Mapp Wayne: Armed Forces Law Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMapp Wayne: Armed Forces Law Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 10 October 2007. Volume:642;Page:12245. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore): I am grateful for the opportunity to take a call at this point. I want to refer specifically to a particular point that the Minister in the chair the Hon Phil Goff raised about the whole issue of bipartisanship. We could bluff and bluster in this Chamber as various members are wont to do from time to time but there are some serious points to be made here.We need to understand why a certain level of bipartisanship which has taken a long period of time has emerged. I will not bear too much on this because I am conscious of the nature of the debate but the Cold War in essence ended 17 years ago. I think most people who were associated or connected with the armed forces understood the problems that the armed forces had in the deployment of Bosnia. They were well recorded by both the Government of the day and indeed the Opposition of the day.In 1996 when I was first elected I along with Derek Quigley who had been elected for ACT put together a proposal for the Minister Paul East. The proposal was that the select committee would conduct an inquiry called Defence Beyond 2000 and we did that for a very particular reason. We could see that world conditions had changed and we could see that some new thinking was required in defence.As has been well noted by Mr Donnelly the select committee worked very diligently on that project. In essence we came up with a structure of the defence force based on utility and it went something like this: a deployable army then aerial patrol and surveillance and naval patrol and surveillance so including an air component. A deployable army or land force obviously involves elements of all three services to achieve that outcome so one of the key recommendations made was for a joint service approach. We had looked at the 1997 review that had been done in the United Kingdom which talked about this a great deal. So the elements of a new approach to defence thinking were being formed and established in that select committee from 1997 onwards to rectify some of the transparently obvious problems that the Defence Force was having in being able to fulfil all the tasks that were being put to it at that stage.The current Government picked that up—and I ask members to bear in mind that this was before September 11—and used almost pacifist language whereby it saw a defence force as something akin to a constabulary and defence force personnel as really just police officers who happened to be in camouflage uniforms. After September 11 it became very obvious to the current Government that the role of the Defence Force and let us say an armed constabulary were very very different. I think the Minister would do the House and indeed the nation a service if there was some level of acknowledgement that the Government itself had to shift as well.So there has been a degree of convergence if you will of the parties in this House when faced with the contemporary challenges. As I said it is very easy to bluff and bluster on this to score political points but we need to look a bit more deeply at these issues and see why fundamentally this change has occurred. It is not only because different political parties have been elected or not. Rather it is because there have been some fundamental changes in circumstances: the end of the Cold War; a much greater use of expeditionary forces in nation-building or working in failed States; and the contemporary challenges around terrorism and so forth. Both parties have had to shift intheir respective ways. The National Party has certainly understood this well and we have been working on this for quite some time.I remind the Minister that by 2005 we had certainly formed the view that it was unrealistic to re-establish the air combat force in the way it had been established previously. That was actually clear in our policy from 2005. So it is simply wrong for the Minister to suggest that there has been some late discovery by National on the virtue of bipartisanship. This is something that has been emerging over a decade or so and that is an important point that I want to place on the record.The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I will call the member again but before I call him I have to tell him that he really has strayed from the bill. We have had a fair bit of leniency but he needs to come back to the bill.Dr WAYNE MAPP: Thank you Madam Chair. The point has been fairly made. I just wanted to put some points on the record as to how the debate has evolved.I want to speak briefly to two points. The first point concerns the new charges—essentially a modification of the charge of conduct prejudicial. This was designed in part to provide a better way of dealing with offences around unauthorised discharges. It is related to the way that summary proceedings can now be undertaken in relation to officers. This came about through a specific instance where an officer had committed an unauthorised discharge overseas. That is normally something that is dealt with in a pretty summary way but with an officer that was not possible. We understood that that person had to be brought back to New Zealand and tried by court martial which I think everyone thought was frankly an absurd process.So we were pleased to see that there has been a much more coherent way of dealing with that. I might just note that there was a reason why the proceedings did have to take place and that was that otherwise there was the risk that people who were not commissioned would be charged and if officers who did the same thing were not charged that would create serious disharmony within the military forces. So I certainly see that the Defence Force had no choice but to have the court martial but clearly it was a clumsy procedure to have to go down that path and I am pleased to see that we have provided a much more sensible approach to that.The other point I also want to bear on is the appeals from the summary proceedings. Most disciplinary issues that most service people will come across will be dealt with through what is known as the orderly room process. These issues range from soldiers not having their boots clean to I guess unauthorised discharges and the like and as Mr Mark—Major Mark I should say—indicated yesterday sometimes more serious things than those. One of the difficulties with this process—and it is inherent in a disciplined force—is that there are often tremendous pressures on individuals to plead guilty.Now I understand the reasons why those pressures exist but it does require a mechanism of review and National was very concerned about this. So one of the things we effectively put into section 128 is the ability for an independent entity—the Judge Advocate General—to refer a guilty plea to the Summary Appeal Court. This was because the individuals themselves may for one reason of another feel they just have to take it on the chin even though they feel unjustly dealt with. People might say that New Zealanders are not like that but I know for a fact that service people often feel put upon. I can see Mr Mark nodding his head to that effect. He has seen exactly the same thing both as a non-commissioned officer and as a commissioned officer so we know what we are talking about on this issue.So we felt it was very important that there had to be a mechanism so that if the individuals themselves felt they could not act—for whatever reason—then someone else could effectively act on their behalf. I was pleased that it was well understood by our advisers Brigadier Riordan and Lieutenant Commander Griggs that this was a changeto enable that fairness and that ability for someone else to act for someone who may feel disempowered. It was essential in the way we dealt with this legislation to provide a full measure of fairness in our armed forces law because we know the impact that disparity of rank can have on the way that people act within our armed forces. Actually there is not just the question of disparity of rank. There is also the importance of unity within an armed forces unit—be it a battalion or a company or a ship’s company or a squadron. There are enormous pressures for people to play their part and not create waves. That can of course sometimes—not always—run counter to giving justice in individual cases.So we spent a lot of time at the select committee trying to tease out these issues and amend the law where appropriate so those sorts of things would get proper consideration. I might add that the Sentencing Council was very much in that as well and my colleague no doubt will be talking about that.