Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. It is with mixed feelings that I lead off the second reading for this bill, because it was originally introduced to this House by the late Hon Brian Donnelly, who at the time had a very strong belief in this country’s responsibility for the care of its children.

I do not know whether it is just a plain coincidence that this bill is now being read for a second time, following the previous bill—again, all around the care of children.

Subsequent to the late Brian Donnelly’s introduction of this bill back in 2005, if my memory is correct, it was subsequently taken over by a former colleague of ours, Asenati Lole-Taylor, and when she introduced the first reading of the bill to the House she also expressed her acknowledgment of the Hon Brian Donnelly, who strongly advocated for a bill like this to be developed in order to tackle the issues that this bill intends to address.

My colleague Asenati Lole-Taylor prefaced her introduction to the first reading by quoting from Jim Rohn, who said that “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” If you consider that this bill is about the protection of children, then one can easily connect that quote to mean the future happiness of our children.

The bill was subsequently referred to the select committee, and I think it was—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Law and Order.

—the Law and Order Committee, and 10 submissions were received. Ironically, half of those submissions that were made actually came out in support of the bill. However, the report from the Ministry of Justice suggests that there is no need for this bill. I want to take my time, while I am on my feet, to suggest otherwise. I am not intending to devalue the advice given by the ministry, but I think that if you consider the number of young people who, beyond their control, are being confronted by acts that are totally against the law of this country, then obviously those perpetrators are not receiving the message under the present legislation, notwithstanding that the advice from the ministry stated that the present legislation is more than sufficient to cover the intent of this bill.

I just want to make some reference to the report prepared by the ministry. It says that if the bill is to progress beyond this second reading, there needs to be some amendments to clauses 4 and 5 that will clarify the meaning of aggravation and clarify the meaning of “minor”.

Although the New Zealand Law Society was one of the submitters that felt that the bill was unnecessary, one can only wonder that if in fact it is not necessary, why are we witnessing children still being subject to recalcitrant adults committing crimes while these young people are present? It seems to me that the sentencing being used to sentence the perpetrators does not seem to be strong enough. I just wonder whether or not those who will be taking a call in this debate would consider allowing the bill to go to the Committee stage, and so giving the opportunity of introducing appropriate Supplementary Order Papers to account for the concerns of those submitters who feel that this bill is not needed, to make the bill more relevant. I just wonder whether, in fact, some consideration would be given to this.

In the report received from the ministry, it analysed each of the submissions and commented on them clause by clause. I want to take the opportunity of saying that I was really impressed at the time and, obviously, the research that it had to undertake in order to provide a report that is very clear for the committee. I notice that the report back from the committee suggests that this bill should not go any further. But there is always a first time, and I actually stand in the hope that consideration may be given by the House today, not only to say that this bill is going to progress to the Committee stage but also to give some due recognition to the member who originally introduced this bill to the House. Those of us who knew the Hon Brian Donnelly know that he would have given very serious consideration and thought to this bill before introducing it to the House.

I just want to commend this bill to the House and plead to those who obviously have the power to decide on the future of this bill on whether or not they will give consideration to referring this bill to the Committee stage, in order for there to be an opportunity to introduce Supplementary Order Papers that address those concerns that have been expressed by some submitters and the ministry. Tēnā koe.

I acknowledge my colleague from the north Pita Paraone for his contribution and also the member who brought this bill to the House, Asenati Lole-Taylor. I also obviously acknowledge the Hon Brian Donnelly as being the bill’s original genesis. I guess the first point I would make is that I think the honourable member from New Zealand First Pita Paraone made some very, very good points. National was certainly supportive of taking this bill forward to the Law and Order Committee to explore the relative pros and cons of this amendment. It is fair to say that since Brian Donnelly and since the genesis of this concept, I would suggest that there have been some quite substantial changes to the Sentencing Act that really go to the heart of addressing some of those aggravating features that exist where children are subject to the criminal activity of parents, caregivers, or other adults within their vicinity. That is something that was obviously fleshed out during the select committee process, and I think that that is really the nub and the essence of what we are talking about in terms of striking the right balance between overcomplicating or over-legislating a situation and giving judges the adequate discretion inside the parameters of the existing legal framework to apply sentences that would involve an aggravating factor, such as offending in the presence of children. Whether that may in fact eventuate in harm or not, I guess, is neither here nor there. The reality is that there are many children who are subject to adult criminal behaviour because it happens in their presence.

When we look at some of the issues that the select committee actually did tangle with, one of the challenges was around the definition of “in the presence of a minor” and what that would actually look like. I have to say that I was not a member of the Law and Order Committee at the time, although I did speak in the first reading of this bill and I do see significant relevance to it actually making its way to the select committee on a number of grounds. One of them from my previous life was the advent of methamphetamine clan-labs and the dangers of meth labs to children. There may be no intent whatsoever—the offending adults may go about drug manufacturing without any real recognition of the danger not only to themselves but actually to the children who live in those environments.

In that circumstance, when you are talking about highly volatile chemicals—some of them explosives, some of them highly toxic; anything from strong drain cleaners to paint thinners, insolvents, acids, hydrochloric acids, and sulphuric acids to name but a few—the combination of these creates a toxic cocktail. For every kilogram of methamphetamine, you are getting about 9 kilograms of toxic waste, which actually goes somewhere. It falls from the atmosphere on to the ground. Children crawling around can ingest these volatiles and toxins and, in fact, methamphetamine. We see chemicals stored in fridges in drink bottles and so forth. We see chemicals that are discarded and dumped down the drains in the yard. Children will find themselves in contact with those substances, notwithstanding the fact that someone who is manufacturing methamphetamine is often in a position where they are using this stuff as well. So they will spend long periods of time awake, followed by long periods of sleep, where they may be asleep for anything up to 2 to 3 days. And what are their young children doing during that time? Well, I can tell the House that what they are doing is having to fend for themselves.

This country was in an absolutely dire situation in the late 1990s and early 2000s when we saw this increase and prevalence of clandestine drug laboratories. It was something that was seen in more than 60 countries around the world. It is the only hard drug in the world that can be made from locally accessed retail chemicals and on your kitchen bench—an absolute toxic time bomb. The most vulnerable people in that equation were the children, and often multiple numbers of children. It is fair to say that I think the police, Child, Youth and Family, and a number of agencies were actually really challenged by that.

Subsequently, though—and coming back to the importance of this bill and avoiding the legislative overlap in terms of the judges’ discretion in the current legislative framework—there were provisions for the police. In fact, it is now commonplace for the police to charge adults in a meth lab situation for a range of child neglect offences.

💬 Jacinda Ardern: Not successfully.

Well, some certainly are. The member makes a very good point: is that enough? The reality is that when it comes to methamphetamine manufacturing, the risk of harm is very high, and often the scale of consequence or the penalty has little or no bearing whatsoever on whether or not the individual is going to partake in that activity.

So actually removing the children entirely seems to be one of the only ways to do that, or, in fact, removing the adult from the equation by way of them being imprisoned, which, for an offence involving a life imprisonment, is more often than not the case.

That one example gives some idea of the fact that there are other legislative mechanisms available to the judiciary to seek out relevant punishment for what would be an aggravating offence. This really is where the Law and Order Committee has landed in its concerns and the issues that were raised during the submission process. I think that Pita Paraone, the member speaking prior to me, alluded to the Law Commission’s submission, saying, essentially, that it did not believe it was necessary. There is a danger, I think, that when we are well-intentioned—and I certainly believe that all members in this House are well-intentioned around the importance of keeping young children safe—arguably, laws are made for law-abiding citizens, but when adults are committing offences in the presence of their young ones, you know, it is fair to say that they are pretty much ignoring the consequences of those laws, let alone the consequences to their children. So we are at the starting point where, essentially, the laws do not mean that much to them.

