Chauvel Charles: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Chauvel Charles: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:658;Page:7159] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I will say a few words about the two Supplementary Order Papers that stand in my name. I apologise to the Committee that I was not able to be here earlier; I understand that the Minister in the chair the Hon Simon Power addressed one of them. I was unfortunately—[ 
Interruption 
]—that is right; I think I can refer to my own absence—detained at the Finance and Expenditure Committee doing round 58 of the emissions trading scheme. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Did Gerry manage that process? 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: No Gerry Brownlee did not manage that process; it was managed with the same level of competence by one of his colleagues. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: What the one who did the ACC as well? 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Well let us not go there I say to members; let us concentrate on the business at hand. I am delighted to follow my friend and colleague David Parker and also the contribution by Clayton Cosgrove and to have been in the Chamber for both of those contributions. I am very sad to have missed the contribution of Lianne Dalziel. 
I will deal first with the amendments that would make changes to clause 7. Labour members in the commentary to the bill as reported back from the Justice and Electoral Committee said the following: “New Zealand Labour members of the committee having carefully considered the Attorney-General’s report to the House on the inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 felt strongly that there should be an amendment.” I think that for the Committee and for the Minister if he could turn his mind to the issue this really has to be the nub of the question. There is an Attorney-General’s certificate of inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The view taken is that the power to confer an authority of literal physical compulsion over those arrested in the way that the bill proposes does interfere with the rights and freedoms affirmed by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That is not a position that this Parliament should endorse readily or freely. If it is within our powers to easily amend the position so that the rights and freedoms declared by the Act are not interfered with then that should be done. 
As David Parker pointed out in his contribution there would be no impairing of effectiveness of the legislation; this has the potential to be a very powerful crime-fighting tool. That is one of the reasons why it has enjoyed widespread support. But for goodness’ sake if we require the police to seek a warrant—that is judicial authority—to enter a person’s premises or property why on earth would we not require that level of judicial supervision when we are talking about the ability to commit what under common law is an assault without the provisions of this bill? That seems completely inconsistent to me. It ought to be the case that this Parliament just puts in place that very simple check and balance. The police tell me they have no difficulty at the moment even after hours in procuring search warrants from justices. It seems to me that if that is the case given the number of occasions on which one would expect that the powers in this legislation would have to be exercised there should not be any great administrative burden in putting that extra safeguard in for the people of New Zealand. 
So I commend the Supplementary Order Paper dealing with the judicial oversight that ought to exist in my view over this power. As David Parker said this is the sort of oversight that has been put in place in Europe. The European Court of Human Rights in respect of offending English legislation which is essentially the scheme that this bill would enact has said that there should be that safeguard so that the European Convention on Human Rights is complied with. Our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act comes out of the same family. The ancestry is common. It is from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is not onerous to bring about compliance and we should do so. 
I will now deal with the second Supplementary Order Paper. I understand that the Minister has said that he does not think it would be desirable to have a review by the law required of the novel provisions of the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill and he has said that a cost-benefit analysis will be conducted by his ministry in 2011. That is a fantastic thing and we will all be looking forward to the fruits of that exercise. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: They’ll be in the middle of the election. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Well there are two reasons and one of them has just been touched on by Lianne Dalziel as to why we ought to have a bit of an additional safeguard. The first is of course that 2011 is an election year. By this legislation we confer on the police on the executive a novel power. It is a power of literal physical compulsion and I would have thought that we do not want an administrative review of that power with all the implications that that would contain appearing in election year. We want that review to occur in a more dispassionate time and place and the legislation that I have proposed the amendment to clause 48 is very simple. It says that after 5 years the House of Representatives would refer— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I remind the member that we are on Part 1. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Oh I beg your pardon. I thought I might be able to knock them both off in one speech but if the Committee prefers that I take a second call on that I am happy to do so. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Charles Chauvel to clause 7 be agreed to: 
to add after new section 24J(1) the following new subsection: 
(1A) A constable may only require a bodily sample to be given in accordance with a suspect compulsion order.