Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill

I move, That the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill be now read a second time.

I’d like to acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee in deliberating on this bill and coming back to the House with an interesting conclusion they reached, which was that they were unable to recommend that it be passed, but they have recommended a number of amendments in the report. So I want to say that the amendments that they’ve arrived at are very helpful, and I’ll address those as I address the House in the next few minutes.

This bill establishes the Criminal Cases Review Commission. This is about enhancing and improving the process that we have to deal with miscarriages of justice. It is not the same as any other appeal. It is to deal with those cases where somebody who has been convicted and, often, has served a sentence considers that they have been wrongfully convicted, often because they haven’t committed the crime that they’ve been accused of and convicted of. Therefore, this provides just that extra important safety valve that goes beyond the ordinary appeals system to allow that act of justice, where it is called upon, to take place.

The commission will replace the function currently carried out under the royal prerogative of mercy provisions, which are in section 406 of the Crimes Act. The Governor-General, who currently exercises that royal prerogative, will, however, continue to exercise the power in relation to pardons, and I expect once the commission is up and running that it will be the Criminal Cases Review Commission that will assist the Governor-General in conducting the appropriate inquiries into the exercise of a pardon. The significance there is that somebody who has died pending any determination of a claimed miscarriage of justice ordinarily cannot continue that, but there may be a claim for a pardon, and ordinarily we allow posthumous pardons, and they therefore need to be investigated. So there will be some residual power left with the Governor-General. I know she would be reassured about that.

Presently, if a person considers they have a miscarriage of justice, they apply to the Governor-General. By convention, the Governor-General acts on the formal advice of the Minister of Justice. Work on the prerogative of mercy applications is, in fact, undertaken, as you would expect, by lawyers in the Ministry of Justice. Now, occasionally they may brief that out to Senior Counsel, but otherwise it is a matter controlled by the ministry. One of the points that is often made is that there is potentially a conflict of interest between the lawyers employed by the ministry, who are also there to ensure that the court system and the judiciary are supported in the conduct of their role, but an application for the royal prerogative of mercy is, in effect, a challenge to the determinations by the judiciary—not necessarily a single judge—through the peer process, and therefore it does not sit comfortably with some people that it is lawyers in the Ministry of Justice who are charged with making the investigations and the inquiries.

There is something else about this as well, and that is that the powers that the Ministry of Justice have—in particular, lawyers in the ministry have—and, indeed, those briefed out to conduct investigations to acquire relevant information to the investigation into a miscarriage of justice are those, in effect, that any citizen has. What this bill does for the Criminal Cases Review Commission is to provide additional powers to ensure that all the relevant information that there could be to bear upon—somebody who has claimed a miscarriage of justice can get that information, and therefore a good determination can be made, either that there is no miscarriage of justice or that there potentially is one, and so it then gets referred back to the Court of Appeal, as is the case with a successful application under the royal prerogative of mercy process.

Now, the existing process has worked reasonably well—there’s no question about that—and there are people who have had that determination of a miscarriage of justice. It is equally true to say that those who have seen the greatest success of the exercise of that process are, typically, people who have champions in the community. People, often on a voluntary basis but with a bit of wealth behind them and a bit of energy and momentum, can bring some energy to bear on a claim for and a case for miscarriage of justice, and that should not be the case. It should not be dependent on the luck of the draw that somebody else in the community is so interested in your case—or, often, a lawyer is so interested in your case—that it requires their personal commitment to see it through. The Criminal Cases Review Commission is a standing body that is there for anybody who claims a miscarriage of justice. There’ll be an appropriate triaging process, as you’d expect there to be, and if the particular claim meets a threshold, then an investigation will take place.

Now, we know that Māori and Pacific people are imprisoned in this country disproportionately to their presence in the general population. They make up 60 percent of the prison population, and yet the rates of implication for the royal prerogative of mercy from these populations is estimated at somewhere between 11 and 16 percent. That seems also discordant with the way things are. If you’re 60 percent of the prison population, you might expect a higher incidence of claim of miscarriage of justice. So a standing Criminal Cases Review Commission has the ability to reach out to those communities, and I’ve seen it happen that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission actively goes into prisons and says, “This is who we are. This is where we are. This is what we do. If you consider you have a miscarriage of justice, here is a process you can embark upon, and you can seek justice or the next stage of justice through that sort of means.” So this is an opportunity to improve the process that we have at the moment. As I’ve said, a number of jurisdictions have already established bodies like this. I mentioned Scotland; there’s also England—that also covers Wales and Northern Ireland—and Norway has one as well.

Some of the changes that the Justice Committee have recommended—many of them I agree to. But the committee received 32 submissions, all of which were given very careful consideration, and I know the Law Society and the Criminal Bar Association and others made submissions and, I think, made some very helpful suggestions.

So two of the committee’s recommendations I turn to now. The first is a change to the composition of the commission’s proposed membership. As an independent Crown entity, the commission will be led by a board of between three and seven commissioners. The commissioners will make strategic decisions about the commission—for example, about the development of its operational procedures—and with the support of its staff and its specialist staff, including investigators, the commissioners will decide which cases will be referred back to the court. So the ultimate decision of referral back following an investigation will be by the commissioners who are appointed to that task. At the moment, clause 9 of the bill requires at least one-third of the commissioners to be legally qualified and, in addition, at least two-thirds of the commissioners must have experience of working in the criminal justice system or have other knowledge or expertise relevant to the commission’s functions and duties. These requirements mirror those for equivalent commissions established in other jurisdictions. They’re designed to ensure that there is an appropriate balance of skills: legal skills, obviously; investigatory skills; and community knowledge and presence and understanding as well.

The committee has recommended that in addition to the legal and criminal justice requirements, the commission must also have at least one commissioner who has knowledge or understanding of Te Ao Māori and tikanga Māori. I agree with that recommendation. The bill as introduced required the Minister to take into account the desirability of the commission being able to draw on knowledge of Te Ao Māori, and this proposed change in the recommendation that the committee has come up with will achieve that.

The second change that I want to talk about, too, is the power for the commission to apply for a court order to disallow claimant privilege. Now, this is a very potentially controversial area. The bill as introduced didn’t provide the commission with the ability to access information that’s protected by privilege or confidentiality. Unlike the royal prerogative process, which relies on an applicant presenting the necessary information and the Ministry of Justice officials gaining access to information by cooperation and agreement, this bill provides the commission with valuable information-gathering powers. The bill details that cooperation and consent should be the preferred means of obtaining relevant information. However, there are circumstances where stronger powers may be necessary in order to get the relevant information, and the committee has recommended that information-gathering provisions be amended to allow the commission to be able to apply for a court order to disallow a claim of privilege in certain circumstances and assess a claim of confidentiality. I think that’s a very important recommendation, too.