What is important, though, if offences are detected, is that a sentencing judge is able to apply the relevant aggravating factors and features into any sentencing regime. It seems quite clear from the submissions and the process to date that, actually, there is a very broad framework of tools, if you like, available to sentencing judges within the Sentencing Act, the Crimes Act, and a number of other pieces of legislation that actually do in large part resolve the vast majority of circumstances—I guess the point being that this House, through this process, if nothing else, is able to send a very clear message to the judiciary about the importance of this. I am not suggesting that the judiciary does not take this into account in a very strong manner, but if this House was to say that these tools are available to it, then those tools should be used in the appropriate manner, because not only are children who are subject to criminal offending by their parents in and around their environments in harm’s way but there is a high likelihood that they will go to perpetrate similar criminal offending in their own lives, and so that cycle tends to continue.

So from the National perspective, we are satisfied that although it is a very worthy bill and certainly one that I think the select committee has done well to traverse, within the current legislative framework there exist sufficient tools for the judiciary to exercise a sentence by way of an aggravating factor where children are involved and are present. It is fairly clear-cut. There is little confusion about how that is used and interpreted. It is fair to say that the important lesson from this is that if those tools are there, then they should be used, and that would be my message. Although I accept that the member Asenati Lole-Taylor, who brought in this bill, was certainly very well-intentioned—as I believe other members in the House are—it is about striking that balance and not overlegislating where it is unnecessary. For that reason, the National Party will not be supporting the bill beyond this point, but I do acknowledge that it is a very, very worthy piece of work. Thank you.

I want to make it absolutely clear that I would say that there is probably no member in this House who would argue against the principle of ensuring that children are kept from harm, and I do mean harm in the broadest sense of the word when it comes to criminal offending: harm perpetrated against the child themselves; exposure to the negative environment that is criminal offending, even if that harm is not directly to the child; or even the harm that comes from a child who has a parent who is engaged in criminal offending and who loses that parent to the justice system and to incarceration. The question, therefore, is not whether we should be trying to prevent harm against children; it is how we can best ensure that we prevent that harm—how do we do it—and, unfortunately, the bill that has been put forward by the previous member of New Zealand First Asenati Lole-Taylor just simply does not achieve that goal.

We can see this if we go back to the general policy statement in the explanatory note of the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill itself, which states: “Criminal offending by adults often exposes minors to serious harm. A primary example of such offending is the production of drugs, particularly methamphetamine. … Minors are often innocent parties to criminal offending by adults, and deserve protection from adult offending that puts them at risk of harm. This Bill amends the Sentencing Act 2002 to make criminal offending in the presence of a minor an aggravating factor at sentencing.” That is probably the most crucial part of that statement—“at sentencing.” This bill relies on an adult to, first, be charged, be successfully prosecuted, and then be sentenced for the crime of producing methamphetamine. It does not make the act of producing methamphetamine in front of a child, in the presence of a child—endangering a child—an offence in and of itself. That is probably one of the most significant issues with this bill and there are a couple of examples that I want to give as to why that means that this bill will not succeed in the way that the member perhaps intended.

We actually already know, first of all, that the Sentencing Act does allow aggravating factors to be taken into account, and we heard submissions that suggested that, actually, the intention that the member included in this bill was already achieved by the existing law. The Sentencing Act 2002 as introduced by Phil Goff allowed flexibility around aggravating factors. Instead, I think that perhaps the original drafter of this bill intended for something quite different to be occurring. We do know, for instance, that children are currently being exposed to the manufacturing of methamphetamine, and we know that because of the research of one woman. I want to pay tribute to Chloe Barker. She is an Auckland-based lawyer who, a few years ago now, analysed Institute of Environmental Science and Research data related to children and clandestine labs as part of her Master’s degree. She worked very closely with the police, and the police were very cooperative on the work that she did.

She found that from 2006 to 2010 there were 191 children living in the presence of methamphetamine labs. Those labs were the ones that the police successfully broke into and closed down, and subsequently the police laid charges against the offending adults. We know that there has been a steadily increasing rate, though. In fact, in 2002, 34 percent of all the labs discovered by the police had children present, living in the confines of the lab itself. We know from a more detailed audit in 2008-09 that in 21 percent of labs there was evidence that the children were present during the manufacturing process, that in 45 of the 53 labs reviewed there was evidence of chemicals within reach of children, and that in 36 of 53 labs chemicals were stored in food or drink containers, and in one case they were stored in a child’s school drink bottle, complete with their name and their school room number on the bottle itself. We know that that also has an effect. There has not been quite enough research in this area, but we know from the hair follicle samples of 23 of the 26 children tested, methamphetamine was found to be present in those children’s hair follicles. We do not, however, know the long-term effects of that presence, but I assume that anyone would agree that that clearly indicates harm in some form or another.

But here is the kicker: despite all of that research and that evidence, there is a low rate of successful prosecution connecting the child to that criminal offending. As Chloe herself was quoted as saying in the Police Association magazine: “Currently in New Zealand, general child abuse laws are used to prosecute those who have exposed children to the dangers of the methamphetamine manufacture environment”—so they are being prosecuted under child abuse laws. She went on to say, though: “The Crown … has needed to show that this exposure was wilful and likely to cause unnecessary suffering, actual bodily harm, injury to health, a mental disability or disorder. Attentive evidential questioning and interviewing of the suspect and witnesses is required to establish intent.” As you can see, if you are prosecuting under general child abuse laws with that threshold test—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

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

Before the break I was discussing the work of Chloe Barker, an Auckland-based lawyer who has done a significant amount of research into children who are affected by parents or caregivers operating methamphetamine labs and the subsequent ability to take action against those caregivers. The point that she had made, and which I quoted to the House, was that currently in New Zealand more general child abuse laws are used to prosecute those who have exposed children to methamphetamine and that the tests in those laws are relatively high. The point that I was wanting to make was that the principle of what Asenati Lole-Taylor was trying to uphold in this bill is a good one but the mechanism was incorrect. The Sentencing Act requires someone, of course, to be charged and convicted before you can then apply an additional aggravating factor, when, in fact, what we need to do is address the fact that the act itself of exposing a child to methamphetamine manufacturing should be easier to prosecute either as a stand-alone form of child abuse or as part of the Crimes Act. It should have its own charge in and of itself. That is the problem that actually has not been addressed with this bill and we implore New Zealand First to have a think about how that could be done instead.

At the moment one of the issues is that the child abuse laws require you to demonstrate injury has occurred. There is not much longitudinal research around the long-term effects of exposure—not intake of but exposure—to methamphetamine. Of course, to do that long-term research you would need the consent of caregivers. That in itself is going to be an issue. If you were a caregiver in the past who has exposed a child to methamphetamine and the transience of the families who may have children who have been exposed to methamphetamine are just basic issues around trying to track long term those effects. A secondary measure though, if we are finding it difficult to prove injury, is that we then need to lower the threshold test in the law, but we should also be making sure that actually we do treat this as a child welfare issue.

I want to pay tribute to the New Zealand Police, and to Detective Senior Sergeant John Brunton in particular, who is the manager of the national clan-lab response team. He stated that the exposure of the children to drugs and chemicals is often complemented with exposure to criminal lifestyles, neglect, and psychological, emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. He said, speaking of Chloe’s work, that “The study corroborates my belief that Police and other response agencies could be more effective in bringing about better outcomes for these children if supported by legislation and information-sharing policies.” What he was referring to was the fact that since 2007 the police have had standard operating procedures that tell them how they best deal with children found in manufacturing labs. Child, Youth and Family right up until 2013 had no such operating procedures. It had no agreement with the police on how to deal with these children. In some cases we had examples of children being removed and then rehoused—rehoused—with caregivers who were operating methamphetamine labs sometimes 2 days after they were removed. That is utterly unacceptable.

My understanding is that Child, Youth and Family has finally come to the party with the police, but it was simply not good enough that the exposure of these children to these environments was not seen as sufficient to warrant emergency procedures to ensure that those children were safe and kept away from harm in the longer term. We must do better in this area. I want to congratulate Chloe Barker again on her work and police officers like Detective Senior Sergeant John Brunton on their ongoing work. We should be listening to their research and constructing legislation around that so that we make a real difference on behalf of children.

First of all I would like to acknowledge Asenati Lole-Taylor, the member who brought this bill to the House, for the work she did in this House. The National Party does not support this bill because it appears to be a repetition of the excellent work that Ministers in our Government have already initiated. Further, while we recognise the good intent of the bill, the member proposing the legislation may be aware that the Government has already passed laws that deal with the offence against minors.

