Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill

I will resume—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. On that occasion, again there was no call from the National bench. The member did not call. Well, we certainly could not hear her on this side, and at the point you called her she was not even properly on her feet.

💬 Louise Upston: Speaking to the point of order—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I do not think we need to take this matter any further. I do not want to take more time of the House. It was an interrupted debate. The member was speaking at the time of the interruption. Under normal courtesy in the House the member does have the first call. I agree with the honourable member, though. I ask members to actually be more on the button. On a couple of occasions we have had members slow to get to their feet, and it does not make it easier. But the call is with Jacqui Dean. She has 9 minutes and 30 seconds remaining to speak, should she wish to take them.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The normal practice, then, when there is an interrupted speech, is for the Speaker to say “When this debate was interrupted, Jacqui Dean was on her … ”—is that her name—“… Jacqui Dean was on her …”—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I accept—[Interruption] The member should not be interjecting. Again, I accept the blame for this situation myself, totally. The member is quite correct.

Thank you for the opportunity to resume my speech. Last night, at the close of play, I was describing how a lone constable in Ōāmaru had the foresight and the bravery to climb out of the gutter, having been beaten there by a carload of what I referred to last night as scumbags, and I refer to them as that today. They had beaten this police officer, who was in the course of his duty, into the gutter on the main street of Ōāmaru. This officer got out of the gutter, gave chase to them, arrested them, and held them until support arrived for him. That is the kind of police officer and that is the kind of duty that we should be honouring in New Zealand, and indeed this bill, the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill, does that.

This Government supports the police; this bill does exactly that.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Thank you so much for the third opportunity to make a contribution on this bill.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Don’t thank us; thank your mates.

You thought the first two were good? Well, you just wait until you see what I can come up with. Look, it is the same story, and I think it does bear repeating. There are police and prison officers all around New Zealand who, in the course of their duties, come into strife, and I think the key point that Judith Collins, when Minister of Police and Minister of Corrections, always made is that we need to back our police; we need to back our prison staff. We need to back, in fact, everybody who works in the service of New Zealanders. But, in particular, in this bill, the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill, we are focusing on our police and our corrections staff because of one critical aspect—that is, when trouble comes along unexpectedly, or expectedly, those of us who may be involved if it is, perhaps, a traffic accident, or maybe we are witness to assault out on the street or some other dreadful event that threatens us as citizens, we have the option of running away. If I wanted to, I could flee the scene. I hope I would not; maybe I would stay and help out, but I do have that option.

💬 Hon Phil Heatley: You’d help me.

The police do not. I would help my most excellent colleague, certainly I would, but the police do not have that option, nor do corrections staff. That is the key difference, and that is why this Government shows absolutely that we support our front line, because they are there to protect us and to protect all New Zealanders.

So, just to go through the detail of the bill, which is a relatively straightforward bill, currently an offence against a law enforcement officer is not an aggravating factor when that person comes up for sentencing. So although it might be in practice that the judge takes that matter into account, they do not necessarily have to do so. This bill places on paper the fact that that consideration—that that police officer or corrections officer, who is not able to walk away or run away from trouble—is an aggravating factor in sentencing. I have found—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: They represent the rule of law.

The Minister so rightly points out that they do represent the rule of law, and it is that rule of law that we value so highly in New Zealand. Do you know, the attitude of the Labour Party has disappointed me over this issue. Last night, in the late stages of the House, the interventions of the Labour members were a little disappointing, because their enthusiasm for this bill was, at best, half-hearted. I heard them making comments like “Oh, well, do we really need it?”, “Is it really going to achieve anything?”, “Is this bill going to make any difference?”—

💬 Hon David Parker: No, it won’t.

