Crimes (Drug Rape) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Crimes (Drug Rape) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This is a rather strange process, once again, in that I will ask the House to vote against a bill that will become law anyway. Strangely, because of the quirks of this House, this is a time when a bill will be voted into law by being voted down. My Crimes (Drug Rape) Amendment Bill is a member’s bill. It was first mooted and came into the House 4 years ago, in response to the increasing incidence of drug rape in New Zealand and the fact that there had been some rather interesting cases where drug rape had been involved. Drug rape, like all rapes, is a crime that is very hard to legislate against, and it is very hard to prove. As the bill points out, drugs leave a person’s system very quickly, and victims themselves are often unsure of the exact events that led to the effect of drugs.

What has happened here is that since tabling this member’s bill and since it went to the Law and Order Committee, a Government bill, the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2), has been introduced into the House. That bill has superseded this bill. In fact, I have to admit that the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) is a much better bill than mine, in that it describes the consent process much more clearly. It lists nine defining aspects of consent under section 128A of the Crimes Act in clause 7, “Allowing sexual activity does not amount to consent in certain circumstances”, and that is much better than my member’s bill. As everybody knows, with a member’s bill one does not have the assistance and help of a huge number of lawyers and of the parliamentary staff who assist select committees. So I can say that the Government bill and the select committee process have hugely improved on my member’s bill.

I want to thank a number of people who were involved with the original bill, and I particularly want to thank the New Zealand Drug Rape Trust and two people in that trust in particular, Louise Carroll and Jenny Fenton, who have worked tirelessly in the area of drug rape in order to bring it to the attention of the House and of the New Zealand Police. They have been involved in police training, and they have very much been involved in the New Zealand Drug Rape Trust and with the Auckland-based people who have been supportive of it. I want to thank Detective Chief Inspector Sturman from the UK, who did a very sizable thesis around the area of drug rape, and who came to New Zealand to share his experiences and his studies with us. I want to thank Jan Jordan, who is the criminology person at Victoria University, and who has just recently published a very, very large book on rape and rape in New Zealand.

I want to thank Amelia Carter, an intern from Victoria University in the year 2001 who worked in my office. She did a tremendous amount of work in this regard. When she came from the university I said that there were a number of things that she might like to work on. She said that she would like to work in the area of drug rape, which I had become interested in. She said it was something that affected young people, it was very relevant to her life and to young professionals, the crime was becoming more prevalent, and it was something that she thought she could make a big contribution on—and she did. I want to thank Doctors for Sexual Abuse Care, the body that represents doctors who are concerned with sexual violence, and Rape Crisis in New Zealand for the conferences and the awareness that it brought together around this issue.

I want to thank the New Zealand Police and the Minister of Police, because they have done a very, very good job. In addition to apprehending people who have been perpetuating drug rape and following up on many calls and complaints in that regard, the police have also done a very, very good publicity campaign. I thank them for the leaflets, the flyers, and the television programmes that warn young people about the possibility of their drinks being spiked. The police have been extremely helpful on this issue. There are a number of young people who think that if they drink out of a bottle rather than a glass, their drink will not be spiked. That is a little naive, and I am glad that the television programmes have made that very clear. I want to thank a person who was a police officer when this started, Angela Gallagher, for her advice. She has now become a Crown prosecutor. I also thank former Hamilton and now Nelson lawyer Anne Todd, who is a member of the National Council of Women. I thank them both for their advice and help, not only with regard to the framing of the bill but also for the sharing of their opinions and of background studies that have gone on.

This is one of those strange times when I am actually asking people to vote my bill down in order that the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) can then take over and become law. I also want to thank my Labour Party colleagues and members of the Labour Party who made the drug rape issue a matter of policy. It was a policy issue going into the last election, and I thank them for seeing that the issue was current and modern. I apologise to the people who have been victims of drug rape for the time that the legislation has taken, and for those who have been hurt in the process. I certainly hope that by making clear the process of consent, the law may go some way towards preventing the perpetuation of this crime. But I do also think that prevention through the police and television warnings is much more important than what we can do in the law, which is to apprehend people after they have committed the crime, and to try to console the people who have become victims of this crime. This is a crime that, as I have said, very much affects young people—particularly young professional people. As I think I have said before in the House, often people who are a little more mature, and who have been in relationships and then come back on the dating scene, are not, perhaps, as worldly wise as they need to be. So to those who have worked on the prevention of this crime, I say a big thank you. Let us hope that whenever we can, we can prevent it from happening.

I thank Martin Gallagher, my colleague who chaired the Law and Order Committee, the people on the committee, the advisers, staff, and everybody who has been involved with the consideration of this bill. Once again I ask the House to vote down this bill in order that the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) can supplant and surpass it.

The National Party in Opposition supports the voting down of this bill, and congratulates the member on putting the bill forward. I think it is a very important role of back-bench MPs to bring such ideas forward. I am disappointed for the member that she has been left behind for so long on the back bench. I think that there would be opportunities for her in the ministry, and the fact that she has not had that opportunity is disappointing. It is also disappointing that the Government decided not to adopt the member’s bill, because I think it would have been very nice for the member to have a bill passed in her name before the general election, because Dianne Yates will not be here after the next general election. The next MP for Hamilton East will be a young man called David Bennett, who has put in a tremendous effort already since being selected as the National Party candidate for Hamilton East. He has attended many of the school prize givings and local events that the local member of Parliament has not attended because she was down here at Parliament.

