Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a great pleasure actually to be in the House today and rise in support of the Military Justice Legislation Amendment Bill which is of course in its third reading. Can I acknowledge the previous speaker the Minister of Defence the Hon Ron Mark because yes we did introduce this bill. He didn't need to pick it up and keep it moving but he saw that it was a good bill and that actually there's not a lot of point in having two disparate systems one running in our military justice system and the other in our civilian force. So it just made good sense especially around putting some more protections around victims and how they're treated through the military justice system as well. So can I just acknowledge him for supporting the bill and carrying on the good work and sponsoring it through the House so that we can come here today and we can pass this legislation.As I was saying one of the most important changes to me has been around victims so I just wanted to talk a little bit about some of the changes that were made to victims' rights. Part 3 of the Victims' Rights Act 2002 confers rights on victims of certain serious offences—especially namely sexually-related offences or violent offences—including the right to be kept informed and the right to be consulted in respect of decisions such as bail. If you talk to the victims of these types of offences one of the things that's most important—that's critically important to them actually—is that they are kept aware of the status of the offender. You'd be surprised at how many tragic cases we've had in the past if you go back 20 or 30 years where actually offenders have been given bail or their status has changed and the victims or the victims' families have never been notified and never been told of that change of status. Sometimes they have been put in a terrible situation. Sometimes it's resulted in a horrible outcome.The amendments made by this bill are that victims of specific offences have rights and protections in the military justice system that are equivalent to those that they would receive in the criminal justice system. I'll just go back to the point that the Minister raised and I'm just reinforcing that which is that it made no sense in having rights for victims in our civilian court system and of course our New Zealand Defence Force personnel who are actually out there serving the country didn't have the same rights in our military justice system.I'm just going to move forward to objecting to a military member. This is a bit more technical and this does relate really to just what's happening in the military justice system but it is actually really important. Before this change was made you could end up with the invidious position where you have a miscarriage of justice because actually the appointment of a military member to that court for whatever reason couldn't have been challenged. There was no legislative provision for the director of military prosecutions or the prosecutor to object to the assignment of a military member to the court martial. So that simply meant that if a military member was nominated there was no way of objecting to them. In the civilian system if you're going trial by jury then there's a process—if you'd ever seen it—where actually the jurors can be challenged by either the defence or the prosecution. That was actually—for whatever reason whatever technicality—not possible in our military justice system.It is possible now that the director of military prosecutions or the prosecutor may be aware of circumstances that would make it untenable for a particular person to be assigned or to sit as a military member. However in the absence of a formal process for raising such matters with the court there is the potential for a miscarriage of justice. The bill amends the Court Martial Act 2007 to remedy this anomaly. Like I said it may seem very technical but it's actually very important. We're very proud of our justice system in New Zealand whether it be civilian or military and the last thing that we want to see occurring is a miscarriage of justice.Onus of proof: section 3(2) of the Armed Forces Discipline Act 1971 provides that the onus—and the Minister was talking about this. He was relating it back with tongue in cheek as being the young army officer or being in the army and often you'd feel in that environment that actually you were guilty until proven innocent rather than innocent until proven guilty. Although he was using some humour there was an important message around this and this is exactly what the onus of proof actually speaks to. The onus is on the accused to prove on the balance of probabilities any excuse exception exemption or qualification that the accused relies on as a defence to a charge. So the onus of proof was actually back on the person being accused.Provisions placing the onus of proof on the accused have largely been removed from the criminal justice system following the decision of the Supreme Court in R v Hansen—that was back in 2007. There is no good reason for members of the armed forces who are tried under the military justice system to have an onus of proof imposed on them that is not imposed in the criminal justice system and that comes back to the heart of what the Minister raised. So this has been another very good change in the bill.I'm very happy to stand in support of the Military Justice Legislation Amendment Bill. I would also like to mention my predecessor the Hon Gerry Brownlee. He was a big driver of this as well. I would like to thank the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee for their work. I understand this has unanimous support in the House and I was very pleased to take a call. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.