Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): The principal purpose of this bill as has been repeated is to bring our military justice system more closely into alignment with our civilian justice system—in particular in terms of the rights of victims and in terms of some particular due process safeguards that are missing currently.The rights of victims of sexual and certain serious violent offending to be notified has already been enshrined in our civilian justice system by way of the Victims' Rights Act 2002. In the military justice system currently the only one of these rights that exists is the right of victims to be consulted on bail. They currently don't have the right to be notified of even breaches of bail by accused persons or offenders that have affected them or if the offender escapes custody or is released. This is particularly concerning given the nature of the offences that are involved here and there is a failure to really take account of the type of trauma—the kind of ongoing trauma—that victims of this kind of offending suffer.So the risk of re-traumatisation for a victim who finds out that an offender who sexually offended against them has been released and that they didn't know about it the trauma that the family and whānau of that victim will suffer finding out that someone has been released or has escaped custody where they have not been notified is huge. We have an obligation in any kind of criminal justice system to protect those victims and their families from that kind of re-traumatisation. This bill will enhance those protections and bring the military justice system in line with what we already recognise as necessary in our civilian justice system.In terms of the procedural safeguards the requirement for two expert reports for example on any psychiatric challenge to the accused's fitness to stand trial in the military system has been recognised again in the civilian system. It's the only way to really know authoritatively if someone can be afforded the protection of that right—if they are in fact unfit psychiatrically to stand trial.A particular note again in terms of the due process rights we have the onus of proof which for some reason—and I can't figure out why—the military justice system has had reversed up until now so that the accused person has the onus of proving his or her innocence essentially on a balance of probabilities which is a perversion of one of the central tenets of our criminal justice system being the presumption of innocence which places as a necessary component of it the onus on the prosecution. Now the reversal of the onus in military situations really places at risk any guilty verdicts that result from that process. So the safeguard that says the prosecution has to bring the proof and prove the charges to any standard—whether it's balance of probabilities or beyond a reasonable doubt—really does safeguard the verdicts whether they are guilty or not guilty. This bill again brings our military justice system in line with those central tenets of our criminal justice system.So the driving purpose of this bill which is to update our military justice system and to make it fairer both for victims and for accused persons is really in line with the Green Party's policy of upholding the rule of law in a democratic society whether it's in our military system or civilian system. I do commend this bill thereby to the House.