Annual Review Debate — Justice

The question now is that the reports of committees relevant to justice—corrections, courts, Crown legal and drafting services, justice, police, and serious fraud—be noted. In calling members for this debate, can I just ask people to at some time make a reference to the period of expenditure under review or one of the select committee reports, just to make the speeches relevant to the year before last.

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my condolences to the people of Nepal, India, and Tibet, where the earthquake happened. I see that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Murray McCully, has just announced another $1 million of aid to Nepal, bringing it to $2 million of contributions from New Zealand. So that is what I wanted to start with.

Thanks, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to talk about the justice system in New Zealand. As you said, the reference should be to the last year. I will try to deal with this and try to comment on the things that we have achieved in the last year.

It has been a clear policy of National to have better public services—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Sorry, one thing that the member has to do at the beginning of his speech—I let him go on because he was making comments about Nepal—is move that the report be noted.

I move that the reports be noted. As I was saying, National has concentrated on delivering better public services in the past few years. We have built up a strong economy and safer communities, and we are proud of that. That is the reason why we are in Government. Everyone wants to have a place of work that is safe, and they also want to reside where there is no crime. People are feeling safe under the National-led Government. When I go out and talk to people, they really appreciate what we have done. They are very comfortable with the economic conditions, plus they feel safe at their workplaces as well as in their homes.

The issue relating to the needs of victims and their families has been in the forefront of the mind. Labour promised on a number of occasions that a victim compensation scheme would be delivered, but nothing happened. I would like to bring to the notice of this Committee and the people of New Zealand that National has delivered that. We gave support to more than 6,000 victims from the offender levy. Another thing that I would like to share with this Committee is that we have passed a law to improve the coordination and delivery of victim support services, where, by giving their victim impact statement, victims can express how the criminal action has or had affected their families and their future.

The third thing that I would like to bring to the notice of the Committee is protection for victims by reducing the likelihood of offenders of serious violent and sexual offences coming into contact with them. Legislation bringing in tougher penalties for those who breach protection orders and increasing the term from 2 years to 3 years in jail was passed last year. We have plans to reduce reoffending and modernise our justice system.

National has adopted a number of initiatives to move communities away from the crimes. Audiovisual links are one of the examples where courts and prisons are connected. These give an opportunity for the offenders to appear in court through these links—another example of modernising the justice system.

I would like to acknowledge the Minister of Justice, the Hon Amy Adams, the Minister of Police, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, and the Minister of Corrections, the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, for their work and commitment to improve our law and order situation in New Zealand. Our better policing has helped the country to achieve the lowest crime rate since 1978. Also, our approach to addressing the issues involving family violence is well taken care of. This approach has helped—

It is my pleasure to rise to speak to elements of the appropriations that relate to the justice sector. I want to start though by just making a general statement about the Government’s aspirations generally when it comes to the appropriations and its Budgets generally. We have heard repeatedly from this Government that its goal is to reach surplus in the upcoming Budget. We have heard it repeatedly. Only recently has the goal of reaching surplus been removed. I do not think it is fair, though, for the Government—having said that that was its priority, having said that that was its promise—to now claim that it was an artificial target and to back away from it altogether. The public place their trust in the Governments they elect. Governments do not get to walk away from promises that they make in such loose terms, simply because it is a target that they could not reach. They must take responsibility for when they fail, as often as they take responsibility when they succeed.

In that regard I want to speak to some of the massive failings that we have seen in the justice system. Clearly, in the past few Budgets the appropriations for the police have been blatantly inadequate. I know that our police spokesperson will speak to this, but you cannot run a well-functioning justice system with early intervention and prevention as a priority, and at the same time cut $40 million from the police budget. We are seeing stations close. We are seeing police who are no longer able to employ the same level of support staff. We are seeing police no longer attending callouts. Mr Bakshi is listening to this because he knows that members from his community have been raising this with Labour frequently. I know they will have been raising it with him.

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: That’s not true.

It is not true—so the communities are safer, are you saying, Mr Bakshi?

