Walters VanushiVANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you Madam Chair for the opportunity to take a call in relation to this very important bill. I would like to thank the member Louise Upston as a number of my colleagues have done on her really important work in this area. But also as a newer—maybe not so new—member of the Justice Committee I really was extremely impressed with the collegiality across the committee on what was actually quite a difficult and complex area of the law and one that I think we spent the appropriate amount of time on because these weren't easy decisions at all. They require a balancing of rights both of the experience of the victims but also the criminal justice process itself and the rights of the accused which strays into the mental health space.My colleague mentioned that she had worked in the criminal justice space; for me a lot of my work has been on the defence side. And I do think when you've been doing that for a number of years sometimes it can be difficult to consider the space of victims' rights. It was about two months ago when I met the Chief Victims Advisor at a men's rights activist meeting and it was really that discussion and then reading her report from 2019 which called for several changes to be made in the space of victims' rights that I really saw the process we were going through a select committee quite differently. It is something else to sit in that room and listen to the stories we did. So I'd also thank the member not just for the important changes but for giving those families a space to be heard. I think one of the things I learnt early on is that it's not always just the families; it's people who witnessed some of these atrocious acts including colleagues in employment settings including members of the public as well.This is a complex area of the law and one of the changes that we looked at—actually several times; there were three iterations—was the verdict itself. So I just want to spend a bit of time and then perhaps ask a question on that. So as some have traversed after the bill received its original second reading on 12 May the Chief Justice wrote to the Attorney-General on behalf of the bench stating that they had concerns and then it was referred back to select committee. So the three iterations that we had—the first one included a reference to acts and omissions" and also included a reference to the "defendant". The second when it came back to the House initially included the words "proven but insane" and where we are now as we've revisited the definition is a unanimous position on the way forward which I do think is extraordinary but also does justice to the balance that we need to strike in this place. And that is the wording that the "act [is] proven but not criminally responsible on account of insanity".So what I felt we did in many ways is we actually revisited where the member was initially with that section. To me it gives that same sense of highlighting the act while making it clear that both elements of the offence hadn't been met. I mean I would like to just have that assurance—the words from the member in terms of her sense of whether that did bring us back to where she initially saw that piece of the bill because I do think that that is the most significant change to the bill.The second question I would ask is there were a number of submitters who questioned whether if we changed the verdict that would also bring a lack of clarity to those in the courtroom. So we're not just talking about the victims and the families and others who might have witnessed the act in this case but we're also really talking about potential jurors and of course the accused themselves. So if the member would I would very much love to hear her thoughts on whether we have landed—not exactly but in fact very close to the intention of where the original verdict clause was."