Well, I say to Labour members, and I say in particular to David Parker, who was rejected resoundingly by the people of the Waitaki electorate on several occasions, and so therefore is not really in touch with his community—oh, and Epsom. I say to that member who was merrily interjecting from the other side of the House, that yes it does matter, actually. It does matter that those of our members of the police and corrections who may not run away from trouble are recognised in law and recognised by this Government. So with that very salient point, I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to take a call on the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill. Despite the sort of colourful approach of the other member, I would state for the record that Labour will support this bill. But we do have some reservations about it, and that is why this is called a democratic Parliament. We are charged with actually raising some issues.

The point is this—and Mr Parker, who is a lawyer, had a word to me before and I think he made a very interesting point: does the Government really think that for the last 150 years, when a police officer or a prison officer has been brutally attacked—as with other analogist cases where an adult, as we have seen recently actually, tortures or imposes themselves on a young child; that is an aggravating factor—that judges for the last 150 years have not taken that into account—

💬 Hon David Parker: As an aggravating factor.

—as an aggravating factor? Of course they have. I know Simon Power, a pretty good member of this House—he is not here now; he is in the hallowed halls of Westpac but the bill is in his name, actually—will be kissing the ground that people walk on up in Auckland or wherever he is, saying thank God he does not have to come down and front another tinkering, fictitious bill.

Everybody in this House—before the squawk-boxes start—everybody on this side of the House, like everybody in this Chamber, agrees that where a police officer or prison officer who puts their life on the line is attacked, then of course that should be dealt with by the judiciary and of course it should be an aggravating factor, and it is. But this is a “Judith Collins Special”—another one, because Simon Power is not here; this is another one. The huge detail in this bill—we are talking 3½ pages, maybe if we can get there 3¾ pages, that again sound tough, but actually will do nothing. The history of police officers and prison officers who are assaulted, when those cases are dealt with in the courts, is that judges do take it into account as an aggravating factor.

In fact, this bill is so light that it says that a judge must take account of it as an aggravating factor, but then it does not go on to compel a judge to do anything—not a thing. It just says the judge must acknowledge, mentally or however, that this is an aggravating factor and then it is over to you, which is exactly what a judge does in the present-day judicial system. They sit there, they look at the aggravating factors, and they sentence accordingly.

This bill says: “Judge, you must sit there and you must say to yourself ‘this is an aggravating factor’, and then you can sentence accordingly.” What does it change, apart from being another little political pamphlet where Ms Collins can stand up and say: “I’m being tough and I’m standing beside our police and our prison officers.”? Well, she did not do that a few years ago, when a lot of the prison officers got attacked, had their bones broken, and she got up in this House and said they were minor injuries.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: That’s just not true.

It is true, and it is in Hansard. This is the sort of lightweight political pamphlet stuff we got from the last Government and we get from this—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Angry member.

“Angry”, she says—angry. Well, I will tell you the people who may well be angry tonight. They are the people, the men and women in the police force—as she chirps away, because she does not take these issues seriously—who actually know, as prosecutors and others stand up in the courts and know, Greg O’Connor and others, how their men and women are dealt with by the judiciary. They know this is piffle. This is a political pamphlet.

Everybody supports the judiciary ensuring there is an aggravating factor when a police or prison officer is attacked. You do not actually need this. The judiciary do it, anyway. But Judith Collins can get up and say: “I’ve been tough again”. Remember the old boy-racer thing—we had a hundred out the other night—when Judith Collins said: “I’m going to go and crush them.”? None have been crushed. She said: “I’m going to say that it is mandatory—no, I am going to make sure that the judges deal with these silly boys and girls.” Then she did not make anything mandatory on a judge. She did not say that a judge had to crush a car—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Yes I did.

No, you did not.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Guess what? What’s happened?

Well, there was a hundred of them a couple of days ago reported in the paper, or is she blind? Let us get past all the piffle and political politics. Simon Power will be sitting up there in private banking, which I am told is sort of professional shopping for the rich or something like that, saying: “Thank God I got out. Thank God the Prime Minister didn’t force another bill that I had to hand over to Judith Collins because I knew it was wrong. I didn’t want to represent it as a justice bill. Thank God I don’t have to stand up and humiliate myself and front this sort of piffle.”

