Mitchell Mark; Williams PotoHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I'm very pleased to stand and take a call on this third reading of the Crimes Amendment Bill. We are supporting this bill. This was a bill that was started whilst we were in Government. It was good to see that it was picked up by the incoming Government. Can I acknowledge the chairman of the Justice Committee Raymond Huo and the committee themselves that worked on this bill.There are just a couple of issues in the bill that I wanted to address. The first one was actually an amendment that was put in during the committee of the whole House by Ian McKelvie. Of course those that know Ian McKelvie would know that he's from a very strong rural primary industries farming area of the country. He's a farmer himself and he's very much in touch with and understands the challenges that our farmers and those in the primary industries face and he wanted to deal with livestock rustling. It's not something that we always see in the media or in the news much but it's something that does happen and it actually has a massive negative impact on the farmers that fall victim to unscrupulous and dishonest cattle rustlers or stock rustlers. The fact of the matter is farmers are not flush with money. Cash is king for them. They run very very tight budgets and often they're reinvesting and putting money back into the farm—whether it be fertiliser or fencing or upgrades on materials and equipment or whether it be replacing stock. So although we may think that the loss of even two or three cattle or a dozen sheep may not impact them it actually does.I had my own very direct experience of this when I was policing up on the East Coast of New Zealand out of Gisborne. I remember clearly one night stopping a vehicle that there seemed to be very unusual movement inside the vehicle. It was a station wagon.Hon Member: Well you'd have seen a lot of that done!Hon MARK MITCHELL: That's right! No no. It was a station wagon. There was a fair bit of movement inside it and so I pulled it over and there were a couple of gang members inside it. But in the back seat—they'd laid the back seat down—there were half a dozen sheep. What they'd been doing—it was really the first indicator that we had that the Gisborne branch of the Mongrel Mob had decided that they would start to steal stock out of farmers' roadside paddocks.And although it was only a dozen sheep in actual fact there was an investigation initiated by the crime control unit and they went back and they found out that there were large numbers of cattle and stock being taken and actually it had almost sent one farmer to the bank—the amount of stock losses. It hadn't been big stock losses; it had been over a long period of time. So it had been two or three cattle half a dozen sheep—and actually it does have a real genuine impact on their business and on their livelihoods and on their families. So this is actually a very good Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that was brought by Ian McKelvie.I think the other thing that we have to think about at the moment which has been a massive threat to our dairy industry has been M. bovis. I want to acknowledge again the Government have picked up a programme that our Minister for Primary Industries the Hon Nathan Guy had already put a lot of work into along with the Ministry for Primary Industries and are rolling out a very very big expensive programme in terms of trying to eradicate M. bovis. Well you can imagine the controls that are put in place to try and deal with that. And if you've got people that are rustling or stealing stock and moving those stock around especially livestock then of course you risk breaching all the protocols that are being put in place to actually try and contain something that would have a massive negative economic impact on New Zealand if there was a breach due to some livestock rustling.The other issue that I just wanted to very quickly touch on in the bill because the Hon Nick Smith has done a very very good job and delivered an impatient plea speech tonight is around his SOP on the year and one day rule. I completely support him. As he said God forbid that we ever have to deal with another issue like the CTV building but the reality of it is New Zealand is on a fault line—it's on several fault lines—and it's possible that we may have another earthquake or another incident like that in the next 10 15 20 or 30 years. Actually I would say that the people involved or the families involved if there is a loss of life or serious injury want to feel that there is the ability to be able to go back and actually deliver some justice. So I support his speech and the work that he's done on that.The other issue that I really wanted to talk to was quite simply the removal of the spousal immunity for accessory to a crime after the fact. I'm just going to talk to this in somewhat of a broader context. I'd be surprised if all members in the House tonight didn't agree with me when I say that one of the big challenges that we've had is offending against our children against babies. We've seen many cases in this country where there's been terrible offending. I remember a case clearly in Rotorua where a young child 18 months old was subjected for weeks to ongoing physical abuse—burnt with a cigarette put into a clothes dryer and having the clothes dryer turned on. And finally of course—it was inevitable—the child died from internal injuries that had been sustained over a long period of time. The issue with that is that the family and friends and whānau all decided to circle the wagons and not cooperate with a police investigation. And actually in a police investigation in New Zealand we have a standard—it's called beyond reasonable doubt—when they take a case to the criminal court. For the police to be able to put a case together that strong that puts it beyond reasonable doubt so that you can deliver justice for a baby like that means that they have to have—or if it's available they can have—good strong witness testimony.So we think that this is a very good move in repealing this part of the bill because we consider that there's no justification that exists for protecting anyone who interferes with the execution of justice as an accessory after the fact. It wasn't clear in terms of who was actually protected under this Act anyway—whether it was a de facto spouse. So we think that the repealing of this section under the Crimes Amendment Bill is actually a very very good piece of the bill and I'm very happy to commend the bill to the House. Thank you.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. Dr Duncan Webb.