer. This bill was always good legislation, but I think it is much better because of the submission process, and I am delighted to support it at the Committee stage.

KATE WILKINSON (National) : I appreciate having the opportunity to speak on Part 2, which is restricted to spray-cans. In my earlier speech I noted that one of the submitters had informed us that 90 percent of graffiti is spray-can - related, so although this part has only a couple of clauses, it is certainly an important part of this bill.

In effect, Part 2 prohibits the sale of spray-cans to a person under the age of 18, unless the spray-can is sold for school or educational purposes to enable the student to undertake a course at school or to complete an assignment or project. We have no difficulty with that. The difficulty is in the next clause, clause 6, which inserts new section 14B into the Summary Offences Act, and that is why I have put forward an amendment for the Committee to consider. The amendment relates to the section that restricts access to spray-cans in shops. Admittedly, the bill in its previous form provided that the spray-cans had to be “kept secured”. That provision has been watered down so that spray-cans are “stored in such a way” that members of the public cannot access them without the help of the occupier, but it is my suggestion that we do not need that provision. Why do we need a clause that restricts access to spray-cans when it is already an offence to sell spray-cans to under-18-year-olds?

I think that we also have to look at the over-18-year-olds who want to buy spray-cans for legitimate purposes and also at the imposition on retailers of having to secure spray-cans when we bear in mind that it is already an offence to sell spray-cans to somebody under 18. It is my suggestion that, surely, it is up to shop owners to take all reasonable steps to ensure that spray-cans are not sold to under-18-year-olds, and if they do sell them to under-18-year-olds, then they are liable to the penalty clauses and the offence that goes with that action.

If I can draw an analogy, we do not have such a provision in relation to alcohol in supermarkets. Alcohol in supermarkets cannot be sold to under-18-year-olds, but we do not have a special provision as to the storage of alcohol or access to alcohol in supermarkets. It is my suggestion that this clause itself is superfluous, and if we look at it objectively, then we have to wonder whether we need this provision relating to storage. We trust supermarket owners to control their premises so as to avoid the sale of alcohol to those under 18. Why then, if we are to be consistent in our lawmaking, do we not trust retailers such as the Mitre 10, PlaceMakers, and Bunnings stores to keep spray-cans in a way they choose so as to minimise and avoid sale to those under 18? If retailers breach the preceding sale offence, they will be subject to the penalties. So they will be accountable, and they will not be able to breach the law without having to pay the price.

If we look at this provision, we see that it is also an imposition on the innocent, law-abiding shopper who just wants to be able to go and buy a spray-can for law-abiding and proper purposes without having to seek the assistance of a shop assistant. Why should a law-abiding member of the public not be able to access spray-cans without having to seek the assistance of a staff member, which involves time, cost, and inconvenience?

The Law and Order Committee was told by some of the submitters that, firstly, age monitoring is not the problem—and if that is the case, then we have a solution looking for a problem—in relation to the storage of spray-cans. I am refining my discussion to the storage of spray-cans, not to their sale. We were told, secondly, that there is a significant cost to retailers. We were given the example of a cost of about $3,000 per storage cabinet. I am aware that some retailers have already gone to this expense, but, worse than that, we were told by one submitter that sales of spray-cans were down by 70 percent. If it becomes too hard for law-abiding citizens to purchase spray-cans legitimately, then what does that achieve in terms of graffiti? It is a cost to law-abiding citizens and to retailers. My comments on this part of the bill are very limited to the provision related to the storage of spray-cans. I am not condoning their sale to under-18-year-olds; I am saying that the clause in relation to storage is unnecessary.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Justice) : I thank the member Kate Wilkinson for her contribution and for her amendment, which she obviously believes in firmly. I believe that if we were to pass her amendment, then we would actually make a mockery of the bill we have been debating. Although we have been putting in place what we believe are tougher measures around graffiti vandalism, not addressing the issue of access to spray-cans would, I believe, dilute the bill considerably. You see, what we are asking for is not onerous on shopkeepers. We are saying that spray-cans ought to be kept under the watchful eye of the shopkeeper.

My colleague David Benson-Pope very clearly set out what our problem is. The problem is that often young folk who go out and carry out their vandalism do not bother to go to the shopkeeper to buy spray-cans; they help themselves to spray-cans. I have seen examples of shops where spray-cans are on the bottom shelf and near the door. It is easy to whip in, take out a spray-can, and do $10,000 worth of damage—with one spray-can. So what we are asking of shopkeepers, in my view, is not onerous at all. The legislation does not require them to have complex security measures. It does require them to physically restrict access to spray-cans. They could have them behind the counter, for example. We do not argue about the fact that we have tobacco behind the counter of a dairy. That is common in New Zealand. We say that we do not want under-18-year-olds to get their hands on tobacco. We have it on display behind the counter, and it is easy to get if the shopkeeper is there to assist. So I do not believe that it is onerous.

I also think that there is a difference between the storage of alcohol in a supermarket and the storage of spray-cans. It is pretty hard to get out of a supermarket unless one goes out through the checkout, so supermarket staff do have a watchful eye over the product that goes out of a supermarket. It is much harder for staff in a dairy or a small retail outlet to have a product under a watchful eye if it is on a shelf. Spray-cans are easy to access there—one can stick a spray-can in one’s bag and leave.

I do not want us to destroy the aims and ambitions of this bill, which we have spoken about in a collective voice today. I also think that it is important for members to know that the Ministry of Justice intends to give support to local authorities and retailers in respect of this legislation. This will be in the form of advice leaflets and signage to clarify the responsibilities of retailers and their employees. We are not just leaving them on their own. There is support and back-up for them. But if we were to accept the member’s amendment—which I am in no doubt was put forward in all sincerity—I believe that we would undo much of the very good work in Part 1, which we have just passed.

RON MARK (NZ First) : I want to put New Zealand First’s position on record. We will vote against the National Party’s Supplementary Order Paper because we believe that fundamental to the effectiveness of this bill is some form of control over the way in which these items are sold, or handled and stored.

It is interesting that Kate Wilkinson has raised a number of questions about us not treating other products in this way. She has suggested that people would be deterred from buying their spray-cans of paint for legitimate purposes simply because they would have to go and ask the shop assistant to get access to them. I will point out a couple of things. In the weekend I was in Hunting and Fishing. I went in there with my partner, Chris, and we were looking at a couple of rifles that we thought we might like to add to our golf bag to enable us to do the sort of hunting we do. I looked at a .22 Ruger and a .22 Marlin—both of them semi-automatics. Both of those rifles were bolted to the wall. In both instances, in order to be able to put them to the shoulder to see how they felt and how the line of sight felt for me, I had to ask one of the shop attendants to come down. I asked him whether he would mind unbolting them from the wall. He did not mind, at all. He came down and spent some time with us. We tried out the rifles for feel, for weight, and for sight picture. We made a decision at that point in time, and the rifles were put back on the wall. Having to ask the shop attendant for assistance will not deter me, when the time is ripe, from going into that shop and buying a .22 Ruger—or not. I now have a better understanding of what the weapon feels like and is capable of, and I will feel confident in the purchase. I am also confident about the advice given to me by the sales assistant, because he gave his assistance.

A few weeks earlier I was in the same store. I needed a couple of knives—a skinning knife and a boning knife—because we were doing a bit of home-kill. It is interesting that all of the knives—pocket knives, pen knives, skinning knives, and hunting knives—were behind lock and key in glass cabinets. I was not deterred from asking the shop assistant to unlock the cabinet and pull out an array of knives for me to look at, and he was not deterred from doing that for me—he was quite pleased. Eventually, after looking at a number of knives, I selected the two that I wanted, and a sheath to go with them. I was not deterred from making the purchase of a boning knife and a skinning knife because they happened to be under lock and key.

The point is that these spray-cans will not be under lock and key. They are simply required to be placed in an environment where there is restricted access to them. I point out that there are other things that could happen in this House that will not happen, but in relation to which it could be argued they pose a similar threat to the community. A while ago I was buying some building materials in PlaceMakers on Moorhouse Avenue in Christchurch when I saw a Māori chap—very scruffy, long hair, very unkempt—wandering through the aisles with silver aluminium paint around his lips. He was clutching in his hand a plastic bag that he was putting up to his face and sniffing. What was he doing there? He was wandering up and down the aisles of paint looking for more paint. Now I could be forgiven for suggesting here tonight that there should be restricted access to that type of paint, or some form of control, because it poses a health hazard. But we are not doing that; maybe we should. There are some things that in the hands of the wrong people are being used in a very antisocial manner. They are being used in a manner that is detrimental to the health and well-being of the person who purchases them, because we know that person will use them for illicit purposes, for wrongful purposes, and for the purposes of vandalism.

Society has a right, if it sees fit, to pass laws such as this to restrict access to those products—whether they be tobacco or alcohol. I say to Kate Wilkinson, with all due respect, that I think alcohol was a bad choice because my understanding of the sale of liquor licensing laws is that certain people under certain ages are prohibited from going into bottle stores and being in certain places. They cannot go in there. They are not allowed in there. So there are restrictions on the way in which alcohol is sold. They are specific restrictions designed to ensure that, as far as possible, alcohol does not get into the hands of those who are not legally entitled to purchase it.

The big issue that we were consistently reminded of as members of that committee was not actually about the purchase; it was about the theft—the stealing. And whilst we would all assume that good business people, who were mindful of the stock losses that they would be incurring and the impact on their profit line, would take all reasonable steps to ensure that their items are not being shoplifted, or that they are secure, it is not always done. That is why they get shoplifted. We also need to recognise that many of the people who own the businesses are not staffing the counter. They rely on competent, effective, efficient salespersons to monitor the premises, to ensure that stuff is not stolen, and to ensure that customers who wander over and pick up a spray-can and start looking at it are serious in their intent of purchase and are purchasing for legal reasons.

We discussed in this clause—taking advice from the officials—the various ramifications that this law might have on the legitimate usage of these products. We talked about schools, school projects, and the fact that young people are required to do art projects using these spray-cans. Those issues are well catered for in this clause. The one area where we have some controversy and disagreement is in relation to the level of security that a retailer or wholesaler must place around the storage and keeping of these products. I guess it is up to those people who want to sell these products. They know that builder George Brown or developer Bob Clarkson will buy these products, which may be markers to mark building sites. In terms of quantity, they know that the developer will order maybe two cartons of them, in different colours for different legitimate purposes, and those orders will be met in the normal way. Bob Clarkson does not have to walk in and purchase one spray-can off the shelf, and ask the shop assistants for assistance to get it down from the high shelf that he cannot reach; he does not have to do that. He simply puts in an order, and it arrives. And that is how most farmers—who use them for marking stock—most builders, most property developers, and most schools will meet those orders. This clause is designed to prevent, or at least in some way deter, shoplifting and stealing, and the vandalism that results from such actions by the particular people who would do that.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) : I rise in support of my colleague’s amendment in respect of this matter. The point that our colleague the Hon David Benson-Pope made was that most businesses are already taking these steps, so what is the point of penalising them for not taking those steps, bearing in mind that they do not want to lose stock and they are putting in place measures to make sure they do not. Why should they be penalised when somebody comes along and steals from their shop or later uses a spray-can? If a shop has sold a spray-can and if information or verification that the purchaser was over the age of 18 was not provided, then the shop will be penalised for that, and this legislation is relatively punitive in that respect.