My colleagues should also consider that under this National Government recorded crime is at the lowest it has been in 35 years. We are focused on staying tough on criminals. We will keep on increasing the number of front-line police officers, and we want to ensure that the justice system focuses on victims who suffer from crime. Increasing the number of front-line police officers and building a safer New Zealand is part of our four main priorities towards all New Zealanders. We want to deliver better public services; that is our commitment. Wherever I go in the country I see and learn about, by talking to constituents, the excellent role that our police and law enforcement agencies are playing.

The proposed legislation is about placing tougher penalties on people who forcefully ask young members of our society to be part of their crime. There is little doubt that in cases where people are involved in crime at a young age there is a fair chance that these young people are likely to be involved in crime for a lifetime. I understand that by virtue of this bill the member sponsoring the bill seeks to address this concern. As others have expressed, the current legislation already holds tough penalties for people who are involved in crime.

The legislation was considered by the Law and Order Committee. It is their recommendation that the bill not be passed, because of the very broad parameters listed in that bill. The current wording of the clause regarding committing a crime in the presence of a minor is vague and thereby is likely to confuse the decision maker at the time of sentencing. The select committee found that the existing legislation, the Sentencing Act 2002 and the Crimes Act 1961, already gives the options for considerations such as these at sentencing. The judge or the adjudicator already takes into account the entire situation of the crime and the people affected by it, before making any decision.

Last year we further strengthened legislation to ensure that any offence against an officer apart from a police officer, such as emergency, health, or Fire Service people who may be at the scene of an emergency, is included in the legislation. Sentencing should reflect the gravity of a person’s offending, particularly when the offending endangers or exposes children to harm. Secondly, any crime committed in the presence of minors or children, such as the manufacturing of drugs, is already covered under the current legislation as wilful neglect, and they can be charged with neglect offences.

National has also done a great deal of work around protecting vulnerable children and setting better public service targets to improve their lives. As I mentioned, law and order and ensuring the safety of our citizens is critical to this Government. Based on this we introduced a law that makes it a criminal offence for anyone to stay silent in cases where they are aware of any person being at risk. We have removed parole for repeat offenders who do not want to obey the law and who are a risk to New Zealanders. Furthermore, it will be much harder to gain parole, as the Parole Board will now be able to screen applications beforehand. This will reduce unnecessary hearings, giving the board power to make decisions on facts and evidence itself rather than any pleas from the offender. Further strengthening of the law has led to an increase in penalties for possessing a knife from 2 to 3 years. We have abolished the plea of provocation as a defence to murder.

By sharing these specific examples, what I am trying to share is the Government’s proactive role in ensuring the safety and security of our people and our communities. The current legislation has covered all the facts to ensure that any offender or person at risk is sentenced by the courts accordingly. Our focus, I believe, should not be on passing repetitive laws. Rather we should, as the National Government is doing, focus on better implementation of current laws and legislation. We should focus on delivering better public services to all New Zealanders. With these words I repeat that the National Party does not support this bill. Thank you.

I am pleased to take a call on this bill, in part to have an opportunity to explain why the Greens initially did support this bill’s referral to the Law and Order Committee—and, indeed, I personally participated in that committee. But at this stage we are no longer able to support the bill, for reasons that I will go into and, indeed, for reasons that are not very different from some that have been expressed by other members. We supported the bill initially in part due to the sheer enthusiasm of the member Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor, who at that stage brought the bill into the House. I am grateful to Mr Paraone for pointing out that the bill has a somewhat longer history than I was aware of, but Mrs Asenati Lole-Taylor brought this bill in with real passion and real concern—a genuine concern. The intention of the bill was very honest and appropriate and we certainly supported that.

On the face of it, it was a very straightforward bill—to make the presence of children in offending an aggravating factor at sentencing. It certainly seemed a good enough idea to merit our support through the House. It is well-known that children are often the unseen victims of crime. The bill itself notes that criminal offending often exposes minors to serious harm. That harm can be physical, emotional, or psychological, and can cause lifelong problems for young children. As they grow, it can seriously affect their development, and it can effectively create the forms of post-traumatic stress sort of symptoms that children can exhibit. At the extreme end, of course, offending can inevitably lead to imprisonment. We know that it is extremely damaging for children to have a parent in prison. We know that children with a parent in prison are something like seven times more likely to end up in the justice system or in prison themselves. I think we have to be alert to the extreme necessity of keeping our children out of those situations.

I will make a completely gratuitous and unsolicited plug for PILLARS, the Christchurch-based organisation—and also with a facility in Manukau city—that engages with the children of prisoners and does extraordinarily good work to support those children and their families while they have a parent in jail.

It was clear in the explanatory note to the bill that although the bill talked about offences committed in the presence of children or minors, the specific focus was on children who were caught up in P labs and situations where methamphetamine was being used or even manufactured. It is an appalling neglect of responsibility, be it parental or any other sort, to allow any child to be in that very dangerous environment. Sadly, we know that the number of homes and sites where P—where methamphetamine—is cooked or manufactured is quite frightening.

Some work done by the Home Owners and Buyers Association about 2 years ago indicated that there could be something in excess of 30,000 houses in New Zealand that have been or are being used for the manufacture of methamphetamine. We know that is extraordinarily dangerous because the chemicals used in the manufacture are in themselves very toxic. They get disposed of inappropriately—tipped down drains, poured into gardens. Equally, and even more insidiously, some of the chemicals that gas out—the gases that are a result of the cooking of P—will be absorbed into just about any sort of porous material. Carpets, soft furnishings, and even plasterboards and unsealed concrete can absorb these gases, and over time they gas out. So anybody living in those environments can be exposed to those gases, and there are significant health risks associated with that. Asthma symptoms, breathing difficulties, skin rashes, and eye irritation, right through to much more serious diseases of the central nervous system—strokes and cancers—can all be directly linked to the presence of these chemicals in homes.

Getting back to the bill, its intention is to try to ensure that children are not exposed to these very, very dangerous substances, and, of course, one would always wish that children were not put into those dangerous situations. Most of us would go to extraordinary lengths, and do, to make our homes safe and hazard-free for children. I recently had the pleasure of having my toddler granddaughters at home for a few days. You discover very quickly that just a normal family home is abundant with hazards for children and very active kids of that age, be it sharp edges, electrical items, heat sources, fragile ornaments—you name it; kids will find it. Most of us do endeavour to make our homes and environments child-friendly and child-safe. It is very sad that there are people in our community who lack that empathy, that common sense, and that concern, and who are reckless enough to expose children to these extraordinarily dangerous situations, as in a P house or somewhere where these dreadful chemicals are being used carelessly and without thought for the well-being of those kids.

Having said that, we regret that we cannot support this bill, because it was well-intentioned. It did reveal a very real risk and an important problem. Primarily, the reason that we are not supporting this bill further is that we have been persuaded by the select committee process, by the advice of officials, and by evidence that the legislation simply is not necessary. We were shown quotes and extracts from judgments where it was clear that judges did consider the presence of children where offending was taking place as an aggravating factor and that it did influence their thinking when it came to sentencing. We were persuaded that the legislation for that reason was unnecessary.

There were also issues about the wording of the bill and the definitions—particularly the phrase “in the presence of”, which seems sensible and straightforward—and it was revealed to us by officials and others that it was not clear what the boundaries are in saying that an offence is in the presence of a minor. Common sense is that you would say that it means that children were in that house, building, or whatever it might be, but legally it could mean that if there were children even in a nearby building, or in a street, or in a mall, or anywhere in a public place, it could still be captured by this legislation, which is outside its intention, clearly. It seemed that there was no clean or effective way to tighten up that definition sufficiently so that the intention of the bill would be made clearer. The notion of proximity is one that legally has issues.

There was also concern about putting these provisions into the primary legislation—the amendments to endeavour to capture the notion that where offending was happening in the presence of children, sentencing should acknowledge that. There were issues around judicial discretion and the fact that you actually might be locking judges into outcomes or into making judgments that are less than optimal. There could be situations where you would not necessarily want to have that level of direct influence and to impose those conditions or restrictions on judges.

