Mark RonRON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First firstly to signal that New Zealand First as advised by our spokesperson on justice Denis O'Rourke will continue to support this legislation through the House. Not being the justice spokesperson and not having sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee I am at a tad of a disadvantage in speaking to this bill but I shall do my best guided by Mr O'Rourke's notes.We note that in the first reading on 2 July 2015 New Zealand First acknowledged that the bill was designed to give further strength to the Evidence Act 2006 through the review conducted by the Law Commission in 2013 which the Attorney-General spoke of. It was a review that Mr O'Rourke supported on behalf of New Zealand First. We acknowledge that the bill contains some amendments that were considered technical in nature but still important and that there were changes requested. Looking at what Mr O'Rourke and New Zealand First said at the first reading—we spoke then about the changes to laws on hearsay evidence and pointed out that generally hearsay evidence is not admissible. The principal Act made hearsay evidence admissible in some cases but it preserved the common laws rules relating to statements of conspirators and persons involved in joint criminal enterprises.We went on to speak about the bill altering the law regarding improperly obtained evidence in criminal proceedings and the longstanding principle that such evidence would be inadmissible but sections 30(1) and 30(2) of the principal Act provide that if evidence may have been improperly obtained the judge must consider it on the balance of probabilities and decide whether or not the exclusion of the evidence is proportionate to the impropriety…".There were other matters that were discussed in the first reading relating to the admissibility of previous statements and documents used to refresh memory mainly contained in section 35(1) of the principal Act which says that previous statements of witnesses are not admissible unless absolutely necessary to respond to the challenge to the witness's veracity or accuracy and the statement provides the court with information that the witness is unable to recall.There was mention about the issues around clauses 13 and 14 of the bill and section 37 of the principal Act which provide that parties may not offer evidence about a person's veracity unless the evidence is substantially helpful. Then there were issues around section 44(1)—and further there on section 57 and clause 22 inserting new subsection 2(A).In the second reading I notice New Zealand First did talk about the improvements around hearsay evidence and the second improvement in clause 30 which amended section 106 and the need to prevent the misuse of video records. It is something that has been spoken about at length here in this debate this afternoon in the third reading. It pointed out that the Justice and Electoral Committee had made some important improvements to clarify the Act in this respect. There were two improvements. The first one amended section 106 to clearly specify the duties and restrictions relating to those video records that parties and lawyers have access to. We went on to talk about in relation to that matter that the committee recommended that it was important that regulations should be made and that there should be provision to make those regulations to cover the various ways in which all of that would operate.The third improvement New Zealand First spoke about and that we focused on was the difficult area of children giving evidence. It was pointed out this actually means people under the age of 18 something that the previous speaker David Clendon has just referred to again. It was pointed out by New Zealand First that at the age of 18 these people are not necessarily infantile. Some of them may be able to give evidence in the ordinary way and others not. But the Act improved the situation in that respect.We noted that there were changes to access to video records of evidence outside the criminal and Family Court cases which we agreed with. Recommendations were made and adopted by the Justice and Electoral Committee to ensure a clear and broadly uniform regulatory approach to prevent the misuse of those records by making amendments to new clause 33A to insert new sections 119A and 119B into the principal Act.Generally speaking getting to the Committee of the whole House one of the things that I will point out is that we New Zealand First did support Jan Logie's Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 195 because we thought that it added strength to the bill. Like the Green Party has just expressed we are a little bit disappointed that that SOP was rejected by the Government. New Zealand First signalled it would support this legislation at the first reading and worked constructively along with the other members of the committee to make constructive changes to that legislation which the Government accepted. At this point in the third reading we will signal that we intend to support the bill."