Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to stand and take a call on this the Crimes Amendment Bill. Could I acknowledge the Minister in the House who has brought the bill to this House and shepherded it through. We do support the bill. I think that previous speakers have already spoken about the fact that we'd like a more nuanced approach around the year and a day but the committee of the whole House will have a chance to talk about that. Can I acknowledge the chairman of the Justice Committee because he's quite right: we've had a heavy workload this year—20 bills and of course we've been listening to very important submissions around the Privacy Bill and the End of Life Choice Bill as well and getting around the country. So can I just acknowledge him and the other members of the Justice Committee. I've enjoyed working with you this year. I hope that you have a great Christmas break and we'll be back into it in the New Year I'm sure. Just very quickly this bill covers off section 71(2) which protects spouses and civil union partners in cases where they would otherwise be an accessory after the fact. I think this is a really important part of the bill in terms of the repeal because although I recognise that wives and spouses in a relationship are always subject sometimes to coercion or force or threats that can affect their behaviour I don't actually think that we should as a country accept the fact that they are able to actually assist a spouse and they're somehow immune from the justice system like everyone else is. So I think that this is a very very good move. I think our agencies now are able to work out some of those complicated cases and deal with them appropriately but we should not be using laws in New Zealand to say that we're going to give you protection to help actually facilitate a crime and somehow give you protection from our justice system. So I think that that's a very good move.In fact me personally I would go further—and this is for another discussion another bill—in terms of when we see young Kiwis killed when we see children killed and you see the family come around them and this cloak of invincibility and silence comes up. I actually think as a Parliament and as a country we should be doing something about that and we shouldn't be allowing people not to give information to the police not to help with an inquiry not to assist in finding out what happened to that young person or that child. The Minister Andrew Little is in the House and maybe that's a further discussion that we could have because I think there could be some very good work done around that.Hon Maggie Barry: The Kāhui twins.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well the Kāhui twins are a great example—that's absolutely right.Blasphemous libel—this was fairly simple. We did hear quite a few submissions on this. We did listen very carefully to those submissions. We heard concerns that the repeal would encourage hate speech against God incite violence and remove a safeguard for religious freedom. It was suggested that the repeal would disrupt the maintenance of wholesale boundaries in the media and would insult God and the Christian foundations of New Zealand. We listened closely to that but we actually just felt that this legislation is well and truly outdated. It didn't reflect a secular society in terms of where we are as a country whilst also remembering actually that Christianity and religion have been a big part of our country's history as well and will continue to be.Arguments in support of repeal included the idea that the current law is an unwarranted restriction on the right of freedom of expression.SPEAKER: Order! The member suffers from some disadvantage because I've got a copy of the speech that he's reading. The member is not allowed to read speeches and he's especially not allowed to read the explanatory note. He's read a whole paragraph out and now he's just started again.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yeah. Mr Speaker I'm trying to reflect on the submissions that were made to us bearing in mind there were 24.SPEAKER: The member's own words—the member's own words.Hon MARK MITCHELL: I'm trying to sort of condense those for the House and reflect the submitters' submissions to us because I think that it is important when we get up in the House and we speak to these bills that we are able to do that. But I will condense it and I will say that after hearing all the submissions around the blasphemous libel fundamentally we did as a committee listen to that very carefully. We did have a debate in the committee about it but we felt that it was not necessary to make any changes to the proposal in the bill and the shape in which the bill was being reported back to the House.Kieran McAnulty: There you go—that wasn't that hard was it?Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry what was that? Sorry what was the comment?Kieran McAnulty: Get on with it.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Get on with it?Hon Maggie Barry: Rude rabble-rousing.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yeah that's right.SPEAKER: Can I just say that was not that helpful. Now that the member has been interrupted I will tell him that he mustn't reflect on my rulings after I've made them in the way that he did. He's a highly competent debater he can speak very well without notes and he certainly doesn't need to read out whole tracts of printed material that's already on the Table of the House.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thank you Mr Speaker. So if I come to the final repeal to section 162 in clause 6 (Death must be within a year and a day)" this has been well canvassed in the House. The previous speaker Darroch Ball addressed what we've been talking about in the House today as very good examples: the CTV tragedy and also the Cave Creek tragedy. I think that it's a huge anomaly. I've never been able to understand the year and a day rule especially when you reflect back on modern times now. We live in a golden age in terms of medical science and we can probably all reflect back and think of a situation where someone may have been involved in a car accident that wasn't their fault and they're being kept alive and kept on life support for easily a year or over a year. Or let's take the case I think someone raised it with a coward punch—I think it might have been Darroch Ball in his address to the House—where someone is punched they fall they hit their head on the kerb and actually they're kept alive for up to a year or over a year. Well actually the act of that coward punch is still just as relevant a year and a day later than it was at the time of the assault; so I actually think that this too is a very good repeal of this bill.Finally I just want to acknowledge the justice Minister again for making sure that this comes through the House. I want to acknowledge the comments that were made by the Hon Maggie Barry in recognising the Hon Amy Adams because she's the one that did a lot of work on this and the architect around the bill that we actually currently have in the House. So can I acknowledge her and the team that put that work and effort in. Finally I'm very happy to take a call very happy to recommend the bill to the House and I'm looking forward to it coming back to the committee. Thank you."