Hipkins Chris: Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:676;Page:21600] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to take what will be a relatively brief call on the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill. I agree with what my colleague Rick Barker said about the importance of Parliament coming together on matters such as this and I acknowledge the contribution that the Minister of Justice has made to this debate. Generally in the 3 years that I have had the opportunity to sit in this House I have found that Committee stage debates are far more useful constructive and informative when Ministers as well as Opposition members engage in the debate. Sometimes we can spend an awfully long time talking amongst ourselves on this side of the Chamber. When Ministers engage in the debate I think that makes it a lot more useful. 
However I want to sound a word of caution around the way the Minister framed one of the central issues in this debate which is about the right to a jury trial and the right to a speedy trial. He framed the issues as if those two things necessarily were in conflict with one another and that is something I fundamentally disagree with. I do not believe that the right to be tried without undue delay necessarily should result in a trade-off with the other rights that somebody has when they are being tried. If we were going to go down that road too far in fact we could find that the court system could be made a heck of a lot more efficient timewise if we did away with a whole lot of the other rights that people who find themselves before the court system have at the moment as well. So I think we have to be very very cautious if we want to frame this debate in that particular way as the Minister did. 
I listened very carefully to the first contribution of my colleague Rick Barker. It was actually the points he raised in that speech that sold me on the extended time frame for a jury trial. As he pointed out the lengths of sentences for different crimes have changed significantly since the threshold was first established and it seems to me that it is therefore reasonable that there be some indexation of the penalties relating to the threshold for a jury trial. I think that he made a very reasonable point which ultimately convinced me that we are probably doing the right thing in extending the time frame to 2 years which is what Supplementary Order Paper 281 will achieve. 
I do note in this debate that this is only the second time that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act has been amended since it was first enacted in 1990. The first time it was amended—in 1993 not long after it was first passed—the amendment extended the protection it offers. This is the first time since that law was passed that Parliament will be voting to reduce the protection afforded by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I think it is really important therefore that in doing so there is broad consensus amongst the Parliament about that. I think it would be very unwise for a Government to do as others have suggested and pass an amendment simply by a narrow majority. I acknowledge the fact that the Minister made an effort to secure more than a simple majority for this legislation. I cannot envisage any Government—any responsible Government whether it be a National-led one or a Labour-led one—endeavouring to do anything other than that. I think it would be absolutely wrong for a Government whether it had a majority or a minority with support from others to scrape together the numbers to get a bare majority to pass an amendment to this legislation. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is something that Governments should not tamper with lightly. There should be broad consensus when changes to it are brought forward and it is welcome that this has happened in this case. 
I want to turn now to one other amendment that I had some concerns about which has been addressed in the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper 281. It is to do with the case management system and the requirement for the defence to formally identify issues that are going to be in dispute. I think it is a fundamental rule of the court system that it is up to the prosecution to determine or to prove somebody’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt and the suggestion that at the beginning of a trial it should be up to the defence to specify the issues they will be raising in their defence outright at the beginning therefore potentially limiting the defence’s scope seems to me to cut across that principle. One of the things the Government Supplementary Order Paper that has been introduced today ensures is that issues in dispute can be identified by the defendant only if he or she wishes to do so. So they are not necessarily going to be compelled to do that and I think that that is a reasonable amendment. 
I was going to talk a little bit about the absence of the defendant but having read the Supplementary Order Paper I am reasonably comfortable now that it has dealt with most of the concerns I had around that. 
I want to turn now finally to another issue which I think we need to look at further in a future Parliament—that is the issue of name suppression. I am not going to go into too much detail at this point because the concerns I have are wider than the scope of this particular legislation. But it is apparent in my view that we are developing a two-tier justice system where those who have significant money status and prestige are able to obtain name suppression without too much difficulty while those at the lower end of our society’s status ladder are subject to a different form of justice and to me that seems fundamentally wrong. There was a case recently—and I am not going to go into the details of it because there is suppression involved but it was widely publicised only a few weeks ago—to do with a security breach at an airport. Most of the details have subsequently been suppressed. It was widely covered in the media. Anyone following it in the media would know all of the details. For reasons that I cannot fathom at all the details have now been suppressed preventing people from talking about it further. It seems to me to be totally bizarre. I think that name suppression is an issue that the next Parliament must deal with because there are huge anomalies in the number of people receiving name suppression at the moment and in many cases I do not think it can be justified. I think that it is something that definitely needs to be very closely looked at. So I will conclude my comments at that. 
I am not a lawyer so I take a layperson’s view of this particular legislation. I followed the debate quite closely. I am satisfied that the major concerns I would have otherwise had around the fundamental human rights have been addressed. There is a balance to be struck between ensuring individual rights and making sure that people have access to the justice system in a reasonably speedy way. Definitely there is a problem with New Zealanders’ rights to a speedy trial being compromised at the moment and I think it is important that that be dealt with. This legislation definitely seems to do that.