What bothers me is that time and time again we see that the actual perpetrators, the offenders, are being patted on the head and told that it is not their fault. In these circumstances the law seeks to penalise a legitimate business person for trying to put it beyond the capability of some young person to be able to get hold of a spray-can—not everybody, just those who are under 18 years.

What that means is that shop assistants do not have to bother securing spray-cans from people over 18 years of age. In actual fact, what happens now, and what will continue to happen, is that they have measures in place to do that. Why do we need to have the punitive aspect of fines if they do not measure up to where a local inspector tends to think they should be? Why is it not enough of a disincentive that they would lose the value of the product they are trying to sell, or that there is the threat that if they do sell to the wrong person without seeking verification, they will be charged and are likely be convicted and fined in respect of that?

I think we also need to draw a bit of a line under the comments in respect of obtaining firearms and knives, and the hoops that have to be jumped through in order to be able to have a decent look at, and handle, a firearm in a sports shop. By the way, I indicate to my friend Mr Mark that if he wants to borrow a .22 Ruger, Ms Wilkinson has one available. He will have to ask for it, but she will deliver it! But, of course, there is a lot more incentive for a shop owner to open the cabinet and go through the whole sales pitch for someone who will buy something that is worth somewhere between 750 and 1,000 bucks.

Ron Mark: $650!

CHESTER BORROWS: OK. I did not realise that the Warehouse was selling .22 Rugers these days—it cannot be the rotating magazine version.

Of course, another side to this is the fact that skinning knives, boning knives, and pocket knives, or anything else that one could get stuck with, are weapons. There are also some other incentives, apart from that, especially in a sports shop, for instance, where there are other goods that might be attractive to people who would use a weapon they got hold of to rob the store in any event. So the point of the amendment is to say where the blame lies, and the blame lies with the people who are using the spray-cans, not with the hard-working shopkeepers who are seeking to sell to legitimate clientele.

• The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Kate Wilkinson to clause 6 be agreed to:

to omit from subclause (1) new section 14B.

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Labour—Manurewa) : I seek leave for my member’s bill the Sale of Liquor (Objections to Applications) Amendment Bill to be introduced and set down as members’ order of the day No. 1 on Wednesday, 2 July.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave has been sought for that course to be followed. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. That will be done.

Hon MARYAN STREET (Minister for ACC) : I move, That the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time. This bill continues the Government’s commitment to a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme for reducing the incidence and impact of personal injury. The Government has already made substantial changes to the scheme, including returning responsibility for cover for workplace accidents to the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), and the introduction of the new treatment injury provisions. These changes have been major steps in the Government’s goal of making the scheme more responsive to the needs of claimants. The bill continues to progress this goal by making changes to cover for work-related injuries, eligibility and entitlement to weekly compensation, and entitlement to, and processes for, vocational rehabilitation.

The bill introduces cover for a mental injury caused by exposure to a sudden, traumatic event in the course of employment. This means that, for example, a train driver who hits someone on the tracks, or a bank worker who witnesses a colleague shot during a robbery and goes on to develop a mental injury as a result, will now be covered by the accident compensation scheme.

The bill introduces changes to the cover provisions for work-related gradual process, disease, and infection to ensure that people harmed by their work receive greater access to cover and more clarity around whether cover is available and how it is determined. It does this through amending the test of work-causation, set out in the existing Act, to provide greater certainty of cover for claimants with these conditions.

The bill also introduces changes that allow greater flexibility to amend the list of occupational diseases provided in schedule 2 of the principal Act. It also updates the weekly compensation framework to improve access to weekly compensation in this increasingly varied labour market, particularly for seasonal and casual workers. The changes to the weekly compensation provisions make the assessment more reasonable and easier to understand for claimants. The bill provides fairer and more straightforward weekly compensation for seasonal and casual employees through improving access to weekly compensation for people who are injured while temporarily between jobs. It allows earlier access to minimum weekly compensation for certain claimants and increases the rate of weekly compensation paid to potential earners.

The bill enhances the existing legislative provisions for vocational rehabilitation, to provide better outcomes for claimants. Together with the existing provisions, the changes help to ensure that injured people are able to return to work or look for a job. This is important for the people and their families, as well as for the economy of New Zealand. The bill provides ACC with discretion to extend the 3-year limit on vocational rehabilitation, where appropriate, so that claimants who require ongoing assistance can return to, or stay in, the workforce, with more vocational rehabilitation. It also removes the upper age limit for vocational rehabilitation so that claimants who are no longer eligible to receive weekly compensation, because of the age limits on that, will still be eligible to receive vocational rehabilitation.

I also intend to move further amendments to the bill at the Committee stage. These amendments will ensure that the age limits for weekly compensation are not taken into account for vocational rehabilitation decisions relating to claimants who are still receiving weekly compensation but who are approaching those age limits. This will provide clarity for ACC when making decisions about vocational rehabilitation for older people.

The bill also addresses a number of other policy issues and improvements aimed at making the scheme clearer and more responsive to the needs of claimants. During the consultation process, the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee received 50 submissions on the bill. The committee has recommended two technical amendments to the bill and some changes to its work-related mental injury provisions to clarify the situations in which cover will be provided. The provisions in the bill providing cover for work-related mental injury resulting from exposure to a single traumatic event drew considerable comment from submitters. Some submitters considered that cover should not be limited to a single event, but should be broader, and that the provisions create an inequity in relation to non-work mental injuries. Other submitters expressed concern that introducing cover for work-related mental injuries would place a substantial cost burden on employers. Concerns were also raised that the current drafting may not provide cover to those for whom it was intended.

The changes to the provisions about work-related mental injury make it clear that the bill is intended to provide cover for work-related mental injury caused by an event such as a road accident, even though some people might view the event as consisting of a number of interrelated events. For example, the committee was told that a truckdriver hitting a person on the road could be construed as a number of events—the event where the driver saw the person, the event where the truck hit the person, the event where the driver stopped to ascertain injury, and the event where the driver actually saw the person’s injuries. The policy intent is that if the truckdriver developed a mental injury as a result of an accident, the driver would be covered by the accident compensation scheme for that mental injury.

However, the bill is not intended to provide cover for work-related mental injuries caused by a gradual process, such as mental stress caused by work overload. Similarly, the bill was intended to provide cover for a work-related mental injury caused by encountering a traumatic scene such as a serious industrial accident, even though the person may have encountered the scene after the accident had occurred and was not present at the time of the actual accident. This change would provide cover for emergency services and medical personnel if they were to encounter something sufficiently traumatic. For example, again if a worker developed a mental injury as a result of encountering a scene where another worker had suffered horrific injuries in an accident, the intent of the policy is that the worker would be covered by the accident compensation scheme for that mental injury, even though he or she was not immediately present at the time the other worker was injured. It is intended that encountering this kind of situation could in itself amount to a traumatic event. The committee has recommended changes to the bill to make this intention clear, and I welcome the select committee’s recommendations.

I also thank the committee for its work and all those who took the time to make a submission. But I have to say that I am more than a little disappointed with the National Party’s approach to this bill. Its MPs sat in the committee and listened to the case of former train driver Terry Bristow, whose train ran over people on railway tracks and who tearfully detailed how the experiences had changed his life. This grandfather was faced with these tragedies twice in a 3-year period. Unable eventually to cope, he was retired from Tranz Metro in 2003, after 35 years’ service. It was a truly tragic case, and it took courage for Mr Bristow to detail his story in such a public manner for the good of others, knowing that this legislation is not retrospective.

The case of coalminer John Stone, revealed today by the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, was another case in point. In 1991 Mr Stone was buried alive for 20 hours in the cab of his mining vehicle, after the mine he was working in collapsed. He has subsequently been unable to face work underground. This, too, resulted in a significant cut in his pay but he too was ineligible for ACC compensation or counselling.

FinSec, the bank workers’ union, today also spoke of the experience of staff traumatised by armed robberies, but it appears that National MPs will not listen to their consciences, and I believe that that is sad. Of course, it is clearly symptomatic of what would happen to accident compensation under any National Government.

New Zealanders want a fair, just, and universal accident compensation scheme and I am proud to be part of a Government that is working to make it more responsive to those needs every day. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

PANSY WONG (National) : The public should be very concerned about the affordability of the accident compensation scheme in the future, under the Labour Government. Tonight, for the first time, I am pleased to share with the public that the Minister for ACC, the Hon Maryan Street, has admitted that, after nearly 9 years of incompetent management by Labour, the accident compensation scheme is at risk. Let me quote what she said at the launch of the book Blood on the Coal: “… when we look at the forecasts, which show injury rates are getting much larger and at a frightening rate. ACC figures from recent years show that: … Claim numbers are rising steadily. … Costs per claim are rising faster than inflation. … Serious injury costs are rising even more and account for about 56% of scheme costs. … Road injuries are a major concern, with casualties rising and hospitalisations still high.” The Minister for ACC has admitted to the public that, after 9 years of incompetent management, the affordability of the accident compensation scheme cannot be guaranteed in the future.

National opposes this Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2), because it fails to deliver the stated purpose of the legislation, which is to maintain a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme by reducing the incidence and impact of personal injury. We will go through the three major provisions, and then we will look at which part of those provisions will indeed deliver the stated purpose of being fair and sustainable.

One of the major changes introduced is that claims will be allowed for those who witness or who are exposed to a sudden traumatic event during the course of their employment. The estimated cost of this provision, according to the bureaucrats, ranges anywhere from $7.6 million to $72.2 million. Any other accountants, financial analysts, who provided anybody with that type of estimate would have their case chucked out. The range is from $7.6 million to $72.2 million.

