Simpson Scott: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSimpson Scott: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 28 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10471. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to stand in support of the third reading of what was originally the Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill but that has now been broken into its nine component parts. As the two previous speakers Chester Borrows and Andrew Little have indicated this is a measure that receives wide and probably unanimous support across the House so it is very good to be part of it.This is a Government that makes absolutely no apology for putting victims first in our criminal justice system. That is right and appropriate. These nine bills are just another milestone along what is quite a radical overhaul of our total justice system. They contain technical amendments that are needed to ensure that the legislative intent of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 is made clear and can be applied as intended. These measures as others have said are non-controversial and the Justice and Electoral Committee was unanimous in its support for the introduction of these measures. I would like to thank the members of the committee for their work and for their diligent attention to detail most of it of a very fine technical nature.The benefits of these changes including the changes made by Supplementary Order Paper 233 have the potential to free up something like 10000 court sitting hours each year with potentially something close to 31000 fewer court events and it is expected somewhere between 300 and 500 fewer jury trials and a reduction of somewhere between 6 and 9 weeks in the average time to complete a jury trial. The net benefit to taxpayers of these sorts of savings—let alone to litigants and those people who are participating in our criminal justice system—is just huge.Criticisms of our criminal procedure over the last 20 years can be summarised broadly into four areas: excessive delay excessive complexity an outdated legislative framework and excessive cost. It has been estimated that currently there are about 43000 unnecessary court fixtures and appearances a year within our criminal justice jurisdiction. More than two-thirds of cases that reach a defended hearing fail to proceed on the day. We can and must do better than that.Our current system of course is built entirely on an obsolete assumption of a fully paper-based system. It is a bizarre but current fact that the system currently makes and puts in place barriers to the use of modern technology. An example of the delays being experienced is that the median time to dispose of a High Court jury trial is now something in the order of 16 months. That is an increase of about 5 months in the last 5years. As has been quoted many times in the earlier readings of this legislation justice delayed is indeed justice denied. Our system is clogged and we need to fix it.This Associate Minister of Justice Chester Borrows is a good Minister who is getting on with the job. He is making our criminal justice system more responsive more effective and more cost-effective for all involved. These are good measures and I commend them to the House.