Anybody who stands up in this House—and the next Government speakers will, I am sure—and accuses the Labour Party, New Zealand First, the Greens, or anybody else in this House of not standing beside and with our police, or not standing beside and with our prison officers, shame on them. If the test and commitment and loyalty to our police force, to our prison staff, who in many cases—especially our police—put their lives on the line, is to support political pamphlets and piffle like this, if that is the benchmark, then I am sorry but that does not wash with the public. For 150 years where police and prison officers have been done over or killed or grievously injured, and the accused has gone before a court, does anybody on that side believe that a judge has gone: “Nah, that’s not an aggravating factor.”? In the same way, does anybody on that side believe that if an adult does over, kills, injures, or imposes themselves on a young child, as we have seen in recent days—[Interruption]—and keep interjecting; it says more about that member than anybody else. Does anybody believe—does that member believe, yes or no—that a judge would not take into account an aggravating factor of an adult doing over, or worse, a child? Well, well? Of course, that judge will always take that as an aggravating factor. Why? Because they would be negligent in their duty—and I do not speak of them directly—and, I suspect, they would be removed by a higher authority, namely this House.

So this is just another “Judith Collins You Beaut Special”—stand up, stomp your feet, say you are being tough, with a bill that is sort of akin to half a fish and chip paper, which actually will change nothing and do nothing, and will not actually provide any added protection to our prison officers or to our police. What Miss Collins would have been better to do when she was Minister of Corrections and Minister of Police was not cut the police vote as she did, and actually stand up in the House when prison officers were done over, when they had their phones broken, as we know happened, and instead of saying they were minor injuries and belittling them, actually getting off her backside and standing behind them and doing something about it, and supporting them, and not treating, as she did, the Corrections Association and other people who were representing members—the New Zealand Public Service Association and others—like dirt. Prison officers do a hell of a job, an awful job that I could not do, I suspect. I suspect that member could not do it, though she would tell everybody she could—although I suspect if she did take up a prison officer’s career she would probably scare the hell out of a few of them in solitary confinement up at Pāremoremo.

So this is not—this is not—a bill of substance. This is not a great law reform. Yes, we will support it, but let us be honest about what it is. This is not the benchmark and the acid test of whether we support our police, whether we support prison officers. This is about the Government, as usual, talking tough, acting tough, but producing absolutely nothing and changing a couple of words in an Act. And do you think the judiciary are going to be poring over this piece of legislation, over every fine word, changing their behaviour? No, because they do not have to change their behaviour, because they do this anyway, and they have done it for 150 years.

So I say let us be honest for once. Let us say what this is. Let us stand by our police, let us stand by our prison officers. And the Government continues to play this pathetic little game of saying that if you are not fully supportive of this rubbish then you are selling out the police and our prison service. I believe the public are better than that, are far brighter than that, and they will continue to see through that sort of political piffle.

Happy Chinese New Year to you, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, and to the Hon Clayton Cosgrove, who, I have got to say, was a lot more friendly in the Finance and Expenditure Committee today than he was in the House just now. But I have got to say this: I do agree with something he said when he said that—

💬 Kris Faafoi: What?

Well, not much, but it was something—when he said that police do a really tough job. I think he said he would not want to be a police officer. I tell you now I would not want to be a police officer, either. We would have much higher crime, probably, in this country if I was.

But the point is this: when they go out on the beat and they put the uniform on, suddenly—and I learnt this in jury trials, because not everyone thinks the way members in this House do where we think there is a strong respect for police and there is basically a regard for the way police handle situations; there is a small persistent minority in this country who despise them, who hate them—and actually on a far too regular basis, they are spat on and they are abused. We know, and I am not going to go through the cases, but we know, of course, that they are punched, they are kicked, they are stabbed, and in a tragic, but thankfully small, number of cases they have been killed in this country.