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: Yes, they are. They are much safer.

Well, I will send some of those individuals back to see you, if you are making that claim. That could not be further from the truth. Crime reporting is dependent on people raising with the police when they have been the victim of a crime. If the police do not attend it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Minister said, when I raised it in the select committee, that it was a very 1990s view. It is not a 1990s view; it is a reality today. At the same time, it is an indictment. This Government’s main target when it comes to justice is to reduce reoffending. What about reducing offending? What about reducing the incarceration rate in this country? Because as much as that Government claims that crime is coming down, incarceration rates certainly are not. In fact, the Government is in the middle of opening its mega private prison at Wiri. You can bet your bottom dollar that we are contracted to keep that place full. Who benefits from that? Nobody but a foreign company under the banner of Serco. That is an indictment on this country, as is our access to justice issues generally. Big cases like, for instance, the Teina Pora case, which the Minister of Justice claimed demonstrated that our justice system works, are in fact the exact opposite. Real justice is timely justice, and the delay in that case was not timely justice.

What we should be considering as a Parliament is having an independent criminal case review commission and it is something that we as the Labour Party will continue to champion, as we will continue to champion the issue that was raised in the select committee the last time we had the ability to review the Ministry of Justice, and that was legal aid thresholds. It is a bureaucratic roundabout, when 10,000 people are granted legal aid write-offs because they cannot afford to repay their legal aid debt. That is an indication to the Minister that something must change, and that is what we are pushing for.

I want to finish with a final plea. Protection orders in this country should be free. They are not. A woman who is in a violent relationship, who may have equity in a home that the perpetrator of that violence shares the equity in, cannot access a free protection order. That is wrong. I call on the Minister, in her address to this Committee, to acknowledge that issue and to acknowledge that she is going to do something about it. If we can afford nothing else in this country, we should be able to afford protection for victims of family and domestic violence.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a call in this section of the Appropriation (2013/14 Confirmation and Validation) Bill debate, looking at the broad issue of justice. In one sense that really does indicate where I want to start. Since I have been the Minister of Justice one thing that has become incredibly clear is that you cannot look at issues like justice through the lens of individual portfolios. What my colleagues and I have been very focused on is the need to ensure that when we think about justice and justice issues they do not stop just with justice, police, and corrections, but really do extend right across the social services. The issues that you see in the justice sector, of crime and victimisation and the terrible harm that they cause, are really manifestations, more often than not, of much wider and deeper social issues that are addressed primarily through interventions in health, education, and welfare. Along with my colleagues we are working very much in a joined-up way to address those issues.

What you have seen from this National-led Government is a considerable focus on having fewer victims in our system. When I am looking at policy issues and the spending on our appropriations, the touchstone for me is always whether this will create fewer victims. Will this reduce the harm that is suffered in our society? What we know is that over recent years—and I take no personal credit for it; I have recently come into the portfolio—the success has not only been in bringing down the overall crime rate, which as I mentioned this afternoon is at its lowest since 1978. There have been significant drops in the youth crime rate—a 38 percent drop since 2001—and drops in the violent offending rate and the reoffending rate. Those last two I would like to see more movement in, but it is certainly very pleasing that those rates have dropped.

One of the areas where I think we have to recognise that there is not enough movement by any stretch is family violence. The speaker who resumed her seat just before me, Jacinda Ardern, certainly addressed this in the last part of her comments. Family violence is an absolute scourge on our society. It is an appalling statistic and an appalling state, and the prevalence of it is a national shame. When I speak on this topic I never fail to let the audience know that every 6 minutes we have a notification to the police of family violence. Those are just the issues that are being reported. We have taken a number of steps already as a Government, and there are more to come, to try to address this issue. But it is not simply an issue that you can fix by regulation or spending money in the right way. It really does require a quite different approach from society. We have to change the level of tolerance or acceptance or expectation that I think exists in society.

