Power Simon: Evidence Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Power Simon: Evidence Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:9964] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 The National Party will be supporting the progress of the Evidence Amendment Bill in all its swiftness. I thank the Minister of Justice and the Attorney-General and Leader of the House for bringing to the attention of the National Party a defect I guess is the best word in the original bill which has to be remedied. It would be inconceivable for multiple-defendant methamphetamine trials and the like to proceed without this type of evidence being admissible because Parliament did not get the Evidence Act right. 
Russell Fairbrother 
: Only conspiracy. 
SIMON POWER 
: It would also be inconceivable for any political party I say to Mr Fairbrother to play politics with such an important issue. 
We had some discussion with the Government around the process for implementing the bill and I think we found a reasonable compromise to see this bill go to a select committee immediately and return as I understand it to the House on Friday with a view to getting through the second reading the Committee stage and the third reading prior to the Evidence Act coming into force on 1 August. That will be an important milestone for that committee to meet. 
I have no doubt that those members involved in the subcommittee of the Justice and Electoral Committee had no intention of excluding this particular co-conspirator evidence clause from the original bill. But as has been explained to me by the Minister’s officials and by those from the office of the Leader of the House essentially what occurred was that the Law Commission made some recommendations and when the subcommittee did not agree to those recommendations the whole baby was thrown out with the bathwater for want of a better phrase. And in fact what we saw was the rules of common law relating to the statements of co-conspirators or the like removed from the statute book. That is unsatisfactory. The National Party certainly does not want to be associated with any error of law in relation to those involved in particularly tricky trials particularly multiple-defendant trials around serious drug matters. We do not want to be associated with any law that enabled those matters not to be fully investigated. 
Section 12A inserted by clause 5 is a very short one. It simply states: “Nothing in this Act affects the rules of the common law relating to the admissibility of statements of co-conspirators or persons involved in joint criminal enterprises.” There is a further clause clause 6 which relates to defendants’ statements offered by the prosecution. I have had quick look at section 27 of the Evidence Act and clause 6 of this amendment bill purports to add a phrase to section 27(1) which makes the section make more sense in terms of co-defendants’ words or conduct at the point that evidence is offered by the prosecution. 
I also want to say that this is in no way a reflection on those hard-working members of the subcommittee of that particular select committee who were dealing with an exceptionally complicated piece of work. In fact we are lucky in this House to have four or five former lawyers of some expertise in this area. I include those members cross party who were able to wade their way through an exceptionally complicated piece of work. Heaven help the New Zealand Parliament had we not had those four or five people. Some of the rest of us might have been in the position where we had to decipher what was going on with this particular legislation. I am almost convinced that had that been the case this particular amendment bill would be a lot thicker than the one we see before the House now. 
I know that my colleague Chris Finlayson who was on that subcommittee will be speaking to this bill shortly but I want to reassure the Government and the House that National will do whatever it takes to expedite this process short of agreeing to an urgency motion to make sure that this legislation is in place and is working in the way I am sure the subcommittee intended when the Evidence Bill passed through that committee.