Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill

I call the Hon—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Andrew Little.

—Andrew Little, sorry.

I’m such a forgettable person! I move, That the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill be now read a third time.

Can I begin by thanking members of the House through the committee stage—and, indeed, members of the Justice Committee—for getting the bill to the point it is at the moment, and there were changes that the bill achieved through those stages. I think we have a very good bill, and I’m going to talk a little bit about the motivation for it, the objectives of it, and what I think it will do in relation to our criminal justice system.

I want to acknowledge members opposite, particularly Chris Penk and the Hon Tim Macindoe, who, I know, made very worthy contributions, as they do on most things, actually, but they did in the committee stage of this bill, and I took the time to assiduously read their contributions, because I normally hang on their every word!

💬 Hon Tim Macindoe: Ha, ha!

I don’t know why Mr Macindoe finds that very funny; I’d find it flattering, normally. I think the way that the National Party has approached it—I know they don't support the bill generally, but their attitude has been, notwithstanding their in-principle objections to an organisation like this, nevertheless, they wanted the bill to be as perfect as it possibly could be. They made some interesting contributions about how the rights of victims fit into the work of a Criminal Cases Review Commission.

If I go back to the beginning, right now, for a person who has been convicted of a crime who is determined and who strongly feels, and may well be, innocent and they’ve exhausted all their appeal rights, right now we have the process called the royal prerogative of mercy. At the moment, the mechanics of that are that a person will apply, usually, to the Governor-General—possibly they'll go directly to the Minister of Justice. In any event, the application will be referred to the Ministry of Justice and its legal section to find somebody who's got a bit of time up their sleeves to examine it—examine the application, triage it—and, if they think it has merit, maybe it'll be briefed out to a lawyer, who has to have time, and they will have to find time to do that. Or the legal department of the Ministry of Justice may well decide, in their triaging sort of approach, that it doesn't warrant any further attention. Either way, it is very close to the executive for what ought to be, in relation to an appeal against a conviction or a re-examination of a conviction, independent of the executive.

Other countries in the world have grappled with this—other Commonwealth countries, notably England and Scotland. They both have Criminal Cases Review Commissions, and they were motivated by the fact that they had cases that had gone right through their court processes, their appeal processes, and yet convictions were upheld which were then found to be demonstrably unjust, unjustified, and actually just wrong. Innocent people were locked up, in some cases for extensive periods of time, and the criminal justice system simply wasn't nimble enough, agile enough, or flexible enough to discover the conviction of the innocent early enough, and so those people ended up spending a lot of time inside.

Now, we've had cases in this country, even quite recently, where exactly the same thing has happened. You can think of some of the leading cases where somebody has been convicted, has appealed, has had their conviction quashed and a retrial ordered, has been convicted again and then subsequently found to be totally innocent. Teina Pora is probably the most recent one of those, but you could think about Arthur Allan Thomas. He had two trials and two appeals to the Court of Appeal before, not through a royal prerogative of mercy process—it was a very special process engineered by the Prime Minister of the day, Robert Muldoon—that resulted in him being considered to be innocent and a pardon issued. A very rare thing for a pardon to be issued.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill provides a genuinely independent approach to dealing with those cases of miscarriage of justice and is dedicated—and I suspect it will be—because they will have to be a determined body of people who will conduct the investigations, examine the background to the case and the conviction, and decide whether or not there are grounds, therefore, to refer it to the Court of Appeal for a review of the conviction.

The reality is that, as good as our justice system is, no justice system is perfect; it gets things wrong, but sometimes it gets things spectacularly wrong. We just need to have that other safety valve that allows for those who are innocent but who find themselves convicted, for whatever reason—overzealous policing or investigative or detective work that leads people to draw conclusions and draw inferences that they're not entitled to do; perhaps not very well represented at the trial stage of their court case. They end up convicted and they get drawn into the system. The reality about the justice system, good as it is in very, very many respects—very good as it is, in fact—is it does have the capacity to be somewhat self-perpetuating once it makes a set of findings and draws a conclusion. It is sometimes very hard to shift the system off that, and so this is a way of making sure that those who, having exhausted their appeal rights, are innocent, strongly believe themselves to be innocent, and for which there are good grounds can go to find a place where their case—their circumstances—can be examined.

The benefit of this approach, too, is that it's not bound up in the legal niceties that you would expect in an appeal process. It is an opportunity to kind of take a step back, go back to square one perhaps, look at the evidence—perhaps even investigate other possibilities that weren't properly examined at the time the case was being managed through the courts—and, potentially, discover that somebody has been wrongfully convicted and there's been a miscarriage of justice.

I know that members opposite were concerned about the impact of these sorts of processes on victims of crime, and we know that any appeal process for the victims of a crime, particularly where there has been a conviction, can be an even more confusing and sometimes traumatising time for victims, because, just as they are in the process of putting what has been a traumatic event behind them, it all gets dug up again. I get correspondence from people who’ve had that experience. I know how it feels. I’ve heard from people about that. The bill as it currently stands, as we go through this third reading, does already require—or, at least, places the Criminal Cases Review Commission under the Victims’ Rights Act. So there is a notification obligation on the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

But I just make this point, though, too: from the position of the person who is innocent, the person who has been wrongfully convicted, it is very important for the sake of the victim to let them know what is happening on a matter that could affect them, but there can be no greater injustice—apart, obviously, from the wrongful conviction—than for a victim to discover that the person who was accused of harming them and convicted of harming them hasn't actually done it and that the person who has harmed them is actually running around in the community somewhere scot-free. That is an injustice too, and it's not just an injustice to the person wrongfully convicted; it's an injustice to the victim as well.

So this bill, far from creating problems for victims, is actually about putting at peace victims who have been wrongfully led to believe that the person who perpetrated harm against them has been brought to justice and the matter is all closed. The reality about injustice is this, as we know—a sense of injustice—someone who has genuinely been done an injustice never lets it go. It sits in the craw, it gnaws away at you, it bedevils you, it burdens you, and that is why the extra safety valve that the Criminal Cases Review Commission provides to our criminal justice system will be a very important one, will be a very good one.

