Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I wish to further contribute in this committee stage to clause 6 in respect to the questions around the repeal of the death being within a year and a day provision and the reason I want to make a considered contribution on Part 1 of the Crimes Amendment Bill is to give some history as to where the provision came from. I want to give some background as to why that may have been relevant then but is not today and then to talk about how important in a modern context it is that this improvement in the law is made.Now I was quite surprised at the Justice Committee to find there the death within a year and a day came from a common law judgement in the English courts in the year 1276. That's a wee while ago—about 800 years.Chris Penk: Before your time.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: It was before my time I assure Chris Penk I was not a member of the House in 1276 but the interesting bit was this: what the judge determined was that someone should not be held accountable for a death for an event that occurred more than a year ago because it was too difficult to be able to connect the causal affect. It actually arose in a poisoning case where someone was accused of poisoning a person and they then died 18 months later and they felt it was unjust. Of course I would remind the committee that in 1276 the penalty for committing such an act was being hung drawn and quartered. So it was pretty tough and it was appropriate at that time.My point is that society today has become so much more sophisticated and complex and that actually there are lots of things that New Zealanders can do that may not cause an immediate death but down the track can be incredibly dangerous. For instance if you are manufacturing a piece of equipment like a car and you negligently include a provision in that item of the car—it may not be that someone's instantly killed but it may well be that you could be criminally responsible for an accident that occurs 10 years later because you knowingly included it in the design of that vehicle. Today we live in an incredibly complex world of technologies and actually whether it be in terms of drugs whether it be in terms of electronics traffic lights all sorts of systems actually today in this scientifically advanced and technological society there can be a real connection between a criminal act of gross neglect and a death some years later that it would be inappropriate for people to be able to use this very ancient and archaic provision to not be held responsible.I also want to make the point that actually this is really important. This provision is only where people die. This is about death and about criminal acts associated with death. And so it is not some minor issue. During my time in various ministerial portfolios—some people may remember the awful Cave Creek tragedy that occurred on the West Coast. Actually the acts of neglect there that caused those deaths were more than a year after the events that occurred. We could all look at the tragedy that continues to cause controversy in respect of the Pike mine. Actually if you look at the Royal Commission's conclusion some of the acts of neglect that occurred around the safety systems of that mine occurred more than 12 months prior to the explosion that resulted in the death of the 29 brave miners and again in my view that is an example of why this one year and a day law needs to go. I have also made the point very strongly—in fact this provision in this bill has been triggered by the frustration of not just the CTV families but all New Zealanders—that the presence of this provision and our Crimes Act enables the engineers on the CTV building to not be held criminally responsible.So what I want to emphasize is how important and significant it is that this provision is to be repealed that it is archaic that it is out of date and we should not be allowing people to avoid criminal responsibility for death as a consequence of this provision.