Submitter after submitter came in front of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and said that people who are exposed to a sudden traumatic event in the course of their employment should be able to make a claim. For example, we were talking about a bank clerk who had witnessed a colleague being shot—and, by the way, may I remind the public that after a total of 9 years of failed law and order management under Labour, that event will not to be a one-off event; indeed, it will happen quite often. That bank clerk should be able to make a claim, but what happens to individual members of the public who happened to be doing their banking for domestic purposes and who witnessed the same event? They would not be entitled to the same treatment.

When two firefighters attend the same traumatic event, the paid firefighter can claim, but the volunteer firefighter cannot. Where is the fairness in that? Diligent members, like National Party members—because we are the only ones who sit and ask these questions at the select committee—asked the intelligent question as to why this Government, which says it cares for New Zealanders so much, is not looking into extending the same treatment to people who are exposed to the same traumatic event at the same time but who have not witnessed it in the course of their employment. Oh well, we were told by the Government that it was too expensive. When one New Zealander’s life—apparently, in Labour’s book—is more valuable than another New Zealander’s life, I ask where the fairness is in that.

Hon Damien O’Connor: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not like doing this, and I intend no offence to the member, but I have trouble hearing. The sound in here is actually hurting my ears, because there is something wrong with the sound system. I think it should be better moderated.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I thank Mr O’Connor for bringing that matter to my attention. We will see what we can do.

PANSY WONG: I am will not apologise for feeling quite emotional and passionate in arguing against the Labour Government treating the lives of New Zealanders as if they have different values. When a person witnesses a traumatic event in the course of employment, he or she gets compensation, but a volunteer firefighter will not be subject to the same treatment.

The reason Labour is quite happy to introduce this provision is that the cost of the levy—the payout—would be imposed on the employers’ account and the self-employed work account. So where employers and self-employers are concerned, Labour is very happy to say “thou shall pay”, but when it comes to the general fund that is paid for by the taxpayer, Labour says: “Wow, it is too expensive. We will not do that.” Where is the fairness in that? Just because employers and the self-employed are made to pay for their levies, the Labour Government will be generous. But when it comes to the Government having to pay for claims from the general fund, which it cannot use to waste on other areas, then it believes it is too expensive. Where is the fairness in that? This is outrageous. Submitter after submitter asked why this Government is treating New Zealanders as if their lives had different values, and I think the Government has a lot to answer for.

Another issue that I feel very passionate about and outraged against is the second major provision, whereby this bill removes the disentitlement for wilfully self-inflicted injury. This bill is telling people that compensation will be available in respect of suicide and self-inflicted injury. If anybody else were to go out to incite that type of activity, then New Zealanders would feel outraged. This is an evening when New Zealanders will feel very angry that this Government is removing the provision that sends the message that the accident compensation scheme is for injury where victims forgo their right to sue and, therefore, the compensation is there. In the case of a self-inflicted injury, if there is a mental illness involved, then National has no problem with extending the entitlement. But to extend the entitlement to compensation to situations where there is a lack of proof that a mental illness is involved is outrageous.

The third provision is to change to the process of claiming for a work-related gradual process injury. The estimate of that cost ranges between $58 million and $124 million. Once again, just because the levy—the cost—is borne by employers and the self-employed, the Labour Government has no respect towards that burden. It just says: “What does it matter whether it is $58 million or $124 million?”. It has not even applied some diligence to ensure that the cost is accurate, rather than being within such a broad range. So this bill will further endanger the affordability of the accident compensation scheme, and it will certainly endanger fairness in terms of the treatment of future claimants and members of the public under the scheme.

Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) : The bankruptcy of the National Party in terms of policy on anything other than “it will cost money” was just portrayed in that speech. When New Zealanders gave up the right to sue, they expected to have an accident compensation system that would compensate them for it. But thanks to the National Party, and people like Bill Birch and Pansy Wong, they destroyed that system, privatised it, and took away the entitlements that New Zealanders expected. They would do it again if they had the chance, and Pansy Wong has just showed that.

We would expect Pansy Wong now to be walking to the Table with an amendment. Her speech, or much of it, was about how unfair it was to deal with the workers out there who came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and told us about the traumatic mental injuries they had suffered as a result of their work. Pansy Wong’s logic, and the National Party’s logic, is that it is not fair to do that because we are not going to be compensating a person who is not at work. If the National Party is to be believed, and logic were followed by the National Party, its members would not be voting against this. They would be amending it to cover all those people whom Pansy Wong says she is really feeling very sorry for, such as the person who is in the bank doing his or her domestic banking and witnesses a bank robbery. Pansy Wong says that person should be covered. It is unfair that the person behind the counter who has a gun pointed at him or her will receive accident compensation for mental trauma, if he or she has a mental trauma, but the person watching from outside, who walked in to do his or her banking, is not covered. The National Party is so appalled by this that it wants to see it changed. Well, when is Pansy Wong going to put up that amendment? Never. Pansy Wong and the National Party members in the select committee voted against it, they voted against it in the House, and they will vote against it right the way through because they have no interest in fairness.

Let us listen to what we were told. A train driver who came to the select committee, a very brave man, suffered the terrible tragedy of a young person throwing himself in front of the train that he was driving. He was unable to stop, and that person was killed. He had to stop working. He took a long time to recover. He received no accident compensation, as a result. He went back to work and—members will not believe this—it happened to him again. He is now no longer able to work, and he is unable to get accident compensation. Because he has no earnings like he used to have, he cannot afford to get out of his house. He lives next to the railway lines, and he has to listen to those trains going back and forth every day of his life. The National Party will vote against him getting compensation under this scheme, because Pansy Wong says it is not fair. Well, members should try and figure that one out. If there is any logic in that, I will go “he”.

National’s position has nothing to do with fairness. Its position is purely based on the fact that the insurance industry that National represents is dying to get its hands on the scheme again, like it did last time—to wreck the scheme like it did last time. Well, I have told National that it should not go there, because that will put our costs up too much. I say to Dr Mapp that we can prove it. We know who wrote National’s accident compensation policy last time, and they will do it again this time. National will dutifully follow it because that is the way National members always operate. Whoever pays National writes its policy—that is how it works. Labour members have read all about it and we know what happens; we have seen it before.

I sat through the urgency debates in this House and watched the people from HIH sitting up there giving National members the hand signals of what to do. What happened to the people from HIH? They were the worst crooks ever; they wrecked the system in Australia. That is who owns the National Party—it is those sorts of people.

One of the other examples that I think should be read out here relates to coalminer and Engineering, Printing and Manufacturers Union member John Stone. In 1991 John Stone was buried alive for 20 hours in the cab of his mining vehicle, after the mine that he was working in collapsed. Despite suffering ongoing trauma and not being able to continue to work underground after the experience, he has not been able to access accident compensation for loss of earnings or to pay for counselling. National is going to vote against people like him getting that in the future. What John Stone and the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturers Union are saying is that the payment will not be able to be backdated, but that we should make sure it does not happen again.

Pansy Wong sat there and pretended that she was really concerned about that train driver, as did the other National Party members—oh yes, they were sympathetic, they were empathetic, and they said that it was terrible—but they are voting against the bill. That is the truth of the matter. National members should hang their heads in shame, because they are saying to that guy, and to Mr Stone, that they do not like the bill, that it is unfair, and that they are going to vote against it because not everybody in the world can get it. What utter nonsense!

They will also be voting against older people getting access to rehabilitation, and I know that Peter Brown will talk about this in his speech. Mr Brown is very hot on this issue of over-65s who continue to work in this country and make a contribution. Labour wants them to be able to make that contribution by having access to rehabilitation, and the National Party will be voting against them, as well. National members will say that that is unfair, and that somebody will have to pay for it. Well, that is what accident compensation is about: spreading the cost across the whole of society so that it does not cost individuals their livelihoods, their houses, and their families. And it does not cost the average New Zealander a lot, whether he or she is an employee or an employer, because we spread the cost fairly, and our system is much more cost-efficient than anything one will find elsewhere in the world.

Members should look across to Australia. Australian politicians were here this week, asking us how we did it—how we got this wonderful accident compensation scheme and how we made sure we got it through the political system. Well, we used to have a National Party with members who had some principles, but they are gone. National members pretend they are people of principle, but if they were people of principle they would put aside that nonsense about the bill being unfair and they would vote for it.

Then Pansy Wong stands up and says how shocking it is that people who currently have an injury due to mental illness and are eligible for accident compensation should not continue to get that. So National will be voting against that, as well. National members think a whole lot of people out there deliberately self-inflict injuries at work so that they can get compensation. They do not understand the system, they do not understand people, and they have no concept of humanity. Anybody can understand that when one does serious injury to oneself, one has mental health problems. National wants to deny that, and to have a system that puts those people up against the system to prove it, when we on this side of the Chamber all know, as do people out there who are practitioners in accident compensation, that that is an unnecessary process. It will not cost any more than it costs now, so why are National members voting against it? National members are saying it is a signal for people to go out and hurt themselves. For goodness’ sake! What century do those members live in? Do those members understand mental health issues, or do they just pretend that they have some concern?

I look at Dr Paul Hutchison, who has medical training. He knows what I say is the truth, and he will have to put his conscience aside and vote with his National colleagues against that part. He knows that he is wrong in doing so. As somebody who has worked as a health professional for many years, he knows that people do not self-inflict to get compensation, and that there is something of a mental health problem there that leads to that sort of behaviour. For National to pretend otherwise, I find despicable. For those arguments to be put up in the way that Pansy Wong did, I find despicable. It is absolutely wrong to say that people will go out and self-inflict so that they can get compensation. It is time that National got out of that mind-set, came into the modern world, and understood those issues. If National members ever wanted to convince people that they are worthy of Government, they have just proved why they should not be in Government.

National is opposing the train drivers, coalminers, and truckdrivers who came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and said: “Please don’t let this happen to others in the future. Please undo the wrong.” But National members will sit there and vote against it. They will say to elderly people that they do not care about their rehabilitation, they will say to the mental health community that National will put their cause back 100 years, and they will say to workers who have a gradual process injury that, no, they should not get looked after, either. Well, we know what National did to accident compensation last time it was in Government. It attempted to wreck it. It privatised it. It downgraded the system as much as it could get away with. Let us not have this country make that mistake again, and let us not allow National ever to get near this again. Members should look at what National is doing now. It is voting against progressive policies that 99.9 percent of New Zealanders know are fair.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) : Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2). We have heard a somewhat high-minded tirade of moralising from the previous speaker, Mr Gosche. One must ask why it has taken 8½ long years before this moralising morass that is left of the Labour Government has finally brought in this unfortunate amendment to the legislation. Those members get very heated up and very moralistic, but it has taken them until the zenith hours of the dying Labour Government before finally getting around to bringing in this legislation.