When I look at the experience of Criminal Cases Review Commissions in other countries—Norway is the only other country that has one—there is a bit of going out to prisons and prisoners, because we know there are people in prison who do not know how to access services that might lead to a wrongful conviction being discovered and, therefore, being put right. So they go out and do that. But the estimates are that there will be a handful of cases each year, as there are a handful of applications for the royal prerogative of mercy at the moment, and there will be the opportunity now to give a thoroughgoing examination to any application like that so those issues of injustice can, hopefully, finally be put to bed.

I know that one issue that also exercised the members opposite was the make-up of the commission and the fact that there will be people with a non-legal background on the commission. What has been shown in other jurisdictions, actually, is that that is helpful—people with a social work background. IRD investigators, for example, in the UK make up people in the commission because they bring a different perspective, a not entirely legal perspective to it, which is also important when considering issues where the legal system actually has slipped up. You need a bit of external common sense brought to it.

So, on that basis, I’m very pleased to see the bill in this stage, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill at this, the third and final reading. I acknowledge that the speech by the Minister has canvassed a number of the issues that we have previously canvassed on this side of the House, and that’s helpful. Being the final reading of this bill, I will nonetheless reiterate those from our perspective. But I wanted to structure my remarks in the following way: first, to understand the problem that this bill is designed to solve; second, to consider what tools are already available, notwithstanding that they are imperfect tools, admittedly; third, to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the existing structures to consider whether the reform of those might be the more useful approach; then, obviously, to consider the line that the Government is going down in terms of what it is that they are establishing here—the Criminal Cases Review Commission itself—and then, of course, summarising our position, including emphasising at the end that, ultimately, we are unable to support the bill.

Notwithstanding that, as the Minister has been good enough to acknowledge, we’ve sought to take a constructive approach throughout, including at select committee—on that split committee that is the Justice Committee. We could see no good reason to deny the changes that were constructive, in the name of making it a better piece of legislation to result from the parliamentary process.

The first of those points, then: defining the problem. We can turn to the purpose clause of the bill and see that it seeks to establish an independent body to investigate and review criminal convictions and sentences and to decide whether to refer them under the Act to an appeal court. The aim of the exercise more broadly, however, is of course to deal with the situation of miscarriages of justice. That’s a situation that is very serious, for the reasons that have already been outlined, and I would like to think that there isn’t a member in the House, or indeed perhaps a person in New Zealand, who would be comfortable with the notion that there are miscarriages of justice and would be happy to accept that merely as a statistical inevitability and not examine the proposition further. But, nevertheless, it is inevitable that such things do occur.

However, thinking about the tools that are currently available for remedying such a problem, we note, of course, that there is an appeals court framework and structure already within the system. The purpose of this Criminal Cases Review Commission—hereafter, I’ll just call it the commission, if I may—is, essentially, to consider whether an appeal is worthy then to be heard by the courts. So it’s an extra step in the process which is not in itself able to be decisive, provide any further finality of justice. Of course, there is also a royal prerogative of mercy, which the Minister of Justice has outlined and, being a royal prerogative, traditionally is exercised by the Governor-General, standing in the stead of the monarch in this country in this day and age.

Thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of that existing system, well, we have an ability for a person who has been or claims to have been wrongly convicted to go back into the system and have another go, not merely a second bite or third bite of the cherry but actually to have some particular reason that they’re able to have their case heard again. I do acknowledge the points that have been made by submitters to the Justice Committee as well as in the House prior to now—access to justice issues, in relation to that. There are members of our society who are less able to access those avenues of justice and the issues might be financial, and they might also be around awareness of such arcane concepts as being aware that there is such a thing as the royal prerogative of mercy. Also, there might be an injustice whereby some cases naturally appeal more than others, and I use the word “appeal” in a pretty general sense. Some cases naturally seem to lend themselves to the attention and the assistance of white knights, so-called, and be a cause célèbre, and others are less interesting to the public and go unaided. So that’s a matter of injustice in itself. So I acknowledge those points but, in doing so, would also point out that there are opportunities that we can and should take as a Parliament to consider ways to improve the access to justice, the knowledge and ability to find those avenues of appeal, and so forth.

I’ll just note briefly that a secondary function of the Criminal Cases Review Commission is to conduct thematic inquiries, essentially, and that’s something which I’ve pointed out before in this House is, essentially, replicating—different branches of Government already have the ability to look at patterns that are developing in our criminal justice system, where it might be that a number of different miscarriages of justice take place in a way that reflects perhaps a systemic bias against a group of New Zealanders, or perhaps certain methods or techniques have been proven over the course of time and with a multitude of cases particularly convincingly, it might be, that are leading to unsafe convictions, as we’d say.

Moving, then, to the proposal that’s before us now—and I note in passing that the legislation seems set to succeed because parties opposite have committed to support it. But considering this new beast that is the commission, it is neither fish nor fowl, in the sense that it doesn’t sit firmly within the court system but neither is it part of executive Government. It’s not an appeal court in itself, so it can’t actually provide the remedy that the person’s after but can just really reopen a can of worms that might have good reason to be reopened but at the same time might also just simply be another roll of the dice for someone who has been convicted and rightly so, as well as, of course, providing a much-wanted avenue for those who have been unfairly convicted.

The Justice Committee made a number of constructive changes which I would class along with various minor or technical achievements, some which I think are helpful in, effectively, making the commission more like a court, in the sense that the relationship with the Evidence Act is more clearly established, the right of various kinds of privilege is more clearly set out, and so forth. The membership of the commission is something that we’ve emphasised we’ve had some difficulty with, not because we think it’s unhelpful to have people who are not legally qualified but we just don’t think that the balance is right to have as little as a third of the commission to be legally qualified and no requirement that those need to have any criminal type of experience in the courts, nor, even, that they have practiced in New Zealand. So that’s a serious shortcoming in our submission.

As the Minister again has acknowledged in relation to the status of victims, we think it would be helpful to have an explicit acknowledgment that when the commission is considering whether to review and refer a case, the interests of the victim involved must be considered. That was a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) change that we recommended but which was not successful in the committee stage, along with the related SOPs that we put forward. One was to do with ensuring that a victim is notified at every step of the process if it’s in prospect that their case will be reopened, and also a separate proposal that legal aid funding be provided for victims whose cases are looked into again, noting that they would have financial costs that would be imposed upon them as a result of that, through no fault of their own, as well as emotional costs and perhaps physical costs and so forth.