Some of the things that I did want to highlight are the efforts that we have put into police safety orders, so that safety orders can be put in place on the spot. We have increased the penalties already for the breach of protection orders, but I do acknowledge there is more work to do in the space of protection orders. I think that is a system that we can look for better outcomes from, and shortly I will be launching a document looking at the review of the Domestic Violence Act, so that we can engage in that. We have put in place victim safety orders against violent offenders. We have tightened the sentencing, parole, and bail laws for those who offend against the most vulnerable in our system. Just recently, of course, we passed the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill, to make sure that those who offend against the most vulnerable in our society, children, and those who seek to exploit them online, receive much more significant punitive sentences than would otherwise have been the case. This House will soon continue its consideration of the Harmful Digital Communications Bill to again try to protect children and young people particularly, but actually all of our communities, from harmful digital communications.

I come back to domestic violence specifically. There are two other initiatives in terms of the appropriations that I did want particularly to highlight because I think they are incredibly successful. The first of those is moving from the pilot programme for the National Home Safety Service to a nationwide programme. This has been one of the most successful pilots I have ever seen certainly in my time in politics, but actually more widely than that. Before the pilot programme, 85 percent of, I will say women, but it is victims—sometimes it is men—in this category reported having to move home to feel safe from their partner. After the pilot, none of them had had to move. So before the pilot 85 percent had had to be moved out of their homes to be safe, to none after the pilot. Before the pilot, 73 percent of those with children had had their children hurt by the offender. After the pilot, no children had been hurt. Before the pilot, 40 percent of victims reported having suffered serious injuries from their offender, and after the pilot, again, there were no reports of any serious injuries. We accept that pilots are not guarantees of future success, but those early indications are tremendously encouraging and so we are very excited to roll that out nationwide.

This Government has built a brand new prison in South Auckland, spending $350 million of public money, when there was no need for a prison. We had 1,861 spare beds in our prison system, as at 31 October 2014, and that includes those that were made available as emergency accommodation. That $350 million could have been used to fund or upgrade schools or hospitals. But now this Government’s priority is towards building a brand new prison that is not required—not educating Kiwi kids or providing better health-care services. This is not even close to common sense.

The South Auckland prison was built with a view to be handed over later to a corporate to run, so that the corporate—principally, Serco, which is known to carry out shonky financial deals in the UK—could improve its bottom line. Prisons for profits: this, in spite of the fact that the rehabilitative programmes provided by that company are in no way comparable with the ones provided by the public prison service. The public do not get any value for money. The staff do not get the benefits. The prisoners do not get the benefits. The only one to see any benefit is the company called Serco.

Staff and prison safety: the Minister of Corrections admitted that private companies are not required to maintain the prisoner to staff ratio that is required in public prisons. This has had a detrimental effect on the safety of both staff and prisoners, as evidenced at Mt Eden prison. There have been some serious assaults on staff at the Serco-run Mt Eden Corrections Facility, and the Minister is aware of those. The number of prisoner assaults on staff and on other prisoners is relatively high in that prison, and the reason for that is that there are fewer staff to manage violent incidents in that prison—that is, when the prisoners are unlocked, there are fewer staff to manage those units, which results in prisoners getting violent and staff getting hurt. This has had a demoralising effect on staff, and there has been a high staff turnover in that prison. New Zealanders do not feel safe working in privately run prisons.

The next thing this Government does is close down units in publicly run prisons in order to fill the privately run prisons, because that is what the contract says. We see no wisdom in this. In fact, it is pure folly. This is the only way that the Government can justify the building of a new prison—shut the ones that we already have and move the prisoners into the new one at Wiri. It might seem like sense to this Government, but to New Zealanders, it makes no sense at all. This move is likely to render around 260 staff jobless—this, from a Government that prides itself on creating jobs. It makes no sense at all. Our thoughts are with those staff and their families who will be affected by this new prison, and with the communities that face an uncertain future. Thank you.