So this Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill—no, it does not solve everything, but it does recognise the important role that police play in this country. And I say to the members opposite, yes, I understand that in sentencing in this country there are aggravating and mitigating factors. There is a common law, and judges can take into account things that have built up over the years—I understand that. But what this bill does do is it provides certainty, it provides black and white for the judge on any given day in the District and High Courts in this country that they shall take into account as an aggravating factor, offences against a police officer, and that that will lift up the penalty that would otherwise be applied.

The modern approach to sentencing in this country is the judge starts with a sentencing starting point, whatever that is. Rape these days, all things being equal—I think there may be new case law out, but it has always been 8 years. Then the judges go by a list of aggravating factors. Some are common law, if they decide to apply those, but they must take into account the ones in section 9 in the Sentencing Act. Then they mitigate from that as well, of course—the guilty plea, remorse, etc.; those sentences come down. But what this bill does, as I say, very much it puts in black and white for all judges in this country to see that offending against police is something that they must take into account and elevate the sentence because of that fact. I think that is a great thing. It is the right thing. Police deserve us to back them in that way. To some extent it is symbolic, but I also think real as well. I also hope that by doing this, there will be a deterrent effect so that trend towards more offending against police in recent years may be turned round.

Of course this is not the only law and order bill we have passed in the last 2 or 3 years. We have had a really strong effort to toughen the law and the legal response to crime in this country. So I proudly support this bill.

I rise to take a call on the second reading of the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill and offer happy Chinese New Year to Mr Bridges as well. As has been said in this debate already, police officers and prison officers do a job that few of us would want to do. When there is danger or harm, we are probably more inclined to run away from it, but it is their job and their duty to head towards it, to protect Kiwis, to protect our communities. It is a job that is not the highest paying job in the Civil Service, but it is a job that demands bravery, guts, and a deft touch too with the communities when they are trying to prevent crimes with a feather rather than with a baton. In their line of duty, they can pay the ultimate price. I have a family member who is a prison guard. I do not really like the fact that he is doing that job, but it is his choice, and I want to make sure that we take every opportunity to make sure he is safe in his job. So I think in terms of a very personal touch we as a Parliament have a real duty to take real measures within our powers to make sure we ensure the jobs of our police and our prison officers are as safe as possible, so they can keep our communities in peace.

In fact, we know that their jobs are becoming much more dangerous. I have read in the regulatory impact statement that in the 5 years since the 2004-05 fiscal year serious assaults on police officers have gone up somewhere around 40 percent, and on prison officers around 120 percent. So let me state quite clearly that we share the Government’s will to make the role of prison officers and police officers much safer, but we do not share the opinion that this bill that is going through the House at the moment will make a real difference. There is no evidence that this bill will be a real deterrent to those who take the action of attacking police or prison officers. But there is some evidence that the judiciary has already taken into account the fact that these assaults are carried out on police and prison officers when they are sentencing. Earlier in this debate Jonathan Young took a call and he said that we on this side of the House thought this bill was unimportant. Well, he is quite wrong. It is very important and it is our role to stand here in this Parliament and talk and debate about the issue, to make sure we are making a real difference at the front line. So we do think this legislation is important. That is why we are saying that we will support it, but we do have some serious reservations with it.

We do not think the bill goes far enough to tackle the real cause of these attacks that are happening on our prison and police officers. I think Lianne Dalziel mentioned yesterday during the same debate that we should be looking at alcohol reform to make sure our police officers are not getting into these situations where they are being attacked, because I am sure the taking of drugs and the use of alcohol is a big factor when police officers are being attacked. Jonathan Young said in one breath that the Government wants to send a signal, but in another breath he said that the attackers have no regard for the rule of law, at all. So that does not quite marry up, in my opinion. If he thinks these guys are going to completely disregard the rule of law, bringing in this bill is not going to change their behaviour, so we think that he has made our argument for us. Will it be a meaningful deterrent? We do not think so. What we do need to do is make sure we are addressing the root problem and preventing the situations where officers get into a situation where they could be assaulted.

