Borrows Chester: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Borrows Chester: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
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CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I am pleased to stand and take a call in the third reading of the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill. As I have said before this bill more than any other legislation that has been before the House for a long time or will be before it in the future will prevent more people from being victimised. 
Apart from the scenario outlined by the previous speaker Charles Chauvel what will happen hundreds if not thousands of times over and over again is that a different scenario will be played out. I do not undermine what he said but I think we need to take cognisance of the balance here. For example a young man seen hanging around premises late at night looking in some windows will be caught unlawfully in an enclosed yard and will be arrested for peeping and peering. He will be taken back to the police station his fingerprints will be taken his photograph will be taken he will be handed a cotton bud Q-tip and told to put it in his mouth he will take a cheek swab and it will be put into a plastic bag. At some stage after that he will probably plead guilty to the offences outlined because to him they are nothing. At that stage he does not realise the criminal he will go on to become. Later on through a number of things that will probably impact on his life he will become a sex offender and will go on to commit further crimes against the person that are far more horrific than he or those who were around him at the time—probably the constable who first arrested him for peeping and peering—ever contemplated. 
After the offender commits what was likely to be his first offence and leaves a bodily sample at the scene whether it be blood semen spittle hair a piece of skin on a broken window or whatever he will have the DNA compared with whatever sample he left behind at the scene and there will be a match. He will be identified very very early in the piece as a sex offender and a conviction will probably emanate from that. Although we cannot say with 100 percent certainty that any DNA sample belongs to any particular person the good scientists from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research can come before the court and say: “The likelihood of another person being the provider of this DNA sample is 29 million to one.” The jury in the knowledge that there are only about 4.2 million of us living in this country quite rightly will convict.  
Although the points the previous speaker laid out before the House could well happen in the future if we look on the balance of public interest in this matter we have to concede that the vast weight of public interest is following the line that I have just outlined. That is why this legislation is so good. Yes there are costs involved. Bearing in mind the thousands and thousands of people who are arrested every year going to a judge to obtain a warrant to retain a DNA sample even before the conviction is entered would incur a pointless cost. For instance bearing in mind that the reason why a judicial oversight was required in the initial stages of recovering DNA was that it involved taking a blood sample this is merely a cheek swab that the offender takes himself or herself. That is a very very important point to remember because the science has moved on the intrusive nature of recovering DNA is far less than it ever was before and the law needs to reflect that fact. It has been said many times in the course of this debate that DNA is the modern fingerprint and yes it is. If scientists were mad enough to hare off down the track and try to identify a number of other profiles within any DNA sample then they could find out all sorts of things. But I am sure that no one in this House really subscribes to the Big Brother conspiracy theory.  
As outlined by previous speakers costs have been covered in the Committee stage. We know what those costs are and what we are setting ourselves up for. We also know that the call for more explicit guarantees comes from the side of the House that only last year gave us a Budget that promised hundreds of millions of dollars in spending entitlements and provisions that were never there to spend. Those members demand that level of accountancy from the current National Government and it has explored and costed this very worthwhile election promise. We are very pleased to see that at the end of this third reading it will come into form. We look forward to not seeing the offenders of so many thousands and thousands of victims appearing before the court and not seeing those young men and women enduring the pain of being the victims of such offenders.