One of the important things about giving back-bench members the opportunity to produce members’ bills is that those bills do engender public debate, and often Ministers do take on board a member’s concerns. The Government would like to give the impression that it has taken on board the concerns that Ms Yates brought forward in her Crimes (Drug Rape) Amendment Bill. But I draw members’ attention to the commentary from the National Party on the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2), because there is actually quite a lot of doubt about whether her concerns are, in fact, picked up in that bill. Members of the House will have their minds refreshed when I say that the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) was the bill in which Mr Goff proposed to decriminalise some sexual activity of children aged between 12 and 16. He told Cabinet that he thought the public would support those proposals, but when they were outlined to the public in a Sunday newspaper he quickly backed away from his plan to decriminalise some sexual activity of children aged between 12 and 16, which he had thought the public would support. Although that bill attempts to cover the drug rape issue, it also proposes that foster parents will be able to have sexual conduct with their foster children once the foster child is 18 years of age. That is also proposed in the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2), and members will be able to read our commentary on that, together with our views and concerns that Ms Yates’ comments on the drug rape issue are not necessarily being taken on board by the Government. There is confusion about the wording of that bill and we draw that to the House’s attention in our commentary on the bill.

So we support the expiration of this bill—the voting down of this bill. We acknowledge Dianne Yates, who has brought this bill forward. We are very disappointed that the Government did not see fit to proceed to have this bill brought forward and passed into law. I think it would have been great for Dianne Yates to finish her time in Parliament by having a bill passed in, I think, quite an important area. It is disappointing that the Government did not give her that opportunity as a back-bench MP. We will also have other speakers in this debate who will talk about our concerns that the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) has failed to address the full magnitude of Ms Yates’ concerns, but we indicate to the House that we will take on board Ms Yates’ comments, and we will support the voting down of this bill.

The work that Dianne Yates has done on this legislation is exactly the reason that she will, in my view, hold the seat of Hamilton East comfortably. I am sorry that the previous speaker went on a bit of a flight of fancy. He was very gracious for most of the time. I will not use the words “forked tongue”; I am not allowed to use them. However, I do not think it was appropriate to engage in some kind of political point-scoringon an issue that is as important, as fundamental, and obviously as painful for a number of people as this one.

Dianne Yates is a good example of a hard-working member who talked to people, who did the work, and who came with a bill to this Parliament. It was referred to the Law and Order Committee, which I chair. I pay tribute to members of that committee in particular, and I also acknowledge Marc Alexander, the deputy chair of the committee, who, no doubt, may take a call on this particular bill. I know that he will support me when I say that the committee gave the matter very serious and comprehensive consideration. However, we came to the view that this particular bill would be better embraced by, and absorbed—if one likes—into the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2), a Government bill that initiates the first overall review of the sexual offences located in Part 7 of the Crimes Act. It became clear that the issues raised by Dianne Yates’ bill would be better addressed in the provisions of the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2). Of course, we acceded to Dianne Yates’ request that we not proceed with her bill, but take into account her proposals when considering the relevant provisions of that bill.

I say again that drug rape is one of the issues that perhaps could have been put in the too-hard basket. I acknowledge Brian Connell, who is also part of the select committee, along with Ann Hartley, Mahara Okeroa, Georgina Beyer, the Hon Tony Ryall, and Ron Mark. I thank them all for the work that was done. As chair of the select committee I do not think that members will mind if I take the liberty to express that all members were deeply moved at a personal level by some of the submissions. We certainly were moved by the submissions from the Drug Rape Trust and a number of organisations that gave public submissions.

We also heard some private submissions from individuals. It was one of those moments where, quite clearly, it was not like reading someone’s account in a newspaper or a magazine article, or even watching a documentary on the television, to have someone in the same room as us who was sharing very disturbing and tragic experiences. We also witnessed the incredible courage of those submitters and the wonderful love and support they received from their friends and family. It was the kind of situation where—touch wood here—one hopes one never has to be even close to having such experiences personally. However, one is aware—again, touch wood—that one never knows what life holds. I absolutely commend the courage of the individuals who made those submissions in a very, very focused way, and I thank them for that. I believe that they made a very significant contribution to our grasp of the issue, because we are lay people from a cross section of backgrounds. I also accept that I do not know whether the submitters will be entirely satisfied when they read the Crimes Act, or the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) in particular, but all I can do is to assure them that we have done our best.

We certainly will be monitoring the situation when it comes to drug rape. One of the things about the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) and the bill introduced by Dianne Yates, and our small contribution and that of the officials to them, is that they have raised the awareness of the problem. I was reading in the newspaper the other day an article about some of the issues around the smoke-free legislation with regard to people going outside to have a fag or something, and again, having to use some tests to check their drinks, and that kind of thing—the need for people to just be smart and cautious in a crowded pub situation. Again, I emphasise that people should be absolutely vigilant.

In closing, I acknowledge the work of Dianne Yates and the incredible research she did on the issue of drug rape, by talking to people in New Zealand and from overseas. I stress that although we are technically voting this bill down, I want to assure those people who are listening to this debate, and for the benefit of the Hansard record, we are purely—if one likes—absorbing it into a larger Government measure, which I fully understand that there will be rigorous debate on. I suspect that there will be rigorous debate on the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2). That is good; that is democracy. Finally, I thank the select committee and the officials very much for their work. I especially thank the submitters and acknowledge the courage of some people who made submissions. I again pay tribute, in particular, to the hard-working member of Parliament for Hamilton East, Dianne Yates.

Debate interrupted.