Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): One of the greatest challenges that a Parliament has that parliaments from the earliest of times have grappled with is how do we find and establish a system of criminal justice in which the guilty are appropriately punished and held to account while in the same way ensuring that those that are innocent are not used and abused by the power of the State? It's not an easy area there will never be a perfect system and what we have with the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill is the latest attempt to try and provide some other mechanism for dealing with those exceptional cases where there is concern that there has been a miscarriage of justice. The first point that National would want to make is that before we start creating ad hoc processes the primary focus must be on making our existing criminal justice system work by making sure that the evidential rules the systems by which trials are heard in the High Court and appeals in the Court of Appeal and ultimately through the Supreme Court support a justice system that New Zealanders can have confidence in. The difficulty I have with this Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill is it seems to establish a system which will be wide open and an extra tier to our justice system when it is my view that a more flexible response is more likely to be able to achieve the improvements we want in our justice system. There have been a number of occasions where Governments of different political persuasions have made a decision to have a royal commission of inquiry or another review of a case that is able to be quite specific to the concerns that exist around a particular case rather than what is proposed with this bill with a permanent criminal cases review commission. I do ask the question: what is the difference between a criminal cases review commission as compared with establishing a further round of appeals? I'm also worried that in all the discussion I hear from the Green Party and from Labour members is a focus on the offender. We need to be upfront as a Parliament. When you establish an additional process of appeal the uncertainty the pain and the additional trauma that you cause for those that are victims what is lacking in this bill is an appreciation of the victims' perspective in respect of trying to get that balance right in this Parliament of holding those that are accountable while ensuring also that the innocent are not wrongly convicted. So we've made our views plain that we are doubters about the merits of this proposal. We think it's got serious flaws. We think the historical approach where the Cabinet has been able to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy in exceptional cases has actually worked quite effectively and—more importantly—if we actually are to refine and to improve our criminal justice system the flexibility that goes with the discretion of creating inquiries or even royal commissions of inquiries is a better way forward than creating the new bureaucracy that is proposed with this bill. We don't support it. We don't think it ultimately will improve our justice system and we also believe it does not get that balance that National would want to see between protecting the rights of victims while ensuring that this country does not have innocent people being convicted and held in prison.