The point made by Minister Little that no one is well served by a miscarriage of justice is well made. Of course, the victim as well as the wrongfully convicted person, and I suppose we could say more generally society at large, the rule of law, is offended by such things. But, for the reasons that we’ve described, and I say this in concluding my remarks, we don’t believe that this is the right way to go about reducing the number of miscarriages of justice, of course, in the first place or even dealing with them in necessarily the most efficient manner, which we believe could be done much better by reforming the existing structures—for example, better financial support and access to justice for those who genuinely need it.

In summary, for all the reasons I’ve stated, we are unable to support the bill in its form at the third reading. We note that it will pass nonetheless, surely, and so it will be that as a constructive, loyal Her Majesty’s Opposition, we will continue to watch it carefully in its operation going forward, and we hope that it’s more successful than we fear it will be.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. It’s important, at the third reading stage, that we acknowledge our Government partners New Zealand First in a really important piece of legislation that brings a greater sense of justice and fairness to our current justice system. It’s not that long ago when we’ve heard many contributions through the media and through other discussions around really high-profile cases such as those of Teina Pora and the miscarriage of justice carried out through those areas that received so much discussion publicly, and it’s important to note that this will be an improvement.

The key part that this bill enables is to replace the royal prerogative of mercy by establishing the CCR, the Criminal Cases Review Commission. This is able to be done when there is a suspected miscarriage of justice, and that’s exactly what the problem has been in the past: it’s very unclear, sometimes, when a miscarriage of justice has happened. It’s important to note, too, that I go back to the departmental report that was done by the Justice Committee, which I sit on, and specifically outlines in that report—it is stated that this commission is designed to be more accessible and transparent than the current system and, they note, particularly for Māori and Pacific people. There are often issues in terms of access to justice and making sure that everybody is treated equally before the law, that in some instances in the past there have not been good avenues and access to justice that this legislation seeks to rectify—so by having a clear pathway and by having a commission that is able to be more transparent for the fact that it is in fact an independent body that is able to review the convictions and sentences where there is that suspected miscarriage of justice.

It has the ability to do several things in terms of what further steps can be taken. If the commission considers that no further action needs to be taken, that is within their power, but it can also refer cases back to the appeal courts. But it does not determine guilt or innocence. The commission itself will replace the referral power currently exercised by the Governor-General, and that’s under section 406 of the Crimes Act—so by having the ability to have that greater transparency, and in matters looking at those, to come to the attention during exercise of those functions that are carried out regularly.

So there’s already been a mention by the Minister of Justice tonight of overseas jurisdictions, and with those overseas jurisdictions that have a similar function, a similar commission, the bill requires that a third of the members have legal qualifications and two-thirds of the members have relevant knowledge. That’s important, because it’s important to have that knowledge of the criminal justice system.

At least one member of the commission also must have knowledge or understanding of Te Ao Māori, Māori tikanga, and concepts of Te Ao Māori. I think that goes back to my point already made at the beginning, that it’s incredibly important that we look at access to justice. This has been a particular issue for iwi Māori in the past, for making sure that there is a clear pathway for review if there has ever been a thought that there has been a miscarriage of justice, and making sure that there are no obstacles to be able to see that.

In terms of what the role of the CCR is: to be a final opportunity to deal with credible claims of miscarriage of justice, and to have a way of putting that through in a way that the public is clear of what is happening and that there is transparency not only for those who are accused and before the courts, not only those who are victims of crime, but also for the public, also for New Zealanders to understand what is happening. If there is consideration that we have an independent commission that has a greater level of transparency, I think that gives New Zealanders a greater sense of confidence within our justice system that it is operating fair, that it is operating in a way that is not showing favour to any particular group or any particular area, and that there is a sense of being able to provide a clear review when there is concern that someone hasn’t received fair access to justice.

I think this is an excellent bill. I’m grateful for the Minister for doing the work on this; I’m grateful for our partners in Government, New Zealand First, as being a part of our coalition agreement; and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I’m no longer a member of the Justice Committee, but I’ve taken quite an interest in this piece of legislation. I think it’d be fair to say that no one in Parliament wants miscarriages of justice to occur. They are a blight on our legal system, and, of course, it’s important that we seek to minimise them and it’s important that when they do occur, they are dealt with properly and addressed as quickly and as expeditiously as possible.

This bill is a strange beast in some ways, because it doesn’t replace the royal prerogative. Basically, what it does is place a framework around it—bolsters it, I suppose, buttresses some of the things that are already there. I suppose the question for the Parliament is: has the case been made that the status quo is insufficient to deal with miscarriages of justice, and we on the National Party side of the House do not believe that that case has been made.

Take three examples that have attracted public comment in the last decade or so. Take the Bain case: controversial case, tried and convicted in 1994, sent to prison. There was lots of doubt about—well, there was lots of comment about the verdict and about the way in which the police investigated that case. Various books written, particularly by Joe Karam—that then led eventually to Mr Bain appealing to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which ordered a retrial. That’s the system working as it should. The retrial was ordered—2009, from memory—he was retried, and, of course, found not guilty and walked free.

Now, that didn’t involve a criminal cases review commission. It didn’t require one. He appealed. The judicial committee ordered a retrial on the grounds of some of the inadequacy of the evidence. There was a real risk to the safety of the verdict. A retrial was ordered, and he was not convicted at the second trial—no need for a criminal cases review commission. To those who say, “Well, it should’ve happened sooner.”, I would say Mr Bain could and should have appealed sooner. He was imprisoned from 1995, from memory, onwards, and the appeal was only heard in 2009. At any stage, he could’ve appealed. Of course, there was an appeal in 2000 to the Court of Appeal and it was dismissed, but that right of appeal to the Privy Council existed, notwithstanding the passing of the Supreme Court Act in 2004—that preserved his ability to do that.

Take the Pora case, which has been dealt with in recent years, including in this Parliament. Everyone has a huge amount of sympathy for Mr Pora, but, again, that did not require a criminal cases review commission to be dealt with. Again, that was dealt with through the normal legal appeals. Take a case that some people have commented on in recent years: the Lundy case—convicted in the Palmerston North High Court in the mid-1990s of the shocking murder of his wife and wee daughter, and various writings, particularly by journalist Mr White, in the North & South magazine. There was lots of comment in public debate that the safety of the verdict was in question, particularly about the time of death related to the McDonald’s that the Lundy family had eaten, and particularly related to the safety of the admissibility of the DNA that was later found at the retrial to be on Mr Lundy’s—I think it was his T-shirt that was found in the car. Now, that went all the way to the judicial committee as well, eventually, on appeal. That was sent back down to the High Court for a retrial. Mr Lundy was retried and he was found guilty. So it’s not a case of someone innocent being in jail at the moment, but that was dealt with through the normal process.

