Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to stand in this House and support the first reading of the Crimes Amendment Bill in the acknowledgment that it was the hard work of my colleague the Hon Amy Adams as the former Minister of Justice who did a lot of the groundwork on this legislation.It is somewhat puzzling though. I know we're heading in to Easter shortly but I'm thinking more of Christmas and what parents often do at Christmas is find stocking fillers. This piece of legislation feels very much like an Order Paper filler because there's nothing significant about this legislation. Yes it's important some of the components have been around for decades and so none of it is particularly urgent or new. It's not to say it's not valuable but it's somewhat puzzling that for the legislation immediately before this the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill there's not enough time for the House to debate that legislation at length and to allow members of the public to submit on it and yet they'll get to fill their boots with this legislation which unfortunately in most cases will not set the world alight. But at the end of the day every New Zealander who has a car and drives on the roads will be affected by the last legislation. So it is somewhat surprising but as I said we will support it. Unlike other legislation it will be great for the select committee to have a decent look at it. We know that when a piece of legislation like this is put together and drags in a member's bill the Government's pretty desperate in terms of filling the Order Paper but congratulations to the member who has had her member's bill taken up supposedly as a Government bill—well done.I did want to just touch on a couple of the aspects of this legislation. It is quite straightforward; there are three components. The one that probably is dazzling most people out there is the blasphemous libel which of course was the member's bill. I am somewhat staggered that we have a piece of legislation on our books of which there's been no action since 1922 so it is probably fair to say it's overdue for the attention of the House to deal with it. Perhaps it could've been done in a Statutes Amendment Bill but there we go.I think the one that the New Zealand public will be interested in though is the year and a day provision. I do want to say that that is an important piece of work and the Hon Amy Adams did do some substantial work to make sure that this formed a piece of legislation that would then be brought before this House. Because at the end of the day as we've seen in the very real example and the real tragic example of the CTV Building collapse we do want to ensure that people can be held accountable for their actions. The inability to prosecute anyone for that has had many New Zealanders shaking their heads. So this Parliament can quite rightly say that that issue is being addressed. I think the other aspect of that is with modern medical technology. People who do have serious injuries are likely to live longer periods of time and that shouldn't then be justice not being served in that instance.There are some other areas in this legislation. The third one of course is that the protection from accessory after the fact for partners should be repealed. We do consider though that there's additional work that perhaps could've been done before this component was brought to the House and on to the select committee for consideration. That is around what protections are being offered to vulnerable partners and spouses who could be forced or pressured into being accessories after the fact. The work that the previous Government did around family and sexual violence raised some really important issues and we were sort of hoping that the Government would pick up some of that work and really solve some of these challenges for those victims of family violence and those that could be very inappropriately pressured into that position.There were also a couple of areas that are worth mentioning that haven't been included in this legislation and in fact actively removed from it. I'm really proud of the work my colleague Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi has done with the carrying of traditional kirpan and that would allow baptised Sikhs to carry that particularly important cultural item for Sikhs. So I do want to congratulate my colleague for putting a Supplementary Order Paper together. I do hope that members on the other side who are very open about wanting to push for greater diversity for embracing cultural difference and for accepting New Zealand as a multicultural society what seems to be quite a simple mechanism—to have removed that from the legislation we find quite frustrating given that that was a lot of work that was done and a lot of consultation with the Sikh community to allow them to carry their kirpan in public places. But I'll allow my colleague to talk to that in a bit more detail.As I say although we don't see this as a bill of huge priority we will be supporting it. Thank you.