Ardern Jacinda: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Ardern Jacinda: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker for the opportunity to comment on the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Bill. I rise with heavy reservations around this bill. In fact I have noted heavy reservations being expressed by a number of my colleagues and counterparts in this House. The most recent of those reservations was expressed by Mr Worth. I do not know whether anybody else picked up on it but he noted the staged implementation of the bill. I can only assume—and he in fact said this—that that is to allow us time to figure out whether we have got this measure right. Now that sounds like a heavy reservation to me. That is poor policy-making. I also heard reservations more significantly perhaps being expressed by my colleague in the ACT Party. There were areas in which we unusually share the same view. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Not many. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: There were not many but I will acknowledge that they do exist. Reservations were also expressed by the Attorney-General and I will spend a bit of time dwelling on those because— 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: That is worrying. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: It is very worrying; it is in fact extraordinary. 
I will focus on two areas in my short address. Firstly one of our concerns which we have already expressed is around process. It is absolutely unacceptable that 50 pages of commentary and bill should be tabled 2 to 3 hours before this House is due to debate the bill in an area of such significance. Clearly the National Government believes it is of significance because why else would the bill be included in an urgency motion? The bill is of sufficient significance to be included in that motion but we are unable to have the amount of time required to give it the scrutiny it deserves. Once again we have seen this House be misused by this Government and that is an absolute disgrace. I think that begs the question of why there is such speed. I have seen some quotes given by members of this House around why expediency may occur in this policy area. I note a particular quote on this issue: “He has clearly timed it for this election and that has to be seen as something of an electioneering stunt.” That was a statement made by Wayne Mapp in 2002 when we made amendments to the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act. National clearly sees fiddling with this legislation as a matter of political expediency and that has come at the expense of good policy-making. 
On that point I will go back if I may to first principles. In the Labour Party we do not object to the use of technology to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of criminal investigation—of course we do not. If there are reasonable ways in which these technologies can be used with the appropriate safeguards we would of course like to see them being used. But it is important that we ensure we are doing so in the most effective efficient and targeted way possible with the necessary safeguards. 
Paul Quinn 
: You could have done that 9 years ago. You’ve had 9 years. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: For the education of Mr Quinn who with all due respect I know is new to this House I say that perhaps he might like to reflect on what Labour did around this legislation when it was in Government. He will see that we made massive gains. We have the highest hit rate in the world for DNA samples because we changed the principal Act to target burglary. In targeting burglary we ensured that we targeted the early symptoms shown by criminals who were about to escalate their offending. 
I will compare our hit rate with that of the United Kingdom. It has already been raised today by Mr Locke that the United Kingdom has one of the highest sample rates we can see in the world. It is about 6 or 7 percent of the population. The equivalent of all of New Zealand is on a DNA database in the UK. Have we seen the equivalent hit rate that we see in New Zealand? No. That begs the question of whether doing more sampling means we are more effective in the resolution of crime. 
Now what we have not seen from National in the analysis on this bill is the justification for the heavy expansion in those who are included in DNA testing as well as for the cost of that. In fact I know this has already been raised by my esteemed colleagues but I want to reflect on the view of Treasury’s regulatory impact analysis team because I think it is significant. I would however like to commend Mr Power for including information on that in the commentary on the bill. Unlike Mr English he is not scared to share Treasury’s view. Treasury’s view is that there is a lack of clarity around the nature of the problems with the current DNA testing regime along with a lack of evidence anecdotal or empirical to support these measures. A lack of evidence results in poor policy-making. There is limited analysis of the impacts of the options. In fact in the analysis of the options that we have been presented with there is a short more limited introduction followed by full unmitigated testing of everyone before he or she has even been convicted of any imprisonable offence. 
The Attorney-General has picked up that this issue is of huge concern because there are no longer the safeguards that we would expect to find in such a regime. We see those safeguards in Canada Australia and even the USA and in the one place where we have not seen them it now appears that the measure has been highly contested in the European Court on the basis of what it has done to human rights. 
From our perspective this bill detracts from the real issue. There are gains to be made here. If we can improve the way the regime works—for instance by reverting to the police commissioner’s submission that was made in 2002 which stated that it may be advisable to look at all offences punishable by up to 3 years in prison—we may capture a greater precursor range of offences that will lead to more serious offending. That might be worth looking at. Instead the National Government without analysis has gone the whole hog in terms of all imprisonable offences and has removed the safeguards. That is a key point and a key concern of the Attorney-General. 
I want to reflect a little not only on the human rights issue attached to this measure but also on the cost issue. There is a reason why we need to be proportionate in terms of what we target. What we take for DNA testing which could cost up to $20 million—that is up to 200 cops—means less in the way of resources to spend on prevention or other aspects of investigation and that is incredibly important. Even Warren Young a member of the Law Commission and a highly esteemed member of our justice fraternity has stated that obviously a huge amount can be done with forensic science but there are limited resources both with regard to people and money. That is not unlike the situation we see in our health sector. If we had all the money in the world we could perhaps throw it on an initiative such as this. But why would we invest money in compulsion around testing for something as limited as traffic offences when we could target the spending more effectively? 
I want to dwell a little as well on the changes that this measure will mean for the forensic science community. I do not think enough time has been spent on that issue. I am sure that the select committee—and I am lucky enough to be on that select committee—will hear evidence on that but I would be interested in hearing from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research Ltd. I have heavy concerns about that. DNA is not the same as fingerprinting and I want to make that point to the Minister. I find it worrying that he has treated it in the same way as fingerprinting. A fingerprint is 100 percent unique; DNA is not. That is a concern. There has not even been any discussion around the way we are to treat familial DNA. That issue has been raised overseas and we have not seen much discussion about the way we are to treat the storage of the evidence and samples. 
I also have concerns about whether the Institute of Environmental Science and Research Ltd is equipped to respond to this measure. I recall that in 2002 the institute even with the minor extension to sampling that had come in just the burglary area and in retrospective testing pre-1996 had concerns about whether it had the ability to do this work. So we need to have a very robust discussion with the institute on this issue. We need to make sure the institute is able to keep the chain of custody in tow because there is a range of dates around the dumping of samples. The dates are quite staggered and I think we need to consider that. 
There are two more issues I want to raise. I actually question whether this bill is all Mr Power’s work. I have a lot of respect for Mr Power but it strikes me that this is more of a Judith Collins bill. But I look forward to considering the bill in the select committee and to giving it the heavy scrutiny it deserves and that the House has not had the opportunity to give it.