Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): I'm very proud to take a call on the second reading of the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill and I say I'm very proud because I do take an enormous sense of pride in that this piece of work came about under my tenure as Minister of Justice and under the National Party's period of Government. I want to acknowledge the current Minister of Justice Andrew Little obviously for continuing the work with the same degree of commitment and urgency actually to get it in place that we certainly had on this side of the House.There aren't that many opportunities in this House where you get the chance to do something that just simply feels at a very innate level right and this bill feels like that to me. It's always felt like that to me and I also want to put on record that it's one of those equally rare chances in this House to do something I hope will continue to be collectively—certainly that's been the experience to date—but that is absolutely above party politics. Now those of us who have been members of this House for some time know that there are more occasions than the public probably see where we do work actually for what is simply the right thing to do and in the best interests of this country irrespective of party lines. This piece of legislation has certainly been one of those and it will certainly stand out in my memory for that reason.I want to acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee as the Minister has done. I had the privilege of sitting on that select committee while it was considering this bill in most of its consideration. Again on that select committee—and I acknowledge the chair Mr Raymond Huo who chaired the committee through that process. Again it is incredibly heartening to see a group of committee members who actually hunted in a bit of a pack vis-à-vis the officials really. There were the committee members sort of on one side all lining up with a very similar view of what we wanted to see happen and on occasion running up against perhaps some drafters and some officials who hadn't quite understood exactly how we wanted it to work.I want to just record in this contribution that actually the members of the committee representing members across the House were really clear when this bill talked about being an expungement scheme that we wanted it to be an expungement scheme—i.e. that the conviction was as if it had never happened; not a scheme whereby the convictions still remained on the record but everyone was just directed to disregard it. To us on the committee that was a really important distinction and we believed that to the submitters and those affected by this legislation that was an incredibly important distinction to make.This was always to be more than simply the Clean Slate Act 2.0". This is the first time this Parliament will have ever created an expungement scheme like this. Now in one sense that didn't help us because there was a lack of simple precedent but actually it reflected the seriousness with which we took this issue and the depth of feeling about the fact that these laws the laws that these men were convicted under are now seen as absolutely wrong—fundamentally wrong—and that those men should not have borne the scar of that criminal conviction.Now for this Parliament to do what it can do to redress that it is important that the expungement goes far beyond simply a "You're not allowed to discriminate on the basis of this conviction."—sorry Mr Assistant Speaker certainly not you—that society is not allowed to discriminate on the basis of these convictions and becomes as close as we can physically and practically get it to a situation where it is as if these convictions had never existed for the purposes of New Zealand law.In the first reading of this bill we didn't just move the first reading of the bill and send it off to select committee in the way in which we normally do. This House also passed a motion that I moved that this Parliament apologises to those homosexual New Zealanders who were convicted for consensual adult activity and recognises the tremendous hurt and suffering those men and their families have gone through and the continued effects that those convictions have had on them. We put on the record that this House deeply regretted the hurt and stigma suffered by the many hundreds of New Zealand men who were turned into criminals by a law that was profoundly wrong. And for that this House this Parliament put on record that it was sorry. We acknowledged that those men should never have been burdened with conviction and we wanted to recognise the continued effects that the convictions had had on their lives and the lives of their families.When we as the Government at that time decided to move that motion—and it was supported by the parties in the House—and passed that motion it was a very deliberate decision that it was this Parliament as an institution that would apologise and express in its most sincere form the sense of regret the understanding of the hurt and the desire to put it right. Again that is in my experience and my understanding quite unique and I do hope that this bill that that apology and that the action of the House to move—with some pace actually; it might not always seem like it from the outside looking in but with some pace given all of the other work that's going on—to put this bill into law does reflect our real desire to bring this awful period to a close as far as we can ever rewrite history. That was certainly a theme in the select committee. We can't change history and actually nor should we want to because sometimes remembering the wrongs of the past is incredibly important. So we weren't trying to rewrite history and blank it from history but we were absolutely setting out to ensure that the impact of these criminal convictions the tag of criminality and the stigma that settled on these men and their families should be removed as far as this House could physically make that possible.I think the bill now is in a better state than when I introduced it to the House and I'm certainly happy to acknowledge that. I think we've got it far more to the place that we as a Government introducing it in this House had wanted it to be at first reading. I think it does go as far as it practically can to make those acknowledgments and to right those wrongs. It is a bill that I'm incredibly proud of it is a bill that I do hope and believe will help to heal those wounds and it is a bill that I'm very pleased to support."