O'Rourke Denis: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 09 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11875. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First will continue to support this bill which implements almost all of the Law Commission’s recommendations—and of course the Associate Minister of Justice Simon Bridges has already reviewed the main changes in the bill. So what I want to do is focus on four of the improvements made by the Justice and Electoral Committee and why I think in particular they should be supported. I would just like to begin by commending the Justice and Electoral Committee for the work it did. I think that it went through the bill very well and it was a great pleasure to be part of it.The first improvement that I want to focus on relates to hearsay statements and to section 16 of the Evidence Act. There are types of police records that as we know are not inherently reliable and in the current Act they should be excluded rather from the definition of the term “business record” in section 16. The reason for that is that hearsay statements made by witnesses or comments made by them in interviews—by people who say that they have important knowledge to contribute—are not inherently reliable and ought to be excluded because reliability is absolutely vital and fundamental. So I think that is an important improvement that the committee has made to the bill and one that deserves to be supported.The second one relates to clause 30 which amends section 106 and the need to prevent the misuse of video records. The Justice and Electoral Committee has made some important improvements to clarify the Act on this matter. There are two of them that I want to mention. The first one amends section 106 to clearly specify the duties and restrictions relating to those video records that parties and lawyers have access to. What the amendment will do is ensure that defendants and their lawyers are still able to view video records and to determine whether to oppose or not what is in them. But they are now able to do so in an appropriate way and in an appropriate place. That is a significant improvement and it is very important that access to those video records is available but there needs to be the protection that it is done in an appropriate way and in an appropriate place. I think now we have that balance correct as a result of this particular amendment.In addition to that and secondly in relation to this matter the committee recommended that it is important that regulations should be made and that there should be provision to make regulations to cover the various ways in which all of this will operate. So that is also included in the improvements. It is a minor point but I think in itself it is still very important.The third improvement that I want to focus on is the difficult area of children giving evidence. As Mr Clendon pointed out this actually means people under the age of 18—so they are not necessarily infantile. Some of them may be able to give evidence in the ordinary way and others will not be able to do so. What we have currently is a situation that does not reflect that. The improvements to section 107 inserted by clause 32 do give effect to the presumption that a child witness does need to give evidence in alternative ways—that is an infant I mean—while at the same time ensuring that the defendant in particular but also the judge jury and other parties can hear the evidence given and will be able to understand it.As the law stands a party other than the party intending to call the child witness may apply to the judge for a direction that the child is to give evidence in the ordinary way. But that is not quite enough. So what this improvement does is to amend section 107 via clause 32 so that it will allow a party other than the party calling the child witness to apply to the court for a direction that the witness can give evidence in the ordinary way or alternatively in the alternative way. So that reflects the need to cater for both those witnesses who are capable of giving evidence in the ordinary way and those witnesses who really need to use the alternative methodologies. That again is a fairly minor but I think quite an important improvement that is being made to the bill.The fourth and last improvement that I want to focus on is I think the most important one. We heard a submission from a particular person whose name I will not mention. I felt it had particular relevance and I think the committee did as well. I felt that that submission was quite compelling in demonstrating what can happen to a person if we do not get the law right in these respects. What I am particularly referring to is access to video records of evidence outside Criminal or Family Court cases. The truth is that some bodies—tribunals and so on—do have powers quite outside this legislation to call for and consider video evidence but are not subject to the regime that is actually prescribed by this Act in regulations and injustices can flow from that.The recommendations that were made and that I am sure will be adopted by the Justice and Electoral Committee will ensure a clear and broadly uniform regulatory approach to prevent the misuse of those records. I am sure that by inserting in new clause 33A which inserts new sections 119A and 119B the requirement that police would be prohibited from releasing a video record of evidence to parties to proceedings outside Criminal or Family Courts unless the relevant body orders it is most appropriate. I think it will operate to avoid the sorts of injustices to which that particular submitter had been subjected and which can cause significant problems to such a person particularly for their future employment prospects and so on. Again it is a relatively minor improvement in itself but it can have very important effects. I think it needs to be mentioned as a particular improvement recommended by the committee that really needs to be supported and I am sure it will be.In addition to that the amendment inserted by new clause 33A will provide that the body concerned may order the release of the video record only if it would not jeopardise any pending criminal trial and that it is in the interests of justice to do so. So I think that again we have here a balance: the balance being the need to protect individuals where for example the police release this sort of information in a way that can be damaging to an individual and that individual has no way of effectively preventing that damage from happening and on the other hand the need for such information to be available if it is in the interests of justice to do so. So I think again the balance has been achieved there.Overall I think that as I have said the Justice and Electoral Committee has done a very good job in reviewing this particular bill identifying some of the issues with it that needed to be corrected and it has then made some very sensible and worthwhile—perhaps minor in themselves but nevertheless very important—improvements to the bill and we will get a good piece of legislation as a result. New Zealand First will be very happy on that basis to continue to support it.