Dalziel Lianne: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
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Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am pleased to be able to take a call on this section of the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill. As my colleague Moana Mackey said it could have a new name. Its new name could be the “Criminal Investigations (Are You Going to Pay Them Properly) Bodily Samples Amendment Bill”. But I think there are some very serious issues apart from the payment. I will come back to that aspect because it is part of the reason why I have taken this call. The Government needs to take account of how much it will cost. I think that an assumption is being made here that once a sample has been taken it somehow identifies itself and it does not have to go for analysis to a Crown research institute that is already under pressure. That analysis will provide the basis for evidence but it is not evidence in itself of anything other than the presence of somebody who is more likely to be that person than anyone else. 
Unfortunately—and I think my colleague has raised an extremely good point here—the police are up against it as far as this issue goes. Any police officer will tell us today that the programmes they hate the most on TV are  
CSI 
  
Cold Case 
 and anything that deals with DNA in any way shape or form because there is almost an assumption that if the police do not turn up with a DNA sample from a crime scene then somehow they do not have sufficient evidence to convict somebody who may be guilty of an offence. I think we do a great disservice to the criminal justice system when we put all of our eggs in one basket and when we try to rely on a single technology and assume that because facts fall in a particular way that then results in certain conclusions being able to be drawn. 
But that is not my only concern around this legislation. The cost is a significant part of it. DNA does not analyse itself. The sample does not analyse itself. The process needs to be properly resourced and consideration has to be given to the effects of having such a large volume of material available. I sat in a police station once Christchurch Central Police Station where they— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I’ve done that too. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well I was not there for the same reason as that member! I was there as a visiting member of Parliament not as a person under an inquiry. So there we go. The police let me do a database search of a fingerprint which was quite an exciting thing to do but they had already arranged for it to produce a match so that I could see how the match came up on the computer system. But otherwise even the process of matching takes hours. It generates hours of computer time to find the exact match or the closest possible match in terms of— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It doesn’t do that on  
CSI 
. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well the thing about  
CSI 
 is that young women are led to believe that they can go on to a crime scene wearing lipstick fingernail polish and high-heeled shoes so there we go. A lot of the things about those programmes are not really real I say to Mr Mallard. I am sorry to disappoint him. But the point is that an incredible amount of pressure is put on the whole string of the process that has to be put in place in order to bring that evidence in front of a court at some future stage. It is not just a matter of taking a swab and then the swab looks after itself. A lot of work has to be done after that. 
The second point I would make is that Treasury says that this legislation does not stack up in terms of its regulatory impact statement. I was involved in the original decision-making when I was on the select committee that looked at the original extension of DNA testing in this particular framework. This bill takes it a step further from the legislation that our Government introduced. We highlighted at the time that there were considerable links between certain types of crime and other types of crime. For example there was a very strong association between previous convictions for burglary and a rape conviction. The reason that there was a strong correlation was the opportunistic element involved with finding somebody at home when a burglary either was in process or was perpetrated when somebody was at home unexpectedly. 
That is certainly a correlation between types of offences where one would think that DNA would be a useful source of information and a useful correlation could be made. Gathering DNA from people convicted of burglary offences had a very distinct purpose when one looked at trying to find people associated with rapes later on where the person was not caught immediately. I think that in those circumstances the regulatory impact analysis the cost-benefit analysis stacked up. It made good sense to target those particular offences because of that strong correlation. 
Here all of that whole cost-benefit analysis has just gone out of the window. There is no cost-benefit analysis to substantiate the broad sweep as it were in terms of the collection of DNA in these circumstances for those charged with imprisonable offences without any judicial oversight whatsoever. 
The second point is that even the Human Rights Commission has said that this has gone too far and has the real risk that allowing this to be used in this way will undermine public confidence in the system. The Privacy Commissioner also expressed concern that the value of the existing criminal DNA data bank would undermine public trust in the police and the Government. These things are of concern. But apparently we are not concerned that Treasury thinks there is a lack of clarity around the nature of the problems with the current DNA testing regime that the Privacy Commissioner has expressed real concerns about undermining public trust in the police that the Human Rights Commissioner is concerned that the proposed changes go too far and that even the Attorney-General has tabled a report showing the inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. 
Charles Chauvel 
: That well-known civil libertarian. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: That well-known civil libertarian as has been highlighted! The point I am making is that given all of those things and the fact that we have not taken the opportunity for this bill to be remedied by the very good amendment that my colleague put up first of all to make the judicial oversight— 
Charles Chauvel 
: What’s his name? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: My good friend the soon-to-be Hon Charles Chauvel. He put up two amendments. One amendment was to address the question of judicial oversight. The second one which I think was also important addressed the question of a review after the legislation had been in place. It is all very well for the Minister to stand up in the debate on this particular aspect of the bill and to say that the bill will be given a “once over lightly” before it is implemented. Actually he will just implement the bill and the “once over lightly” will not be the detailed analysis that I think Treasury the Privacy Commissioner the Human Rights Commissioner and I would assume the Attorney-General would expect. With those defects sitting around this issue there is indeed a sense of disquiet on this side of the Chamber about where this legislation has taken us. It would be helpful if the Minister would simply stand and provide my colleague Moana Mackey with the information she has requested which is very simply that if the extent of the pressure that will be put on the Institute of Environmental Science and Research is not remedied in advance by a commitment to the funding that is required to meet that pressure we will in fact create a greater problem than we have today with this legislation instead of going anywhere near to resolving the issue. 
As Treasury has said the Government has not even provided clarity around the nature of the problems with the current DNA testing regime. There is a little bit of a sense of smoke and mirrors here and a sense that this bill might be showing that the Government is doing something but may not be achieving that without the kind of commitment that we have been seeking here tonight.