O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I have to admit being a member of the Justice Committee that considered this that I did approach it with some scepticism. This has become something of an industry over the years. We would often say There's the conviction; now wait for the book." Usually before the book came there would be several articles in a magazine there'd be claims that it was a miscarriage of justice and the matters that were going to be considered would generally be played out in the media generally one-sided. Anyone who's ever been involved in the justice system knows that it's not a justice system that's made up of sound bites. It's not a justice system that is made up of at the last minute someone discovering—on the dock the person who looked like a credible witness all of a sudden breaking down and confessing. That's not the way the justice system works. What it is is a painstaking building of evidence. Detectives are trained—I actually trained detectives myself—and what it is is reconstructing all the time what has happened at a certain time at a certain place and ensuring that every new piece of evidence that is discovered is interrogated to the nth degree to see what has been learnt. So when a piece of evidence is discovered a good detective will wait and see until that piece of evidence and everything known about it then will be interrogated to see how that fits into the reconstruction. That case will then go to a court where once again painstakingly everything relating to that case will be played out. However that's not the world in which we live in. The world in which we live is one where we're brought up on a diet of one-hour crime shows where often at the start of the show there'll be a horrific crime. There'll be someone who will probably be a suspect and it'll be quite obvious—"How are we going to fill in this hour?"—and somewhere about five minutes before the end the real truth will emerge because someone who was the Miss Marple special will discover that in fact it was this other person who did it. So with that scepticism I did look at the legislation as it came through but then I reconsidered because actually what's happened is that we do de facto have a criminal cases review commission. It's just North and South it's just Metro magazine and it's just now podcasts on television. So what that has necessitated is a forum where those cases I have to say normally are high-profile. Almost invariably they are murders and almost invariably the offender is a male European. That seems to be the case. I'm certainly not standing here saying I don't believe there are people in prison that shouldn't be there or people that are innocent. They tend to be much further down the food chain of offending. They are probably from a minority race and are probably there because they have confessed because the gang or someone standing over them has told them to confess. So the evidence that the court has used to convict them has been evidence that the court has had to take into account because it was before them. That's more likely. But those are not the cases that tend to attract the popular cases—they tend not to be the cases that in the past that have attracted the money if you like the journalists and various others. So for that very reason I have come to the conclusion that this is actually quite a good idea to have this Criminal Cases Review Commission simply to have a forum where the doubts that have been tested usually often beyond the appeals system beyond the court system itself—with the net effect that the public of New Zealand lose faith in the justice system. That is the real threat here in this current environment—that the public of New Zealand lose the faith because of the inability particularly in the modern media to see the whole case and to see everything from start to finish. The sound bite world the five-minute sounding of the changing headlines is the reality of the modern world. Because of that the real threat is that New Zealanders will lose faith in their justice system. Now there have been some very high-profile cases particularly overseas from jurisdictions where I have to say the investigators in the jurisdictions are not as professional as they are in our part of the world where their expectations are not—and there have been some quite horrific cases in New Zealand. There have been cases that have been shown—I mention the Teina Pora case a case which I have to say at some risk to my last position I called an inquiry into such was my disquiet at the conviction of Mr Pora and I think it's great to see. It's a shame that it took so long for Mr Pora's case to come. Some of those attributes that I mentioned before that prevent it becoming a very popular case were perhaps not present but they were so certainly things have happened in New Zealand. But I think we have a far more professional investigation and a far more professional justice system in New Zealand. However saying that as I've said before there are books written and there are articles written so there is a need to ensure that New Zealanders are able to have the faith they need. I turn then to actually what it is that the commissioner will be considering: the functions of this commission that may ensure that we actually are able to have that faith in the justice system of New Zealand. It's also important to remember that this does not replace the royal prerogative of mercy; it is actually more complementary to it. Any eligible person can apply to the commission. The commission will be made up—and I see that the previous speaker talked about the need to make sure we have lawyers. Yes it's good to have someone with a legal background but it's also very important to have people on these commissions too that know how to do an investigation. In my experience being a lawyer does not train you in how to do an investigation. Investigation as I say is a painstaking piece of work where you start with one starting place—whether that be a body or whether it be a crime committed—and you work up and reproduce that. It's important that people understand the starting point. Where there have been poor investigations—and I have seen them—it's often where some of those basic rules of investigation have actually been ignored or overlooked or someone has tried to take a short cut. So it's very important and it's good to see at the moment the police have changed a lot about what they do. What they do is they bring a senior police officer in at some stage of what we call a whodunit inquiry where it looks like the investigation is going to go on for some time to make sure it is overseen and to make sure that the blinkers haven't gone on and that the inquiry hasn't gone down a bad path a wrong path and that's important. But again I'd certainly believe that when we do get the inevitable cases and they become popularised where they'll have a very highly articulate probably popular and probably well-off champion who will bring these things to the fore then it is important that we do have that somewhere that we can sort these things out. I think looking through again what is going to important for this review commission is that they don't just sit there and read the books and they don't sit there and read the newspaper articles but they actually are forced to go and sit down and look at how the conviction was arrived at and they ask the question: how did that person become the suspect in the first place? They ask these sorts of questions and it should never be—and I'm satisfied when I look through the criteria here—a way of satisfying a demanding public who have been placed into a frenzy as they can do over some of these cases on the basis of the small bits that they are exposed to the small bits that they read and the small bits that inevitably happen in those five-minute headlines. So then going back to the bill the functions are that ultimately "The Minister of Justice may ask the Commission to provide an opinion on any matter arising out of relation"—I'm also interested that this commission is actually going to have some considerable powers. It can decide to take no action. It can also compel people to actually come and give evidence before it. It has general powers of investigation it may require a person to provide information in Part 2 Subpart 6 clause 32 and it may require a person to give evidence on oath or affirmation. That is actually a power that will bring to light information that often the courts will not have had available to them. It has the potential to bring to light information that the investigators may not have had to them because neither of those institutions will have actually had the ability to force anyone to give that same sort of evidence. So actually properly done this could actually ensure—particularly given that these cases are more likely to happen some time afterwards—people's positions change relationships change and people's preparedness to actually give evidence may change as well. There's a prohibition on the commission members and staff disclosing information unless authorised as well. So in that case it also means that the information that comes can actually not be made public which again will encourage people who will not be keen on the fact they've given evidence to be known publicly—to actually give that sort of anonymity—which will again improve the protection. So while this must always be complementary and it cannot be an alternative I commend it."