So although clearly we have absolutely no tolerance for anyone who would offend in the presence of children, who would put children at risk or minors at risk, we would, particularly, have no time for people who are engaging in cooking meth, obviously driven only by a profit motive.

I think, just as an aside to that, it is interesting that some gangs will not allow even their own members to use this drug because it is just such a volatile, dangerous substance to absorb, albeit, unfortunately, some of those same gangs might be involved in the business around it. We cannot and would not ever condone any form of endangerment of children by putting them into a situation where offending is taking place. But for all the bill’s good intentions and its apparent simplicity, we have been persuaded through the select committee process that it is not necessary and that there is existing law in place. Jacinda Ardern made some very interesting points about the fact that there actually is not a criminal offence that captures the notion of people actually committing these acts, particularly cooking drugs, in the presence of children. Maybe that is an avenue that might be worth exploring at a later time.

As I say, although we do acknowledge and respect the intention of the legislation, the Greens will not be supporting it further.

I am very pleased to stand and speak on the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill. Can I just say, in terms of my regard for Asenati Lole-Taylor, who brought this bill to the House and who was a member in the last Parliament, that I send my greetings to her. I felt she was a good contributor to this House, and obviously, as someone who was a former corrections officer, she understood some of the issues that face our communities—just as you do, Mr Deputy Speaker, as a former detective sergeant and a solicitor of the court. You are very much aware of the issues that our communities face around lawbreaking, particularly the issues around the vulnerability of people.

Although we understand that this bill would not actually stop people doing those heinous deeds to young people—in fact, I cannot think of anybody in our society as low as somebody who would manufacture P, which is dangerous not only for the community but at the threat of the lives and, obviously, the influence on young people. We need to be people who see the future for our young people, unlike those sorts of people. All they care about is money. All they care about is what they gain, not the pain they cause.

But this bill does not really address the issue by making the fact of doing something like this in the presence of a child an aggravating offence, because those people do not respect the law. They will do it anyway. There are issues that we understand around aggravating offences, particularly when people attack our first responders—our police, our ambulance drivers, and those who because of their commitment to the safety of others go into situations where they do not have the option or the opportunity to withdraw from a difficult, threatening situation. They are, by obligation of their job and their commitment to our community, required to go into unsafe situations. So in those cases where somebody would attack a police officer or ambulance driver, you can understand why we would make that an aggravating offence.

But these lowlifes who do this other sort of work—I do not know whether anything can change them. What they need to do, or what needs to happen to them, is that they need to be apprehended by the police and they need to go through the courts of this land. They need to have the sentences put upon them that will stop them having that sort of activity, behaviour, lifestyle, and certainly that negative influence—not only upon the health and well-being of young children but also the influence upon them. What happens is that kids look at the adults around them and they see that as the norm. They see that as acceptable behaviour. We need to put a stop to that. We need to have a vision for the future of our young people.

I am very pleased to say that I come from a region that has exactly that. We have a great organisation called Taranaki Futures. This is made up of people in our community who actually care for the young people, who actually see that they have a future. They want to nurture them, help them, enable them to become the very best that they can be in their life so that they can have some future to look forward to. These people whom we are talking about in this bill have none of that. They have none of that.

One of the things that I believe we need to also have confidence in is our judiciary. I am sure, and we know by case law, about the approach taken by the men and women who sit in the courts of this land when they come across cases like this. When people do a crime in front of a child, whether it is the manufacture of P or whatever it might be, do those judges take that into consideration? Of course they do. Of course they do, because they know that these kids, these young children, are vulnerable. As I said before, they are vulnerable to influence and they are vulnerable to harm. They are defenceless in many situations. So what we need to understand is that our judges, the men and women of our courts, are understanding, rational, intelligent people who actually do not need this Parliament to tell them that a crime done in the presence of a child is a bad thing. It is a worse thing; they know that already. Case law shows that they are giving sentences accordingly.

One of the things that I think is really important is that when it comes to law and order and crime and when it comes to safety in our community, we need to ensure that the men and the women, the young and the old, who enter our corrections facilities actually have their behaviour changed. I am pleased to say that this Government has put into place educational programmes and individual learning plans for every person who goes into prison. That is a great step forward. The number of prisoners gaining qualifications has increased by 830 percent, up from 197 in 2008-09 to 1,833 in 2012-13. What I cannot understand when I read figures like that is how the previous Government, with all of its 9 years of surplus—

💬 Kelvin Davis: Oh, you were doing so well, Jonathan.

—Mr Davis—and 9 years of skiting that we have got money in the bank never did anything in this space. I cannot understand. We have almost 3,000 prisoners starting literacy and numeracy programmes in the 2013-14 financial year, up 155 percent compared with 2007-08. And this is the important thing, coming back to the bill: we have had an almost 1,500 percent increase of places on drug and alcohol treatment programmes for prisoners since 2008.

💬 Simon O’Connor: How much?

A 1,500 percent increase since 2008.

I do not know what the previous Labour Government was doing. I do not know what it was doing for all those years—you know, the party that cares! How come when we came into office we lifted all these programmes, especially rehabilitation around drugs? The people who are out there creating drugs, making drugs, are people who live in a drug culture. So this bill is saying that that drug culture is destructive for those individuals, those kids, and the people they sell drugs to, but what is Labour doing about it?

What we are doing about it is that we have increased the number of places by 1,500 percent so that people who end up in our corrections facilities have drug and alcohol rehabilitation to get off it, to pull their lives together, to have a fresh start, and to be able to come out of a corrections facility with skills training so that they can go out and get a job, get an apprenticeship, and get something that is going to give them another source of income instead of making this destructive stuff.

So, you know, we could bleat on about things, as people do, but we as a Government are doing something about it. We are being pragmatic and being proactive. We are changing the culture of this society by the things that we do. I believe it is not just a matter of creating a law that punishes but it is about creating an opportunity that changes. This is what we are doing. Thank you.

I was so enjoying the speech of that member, Jonathan Young, until he got to those really hurtful things about the previous Labour Government. It is tragic. He was talking about the things that matter so much to New Zealanders such as the safety of our children and those terrible people that are making methamphetamine and doing all those hurtful things, and then he himself goes and hurts our feelings by criticising the fantastic previous Labour Government.

I just would like to start though with Pita Paraone, who earlier this evening spoke about the genesis of this bill. He mentioned the name of the late great Hon Brian Donnelly, who was not just a wonderful member of Parliament—I knew him before he was in politics as a fantastic principal up in Whangarei. He was also a fairly handy rugby league player for the Moerewa Tigers in his day. Then we move on to Asenati Lole-Taylor, who actually brought this bill to the House. I would just like to acknowledge her.

I do have to say, though, that the Labour Party is not going to support this bill. We do not disagree with the intent of the bill; in fact, we agree entirely with the intent of the bill to protect our most vulnerable children. Labour is committed, absolutely committed—as are all parties across the House—to protecting the most vulnerable, and particularly our children. As Jonathan Young did say, anybody who would think of doing something as heinous as baking P in the house in the presence of children deserves the law book to be absolutely thrown at them.

The Labour Party is absolutely committed to the physical safety of children. It is committed to preserving the emotional safety of children and the cultural safety of children. It is committed to protecting the educational safety of children. That is why we have spent much of this evening, this afternoon, and many previous members’ days debating the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. It is why we always talk about the need for warm, dry homes so that children and families are warm and safe. It is why we are always talking about poverty and how we need to expend all our energies in reducing poverty across New Zealand. It is why we talk about our concern about the cost of food, and healthy food in particular, and also about overcrowding in homes. We talk about these issues because we care about giving our children throughout New Zealand the best start in life.

