O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It gives me pleasure to rise and speak on this bill—a bill that I have to say I'd describe as very pragmatic. As I read through the three provisions—they cover quite a range—one that really does resonate with me is the year and a day rule. It takes me back to a time as a detective when I stood in an operating theatre watching a young man who'd been stabbed in the back of the brain in fact in his medulla oblongata and watching surgeons working to save this young man's life. Obviously had he died it would have been murder at the time but through some great work heroic work actually by these surgeons over some length of time this young man did survive but he didn't thrive. I was to see that young man over the next several years and he eventually did succumb to related injuries. As I read this I thought about the fact that the offender in that case was back on the street relatively quickly. I happen to know that he was involved in another very serious crime further down the track.So just to put some real I guess meat and bones if you like on this offending I will just talk about modern medicine and I go back to the vital first few minutes the golden minutes that occur after any injury. If you are lucky enough to be injured where you do have very good medical help available then it's very likely that you will survive but again I go back to just how well you will survive or thrive.So modern medicine of course brings us to the fact that many people who would previously have died will now linger and we know death can occur years later from that same injury albeit given the ability of modern medicine to intervene. That will be a debate for certainly another bill that will come before this House.So the year and a day rule—the most recent example is the very highly publicised CTV Building in the Christchurch earthquake. Again I have to say it was a situation I was very closely involved in. I spent basically three weeks inside the red zones following that quake and I saw the human tragedy there—everything from where there was only a trace of a body to actually full bodies being taken into the morgue. Again closure will be an important part of what those families could hope to achieve from that disaster—and what better closure than closure in terms of the two people who quite clearly took unacceptable shortcuts. But those two people will now not face what they should face.Some would argue that time cures all but I look at just this week the person who was the bookkeeper at Auschwitz who cheated his day in court by dying early. But I don't think anyone would argue that that man shouldn't have faced his consequences in court despite that length of time.So if you are responsible for a death however long it should take for that death to occur of course you should face the consequences and not be freed if you like by the fact that a year and a day was reached. Again I certainly commend that part of the bill which of course is clause 6 which repeals section 162.I move on to section 123 in clause 5 which contains the offence of blasphemous libel. This is another provision of the Crimes Act which will be repealed. No one has not been prosecuted for that offence in New Zealand since 1922 although I note—and it's not that particular case; blasphemous libel—that Professor Lloyd Geering who made 100 years very recently was prosecuted for heresy which is a related offence. I think the prosecution was withdrawn. But it just takes us back to another era where the role of the Church and religion was rather more stringent strong and relevant than it is today. Even the mere fact that such a statute is on our statute book just takes us back to another time.I do note that when the discussion was taking place last year the Labour Party the then Opposition was very much in favour of the legislation about blasphemous libel being repealed. There was some discussion then and the comment made by the bishops in the New Zealand Anglican Church was that God did not need to be defended by a statute. Also attention was drawn to the legislation last year after news reports that British actor Stephen Fry was being investigated by the Irish police on a complaint of blasphemy. Mr Fry questioned why he should respect God when the world was so full of suffering. He was investigated by the Irish police. He said It's utterly utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious mean-minded stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?"That investigation was dropped but again it just goes to show that even today when we're talking about legislation here we often look at what overseas jurisdictions are doing. So it may well be we're ahead of several other jurisdictions on that and I commend it as another statute on our statute book whose time is well past. I certainly commend that it be repealed.I go to the other aspect of the bill clause 4 which repeals section 71(2). Section 71(2) protects spouses and civil union partners from essentially being an accessory after the fact to an offence. Again while not precisely relating to this I used to train detectives at the Police College. One of the tricky questions was always around spousal privilege. Again that still does exist on the statute book—spousal privilege. Again that is taking us back to another time and really what was behind that was that a person's identity is not separate from their spouse. That's the provision that essentially underlies spousal privilege and related to that is of course the provision we are looking at now which protects spouses and civil union partners in cases where they would otherwise be an accessory after the fact to an offence.Essentially really the time has come where it's anomalous. It creates an anomaly because it does not apply to other classes of people who are protecting someone in a close personal relationship. So in terms of the provision I mentioned in relation to spousal privilege it certainly is related to that and there really is no reason why a spouse or civil union partner should receive the protection that they currently do. A lot of these provisions often are used to hide behind. Lawyers who know their business and know their law will often use these provisions to ensure that the jury or even the judge does not get to hear the evidence that they should. Any provision or any law that presumes that a person's identity is not separate from their spouse I think has had its day.So when I look at this Crimes Amendment Bill with the three provisions I've spoken of I believe that it would be hard to find anyone who would argue that all three provisions have not had their day. I commend this bill to the House."