Reading the reports of the Ministry of Justice, one could be forgiven for thinking all was well. Certainly, the ministry has not been idle. Nor has the Minister of Justice over the previous financial year. There has been legislative change. There have been new programmes implemented—a lot of change, a lot of restructuring. What is not so apparent—and one has to dig a little deeper to discover—is that, actually, we have a very serious problem in New Zealand emerging in terms of people’s access to the justice sector and particularly to the courts.

Largely, one of the major barriers to access to justice is a financial barrier. That is becoming a very serious problem. The former Chief High Court Judge, Justice Helen Winkelmann, commented on this last year in the Ethel Benjamin Address, when she talked about the justice gap that is emerging and indeed widening in New Zealand. She pointed to one of the primary symptoms of that, which is a dramatic increase in the number of people self-representing to the courts—so-called self-litigants. People are endeavouring to navigate their way through the court system unaided by professional legal assistance. The ministry has only recently started to record the numbers of people self-litigating, but it is evident anecdotally and from informed members of the judiciary and of the legal profession that the numbers are increasing dramatically. In the Wellington High Court last year some 20 percent of active appeals involved self-represented litigants. In the Auckland High Court the figure was around 30 percent. Something like 50 percent of applications for leave to appeal in civil cases in the Supreme Court last year were from people intending to endeavour to represent themselves. That is a symptom of something seriously wrong in our justice system.

We live in a liberal, democratic country. The people of this country expect to have access to the courts to resolve their differences, to defend their rights, or to assert their rights—whatever it might be. We are fast reaching a position where New Zealanders will be able to rely on one thing, and that is that they can get the best justice that they can afford. That is not a situation we want. The cost of a simple, straightforward 1-day hearing in the High Court is approaching $7,000 simply for filing fees, scheduling, the cost of the hearing, and the sealing of the judgment. It is almost $7,000 before anybody gets anywhere near a lawyer. That is beyond the ability of most people to pay. Certainly the registrars can choose to waive, and on occasion they do, but nevertheless the barriers are mounting. The financial barriers are becoming serious.

We have a legal aid funding system. Of course we do. As a member has previously commented, the financial threshold for eligibility is set extraordinarily low—ridiculously low, in fact. For a single person, it is a gross annual income of $22,000 or less before one can apply for legal aid. That is significantly below the minimum wage for a person working full time. For an applicant with a partner or one child, it is $35,000. Again, that is a very low income by our current standards. Justice Winkelmann has commented on that and pointed out that that is simply inadequate to allow legal practitioners to do any useful work for their clients. In the event that a person is successful in getting legal aid, they may be obliged to repay that money. If they are so obliged, they have 6 months to pay it back or 8 percent interest is applied to that money, getting people further into a financial hole if they have not had the money to come up with that.

The dean of law at the University of Canterbury, Dr Chris Gallavin, wrote recently: “The deficit between eligibility for Legal Aid and the reality of paying for legal presentation oneself is large and likely places a significant number of ‘middle class’ in an intolerable situation.” It has been noted that a large number of lawyers and legal firms are simply withdrawing from legal aid, because with the best will in the world they simply cannot afford to devote hours to that work given the cost, the legal obligations placed on them, and the associated cost of running a legal practice. They simply cannot afford to participate in legal aid work to the extent that they might wish to and that, indeed, we require. Some of the slack, as we know, has been taken up—

It was refreshing to hear Minister Adams speaking earlier about the emphasis that the Government is placing on domestic violence. The Labour Party agrees entirely with the importance of this issue. Our law and order caucus committee has written to the Minister asking that we participate in an apolitical way to address this issue. We look forward to the Minister taking us up on the offer to sit down and work out solutions around this issue.

It is not just domestic violence that is an issue. Sexual violence is an issue, and only 5 percent of crimes are recorded. We need to do more to make sure that people have the strength and the courage to speak out. We need to make sure that we create the conditions where people feel that when they do speak out they will be heard and listened to and their issues will be dealt with. We need to make sure that people will speak out, regardless of whether they are survivors of sexual violence, whether they are observers of sexual violence, or whether, in fact, they are perpetrators of sexual violence. Would it not be great if we could create the conditions where perpetrators spoke out about their problem before they actually created any victims? To take a line from the Madden Brothers’ song, we all need to be “done with being a silent many”. We all need to learn to speak out and not put up with sexual violence in any way, shape, or form.