I just want to talk about an incident that happened when I was principal at Kaitāia Intermediate School when the local youth aid officer came into my office and said: “Kelvin, we need to take a brother and sister, a girl who is year 8, 12 years of age, and her younger brother, year 7, 11 years of age, for drug testing.” I said: “Oh, what—marijuana?”. He said: “No. This is P. We want to test them for P.” I said: “Well, why would you suspect that these kids have been doing P?”. He said: “Well, to be perfectly honest, their parents are doing P. We have interviewed these children, and they have a detailed knowledge of how to manufacture P. They can explain in graphic detail how to manufacture P. They can also explain in great detail the process you go through to actually consume it.” He mentioned something about taking light bulbs. Mr Deputy Speaker, you were a policeman in your day. Somehow they used broken light bulbs to consume P. So these children had this intimate knowledge that they could explain in quite some detail. At 11 and 12 years of age they could explain how to manufacture and consume P.

They actually took these kids away and they did test them and found that, no, the children had not actually consumed it themselves. But the youth aid officer said to me: “Kelvin, they display all the symptoms of somebody who has been using P.” I said: “Well, explain to me.” He said: “Well, are these kids tired? Do they come to school and fall asleep?”. I said: “Yeah, actually, they do.” He said: “Well, when your parents are having a P binge, it makes them hyper. They will stay awake. They will party for 3, 4, or 5 days at a time without any sleep. That means these children are also kept awake because their parents are partying with their mates. They can’t get to sleep so they’re also displaying the symptoms of sleep deprivation. Physiologically they just can’t cope with it, so they come to school to have a rest.” He said: “Are these kids hungry?”. I said: “Yeah. They’re always hungry. We put on breakfast for them.” He said: “Well, that’s another symptom—when the parents are on their P binges, they don’t get hungry so they don’t think to go out and buy food for the kids. In fact, their minds aren’t in that space where they would think to go and buy food. All the food is used up on day 1 and day 2 of the P binge. The kids go for 4 or 5 days without food in the house so they will turn up to school hungry as well.” He said this is what happens. This is how insidious it is that parents will have this happen to their children.

We, as parents, want to have our children. We want to love them, nurture them, and make sure they grow up safely. David Clendon has spoken about how his grandkids have come around, and you put everything up high so that they cannot have things fall on them and they will not play with the light sockets, etc. There are some parents in this world who just absolutely do not give a toss about those little things; they are too busy on these P binges where their kids are sleep-deprived and where they are food-deprived, and basically those children are not in a situation where they can actually go to school and learn. They are in danger of just repeating the cycle over and over and over again.

The intent of this bill is laudable, but we will not support it because the Sentencing Act and the Crimes Act already basically cover the intent of this bill. For example, section 152 of the Crimes Act says it is the duty of the parent or guardian to provide necessaries and protect from injury. It says: “Everyone who is a parent, or is a person in place of a parent, who has actual care or charge of a child under the age of 18 years is under a legal duty—(a) to provide that child with necessaries; and (b) to take reasonable steps to protect that child from injury.”

Those parents whom I have spoken about are not taking any steps to protect their children from injury. In fact, it was just a wonder that those children had not actually consumed P themselves, because if they had, they would have been instantly addicted. P is one of the most addictive substances there is. Nicotine is probably the only thing that is more addictive, strangely enough. It is just a wonder that those two children whom I described had not actually consumed P and at that stage of their lives had not become addicted to it, although I would have concerns now, some 7 or 8 years on, and I hope that they have not fallen into that lifestyle as well. In fact, I have to give them credit for getting themselves up every day, getting out of bed, getting themselves dressed, and getting themselves to school. I was thinking about it, and it was probably because school was the one safe place in their lives where they could get up, where they could get some sleep in the middle of the day when they are meant to be learning, where they could get a decent feed in the mornings, and where they were relatively safe.

Also, the Sentencing Act—I just want to refer to section 9A, “Cases involving violence against, or neglect of, child under 14 years”. Section 9A(2) says: “The court must take into account the following aggravating factors to the extent that they are applicable in the case:”. Section 9A(2)(b) says: “in relation to any harm resulting from the offence, any serious or long-term physical or psychological effect on the victim:”. So that is an aggravating factor—taking into account the psychological effect on the victim. I just wonder about the psychological effect that those parents’ behaviour had on their two children. Labour will not be supporting this bill, although we do support the intent. Kia ora.

I am pleased to take a call on the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill. I have listened to 80 minutes of fact on this bill, and I think the only thing I can do is add a little fiction. I did learn a couple of things tonight. I learnt from Pita Paraone that this bill has been floating around this building for some 8 years, so it is little surprise, given the fact that it has been around for some 8 years, that some of the things contained in it have been superseded by other pieces of legislation. It was picked up in the last Parliament by Asenati Lole-Taylor, who was famous for some things in this Parliament, but probably not this bill. But none the less she had an entertaining 3 years in this place, but, of course, is no longer with us.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: Then New Zealand First did the nasty on her.

I have been put right off my stride. She did have this bill. I guess it is a little bit like backing a racehorse. She became lucky. She got a bill drawn out of the ballot. Of course some of us and some of you have had bills in the ballot for a number of years and never have been lucky enough to have one drawn out. Asenati had one drawn out of the ballot within a few minutes of arriving in this Parliament, and this was the bill that was drawn out. The National Party, for that reason, is not inspecting it. Of course, we have got a slight—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member in his entertaining contribution but the noise across the House and the discussions are getting a little bit out of hand. If we could keep it down please.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. That is much more peaceful. I was about to say that I listened to not only 80 minutes of speaking on this bill but also speeches on the previous bill, and I seriously thought I was in a morgue. It was very disappointing to think that you could speak for hours and hours and hours on a bill, and pretty much never change the tone of the speaker. I think that is the sad thing about this place, that probably we need a little—

💬 Sue Moroney: How long did they speak about the name of that bill?

Oh, there is the proponent of that bill over there. She actually did quite a good job, I have to say, sitting in the chair. I did notice her making some quite good contributions to the bill, and she was slightly more gregarious than some of her helpers.

I want to go back to the bill for a moment. The reason it is not being supported—and it has been very well documented in here tonight—is that a lot of the legislation passed by this Government in the last 5 or 6 years has really superseded the intent of this bill. Judges already have the opportunity to consider the presence of children when sentencing. I think that that probably was the key for the Law and Order Committee, which perused this bill. That select committee, of course, had a number of people sitting on it who are in the House tonight. I think Kris Faafoi might have been on that select committee, in the early stages of it.

💬 Kris Faafoi: A very august select committee.

And a very, very good member of that select committee too, Kris Faafoi. Of course, David Clendon from the Greens has been on the Law and Order Committee in the time I have been on it and he makes a great contribution. But the select committee at that time was chaired by Jacqui Dean. She did give Asenati Lole-Taylor a number of opportunities to appear before that committee and explain the reasons for the bill and explain how she wanted to progress it. Asenati did not turn up. Of course, that does not help your cause when you have got a member’s bill before a select committee.

💬 Jacinda Ardern: That’s a bit unfair.

A bit harsh—yes, I realise that. I did not say she was not here, but perhaps there is a reason she is not here.

I want to go on to what I think is the solution to this. It is a solution that the National Government has soundly supported in its time in Government and in the House. I think the real cure for the child abuse issues we have, for the crimes issues we have, is a better education process. I am sure this Government is advancing that at pace. I think initially the opportunity for our very youngest children to go through the education system, even in remote towns like some in my community, such as Raetihi—in fact, the primary school had a team of its pupils in the gallery today, and it is nice to see such a large turnout of children in the gallery tonight.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Just for you.

Exactly, Mr Faafoi. I think the education process will certainly make a difference. It will make a real dent in people’s perception of crime.

I want to talk about another thing that is going on in my electorate right now, as we speak. The Notorious chapter of the Mongrel Mob in Auckland is running a drug programme in conjunction with the Salvation Army at a place called Kākahi. For those of you who have not heard of Kākahi, it was at one stage the home of Peter McIntyre.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Where is it?

It is in the King Country. My grandmother taught at Kākahi School in 1927, as a matter of interest. But it was also the home of Peter McIntyre.

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: When was that?