I’m coming to the end of my time. I just wanted to address one point that was raised by members of the National Party on the committee, which was their well-established concern about the place and role of victims. The point that they made in their minority report refers to those with criminal convictions causing further disquiet for victims of crime. The point about this is that if the criminal conviction is one that should never have happened in the first place, it is an injustice upon injustice that they should not get access to a process that allows them to address that. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to lead on the National side in terms of the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. I think our starting point should be to acknowledge the seriousness of the possibility and, indeed, reality, on occasion, of miscarriages of justice. When a miscarriage of justice does occur, that is an offence against the individual himself or herself who might have had liberty deprived or have otherwise been unfairly punished; another perpetrator, if it’s a case of mistaken identity, will not have been held to account; and, of course, society as a whole will lose out in confidence in the system. It is no trivial matter—the system’s ability to produce miscarriages of justice—so let me start by acknowledging on this side of the House that we do understand and recognise that, before going on to our philosophy in relation to this particular proposal that has been put forward by the Government.

I’d also like to address a comment that the Minister made in relation to the select committee process. The National Party understands and recognises that the bill is likely—indeed, certain—to pass. The Government parties do support it. So with that inevitability, it seems to us as responsible lawmakers that we should support changes that will improve the bill as it comes through select committee and beyond, so there is no good reason for us not to be part of that process, recognising the very practical suggestions being made by various submitters in support of the bill. A couple of those changes that the Minister’s outlined, and, indeed, I think some others of a more minor and technical nature, we were happy to support to be produced by the select committee as a whole.

Notwithstanding that, as you will no doubt be aware—or, if not, you are now—we still feel unable to support the bill on this side of the House. The reason for that I’d like to step through in what I hope will be a pretty logical sort of fashion, starting with the other possible priorities for reforming our criminal justice system as a whole to reduce the incidence of miscarriages of justice and possible miscarriages of justice, also then looking a little bit at the detail of the set-up of the commission, and then, finally, sort of wrapping up as best as time allows at that point.

So our starting point was to consider whether there could be reforms to the criminal justice system such that there would be a reduction in the number of miscarriages of justice in the first instance. Recognising that prevention is better than cure, we would prefer to see the Government turn its collective mind, at least in the first instance, to ensuring the safety of the system such that unsafe convictions are less likely to arise in the first place.

The next possibility—adopting a pretty logical approach, I hope—is to then consider whether it might be possible to reform existing structures. There are some points that Minister Little has made about ways in which the current system of appeal and safeguards—I suppose we could broadly say—is potentially inadequate, and we think that there is potential for reforming those as an alternative to setting up this other system. I’ll go through those very shortly.

In fact, first of all, to note the obvious, there are appeal rights through the existing court system, notwithstanding limitations in terms of access to those, but also, for the sake of completeness, I will note, with the royal prerogative of mercy currently executed—that’s the word I want—through the office of the Governor-General but based on the advice in the Ministry of Justice office. There is no good reason that the Government shouldn’t consider providing additional resources or powers to that team within the Ministry of Justice. I note Minister Little’s objection that it doesn’t currently have those resources and powers currently, notwithstanding that it carries out that function. So that’s a possibility that we’re somewhat concerned doesn’t appear to have been considered.

So we’re not even ending up in a situation where there’s a reform in the real sense of the word whereby the existing structure would be set aside and replaced with this new body, but, in fact, we’d have an extra layer. We would have this new beast called the Criminal Cases Review Commission, but we’d still also have that somewhat anomalous situation whereby the Governor-General would be available to issue pardons. So neither fish nor fowl is the new entrant into the field of criminal justice, and we think that it’s somewhat of a half-measure that the Government’s proposing to go about it this way.

I note the very real and, I think, reasonable concerns of the Minister of Justice regarding access to the structures—for example, the appeals. He is right to acknowledge that there are some groups in society who are less able and, historically, the statistics indicate have accessed these structures and these avenues less frequently. That might be for reasons financial, cultural—perhaps relating to the acceptance of authority by some ethnic groups more readily than others—language and/or education barriers, or, in particular, by persons who are determined to be criminals. Often times, there’s a link between disadvantage of a more general kind and a person’s likelihood of ending up in the criminal justice system, or it might be a personal disadvantage, I suppose, in the manner of perhaps an injury or a learning difficulty, or some other limitation in engaging with the system and knowing that one has the ability to appeal and say “Sir/Ma’am, I didn’t do this thing of which I’ve been convicted and I’d like to have a crack at overturning it.”

Society shouldn’t rely on the champions, as Minister Little has called them, or white knights, as we might also refer to them—using somewhat archaic language—and so it is that we should take seriously the lack of access to justice, but all of those obstacles are not insurmountable by other means, and, again, it seems as though the Government has preferred this shiny new object that is this new commission, rather than considering means of publicising the availability of different kinds of recourse, or perhaps reforming the court structures themselves to enable a faster and less expensive process. Again, all these things appear not to have been considered, and we would have preferred that in the first instance.

As to the other key function of the commission as set out in the bill, we’ve dealt with the primary function as it’s known, but the secondary function—if we can call it that—is thematic inquiries, where the commission will be tasked to look into patterns and trends of miscarriages of justice. I would point out, again, on the theme, really, of emphasising that this is an exercise somewhat in redundancy that all branches of Government have at least some sort of role in that. Obviously, the judiciary is pretty constrained in its ability to be able to see patterns as a whole and recommend. Naturally, we want our courts to continue to focus on one case at the time, but the executive branch of Government, through the Law Commission, the Ministry of Justice, the legislative programme of the Government of the day, has avenues of identifying and enacting upon these trends that become perceptible from time to time.

We have the legislative branch of Government—this Parliament and its select committees—which, of course, can hold thematic inquiries as well, and it is worth bearing in mind as well, of course, the legal academy. That is to say that legal scholars who take an interest in these things—quite rightly—should and, I would say, certainly do already notice trends in these areas and can make very serious recommendations. So too the fourth estate, and I think it’s worth acknowledging the popular role—and I mean that in both senses of the word “popular”—of podcasts, particularly of true crime stories and unravellings of history, if we can sort of glibly call it that. So there are lots of opportunities already for uncovering miscarriages and possible miscarriages of justice, and I think that we should not discount those so readily as it appears that we’re in danger of doing.