The reasons that National is not supporting this bill are manifold. It has not been well thought out. It is, undoubtedly, inequitable. Different groups of people are treated in different ways, and there is no doubt that there are, clearly, disadvantages for the employer as compared to the general taxpayer. There is no doubt also that this legislation blurs the margins between injuries caused by accidents and other medical conditions, and it is extremely poorly costed. I was not on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, but I did speak in the first reading debate on this bill last November. I was appalled to read just how wide the costings were in various aspects of the bill. In fact, it was estimated originally that the total claims for witnesses who are exposed to a sudden traumatic event during the course of employment could cost between $7.6 million and $72.2 million—ten times as much. There is a variation of up to ten times as much in terms of what the reality of the costing of this bill might be, and that is just indicative of how little a hold on reality this dying Labour Government has. That is the problem. It is all very well to have a high-minded, moralising Mr Gosche come into this House, but then we see that the reality is a variation of up to 10 times the cost.

It is all very well for Mr Gosche to go on, but 9 years ago the Labour Government said it would raise New Zealand into the top half of the OECD. Instead, what has happened? We have gone down—sadly—two slots in the OECD rankings during the tenure of this Labour Government, and it is more and more difficult to afford the high-quality health, education, and social welfare services that most New Zealanders would like to enjoy. There is no doubt that this, again, is an example of one of the realities of why under Labour it is not possible for that to happen.

As well as that, together with the changes to the cover for work-related, gradual process disease or infection and changes to weekly compensation, the estimated cost varies between $58 million and $123.7 million. Once again the reality check that should be put on the Labour Government is sadly and absolutely lacking. No wonder the Labour Government has failed New Zealand! No wonder the Labour Government has brought New Zealand down two notches into the lowest quartile of the OECD rankings for per capita income! That is the sort of thing we should be focusing on—indeed, that is what a new National Government will be focusing on. The purpose of this bill is said to be the maintenance of a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme, but there is no doubt that with those sorts of costings, sustainability of the scheme is all but impossible.

I think it was Mr Gosche who talked about the origins of our accident compensation scheme in New Zealand, which actually occurred under a National Government in the 1970s. He was quite right when he said that New Zealanders had to give up something when the scheme was brought in, and that was their right to sue. No political party that I know of would like to bring that back, but it is important to realise that that inability to sue does come at significant cost.

I can think of a young Queenstown businessman, the father of three children, who had an unfortunate accident. He was paralysed and now he is in a wheelchair. He had put most of his money into his business so he was not bringing in much of an income, which means that for the rest of his life he is destined to get 80 percent of the fairly low wage he received at that time, and he has three young children to look after. The point, clearly, is that the loss of the right to sue is very significant, and it is very important that New Zealand is able to sustain a high growth rate—something we have certainly not seen under this Labour Government.

I was fascinated to read the submission from New Zealand Steel on this bill. I was particularly interested to read that company’s submission because it is well known for being a very good employer. It has 1,200 local employees and about 5,000 employees around New Zealand. Among those local employees in four parts of New Zealand, including Port Waikato—an area I am very proud to represent—the average wage is $90,000. New Zealand Steel is well known for its great efforts to make the workplace safe and to ensure fairness in its dealings with its workforce.

Why does New Zealand Steel say about clauses 5 to 9, which deal with the cover for work-related mental injury? It says: “We oppose these clauses as they significantly increase the scope of cover offered by the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act 2001. Furthermore, the proposals offer an increased level of cover, but only to one group of levy payers—those funded by employers. This creates further inconsistencies in the recognition of a condition suffered by an individual. If an individual suffers a mental injury from witnessing a traumatic event whilst in the course of their employment, they will be covered. However, if another individual witnesses the same event but are not in paid employment or not at work at the time, they will not be covered.”

There is no doubt that this is the sort of inconsistency that the Labour Government is only too ready to perpetrate. Firstly, we have seen its wildly varying costings. Secondly, we have seen its total lack of reality—the absolutely unreal grip it has. Thirdly, of course, there is inconsistency and inequity throughout this bill. I refer now to clause 10. What did what New Zealand Steel said about that? It said: “The proposed changes remove all onus of proof from an individual claimant in terms of justifying whether a claim is work-related or not.” It said: “Given that gradual processes claims are not covered for non-work exposures, there are significant incentives for both individual claimants and their medical practitioners to have gradual processes claims accepted as being work-related”. They say: “It is virtually impossible to investigate a person’s non-work environment without encroaching on an individual’s right to privacy.”

There is no doubt that when there is a clear base of evidence behind work-related disease, it is clearly justified. But this is a blurring of the margins. And when we have the example of a good employer such as New Zealand Steel pointing out the practical problems of this totally impractical bill that Labour is bringing into the House, we are forced to oppose it.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : I listened intently to the member who has just resumed his seat, because I know that when he was the National spokesperson on accident compensation he shared the concerns about accident victims that New Zealand First had. He had a good deal more compassion then than he displayed in that contribution. He spoke about the “reality”. Well, the reality is that there are accident victims in our society, they are hurting, and they are not being looked after well enough. This bill goes some way towards addressing those issues. I have to say to the honourable member who has just resumed his seat that it is much better, and of a much clearer, cleaner conscience for us, if we put a value on looking after accident victims as against putting a dollar value on paying for their circumstances. The member started his contribution by giving the clear impression that the dollar was much more important than the people it was paid out to.

Ron Mark: Typical National.

PETER BROWN: I have to say that in the way that that party is going, it is becoming typical National.

David Bennett: Oh, get over it, Peter.

PETER BROWN: The honourable member David Bennett raised his voice there; I heard the melodious tones. But I say to that member that I guarantee he supports private insurers. I guarantee it. I have noted his attitude in this House and at the select committee, and he would like workplace compensation and compensation paid for and funded by private insurers. I tell the member that this bill is about coverage and entitlements, and the private insurers would go along with this.

David Bennett: Think about it.

PETER BROWN: The member sits there harping on, but private insurers have told me they will give better coverage than accident compensation. They would embrace all of this willingly.

Dr Wayne Mapp: That’s exactly right—

PETER BROWN: The member Wayne Mapp acknowledges that, but he takes exception because the Accident Compensation Corporation has the monopoly. Well, we say loud and clear to Mr Mapp that we have an accident compensation system in this country to cover accident victims, and we want it to be as good for the accident victims as we possibly can make it. [Interruption] I say to that member who is yelling and screaming that he would not be able to put two, two, two words together to make sense out of this bill.

David Bennett: Toot, toot, toot!

PETER BROWN: The member sits there making a joke, but I am sure he was on the select committee when a train driver came before the committee to outline his concerns about an accident and its effects on him.

David Bennett: Why don’t you make it retrospective, then?

PETER BROWN: Would the member support that? We will put a Supplementary Order Paper up if the National Party tells us it will support it. There is silence. We will put up a Supplementary Order Paper if the member will say he will support it. We will make it retrospective. Even Labour is thinking about it. I ask him to give us an answer about whether he would support a Supplementary Order Paper from us to make it retrospective. Will he support it? I think the answer is no.

Dr Wayne Mapp: Will your mates support it?

PETER BROWN: I got more of an indication from them than from National members who are asking me to make it retrospective. I think anybody in this Parliament would have been moved had he or she sat in the select committee when that train driver made a submission. It brought water to my eyes. That is the only way I can describe it. I felt the moisture not only coming out of my eyes but running down my cheeks. I am not a man who easily succumbs to that sort of thing.

Dr Paul Hutchison: Oh yes, you are. You’re a softie.

PETER BROWN: I see my old accident compensation colleague there, Paul Hutchison, interjecting. I guarantee he would have been taken aback by this man’s submission. He spoke genuinely and he outlined the circumstances. It was actually a very sad event that he witnessed. In fact, it was more than one event that he witnessed. It is only right and proper that a system like accident compensation covers individuals like him. [Interruption] We are doing our best to do that, I say to Mr Bennett.

The other point I would like to make is that this bill goes some way towards giving coverage—if that is the right word—to people who are aged over 65 and who are currently in the workforce. Currently, 12 percent, or thereabouts, of New Zealanders are over 65, and many of them work. That percentage will increase as time goes on. We are an ageing population, and I think that figure is forecast to reach 25 percent by the year 2050. More and more of those New Zealanders will be required, or need, to work not only for their own advancement but, more important, to provide the essential services that New Zealanders require. This bill does not go far enough in addressing the concerns of those folk.

Age Concern has put in a brilliant submission, and I am disappointed that my Labour Party colleagues could not take it on board to give it a little more thought and consideration. I know that it touched them, but they stuck with the basic clauses in the bill.

This is an issue that sooner or later we parliamentarians will have to face. We have an ageing population and we need more and more of those people to work, to continue working, and to do essential tasks, and we need to give them better accident compensation cover. I can recall a nurse coming to see me. She was well into her 70s, although one would not have thought it to look at her. She was a night nurse and had had an accident caused by lifting patients in the middle of the night. The accident put her off work. She was covered by accident compensation and was told she needed to be operated on. I think the accident affected her knee. She did not make the recovery from the operation in the short term that she was expected to and was left high and dry on superannuation. As we well know, people who are over 65 in that situation get either one or the other. If they get accident compensation they do not get superannuation. It is one or the other. It does not apply to anybody else in society, but if one is over 65—I think there is a year’s running in—then it is one or the other.

Dr Wayne Mapp: No one can actually get superannuation other than people over 65.

PETER BROWN: The member is exactly right, but other people can get an income from other sources and it does not get stopped. The point I am making is that these people paid their taxes to get superannuation and they paid their premiums to cover them against accidents, and their employers paid their premiums to get accident compensation, yet in our wisdom we stop one or the other. We give people over 65 the choice. We tell them they can have this or they can have that. That is not fair. People pay tax, levies, and what have you, to get entitlements, and that is not fair. I think Wayne Mapp is suddenly beginning to agree with me. I made a technical mistake, but he is recognising that the principle I am outlining now is correct. I just say to Mr Mapp that he has no hope in respect of his colleague David Bennett at the back. He needs to take him aside and give him some good, solid political education. There is no hope for the guy. He is an accident victim in his own self.

New Zealand First is quite pleased with this bill—not totally pleased, but we will be supporting it all the way.

SUE BRADFORD (Green) : The Green Party supports the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) being read a second time, as we recognise the steps it takes towards having a fairer accident compensation scheme for this country. However, the bill does not go anywhere near as far as the Green Party would like in terms of making accident compensation once again the fair, equitable, no-faults scheme that Sir Owen Woodhouse once upon a time envisioned. It is actually a rather timid little bill in its own way.