I use these cases to illustrate the point that I don’t see what is deficient about the status quo that would justify the establishment of a criminal cases review committee, and my colleague Chris Penk has gone through some of the defects that we see in the legislation. In my brief contribution, I just want to make the point that we have a very robust and effective system, I believe, in New Zealand of checks and balances in our judicial system right now, and I do not believe the Government has made the case that we need a criminal cases review commission. I accept that other countries have done that. I accept that the United Kingdom has established one—they did that in 1997—but I do not believe that just because the United Kingdom does something, we should follow suit. The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union. I suspect if New Zealand was part of the EU, we would not be doing the same.

💬 Simeon Brown: Oh, come on!

Oh, well, I don’t want to get into a—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, and we won’t.

He’s outed himself as a Brexiteer. I don’t want to get into that.

💬 Brett Hudson: He’s a Rees-Mogg—a little Rees-Mogg!

I’m struggling to know how to compare Simeon Brown to Jacob Rees-Mogg. I really am struggling. That would be—

💬 Brett Hudson: Equally erudite and articulate.

He’s certainly erudite. But may I say, Madam Assistant Speaker, you have been a more fair-minded and impartial observer than Speaker Bercow in the United Kingdom—but anyway, I digress. I just make the point: the Government has not made the case for what will be quite a complicated model with a series of procedural defects.

Just in closing, I’ll just make the point around the lack of requirement for commissioners to have any legal qualification. Only a third will be required to have a legal qualification. A third aren’t required to have any experience of the criminal legal system, and these people are being asked to consider, essentially, a legal question of whether or not the evidence supports a rehearing. We believe that that is a real defect in the legislation, and therefore we do not support it. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would just like to address a couple of the points that Mr Bishop made, and Mr Penk made as well. In fact, Mr Bishop made his side of the argument quoting the cases of the likes of David Bain and Teina Pora and Mark Lundy. He used that as evidence for voting against this bill, because this was the normal process. I struggle to believe that Mr Bishop doesn’t understand that all of those cases weren’t the normal process, especially Teina Pora, but with David Bain as well. I mean, he mentioned the fact that Joe Karam was one of those ones that actually made publicity of the issue. I mean, he can screw his face up if he wants, but the fact is that those victims of gross miscarriages of justice would never have come to light unless they had a few things: one, a champion of the community that believed in them enough to make enough noise for them, on their behalf; that they had enough money backing them to not only make the noise but take those noises to the court and make sure the right people heard them; but also, a lot of luck involved with that as well.

So if it is true that the argument from the National Party is that that’s the norm, and that that’s the status quo, and that that’s what’s effective, and therefore they’re not voting for this bill, then we’re in real trouble, because we’ve got an Opposition party that can’t see the issues that have arisen through this justice system. Look, we have a great justice system—don’t be mistaken—but we will always have mistakes, and we’ll always have errors and issues, and cases will fall through the cracks. This is what this commission—

💬 Chris Bishop: We’ve got three appeals.

DARROCH BALL:—will help solve.

Mr Bishop, I believe, just said, “Well, three people.” Well, I’d like him to stand face to face to those people and say this isn’t worth it. Mr Penk actually, and I wrote down when he said it, said that this is a potential to open up cans of worms when they may not need to be opened up. Well, the fact of the matter is that there are some cases that absolutely need to be opened up, Mr Penk. We cannot accept that the status quo is working. We cannot accept that the status quo is working.

I would just like to say that it’s a pleasure to support this bill, not least of which because this is in the coalition agreement between the Labour Party and the New Zealand First Party. I think that if we look at the most important parts of what this commission does and brings which are different to the status quo, that the National Party is not supporting, it is the fact that it is independent, and it has that mandate to not only review cases that are brought to its attention but also effectively investigate possible miscarriages of justice too. I think that the Minister when he gave his speech explained it quite well, and I hope I can do the same, in regards to the fact that part of the issue that this commission is going to be solving is the fact that miscarriages of justice do not only affect the likes of Teina Pora or those who have had it happen to them, but they also dramatically affect the original victims of the original crime as well, because they have the perspective that not only has the wrong person been punished for this and been held to account but the original perpetrator has not been held to account and is still out there. I think it’s a very important point that the Minister made.

I think what also the National Party is, unfortunately, missing from it is that there is quite a high threshold in order for the commission to be able to give any case to the Court of Appeal. It needs to include a number of considerations before it takes that step and it is quite a high threshold, like I said. It includes that the eligible person has exercised their right of appeal; the extent to which the application relates to the argument, evidence, information or a question of law previously raised; and, third, that there is actually a prospect that the Court of Appeal will actually allow it and hear it.

New Zealand First is supporting this bill. It’s a very good bill, and we believe that it strikes the right balance between having the high threshold but also ensuring that miscarriages of justice that need to be addressed are. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m quite pleased to be following the member Darroch Ball, because he has spoken after me on a couple of previous occasions as this bill has moved through the House, and I think he has tried repeatedly to suggest that I and other National Party speakers have been arguing that the status quo is fine and that there are no problems. That hasn’t been the position that we have been articulating. What we have said is that this bill is not the solution to the problem that Government members have been identifying, and, in fact, we are concerned that this creation of the new Criminal Cases Review Commission will give rise to further miscarriages of justice, albeit of a different type, and, in particular, relating to victims. And I’ll come back to that in a moment.

I do want to commend the very fine work that the member for Helensville, our court spokesman, has done in leading the charge for National on this bill, because it’s fairly unusual for a first-term member to take the lead. He has really picked up the ball and run with it in a very impressive way and I think he articulated the National Party’s concerns very clearly before, so I won’t cover all of the points that he made, but I’ll just thank him for the work that he has done.

