Goff Phil: Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) — Consideration of Report of Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
Goff Phil: Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) — Consideration of Report of Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:9527] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I will respond to the comments made by Dr Hutchison and Dr Scott. First the question has been raised about the length of the Supplementary Order Paper. The Supplementary Order Paper is as long as it is because this new legislation has been recast as a stand-alone Act not as part of the Criminal Justice Act as it was introduced. Therefore most of what is in the Supplementary Order Paper is what is required in order to turn it from an amendment to a bill that is shortly to be totally repealed to a stand-alone Act. So most of this material is purely technical. It is to create it as a stand-alone Act. It makes sense to make it a stand-alone Act and to have a title that better reflects what it does. This is not about criminal justice because this is about people who are deemed to be not responsible for their acts in a criminal sense. 
Secondly we would not want to keep the legislation called the Criminal Justice Act when that Act is about to be repealed. Most of it has already been superseded by the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act. I mention the point made about multiparty support. Yes there has been multiparty support and there has been that support in the Chamber tonight. Every party in the Chamber has agreed that this is necessary legislation and will be supporting it. Yes it is important that we get it passed now and therefore I hope that the matter will not be unnecessarily delayed. 
I now want to come to the key point about the mandatory requirement. The original Act has a requirement that the judge must remand the individuals in a hospital or secure facility while inquiries are made about the most suitable method of dealing with them. Clearly in most cases where a person is found unfit to plead or not guilty on the basis of insanity that person will be remanded into some form of secure facility in most cases. But it will not be the case on every occasion that it is necessary to remand a person into a secure facility. In fact the advice I have been given by Crown Law is that by making this mandatory or leaving it mandatory we would very likely contravene section 22 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act under which everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained. In most cases the judge will remand the person to a secure facility. But it is always important in our justice system to give a judge discretion so that the law is applied to the situation in the particular case. In every other facet of our justice system we create that form of discretion— 
Dr Lynda Scott 
: Oh! 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: —and unless the member believes that a person who patently constitutes no risk at all ought nevertheless to be compulsorily detained when there is no need to do so why would we not want to give the judge discretion? 
But within the context of the discretion we have given a clear direction to the judge that the benefit of the doubt has to be given to the safety of the community. That is why in making the judgment the judge will be required to give paramount consideration to the safety of the community. I think everybody would agree that that is eminently sensible. It is certainly what Crown Law requires. It is certainly what the Human Rights Commission would support and I think that every reasonable person in the House would say that that is sensible. We should err on the side of caution but we should not create a mandatory situation that fails to take into account those situations where a person constitutes no risk and should be able to be remanded on bail into the care of an appropriate person.