Turning as my final category to the detail, we’ve talked about changes that we’ve been happy to accept, but a couple are worth noting. One is that, as the Minister has acknowledged, we have said in our National Party minority view within the select committee report that we’d like to have some explicit acknowledgment of the effect on victims of a crime such that if a person is in danger of being revictimised by having their case, essentially, reopened, albeit by the Criminal Cases Review Commission rather than a court proper, then there’ll be an element of them being retraumatised and potentially having to go through all that and relive that again, which is unfortunate, if it should be the case that the crime had in fact occurred, as has already been the case.

💬 Darroch Ball: It’s a ridiculous statement to make.

This is why we have an appeals process, Mr Ball, and this is why we have these structures and these avenues already.

Finally, it’s unfortunate the membership of the commission doesn’t guarantee that there’s a New Zealand - trained and experienced criminal lawyer, because that would be an absolute minimum requirement. For all these reasons, we are unable to support the bill at this stage and beyond. Thank you.

I have to admit, being a member of the Justice Committee, that considered this, that I did approach it with some scepticism. This has become something of an industry over the years. We would often say, “There’s the conviction; now wait for the book.” Usually before the book came, there would be several articles in a magazine, there’d be claims that it was a miscarriage of justice, and the matters that were going to be considered would generally be played out in the media, generally one-sided. Anyone who’s ever been involved in the justice system knows that it’s not a justice system that’s made up of sound bites. It’s not a justice system that is made up of, at the last minute, someone discovering—on the dock, the person who looked like a credible witness all of a sudden breaking down and confessing. That’s not the way the justice system works.

What it is is a painstaking building of evidence. Detectives are trained—I actually trained detectives myself—and what it is is reconstructing all the time what has happened at a certain time at a certain place, and ensuring that every new piece of evidence that is discovered is interrogated to the nth degree to see what has been learnt. So when a piece of evidence is discovered, a good detective will wait and see until that piece of evidence and everything known about it then will be interrogated to see how that fits into the reconstruction. That case will then go to a court where, once again, painstakingly, everything relating to that case will be played out.

However, that’s not the world in which we live in. The world in which we live is one where we’re brought up on a diet of one-hour crime shows where, often, at the start of the show there’ll be a horrific crime. There’ll be someone who will probably be a suspect and it’ll be quite obvious—“How are we going to fill in this hour?”—and somewhere about five minutes before the end, the real truth will emerge, because someone who was the Miss Marple special will discover that, in fact, it was this other person who did it.

So, with that scepticism, I did look at the legislation as it came through, but then I reconsidered, because actually what’s happened is that we do, de facto, have a criminal cases review commission. It’s just North and South, it’s just Metro magazine, and it’s just, now, podcasts on television. So what that has necessitated is a forum where those cases, I have to say, normally are high-profile. Almost invariably, they are murders and, almost invariably, the offender is a male European. That seems to be the case.

I’m certainly not standing here saying I don’t believe there are people in prison that shouldn’t be there, or people that are innocent. They tend to be much further down the food chain of offending. They are probably from a minority race and are probably there because they have confessed because the gang or someone standing over them has told them to confess. So the evidence that the court has used to convict them has been evidence that the court has had to take into account because it was before them. That’s more likely. But those are not the cases that tend to attract the popular cases—they tend not to be the cases that in the past that have attracted the money, if you like, the journalists, and various others.

So for that very reason, I have come to the conclusion that this is actually quite a good idea to have this Criminal Cases Review Commission, simply to have a forum where the doubts that have been tested, usually, often beyond the appeals system, beyond the court system itself—with the net effect that the public of New Zealand lose faith in the justice system. That is the real threat here in this current environment—that the public of New Zealand lose the faith because of the inability, particularly in the modern media, to see the whole case and to see everything from start to finish. The sound bite world, the five-minute sounding of the changing headlines, is the reality of the modern world. Because of that, the real threat is that New Zealanders will lose faith in their justice system.

Now, there have been some very high-profile cases, particularly overseas, from jurisdictions where, I have to say, the investigators in the jurisdictions are not as professional as they are in our part of the world, where their expectations are not—and there have been some quite horrific cases in New Zealand. There have been cases that have been shown—I mention the Teina Pora case, a case which, I have to say, at some risk to my last position, I called an inquiry into, such was my disquiet at the conviction of Mr Pora, and I think it’s great to see. It’s a shame that it took so long for Mr Pora’s case to come. Some of those attributes that I mentioned before that prevent it becoming a very popular case were perhaps not present, but they were, so, certainly, things have happened in New Zealand. But I think we have a far more professional investigation and a far more professional justice system in New Zealand. However, saying that, as I’ve said before, there are books written and there are articles written, so there is a need to ensure that New Zealanders are able to have the faith they need.

I turn then to actually what it is that the commissioner will be considering: the functions of this commission that may ensure that we actually are able to have that faith in the justice system of New Zealand. It’s also important to remember that this does not replace the royal prerogative of mercy; it is actually more complementary to it.

Any eligible person can apply to the commission. The commission will be made up—and I see that the previous speaker talked about the need to make sure we have lawyers. Yes, it’s good to have someone with a legal background, but it’s also very important to have people on these commissions too that know how to do an investigation. In my experience, being a lawyer does not train you in how to do an investigation. Investigation, as I say, is a painstaking piece of work, where you start with one starting place—whether that be a body, or whether it be a crime committed—and you work up and reproduce that. It’s important that people understand the starting point.

Where there have been poor investigations—and I have seen them—it’s often where some of those basic rules of investigation have actually been ignored or overlooked, or someone has tried to take a short cut. So it’s very important, and it’s good to see at the moment the police have changed a lot about what they do. What they do is they bring a senior police officer in at some stage of what we call a whodunit inquiry, where it looks like the investigation is going to go on for some time, to make sure it is overseen and to make sure that the blinkers haven’t gone on and that the inquiry hasn’t gone down a bad path, a wrong path, and that’s important. But, again, I’d certainly believe that when we do get the inevitable cases and they become popularised, where they’ll have a very highly articulate, probably popular, and probably well-off champion who will bring these things to the fore, then it is important that we do have that somewhere that we can sort these things out.

I think, looking through, again, what is going to important for this review commission is that they don’t just sit there and read the books and they don’t sit there and read the newspaper articles, but they actually are forced to go and sit down and look at how the conviction was arrived at and they ask the question: how did that person become the suspect in the first place? They ask these sorts of questions, and it should never be—and I’m satisfied, when I look through the criteria here—a way of satisfying a demanding public who have been placed into a frenzy, as they can do over some of these cases, on the basis of the small bits that they are exposed to, the small bits that they read, and the small bits that, inevitably, happen in those five-minute headlines.

