Chauvel Charles: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Chauvel Charles: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:658;Page:7469] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 In the Committee stage on Part 1 of the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill the Government used its majority to vote down an amendment in my name that required a warrant to be obtained prior to the exercise of the novel powers that Parliament intends to give to the State through this bill. Now under urgency we are debating Part 2 of this bill in Committee and I think it pays for Parliament to think about the novel power that we propose to confer through this legislation: to “allow the Police to collect without prior judicial approval a bodily sample from any person whom they ‘intend to charge’ with certain specified offences.” which is later to be expanded to “allow the Police to collect a bodily sample from any person whom they intended to charge with an imprisonable offence.” 
As the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Justice the Hon Nathan Guy correctly recorded I have put forward another amendment which is designed to require a select committee of this Parliament to conduct after 5 years a review of the operation of the new power that we intend to give to the State. Given that we are now sitting in urgency—and given the Committee’s decision to reject the requirement for a warrant the last time this bill was discussed when we were debating Part 1—I suggest that the review is even more important. A power of literal physical compulsion will be conferred under urgency with no judicial supervision whatsoever intended. The Associate Minister said that the ministry would conduct a review of the operation of the legislation by August 2011. But of course that review is intended to satisfy the State that it can move satisfactorily to Part 2 of the bill which extends the powers contained in the legislation from the specified offences it deals with to all imprisonable offences. This is a very different sort of review to the one my amendment proposes. I suggest that this Parliament takes a long hard look at whether it has overall been a good idea to extend the powers of the State without judicial supervision under urgency in this way. I submit that a select committee would be well suited to report back to the Parliament after hearing all the evidence. It would not be in an election year—as August 2011 is which is the deadline for the ministry’s review—but after 5 years of operation when we have a track record when the police and their actions can be looked at in an objective fashion and when we can properly work out whether this legislation has made the contribution that we all think it will to overall law and order. 
I hope that the Associate Minister will take another call at some point during the debate and that there will be a reconsideration of what appears to be the Government’s initial decision to reject the idea of a more independent review given that the State intends to take a very new power to itself. The State is proposing that an organ of the Crown will review the exercise of that power after a very short period of time—in an election year—for the purpose deciding whether that power should be extended. My proposed review is an entirely different beast: it seeks to consider the exercise of the new powers in the round to help us decide whether we have made a wise choice in extending the powers of the State the way that the bill is intended to do without judicial supervision. I have to say that if Parliament thinks about this carefully it will determine that the review that is set out in my amendment is a much better mechanism than the substitute offered by the Minister.