The real solution to the problems, or at least some of the problems that have been identified, is to improve the timeliness of the way in which courts deal with the issues that come before them. And we do have a problem at the moment that sees many people becoming victims of that old maxim, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Unfortunately, by creating the Criminal Cases Review Commission, there is a very real risk that those delays will be exacerbated, adding further to the suffering of those who are seeking justice.

I did appreciate the fact that in his opening remarks, as the Minister of Justice moved the third reading of this bill tonight, he complimented both Chris Penk and me for our contributions. I think we have had a very thoughtful debate on both sides of the House. We’re not in agreement, but there has been genuine engagement and a respectful acknowledgment of each other’s points of view. So I want to thank the Minister for doing that. And he did, at least, acknowledge the fact that we have repeatedly raised as one of our main reasons for not being able to support this bill our concern that it will add further to the suffering of victims. There is nothing in the bill that acknowledges that victims have a very real interest in this matter and, in fact, by failing to deal with the rights of victims, this bill does pose a very real threat of re-victimising and re-traumatising the experiences that victims have to go through.

As is often said in this House, they don’t choose to be victims, they don’t choose to end up in the criminal justice system, they don’t choose to relive the trauma of going through the trial—and sometimes many trials—in order to lead to the outcome that the courts will come to. And so we should be very mindful of their concerns and not adding to them, which, as I say, we believe is happening. And so while the Minister did acknowledge that we had raised those concerns, I was disappointed that I don’t believe tonight in his speech he gave an answer to them. He certainly didn’t deal with the fundamental concerns that we had raised and reassure us that our concerns are unfounded. We’re getting towards the end of this debate, but I hope that some of the remaining speakers will deal specifically with that issue. And I know that there are many people who advocate for victims who are hoping to hear that as well. It’s getting late in the piece, but let’s still hope it might happen.

I don’t need to say much more other than to say I don’t doubt for one moment the good intent that is underpinning this bill, and that, I think, is why we’re having a very respectful debate. There clearly are issues that have been well highlighted by some previous speakers relating to some high-profile miscarriages of justice. The Minister mentioned some of those; so have some of my colleagues. Sadly, they have occurred in the past and, almost inevitably, miscarriages of justice will occur again in the future. But this bill won’t stop that, and this bill is highly unlikely to resolve some of the most significant cases that have happened without adding further problems. It is an expensive measure that I think doesn’t meet its mark, and for that reason, as others have indicated on this side of the House, unfortunately, we are still unable to support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s quite a thrill for me to stand in support of this bill on its third reading, and I do want to congratulate and acknowledge the Minister of Justice, as well as the coalition partner who, very wisely, included this as part of their agreement and brought it to us in the House. So thanking everyone on this side of the House, I do so as a member of the Bar and as a member of the executive of the New Zealand Criminal Bar Association: an organisation that lobbied for this for many years, an organisation that represents defence lawyers, prosecutors, judges, members of the police force, justice sector experts and professionals and academics—people at the front lines. We knew that this Criminal Cases Review Commission was something that was needed.

We based that lobbying on the success that commissions like this have had elsewhere in the world, like the UK but also on the ever-increasing heartbreaking deterioration of New Zealand’s own justice system—and we are a country who prides ourselves in having a system of justice that’s not only fair, not only transparent but also accessible equally to everyone, that isn’t being bought and sold on the free market. Part of that is the right to access justice when a miscarriage of justice has occurred. Part of the right to fair process—and most people know the right to fair trial, the right to counsel; all of those things. But here in New Zealand we also recognise the fundamental right to an appeal, a right that was eroded so—I’ll say “heartbreaking” again and I’ll refer the National Party to the Court of Appeal judgment that said their legal aid policy was not just unfair but unlawful. Imagine that. Imagine a Minister of Justice adopting policy that the Court of Appeal told her was unlawful and maintaining that in a system of justice.

💬 Hon David Bennett: You pass legal bills every day. You’re part of the coalition.

You did it. You did it and the judgment stands. Imagine how embarrassing it must be, and that’s why they’re so loud tonight.

An appeal is a complex thing. An appeal is something that needs to be dealt with by senior lawyers, because a miscarriage of justice isn’t just that a finding of facts may have been wrong. It’s not just that a jury could have found differently than a different jury or a judge could have found differently on a matter of fact or law; it’s that something went so fundamentally wrong that the—

💬 Chris Bishop: Well, appeal it.

Well, people can’t appeal, actually, because you cut legal aid so much that only the wealthy can appeal, and that’s shameful.

💬 Hon David Bennett: Oh no, shame on me. Shame on me.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I’m sorry to interrupt the member. Could the Hon David Bennett make a higher standard of contribution or resist making one at all.

That’s uncertain at this point. But the point is that an appeal requires a senior lawyer, and with the cuts to legal aid—the cuts that were found to be unlawful by the Court of Appeal—that hasn’t been possible in New Zealand in the majority of cases for a very long time. We haven’t been able to assess whether a judge made a ruling that was so wrong in law that a miscarriage occurred. We haven’t been able to figure out whether witnesses should have been interviewed and weren’t by counsel, who made an error, because it is a high-level thing. But the other thing is that we know people are litigious. Criminal appellants can be litigious, so the courts do also get a lot of cases—and people have raised this point—that are superfluous.

Well, this commission—this bill, once it’s passed—will protect our system of justice from both of those things. Our courts are overworked. They do have to deal with a lot, and this means that the bar is met at a different level: that we know—experts have told us—that a case has merit. The commission is not deciding the case; it’s deciding whether there is merit enough for the Court of Appeal to consider it. At that point, the court considers it, so the courts’ workload comes down. It’s much more efficient, and you know what? It saves victims the trauma of coming to court in cases that are superfluous appeals. It actually protects victims, so high-level expert decisions are made about whether or not something went wrong in the law, went wrong in terms of the factual findings, before a victim has to be dragged into court. That’s the protection that this bill, actually, will provide.

And what’s more that I would like to celebrate is the commission’s mandate to actually launch its own inquiries and tell the Government, based on what it’s seeing in terms of the appeals that are coming to it, what might be going wrong in our system of justice. That is invaluable. If we know that we are falling over in certain ways, if judges are making certain mistakes across the nation in the same way, if we know that police are falling short in different ways, that’s invaluable to us. For the first time in our system, we’re going to have an independent commission telling us that.