So then, going back to the bill, the functions are that, ultimately, “The Minister of Justice may ask the Commission to provide an opinion on any matter arising out of relation”—I’m also interested that this commission is actually going to have some considerable powers. It can decide to take no action. It can also compel people to actually come and give evidence before it. It has general powers of investigation, it may require a person to provide information, in Part 2, Subpart 6, clause 32, and it may require a person to give evidence on oath or affirmation. That is actually a power that will bring to light information that often the courts will not have had available to them. It has the potential to bring to light information that the investigators may not have had to them, because neither of those institutions will have actually had the ability to force anyone to give that same sort of evidence.

So, actually, properly done, this could actually ensure—particularly given that these cases are more likely to happen some time afterwards—people’s positions change, relationships change, and people’s preparedness to actually give evidence may change, as well.

There’s a prohibition on the commission members and staff disclosing information unless authorised, as well. So, in that case, it also means that the information that comes can actually not be made public, which, again, will encourage people who will not be keen on the fact they’ve given evidence to be known publicly—to actually give that sort of anonymity—which will, again, improve the protection.

So, while this must always be complementary and it cannot be an alternative, I commend it.

Kia ora e Te Mana Whakawā. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. The Justice Committee is one of the busier select committees, and we often operate in a very collegial way. We sometimes have some colourful moments. I feel that every time I’ve taken a call on a justice measure in the last three months, I’ve begun with the same thing, which is to say that I wasn’t on the committee at the time that the committee actually dealt with this bill and heard from submitters, and, sadly, that remains the case today.

I’ve also acknowledged on previous occasions the previous chair, Raymond Huo, who was, I think, regarded as a very fair chairman. He’s no longer with us, but he will no doubt be taking a call later, and he’ll be able to tell us what I missed as far as the submissions go.

I joined the committee after my appointment as shadow Attorney-General at the time that the committee was deliberating on the bill, so I was part of the discussion and managed to pick up a little bit about what had gone on. I’d like to pick up on the contribution of my very scholarly and erudite colleague Chris Penk, the National Party spokesperson for courts—who’s given a very good outline, I think, of some of the key principles of the bill—not only to acknowledge his work but also our colleagues the Hon Mark Mitchell, our justice spokesperson, and the Hon Nick Smith, who makes many colourful contributions to the work of our Justice Committee.

I point out that although this is a bill that the National Party isn’t supporting, I actually think that it is something that we have had a very sensible and intelligent exchange on. I was encouraged to hear that the Minister, in his second reading speech earlier tonight, described all of the amendments that the committee has put forward as being very sensible. I’m not sure if he went as far as saying that meant that he will be introducing Supplementary Order Papers during the committee stage to implement those, but if he does so, I believe that this is a bill that probably would be greatly improved. So I do want to commend the committee for the work that they have done.

Of course, as had been indicated, the point of the commission is to create an independent body that will review convictions and sentences where there is a suspected miscarriage of justice. People listening to this debate might think, “Well, that sounds very fair and reasonable.”, but the problem with it—well, there’s several problems with it, but the main problem—is that to some extent it duplicates things that are already in existence and which, in many respects, probably have more of a professional underpinning to them.

It wouldn’t be a body that would determine guilt or innocence, but, nevertheless, we are fearful that it would be likely to open the floodgates, because, as Mr Greg O’Connor was saying before, quite often you get the conviction, and then immediately you get the article and the TV series and the film and all the rest of the things and several stages of appeal. Having this particular commission, we fear, will open the floodgates in a system that is already under considerable pressure. For that reason, I hope very much that the Minister will be looking very carefully at the reservations that the committee had at the time that we failed to agree.

If people are listening and wondering “Well, how did that come about?”, it’s simply the fact that there’s a 4:4 split on the committee: four Labour members; four National members. So unless there is a numerical agreement, if we’re split 4:4, we can’t agree on anything. That doesn’t mean, therefore that we’re dysfunctional; it simply means that—

💬 Lawrence Yule: Ha, ha!

—Mr Yule obviously thinks we are dysfunctional—the mathematics mean that we can neither go forward nor backwards. But, nevertheless, we were able to report back.

Let me just return to some of the things that we think are particularly important. We are very concerned that the low threshold for referral back to a court could easily put more pressure on court timeliness. It’s that old saying—and I’d better get it right, because I once mocked a former colleague who memorably said that “Justice delayed is justice not done”. I think what he meant was “Justice delayed is justice denied”. The point is that we already have a lot of pressure on our court system, and this, unfortunately, we think is going to exacerbate that problem.

We are also very concerned that two-thirds of the commissioners will not be required to be legally qualified, making untrained and unaccountable commissioners extremely powerful in this aspect of the execution of justice, and the remaining one-third of the commissioners will not necessarily be required to have any experience in the criminal justice system. So, potentially, you could have people reviewing cases that are of high public interest in the criminal field, where few, if any, of them have any knowledge at all of the way the criminal justice system operates.

We believe that the status quo—which, effectively, means where the Governor-General, on advice from the Minister of Justice, determines that there’s a reasonable prospect that the court would uphold an appeal—is the appropriate and clearer way of dealing with it. So, effectively, we are saying stick with the status quo.

We are also concerned about the cost. This will be an incredibly expensive commission. There’s an estimated $2.3 million just to establish it and another nearly $4 million anticipated per year in operating expenditure.

Let me just turn in the next few minutes to a few more of our particular concerns. As the Minister noted—and I was pleased that he did—when he was speaking, one of the concerns that National members have is that there is a lack of consideration given in this particular bill to the rights of victims. Victims are frequently traumatised by their experience of passing through the criminal justice system. After all, they didn’t choose to be victims and many of them have suffered horrifically, and it’s not just the victims; it’s their family who suffer with them and sometimes suffer great loss. The potential for this commission to retraumatise them and open them up again yet to further distress is very real. We don’t feel that the bill makes any acknowledgment of the fact that adding appeal rights to convicted criminals does come at a cost to the victims, who may be forced, as I say, to undergo the ordeal of providing testimony on additional occasions. They have done what is required of them. They, obviously, hope that the courts will respond appropriately to their needs. We don’t want to see them having to suffer further distress.

