Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

First of all, I’d like to thank the Justice Committee, who reviewed this bill. It was an interesting process. There was good debate. I think both sides of the argument could reflect and understand the others, and I appreciate that understanding across the select committee. But, unfortunately, neither side could have a majority. It was a four on four situation, and that is why we are here today, debating it and having a second reading. So there was no outright opposition; nor was there a majority of support.

I’d like to reflect on the select committee report, to start with, and discuss—so I’m going to preface this by talking about section 272 of the Crimes Act—I’m just going to refer to that as “272”; section 55 of the Arms Act, as “section 55”; section 202 of the Crimes Act, and I’m going to say “202” only; and section 51 of the Arms Act, I’m just going to say “section 51”.

There are a number of reasons that half of the committee recommended this bill not proceed, and I’d like to address a number of those points. The difference between a lot of these sections is quite subtle. For example, section 272, which is the section that this bill amends, does not necessarily require possession, whereas section 55 and section 202 do require possession of explosives to kick in.

Section 55, along with 272, also needs intent, but in section 202 there is not necessarily intent needed for the crime to take place. Instead of intent, the explosive must be found in a public place. So the public place factor outweighs, if you like, or complements or overrides the intent that other sections must have. So 272 requires intent but not possession, and I’m going to give an example of where this section 272 as amended might have applied.

In Australia, just this week, we had an example of explosives potentially being used to hurt people in Brisbane. So there’s been a guy charged with four counts: manufacturing an explosive without authority or without a lawful purpose or with intent to commit a crime. I’d like to reflect on the change in technology that enables people to commit crime without the possession of the explosive, without the possession even in their own home. We can operate so many more things remotely through technology, through the internet, so I’d like the House to consider the situation where 272 as amended applies.

So, as I say, no possession is required. The operator is remote. He or she is sitting in his office and is enabling an explosive that is held in another place. Now, there must be intent for that crime to occur under 272, so there must be evidence to prove intent. All I’m saying here is that where that situation occurs, where one can prove that there is intent to commit a crime using explosives but remotely, at the moment the maximum penalty is two years. It is only two years.

Now, that brings me on to a Law Commission report which was mentioned in the select committee, published in 2013. I’ll quote from that report. It’s study paper 21, Maximum Penalties for Criminal Offences. So a review of a number of offences took place but was not completed, but in any case the Law Commission chose to publish this report. It says, “The offence under s 272”—which is what we’re talking about here today—“of the Crimes Act of possessing or making an explosive device with intent to commit a crime carries a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment, notwithstanding the fact that in the worst class of case the person committing the offence will possess an explosive, again with the intent of committing mass murder or an offence causing catastrophic economic consequences, although not having reached the stage of an attempt.” So the button wasn’t pulled, the trigger wasn’t pulled. All right?

So this is all about the police or the investigators discovering, through technology probably, that this is probably or about to occur. We can talk about—we know that there are terrorist activities going on regularly and as close as in Brisbane and Sydney and in the Canadian Parliament. We don’t want them to occur. We don’t want to have to wait for them to occur before we arrest the guy or girl. We want to know and understand, and get the intent and prosecute.

So, to go back to the report: “We placed this offence in Category G, alongside offences that predominantly have current maximum penalties of seven to 10 years’ imprisonment.”—so seven to 10 years. “We note in passing that this puts it alongside the almost identical offence in s 55 of the Arms Act of possessing a firearm or explosive device with intent to commit an offence punishable by imprisonment for three years or more.”—so a minimum of three and a maximum of five for that section 55.

I’ll try and explain—well, I will explain—the difference between sections 55 and 272. Basically, the difference is the possession. So section 55, “[The offender] commits an offence and is liable on conviction … [da, da, da for] 5 years who has with him any firearm”. So there’s a possession that must take place for section 55 to kick in and there also must be intent to commit an offence—so only an intent, and this was part of the argument for rejecting my bill. The argument was that it was only intent.