Mr Young also quoted a case from the Police Association’s Police News December issue. It was around an incident in Christchurch, where two police officers got shot and, unfortunately, a police dog got killed. Gage was killed in July 2010, and Christopher Graham Smith, the gunman, was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment for his reckless attack on the police officers and the dog. Smith was handed a non-parole term of 7 years, meaning he will have to serve half his sentence before being considered for parole. I believe that when we are talking about sentences of this length—14 years—someone is considered for parole after a third of that term, so we think that in this case the judiciary has actually taken action. It has said: “You have attacked two police officers, you have killed a police dog.”, and they have made that a mitigating factor when the sentence has been handed down. When he tried to appeal, the judge in this case said that Mr Smith had “offended against people who were protecting the community and he had not expressed enough remorse to warrant reducing the sentence.” So the judiciary is already taking action. When people are presented in our courts who have attacked our police officers and who have attacked our prison officers, the judiciary is making sure that it is sending the signal that the Government wants to send at the moment to the community to say that these people are the guards of the community. If you attack them, it is sending the signal that that is not good enough, and you will receive a harsher punishment than you would have for an attack on a normal citizen. I think from that example we can have confidence that our judiciary is taking action.

We have had—and I stand to be corrected here—only one case of a prison officer who has been killed in the line of duty, and that was Jason Palmer, who was killed at Spring Hill prison in May 2010. He was killed with a single punch; he was felled by an inmate, Latu Kepu. For the killing, Kepu was sentenced to 6 years and 4 months of jail on top of the nearly 3 years he was serving for another crime. Kepu appealed this sentence, saying it was manifestly excessive, but our Court of Appeal disagreed. The three judges in that case said: “The sentences to be imposed in [these] cases must demonstrate to other prisoners that the courts will not tolerate unprovoked attacks on prison officers.”, and that “Kepu’s offending had the seriously aggravating factor that it was a deliberate and premeditated attack on a prison officer who was carrying out his duties within a prison environment.” That is another case where our judiciary is already doing the job that the Government wants to set out in this bill. Our judiciary is already taking this action. Although we do support this bill because we want to make sure we are standing next to our prison officers and police officers, we do not think that this bill does enough in terms of making any real, meaningful difference to make sure that our prison officers and our police officers are as safe as they possibly can be.

So where does that leave us? We all agree on one thing: we want to make sure that our prison officers and our police officers are protected. They are doing a job that none of us would probably want to do, looking after the worst in society, making sure that the worst in society who are incarcerated are rehabilitating themselves, in trying conditions. But I do not think, and our party certainly does not think, that this bill is going to make any difference to making sure that those people who put themselves in harm’s way to protect us are safe. I do not think it is going to make any real difference. So I hope that, although this bill is going to go through and we will support it and it will become law, at some stage we can actually get our heads together to make sure we are making a real difference. Sure, there is politics involved in this, but there is also the safety of people on our front line, who do not get paid as much as us to do a job that is much worse than the job that we have. We support this bill through to the next stage.

I would like to take just a brief call as the final speaker in this reading of the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill. Obviously, it will not be as capable as Jacqui Dean’s three efforts at this speech, so I do want to acknowledge her determination in speaking on this bill.

I want to take a moment to congratulate those who have given their maiden speeches today, because maiden speeches really give you the opportunity to talk about what is important. In my own maiden speech 3 years ago I talked about how important it is that we back our police. So this particular bill, the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill, is yet another example of how important it is to this side of the House that we back our police and that we give them—and also our corrections staff—the tools and the safeties that they deserve in the important work that they do for each and every one of us every day.

One of the things that I attended in my first term as the member of Parliament for Taupō was the 10th anniversary of the death of Constable Murray Stretch in Mangakino. It is really important that we do whatever we can to make sure that we are able to send a very clear message that any derogatory actions or assaults on police are taken into consideration. Also, there are those who are working in the Tongariro/Rangipō Prison. It is always interesting when you attend a medal ceremony to see the length of service that they put in for us up and down this country, and it is our duty to do what we can to keep them safe. Thank you.

Bill read a second time.