We do think that the select committee’s consideration of the bill has been a useful exercise. As I say, there are a number of amendments—I haven’t really got time to cover them all—including to do with the commencement date, the desirability of a knowledge not only of Te Reo Māori but of Te Ao Māori and tikanga Māori so that the cultural aspects that often are thought to be lacking in the criminal justice system will be given greater emphasis—and I certainly applaud that—and then there’s a specific recommendation that clause 10(1) as it is written at the moment would allow the commission to appoint specialists to advise it in relation to scientific, technical, or other matters involving particular expertise. To avoid doubt, the committee is advising the amendment of clause 10(1) to specify cultural expertise. We’re also recommending, in relation to clause 11, which states the commission’s primary function, that investigation of a conviction or sentence should be an inherent element of the commission’s review function and that the bill should make this clear. We are therefore recommending the amendment of clause 11 to expressly recognise that the commission’s primary function would include investigation.

I have probably incurred the wrath of my whip, who told me not to speak for this long. So maybe in the committee stage I’ll have a chance to return to some of these matters, but it is a significant measure. I’m sure that some other members to follow will comment on some of the other amendments. While we are not supporting the bill, I respect the contribution that the Minister made before. I respect the work that all members of the committee have made on this bill. Let’s hope that it will be amended to become something a little bit better than it is at the moment.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of this, the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. One of the main reasons why we’re supporting it is because it’s part of the coalition agreement that we had with our coalition partners, the Labour Party. I’d just like to thank the Minister of Justice for bringing it forward. In fact, I think it was introduced to this House within the first year of the coalition, and I’d like to thank the Justice Committee for their hard work moving through it as well.

Before I get into the details of the bill, I’d just like to comment on the two speeches so far from the National Party. I tried my hardest to understand what they were saying and what their argument was, but, unfortunately, they didn’t talk to each other, because they had two different types of argument. The first thing that I heard that Mr Macindoe said was “We should stick with the status quo.” That’s what he said: “We should stick with the status quo.” But when I look back at my notes about what Mr Penk said, he said “We should be proactive about this instead of being reactive and amend the current legislation.”, instead of bringing in an independent commission.

So would we stick with the status quo, or would we do what Mr Penk said and make some amendments to the current legislation? That doesn’t make sense to me. That doesn’t make sense. That’s not coherent. That’s not a coherent argument, but, you see, the thing is that the very fundamental basis of this legislation is ensuring that we’ve got a robust justice system. So I’m not even sure why the National Party isn’t voting for it—well, I do know why they’re not voting for it. It’s only because it’s a Government bill and because, most importantly, it’s part of the coalition agreement with the Labour Party and New Zealand First—that’s why they’re doing it. I’m looking forward to the half-dozen other different arguments that the National Party’s going to stand up and try and give.

The other thing that is most important is that they harp on all the time about protecting the victims of crime, etc. The very fundamental issue with this is that there are victims of miscarriages of justice, and this is what this bill is trying to deal with in the first place. Because of the lack of access to the judicial system, the current status quo has caused so many problems, especially under that previous Government. One of the main reasons why it’s in the coalition agreement with the Labour Party of 2017 is because of the previous Government’s nine years of inaction and all of the high-profile cases of miscarriages of justice. But what does the National Party want to do? Status quo—don’t do anything. That’s the option that they’re giving the country at the moment.

Let’s put in an independent commission that, by the way—as has been mentioned by every speaker on this side of the House so far—is actually already occurring overseas. It is actually already occurring overseas. The types of independent commissions that we see in the UK and we see in the likes of Norway all, by the way, have good results and have positive results, and I’m sure that this was brought up and broached in the Justice Committee, but I wasn’t there, unfortunately. But the members of the National Party who are on that select committee would have known this.

What they also would have known is that this concept and the legislation that’s been brought before the House and introduced within the first year didn’t just come down in the previous shower. There was targeted consultation with investigative bodies before it got to the House, like the Independent Police Conduct Authority, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, and all of the comments were positive in nature and supportive of this kind of independent commission. But I’d like to know which submitters they’re using and what evidence they’re using to stand up and not support this bill.

I’d just like to go into the bill in regards to the main reasons behind why New Zealand First is supporting this bill and why we introduced it within the first year. Actually, both sides of the House during the first reading identified the high-profile cases that we were dealing with at that time and the gross miscarriages of justice that they had been through. Unfortunately—and the Minister said it as well in his contribution in this reading—the fact was that a lot of those people were lucky, in fact. They were just lucky to have some high-profile people in the community—the champions in the community—to help them in a sort of ad hoc nature. Most importantly, also, they had the funding to be able to do it. If that’s what it comes down to in this country to ensure that those who have suffered gross miscarriages of justice actually get to see justice, then there’s something terribly wrong, and if Mr Macindoe wants to stand up and say let’s just stick with the status quo, I think he needs to take another re-evaluation of why they’re not supporting this bill.

Just very quickly, a few main things that this bill does which we are in support of are dealing with the issues of not only what I’ve just mentioned, of being lucky about having champions of the community to help them, but, actually, the timeliness, the quality, and the fairness of the current system for investigating suspected miscarriages of justice. So if this legislation doesn’t go through and if the members on that side of the House want to stick with the status quo or with just amending what they’ve got, then that won’t get over the massive hurdles of the timeliness, the quality, the fairness, and the independence of the current system. That just won’t occur, and that’s one of the major points—it is just making that this is an independent commission.

This model will also ensure that the framework, like I said, is independent from the Ministers and the courts. It’s already been through significant consultation with other countries that have the criminal case reviews just like this. This is not a shallow, sort of moralistic point of view or principled point of view; this is actually researched and it’s got the evidence and it’s got the backing of overseas jurisdictions that it works, and it is needed. But, most importantly, it will substantially improve our system for responding to those miscarriages of justice and it will take away from the burden of applicants who require assistance for their voices to be heard, and that’s the major point of this.

Again, I’d just like to thank the Minister for bringing it through as part of the coalition agreement between New Zealand First and the Labour Party. I’d like to thank the Justice Committee for their hard work on the bill, although their report couldn’t come with a recommendation to support it, but they had some recommendations that we’ll go through in great detail in the committee of the whole House stage. I’d like to hear some arguments from the National Party that actually make some sort of sense that’s based not only on fact and evidence but on what was submitted at the actual select committee, and hear why they’re not going to listen to the evidence from overseas, where it does work—why they are happy with the status quo, like Mr Macindoe said.

At this stage, we will be supporting this through to the next stage and we commend it to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to start by clarifying that National is opposing this bill, and, to the previous speaker, Darroch Ball, I would like to touch upon one point which I feel is most relevant, from my viewpoint. It is that this bill is ignoring the rights of the victims.