Well, I say intent is as important and sits alongside the fact that one pulls the trigger. That’s the only difference. Someone pulls the trigger, or not. Someone gets an opportunity to pull the trigger, or not. So section 55 also only required intent and, as I say, carries a prison term of three years or more, up to five years. So the only difference is possession. I say possession is really not relevant. It doesn’t matter if one is in physical possession of the explosive, to come under section 55. I say possession is really a minor factor, because we know that one can control the device without being in possession. The device can be sitting in a car halfway across the planet but can be controlled by a person that is not in a public place and is nowhere near the bomb, near the explosive, and creates as much of a problem as if that person was in possession. So that’s the difference between sections 55 and 272, and I say that the punishment should be the same.

Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. This is my third term in Parliament, and I’ve sat through a number of these members’ days. You can tell the bills that are probably going to make it, because the member stands up and he or she speaks with conviction, with passion. They go hard, they’ve done their research, they know what they want to say, they bring people into the gallery who are there supporting them because this is a passion of theirs. This is why they got into Parliament: to change the law, to change people’s lives. This is not one of those bills, and that was not one of those speeches.

I hold these things called “street corner meetings”. I’ve been doing them for about six years now, and every Sunday that I can, I go along and I speak to the people of Napier and ask them about the issues. Law and order is a big issue—law and order is a big issue—but I can tell you with my hand on my heart that no one has ever said to me, in a street corner meeting, or in my role as Opposition spokesman for police, or in my role as a Minister of Police, “Mr Nash, if you change the law from providing explosives to commit a crime from two years to five years, I’m going to vote for you.” And I’ll take it even further: no one has ever said to me, “I’m concerned about Kiwis making bombs to kill people, or I’m concerned about Kiwis providing explosives to terrorists.” It has never once come up.

Now, I’m not saying that the street corner meetings are a fair or true representation of what happens around New Zealand. I’m not saying that, in the Manawatū or Wairarapa or Masterton or Dannevirke, this isn’t a really big issue, because it might be. It might be. And maybe Mr Scott has been approached by a group of concerned citizens who have said, “You’ve got to change the law here because we are really concerned that there’s a group in Dannevirke who are making explosives.” But I doubt it.

When I said that this is my third term here and that I’ve sat through a number of these members’ days and have spoken to them, I also know what happens is that members like Mr Scott put a bill in the ballot because they’ve been told, “You need to fill a spot. You need to fill a spot, and you’ll take this one.” So Mr Scott said, “OK, I’ll put it in there, and the odds of it being pulled out are highly remote.” When my bill got pulled out of the ballot, it was fantastic because it was about an issue that was really important for the people of Napier, and we lost by one vote. But I know that when Mr Scott’s bill got pulled out, he went, “Oh my God! What’s happened here?” I remember because this was pulled out in the last term. This came to the select committee that I sat on, and the member sat in front of the select committee and said, “Well, this is what I want to do.” and we looked at him and said, “Are you really going to waste the select committee’s time with this?” And he said, “It got pulled out of the ballot.” So, as a select committee, we talked about how we were going to go through this.

I think, if I’m right—and the member may correct me if I’m wrong, and please take a point of order if I am, because I’m happy to be corrected here—there’s been about two people tried under this clause in the last 50 years.

💬 Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Three people.

Three people, and is it 50 or 100 years? Well, anyway, this is not something that the police are spending an inordinate amount of time on, rounding up people and putting them in front of the judiciary so they can go to jail. In terms of the police work plan, in terms of the justice work plan, this is not high on it. I’m sorry, but this is just not high on it. Mr Scott, there are important law and order issues. There really are things that we want the police to concentrate on. There are things that really concern the people of New Zealand, about our law and order system in our communities, which we are going hard on, and that I know members from both sides of the House will have been petitioned on by constituents—things like burglary, things like sexual assault, things like robbery, things like car conversion, even homicide. These are serious law and order issues, and the lack of police to deal with them—the fact that less than 10 percent of burglaries, crimes against property, are being solved. These are big issues—

💬 Darroch Ball: All under a National Government.

—and Mr Ball’s got it right. This is why we love coalition politics, because New Zealand First and Labour heard what the people of New Zealand were saying about law and order, and we have said that we are going to strive to put 1,800 officers on our streets over three years. It’s why Mr Bishop is being very, very quiet on law and order. He knows this is the right thing to do, and he knows his Government wouldn’t even come close to delivering this if they were there. Thank God they’re not. Thank God they’re not.

