Collins Judith: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) — In Committee Third Reading 
Collins Judith: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:7082] 
JUDITH COLLINS (NZ National—Clevedon) 
: 
 This title is not a fair reflection of the contents of the bill and it is very disturbing that a Minister who purports to be in charge of telecommunications has not picked that up. I note that this bill should have been with the Associate Minister of Justice; he might have read it but I doubt it. This bill has a terrible flaw in it: it is missing a very important part. I hope the Minister in the chair the Hon Harry Duynhoven will listen to this because this is very important. A huge part of this bill deals with increasing the penalties for home invasion. That sounds great except that this Government repealed the part of the Crimes Act that deals with home invasion last year. 
I know that the Minister in the chair is looking puzzled by that so I say to him that he should get the officials here. If he looks at clauses 3 to 7 he will find that a huge section of the bill is absolutely redundant because sections 17A to 17E of the principal Act were repealed by this Government last year—and here is the proof. We have a Government that is asking this Parliament to put through and to vote on bills that are redundant. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Read the clauses. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I will list the clauses for the benefit of the officials. Perhaps the Minister could talk to the officials about clauses 3 4 and 5 which deal with increasing the penalties for home invasion crimes. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: You can’t amend provisions that don’t exist. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: One cannot amend provisions that do not exist and worse than that further on in this bill that we are being asked to vote on today are provisions dealing with sections 17A to 17E of the Act. There are errors throughout this bill because Parliament repealed sections 17A to 17E of the Act last year. That is shoddy work from the Government. 
We have looked through the bill and put in an amendment dealing with that issue. We would like it to be sorted out because it should have been addressed in this bill. The issue of home invasion has been in and out of the bill everywhere. Moreover if we go through to other clauses in the bill we find there are whole clauses about it. 
I would also like to talk about the concept of colour of right. This Government has said in this bill that it does not like the concept of colour of right and it wants to change the definition to “claim of right” because it does not want to extinguish customary rights. Instead it wants to look at cultural interpretations. “Colour of right” is a term that has been used time and time again through the courts. It has been used in the legal system of England and then in New Zealand for hundreds of years. Consequently that particular part of the bill should be left as it is. I talked to criminal lawyers about it last night and they said it is shocking to change a term like “colour of right” by trying to make it become a claim of right. That is absolutely appalling. It is a very poor piece of drafting which should have been fixed. 
I will come back to the particular part of the bill about home invasion. That part was looked at only in May of this year. This bill had been floating around for the last 3 years until someone suddenly looked at the issue of home invasion and that is not good enough. It is not good enough for this Government to take 3 years to work out what it has already done. That issue occurs all the way through the bill and the Government has not even taken the time to go and get it fixed in a proper way. That is not good enough. If we go through the bill we see there are other clauses that need to be looked at.