The victims are not at all being considered in this bill. They don’t have a right to appeal and they don’t have a right to object. So that is one of the main points on which I feel this bill is lacking, and we should be considering that at the committee stage. If the Minister of Justice can consider it, that would be really good.

The second thing is that as my friend the Hon Tim Macindoe, as well as Chris Penk, mentioned, one-third of the commissioners will be having a legal background and two-thirds won’t have any legal background. That is another point where there will be a challenge as to how that is going to resolve some of the really complex cases which we have in our judicial system.

Those are two things that come to my mind that should be addressed to improve this bill. I think everyone in this House is contributing to provide that the best laws are formed, so that the people get the benefit of them. From my point of view, these two issues, which are very important, need to be addressed, and I won’t be supporting this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with great pleasure that I rise to speak in support of this bill. I congratulate the Minister of Justice for bringing it to the House, and just want to stop and notice that New Zealand is a nation who’s proud of our history of upholding the rule of law and the right to fair trial, and that we are one of the few nations, actually, in the world who has also adopted and applies the right to appeal as one of our fundamental rights, recognised in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act under fair process rights and access to justice rights. The right to appeal is fundamentally important because, as anyone who’s worked in the criminal justice system knows, there are so many factors that can go to the entry of a wrongful conviction, and the repercussions are so serious for those who are wrongfully convicted, especially of serious crimes.

This bill proposes to establish an independent body to review criminal convictions and sentences and decide whether to refer them to an appeal court. The reason that’s something to be celebrated is—and I know this from the ground—that the sector has been calling for this for years and years. I had the privilege of being elected on to the executive committee of the New Zealand Criminal Bar Association for four years, and that body, which is made up of prosecutors, defence lawyers, and judges, has found for years that we needed something more because our court system was increasingly falling short to deliver justice to everybody. In part, that’s because the courts are overworked, and in part that was because of the legal aid cuts and the restructure introduced by the National Government, that the New Zealand Court of Appeal found to be unlawful. Those members continued to apply this unlawful legal aid system under their watch, and now they stand up and say that perhaps we could reform it to make sure that miscarriages of justice don’t happen. Well, the sector knows that it was they who ruined the legal aid system, and now it is falling short.

Appeals are complex matters. A miscarriage of justice isn’t just that one jury could have could have found the person guilty or not guilty and another could have decided differently. It’s not just that the facts could have gone either way. It’s that something went so wrong either in the application of the law during a trial or in that there was no evidence at all to support one of the elements of the crime charged. So it needs senior lawyers and it needs resource. Somebody has to go through the entire trial transcripts. They have to look at all the decisions of trial judges and make sure that they were all right, and that we as a system and a society are not falling short.

So this commission puts together a bunch of experts, and they, in fact, take pressure off the courts. We make sure that everybody, whether they’re on legal aid or they have access to money, has the same access to the expertise that will tell them if a miscarriage of justice has happened in their case. That takes pressure off the courts, it takes pressure off the legal aid system, and it equalises appellants. It takes pressure off victims, and I think there’s a misunderstanding on that side of the House. Victims are not involved in this process, nor are the courts. This is an expert body that’s going to look at and analyse whether or not something went wrong so that a court then has to look at it. It will actually cut out superfluous appeals, because we know people are sometimes litigious, and so sometimes appeals are brought without real great cause. So it will cut down on those things.

Those of us in the Criminal Bar Association, who did endlessly call for some intervention there, knew that the courts weren’t well-equipped to deal with all of the appeals because they were underfunded and because we didn’t have enough judges. We don’t have enough legal aid lawyers that are at the level that they can take on these cases, especially with the cost-cutting in the unlawful legal aid policy that was adopted by the National Government.

I do actually want to stop and acknowledge past presidents and the present president of the Criminal Bar Association—Noel Sainsbury and our past president, Tony Bouchier, who fought with our committee against those legal aid cuts. I want to acknowledge the Court of Appeal for saying that they were unlawful, and that is what’s brought us to this place now. It’s brought us to a place where this Government, on this side of the House, is fighting for justice and is willing to invest in it. We’re taking pressure off the courts, we’re taking pressure off the legal aid system, and we’re making sure that everybody, whether they have money or not, has an equal access to their fundamental right of appeal.

We know that we don’t want to be a society where people are wrongfully imprisoned or convicted or sentenced to unduly lengthy sentences without the right to raise legal issues or factual mischaracterisations that have led to wrongful conviction. We know that in a democratic society, those rights exist and they are funded by the Government, and not defunded to the point that the courts have to intervene and call Government policy unlawful.

One of the things that I do also want to celebrate which comes under the mandate of the commission is that they will be able to initiate their own inquiries and issue reports on patterns that they see that are causing miscarriages of justice. So whether that’s patterns in practice by the courts, whether that’s misapplication of the law that’s happening repeatedly, we’ll be able to find that out, because there will be a consistent body of experts sitting and looking at appeals as they decide whether or not they should go forward. We’ll have this wealth of information to draw upon.

I was quite surprised, I must say, that a member on the opposite side—a lawyer—would actually say that the Government should, instead, rely on podcasts and popular culture to notice patterns in miscarriages of justice because, you know, of course, it’s only sensational cases we need to worry about, right? No—miscarriages of justice do happen in cases that the public may not need to hear about on podcasts. We still need to know that our justice system is working well and that there are not consistent errors being made that are leading to miscarriages of justice. So that is exciting.

Another change that’s come through is the inclusion of the recommendation from the committee that there be a tikanga Māori specialisation on the commission. We know that that’s important because our system of justice does disproportionately target Māori, and we know that we need to do something at every level, in this Government, and we’re committed to doing that. Whether that’s in terms of preventing crime, whether it’s in terms of police biases, or whether it’s in terms of the way that the law and the courts are applied, that’s actually part of our obligation as a Government—to honour and apply the Treaty of Waitangi.

So I do welcome the committee’s work, the Minister’s work, and a bill that’s come to the House that’s actually come about as a result of huge push over the years from the sector and that will enhance New Zealand’s ability to uphold the rule of law and a fair system of justice.

One of the greatest challenges that a Parliament has, that parliaments from the earliest of times have grappled with, is how do we find and establish a system of criminal justice in which the guilty are appropriately punished and held to account, while in the same way ensuring that those that are innocent are not used and abused by the power of the State? It’s not an easy area, there will never be a perfect system, and what we have with the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill is the latest attempt to try and provide some other mechanism for dealing with those exceptional cases where there is concern that there has been a miscarriage of justice.