💬 Chris Bishop: How’s the 1,800 going?

So we don’t hear anything from Mr Bishop on this one. But I will also say that Mr Bishop hasn’t come to me, nor has Mr Scott come to me, as the Minister of Police, and said, “Hey, can we work together on this one? Can we work together?” There’s been no reaching across the House to say, “This is an issue that the people of Wainuiōmata have come to me and said they want Labour and National to work together on because it’s important.”, because it’s not. It’s not.

The other thing is that we have a problem at the moment: it’s the fact that our jails are full. They’re full of people who, possibly, shouldn’t be there, because they haven’t committed a crime of violence; they don’t pose any direct threat to our community or our societies. But they’re there, and we’re trying to deal with this at the moment. Any piece of legislation that comes before this House that I have a look at that says, “Increase the term of imprisonment”, I take a good hard look and say, “Why? What is the overriding business case to keep someone in jail for five years rather than two years?”—if, in fact, they are put in front of a judge for committing such a crime; if, in fact, they are.

In fact, what will happen is that the judiciary will look at this and go, “Hmm, I don’t think that this really fits with where we want to be.”

💬 Alastair Scott: Talk to the Law Commission.

Well, I’ve talked to the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Justice spoke to the select committee, and the Ministry of Justice said, “We don’t think this is a good idea.”—we don’t think this is a good idea. In fact, there are very few people who do believe this is a good idea. This is not the sort of bill that we want to be wasting a whole lot of time on, and what I urge Mr Scott to do—and I’ll be so bold as to give him some advice, and I don’t mean to sound arrogant about this, because I don’t mean to be in any way, shape, or form. His electorate sort of abuts the electorate that abuts mine. We’re provincial MPs. What I would ask him to do is actually go out and speak to his constituents. And that would be a drive, because he lives in Wellington, so he would have to drive over the Rimutakas. So he would have to be over there—he’d have to live there—but that’s beside the point.

What he would have to do is just have a talk to his constituents and be direct—just be really direct and call a public meeting, go to his constituents, put a message up on that big billboard and say, “I’m calling a public meeting on the issue of increasing penalties for providing explosives to commit a crime.” If he gets more than three people there—and they’ll be his electorate secretary, if he employs one—then I’ll eat my hat. The reason I say that is this is just not an issue that is important to the people of New Zealand. It’s just not an issue on the law and order spectrum, on the justice spectrum that’s front of mind—not even back of mind; it’s not even “in” mind.

Mr Scott, well done on getting the bill pulled out of the ballot. I think there was a little bit of analysis there, because you talked about a case that was in Brisbane. I didn’t see that in a google search, but maybe this is an issue in Brisbane. Maybe what we could do is take this bill, give it to the state Parliament in Queensland and say, “It hasn’t worked in New Zealand but maybe you need it here.” And do you know what the Queenslanders would say to him, “Go away. Go away. Have a beer and go away.”

This is just not an issue that is important to people, but good on you for getting it to the select committee. The fact is that the Government members on the select committee saw sense and actually said themselves, “We are not going to clog up our legislative agenda with something that’s not important. We’re not going to fill our prisons.” Well, we’re not going to fill our prisons, because no one’s been tried under this. No one’s in front of the judiciary. It’s like arguing about an issue that simply doesn’t exist. In fact, the issue does exist because Mr Scott brought it up. So it goes along like this: if this is the radar, it’s way below the radar, it’s up, and it will drop below the radar again.