And what’s more, there is the recommendation of the inclusion in the committee of tikanga Māori expertise, and we know that that has been a huge shortfall for our system of justice for a very long time. We know that miscarriages of justice are much more likely to affect Māori. We know that our system of justice at every level targets Māori unfairly, whether it’s in arrests, in convictions, in sentences. That’s what miscarriages of justice are about, and we’re going to have experts on this commission making those findings, launching their own inquiries, and saving the courts.

So I do commend this bill to the House, but, before I do, I would like to acknowledge past presidents of the Criminal Bar Association of New Zealand, Tony Bouchier, and the present one, Noel Sainsbury. I’d like to acknowledge the whole executive committee of the Criminal Bar Association—everyone who fought for this—for being activists as well as lawyers, for suing the Government and winning when it did something unfair and unlawful, for standing up for access to justice and for equality, and today, we’ve made a little bit of that into law. So I do commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just don’t see the need for this bill in our court system. Now, we have a very strong judicial system, and I remember when the Labour Party brought to this House the need to remove the Privy Council and replace it with the Court of Appeal in New Zealand. They were very adamant, at that stage, that that would be the final court and all that was needed for the court system. Suddenly, now we have the need for a commission of review. There’s no need in our small country to have another stage in the legal system. This is really just trying to bring more bureaucracy into the system.

💬 Golriz Ghahraman: This isn’t a stage; that’s not how it works, David.

That is how it works, because it is a review commission. So in between every level of the court system, someone can apply to this review commission, and then—

💬 Golriz Ghahraman: Yeah, it’s a diversion.

Hon DAVID BENNETT:—and so it is another court in our four-court system. And why would we want to do that? Why do we need to do that? It’s just a gross abuse of New Zealand taxpayer funds for the interests of the Green Party so that they can feel that they are dealing with people’s personal interests.

It’s very sad that the New Zealand First Party, which is the handbrake on this Government—or they say they are—has let this go through. And it’s very silly that the Labour Party—that, actually, had proposed to take out the Privy Council and replace it with the Court of Appeal—is now buckling to the pressure of the Green Party to have this fifth court process. It’s completely unnecessary, will achieve nothing, and is part of a coalition that looks for problems where there are none and just creates more bureaucracy in the system, more costs in the system, and a failure of a justice system that actually works very well as it stands.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I’m sorry to interrupt the member, I omitted to say this is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill in the third and final reading. There are a couple of points that speakers previous to me have raised that I’m going to address in my contribution. First and foremost is in the Minister’s introduction of this third reading. He used the phrase “safety valve”, and that this commission should be seen as a safety valve, adding to our justice system. I want to reference that, because that’s exactly what we are trying to do here. The commission, as the Minister outlaid, will be set up to investigate miscarriages of justice. I, unlike that previous member that’s resumed his seat, David Bennett, have every faith that the appointed commissioners will not just take any frivolous cases, but will subject those approaching the commission to the same test that we have currently.

In the Minister’s use of the phrase “safety valve”—I would think all members of the House would consider how we improve our justice system. I believe we do have a very well-oiled justice system, but, like we said previously, we get things wrong. And so we should be open to forever improving our justice system so that those that are subjected to it feel that they are being treated fairly. The other words the Minister used—and it’s also in some of our contributions in the reading of this bill—were independence and targeted. So this commission will be an independent body targeting those that may bring their cases to them. They won’t be part of the Ministry of Justice, where, presently, if you have applied for the prerogative of mercy clause, you then have to fit within the Ministry of Justice’s current, busy workload. So having an independent body that has the resources, the energy, and the targeted expectation that will examine each appeal, I think, is a good thing.

I want to just talk about the make-up, and I want to talk about the introduction of a commissioner that has knowledge in tikanga Māori and Te Reo Māori and knowledge of Te Ao Māori. I want to acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee. They couldn’t agree on making this particular—couldn’t agree on the bill, but they did make a series of well-considered amendments. One of them, actually, when I read it, I thought I was reading a select committee report from the Māori Affairs Committee, because not only did we talk about the knowledge of Te Ao Māori and tikanga Māori, we talk about specialists advisers with cultural knowledge, and we also talk about procedures consistent with the Treaty principles.

Some members in this House have talked about certain sectors of our community that do not access the appeal rights within our justice system, none more so than Māori, and in terms of the prerogative of mercy, virtually none—very few. The Teina Pora case, as expressed by other members in this House, was not ignited or engaged or instigated at his instigation; it was his advocates and friends on the side. And if we are going to ensure that our justice system is equitable and accessible, then a commissioner surely must be a way to achieve that aim. And so the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill is attempting to do that. It is attempting to add the value and make sure that our justice system is free and accessible to all.

In my closing minute, I want to acknowledge the Minister for bringing this important piece of legislation to the House. I want to acknowledge New Zealand First, who advocated for this bill. I want to acknowledge the submitters that came in front of the Justice Committee. I want to acknowledge the officials that wrote it, and also the select committee members who considered it and made some very good amendments. It is a point to all of us on this Justice Committee that there are clearly going to be occasions where we differ across the House. It is always my hope, as the chair of the Justice Committee, that we actually report back to the House on pieces of legislation, even though we disagree. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call in the third reading of the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. Look, I just want to start by saying that I think everyone in this House would agree that the Teina Pora case was a terrible miscarriage of justice, and it was a tragedy of a series of events that led to a conviction that, as we all know, shouldn’t have happened. Meka Whaitiri, the previous speaker, highlighted the fact that through advocacy and through some individuals that believed in him and got behind him and supported him, actually, we are able, finally—and it took way too long—to have at least some vindication for him and some compensation to follow up as well.

But the reality of it is that the Criminal Cases Review Commission wouldn’t have helped Teina Pora one little bit. It wouldn’t have changed his outcome. It wouldn’t have changed the process. You’ve got the speaker from New Zealand First Darroch Ball standing up, and I don’t doubt Darroch’s—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Full name, please, Mr Mitchell.

Hon MARK MITCHELL:—that he has a genuine belief in this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Full name of members.