I would just like to touch on a number of issues around the Department of Corrections, and, if I have time, I will get on to some police issues. Issue No. 1 around the Department of Corrections was the absconding of Phillip John Smith from his prison cell, basically from a Release to Work programme, over to South America. He was able, from the comfort of his prison cell, to apply for a passport under an alias and then abscond, go through Auckland Airport, get on a plane, and have a bit of a jaunt over to South America.

The issue there was that the department and the New Zealand Customs Service did not actually share information around the fact that many people in prisons go under aliases, and so he was able to use an alias that he had been known under at another time to get his passport and then to abscond. It is about Government agencies, ministries, and departments working together and sharing information. I hope that the Minister of Corrections, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, has fixed that issue up.

Then we also have the issue around New Zealand prisoners in Australian prisons who are paroled and then deported back here. The issue raised its head earlier this year when a woman who participated in a murder in Australia some years ago was deported back to Kaikohe.

At the time, when I was approached by media, I said: “Look, it’s obviously a loophole that has been found and needs to be addressed, but my concern isn’t so much for this woman, who I don’t think poses a problem to the Kaikohe community. But what happens when a sexual offender is released on parole in an Australian prison and he’s sent back here and we aren’t able to track or trace him?”. What if we do not know whether that person is living next to a school, or an early childhood centre, or a kōhanga reo, or a park where children may be playing? He could be a sports coach or a Scoutmaster. The Government needs to make sure that we treat those paroled prisoners from Australia as if they were paroled from New Zealand prisons.

Speaking of prisons, there have been three recent partial closures of prisons—at Rimutaka, at Waikeria, and at Rangipō. The member from New Zealand First Mahesh Bindra is correct in saying that 260 jobs have been lost. I know that the Government will say that those corrections officers may be able to go to the new prison at Wiri. Again, it will be really difficult, I think, to sell your house in Tūrangi for probably $120,000 or $130,000 and shift up to Auckland, where the average house price is $750,000. I think if you are a 55-year-old corrections officer you would not really want to remortgage to that extent. So it makes it really difficult. But the reality is that the prison at Wiri is a private prison. It cost $900 million to build. The member from New Zealand First gave a different figure—I was told it was $900 million. It was built at the height of the recession. Serco, the company that is running the prison, has had the Government—

It is an honour to stand and take a call in this annual review debate. I want to take a call in the area of corrections. As the Minister of Corrections I think it is appropriate to talk about a department that has $1.2 billion worth of services that are provided, firstly, to protect the public. It is important that the Department of Corrections protects and secures the public from certain criminal elements that have broken the law.

Secondly, prisons should be a place of rehabilitation so that when prisoners return to civil society they are able to reintegrate and go back to become contributors to our wonderful society that we have here in New Zealand. Of course, it has a certain punitive element whereby prisoners are denied their freedoms and liberties. On any given day there are over 8,700 prisoners and we have over 30,000 offenders in the community who may be subject to release conditions, probation, and other such conditions upon release from our prisons.

In 2011 this Government, the National Government, committed to a Better Public Services target of reducing reoffending by 25 percent by the year 2017. Those targets are important, as I said last night when I spoke about the health portfolio, because it is about accountability, it is about outcomes, and it is about the prudent and efficient use of taxpayers’ funds. So we set that target in order for us to better rehabilitate people and in order for us to get to a point in our society where we have a prison system that we can be proud of and that is one of the best prison systems in the world. So how do we do that? Well, I will talk about three things: firstly, I will talk about working prisons; secondly, I will talk about the role of education, training, and opportunities that are available to inmates; and, thirdly, I will talk about alcohol and drug treatments for prisoners that are available in order for them to go back into society and make a meaningful contribution to our society.