I just hope that Mr Scott comes up with something meaningful, because I would hate to think that his legacy is being the MP that brought the bill before the House that wanted to increase penalties for providing explosives to commit a crime. Go and talk to the constituents about law and order. Go and talk to them about what is important, what the police should spend their time doing, who we need in our jails, what we need to do there, what the judiciary should be counting on. I’m not going to be support this bill, if that’s not obvious already. I can’t support his bill, because I just think it’s a nothing; it’s a waste of time. We don’t need it, it doesn’t address a substantive issue, and there are 10 minutes of my life that I’m never going to get back. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to talk to the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill at its second reading. I think that the member Stuart Nash, who just resumed his seat, probably should stick to pumping iron in the gym and huffing and puffing his way through it. He’s clearly an expert on what is irrelevant to his constituents. If he ever does speak to them, for example, he might want to ask them why the Coroners (Access to Body of Dead Person) Amendment Bill, a four-liner spun into a legislative filibuster in this House—so much of Labour’s legislation, residential tenancies legislation and others, are all about padding out a legislative time frame and timetable which Labour has been woefully inadequate at being able to fill. So it’s very rich coming from that member, who, if he speaks to his constituents about pumping iron might get somewhere, but otherwise would appear to be quite out of touch with what people really want.

Increasing prison statistics is about keeping people in jail if they do bad things. Consistency is what this bill, I think, has at its heart and as its strength. For the member who resumed his seat to assume that we will not have a case like the Boston Marathon, where, people may recall, a young man with a backpack put it down. It was an explosive. It claimed lives. We have seen explosives in London, which have caused mayhem. That member may be completely out of touch with what may be coming our way, but I think deterrence and the ability to ensure that this country has a very tidy and consistent penalty regime is important, and that’s why this is a very useful piece of work.

We have an amendment to the Crimes Act and the Arms Act. This bill aims, in its consistency, for a maximum penalty for providing explosives to commit an offence from a maximum term of two years’ imprisonment to up to five years—so, consistency. It’s a little bit what the psychoactive substances bill is trying to do, also. It is to make it as serious a penalty as marijuana. So getting the message across to the people who would do bad things like peddle bad drugs or use explosives in a public place that they will get the consistent penalties that the law and the judiciary will have the ability to hand down. So I think it’s very important.

I think it’s also very important to note that New Zealanders do need to feel safe in their homes and their communities and, as well as that, in public places. There are a number of major public events that I have attended, and they include the respectful ones. Laying wreaths for Anzac Day is one that is coming up. We do not want to be, as a nation, fearful of what people may think they can get away with because the Government is soft on crime, and this Government is. They want to not build prisons. They don’t want people to go into the prisons, so what does that mean? All penalties will be reduced down to six months or a year. Let the villains out on the street. Let them do their worst, and the New Zealanders—we will be bearing the brunt of that.

The Law Commission, for example—an august body with possibly even a lot more knowledge of the law than the member who resumed his seat—has recommended increasing the penalty and the maximum penalties for criminal offences. In their report, they compared section 272 with section 55 of the Arms Act, and considered that the two sections are almost identical. However, section 55 carries a maximum penalty of five years, and there is no possible justification, says the Law Commission, for that lack of consistency. So this is about tidying up something that needs to be tidied up.

New Zealand First’s position remains unclear. They weren’t on the Justice Committee. I’ll be interested to hear what they have to say on this. It would be useful if New Zealand First stuck to its core brand of being tough on crime and making sure that bad people were locked up and dealt to, so it will be very interesting to see whether they will add their weight to support this bill.

But I feel that this is a piece of legislation—while perhaps not the largest and most significant piece of legislation this House will deal with in this term, it is still an important piece. I commend the member for coming up with it, for the research, and for the work that he has put into it. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’d like to start by acknowledging the National member who is sponsoring this member’s bill, Mr Alastair Scott. I’d also like to acknowledge the intent behind the bill. The bill was very well-intentioned.

Labour supported the bill and voted for the bill’s first reading, to be referred to the select committee. I believe it was the Law and Order Committee and Mr Bakshi was the chairman of that select committee. I’d like to acknowledge Mr Bakshi, as well.

We heard submissions and had discussions at length. What I can confirm at this stage is we were convinced by the officials and we were convinced by the Law Commission reports, but we were not convinced by Mr Scott and his National colleagues. So Labour will not be supporting this bill, and this bill should not proceed. The simple reason is that probably Mr Scott has got his intention right but got the vehicle wrong, because section 272 is not the right vehicle. Section 272 is the preparatory offence, and I’ll come to that point later on.