I am pleased that the new provisions relating to workplace mental injury cover have been clarified by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to ensure that cover will be extended to claimants who suffer mental injury as a result of witnessing a succession of closely related events in the workplace, or who encounter a traumatic workplace scene even though they did not witness the event or events that gave rise to that scene. However, I am disappointed that the select committee did not take on board the concerns of those submitters who put forward the view that cover should also extend to those who suffer mental injury as a result of a series of workplace events, or, in the parlance of the Act, as a result of “gradual process”. That creates a major inequity.

An employee who suffers a mental injury as a result of witnessing one death in his or her workplace will receive cover. An employee who suffers mental injury as a result of a cumulative effect of witnessing a series of deaths in the workplace over a period of time—as may happen with emergency workers or health professionals, for example—will not. That is simply unfair.

The Green Party does not accept the view expressed in the select committee report that difficulties in determining causation, and particularly in establishing that the mental injury was caused by factors in the work environment, is a reason to exclude from cover mental injury caused by gradual process. These difficulties are not significantly greater than those encountered in working out whether a physical injury is caused by work-related gradual process. In making a decision on the balance of probabilities as to causation, it is a matter of seeking expert opinion from appropriately qualified health professionals. Although this may involve a psychiatrist as well as an occupational medicine specialist providing expert medical opinion in the case of mental injury, these so-called difficulties are far from insurmountable.

More telling is the comment of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee report that “The effect of extending cover to gradual process work-related mental injuries would be significant increases in employer levies.” Once again, we see equity and fairness to people who suffer injuries sacrificed in the interests of minimising employer levies. The flip side of that argument is that employers will continue to have no financial incentive to minimise hazards likely to cause gradual process mental injuries in their workplaces—most notably workplace stress—because the incidence of such injuries will still have no impact on the levies that they pay.

The Green Party shares the concerns regarding the position of older people in the workforce who are injured that were raised particularly by the New Zealand First minority view in the select committee report. The amendment that the Minister is proposing in a Supplementary Order Paper will address that concern, at least in part, by ensuring that claimants approaching the age limits for weekly compensation will not be discriminated against in the provision of vocational rehabilitation on the basis that, because of their age, vocational rehabilitation will not be cost-effective. However, the amendment does nothing to address the blatant discrimination in the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act 2001 that disentitles injured people to weekly compensation on account of their qualification for New Zealand superannuation. The Green Party believes that the accident compensation scheme should provide equitable compensation for all injured people, and the age discrimination that remains in the Act is a matter that needs urgent attention.

Furthermore, the bill continues to fail to address the inability of injured people who were non-earners at the time of the injury to access vocational rehabilitation. These are the forgotten people under the accident compensation scheme—injured people who are left to languish for years on a social security benefit because neither accident compensation nor Work and Income has the capability to provide them with the rehabilitation they require to return to the workforce or get into it in the first place.

I am pleased that the select committee majority has recommended that clause 17 of the bill be passed. The vocational independence assessment process completely disentitles a person to weekly compensation if he or she is found to be capable of working 35 hours a week in some occupation for which he or she is qualified or experienced. This is another unfair aspect of the way the accident compensation scheme operates. I am aware of many claimants with well-paid pre-incapacity employment who have been shunted off weekly compensation because they were assessed as capable of doing some menial job that paid little above the minimum wage. Clause 17 of this bill will at least ensure that claimants’ pre-incapacity earnings are taken into account when assessing whether an occupation is suitable under the vocational independence assessment process.

The Green Party would go further. We would abolish the vocational independence assessment completely. It is unnecessary. The requirement to look for suitable employment can be included as a part of claimants’ individual rehabilitation plans, and a claimant who fails to seek suitable employment can be disentitled to weekly compensation on that basis. We do not think it is fair or reasonable that claimants lose their compensation when work may be suitable for them but is not available to them.

The Green Party supports this bill because it makes some progress towards improving the accident compensation scheme. It is one step further forward from National’s disastrous gutting of the accident compensation scheme in the 1990s. However, there remains a long way to go before we have an accident compensation scheme that returns to the principles of community responsibility, comprehensive entitlement, complete rehabilitation, real compensation, and administrative efficiency that was Sir Owen Woodhouse’s vision all those years ago.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) : It is a pleasure to rise and speak to the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2). We are seeing from Labour members classic fear tactics with regard to their arguments in support of this legislation. They are trying to create fear in the public’s mind that the National Party is out there to change the way we engage in looking after vulnerable people in the workplace, and that the National Party is not there to look after all members of our society. Well, that is not true. The Labour Party constantly brings up this fear tactic at election time. It preys on the weakness of people’s inhibitions about what can or cannot happen in an election campaign. It fights campaigns on fear, on mistrust, and on trying to take advantage of people’s unknown futures.

Well, let us think about this for a second. If the Labour Party was so fair and principled, it would be doing what the Green Party has been talking about doing. If Labour wanted to cover the full ambit of this legislation, it would not cover just those who sustained a mental injury in a work situation, it would cover those who witnessed the cause of the injury, and it would cover those injured retrospectively, as well, in that period of time where there had been no coverage. But, no, Labour will not do that. It will not stand for its principles. Labour members go out there creating only more fear. They go out there saying they have done something about this in year 9—it has taken them 9 years. If these people are the people they actually wanted to look after, why has it taken those members 9 years?

Why has it taken the Labour Government 9 years to look after its own people? It is because Labour members do not care. They just want to win elections. Michael Cullen has told us that; that is all they are interested in. This is just something they can go on the hustings to say they have done—at the eleventh hour. They will probably take the provisions away next year, anyway. It will be like those tax cuts—here today, gone tomorrow. The provisions will not be around. The Labour Party has no principles. It is desperate to get back into Government, and it will do anything, any time, anywhere this year to get that place. It is unfair. It is unfair on New Zealanders, because New Zealanders trust in this institution. They expect that the Government of the day will act in the best interests of all New Zealanders. They do not expect a Government that just acts for political expediency, and that is what the Labour Government does. This is political expediency from Labour, because all the examples that came before the select committee—and there were some very touching examples—are not covered by this legislation. The people who were the examples of what the Labour Party says it wants to cover will not actually be helped by this legislation.

Darien Fenton: Oh, they will so!

DAVID BENNETT: They will not, because this legislation is not retrospective, and it will not help those people who stood in front of the select committee and told their stories. Those stories were just for Labour members to go out and use in their presentation of fear tactics, over the next election campaign. That is all they were after; they were not after helping those people.

Sue Moroney: Rubbish!

DAVID BENNETT: They were not. They are not going to help them. Those people who came before the select committee will get nothing out of this bill, because this bill will not help them. That is the reality of what is going on in this legislation.

This is legislation that even the select committee knew had some serious flaws. There are some real questions about the differential between being in employment and not being in employment. There is the question of what we do with someone, like a visitor to a worksite, who sees something happen that could cause mental injury. Such people are not covered, are they? There are all these gaps in the legislation that the Labour members did not deal with. If they really wanted fairness, if they really wanted equity, and if they really wanted to provide for people who had mental injury, they would have covered the whole ambit. But, no—they know it would cost too much to do that. They would not do that. They have put a different price on somebody’s mental injury depending on whether the person was in or out of work. They have put a different price on somebody’s mental injury depending on whether the person was a visitor to a worksite or somebody who worked there. They have put a different price on the mental injuries of somebody who was a volunteer compared with somebody who was an employee.

Labour has put different prices on the same mental injury because of one thing—because they are only looking after paying back the people who support them. This legislation is payback for the unions. That is why it deals only with employment. It does not cover volunteers or visitors, because they are not covered by the unions. That is what this legislation is about. It is another payback for their old supporters who need to see something as we go into an election campaign. That is the Labour Party for us! If those members were really principled, generous, and looking after people who had suffered a mental injury, they would cover all those other situations. They would not limit the legislation to just those in employment. They would not worry about the size of the cheque book. Labour members say they are there for people. They say they are there for people with a mental injury, so why do they limit that by cheque book size? What cheque book size can they put on those mental injuries? That is what Labour members have done. They have gone out there and they have blatantly chosen whom they want to support. They have picked the groups. They have not gone out there and supported everyone who has had a mental injury, and then they have come into this House and talked about fairness. They have talked about policy. Well, let us see some Labour Party policy that is fair and equitable and just, because that is not what we are getting in this case. What we are getting in this case is a payback for Labour’s mates—and they are not even paying back the ones who were injured and are now suffering, and who came before the select committee. They will be paying back some people in the future—some taxpayer in the future who will earn some money in this country before leaving to go to Australia. That is who they want to pay back, in some foregone vision of New Zealand.

Let us get to the reality. The reality is that if they are to be so visionary, they will have to extend the legislation to cover all circumstances. If those members want to be so visionary and do that, then they will have to cover those other costs. But they cannot even work out what the costs of being in employment will be. So how will they work out the cost of including all other situations? They simply cannot do it, and they know they cannot do it. This bill is just some ploy for them in an election campaign. It has taken them 9 years to get to that ploy, but it is too little, too late, and it does not help the people who need it.

If we look at the cost of this piece of legislation, we see that it is not spread fairly. The cost is all on the employer. Why would members, if they are in the Labour Party, put the cost on to the employer? Because they do not care about those people. They do not care that they are the people who actually make this country strong by building the businesses and giving the jobs. Labour members do not care that employers are taxpayers who go out there and build businesses that keep New Zealand strong. Those members do not care about that if they are in the Labour Party. They just see employers as things they can kick around and tax, and then they put more charges and costs on to their businesses.

Labour members are reaping the rewards of that approach now, because in the world economy some things are going dog for the Labour Party. Those members can talk about fuel prices and the cost of commodities—and it is true that they are going up around the world—but this Government’s economic management has meant that it has not delivered a strong economy to get through these hard times. They have kicked businesses around, as they are kicking them around again in this piece of legislation, and the payback is coming now. We are seeing greater unemployment, high interest rates, and an economy that is slowing incredibly.

