Dean Jacqui; Henderson EmilyPart 2 Amendments to Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 and Schedule 2CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members we come now to Part 2 and this is—Hon Members: Madam Chair. CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Ha ha! I did have some words to say but Emily Henderson also has. Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Madam Chair this is just a red-letter day for those people whose names end with son" rather than "sen". All right we've come now to Part 2. I had a few more things to say about Part 1 but I'm pretty sure that because of the way we've had to structure this omnibus bill we can still discuss them. Isn't that fun? The start of Part 2 is really about how we grappled with the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 which is the same year I started work in vulnerable witnesses—oh my God I'm old. Anyway this of course comes to the issue that we've already alluded to which is that this bill has two significances other than my overarching obsession with the rights of victims. The first one of course is that placing of the victim at the changing of a verdict which we've already discussed in some detail and I was very pleased to see that I was being joined in my nerdy-ness on this side of the Chamber. But the second part of it is about that difficult process of finding an equivalence for the rights of victims of ordinary offenders—non-insane offenders—as opposed to insane persons who we went on to deem offenders. I would like Ms Upston to talk to that because it was a very difficult operation. These systems—the mental health system and the criminal law system and the penal system—are not used to talking to each other; in fact they operate almost oblivious to the other. One of the real privileges I think of this process was having the Director of Mental Health before us again and again and he was extraordinarily kind to a bunch of enthusiasts who did not understand the system as we needed to. But he also did us the courtesy of taking our endeavour seriously and of walking us through the balance between the rights and needs of the insane person who is a patient and who is a sick person in need of protection and treatment and making sure that in our zeal to ensure the inclusion of the victim we did not overstep into the rights of the insane person and that was not easy particularly when the system has no real compatibility and frankly I didn't think the mental health system really had much interest in the legal system which of course came as a shock to a lawyer. When we had that discussion there were those three different Acts that we needed to marry up in order to create our equivalence and I would like you to talk us through what they were and why they were. But also I'd like you to talk through your thoughts about why it was important that we actually grapple with that and intrude on the treatment of patients and try to include this new element in the work of clinicians. It was interesting watching them grapple with that because I remember that at one point and it was Ginny Andersen talking about this earlier today who reminded me of this they talked about how they had never really had the opportunity to learn some of the things that victims could tell them which were in fact relevant to treatment—for example the letting out of the person and the leave provisions which go across two different Acts for the different stages of the leave. I think Ms Upston would do the community a service if she spent a little bit of time on how it works and maybe that is where I should stop. I feel that it would do the community a service if Ms Upston would take us through how the process of leave works and how we sought to integrate the victim into that notification process because it was extremely complicated."