Firstly, on working prisons, we know that the best way out of poverty, the best way out of welfare, and the best way to contribute to your family and to look after your families and your communities is to be in work. We know that outside the wire—outside of prison—and we also know that for people who are in prison. We are working towards a target in 2017 where every prison in New Zealand will be a working prison, where each prisoner will have the opportunity to have a work routine of 40 hours per week. In 2014, the financial year that is under review here in the Committee today, three working prisons were delivered, with about 650 prisoners subject to or having full working rights within those prisons. We have four more on track this year in Northland, in the Hawke’s Bay, at Spring Hill Corrections Facility, and in Otago. In 2013-14 we had 806 prisoners who participated in the Release to Work programme because we know that prisoners can contribute to society when they are work-ready, when they have opportunities to work on the outside, and when they are educated and trained.

Secondly, it is about education because we know that education unlocks opportunities where, again, those who are released from prison are better able to contribute to society. One of the sad facts that is present within the prison system is that two-thirds of prisoners are basically illiterate. They are illiterate. So we have put a great amount of resources into numeracy and literacy programmes inside prisons, where last year there was a 206 percent increase in the number of level 2 and level 3 National Certificate of Educational Achievement qualifications that were available to our prisoners—a 206 percent increase. That is important because without basic literacy, we know that they are not able to contribute.

Finally, we come to alcohol and drug treatments. We know that the programmes we have run have made a huge difference to our prison system. Thank you.

It is my pleasure to follow my colleague Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga and to talk on the justice group of portfolios. I want to commence by acknowledging the member for Te Tai Tokerau, Kelvin Davis, and in his intervention, his advocacy for victims—and for perpetrators, actually—of adult sexual assault. In his intervention, he referred to a statistic that is quite alarming—the fact that only 5 percent of victims speak up about that.

I was in the Counties Manukau area last week visiting not only the police station but also the Manukau multi-agency centre. It is a very good area and a very good centre, which is the joint collaboration between New Zealand Police, the Counties Manukau District Health Board, and Child, Youth and Family. I was extremely impressed with the approach to family violence and to child and adult sexual abuse cases that are reported in that district. It is a concerningly high number, but I think the model they have and the multi-agency approach that they take to that very important issue is an excellent initiative, and I applaud everybody who is working in that very challenging area.

Of course, we have recently had both the Independent Police Conduct Authority report and the findings of Operation Clover into the Roast Busters case, and I know that police are very committed to joining the dots that failed to be joined in respect of that case. I am pleased—and relieved, actually—that the authority’s findings were that this was not a systemic issue and that police are working extremely well on improving victim empathy and their commitment to the resolution of those complaints.

It is a very interesting environment in which police have been operating. Naturally, they are straitened times. But through the Policing Excellence programme that they have initiated, their challenging targets have not only been achieved but also been considerably exceeded. In the 2013-14 year a 13 percent reduction in recorded crime and a 19 percent reduction in non-traffic prosecutions was the goal. They exceeded that by a considerable margin, I have to say: a 20.1 percent reduction in recorded crime and a 41.3 percent reduction in non-traffic prosecutions. I think that reflects very much a professional police organisation that is regarded extremely highly, not only in New Zealand but also around the world. As a consequence of those efforts, that equates to 90,000 fewer crimes being committed in that period. That means tens of thousands fewer victims, and I think that is what we would all like to see.

They have done that by very, very smart uses of technology. I think the deployment of smartphones and tablets in order to increase the mobility and the technical capability of New Zealand Police has had a significant impact on the reduction of crime and also on the visibility of our police. You know, there has been a lot of talk about bricks and mortar—and I think that is important—but, actually, what people want is to see their police on the street, on the beat, and being very visible; not just investigating but preventing crime from happening in the first place.

💬 Phil Twyford: How about resolving burglaries?

