Smith NickRIGHTS FOR VICTIMS OF INSANE OFFENDERS BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed.Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I feel so strongly about the importance of this bill having seen numerous gross injustices occurring from what my colleague Louise Upston is wanting to address with this bill. What I have seen over the last 20 years is an increase in the number of insanity pleas and with it an increasing number of victims that have not had justice from our system.I want to begin by paying tribute to Wendy Hamer a nurse in my Nelson constituency who in the course of her work was attacked as a nurse who suffered horrendous injuries—boiling water and the like thrown on her—in an attempted murder and the offender said at the time that he would get off on insanity where that offender subsequently soon came back to our community of Nelson and caused Wendy great distress. Only a few months after hearing that case I had a further constituent where a person who was mentally unwell presented at Nelson Accident & Emergency was not seen for many hours left that A & E and said that they were going to go out and rape. Indeed they did. When they committed the horrific assault they again told the victim that they would get off on an insanity plea. And again what was most awful in that case was the ill-treatment of the victim not having access to the same victims' rights if that person was found guilty and was not insane.And then—and this is all in the term of this Parliament—a third case that's come to my attention this year where a Nelson man was attacked by a person with a machete. They were attacked so badly they ended up in the intensive care of Nelson Hospital. The doctor said that another millimetre and he would have been dead. And I will during the select committee process bring attention to the select committee of the decision of the court where the person who committed that horrific assault was released from the court without any requirement to go to a psychiatric hospital or any other penalty in extraordinary circumstances because of some of the flaws in the law that Louise Upston is attempting to address.So this bill is very timely. I'm delighted it's come before the House. If we look at the statistics around the increasing use of the insanity plea this Parliament and this country does need to take a compassionate view of people that are mentally unwell but equally we must never lose sight of the victims of so many of these horrific crimes. The justice system is failing in this area. The victims of those crimes deserve exactly the same rights as those of others. I also welcome the ambitious step by the sponsor of this bill in changing the misnomer in the law that somehow someone is not guilty and so no one is responsible with the clarification of the language to say that it is proven but the person is not legally culpable because of being mentally unwell.This is a sensitive difficult issue but it is absolutely timely that Parliament addresses it and my hope is that Parliament can move with some speed to address this issue because actually every month this flaw in our law remains there are New Zealanders who are suffering injustice—just three cases in my own Nelson constituency in the last three years. Parliament needs to fix these laws and this is a very good bill that needs to progress.