Dalziel Lianne: Succession (Homicide) Bill — Third Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Succession (Homicide) Bill — Third Reading 
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Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 I express some disappointment at Ron Mark’s comments because he stole my speech. That was exactly what I was going to say. After listening to Kate Wilkinson speak in this House so vehemently about the concerns she had about the Succession (Homicide) Bill I thought there had to be a minority report in this select committee report. So I grabbed a copy of the bill off the Table and I searched through the report which was not a lengthy one. I went all the way through the report and got to the appendix and there was nothing about a minority report. Even a “minority minority report” would have been useful to explain why Ms Kate Wilkinson was somehow distanced from the people who represented her party on the Justice and Electoral Committee. Not one of them raised those concerns at the select committee and it is a bit rich for her to stand in this House and say that nobody took any notice of her at the Committee stage when she could not even persuade her own party to move those amendments at the select committee level. 
 This bill is as the previous speaker said well overdue. In fact it was written as a result of a report of the Law Commission that dates back to 1997. I do not think Labour was in Government in 1997. The Law Commission actually noted that there were a significant number of culpable homicides between 1982 and 1992—over a 10-year period—and that these raised serious issues about the administering of estates particularly when the person who had died was intestate. There were considerable uncertainties about how those issues were going to be dealt with so they had to be dealt with on a case by case basis. The Law Commission recommended that this law be settled by our passing a statute such as the one we are addressing today. 
So I think it is really important that we address this. It is well settled already in New Zealand law that a killer may not receive any benefit under his or her victim’s will or the victim’s intestacy but we have not had settled law to guide the resolution of these particular cases other than to have them before the courts on a case by case basis which can cause delay and costs in the administration of estates that are often of only modest value. That was the point that the Law Commission made. So I think this bill is very timely and it is important that this Parliament does pass it through its final reading today. 
One of the things that really alarmed me though about what Kate Wilkinson said—and maybe I have misunderstood what she said—was that I got the impression she was saying that murdering people in a domestic situation was somehow less culpable than killing people in other than a domestic setting. She went on to use the very rare example of a female having killed her male partner as a result of being a victim of domestic violence. In fact that is a very rare example because of 56 domestic murder cases in this country only three were perpetrated by women against men; the other 53 were perpetrated by men against women. This is a gender issue. Partner violence in this country is a gender issue and it is an outrage to suggest in this House that some lower standard should be applied to people who are murdered in a domestic setting. I think that one of the problems we have had in this country is that people have not treated domestic violence as seriously as they have other forms of violence. 
I want to make the point that of those homicides the Law Commission reported on—and it talked about culpable homicides and attempted homicides rising from 53 to 103 between 1982 and 1992—about half occurred in a domestic setting. So a significant number of people who die in this country do die in a domestic setting. It is appalling to try to undermine the seriousness of the type of violence we are trying to address in this country by saying that somehow a lesser standard should be applied in those cases. 
I think it is important to place on record how important it is that we have law that is well settled by statute rather than relying on judge-made rules in terms of what the Law Commission described as homicidal heirs. It is important that we take up the recommendation of the Law Commission’s proposals because the idea was to enable in most cases administrators and trustees to carry out their functions without needing to refer matters of uncertainty to the courts and to reduce the scope of any dispute that arises. Again I think this is straightforward stuff and I cannot see why the Opposition members want to raise a particular question that they did not raise at the select committee. 
But I want to challenge the comment made concerning whether a lower standard would apply. The interpretation provision clause 4—and maybe I have got this wrong because I did not sit on the select committee—states: “ ‘homicide’ means the killing of a person or a child who has not become a person by another person intentionally or recklessly by any means that would be an offence under New Zealand law”. Well it has to be “an offence under New Zealand law” so all the references to negligence and all those other matters would not arise in the context of the definition of homicide the killing of a person under this particular legislation. 
The reality is that the law is designed to codify the law that prevents a person who kills another person—the victim—by committing homicide from benefiting as a result of the victim’s death. So it is quite clear to me that the law is simply stating what judge-made law has made a reality anyway. Therefore it cannot be undermining that particular interpretation. So I really do not know why the member thinks that her proposed amendments—which apparently she moved at the Committee stage; I was not aware that she had moved any amendments—would somehow have made a difference to the interpretation of law that is simply clarifying the legal situation as it stands. Having it written into the law makes it much more sensible to me because it takes a lot of the pressure off those who are having to administer those estates. 
I also note from the Law Commission report that the Public Trust Office alone had identified eight estates it was dealing with at the time involving homicidal heirs that it had administered in the previous decade. I think again that that raises the serious issue as to the extent to which administrative uncertainty is creating costs on the whole system and causing unnecessary delays to the resolution of these important matters. 
I honestly believe that this is important legislation. I cannot for one minute accept that we should stand back from proceeding on this matter. I think the member was suggesting that we have a discretion applying in the case of the courts to undermine an established principle. In this regard it seems to me to be counter-productive and counter-intuitive. I think it is unfortunate that the member would want to raise those issues. Certainly in my own mind to raise serious concerns at this stage that somehow we should treat victims of domestic violence in a different way is unacceptable for the purposes of this legislation. This legislation recognises that most of those cases—or half of the cases concerned—did involve killings in a domestic situation. I think it is important that we see these things resolved in a sensible way and this bill certainly meets that purpose.