Yes, burglaries have gone up, that is right. The burglary rate has gone down but the resolution rate has too, and that is something that I have spoken about at length with the Commissioner of Police and his leadership team. I think that is an area of homework, but one cannot deny—one cannot deny—the statistics on the lowest reported crime rate in 30 years, and I think we need to congratulate New Zealand Police for its excellent efforts in that.

I want to come back to that technology. Mr Davis: I must say that although I will give him a bouquet, I will give him a brickbat as well for his irrational release, in January, on the upgrade of the iPhones and iPads, which was, actually, part of a very generous contractual arrangement with Vodafone to improve the ubiquity and the technical capability of New Zealand Police. In December I opened the Vodafone Mobility Innovation Lab and Experience Centre in Newtown, in south Wellington, where a number of organisations are working on tools to enable police to be more mobile and more visible and more efficient with the resources that they deploy. Those efficiencies are real. About 900,000 extra hours of policing time have been available to them, and that dividend has been paid right back to the New Zealand public, because we have maintained the number of sworn officers, reduced the number of crimes, and increased police presence on the street, and I think that is a very good outcome.

Well, these opportunities for debate are incredibly valuable. They are valuable to the Opposition because they give it the opportunity to practise its unsubstantiated wild accusations and they give us on this side of the Chamber a very valuable opportunity to reflect objectively on the advancements and the achievements that we have been able to make over a period of time. So it is great for me to be able to objectively reflect, and objectively reflect on the fact that we have now the lowest crime in New Zealand since 1978. We have been able to achieve this while staying tough on criminals, because that is something that we have always wanted to do, and something that our public want us to be is tough on the perpetrators of crime. But, more important, we have been continuing to work hard on putting the victims of crime at the centre of our policies, at the centre of our thinking, and ensuring that victims of crime are foremost in our mind when we are doing things. It is really, really important that we do this, and so we have been passing legislation to reflect this focus on victims.

We have been working on the parole amendment legislation. The parole amendment legislation has served to reduce the number of unnecessary parole hearings that an offender has to have when they have little prospect of release. I know that some people will confuse this with being tough on the criminals, but, of course, with the parole hearing what often has to happen is that victims have to be notified and they have to relive the process all over again. So by passing this parole amendment legislation we are indeed focusing on victims.

We have been able to work on the objectionable publications and indecency legislation to increase the maximum penalties for child sexual abuse online. This is something that has been pervading society, not just in New Zealand but right around the world, for far too long, and so this Government has been taking steps to ensure that children not just here but overseas are offered greater protection through this legislation by ensuring that we are getting tougher on people who are either downloading it or sourcing it—it is not just about storing in on your computer any more, but accessing it alone. By our getting tougher on those people we are again supporting victims of this kind of behaviour.

We are working on the Harmful Digital Communications Bill to tackle cyber-bullying. Again, it is showing that this is a Government that is responding to the technological challenges of our time. It is a Government that is recognising that there are new ways that people are finding to victimise others and we are responding to it through things like the Harmful Digital Communications Bill, and we hope to see some improvement in the way that that is affecting particularly young people in New Zealand, but not just them, through social media and other methods as well. We are progressing the Coroners Amendment Bill, again, to improve the timeliness and the efficiency of the coronial system to better support families. This is a Government that is caring about families. This is a Government that is focusing on victims and we have been working on this legislative programme that reflects that and is ensuring that New Zealand will be a better place.

We are working on policies too that will also improve the outlook for people within this country. We have just heard from the Minister of Police about IT upgrades that have been occurring throughout the police in terms of the type of technology that they have available to them. That has meant extra hours that they can now spend on front-line police services, which is what we want them to be doing, not necessarily sitting back at the station filling in forms. Through these technological advances we have been able to create effectively 300 fulltime-equivalent extra policing hours. It is like employing 300 extra people just by being smarter, just by being innovative, and just by doing the right things and responding to what our country needs. We have been able to put 600 extra police on the front line. Our offending rates are also decreasing. I heard a previous speaker from the other side ask earlier what we were doing about offending rates and why we were concerned only about reoffending.

Reports noted.

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