Curran Clare: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 09 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11879. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I would like to start by agreeing with Chris Bishop which is something that I rarely do in that quite genuinely this is an important piece of legislation and Labour will be supporting it. I would also like to commend the work being done on this by the Minister of Justice Amy Adams. However in saying that I agree with the Green member Jan Logie that there is much more to do—that this is just one part of the work that needs to be done to improve the situation around family violence and sexual assault in our country which is woeful. Improving the law and improving the court processes for vulnerable witnesses is an important part of that but it is just a part of it—although it is good to have accord around the House on this issue tonight. It is rare that we have a piece of legislation on which everybody has worked hard and in the same direction and feels strongly about it.I do note though that this change in legislation relates to a Law Commission report from 2013 which had been essentially in abeyance until it was picked up by Amy Adams as the justice Minister. It was not until it was picked up that things started moving. I would note that it would be good if things could start moving on a couple of other Law Commission reports such as the report into the Privacy Act and the report on the Official Information Act. There are much needed law changes in those areas as well.This particular piece of legislation does a number of things. Because my time is short I will confine my remarks to two of them. The first is around the change that makes it easier for witnesses under 18 who can give evidence to give evidence other than when sitting in court. This is highly overdue and a bit of a no-brainer really. There has been quite a lot of discussion on that this afternoon so I will not continue with that.I do want to make some remarks around the requirement that defence counsel give advance notice if they intend to bring evidence about the sexual history of a complainant in sexual offence cases. The record of sexual violence against women and children in this country is woeful and sexual assault victims are deterred from coming forward because of the low conviction rate in New Zealand; I think we all know this. Here we have a concrete measure that may start to give women the sense that they will have more chance of getting a conviction they will have more chance of getting heard—because it takes so much courage to come forward to report a sexual assault let alone take it right through the court system.In 2015 4801 sexual assault crimes occurred in New Zealand. Only 1007 of those crimes made it to court last year with just 635 convictions which meant that for 2015 there were convictions for about 13 percent of reported sexual assault crimes in New Zealand. That just simply is not good enough. In the year to date 18 percent fewer sexual assaults have led to court action so far this financial year compared with the last financial year where 16.2 percent led to court action in the 2015-16 year to date compared with 19.2 percent in 2014.The change that has been made on this has been tweaked in the select committee. It has become much more specific. But what it does do is provide a process for giving notice when a party proposes to offer evidence or question a witness about the sexual experience of the complainant. This means that in terms of the courage that it takes for women to report sexual abuse crimes and to actually get up in court and speak about them this may make things easier for them.