A lot of New Zealanders are hurting, and they are hurting because the Government does not care about all New Zealanders. It does not care about business; it cares only about so-called employees. It does not care about volunteers. The Government does not care about people who go on to a work site and are injured, but then it puts a price on mental injury. That is its price of caring. This Government is not there for all New Zealanders. This Government is there for the groups it wants to have at election time. This legislation did not even cover the people who came before the select committee, and that is a disgrace. It is a disgrace to the Labour Party and a disgrace to this Government.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tātou kua hui mai i tēnei pō. On first impressions, the purpose of this bill is pretty good. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee suggested that the amendments will maintain a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme by reducing the incidence and impact of personal injury. This is an excellent objective, which, I believe, would find support right around this House. Yet a comment was made in the submissions presented to the select committee by Phillippa Martin of the Support Network for the Aldehyde and Solvent Affected (NZ) Ltd, which, I think, must be given some serious consideration. That comment was that the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) has developed a culture of denial. I will say it again—a culture of denial. It is a fairly hard-line comment to make. A culture of denial is like an alcoholic who is determined to deny he or she has a drinking problem, or like a perpetrator of domestic violence who is set on making excuses for his or her aggression. A culture of denial is what we might like to talk about when we fail to recognise that it is institutional racism that is restricting opportunities for persons of colour. We could say that a culture of denial might well represent the catastrophe of climate change, like a nation walking head first into an energy-depleted future, ignoring the inevitable warning signs along the way.

How could such a strong concept apply in the case of work-related injuries and vocational rehabilitation? The recommendation from Phillippa Martin was that the ACC mindset must change from finding every means to stop paying out on valid claims to finding every means to affirm a claim of honesty. In many respects this sums up the Māori experience of injury prevention, rehabilitation, and compensation: denial of entitlements, denial of access to information, and denial of opportunities. It is all well and good that there are mechanisms in place that supposedly cover work-related injuries, compensation eligibility, and the processes around vocational rehabilitation and independence. All workers have a right to expect that their workplaces, the work they do, and the people they work for and with are not compromising their health. Keeping people safe and healthy within their paid and voluntary work environment should be a right and not a privilege. Yet for far too many tangata whenua such protections are anything but automatic.

My experience is that the ACC is the hōhā of a Māori MP’s life. Far too many people come across our paths with anecdotes of the frustrations they have experienced in trying to swim through the maze of processes that are often too long and drawn out. For many of our constituents life appears to be about barriers and obstacles emerging on a regular basis. Last November Dr Fiona Cram released her report on occupational safety and health, which revealed what most of our constituents tell us. It revealed that awareness and monitoring of occupational safety and health issues for Māori is sorely lacking. Why should this be? Well, what we all know is that the patterns of occupational segregation tend to maintain Māori in more high-risk employment. The jobs that hit the all-time high-risk stakes are in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, and forestry—all areas in which Māori are overrepresented.

Then there is the shift work industry, where, again, Māori and Pasifika workers exist in high numbers. Shift work, as those who have done it know, is, to be blunt, the pits. If members stay late in this place they will hear the real stories of workplace risk from the Māori and Pasifika all-star cast that cleans these buildings and keeps these buildings secure, locks up afterwards, turns down the lights, and then gets ready to do it all over again for another day ahead. Actually, their voices should have been invited to this debate to tell us about another reality: the reality of broken sleep, obesity, hypertension, ulcers, heart disease, diabetes, and other disorders that simply come with the trade, with the job—and all for minimum rates of pay. In fact, in 2004 the National Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Committee detailed the full range of work-related disorders associated with shift work, such as the factors I mentioned earlier, and including psychological and relationship disorders, less time with family and friends, and eating habits being broken. Shift workers are unable to commit to any other interest—to being at school concerts or for child care, even. Their body clocks are stuffed. I am thinking about nurses, prison officers, night-duty reporters, fire officers, police, and accident and emergency workers. The ironic thing is that many of these professions are in fact our essential industries. They are areas where we expect workers to have their full wits about them. Then there are the workers in the hospitality industry, people looking after heavy-duty machinery, people stocking supermarket shelves, road markers, or those deep sea fishing crews trawling through the oceans for months at a time.

I have taken a bit of time to look at these issues to do with the culture of denial because we believe that, no matter what changes are made to the compensation framework, if the vital issues of access, participation, and outcomes for Māori are not taken into particular account, then progress will inevitably be limited. With the Māori Party’s support, changes are being made regarding work-related mental injury, and we support the intention for the cover to help ensure appropriate treatment and to facilitate rehabilitation.

The Māori Party is pleased to endorse any developments that seek to improve access to compensation for some disenfranchised groups, such as seasonal casual workers, those in non-standard work, those mentally injured by trauma, those between work, and young people who are injured. But the single crucial issue for us is that if people are taxed and levied for accident compensation cover and are then denied their entitlements, then we can hardly call this a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme. It would seem that there are still some technical issues within the bill that serve to deny entitlements to those who really need it the most. As an example, we were interested in the submission from the Human Rights Commission, which drew attention to the test of proving whether a mental injury is “reasonably expected”—a test that is not applied to physical injury. The commission saw this as being unjustifiably discriminatory and, in effect, establishing an extra hurdle for people suffering mental injury.

We support the intent of the bill in making the assessment easier to understand, allowing earlier access to minimum weekly compensation, and increasing the rate of compensation. These are all positive steps in the right direction. But again, it comes down to the spirit and intent of the five founding Woodhouse principles, which would suggest that further improvements to the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act are needed to give full effect to the spirit of the legislation. The bottom line is that we know that Māori tend to present late across all conditions and outcomes of workplace injury. Workplace awareness, which is knowing they have a right to talk about their injuries, is vital. So, too, is having access to a case manager at the Accident Compensation Corporation who will work through the scenarios and answer questions such as: “What will I have to do?”, “Am I entitled to a cleaner?”, “Can I be transferred to lighter duties for the same pay?”, and “Can work point me in the direction of a physio?”. Far too many Māori stuck in low-paid work do not want to admit that they have an injury—that they are suffering from occupational overuse syndrome, backache, or even the impact of a trauma—because they fear that such honesty will lead to their dismissal.

We in this Parliament must confront the culture of denial head-on and realise that hazardous work conditions jeopardise workers’ health and safety. We must confront the reality that in 2003 Māori workers had the highest workplace injury claim rate and that most of these injuries are preventable. Why should we do this? Well, I will leave the last word to Dr John Broughton, who wrote the first comprehensive review of Māori injury. This comment is part of the context that makes us know why we must support this bill. He stated: “Although the frond will eventually die, it need not wither or die so soon or before its time.” Kia ora tātou.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) : I hope the House will bear with me; I think that I have caught Peter Brown’s bug—and now I know whom I caught it from. But it is a privilege to speak in the second reading of this bill, the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2). I believe that this bill goes to the heart of the differences between the values of Labour and those of National. Labour is committed to a world-leading, easy-to-access, no-fault accident compensation scheme, unlike the National Party, which wants to continue the wholesale destruction of New Zealanders’ rights that it perpetrated on the nation the last time it was in Government. It astounds me that the National Party can vote against this bill so heartlessly, particularly after hearing the testimony of the workers who came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and who have suffered mental injury in the course of their employment after witnessing horrific deaths or accidents while performing their work. Those workers deserve nothing less than the full sympathy and support of this Parliament.

Others have mentioned workers like Brownie Bristow of the Rail and Maritime Transport Union and Bruce Gardiner of Hamilton. I noticed that the member David Bennett from Hamilton did not mention Bruce Gardiner, and I wondered what he would be saying to him after the speech he made. Those workers came along courageously to the select committee to tell us their horrific stories and to tell us about the suffering they have had to endure since. Hundreds of workers are in a situation like theirs—the bank workers, shop workers, security guards and many others who have been mentioned. I pay tribute to those workers and to the many workers like them. They know that this bill will not make their own situations better, so I would say to those who have been criticising this bill because it is not retrospective that those workers were very, very clear that they wanted to make sure that this did not happen to anyone in the future. They were not concerned for themselves, and that is why they deserve the respect of this House.

The other significant part of this bill that I would like to traverse is one that has been somewhat overshadowed by the changes made to the work-related mental injury provisions. The bill makes important changes to accident compensation for casual and seasonal workers. That will be of benefit to the more than 400,000 people working in non-standard arrangements in a range of industries. From 1 August 2008 casual and seasonal workers’ long-term weekly compensation will be based on the workers’ earning periods, rather than on the 52 weeks before the injury, which often include non-earning periods.

Casual and seasonal workers work across many industries. The ones we are most familiar with are, of course, those in agriculture and in meat plants, but they also work in the retail, tourism, transport, and hospitality sectors. Some of our biggest companies employ seasonal labour—for example, Heinz-Wattie, Sealord’s, the meatworks, and the orchards. Every year the New Zealand fruit, vegetable, and wine industries employ thousands of seasonal workers, who harvest fruit, vegetables, and wine grapes. They pack and sort fruit and vegetables. They prune the fruit trees and the grape vines. They maintain the crops. Some plant vegetables and thin fruit—and the list goes on and on.

Being a casual or seasonal worker in the agriculture industry is not very much fun, actually. Those workers can be more prone than others to workplace injury, given the heavy nature of the work, the lack of experience, and the high turnover in an industry that struggles to find workers. I am thinking right now about the pack-houses throughout the Helensville electorate and about the workers whom I have met who are employed as seasonal workers. I find it quite shameful that their local MP, John Key, obviously has no idea what their jobs are like, otherwise the National Party would be supporting this bill.

One big question hangs over this whole debate, and it is one of those questions that John Key continues to fudge. If we look at National’s announced policies, which National members have been distributing proudly all around the place, we see that one of them says that National will provide choice for accident insurance in the workplace. I will make two comments about that statement. First of all, National has not moved from its old language. “Accident insurance” is what National called it in 1992 when it put in place the first steps towards privatisation, but that was just stage one. Stage two was when the previous National Government opened up the employers’ account to competition by privatising it through the Accident Insurance Act 1998. That Act deliberately set out to bring competition to aspects of the Accident Compensation Corporation’s business and to introduce insurance concepts and principles to the administration of the scheme.

Secondly, I want to address that word “choice”, which we hear a lot from the National Party. The last time that National promoted choice in accident compensation was in its 1998 accident compensation insurance bill, and we continue to hear about choice quite a lot from the National Opposition when it comes to talking about workers’ rights, health and education, and other social services. The word “choice” is one of those feel-good words that those members like to bandy about, but usually what it means is a cover-up for the removal of people’s rights. The word “choice” has a history to it of political philosophy that goes back to Adam Smith and, more recently, Hayek, Friedman, Reagan, and Thatcher. Choice is the Holy Grail of the free market ideologues, and there they are. They are still sitting there in the National Party, including Murray McCully, who was the prime promoter of choice in the 1998 Act.

But, as we all know, National’s choice goes only one way. The last time those members had their hands on our accident compensation scheme, the only choice was for employers, who could choose between insurers competing for business. There was no choice for injured workers. Workers were dependent on an insurance contract between their employer and an insurer that they were not even party to. I am sorry, but when a worker has an accident and is lying comatose on the factory floor, or when a worker has had a finger chopped off in a pack-house accident, he or she is not equipped to make a choice. Workers will not say to their boss that they would rather that the boss insured with a certain company or with another company. The invisible hand of the market does not work in that situation, and to be true to the Woodhouse principles, the accident compensation scheme, like other services, should be run for the public good.

