Logie Jan: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 09 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11878. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): It is an honour to speak in the second reading of the Evidence Amendment Bill. This is an incredibly important area of law and the Green Party is—I will use the word—happy to support this and we will be voting in support of it. However I do want to register my frustration at how absolutely limited this piece of legislation is and how much further we have to go to be able to ensure that victims of sexual violence as well as domestic violence are able to get justice in this country.As has been mentioned by the previous speaker this piece of legislation fits within the context of many many many years of discussion about the need for reform and so much advocacy from those on the ground. It is important to remember that we have about a 1 percent conviction rate in this country for sexual violence. What this bill delivers us are three key changes: the presumption that a child under 18 will not have to give face-to-face evidence in the court; changes around the circumstances of a court hearing evidence on the sexual history of a complainant where that can be put in writing first and given to the judge ahead of the trial so that in effect notice is given and there is the possibility that it may be ruled inadmissible; and that where evidence is given by video there will not be automatic access to this evidence and conditions or constraints on how this is viewed can be applied.In my brief submission I would like to primarily reference the advice from the Associate Professor of Law from Victoria University Elizabeth McDonald. She advised the House on what else could be done. I doubt that anyone in this House would argue that Associate Professor McDonald and Yvette Tinsley are the New Zealand experts on this. They are the people whom the Law Commission typically go to to make sure it is getting it right. I do need to register that I will be intending to develop Supplementary Order Papers to give this House the opportunity to actually make the changes that she recommended that would benefit the victims of sexual violence in our country.She made several submissions. One is in terms of the presumption of not having to give evidence face to face. She suggested that that should be extended to just beyond the age limitation of 18 to all victims of family and sexual violence. That does not mean they would all choose to have that but that there would be that presumption. In fact the presumption for giving video evidence would be to put in guidance as the best practice for all sexual violence cases because we know that these cases take so long to get to trial that victims are holding on and repeating the experience to be able to feel as if they can confidently give evidence in the court maybe over a year later. That is holding them in the place of reliving that abuse. It is unnecessary and it could be fixed by an amendment to this Act and I believe this House should make that amendment.She also sought for the court to consider when considering the admissibility of evidence the likelihood of it causing distress when considering admissibility. She noted that the arguments against this are saying that distress needs to be balanced against relevance and relevance has primacy. But she said that section 8 of the Act already has this balance in place in considering the probative value against the prejudicial impact. It is not without precedence so it could be done. She also noted significantly a recent Supreme Court ruling on the cases of historical abuse that actually have the effect of reintroducing a corroboration warning in sexual cases which is deeply worrying and goes against a trend and needs clarifying in this Act. There are many things still to fix.