Flavell Te Ururoa: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:10339] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Ka nui te mihi ki a tatou katoa mo tenei wa. No area is probably under more negative public scrutiny at the current time than the criminal justice system. This in itself is probably a good thing. Too often the system comprising our courts our jails and our judiciary is shrouded in mystery. Incarceration and sentencing decisions are vigorously debated around kitchen tables but they are not it would seem open to nationwide discussion. 
So it was a matter of some interest when Norm Withers of Christchurch instigated a petition in 1997 after an unwarranted brutal attack on his 72-year-old mother. This petition eventually led to the 1999 law and order referendum so it was obvious that there was intense public interest in the laws of criminal justice. This interest in the law is not just about the outcomes of the law in operation; it extends also to the system’s inner workings—the ambiguities the complexities and the rules around evidence. 
So today we come to the Evidence Amendment Bill which is another example where the law itself is proven to be faulty. In essence it is about an error made at the select committee that meant the co-conspirators rule was unintentionally deleted. We hear that the three common law exceptions to the rules about ensuring that a defendant’s statement can be heard against a defendant but not a co-defendant in the same proceedings have been missed out of the Evidence Act 2006. The passage of law that this House went through last year in supporting the Evidence Act 2006 was such that we were all really partners in crime to the central problem that today’s bill addresses. It is this sort of blind faith that Parliament entered into that I believe is useful to examine a little bit further. 
The legal system should not be beyond the scrutiny of the law. The fact that the Justice and Electoral Committee intended to maintain the co-conspirators rule but did not do so should be subjected to scrutiny as well as be addressed as we are doing today. In the interests of a healthy democracy we must ensure that open access to criticism is a part of the normal way of running business. 
In the case of this urgent amendment to the Evidence Act 2006 the consequences would have been particularly important in cases where evidence is obtained whereby one defendant makes a statement that under the current law is able to be used against another defendant. My co-leader Dr Sharples talked extensively the other day about the implications of such a ruling in the case of serious drug-dealing trials which often involve organised criminal groups. He talked about his own experience with the Patua te Ngangara or Beat the Demon drug education programme and how the mistake in law unintentional or not would have counted heavily in multi-defendant trials such as class A drug trials. So it makes us think that if one error can happen such as the one we are dealing with today then what about the other miscarriages of justice that may not as yet have been identified? 
It reminds me of the old saying that justice delayed is justice denied. What about those people who may have spent years fighting for damages and who are struggling with dwindling finances with the toll of the case weighing heavily on their relationships or on their general state of health? It will be well known in this House that even lawyers have expressed a lack of faith or confidence that justice will be done through the legal system. For a particularly comprehensive understanding of this issue I refer the House to a 1999 publication by the Law Commission entitled  
Te Tikanga o te Ture: Te Matauranga o nga Wahine Maori e pa ana ki tenei 
. This report on Maori women’s access to justice—he putanga mo nga wahine ki te tika—sums up the issue of how well our justice system functions: “Maori women identified the dominance of colonial values and lack of Maori personnel in the legal system as the major barriers to justice. Looked at from another angle the lack of knowledge of Maori values and culture and the lack of Maori personnel heightened their perception of injustice”. So of course the notion that there is injustice in the system of justice is not new but it is always useful to consider when another opportunity presents itself as it does in this case around abolishing the common law rule relating to co-conspirators. 
How does the law work in practice? How well does the adversarial system serve the cause of justice? How can we ensure that the systems of decency integrity honesty and accountability apply as much to lawyers and judges as they do to expert witnesses or clients? We have been interested in the context of such questions to learn about the establishment of a legal issues centre at the University of Otago which has been set up to provide such a bird’s-eye view. The dean of the University of Otago’s faculty of law Professor Mark Henaghan described it as follows: “Everything about the system hinders accessibility. Even the cost of lodging an application stops many people from pursuing a claim even where the evidence is overwhelmingly in their favour”. So the professor has raised concerns about the monitoring and enforcement of codes of ethics such as those stipulated by the Law Society. He has also raised the concept of alternative models of resolving disputes—an area that the Maori Party is keenly interested in. 
 The pursuit of justice te whainga i te tika has always been important in the Maori world view. In Maori terms justice recognises that kaupapa and tikanga are the first law of this land. The Maori Party acknowledges that justice is best achieved not by merely changing the content of existing laws but also by reconsidering—in good faith—the processes through which laws are made and the principles that underpin them. So we believe that if manaakitanga is to be effectively acknowledged the mana of all peoples might be properly and respectfully acknowledged. 
It is essential that the ideal of a fair and just community be established both in the structural functioning of society and in the operations of the justice system. The Maori Party is pleased to support the Evidence Amendment Bill not only in terms of rectifying the initial error but also to remind the House of the importance of ensuring that there are appropriate and responsive social conditions and legal processes to properly acknowledge the fundamental importance of a functioning democracy. Kia ora tatou.