Yesterday, justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith announced a National government would make it a Crimes Act offence for someone at the scene of a child’s death not to give information to police.<\/p>\n
Retired law professor Bill Hodge said the policy appeared to target suspects’ relatives, rather than the perpetrators themselves.<\/p>\n
“It may be aimed not so much necessarily at the primary perpetrator, but the relatives, the family members and so on, who engage in what National might call a ‘conspiracy of silence’,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’m sure the police have been frustrated, not so much by the person they see as the primary suspect, but by everyone else who was present in the house.”<\/p>\n
![\"National's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/nationals-justice-spokesperson-paul-goldsmith-announced-the-3O2GXETIQ5FHFIL4QWPMNDJKXM.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
National’s justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith announced the policy on Sunday. (Source: rnz.co.nz)<\/p>\n
He said it would give police more sway during interrogations, but worried it tipped the scales too far.<\/p>\n
“It would certainly add strength to the police arm in saying to those persons ‘you must talk to us or we will charge you with this new offence’,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I think it changes the dynamic of an investigation in a way which I would say is dangerous. The investigator could now be seen to have the upper hand, given that powerful threat which they have behind them.”<\/p>\n
Professor Hodge said it also put more weight behind an interrogator’s bluff.<\/p>\n
“Investigations sometimes involve a bit of a bluff and it’s quite well known that sometimes an investigator will imply somebody else, ‘your so-called friend is speaking, and you may end up in trouble yourself if you don’t speak yourself’,” he said.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer Marie Dyhrberg KC said it flipped the burden of proof on its head.<\/p>\n
“It’s a reverse onus, it’s a presumption of guilt whereby somebody who just happened to be at the location, they’re presumed to be withholding evidence,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It just flies in the face of justice.”<\/p>\n
She said the right to remain silent was fundamental to a fair justice system.<\/p>\n
“The state has all the resources and all the ability to make an allegation and prosecute someone, and the ordinary citizen doesn’t have the resources to fight back,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Even if they did, it doesn’t matter. You make the allegation and you have to prove it.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got to recognise that sometimes proving innocence is virtually impossible. [The right to silence] is protection against wrongful conviction.”<\/p>\n
Bill Hodge said it was understandable that police and members of the public would feel frustrated by cases in which potential key witnesses had refused to cooperate with police.<\/p>\n
“There have been situations that it upsets our conscience to have other housemates and other people in the extended family refuse to assist, and that is disturbing,” he said.<\/p>\n
“On the other hand, the right to silence is such a fundamental right. I’m just concerned about abuse by investigators. Having been an investigator myself, I’m concerned about the way they would go about an interrogation.”<\/p>\n
Despite his concerns, Hodge didn’t feel as strongly as Dyhrberg.<\/p>\n
“Put it this way, I don’t think it would make me complain to the Human Rights Commission, but it’s certainly something because it changes the dynamics of police and their interaction with families,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s one of the more interesting campaign issues that’s come up in an otherwise pretty dreary campaign.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawyers say National’s promise to remove the right to silence during child murder investigations is “dangerous” and “flies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[67,11507,111,43,139,69,135],"class_list":["post-634695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-national-party","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}