Dean Jacqui: Evidence Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDean Jacqui: Evidence Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5086. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki):Following this first reading of the Evidence Amendment Bill the bill is going to the Justice and Electoral Committee and I am very pleased as chair to be sent this bill. Along with the Harmful Digital Communications Act which has just very recently passed through this House this bill indicates a general move by certainly the Government—which is supported in this instance by many parties around the House; we will find out how many parties around the House—that shows a trend towards greater protection for victims of crime.If I might just divert very slightly off the bill for a very short time—the harmful digital communications legislation will protect young people give them a measure of protection in law and in practice from cyber-bullying. This Evidence Amendment Bill of course is a different beast and it gives legislative protection for children who are victims in terms of giving evidence and cross-examination in the court. As the previous speaker David Parker noted in his very thoughtful contribution to this debate—and I thank him for that—this work does come out of the work of the Law Commission which was commissioned by the then Minister of Justice Judith Collins in 2013. This bill picks up most of those recommendations with one or two of those recommendations altered slightly. But in essence the Law Commission’s recommendations have been picked up in this Evidence Amendment Bill.The main provisions in this bill are to make changes to improve the court processes for vulnerable witnesses; clearly most of those are children. At the moment prosecutors have to apply to the court to use alternative ways of giving evidence. An application must be made and then the judge has to consider and give permission for alternative ways for evidence to be given on behalf of children. Commonly that will be for the child or young person to be supported by a family member or representative and perhaps for a videoconferencing method to be used to give evidence.The presumption in this bill will now be that child witnesses give evidence in alternative ways. It will be up to the child’s counsel and the child’s support person as to what kind of degree that child can be exposed to the courtroom in order to get the best evidence from that child. Fundamentally that is a very humane way—and a very humane change to our court system—to minimise the stress on children and any long-term impacts of not just the offending but the reliving of that offending in the court processes.The restriction on video recording of evidence again is supported by the Labour Opposition. I can only reflect that David Parker as a former lawyer—he is not practising now—who no doubt has been through this process on behalf of some of his clients again is in agreement with this provision. I do hope that the rest of the House is.As I was preparing for this speech I did not quite have time to go back through the legislative changes that this Government has made but it brought to my mind some other changes we had made in a former piece of legislation where this type of information was again restricted. The case I am thinking of is where a victim’s contact details—address and phone number—were able to be shared with the offender by the offender’s counsel. The offender was then able to recall those details—remember them—and harass that victim from inside prison. I will not make a stab at what that legislation was—it was a few years ago now—but again the provision in this Evidence Amendment Bill is in line with those further protections for witnesses. It is nothing else—it is not a mechanism for preventing information being shared with the defence counsel; rather it is a measure for protecting witnesses.The Minister Louise Upston in her opening comments outlined the privilege for plea discussions. The provisions in this bill extend the privilege that currently applies to settlement negotiations and mediation in civil proceedings to include plea discussions in criminal proceedings. At the moment there is no clear privilege in this matter in respect of communication in plea discussions. Again the Law Commission recommended reform in this area and that has been picked up in this bill. Again it deals with previous consistent statements admitted into evidence. Here I think the member who spoke previously David Parker rather glossed over perhaps some of the consequences of the 2006 amendment to the Evidence Act in saying: “Oh well we don’t always get everything right.” No we do not and there is an opportunity in this bill to reinstate the provision for consistent statements to be entered.Perhaps an example of that would be where a complaint was made in a criminal case; maybe a complainant a child told their mother that they had been raped. Consistent evidence of a 111 call made on the day or night of the occasion of that alleged rape could then be used as supporting evidence. So yet again that is another good inclusion in this bill. There are also a number of minor and technical amendments in this bill which the Justice and Electoral Committee together with other parties in the House will go over.I just want to finish my initial contribution on this bill by saying again that it is another piece of legislation brought to the House over the past 7 years that puts the victim of crime at the centre. In this instance it provides protections for child victims so that they can give good quality evidence—and that is the key; good quality evidence—to the court but without revictimising or further victimising or traumatising them. It provides more clarity to the court around evidence to be introduced that is consistent with the original statement and it also provides for notice requirements for evidence of previous sexual history where a notice must be given to the court if a previous sexual history is to be entered into evidence. With those words I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.