The first point that National would want to make is that before we start creating ad hoc processes, the primary focus must be on making our existing criminal justice system work by making sure that the evidential rules, the systems by which trials are heard in the High Court, and appeals in the Court of Appeal and, ultimately, through the Supreme Court support a justice system that New Zealanders can have confidence in. The difficulty I have with this Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill is it seems to establish a system which will be wide open and an extra tier to our justice system, when it is my view that a more flexible response is more likely to be able to achieve the improvements we want in our justice system. There have been a number of occasions where Governments of different political persuasions have made a decision to have a royal commission of inquiry or another review of a case that is able to be quite specific to the concerns that exist around a particular case, rather than what is proposed with this bill with a permanent criminal cases review commission. I do ask the question: what is the difference between a criminal cases review commission as compared with establishing a further round of appeals?

I’m also worried that in all the discussion I hear from the Green Party and from Labour members is a focus on the offender. We need to be upfront as a Parliament. When you establish an additional process of appeal the uncertainty, the pain, and the additional trauma that you cause for those that are victims, what is lacking in this bill is an appreciation of the victims’ perspective in respect of trying to get that balance right in this Parliament of holding those that are accountable while ensuring also that the innocent are not wrongly convicted.

So we’ve made our views plain that we are doubters about the merits of this proposal. We think it’s got serious flaws. We think the historical approach where the Cabinet has been able to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy in exceptional cases has actually worked quite effectively, and—more importantly—if we actually are to refine and to improve our criminal justice system, the flexibility that goes with the discretion of creating inquiries or even royal commissions of inquiries is a better way forward than creating the new bureaucracy that is proposed with this bill. We don’t support it. We don’t think it, ultimately, will improve our justice system, and we also believe it does not get that balance that National would want to see between protecting the rights of victims while ensuring that this country does not have innocent people being convicted and held in prison.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call to support this bill. At the bill’s second reading it’s very important for us to acknowledge and thank our advisers, officials, and, more importantly, submitters. The Justice Committee received 32 submissions and, after careful consideration and deliberation, made a number of recommendations. Those recommendations included, for instance, the composition of the commission, the consideration of tikanga Māori, and also recommendations with regard to the information-gathering provision and the court’s role in that regard. I listened very carefully to the contributions of the members, especially the National members. I do acknowledge the Hon Tim Macindoe and also Christopher Penk and Dr Nick Smith, and I also acknowledge the National Party’s minority view.

In the spirit of avoiding repetition, and after specifically reflecting on the points and issues addressed in National members’ contributions, I shall refrain from repeating the same points. Instead, I’d like to focus on one particular submission which I believe will address all the concerns and answer all the questions asked by the National members. Hopefully, this would meet with the Speaker’s approval. I’d like to read out the two most important paragraphs from that particular submission:

“In 2003, when a Member of Parliament myself, Katherine Rich and I organised a petition which urged the establishment of a Royal Commission to re-examine the conviction … of Peter Ellis … This petition attracted a very large number of signatures, including those of at least one person from every party in Parliament (including Winston Peters, Clem Simich, Judith Collins, Rodney Hide and David Parker), 11 law professors, 11 Queens Counsel, two former Prime Ministers (David Lange and Mike Moore), and many others (including Christopher Finlayson, …). And it attracted that strong support because of a very widespread view in the community that a serious injustice had been done.

“The Select Committee rejected the idea of a Royal Commission to consider the Peter Ellis case, but recommended instead the creation of a Criminal Cases Review Commission, modeled on the UK commission of the same name. That was in 2003, and nothing was done to create such a commission in the years since until the current Bill. I therefore strongly commend the Government for moving to create such a commission now.”

That submission was only a half A4 page long—succinct, but very powerful. That submission was from the former National Party leader Dr Don Brash. I thank Dr Brash for his passion, for his conviction, and for his views. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

When making decisions in this House and speaking to legislation, we need to be aware that what this Parliament does and how things are decided don’t give a perfect solution, and while this Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill is an attempt to supposedly make a system easier to right some wrongs, there is actually no guarantee that it’ll be any better than the current system. The current system doesn’t always get it right, but there are mechanisms for appeal. I accept they are expensive and difficult to get to sometimes, but, generally, various Governments and various parties over the years have made the right call.

The National Party is opposed to this on the basis that the commission provides a mechanism for addressing miscarriages, and, in our view, it will simply open the floodgates for a whole lot of cases to go to court and through this commission process. It can refer cases back to the appeal court, but it does not determine guilt or innocence. The commission, in our view, will open the floodgates, and there is actually a relatively low threshold to take it back to the court. The commission’s decisions cannot be appealed, because to include a right of appeal would risk further complicating the constitutional relationships between the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the courts.

In our view, while this may appear to be a genuine attempt to help miscarriages of justice, this House is charged with making balanced decisions on behalf of all New Zealanders. It’s my conjecture that just as many miscarriages will be done under this proposal, but in a different way than they currently exist, and for that reason, I urge this House not to support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. It’s interesting just to quickly recap on some of the arguments tonight that I’ve been quite puzzled with as to why the National Party are not supporting this bill.

I’ve taken a few notes while I’ve been listening. One is that this would establish a new bureaucracy. Another argument has been that instead of having a criminal cases review authority, we should just simply have another layer of appeal or create another court. We’ve heard that there’s been concerns that this would potentially revictimise victims of crime. We’ve also heard from the members opposite that this would be too expensive—it would simply cost too much. Chris Penk thought that we should change maybe just a few things, Tim Macindoe favoured the status quo, and now we’ve just heard that this will open the floodgates.

Well, that one clear deduction that can be made from that is that the National Party simply didn’t have any key lines as to why they were opposing this bill. They just don’t like it, and that’s the problem. We over this side of the House are quite united as to why this forms a very good piece of legislation and why New Zealand, in fact, will be benefited quite substantially from a bill that will enhance justice processes and give New Zealand citizens better-quality justice.

So the policy content behind establishing the commission is to enhance the independence, the timeliness, the quality, and the fairness of investigations into miscarriages of justice. The commission is expected to achieve this objective because, amongst other things, as an independent Crown entity, the commission will be independent of Government policy and also ministerial decision-making, and that gives an added layer and a better sense of justice in New Zealand.

Dedicated resourcing and additional powers to access information will be likely to make it more efficient than the current process, so that speaks to the argument also of simply creating another layer of appeal. The specialist skill that will be available of the commissioners and the commission’s staff will ensure that investigations are of high quality and, also, less burden is being placed on the applicant, so that in itself will be of benefit for those going through the process. It is designed to be more accessible and more transparent than the current system—particularly for Māori and Pasifika communities—and that’s a point that’s been picked up by some of the changes that we saw go through from the select committee process.

