Dalziel Lianne: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Dalziel Lianne: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:658;Page:7154] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I shall speak on one of the amendments that has been proposed in the name of my very good colleague Charles Chauvel. Firstly I refer to proposed new clause 48 which is to follow clause 47. This amendment would require a review of the operation of certain provisions of the Act after a period of time. Members will see that it is essentially after the legislation has been in place for 5 years. I think this is a very good practice. We have undertaken this process in a number of legislative areas. The advantage of writing the review clause into the legislation itself is that it does not get lost in the annals of history and of course it will not get lost in the change of Government that will occur in 2011. That is why it is very important that we write the provision into the legislation otherwise there may not be quite the level of priority given that ought to be given. 
There is often a debate about whether 5 years is the right period in which to review legislation and I want to make the case for a 5-year period. I recall that when I was very first a member of Parliament back in the early 1990s we dealt with some changes to the Human Rights Act. During the period of the operation of the Human Rights Act it had a sunset provision requirement that essentially exempted the Government from the full weight of the application of the Human Rights Act for a period of 10 years. During that 10-year period the individual Government departments that were responsible for each of the different pieces of legislation that had contrary provisions to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and to the Human Rights Act were to develop a series of papers as it were for different Ministers highlighting to them whether the Government wanted to retain the discrimination whether it wanted to remove the discrimination or whether it wanted to make the case that it was not discriminatory under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act using I think the section 4 provision. There was an advantage in the period being 10 years because there was such a substantial amount of work to do. 
The reason I am arguing for a 5-year review as my colleague has done with his proposed amendment is that for 5 years the departments did nothing. It was only when we got into the second 5 years as we were heading into the 10 years that departments suddenly started to realise that they were in trouble as far as getting the legislation up to speed was concerned. In fact I may even have the time slightly wrong because as I recall the legislation was passed in 1993 so it may have been a 5-year sunset provision. At the end of the period the departments suddenly found themselves right up against that deadline and the Government was going to lose the protection contained within the sunset provision which meant that it suddenly had to start doing something about it. What actually happened was that the Government of the day—so I now think that it must have been a 5-year period that was allowed—actually had to move an amendment to the Human Rights Act to enable the sunset provision to last a little bit longer. I do not think that is a very useful way of ensuring that major changes to our legislation are subject to the intense scrutiny that I think something like this should be. 
I am very supportive of the amendment and I hope that the Government will accept it in the spirit that it is offered to the Committee. It is a genuine attempt to ensure that with legislation that by its nature can be somewhat controversial we do have a period of quiet reflection after its operation to see whether there is the need to retain the provisions as they are set out whether they should be repealed or whether further statutory amendments are necessary or desirable.