It was in 1927. They are running what is turning out to be a very successful drug rehabilitation programme. Although I guess that is not education in its purest form, it certainly will make a difference to the way that those Mongrel Mob members participate in crime. Once they are drug-free, I am sure that will make a significant difference to their attitude and outlook on life. Drugs, of course, were the background to this bill being introduced to the House. They are also a significant cause of crime in this country. That is something that is going on in my electorate of Rangitīkei right now that I think is really interesting. It is a little intimidating for the community, but none the less I think it works very well. It is a very small community as well. It works very well.

The other thing that I think is really apparent has been this Government’s achievements in law and order. As I said earlier, I have been fortunate enough to be on the Law and Order Committee in the time I have been in this House and in that time we have had very good Ministers of Corrections, very good Ministers of Police, and very good Ministers of Justice. That has followed through into programmes that are rehabilitating prisoners at a greater rate than we ever have before in this country, with great success actually. As Jonathan Young said in his very good speech earlier on, we are having great—

💬 Kris Faafoi: It wasn’t very good. It was OK.

It was an outstanding speech. We are having great success with drug programmes and literacy and numeracy programmes in our prisons. We certainly are getting a whole lot more of those prisoners back into our communities in a form that makes them enjoy their lives and does not end up with them going straight back to prison. I think it is a very successful programme. Also, we are keeping a lot more people in their communities as they serve their sentences. That makes a difference to their attitude to life. It gets them off drugs. It keeps them working in the community and keeps them busy.

A lot of the success this Government has had in the 6 years it has been in office has certainly occurred in the law and order programmes that we have instigated—as Jonathan Young says, in a very short time, and likely to be extended. I think on the whole we are doing pretty well with our education and our law and order programmes.

The other thing I want to talk about, in respect of the education and law and order programmes is that a lot of people—and I guess it almost started in my day—were expected to go through the schooling programmes with an academic bent on life, I guess. I think that challenges people significantly, because a lot of us only ever want to work with our hands. When you go to school and you are made to—

💬 Jacinda Ardern: It’s a maximum speaking time, not a goal.

I have never had to waste as much time as this before in my life, but I am very good at it. I am getting very good at it, and I am starting to quite enjoy it. The great thing about working with your hands is that you can do anything. I think the real secret to our education programmes—I have to say that when I started this I said to my neighbour: “What am I going to say for 10 minutes?”. He said: “Just pick up all the facts and spread them further.” What I am actually doing is spreading those facts further. But I just want to get back to the education thing. If you think about using your hands, it is a great opportunity for the young people of today who do not have that academic bent to get on and do something they like doing.

So I think that, aside from the fact that this bill did not fit the bill from a Government perspective—and I am pleased to see even the Greens supporting us on this, and it is one of the few things I think they have supported us on—I do feel a little for Asenati Lole-Taylor, who was lucky enough to have a bill drawn out of the ballot and get it into the House. So although the bill will never see the light of day, I think it has none the less been given plenty of airing. With those few words I will hope that the bill comes to an end with this reading and I will sit down. Thank you.

I call the member Denise Roche. You have a 5-minute split call.

I rise to take a short call on the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill. This bill is an excellent example of the democratic process—how our Parliament should develop our legislation—and I just want to acknowledge the people who are in the gallery today, the young people who have come along to witness democracy in action. This is where the laws are made. Thank you for coming.

I also want to congratulate the member who brought this bill to the House in her name, Asenati Lole-Taylor, and acknowledge her work on the bill in bringing it through the first reading and into the select committee. I also acknowledge Mr Pita Paraone and congratulate him on shepherding it through this part of the process. It is without doubt a well-intentioned member’s bill.

We supported this bill to the select committee, as did most parties in this House, because we wanted the people of New Zealand to have a say on a potential addition to the law around sentencing criminals who have committed crimes around children, while they were present. I was not on the select committee but I have reviewed the advice from the officials, the 10 written submissions, and, of course, the report back to the House. It is obvious from reviewing that information that there has been a lot of care and attention and discussion that has gone into weighing up the pros and cons of this bill.

That is how our legislative process should work, because frequently it is not until a bill has got the full weight of parliamentary services to investigate it, where the public and experts have an opportunity to examine the bill, and where MPs can pick it to pieces during the select committee process, that you actually get to scrutinise our legislation and what we are doing—and what we are proposing to do—in great detail. Just by the way, that is one of the reasons why the Greens love democracy so much and also why we are frequently opposed to the use of urgency as a short cut in the legislative process.

But back to this bill. We come back to the recommendation put to the House from the Law and Order Committee. Basically, it has recommended that this bill not go any further, and we will be supporting that recommendation. Essentially, we acknowledge that this bill is and was well-intentioned and we agree, of course, that children should be protected from the harm of being present when crimes are committed. This was a unanimous response from all the submitters on the bill. But we do not think that this bill will do that. By the time the sentence is imposed on the offender the harm to the child is already done, and we must find ways of preventing that harm—be the ambulance at the top of the cliff, not at the bottom.

I was heartened by the submission from the Salvation Army, which did look at how we sentence offenders. I was struck by the wisdom of some of the comments, and I would like to refer to some of its submission where it said: “If we seek to protect vulnerable children, a concentrated preventative approach to reducing offending and reoffending is required. Therefore we submit that protecting vulnerable children from harm in these situations is not always achieved by an increase in punishment. Whilst we support the removal of risk … from a child’s environment, longer sentences and the separation of children from their parents through prison has also itself been identified as a risk factor for intergenerational criminal activity.” I would add that there is really no evidence that longer sentences act as a deterrent to crime.

There have been no gaps in the current sentencing practice and the current sentencing law identified by any of the Ministry of Justice officials, so this bill basically does nothing to prevent the harm to children or to fill any kind of legislative gap. For that reason, though we acknowledge the good intentions of it, we will be opposing this bill. Thank you.

Sue Moroney—a 5-minute call.

It is indeed a 5-minute call. This is a short contribution on the second reading of the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill, brought forward originally—not very originally, but in most recent history—by Asenati Lole-Taylor. I want to acknowledge her for bringing the member’s bill into the House, having the opportunity to have it drawn from the ballot, and also Pita Paraone for continuing to ensure that this bill remains before the House and that it can, in fact, be debated at the second reading.

Many members have spoken about this bill being related to the issue of children being in an environment where methamphetamine is being used or where, in fact, it is being created. Yes, that has been well traversed. I do not really want to add to that debate and discussion at all. But I do want to bring to the House’s attention another area of criminal offending where children are quite frequently, and far too frequently, present, and that is in the field of domestic violence. It is quite frequent that police officers are called out to domestic violence incidents. Also, one of the next things they are doing is contacting Child, Youth and Family because there is often a child who has witnessed that domestic violence. We know that the link between domestic violence and family violence is very strong. We know that children witnessing violence in that environment are very likely to have been subjected to violence themselves. Of course, the act of witnessing a loved family member being attacked by another loved family member is in itself violence towards the children who are witnessing that. So that is another area where this bill would apply.

As we have heard from the speakers beforehand, the bill is not necessary because judges at sentencing do regard it as being an aggravating factor that children are present in these situations where the criminal offending takes place, and so they should. If criminal offending was not bad enough in its own right, to have children, through no fault of their own, involved simply by being in the environment is just unthinkable for many people in this House.

I cannot address this issue without calling out the Government members on the sanctimony—the sanctimony—of their contributions to this bill and on their not understanding the link between getting right the bonding and attachment between children and family members in those early months.

💬 Chris Bishop: Ha, ha!

Well, Christopher Bishop laughs, but all the research and evidence says that if we get the bonding and attachment right in those early months, parents will never put their children in this situation because they will have developed that protection gene. They will have developed that through their bonding and attachment, and that is why it is critically important that we get 26 weeks’ paid parental leave in place—so that bonding and attachment can occur.

💬 Simon O’Connor: Here we go.

“Here we go.” they say. Yes, well, you are going to continue to hear about it because of the hypocrisy of the Government members pretending that they care about this issue without understanding what leads to it. Quite simply, when parents allow their children to be put in the situation where they are exposed to drugs that will cause health problems for the children, where they are exposed to violence, the simple fact is that those children would be immunised against being put in those situations if that parent was properly bonded and attached to that child.

💬 Simon O’Connor: Oh, what a load of rubbish!

