Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much Madam Speaker for this opportunity to speak on the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill at this the third and final reading. I acknowledge that the speech by the Minister has canvassed a number of the issues that we have previously canvassed on this side of the House and that's helpful. Being the final reading of this bill I will nonetheless reiterate those from our perspective. But I wanted to structure my remarks in the following way: first to understand the problem that this bill is designed to solve; second to consider what tools are already available notwithstanding that they are imperfect tools admittedly; third to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the existing structures to consider whether the reform of those might be the more useful approach; then obviously to consider the line that the Government is going down in terms of what it is that they are establishing here—the Criminal Cases Review Commission itself—and then of course summarising our position including emphasising at the end that ultimately we are unable to support the bill.Notwithstanding that as the Minister has been good enough to acknowledge we've sought to take a constructive approach throughout including at select committee—on that split committee that is the Justice Committee. We could see no good reason to deny the changes that were constructive in the name of making it a better piece of legislation to result from the parliamentary process.The first of those points then: defining the problem. We can turn to the purpose clause of the bill and see that it seeks to establish an independent body to investigate and review criminal convictions and sentences and to decide whether to refer them under the Act to an appeal court. The aim of the exercise more broadly however is of course to deal with the situation of miscarriages of justice. That's a situation that is very serious for the reasons that have already been outlined and I would like to think that there isn't a member in the House or indeed perhaps a person in New Zealand who would be comfortable with the notion that there are miscarriages of justice and would be happy to accept that merely as a statistical inevitability and not examine the proposition further. But nevertheless it is inevitable that such things do occur.However thinking about the tools that are currently available for remedying such a problem we note of course that there is an appeals court framework and structure already within the system. The purpose of this Criminal Cases Review Commission—hereafter I'll just call it the commission if I may—is essentially to consider whether an appeal is worthy then to be heard by the courts. So it's an extra step in the process which is not in itself able to be decisive provide any further finality of justice. Of course there is also a royal prerogative of mercy which the Minister of Justice has outlined and being a royal prerogative traditionally is exercised by the Governor-General standing in the stead of the monarch in this country in this day and age.Thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of that existing system well we have an ability for a person who has been or claims to have been wrongly convicted to go back into the system and have another go not merely a second bite or third bite of the cherry but actually to have some particular reason that they're able to have their case heard again. I do acknowledge the points that have been made by submitters to the Justice Committee as well as in the House prior to now—access to justice issues in relation to that. There are members of our society who are less able to access those avenues of justice and the issues might be financial and they might also be around awareness of such arcane concepts as being aware that there is such a thing as the royal prerogative of mercy. Also there might be an injustice whereby some cases naturally appeal more than others and I use the word appeal" in a pretty general sense. Some cases naturally seem to lend themselves to the attention and the assistance of white knights so-called and be a cause célèbre and others are less interesting to the public and go unaided. So that's a matter of injustice in itself. So I acknowledge those points but in doing so would also point out that there are opportunities that we can and should take as a Parliament to consider ways to improve the access to justice the knowledge and ability to find those avenues of appeal and so forth.I'll just note briefly that a secondary function of the Criminal Cases Review Commission is to conduct thematic inquiries essentially and that's something which I've pointed out before in this House is essentially replicating—different branches of Government already have the ability to look at patterns that are developing in our criminal justice system where it might be that a number of different miscarriages of justice take place in a way that reflects perhaps a systemic bias against a group of New Zealanders or perhaps certain methods or techniques have been proven over the course of time and with a multitude of cases particularly convincingly it might be that are leading to unsafe convictions as we'd say.Moving then to the proposal that's before us now—and I note in passing that the legislation seems set to succeed because parties opposite have committed to support it. But considering this new beast that is the commission it is neither fish nor fowl in the sense that it doesn't sit firmly within the court system but neither is it part of executive Government. It's not an appeal court in itself so it can't actually provide the remedy that the person's after but can just really reopen a can of worms that might have good reason to be reopened but at the same time might also just simply be another roll of the dice for someone who has been convicted and rightly so as well as of course providing a much-wanted avenue for those who have been unfairly convicted.The Justice Committee made a number of constructive changes which I would class along with various minor or technical achievements some which I think are helpful in effectively making the commission more like a court in the sense that the relationship with the Evidence Act is more clearly established the right of various kinds of privilege is more clearly set out and so forth. The membership of the commission is something that we've emphasised we've had some difficulty with not because we think it's unhelpful to have people who are not legally qualified but we just don't think that the balance is right to have as little as a third of the commission to be legally qualified and no requirement that those need to have any criminal type of experience in the courts nor even that they have practiced in New Zealand. So that's a serious shortcoming in our submission.As the Minister again has acknowledged in relation to the status of victims we think it would be helpful to have an explicit acknowledgment that when the commission is considering whether to review and refer a case the interests of the victim involved must be considered. That was a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) change that we recommended but which was not successful in the committee stage along with the related SOPs that we put forward. One was to do with ensuring that a victim is notified at every step of the process if it's in prospect that their case will be reopened and also a separate proposal that legal aid funding be provided for victims whose cases are looked into again noting that they would have financial costs that would be imposed upon them as a result of that through no fault of their own as well as emotional costs and perhaps physical costs and so forth.The point made by Minister Little that no one is well served by a miscarriage of justice is well made. Of course the victim as well as the wrongfully convicted person and I suppose we could say more generally society at large the rule of law is offended by such things. But for the reasons that we've described and I say this in concluding my remarks we don't believe that this is the right way to go about reducing the number of miscarriages of justice of course in the first place or even dealing with them in necessarily the most efficient manner which we believe could be done much better by reforming the existing structures—for example better financial support and access to justice for those who genuinely need it.In summary for all the reasons I've stated we are unable to support the bill in its form at the third reading. We note that it will pass nonetheless surely and so it will be that as a constructive loyal Her Majesty's Opposition we will continue to watch it carefully in its operation going forward and we hope that it's more successful than we fear it will be."