Shearer DavidDAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I just want to start by thanking Minister Bennett for the clarification on a question that Stuart Nash posed before. Notwithstanding the comments made by Jan Logie about the extent of this bill I do agree with my colleague Clare Curran in terms of some of the issues that this bill raises and improves. It may not go as far as we would like it to go and it may have been delayed. I want to just start with a couple of introductory comments about that delay. This piece of legislation has been in the mill really since about 2006 when the Law Commission put out its first report. It really has sat in abeyance on the Order Paper for pretty much 5 years while it has been churning through. So it has been a very long time. I will put that into further context with just a brief comment. We have the sixth-worst sexual violence record in the OECD. It is nothing to be proud of. We have an incredibly high domestic violence record. The fact that it has taken the bill this long to get through is actually pretty significant. This bill will not fix that record but when you look at the fact that out of about 100 sexual violence cases 10 of those get to court and one leads to a conviction you can see as in the example that Stuart Nash was pointing out just a minute ago that the fact that those odds are so long certainly does put people off going forward and reporting those cases because of the stress and the duress they are going to be facing when they end up in court. But having said that I just want to point out three or four of the issues that I think I am particularly pleased to see in this piece of legislation. The first is in terms of children and the fact that for a child witness the onus has shifted to the point that child witnesses will give evidence in alternative ways. Alternative ways means closed-circuit television (CCTV) through video but not through direct personal presence inside a court. This is significant in the sense that it will mean that the presumption is that no child will appear in court which obviously is going to be intimidating and traumatic for many of the child witnesses—so the fact is that that has now become an assumption that that would be the case. Now it is up to the judge—the judge can ask whether the child would want to come into the court but it means that cross-examination does not occur in an intimidating and potentially traumatic environment. That I think is good. Secondly the bill also provides that a child witness is entitled to have a support person when giving evidence and may even have more than one support person if that indeed is necessary as well. The provisions for support persons also can apply whether a complainant or the witnesses covered by those subsections gives evidence in an alternative way or an ordinary way. The support person will be there with the child whether the child is giving evidence through a CCTV and video or whether the child is actually physically present inside the courtroom. Again it is a small step but a significant step forward in terms of being able to satisfy some of the issues that perhaps prevent people particularly children from being able to give accurate evidence in a court of law. There have been some other issues brought forward particularly about the video recording of evidence. There is a series of three offences under new section 95(1) inserted by clause 27. If the video evidence that is being used is used inappropriately or shown publicly or whatever there is a new series of offences that will come into play there. The last thing I just want to mention is section 95 which is being amended. Section 95 of the principal Act is being replaced with: A defendant in a sexual case or a defendant in or a party to criminal or civil proceedings concerning domestic violence or harassment is not entitled to personally cross-examine—". This is a significant issue because we have had past cases where the defendant has been able to stand up and cross-examine and intimidate and in effect traumatise particularly a woman who is the complainant in the case and put that person through an enormous and extraordinary ordeal in the court. The fact that that cannot happen now is I think significant progress along with a number of the issues that obviously the Labour Party will be supporting. I come back to the point that I started from. This has taken a long time to come through. It is a very significant piece of legislation in terms of enabling people to feel much more confident about taking their cases to court. It gives a much greater chance of a conviction occurring as a result of that. It may also provide or prompt some degree—the fact is that it might deter the people who commit these crimes from carrying out those crimes because they know that they have a greater chance of being convicted in court. It may actually have a dampening effect on the committing of those crimes because they are highly prevalent in New Zealand—much to our shame. With those comments I will resume my seat."