The Government members opposite are saying it is rubbish. They clearly do not care about the research and evidence that suggests otherwise—the volumes of research and evidence that tell us otherwise. To quote the Labour leader: “Just cut the crap and actually deal with the issues that matter.”

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Has my time concluded?

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, it has not. Your time has not concluded, but the member should stick to the bill that is under debate at the moment, and carry on as if she is debating the current bill, not a bill that has already been dealt with.

Thank you, and I am indeed debating this bill. The point is that if we want to ensure that parents immunise their children against being in an environment where there is criminal offending taking place, then we want to make sure that parents actually have empathy and attachment and are well bonded to their children. If they do, they would not allow that situation to occur.

I feel that my time probably is going to be up now. I challenge the members opposite to do the right thing.

Well, that was an interesting contribution from Sue Moroney. You would not have thought that it was actually the National Party that took to the election a programme to expand paid parental leave and expand the parental tax credit. Actually, that is the policy of the National Government and that is the policy we will be advancing. But, anyway, I want to mention two things in my contribution tonight. It is a great pleasure to be here, actually. This is the first actual bill I have had the pleasure of speaking on as a new member of this Parliament. I have given a speech in the general debate and obviously I have had my maiden speech, but this is the first bill I have spoken on. It is a shame, I have to say, that I was not privileged enough to be a member of the Law and Order Committee, which considered this bill. But I have carefully read the information. I have carefully read the bill and I have carefully read the report back from the select committee, and I have considered the submissions. I think it is pretty clear that there are, really, three reasons why the bill is not going to be passed tonight—unanimously, I think—by the House.

There was concern about the definition of “in the presence of”. It was felt that that would be difficult to apply, and I think that is fair enough. There was also concern expressed by many that the proposition being put forward by the member’s bill was, indeed, actually already the law. So, in some ways, the bill was essentially redundant. Case law already took account of the presence of minors in criminal offending. There was also some concern, I think, that this would restrict judicial discretion. So for those three reasons I think the bill, rightly, is not going to be passed tonight. I do not think that anyone would dispute that the member who originally brought the bill forward, who, I understand, was the long lamented Brian Donnelly, and his successor Asenati Lole-Taylor were very well intentioned in bringing this issue to the attention of the House.

I want to take a broader look at this bill and the issues. I want to talk about the achievements of the National-led Government in the law and order and crime and punishment fields. The interesting thing about what the Government has been up to over the last 6 years is that there has been a quiet revolution going on in crime and punishment. The National Government has been cracking down on crime—there is no doubt about that—but the other thing we have been doing as a Government is actually putting enormous effort and investment into tackling the causes of crime and tackling reoffending, and that has been led firstly by Judith Collins and then, latterly, by Anne Tolley. I am sure that Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga will continue with it as the new Minister of Corrections. I would describe it as a quiet revolution in that field, and I think that when people look back on the legacy of this National-led Government they will look very favourably on the very large increase in things like drug and alcohol treatment and addiction treatment. It is true—and these are the facts, for the benefit of the House—that under the National-led Government we have the lowest crime rate in 35 years. It is indisputable.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just want to raise with you the issue that you raised with the previous speaker, Sue Moroney, in saying that her speech was out of the scope of this bill. I just think, looking at this particular member of the National Party, that his speech has very little to do with this bill, and I would like you to consider that.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I take the member’s point of order. I ask members to stick to the bill under discussion tonight, which is in respect of children’s presence at criminal offending—the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill. Obviously I previously allowed some leeway and we learnt a lot about the outer reaches of the Rangitīkei electorate. I do not believe that the current speaker is going beyond the scope at the moment, but he must bear in mind the need to stick to the bill.

Understood. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Look, I think it is fair to say it has been a free-ranging debate, and certainly I think that members opposite have taken some liberties as well with the subject matter of this bill. I do want to talk about the crime rate. We have put 600 more police on the front line, and there has been a 155 percent increase in foot patrols by our police between 2011 and 2013. In my great area of the Hutt Valley I was very pleased to see crime down 23 percent between June 2011 and September 2013. Violent crime is down 21 percent, youth crime is down 36 percent, and reoffending is down 10 percent. The justice sector in Hutt Valley won an award from the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand for its efforts in working together as a justice system. That is a very impressive achievement and is great for the people of the Hutt Valley.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Well done, Trevor.

Actually, he had nothing to do with it. As the new list MP based in the region I am looking forward to working with the justice sector in the Hutt Valley to get those rates down further. Here are some more facts for the benefit of the House. In 2007 and 2008, when members opposite were in charge, 234 prisoners had access to treatment for addictions. What was the figure in 2013-14? It was 3,700. So this is a Government that has put a serious amount of effort, energy, and raw hard cash into making sure that our prisoners have access to treatment for addictions, which, of course, so many of them do. What about qualifications? I know that the member Jacinda Ardern has a strong interest in making sure that our prisoners come out of prison equipped to go back into the workforce—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. It is pertinent to remind the member that it has been a long time since he has mentioned the protection of children in his speech. It would have been wise of him to take the steer earlier given. I welcome him back to the point under debate.

I think the relevance to children is pretty clear, in that we want to make sure that prisoners who leave our prisons and often go back to looking after children do not reoffend. This is a Government that has put a serious investment into making sure that prisoners who have the ability to gain qualifications have the ability to educationally achieve. This is also a Government that has put a serious amount of effort, through the Supporting Vulnerable Children Result Action Plan, into making sure that children who are vulnerable in our society get the support they need and that we reduce the number of assaults on children. The trend is downward, and it is very important that we continue on the path we have gone on, through things like putting social workers in schools to deal with the root cause of some of the problems with crime in our society and the subjecting of children to the crimes that this bill very rightly aims to deal with.

It is important that we continue with initiatives like social workers in hospitals, which we introduced in 2009, to make sure that social workers are in every district health board around the country, which I know my colleague the Hon Jonathan Coleman, as the Minister of Health, is very focused on. We are making sure that children in our schools have access to social workers, and this Government has put more effort and energy into that. That is extremely important. We have expanded that programme to all decile 1 to 3 schools, and I was privileged during the election campaign to meet some of those people in Wainuiōmata. They are indeed making a difference to the well-being of our young people.

But to return to the core elements of this debate, I think there is widespread unanimity across the House that for a variety of reasons this bill is not necessary, and I think we can all agree that this is a Government that is taking serious action on some of the issues that are highlighted by this bill. So we will not be voting for it at its second reading.

I would like to address some of the inaccuracies that have been brought up by the previous member, Christopher Bishop, but I think I might start by actually addressing the bill that we are here to discuss in the House tonight. I am not sure whether the previous speaker actually even mentioned what that bill is. In fact, I do not even know whether he came to the House knowing what the bill was that he was speaking on. But I will speak just to the bill. The bill is the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill. I am happy tonight to take a call on this bill. We will not be supporting the bill, but we do support the intent of the bill, and I do want to acknowledge Asenati Lole-Taylor for her work. We may not have always aligned, exactly, in our political views, but I do respect her as a former parliamentarian and I respect the work that she did with this bill, despite the fact that we may not agree with it or support it at this stage.

This bill amends the Sentencing Act 2002 to make criminal offending in the presence of a minor an aggravating factor at sentencing. Where the offender endangers or exposes a minor to potential adverse effects from that offending, the sentence must reflect this. Criminal offending by adults often exposes minors to serious harm, and we all agree in the House that that is the case. A primary example of such offending that has been spoken about by several members tonight is the production of drugs, particularly methamphetamine. Production of these substances is regularly conducted in residential buildings, putting the lives and health of resident children at risk of poisoning and burns resulting from the highly dangerous and unstable chemicals used in such production. My colleague Jacinda Ardern talked earlier tonight about the large proportion of households, buildings, and places where methamphetamine is being produced where there are actually children who are living in that vicinity, or where there are children who are exposed to the harm of that methamphetamine. So it is something that we here tonight, all of us in this House, share some concern for. We accept and we are concerned about the fact that minors are often the innocent parties to criminal offending by adults and deserve protection from adult offending that puts them at risk of harm.