For those who are interested in knowing the detailed analysis before such a kind of conclusion could be drawn, I would suggest that they have a good look at the brief report from the Justice Committee presented to the House in March 2018, the initial briefing dated 28 April 2017, and the departmental report presented to the Justice Committee in February 2018. Probably, I should run a caveat, because the following provisions that I’m more inclined to refer to are from the departmental report to show the seriousness and the gravity of the reasoning.

First of all, let’s look at the purpose of this bill. The purpose of this bill is to increase the penalty under section 272 of the Crimes Act from a maximum of two years’ imprisonment to a maximum of five years’ imprisonment. The stated aim is to increase the penalty for those who provide explosives to another with the intent that an offence be committed. I’ve got no problem with that, and I support the call that we should increase the penalty and should impose a harsher penalty in that regard.

Section 272 is a preparatory offence. It is merely about possessing or making an explosive with the necessary intent. It does not require another offence to ever be carried out with the explosive. Indeed, the intent that another offence be committed may never come to fruition, hence the relatively low penalty. So that’s the entire logic behind the relatively low penalty in terms of section 272. So the rationale behind the low penalty in section 272 is that it is a preparatory offence.

Section 272, if we have a good look at the Crimes Act, is drafted to deal with the situation where a person’s conduct has not necessarily reached the threshold necessary to create criminal liability for an attempt to commit an offence. An attempt requires an act of more than mere preparation and one which is immediately or approximately connected with the intended offence.

I heard what Mr Scott tried to do, which was to add more layers of his analysis to appreciate the reasons behind his member’s bill, and he specifically mentioned clause 202A of the Crimes Act and section 51 of the Arms Act. At the select committee hearing sessions, we did have some close looks at those sections, and, again, I would like to read out one paragraph which is very important for us to note to appreciate the reasoning from the departmental report.

Regarding section 202A of the Crimes Act, “The first limb of the offence in section 202A … requires both that the relevant offensive weapon (which includes explosives) be in a public place and that the person has no lawful authority or reasonable excuse for having it. Both those critical elements are missing from section 272. That means that a person could be liable for making or possessing an explosive under section 272 (with the necessary intent) in a secure, private place where there is no risk to the public and where the person has a reasonable excuse or lawful authority for making or possessing the explosive (for example the person manufactures or possesses explosives for a lawful purpose such as quarrying or mining operation).”

With regard to section 51 of the Arms Act, “Section 51 requires that both the explosive be in a public place (thereby increasing the potential for harm) and that no lawful purpose exists for having it. Therefore, the arguments for a higher penalty than in section 272 are the same in this context.”

So back to section 272, if I may oversimplify the scenarios—I could give two scenarios. One is from, probably, the National members’ point of view, which is that anyone who is not supporting this particular member’s bill could be seen as being soft on crime. The second scenario, again, if I may oversimplify, is that if Mr Scott’s reasoning and conclusion apply, then, for instance, a developer who has to use explosives for the purpose of development in a similar fashion as mining, quarrying, road works, or construction may be liable for and be subject to a term of imprisonment of five years. So this is the irony behind section 272, should Mr Scott’s reasoning and conclusion apply.

Again, the Hon Maggie Barry mentioned the Law Commission’s report, which was mentioned, again, in Mr Scott’s speech earlier. I’d like to draw to the attention of the House that in its 2013 study paper, Maximum Penalties for Criminal Offences, the Law Commission concluded that there is no justification for the difference in penalty in section 272 of the Crimes Act and in section 55 of the Arms Act, which has a current maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment. But that should be taking into consideration the nature of section 272, which is, again, a preparatory offence.

To conclude, Mr Scott’s got his intention right. His reasoning sounds good, and his bill does sound good, and I supported the call for imposing such kind of harsher imprisonment and penalties for whatever the crimes would be in that regard. But, should the bill proceed, that would create a kind of confusion and anomaly, because the entire rationale contradicts some basic principles of criminal law in this country and in other comparable overseas jurisdictions.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Well, I really would like to congratulate that member, Raymond Huo, for his very considered and generous appraisal of this very thin piece of legislation, which we are called upon to debate here this afternoon.

