Jones Dail: Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) — Consideration of Report of Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
Jones Dail: Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) — Consideration of Report of Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:9523] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 Thanks to members of the House Mr Tisch and Dr Hutchison for coming to this arrangement. This bill is new to me so I have obviously been spending a little time going over it. I have been trying to come to grips with it and with the 44 pages of Supplementary Order Paper. I asked myself what the process was when the previous bill the Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) was considered by the Health Committee. What happened in that select committee and why could this amendment to create a new Act not be sent to the Health Committee? Was it such a long process on the previous occasion? Did the committee spend hours and hours on it? Did it get 360 submissions as we sometimes get in the Justice and Electoral Committee? Will it take weeks for this to be resolved? 
I looked at page 15 of the commentary on the Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) and what did I find? The commentary states that the Health Committee received and considered eight submissions from interested groups and individuals. It states: “We heard five submissions orally. Hearing evidence took one hour and five minutes and consideration took eight hours and forty minutes.” There is absolutely no reason why this bill with a Supplementary Order Paper cannot be returned to the Health Committee so that for 1 day interested parties can make a quick comment on this legislation before it is returned to the House. Yet 2½ years or so after it came back to the House we are given a Supplementary Order Paper on the same day as today 21 October and we are told that it must be rushed through the House. What is wrong with the bill going back to the committee so that Associate Professor Warren Brookbanks the National Network of Stopping Violence Services the Auckland City Council the Human Rights Commission the New Zealand Law Society Mrs L D Orr the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists New Zealand Branch and the Mental Health Commission can have a look at? It will not take long. It is a simple matter and there will be proper consultation. 
We make a mockery of Parliament and we all make fools of ourselves with this type of legislation. It is no wonder parliamentarians have a bad name. It is due to the actions of the minority Labour Government failing to consult the community and being very reticent in consulting the community. Mrs Chadwick can turn up her nose at submissions—she does not want it to go back to the Health Committee. She is not interested. She knows it all. She knows absolutely everything there is to know about this matter. She does not want the advice of people like Associate Professor Warren Brookbanks or the Mental Health Commission. It would take one quick meeting of the Health Committee and the matter would be back in the House within no time at all. Parliament would have done its job and we would have had consultation. 
I seem to recall that once upon a time a Supplementary Order Paper like this would have been out of order. We would never have dreamt of putting a Supplementary Order Paper of 44 pages before the House. It just would not have happened. But today this minority Labour Government has no regard for Parliament or the people of New Zealand. This type of legislation is rammed through under urgency at this hour of the night in the hope that no one notices what is happening. Tomorrow morning or on the following day the people involved in this area will suddenly discover that a bill has been passed—at last for we have heard that this bill seems to have taken about 10 years to get to this stage. If it has taken 10 years altogether then why can it not have 1 day in front of the Health Committee so that people can make submissions on it? 
What does the Supplementary Order Paper actually do? As its explanatory note comments—and the explanatory note takes up barely half a page of its 44 pages—we will now have a new Act called the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act. I am not sure that the term “mentally impaired” was the intention of the select committee. I ask Mrs Chadwick who claims some knowledge of the bill whether she agrees with the comment on page 3 of the commentary on the bill that: “The term ‘mental impairment’ should be left undefined to avoid the possibility of leaving an unintended gap in the legislation”. This legislation seems to be a contradiction of the work she allegedly did in the select committee—that is if she can remember ever doing anything in the select committee other than going along with the Labour Party viewpoint. Why can this bill not go back to the select committee so it can be reminded of what has been involved?