Faafoi Kris: Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9722. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Before I hand out a few brickbats let me hand out a few bouquets: first of all to the Justice and Electoral Committee; to Scott Simpson who is the chair; to Jackie Blue; to my colleagues Andrew Little and the Hon Lianne Dalziel; and to those who submitted to the Justice and Electoral Committee on this bill the Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill.As Phil Goff said we have got a bill in front of us at the moment at the second reading that has been amended. It is a good bill and it is a perfect example of how the process works when good legislation goes through this House. It has cross-party support as the Hon Kate Wilkinson said. There has been a lot of consultation with Opposition parties to make sure that this very important piece of legislation will go through the House and have the wide support of this Parliament because it is a very very important piece of legislation in terms of our criminal procedures. We can contrast that as the Hon Phil Goff said with the pieces of legislation that we had before this around the Government Communications Security Bureau and the interception of telecommunications where the process has been an absolute farce and an absolute shambles.Those two pieces of legislation are very important in terms of oversight of our intelligence committees. You really do have to look at the way that the Government has put this piece of legislation through—in what I think was a very good manner and we have got a very good piece of legislation before us—and what happened before this piece of legislation in terms of those two bills the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill and the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill.We have also got the situation where last night we were debating the truncation of the select committee consideration of one of those pieces of legislation; again taking away the ability for the scrutiny that is absolutely needed when we are talking about the surveillance of New Zealanders’ telecommunications. Again this is in complete contrast to the process in the select committee with this bill the Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill.I understand there were only two submitters to this bill the major one being the New Zealand Law Society. You have to contrast the ability of people who are aware of the situation in this criminal procedures legislation with the Law Society coming in and making a fulsome submission to the select committee. That select committee went awayand listened to that submission and made the appropriate changes in the appropriate length of time.But in the previous legislation that I was talking about here we have a truncated select committee period for a piece of legislation that goes to the heart of democracy and also the oversight of our security intelligence agencies. As the Hon Phil Goff has said you can hardly make sense of the contrast between the process with the Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill and with the legislation that this Government put through this House yesterday in terms of the changes that it is making to our intelligence agencies.As has been said before this is a bill that makes technical amendments to I think it is the Criminal Procedure Act which was put through this House in 2011. It has come out of work that was started by the Labour Government in 2007. I do want to just reiterate the words that the Hon Kate Wilkinson said—that although they may be technical amendments they are very important amendments that make sure that the Criminal Procedure Act actually works for those people who are going through the court system because there are some serious issues around delays in our court system the increasing costs of getting justice in our court system and also the complexity of the court system for those who are going through it and that is for victims as well as defendants.It is absolutely fundamentally correct that we should put through this legislation to ensure that the quality of justice that those victims and those defendants are getting in our justice system is as good as it can be. As I did say there was one major submission to the select committee by the New Zealand Law Society and that was basically around some concerns around the “Henry VIII” clause which has been well traversed around the definition of crime and the ability to change the definition of crime by regulation.I just wanted to congratulate the Justice and Electoral Committee on taking that on board and making sure that that part of this bill was removed because as I say this is a case where a select committee has listened and has acted and the process was good. But I reiterate that in other bills that are before this House on this day of urgency that has not been the case.