I said “Darroch Ball”. So I don’t doubt at all Darroch Ball’s belief in this bill. However, he said the threshold—the test—to actually get a case into the Criminal Cases Review Commission is very high. It’s a very high test. So if that’s the case, and if you actually went back and had a look, I don’t even know whether Teina Pora’s case would even have got in front of the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

But then you come back to the bill and, actually, when you look at the test, the test is very low. The standard the commission must meet to refer cases back to the appeal court is merely that it is in the interests of justice to do so. That is a very, very low test, and I anticipate that you’ll have a flood of applications to this commission. By the way, the commissioners themselves—you would have to challenge and question whether or not they’ve got the right training and the right background to be actually making decisions like this, and all I can see is just a mass referral straight back into the appeal court that will put pressure back on the court.

I have to say that Chris Penk, who took control of this bill and shepherded it through all stages in the House and the select committee and who has done an outstanding job and who, by the way, is a qualified lawyer that’s been involved in our criminal justice system as a partner in a law firm before he came to this House of Representatives, tried to put a very good Supplementary Order Paper into the House to actually strengthen the bill around the rights of victims to make sure that they are engaged and to make sure that they understood what was happening and understand that, actually, the case was now back in front of the Criminal Cases Review Commission—what that actually meant for them—and it wasn’t supported. So I find it a bit rich that we have the Government parties standing up and telling us how strong this bill is and how good it is, and yet they wouldn’t actually support the people that are adversely affected or who will be materially affected by the cases that come up in front of the commission.

I think that we’ve been very clear and very articulate about the fact that we will support any good legislation that comes to this House that’s going to strengthen our criminal justice system, and especially around protection for victims, but this bill does not do that. It doesn’t even come close to it. It’s going to be additional cost, it’s laying another layer of complexity inside our criminal justice system to slow things down when we already have a very good appeals process, and, on top of that, we’re going to have victims that aren’t even going to be consulted or included or who understand what is actually involved with this process. So we cannot support this bill. We would have liked to have seen changes made to strengthen it, especially around victims’ rights. They weren’t supported, and that was unfortunate. Therefore, the National Party in Opposition cannot support this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you. Gosh, you know, I’ve listened really hard through this debate to try and really understand the logic of the argument being put across by the other side of the House, and I’m still not there yet. I’ve heard “cost” and “complexity” said numerous times, and never once have I heard “justice” or “fairness”.

So I went and looked for that quote that starts “The measure of a society” or “A society can be judged”, and I found a whole lot of different versions of it, as we know, from people like Dostoevsky. He said, “A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals”. Nelson Mandela said that “no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” You know, there was Gandhi, there was Truman—variations on the theme.

Basically, the point is that, I guess, the divide that exists between the National Party and the Government is around values. It is around a values-based system that actually puts a value on justice and on trying to strive for something that is better to ensure that what we are trying to strive for is a justice system that doesn’t settle for miscarriages of justice when they occur.

So I went and had a bit of a look through as to what was being said during the debate around this bill, and I only came on to the Justice Committee towards the end of this, when it was almost being reported back to the House. But I wanted to read what some of the legal minds were saying about the concept of the Criminal Cases Review Commission and what sat behind it.

There’s this chap who, I understand, is recently deceased—Sir Thomas Thorp, a former High Court judge—who spoke a few years ago, saying that it was inevitable that a criminal cases review commission would be established in this part of the world. His comments were influenced by a review that he conducted in 2005, comparing New Zealand’s system of dealing with claimed miscarriages of justice with those in Scotland and England. I know that they were dismissed by the other side of the House, but, based on those experiences, Sir Thomas estimated that there were likely to be at least 20 innocent people in jail here, and he concluded that we should establish something akin to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. Referrals by that commission had resulted in around four wrongful convictions being corrected each year, compared to New Zealand’s rate of one to two every two years under the royal prerogative of mercy system.

I guess that maybe what it comes down to is what the National Party is saying tonight about cost and complexity. It’s too high a cost, in their view, to improve our system so that there is a better system for miscarriages of justice. I think that Meka Whaitiri referred before to the safety valve system—a better safety valve system.

Actually, when Andrew Little was speaking about the justification for this piece of legislation, he talked about the intent of keeping the commission at arm’s length from the judiciary. He said that “miscarriages are currently handled through the Ministry of Justice but the new commission will be independent of the ministry as a way of keeping it free from the perception of undue influence.” He said that “There will be people in prison who should not be there. The benefit of the commission is that it will use a more methodical and systematic approach to dealing with claims of miscarriages of justice.”

Could we not aim to be better? Could we not aim to be a better country in this regard? Is that not worth something—to strive to be better, where people feel that if there is a miscarriage where they are imprisoned, there is somewhere to go that is better, where there are better outcomes?

Nigel Hampton QC said a couple of things about this. He said that “the royal prerogative of mercy process is long out-dated and too constrained.” and, according to him, two of its principal defects are “that the ‘handling’ of petitions for its exercise rests with ‘insiders’ within the very system under critical scrutiny, rather than with a separate body of independent, objective observers, based and acting outside the mainstream criminal justice system; and that no proper re-investigation of the facts occurs—instead, reliance [rests] on the ‘fresh’ materials put before the officials by the petitioner, rather than having a body with an uncluttered mind prepared to reinvestigate (whether fully or in discrete areas) the matter at issue.”

I don’t know about you—not you, Madam Speaker, or it might include you—but isn’t that something we could aspire to? To be better at this, and to be a country where we could actually hold our heads up high and say that the measure of our society is that we want to make sure that we treat our most vulnerable in the best way possible so that they have better access to justice and that that justice can be seen to be served.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in opposition to this bill as the last National Party speaker on the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. I do want to just acknowledge the sentiment of what the Hon Clare Curran was saying there around the importance of justice and the importance to ensure that we don’t see miscarriages of justice taking place. But the problem with this bill is it is not going to solve that. It’s not going to create a perfect system. It’s not going to actually stop miscarriages of justice happening in the first place. All this bill is doing is setting up another process whereby another body is able to look into a case and make a decision as to whether this case should be referred to the Court of Appeal; that’s simply what it does, and actually that’s already what people have the right to be able to do. They have the right to be able to appeal their cases and to appeal to the Court of Appeal, who can then make a decision as to whether there are grounds for something to be re-looked at and looked into.

The issue here in our court system is actually issues of timeliness, which need to be sorted, issues of representation, issues which actually will make our system faster and fairer so that people do have access to justice and access to ensuring they have access to the appellate courts as well.

