Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): One of the most important areas of legislation for Parliament is in the area of criminal justice and ensuring that we meet the objective of where people cause harm and commit criminal offences they are held responsible serve appropriate penalties for those but equally that our society respects innocence and respects those long-established principles of law in ensuring people get a fair trial. So it is timely with this bill that Parliament debates these core issues about how we improve and eliminate imperfections in our criminal justice system.Now where I would differ a little in emphasis from the previous speaker and Government Minister the Hon Aupito William Sio is that as important as it is that we ensure that no innocent person is locked up equally important for members on this side of the House is that our communities are safe and that where people commit crimes they're held accountable and that the community is kept safe from them. So as we debate this bill let us be open and transparent about that real balance that we have to strike in terms of our criminal justice system.I would also want Parliament to be realistic about that old saying Bad examples make for bad law." If I reflect for instance on one of the very good justice Ministers and an interesting Prime Minister David Lange in his valedictory speech he said that he had so often seen Parliament chasing after bad examples and passing bad law as a consequence of those. While you can quote examples—of course there will be—where our criminal justice system failed I'd urge the Government and Parliament as it considers this bill not to fall into that trap of bad examples making for bad law.Now the previous speaker also quoted the example of Teina Pora and the injustice that he suffered and the process that has been followed through the exercise of the Governor-General's prerogative of mercy to resolve that issue. We on this side of the House need to be satisfied that this new Criminal Cases Review Commission is actually going to be able to more effectively deal with that sort of case of injustice than the process that exists under our current law. Let's firstly focus on ensuring that before we create a fourth tier of judicial process for dealing with difficult cases we make the first three tiers work—that is where there is a case of murder or significant criminal offending we provide for a High Court trial we provide for a Court of Appeal and we provide for the Supreme Court. So before we simply jump to the easy conclusion of adding a fourth process through the Criminal Cases Review Commission Parliament should be focused on making sure that those first three steps are as robust as fair in delivering justice as possible. So for instance if there are issues with our legal aid system if there are issues around our evidence law if there are issues to try and get as many cases right as early as possible this is firstly where National would wish to go.Some of the concerns that National has in respect of this bill are firstly the very low threshold for taking a case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. While any judicial system will be imperfect and will not get every case right the truth is that our justice system deals with tens of thousands of cases every single year and if we're going to open up with a very low threshold and an additional area of appeal under this bill in my view there needs to be a high-level threshold for cases being able to get to that point that exists currently under our Crimes Act under the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy. This is a far wider gate and is effectively adding a fourth level of appeal for criminal cases in New Zealand.I further want to raise concerns about the make-up of the commission. It is National's view that if you are to add this extra tier we need to be absolutely sure that there is a high level of legal expertise going into any fourth-level appeal. What is provided here in this bill is that two-thirds of the members of the commission can have no legal training at all. If we really are intent on improving the quality of the judicial system and the decisions that come out of our courts we would want to be sure that there is the highest level of judicial expertise of legal skills going in to ensure that those decisions are indeed correct.We also would note that this bill is going to provide for a cost of about two and a half million dollars to establish the commission and an extra cost of $4 million per year. Now we are on this side of the House keen to know actually: is that a better response? The simplistic response of "Oh we're prepared to pay anything to ensure our justice system"—actually we need to spend the money where we're going to get the very best of improvements and we have a question mark about that and particularly in respect of the low threshold for cases being able to be taken to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.The last point I would want to make is that in these really difficult cases and we can all think of the Arthur Allan Thomases or the David Bains or the Scott Watsons or the Mark Lundys or the Ewen Macdonalds and we can think of all those examples when there is an injustice is the more flexible mechanism—and there have been a number of commissions of inquiry that Cabinet and the Government can initiate where there are very specific terms of reference that are able to focus on the particular aspects. Here's the truth: if having gone through the High Court the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court the judicial system has still not got it right then that actually asks questions about the effectiveness of those three steps in the justice system.Now the gain we've got at the moment of the more flexible approach of the Government being able to have a commission of inquiry that's occurred in a number of those controversial cases is that you're actually able not just to resolve the issue of the injustice that may have occurred for the individual but to scrutinise the systematic error that's occurred within the justice system and provide a mechanism by which that can be improved. I'll make a bet for this Parliament: even if we proceed with the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission there will still be examples in our justice system where there are failures and there will be commissions of inquiry and the exercise of justice in the provision of the prerogative of mercy being exercised. So my challenge for the Government as this bill progresses before the House is that National wants to be satisfied that we are first making sure that the first three steps of our justice system are working properly and that our principal focus should be on ensuring that those issues are resolved. Secondly if we are going to spend many more millions of dollars in creating a permanent effective fourth level of appeal for these criminal cases we need to be satisfied that we are improving the quality of justice and we are going to take some convincing particularly with the low thresholds particularly with the lack of legal skills on this new commission that we indeed are going to improve the quality and the effectiveness of New Zealand's important justice system.SPEAKER: Before I call Darroch Ball I've had quite a few complaints about visual pollution in the House from all sides with the named boxes. The rules are very clear and that is that members who are in the Chamber are allowed one—thank you Mr Ngaro; can you take one of yours down? Thank you."