Here we are, heading towards an election, with the National Party still seeing accident compensation and workers’ injuries and livelihoods as tradable commodities. National has been having secret meetings with business. In New Plymouth we saw National members chase the media out of the room, and tell them and the insurance industry that they would privatise accident compensation early in their first term of Government, should they get the chance. Private insurers are in business in order to make money for themselves, and they have a powerful incentive to influence the party that will provide that business. History shows us that the big insurance lobby influenced the National Party at the last election, and it is at it again. So let us beware of National members’ intentions. They dress up all kinds of things as choice, when they really mean the taking away of rights.

If National members will not come clean about their real intentions to privatise accident compensation, we will tell the people of New Zealand. We will go out and tell the workers of New Zealand that National will take away their rights to a fair accident compensation scheme, should it ever become the Government. No one wants to go back to those awful days. We want to continue to build on the gains that Labour has made. We have work to do to keep improving the lives of ordinary workers and their families, as this bill does. Labour is the only party with a plan to do so.

I will wind up there, because I do not think I can speak any more, but I will say this is a good day for New Zealand workers, and I congratulate the Minister, the Hon Maryan Street, on bringing this bill to the House.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Tourism) : I will take a short call to follow on from the good, wise words of my colleague Darien Fenton. This matter is something that I feel very passionate about. John Key has said that the National Party will offer choice if it were ever to get into power, and tonight we heard Paul Hutchison ask why a victim should not have the right to sue. Let us be clear here.

Dr Wayne Mapp: Rubbish!

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Yes, he said that. It was another backbencher letting the cat out of the bag. Let us be clear here. What we are doing tonight is improving what is a very, very good system of accident compensation internationally. This is one of the best—the envy of every First World country. For those people who drive and create the wealth in this country—those people in the rural areas—it is absolutely essential that they understand their choice as we come into the next election. It is quite clear in relation to accident compensation that with a Labour-led Government, people will get the continuation and the improvement of the accident compensation system, but with the National Party, people will get choice à la privatisation of accident compensation and a return of the right of victims to sue. That is what Mr Hutchison said, and that is what John Key has said. Well, people should go and ask anyone around the world—whether it be in Ireland or the US—what the right to sue does. It means that all the money gets chewed up in the law courts around the country and less and less money goes to the victims. It is really essential that we understand that.

People in this country have taken for granted for too long that it is just automatic that we get proper rehabilitation, that we get proper compensation while we are off work, because that is the way it is. Well, it is not. The thing is that this Labour Government came back into power and reinstated a comprehensive accident compensation system, because the previous National Government had attempted to privatise it. We had started to see a breakdown in accident compensation. There is one thing that the rural sector—people who live far away from health care, people who live and work with animals, people who live and work with often dangerous vehicles, and people in the tourism system—should have, and that is proper consideration, protection, and compensation where necessary through the accident compensation system.

If the National Party ever comes to power and attempts to privatise the accident compensation system, we will see a breakdown in the New Zealand economy, and in the way of life that we enjoy. It is important that every single New Zealander understands what the National Party intends to do, and that is to privatise accident compensation, to break down the system that has grown the economy of this country to where it is today.

SUE MORONEY (Labour) : I rise to take a short call on this bill to congratulate my colleagues on bringing this measure forward, and also to congratulate those people who made submissions on it. Those people bared their souls and their lives so that we could make this very important change to the present Act. In particular I refer to Mr Bruce Gardiner from Hamilton. I know how sorely disappointed he will be in the speech made by David Bennett before, when Mr Bennett said that he would not support this legislation because Mr Bruce Gardiner would not be catered for retrospectively. I know that Mr Gardiner would want him to vote for this bill, because Mr Gardiner’s position has always been that he was fighting to ensure that in the future people did not have the same dreadful experience he had when, as a truckdriver, he was inadvertently caught up in a suicide. He was extremely traumatised by running over somebody and was unable to continue in his occupation. He has fought and petitioned to ensure that the change we are debating here was brought about.

I thank those people who have made submissions. I know they will be very pleased that this bill will be voted forward in its second reading. They will be sorely disappointed in the National Party and in the very cute arguments National members have tried to bring forward as pitiful excuses for not supporting this bill in its second reading. Thank you.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) : As I was saying before the adjournment, the purpose of this bill is to strike a balance between protecting personal information from those who might wish to abuse it, and maintaining freedom of information and the right of the public to access the registers. The registers are a source of information about demographics, health, mortality, and other important information. They also provide an official record of events such as births, deaths, marriages, civil unions, and name changes that can be used as evidence of those events along with age, identity, descent, whakapapa, and New Zealand citizenship. The registers are not there just for the media to gain information or for historians to do their work. They are there for families, for communities, and for all of us, because public registers such as these are an important taonga for New Zealand and they should be treated as such, both in law and in practice.

Although identity theft was one of the drivers behind the bill, that was not its primary purpose and those members opposite who have tried to play down the significant responsibility of the State in protecting the public records from such abuse have not taken their parliamentary responsibility seriously, in my view. It is even more extraordinary to have these denials going on, knowing that the member, Sandra Goudie, who is a member of the select committee that considered this bill, and who has been most vocal in her ridicule, complained to the Minister earlier this year about a woman who had fraudulently obtained a birth certificate of a child and used that identity to claim over $31,000 in welfare benefits. Then she said there was no problem.

David Bennett, the member from Hamilton East, wrote to the Minister in October 2007 about someone using a false birth certificate to obtain a driver’s licence. He asked the Minister: “When would the requirements for applying for a birth certificate become more stringent?”. Well, duh! That is yet more evidence that National Party members do not talk to each other. As recently as last week I heard another National Party member expressing his concerns about identity theft because one of his constituents had experienced the repeated abuse of someone stealing that person’s identity through birth records.

Over the weekend the New Zealand Herald reported that identity theft is on the rise in New Zealand, with 900 cases of identity fraud relating to 400 identities having been uncovered in the past 12 months. The police say that this is just the tip of the iceberg. So, in my view, we would be really stupid to ignore international trends that show identity theft is a growing problem. There are reports from Britain that identity fraud has risen by more than 60 percent in just the past year, and there is no reason to believe that New Zealand will not follow this trend. Therefore it makes sense that the risks associated with open access to registers should be examined, and this is one of the reasons why the bill came to the House in the first place. The call of National Party members to prove that there is a problem, rather than preventing the problem, is quite bizarre. It is an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach. This Government does not believe that that is good enough and is acting responsibly in bringing this matter to the House’s attention.

The whys and wherefores of the changes made through Supplementary Order Papers have been well rehearsed in the debates on this bill and I do not want to repeat them yet again, although I am sure the member Sandra Goudie is dying to have a go. But it has been an astonishing experience for me. I have mentioned in previous speeches my astonishment at the criticism from the Opposition about the select committee process, but I think it is a tribute to this Parliament that a bill that had opposition from some quarters and, frankly, a bit of a hysterical reaction from others, has been amended to meet their concerns. I feel proud to be part of a Government that is prepared to listen and take on board public concerns, and to work as part of an MMP Parliament to reach a compromise.

I believe that the bill we have in front of us now is a result of that good process of listening to the concerns of submitters, and of collaboration between the parties, other than the National Party. I find it really regrettable that some members have impugned the work of the majority of parties in this House in their cooperative efforts to make this bill one that we and the nation can support. We have seen some amazing hissy fits from National Party members. It is the usual populist “engage the mouth before the brain” rubbish that we see, day in, day out, from that party. There is a good saying, and I will repeat it for the benefit of National Party members: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”, and that is what we are seeing from the National Party.

The final bill is a good compromise between the balancing act that Parliament must strike between the obligations of the State to protect personal information from fraudsters, and maintaining freedom of information and public access. It modernises the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act to take account of technological and social developments, and provides some protections against fraudsters seeking to obtain personal information for illicit purposes. I am delighted to support this bill in its third reading.

SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) : I make it quite clear that National stands for freedom, democracy, openness, and transparency. Openness and transparency is one of the hallmarks of democracy, and New Zealand is hailed worldwide as being one of the best examples of openness and transparency. What are we doing with this particular bill? We are, in actual fact, shutting down that openness and transparency. I call that the death of democracy by a thousand cuts, and the population at large sees it unheralded.

Most of the people who were involved with this Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Billin its original form opposed it— completely opposed it. And there were a number of very excellent reasons why. One of the first reasons was that there was no direct correlation between identity theft and access to the Births, Deaths and Marriages register. If members took the time and trouble to read the KPMG report, they would see that for themselves. It was never proven that the premise of this bill, which is around identity theft, was valid. That was found quite clearly during the select committee process, and it was clearly enunciated to all the committee members, including those of the current Government.

The Press Council, amongst others, stated quite clearly that everyone is entitled to privacy of personal space and personal information, and that these rights should be respected. However, the council also said that the right of privacy should not interfere with publications of matters of public record, or of obvious significant public interest. And, quite frankly, much of the information is on the public record. In actual fact, by law records of nuptials are meant to be held in a public way so that everybody is very aware of them. That is what the law requires. So although the bill has been watered down, it still means that we will be jumping through hoops to get access to information that is publicly available in a whole lot of other forums, and there is absolutely no reason why it should not be available in this forum.

I could talk about a number of different submissions, not the least of which was one by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who had concerns about this bill, and rightly so. Those concerns were expressed and seemed to have been ignored. I would like to mention the submission of David Grant, chairperson of the Trade Union History Project, who also had grave concerns about this bill. In respect of privacy, he felt that much of the information was already public, and that there was no need to shut that access down or to restrict it in any way—which is clearly being done by this current Government, without real justification.

One of the problems that this Government finally came to recognise, but used a sledgehammer to fix, was that if one goes to the Births, Deaths and Marriages register and asks for some information, one can get a copy of an authenticated certificate, without any requirement for identification. That is absolutely wrong. It has been practised for many, many years and should have been clamped down on long ago. But when this Government tries to do something, it does it with a sledgehammer rather than trying to fix it by some other means. One would have to ask what the problem was that the Government was trying to fix. It certainly did not clearly identify that, hence the need to go into a negotiation process about what the bill would actually contain. So because the Government did not practise good problem definition in the first instance—and I have to say that most of its legislation bears the hallmark of poor problem definition—the bill is quite convoluted and requires a lot of substantive changes. Those changes still retain the hurdles for access to information for births. One is excluded from having that information unless the birth took place 100 years ago or more, and for still births it is 50 years ago or more. Marriages and civil unions must have taken place 80 years ago or more before one can start accessing that information. That still means that one has to jump through hoops to get that information.

