Bishop Chris; Tisch LindsayCHRIS BISHOP (National): It is good to take a call on the third reading of this important piece of legislation. This was one of the first bills that I as a new member of Parliament got to see—not in a ministerial sense—go through all of its stages. It was introduced to the House early in 2015 had its first reading in July 2015 then it went off to the Justice and Electoral Committee which I am very privileged to be a member of along with some of my good colleagues on this side of the House including some people who have spoken earlier in the debate—Jacqui Dean and Jono Naylor who is the deputy chair. It is a really important piece of legislation the Evidence Act. When Parliament codified the common law around evidence into the Evidence Act 2006 it was quite a significant step forward for the law and actually quite a significant step forward for the rule of law. I remember being at law school in 2006 and studying the codification of the various rules around evidence—David Shearer: Oh you're older than that.CHRIS BISHOP: No. It was a big moment and a big couple of months. It is a very important piece of legislation. It is really technical. It is one of those complex and technical pieces of legislation and it is really important that you get it right. In that context it is appropriate that the Law Commission has done the heavy lifting on this piece of legislation. The far-sighted parliamentarians in 2006 who passed the Evidence Act back then built a review clause into that piece of legislation. The law mandated that the Law Commission would do a review of the Evidence Act in 2011 to see how it was working to see whether what the drafters said would happen actually turned out to be true in practice. Of course the Law Commission kicked that off in 2011 it was reported in 2013 it suggested a series of amendments for the Government—all but one I think the Government agreed with—and we have this piece of legislation before us that we are going to pass I think unanimously through the House. That is very pleasing to see. I do want to endorse the comments of David Clendon on the bill. He said that the select committee worked in a very collegial fashion and that is definitely true. On matters like this you do need a degree of cross-party consensus. We received a number of very technical but in some ways quite hard-hitting submissions on a number of elements of the bill. We made some amendments that got passed through the House at the second reading and then at the Committee of the whole House stage. I also want to commend the work of Denis O'Rourke the New Zealand First member on the committee because Mr O'Rourke played a very constructive role on the committee. It was interesting to hear Mr Mark just read out some of the comments that Mr O'Rourke had made. Mr O'Rourke with his legal background was very useful on the committee and indeed actually he plays a very constructive role on the Justice and Electoral Committee. In my short contribution I just want to mention to the House that I think we are making a very positive change with regard to the changes around the notice requirements for evidence of previous sexual history. In my first and second reading contributions to this bill's debate in the House I traversed the changing law in New Zealand to do with sexual reputation and to do with previous sexual history. This current bill takes those changes a further step by adding a requirement that the defence give notice before the start of the trial if they intend to use evidence about a victim's sexual history with someone other than the defendant. That is a change recommended by the Law Commission. What it will do is allow the admissibility of the evidence to be determined pre-trial which will ensure that the complainant knows what to expect when it comes to court. At the moment of course the law allows that permission to introduce that evidence can be sought from the judge at any moment during the trial. I think it is best that we have these things determined pre-trial. That is the situation in the state of Victoria in Australia and it was recommended by the eminent experts in this area actually Professor Tinsley and Associate Professor McDonald from Victoria University of Wellington who incidentally taught me. They are the experts in this area. They recommended a bunch of other things that the House has not done. Maybe that will be for another day. I think we have still got some way to go in terms of this element in this area of law. This is a significant step I believe in terms of its contribution as I mentioned earlier to the rule of law but in particular when it comes to the previous sexual history of complainants. I think this will go some way towards improving what is a pretty brutal experience for many complainants in these types of cases. So with those brief remarks I commend this bill to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Dr Kennedy Graham—5 minutes.