We oppose this bill. However, as the Law and Order Committee report states: “we support the intent of the bill and consider the safety of children to be paramount.” We cannot support this bill, though, because there are several problems with it. Some of those problems have been cited by my own colleagues, and some of those problems have been cited by members of other parties. The application of the bill as introduced would be too difficult to enforce. Under clause 4 the definition of “in the presence of a minor” is far too broad and would encompass everything. The definition of “in the presence of” could potentially encompass public areas, such as shopping malls or roads; as such it would be difficult to apply in practice. The select committee stated that it is “confident that judges already consider the presence of and potential harm to children when sentencing, and requiring them to comply with a rigid framework might hinder the use of judicial discretion” in those situations. The report also states: “Case law demonstrates that the Police and the courts already take the presence of a minor into account when prosecuting and sentencing offenders in the situations the bill is intended to address.”

I have not been on the select committee, so, unfortunately, was not there for the public submissions, but I have gone through some of the submissions. One of the submissions that I was particularly interested in, which really aligns with the views of many people in the House tonight, is the submission that was put forward by the New Zealand Law Society. I think the submission that has come from it is credible. It has analysed what the legislation would entail and whether or not it would be effective, and the answers it has come up with really are the answers that align with what we have heard here tonight. The New Zealand Law Society, like many of the parties in the House, welcomes the opportunity to comment on the bill. In its submission it states that the bill amends the Sentencing Act and what that entails. It points out that “The objective of protecting children in these circumstances is laudable, but the Law Society considers the bill is unnecessary. The courts already routinely take the presence of minors into account as an aggravating feature, for example in prosecutions for domestic violence, drink driving and drug offending.” The Law Society points out: “This was illustrated in a recent methamphetamine prosecution, where the Court of Appeal endorsed prosecutions for neglecting a child in circumstances where the child was exposed to methamphetamine: ‘It is appropriate to observe, however, that we are satisfied the charge under s 195 was properly brought in this case and that it is an appropriate charge for a situation such as this, where a parent with control of a child allows that child’s health to be habitually compromised by exposure to an unsafe environment, made so by her own criminal offending.’ This is relevant to the general policy of the Bill: the Explanatory Note notes that ‘[a] primary example of such [criminal] offending is the production of drugs, particularly methamphetamine. Production of these substances is regularly conducted in residential buildings, putting the lives and health of resident children at risk of poisoning and burns resulting from the highly dangerous and unstable chemicals used in such production’ ”—which is what was stated earlier from the Labour Party point of view, and which is shared across the House—“In the Law Society’s view, whether minors have been put at risk of harm by offending is a factor that should be left to the courts’ discretion to assess in each case.” This is rather than through this bill, because, actually, the Law Society and many of the other experts who came to submit on the bill pointed out that this bill could actually put at jeopardy the discretion of the court to assess each case in the way in which it currently is able to.

It is good when we are in a situation where the majority of the House agrees on legislation. I did hear earlier one of the other members pointing out that this particular bill that we are considering tonight has been floating around Parliament for 7 or 8 years. I accept what the other member said, in that things have changed over the last 8 years, so the intention, although good, may be overridden by the fact that other legislation has come into play that actually discounts the need for this particular bill.

I said I would initially start by actually addressing the bill, which the previous speaker did not do, but I would like to address some of the issues that the previous speaker did bring up. When we are talking about sentencing and protection of children—a serious matter that we all take seriously in this House and share concerns for—I thought it was a bit of a cheap opportunity to take, which that member did, to try to push the National agenda and to try to imply that National has been successful on the law and order front, when actually what we are getting out in the general public is the exact opposite. The feedback that we are getting from the general public is that the National Government has failed abysmally when it comes to law and order. Just addressing some of the things that were raised by the previous speaker, Mr Bishop, when he raised that we have had reoffending rates drop, well, my learned colleague Jacinda Ardern did bring up, actually, that that was because reoffending has gone down because of community-based sentences.

I also wanted to say, in addressing the statements made by the previous speaker, that unfortunately what we have seen under a National Government is the dissuading of the reporting of crimes. In fact, we have police who are not even attending crimes such as burglaries to the same extent anymore, so people are not even taking them to the police. That does mean there has been a reduction in crime; it means there has been a reduction in reporting because of the fact that we do not have the police numbers, or police on hand, to attend to those cases. We also had some statement made by members on the other side that they have done wonders in the area of rehabilitation. Can I just point out that it was really just a continuation of the Labour work that had been done during the 9 years that we had in Government.

Finally, when the National Government talks about the decrease in crime, I have to point out, actually, that we are not seeing that in west Auckland. What we are seeing in west Auckland is that we have become the murder capital of New Zealand and we are certainly not feeling any great service by the National Government in the area of law and order. So, in fact, I want to point out, before I go back to the bill, that the National Government has failed New Zealand on so many fronts when it comes to law and order. The one good thing that I can say the Government is doing is that alongside us it is opposing this bill because it actually does not do what it was intended to do. Thank you.

Every time I rise it seems to be you in the Chair, Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard, so I am very, very lucky. But thank you very much for allowing me to take this call on this Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill. Although I was not present for the select committee process in respect of this bill, I have read the papers. The implications of it are important and, of course, they should be debated.

This Government supported the bill in its first reading to explore the proposal and the ramifications, but, unfortunately, it has fallen short. No one can deny—and we have heard from many members in this House—that the intent of this bill is admirable, in that it specifically seeks to make sentencing the consideration if an offence has occurred in front of a child. So that means it is viewed that the safety of children is paramount.

But the devil is in the detail, in that the definition of “in the presence of a minor” is too broad. If we look at that, it says in section 4(1), inserted by clause 4: “(a) in a place or building where a minor is present or could reasonably be expected to be present; or (b) in close proximity to a place or building where a minor is present or could reasonably be expected to be present”. As I said before, it is extremely broad, and, as the member previously alluded to, it would apply to roads, shopping malls, and many public places. So the challenge would be to apply it in practice. It baffles me how this would be done objectively.

From our perspective it is about striking a balance between being tough on crime and not over-legislating. Section 9 of the Sentencing Act allows judges to use their discretion as to the gravity of an offence. They are already doing this. Case law suggests that and it is being done.

But if we go back to the general policy statement, it states that “Criminal offending by adults often exposes minors to serious harm.”, an example of that offending is “the production of drugs, particularly methamphetamine. Production of these substances is regularly conducted in residential buildings, putting the lives and health of resident children at risk of poisoning and burns resulting from the highly dangerous and unstable chemicals used in such production. Minors are often innocent parties to criminal offending by adults, and deserve protection from adult offending that puts them at risk of harm.” Well, absolutely.

It is commonly reported by researchers and experts that children who witness this or who are raised in households where offending is prevalent are more likely to offend themselves. Exposing children to the manufacturing of P, to the toxic substances and solvents used to make it—well, I mean, you do not need to have a PhD to understand the ramifications of that.

This bill, however, is about sentencing, and it does not actually go towards reducing crime or the effects of it on children. Despite what the member opposite has just said, this Government is looking at reducing crime, and it is a fact that crime is at a 35-year low.

As the member Mr Bishop said, this Government is revolutionary in its thinking. One of the things that I particularly like is that we are breaking down the silos of Government and unashamedly enabling agencies such as Child, Youth and Family Services, education providers, and district health boards to talk to one another to identify those children at risk.

I also want to talk about one more initiative in respect of assisting children and bringing them out of the jaws of crime, and that is the Social Workers in Schools programme. That has expanded, obviously, to decile 1 to decile 3 schools—to put front-line experts face to face with those children at risk, to deal with very complex issues.

The other thing—and this is not directly involved with sentencing—is enabling the police to reduce crime by giving them practical measures. This bill does not go to enabling that, to reduce crime. Realistically, it goes to only one example, which is the manufacturing of methamphetamine. I really do not think you can legislate for this type of thing and then legislate for every other circumstance that could appear. So you need to allow judges to use their discretion and—my apologies, Mr Assistant Speaker. So judges need to use their discretion. We need to allow that to happen.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I always use my discretion.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I appreciate your discretion. For that reason, even though the intent of the bill is admirable, this Government simply cannot support it. Thank you.