Walters VanushiVANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Madam Speaker thank you for the opportunity to rise and to take a call on the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill. I want to thank actually all the speakers across the House. I think there have been some really thoughtful respectful contributions from across the House and that's wonderful to see. I want to especially thank Jan Logie for her powerful speech but in particular clarifying that there are a spread of views across the legal profession about one of the issues to hand and as a member of the legal profession I think that's important to note. I also think the other point she emphasised which is critical is that the proposals set out in this bill come from two reports from the Law Commission—that is significant. There's data that informs legislative reform that signposts that something needs to change soon. Then there's data that is horrifying and it highlights that something significant needs to change now. Several people have referred to these statistics but they are horrific. The victim of crime survey tells us 23 percent of adult New Zealanders will experience partner violence or sexual violence at some stage in their lives; the figure is 34 percent for women. One of the really worrying figures is the low levels of reporting of sexual violence—at 94 percent not reported to police. We know the data but again as my colleague pointed out we know so well what's happening in this room as well.The bill stands also as an acknowledgement in my view of the Me Too movement where we saw a cascade of painfully recounted stories of violations of rights openly shared some for the first time in decades. We learnt in my view about entire generations and new generations many women who had no faith in systems of reporting who looked at a system ill-equipped to respond to the raising of a complaint and said no thanks they would prefer to live in silence instead of have some form of justice. One of the things the bill addresses is the problematic use of past sexual history as evidence. And to quote from a well-written article by Kez Bhola-Dare and Jamie Fletcher that I've been reflecting on they say It is argued that prosecution using a complaint's past sexual history [as] evidence is both morally and legally wrong. Introduction of such evidence is largely used as a tactic to undermine the credibility of the complainant to the jury. This plays on an old-fashioned myth that the more a woman consents to sexual activity the less serious one should take their claim of not offering consent to one particular sexual activity. It is analogous to rape myths that paint a woman's morality based upon their choice of clothes. Morally though a woman should not be found to have given consent solely because she has previously done so. In this sense every incident of [consent] should be judged upon its own merits and gain no legitimacy from previous grants of consent." The authors write—and this is something we talked about with young people at YouthLaw getting them to understand what consent was—"The 'cup of tea' [analogy] can be used to illustrate this. A person can want to drink one two three cups of tea but if they say 'no' to a fourth that 'no' is valid. Legally juries should be focusing only on whether consent was given for the offence on trial". Let me say this one even more slowly: you cannot imply consent. We have to also remember that in addition to being legally unhelpful to consider past sexual conduct in terms of determining consent to the alleged offence it is also practically unhelpful and Minister Faafoi spoke to this. It's acted to deter complainants from providing evidence even where a complainant has a very strong case. This bill addresses that problem by tightening rules around evidence regarding a complainant's sex history to ensure they are protected from irrelevant and unduly invasive questioning. It also requires judges to intervene in inappropriate questioning and to address common myths and misconceptions about sexual violence to ensure juries are not misinformed by commonly held assumptions about how victims and perpetrators act. Lastly I want to speak in particular to the allowing of pre-recorded evidence. Earlier today I came across a robust article on this very point written by the esteemed author Dr Emily Henderson when she held the role of Crown prosecutor and honorary research fellow at Auckland University. In the article she examines the decisions of R v M and R v E both regarding the pre-recording of children's cross- and re-examination in criminal trials. She notes that the Court of Appeal stated that the sole advantage of permitting pre-recorded statements is to reduce the stress that long delays can cause to witnesses thereby hastening the complainants recovering. But she notes that the court's analysis overlooks compelling evidence from Australia as has been quoted where some states have used pre-recording successfully for nearly 20 years and the extensive international academic literature. She notes that Western Australia has pre-recorded child witnesses' entire evidence in sexual abuse cases again since the early 1990s. Dr Henderson notes—and I agree—that yes it does reduce delays it also reduces stress and pre-recorded evidence can also provide for better quality evidence allowing complaints to recall the detail of situations earlier which is also extremely helpful and a form of justice for the accused. It can also provide for better evidence because the pre-recording allows any prejudicial and inadmissible evidence to be extracted before it's prevented. So once again I'm very pleased to see this legislation before the House. I'll end where I started which is on those statistics. Let us never look away from them. I think if we saw 94 percent of under-reporting—and that's probably not as big as it is—anywhere else across the justice sector not only would we all be horrified we'd be walking out into a New Zealand that was in disarray. This is one of the most intimate issues that justice must tackle. When we saw the Me Too movement I believe what we saw was the tip of an iceberg. There is much that needs to be done to ensure that anyone who needs to raise this sort of complaint is able to do so. I commend the bill to the House."