The select committee was a really interesting time to hear from different submitters, and we received 32 different submissions from individuals and from organisations. Now, out of that pile, eight of those didn’t give a particular view, but I would like to say that none of them—none of those submissions—outright opposed or said that this new commission should not be set up. All submitters expressed a view in support of the intent of the bill and many submitters suggested some clarifications in terms of how things could be improved, but I think it’s a very important point to note that all those that we heard thought that the principle and the concept of doing this was a valid one and one that would enhance justice processes within New Zealand.

We heard changes that were recommended in terms of the size and the composition of the commission, and also the ability of whether the commission should be able to consider historical cases where the person convicted and sentenced is now deceased. We also heard whether the commission should be able to refer sentences back to the courts or not, and whether the information-gathering powers in the bill achieved the right balance between the need for secure information and sensitivity—including privileged and confidential information—and individual rights.

What the Justice Committee did in addition to the submissions that it received was that we also took the time to write back to the New Zealand Human Rights Commission to try and understand, and we asked for some further information. One of the areas that the committee particularly wanted additional information on, and received it, was also to know how often were there issues of structural discrimination, institutional bias, and overrepresentation of vulnerable communities in the criminal justice system. That was a particular area that the committee went back to the Human Rights Commission and received additional information on. Can I just say thank you to the Human Rights Commission, because they were so engaging, so willing, and so forthright and able to come and give additional information in quite a short period of time in order to allow the committee to get its work done.

It has been a really interesting process to be part of, and the concerns that have been raised in the past—and, let’s be frank, there have been some high-profile cases in New Zealand where there have been some really significant concerns regarding the miscarriage of justice. Instead of just maintaining the status quo, as some of those members opposite would have us do, this Government is taking the initiative to actually take action and to put into place a far more rigorous and a clearer way for people to have that right to justice, should they request that.

Concerns have been raised in the past about the timeliness, the quality, the fairness, and the independence of the current system for investigating suspected miscarriages of justice, and this bill replaces the royal prerogative of mercy by establishing the Criminal Cases Review Commission as an independent Crown entity to review convictions and sentences where there is that concern. By having those in place, the commission will substantially improve New Zealand’s system for responding to miscarriages of justice. We’ve seen times in the past where we’ve had to have additional inquiries, we’ve had ministerial involvement, there’s been speculation in the media, and there’s been ongoing issues. But by having a purpose-built commission set up to take this role, it gives certainty, gives transparency, and gives—I think—greater rigour to New Zealand’s justice system.

This is a great idea. I’m proud that this is a part of our coalition agreement with our partners, New Zealand First. It forms a really important part of strengthening our justice system in giving victims and offenders a strong sense of confidence that when people come before our courts and before our judicial system, it will be done with the confidence that it operates fairly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in opposition to the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill at its second reading. I didn’t sit on the Justice Committee, but I am someone who does have a view on these matters, and my view is that this is the type of bill which seems to be where a Minister is scratching around for something to do, and he came across this great idea and decided to do this bill.

The bill establishes yet another Crown working group—no, sorry. It’s an agency which will cost an enormous amount of money and will, essentially, replace an already existing system which is already there with significant checks and balances. Need I say more? No, I don’t.

I oppose this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, that was a display of ignorance, if anything. Having said that, there’s a—

💬 Simeon Brown: Help us out. Give us some help.

No, I’m really disappointed, Mr Brown, that you took no time, gave us no reasons, and couldn’t even tell us what it was. It’s a commission. It’s not an agency, it’s not a working group; it’s an independent Crown entity called a commission. So if you’re going to stand on your feet, at least make it accurate, Mr Brown.

Now, the National Party minority view does make a couple of points that I want to touch on: one which I find absolutely flabbergasting, and the other one has a germ of truth in it. The first is that the National Party says that they’d like to see the court system sort of fixed up a bit to address this problem. Now, all that shows to me is that there is a real lack of understanding on the part of the National Party about both the court system and the criminal defendants who find themselves in it.

The criminal justice system is incredibly complex and incredibly expensive, and if you are a person who is wrongfully convicted, languishing in prison, the idea that we can tweak the appeals system in some way to make it workable just beggars belief. I want to make the point that people who are wrongfully convicted are not all high-profile people. It’s not all the Sounds murders and David Bain and these glamorous books and articles. There are people in there who no one cares about, who really have no one fighting in their corner. If they haven’t got some gory murder or some salacious sex offence, they simply get left there, no matter how meritorious their appeal is. The fact of the matter is that our criminal justice system, right from the moment the 111 call is made through to the final appeal, has flaws. It has weaknesses. It has gaps. We’ve heard of the terrible cellmate confession problems that have existed.

Only two weeks ago, I was at a one-day conference on wrongful convictions, and one of the points that was made there was that whilst media can have a good part to play sometimes, the pressure that it puts our police under in terms of coming up with a defendant is intense. When they get to day three and there’s a dead young tourist, the public are baying for an offender, and the police feel that pressure. It may be bad policing, but we have to recognise that these flaws exist, and so the suggestion that this is just a problem with our court system is wrong.

What this does is this is a board of inquiry. It is something which has inquisitorial powers, and that is fundamentally different from a court process, which is adversarial and which is procedurally rigorous. So the benefit of this commission—the benefit which the Labour Party and its coalition partners recognise—is that it is active. It can actually inquire and investigate, and when something isn’t right, it can ask another question and another question. It can commission experts, and so on and so forth.

But the one germ of useful information in the minority view is something which I think bears noting and that is that the rights of victims do need to be taken into account, and, earlier on, Mr Huo referred to the Ellis case. The fact of the matter is that in many of these instances, wrongful conviction or not, there are still people who are victims. They have been deeply wronged, and we need to be very cautious because an appeal or a retrial does traverse the evidence again and often requires evidence to be given again, and that is very, very difficult indeed. Having said that, this commission is by far and away the better way to address that, by an inquiry which asks the first question of whether the threshold of the interests of justice is crossed or not, rather than having a full-blown appeal, which will hit the media headlines. So this is by far the better, more sensitive approach than simply running an appeal all over again.

So, look, this is an excellent piece of legislation. As was noted, it’s been wanted for some time. We’re following other well-established jurisdictions in doing it. It will be a robust and rigorous process, but, more importantly, it will be a genuine avenue for redress and justice for those who we know are indeed wrongfully convicted. I commend this bill to the House.