I do just want to reiterate the point made by my colleague Chris Penk, who has been standing up talking about victims. The Hon Clare Curran might say, “No, we need to get justice.”, and I agree, but let’s also talk about victims, because they are also part of the picture here. When you have a process which allows those who have been convicted to simply go to this new body to try and find, potentially try and find, another grounds, another way to get to the Court of Appeal, where there may or may not have been a miscarriage of justice, why shouldn’t victims be notified? Why shouldn’t the victim of that crime actually be notified? I think it’s a real shame that they aren’t even notified that their case may be being reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. That is something which is fundamental to our criminal justice system, is the recognition of victims and their rights. It should not be something which is given tokenism, which is what this piece of legislation does.

The National Party does not support this bill.

Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, John Grisham, Stieg Larsson, Jack Reacher—all crime writers. The world loves a good mystery. The world loves a good criminal case. What’s happened, of course, is that in a world which is a very digital world, a world where many people receive their entertainment, receive, in fact, their information on the world, they get it from the television, they get it from the movies, and they get from the books. What that means is that everybody becomes an expert on law and order. You can be a photocopier salesman and still stand up in the House and talk about being an expert on law and order because you’ve watched a few mysteries on the telly. Well, in reality, it’s not like that in the real world.

In the real world, when a crime is committed, when the detectives are called in—and yes, I trained detectives, but it’s not like it is on the telly. It’s a matter of rebuilding what’s happened. The art of a good detective is to reproduce what happened at the time of the crime, so that everything you learn, every single fact you learn—obviously, you start with the body, what did we learn? So we interrogate every fact we learn, so we understand. So it’s a building process to make sure that we fully understand what exactly has happened, to reconstruct, continually reconstruct, continually reconstruct, so by the time you have that case before the court, you can answer the questions. There will always be those parts that you can’t reconstruct without. The best form of evidence is always a properly obtained confession from the suspect or the offender, but under various changes in the law, that’s a relatively rare thing these days. So we compensate with DNA. We compensate with fingerprints. We compensate with other forms of evidence which make up the case and often, in the absence of a confession, do help make the case.

There are certainly people who are in prison who are innocent. Most of them are a little bit further down the food chain of offending. Many of them are there because they’ve been forced by their gang leader to confess. They’re there because they may have confessed for different reasons and they end up in court. They’re not the ones that generally get captured. They are not the ones that end up in North & South magazine. They’re not the ones that end up in television documentaries. They are not the ones that end up the most talked about cases. In fact, several speakers tonight have mentioned Teina Pora. The reason it took the Teina Pora case to come to court to get the justice that he rightly got was because he didn’t represent one of those popular cases. He didn’t represent someone that was immediately an attractive proposition for a magazine article. He didn’t actually attract those types, whereas with many of the cases that did, generally where, and almost invariably, the offender was someone who the people who wrote the book, shall I say, could relate to, that’s generally what happened. Someone who was probably from the same socioeconomic class, that was what the type of people—that’s where a lot of the cases that were heard.

So in the time that’s left to me, how does this relate to this bill? And you might ask—I did, perhaps because I’ve been speaking for a while. Where it becomes very pertinent is that the justices—we as legislators here, we play a very important part to ensure that people have faith in the system. It’s about ensuring that, as much as people have an understanding of the system, it’s more important—and they think they have an understanding, but actually what they really do need is actually to have faith in our system. New Zealand does have a very good justice system, many people have spoken about it here tonight. I’ve been lucky enough to have spent time with justice systems and examined justice systems around the world. We are pretty good. Like we do many things in New Zealand, we benefit from being one single jurisdiction. We benefit from being very efficient. Unlike the Americans, who have, at last count, something like 19,000 different police forces—even our Australian colleagues have eight—we’re very rare round the world, as there is one jurisdiction, and that makes us very, very efficient.

But even within that, even in that digital age that I’ve spoken about, it is important there’ll be those cases that because of people’s ability to grab hold of the airwaves, because of people’s ability—good writers, good self-promoters, just good promoters—to actually get the airwaves, to have a good proportion of New Zealand’s population actually believing that an injustice may have been done, then it actually is necessary to have another system. That’s why while I may have been a little bit sceptical when I first came to this, I now do understand that this is not actually another level. We still have the Supreme Court, we still have a Court of Appeal, we still have the High Court, and they are the courts that will actually look at the legalities. They’ll look at it whether evidence was properly obtained; that’s through that system. They will ensure that they test the legality of the evidence, because anyone that’s been on a jury will understand that a lot of the evidence that comes before court is tested. The jury are kicked out of that room for some time because they can’t hear the arguments as to whether they can actually hear that evidence at all.

What I like about this is that actually there is going to be the opportunity that much of that evidence that doesn’t get heard—in fact, once the court case is gone through, it doesn’t actually get held by others who are going to be actually looking at the case—will actually get to be seen.

I think for every time there will be doubts raised—actually, anyone who understands that it’s just about putting the right people on this Criminal Cases Review Commission will actually see that, yes, if it’s looked at properly, the correct conclusion was reached: the jury did get it right, the judge did get it right, and the right decisions were made. Unfortunately, because of the way the separation—because of, as I said before, the preponderance of crime stories, the preponderance of documentaries and now all sorts of social media and those who have no right to be commenting, those experts on law and order—with the preponderance of them out there, actually, they will look. What I’d like to see is someone with an investigative background also on this. I see there’s the opportunity for that to ensure that that actually does happen.

So this is a piece of legislation whose time has come. I like to think we’ve now entered the digital age. We’ve entered the age where so much of our information that we get—we don’t get it from a newspaper that obeys the rules: the good old rules. There will be journalists here who will know that when we began in journalism, if you’re going to allege something, you go to the person you’re making the allegations against to ensure there’s some semblance of balance in that newspaper story. That was what reporters, that was what the newspapers, that was what the media used to be like. It’s not like that anymore. We now know, with the preponderance of websites—most of which are very partisan—this is really a result of that partisanship. This is the result of the need to ensure that with that partisanship that is so much a part of the modern way in which people receive their information, that there is now another method to test that.

So, again, having been on the journey through this bill, beginning with it as something of a sceptic, I’ve seen it. I’ve looked about it objectively, and I think this is a piece of legislation whose day has come, and I’m happy to commend it to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.