A number of the reasons that were given by many submitters are very, very valid. There are moves around the world to free up information, following New Zealand’s example, but here we are going in the opposite direction. Why is that? It is because this current Government thinks, in the words of the Privacy Commissioner, that this is “privacy pollution” and that we should not have the ready access that we have had for many, many years. That access to the information also means that private investigators, banks, and genealogists—everybody who has ready access to that information—can actually correct that information. Eighty-six thousand corrections have been made over the years, not by the Department of Internal Affairs or registrars-general of Births, Deaths and Marriages but by external individuals and agencies having ready access to that information. They should still have access to that information.

As I said before, for the benefit of New Zealand First, openness and transparency is one of the hallmarks of democracy, and it should be retained and not lost, at all costs. This was recognised by the majority of submitters to this bill, yet that ready access will now be denied, in spite of the changes that have been made to the bill. This is the reason why National continues to oppose this legislation. It is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and there could have been other ways to fix the problem without going to the extreme of what has been done here. There is already a raft of legal and regulatory measures to protect people’s privacy, and we know that the Privacy Commissioner is now looking at all the other registers across Government that contain information, and looking at how the Government can shut down people’s access to that information in those registers, as well. As Sir Geoffrey Palmer pointed out, this particular bill is the tip of the iceberg, and it will now roll on to all of those other registers.

Again I say that openness and transparency is one of the hallmarks of democracy, and we should defend that strenuously. Members should not forget that this debating Chamber is a memorial. Our armed forces, our Anzacs, and the people from our Returned Services Associations fought and died for our freedoms and our democracy. That is what we should be defending in this House, right to the bitter end. We should not let that go unrecognised. Of course, this is the new battleground. Our democracy and our freedoms are being undermined, little by little, without the public really being aware of it, in a number of pieces of legislation. This is a constant battleground. We have to be aware of those changes, and we have to fight to protect our democracy and our freedoms, and this is one of those cases.

David Grant, in his Trade Union History Project submission, said that there would always be a balance between what is public information and privacy, that it is very hard to see how information about the date and place of a birth, marriage, or death, and the full name of that person or persons, compromises their privacy, and that it is also hard to see how the confirmation or other of parentage could be deemed a privacy matter for those other than a direct relation. Researchers often access information about all sorts of people they are not directly related to. That is one of the essential marks of historians, and that is why David, as chairperson, spoke pretty strongly on behalf of the Trade Union History Project, and opposed the changes being mooted by the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill.

The media were very concerned. They felt that this bill was also an attack on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and that it breached the freedom of the dissemination of information. Another submitter, James McAloon, associate professor of history at Lincoln University, said the bill failed the test of reasonableness. There was submission after submission that gave a range of valid reasons for opposing this bill. The reasons have been reiterated in this House time and time again by National members, but have still been ignored by the rest of the House.

It is very disappointing that nobody values our democracy and freedom as much as the National Party. We will continue to do that, and continue to fight for that in this battleground here in the House. I am very proud to stand here on behalf of the National Party and oppose this legislation.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : I do not think I will take my full 10-minute call because I do not think that will be necessary. The Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill has been well explained to the House.

I say to the member who has resumed her seat, Sandra Goudie, that she has just given the impression to anybody who might be listening to this debate that access to the registers through the registrar-general’s office is totally denied. She knows that that is untrue. She has given the impression that there is a steel casket around the information held by the office. That is absolutely untrue and she should have made the true position clear.

Sandra Goudie knows that the bill came back to the House unchanged. The Government Administration Committee was made up of equal numbers of Labour and National members. New Zealand First had no influence there. But it was amended in this House. She knows that an access register will be set up so that people can go and get information held by the office. Those people’s details will be recorded, so that other people can find out who has asked for information concerning themselves. It is quite simple.

Historians came before us and voiced concerns about the bill as it was presented, as did genealogists, adoptees, and people who represent adoptees. The select committee listened to them. National members ignored them, but the Minister took their concerns on board and produced a rather lengthy Supplementary Order Paper. We have debated that in this House, and it has in very large measure addressed all of those questions. The historians, genealogists, adoptees, and people who represent adoptees whom I have spoken to are happy, in very large measure, with the new bill and the access arrangements.

If members needed anybody to give them an example of why things need to be tightened up, they had Sandra Goudie. Sandra Goudie engaged somebody to go and get information from the registrar-general’s office, and he or she did that with complete ease. Sandra Goudie illustrated to the select committee that the system needs to be tightened up, but now she has stood in the House to oppose the tightening-up that the bill will do. That just does not make sense. National members stand there and say they are all for democracy and all for being caring New Zealanders, but they give the opposite impression.

This bill has been modified extensively by the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper since it came back to the House. That has improved it no end, and it has made it a very workable bill.

I want to conclude with one little change, which New Zealand First steered through. The National Party would not support us even on this. The word used on copies of death certificates—not on actual death certificates, which talk about a burial, a cremation, or what have you, but on copies—is “disposal”. That is insensitive and unacceptable. An elderly lady pointed this out to me. It was unrelated to the bill, but it just happened that the bill was at the select committee at that particular time. I raised it at the select committee with the officials. They took it on board, as did the Labour Government, and it has been corrected in the bill. I think that proves that by listening to New Zealanders members can make minor changes that are of some significance. I am quite delighted by that little change, because it shows clearly that some MPs in this House are prepared to listen to ordinary New Zealanders and their concerns.

I do not think there is much more to say on the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill. It is a bill that addresses an issue. It tightens up the births, deaths, and marriages registers, but it does so in an acceptable, enlightened manner. Personally, I am pleased with the way it has done that. New Zealand First supports this bill.

Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party) : Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. I come to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill driven by the principle of whakapapa. I come to this bill with a deeply personal understanding of whakapapa and of what it means for any discussion on births, deaths, marriages, and relationships. My very first utterances in this House, in fact, traced the journey I know of as defining my whakapapa—a journey that began with Toi Kairākau, with Rauru and his son Whātonga, carried through to Tahaiti, to Uenuku, from Uenuku to Ruatapu, from Ruatapu to Rākeiora, from Rākeiora to Tama ki Te Hau. These are my ancestors. They gave me life, and they live in me. So I come to this bill absolutely, utterly believing in the importance of whakapapa and the vital need to know who gave me life.

As tangata whenua we hold in the highest regard the value of whakapapa as the means of defining who Māori are as a people. Whakapapa is the bridge that links us to our ancestors, defines our heritage, and gives us the stories that define our place in the world. Whakapapa helps us to know who we are, from whom we descend, and what our obligations are to those who come after us. It tells us who we are. I recall a warning left by John Rangihau in 1987 that cutting children off from their whakapapa had the effect of making “a child of lineage, a child who belonged only at sea, to be rescued if possible”. He left that legacy to Child, Youth and Family Services, which never understood the depth of those words in Pūao-te-ata-tū - Daybreak.

For tangata whenua the vision of our babies adrift at sea with no one able to throw them a lifeline to reclaim their whakapapa and their identity is a haunting one. We believe it to be critical that all children know whom they belong to. Whakapapa is, and always has been, the basis of Māori culture. The knowledge that a child is Māori, that a child has a Māori heritage, means that the child is a taonga of his or her whānau, hapū, and iwi. In turn, the whānau, hapū, and iwi to which the child belongs have an obligation to care for that child as best they can. We believe that every child is determined by those who have come before him or her. Every child is a product of his or her history and whakapapa. Every child deserves to belong: to know and to understand his or her descent, and to have a meaningful relationship to it.

It was of particular interest to me, in preparing for this bill, to come across a paper published in Human Reproduction in 2007 entitled “A retrospective study of New Zealand case law involving assisted reproduction technology and the social recognition of ‘new’ family”. The paper contrasts what its writers describe as predominantly “… non-Maori) traditions ofnuclear family formation”, which features “less well-known genealogiesand … diverse genetic histories” with “wider extended family formation (whanau); extremely well-knowngenealogies (whakapapa) with well-established genetic connections;and the well-accepted practice of guardianship (whangai)”. The writers suggest that “the letter of the New Zealand law has … remained true to its British antecedentsreflecting a nuclear, truncated and highly biologized view offamily according to Pakeha folk understandings, ignoring Maoridom’straditionally more open family formations.” They conclude “For Maori, this hasbeen a particularly pernicious practice in relation to the lackof recognition of the importance of the concept of whangai,and in cases of adoption and ART,”—assisted reproduction technology—”the loss of whakapapa whichorders an individual’s relationship with the wider social,material and spiritual world and forms the basis of one’sethnic identity”.

We hope today that in supporting this bill we will go some way towards addressing the pernicious practices of the past, and in doing so will help to heal the wounds that have been created as our people have been cut off and alienated from the very source of their identity as tangata whenua.

We in the Māori Party, along with the Greens and United Future, were concerned that the bill in its original form imposed unjustifiable restrictions on New Zealanders’ access to information. We were concerned that by restricting access to records to individuals and immediate family members, the legitimate public research carried out by historians, genealogists, and other researchers would be blocked. We were particularly alarmed at the definition of “immediate family”, which sprang from a Eurocentric model. It would have had dramatic and negative repercussions for those researching their whakapapa. Brenda Joyce from the New Zealand Society of Genealogists’ Māori interest group described whakapapa as “a hereditary right guaranteed to Māori by means of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”. She described birth, death, and marriage certificates as often providing the link that starts people on the journey back to their marae. If those links are broken, tangata whenua will be critically handicapped in researching their whakapapa and supporting Treaty claims. Mrs Amer of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists also made a very good point: that the information contained in birth, death, and marriage registers, as well as illuminating personal family history, can lead to a wider appreciation of history in general.

In the light of those submissions and others, the Government Administration Committee reported that “Many submitters opposed the bill’s intention to restrict registered information to only the individual concerned [and] their immediate family”. It recommended that the bill “retain general public access to the registered information”, which is a move we support. We believe that every child has the right to know who has given them the sacred gift of life. The right to know one’s parents is a right that has been far too frequently denied, and we do not believe it is in the interests of our people to sit silent on such a critical issue as identity.

We do, however, have considerable feeling around the need to protect women and children from the shame and trauma that come with the consequence of rape or incest. Where the child is a result of such an act, there should be other legislative protections in place that prevent them from suffering any further trauma. We also acknowledge that a change to require all parents to be named on birth certificates may require other amendments, to ensure children are safe and properly provided for.

• Debate interrupted.