I will, actually, as I did in the first reading when I spoke on this piece of legislation, congratulate the member for the Wairarapa, Mr Alastair Scott, firstly, on his clear and absolute victory in the Wairarapa, where 13,000-plus voters said that they wanted him to represent them as their elected member. And why did they do that? Because Mr Scott lives, eats, and breathes in the very heart of the Wairarapa. There is no denying that this is a member of the House who’s thoroughly, absolutely connected to his electorate—so much so that he reads the pulse from here, frequently. He reads the pulse of the Wairarapa from Wellington frequently.

That is why he was driven, as a new MP, to come to this House, to spend so much time researching the issues which I know thousands of the people who voted for him brought to his electorate office. I know he’d spend many, many hours sitting there holding clinics, hearing from hundreds of his electorate people, hearing their concerns, putting them together, coming to the House, researching the law, and coming to grips with the deficiencies in the law as pertains to the penalties for providing explosive devices to commit crime.

Mr Scott put that research together, came up with an amendment, put the bill together, put it into the ballot, and, hallelujah, he was successful. I mean, some other less generous people would say that Mr Scott, on the instructions of his own party caucus colleagues and his Ministers, crafted this bill together very quickly, ably assisted by the Minister responsible, and threw it in in order to act as a blocker to try and stop Opposition members getting their bills drawn. But I consider those to be very disingenuous comments, not befitting the hard-working Mr Alastair Scott, who brought this bill.

Now, at the time that we debated this bill—and I spent more time debating it than the Hon Maggie Barry just spent defending it, which I think just clicked over four minutes. She blew six minutes out the window, sat down, and there you have it. But I think I actually spoke for the whole 10 minutes in supporting Mr Scott and saying, on behalf of New Zealand, that I know that he spent many hours lying awake considering that act of terrorism that resulted in Ernie Abbott being killed at the Trades Hall.

I know Mr Scott is deeply concerned about the rights and the liberties of trade unionists, and it concerned him that Ernie Abbott was killed and his dog was seriously injured. I know in the background that must have been one of the things weighing heavily on his mind. I know that in the back of his mind he must have been seriously considering the Rainbow Warrior and the act of terrorism that was afflicted upon this nation. But I would’ve thought that he would’ve done a little bit more study and realised that the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was treated as an act of terrorism, and so too was the bombing of the Trades Hall that, unfortunately, saw Mr Abbott killed. And I would’ve thought that he would’ve known from there that the laws, as they currently exist, were perfectly suited to hand out a life sentence to those people.

But all of that being as it may, we supported his bill. We supported it, but we did flag some reservations, like why only five years? And I actually said—

💬 Alastair Scott: Can’t even be bothered getting in a car—has to fly himself around.

Oh, Mr Scott wants to interject over NH90s. And we all know that it was a member of his committee who was flying into Masterton at the time and made a comment on the radio—

💬 Alastair Scott: Can’t even mention 272. Do you know what Act you’re talking about? You don’t even know the Act.

—and fed Mr Scott, who couldn’t do it himself, so he fed it to Mr Mitchell. And Mr Mitchell—oh, Mr Scott’s still going. He’s really concerned about NH90s!

But we know that Mr Scott, unfortunately, put Mr Mitchell in the gun sights, because now everybody knows that Mr Mitchell flew to a dinner party in Papakura from Whenuapai in a Seasprite.

💬 Alastair Scott: Which section are you talking about? What bill are you talking about?

Oh, now he wants to get back to the bill.

💬 Chris Bishop: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member knows this is well outside the scope of the bill, which is to do with the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill. I ask the member to come back to the point.

Speaking to the point of order—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No, I don’t need any help on this, thank you. The member is actually correct, and this debate has been following that pattern for a while, and we’ll come back to the bill.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I would simply—as Mr Scott now wants to come back to the bill, I will definitely do so. I recall in the debate, Mr Scott, suggesting was five years enough? I recall asking why a minimum sentence of five years? I’ve seen nothing in the way of a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). I see nothing in the National Party’s comments in the Justice Committee. I’ve got the select committee report here. It’s pretty thin. It’s really, really thin, and I see nothing in here from the National Party members saying, “Let’s make it life. Let’s make it life without parole.”

💬 Alastair Scott: Where’s your SOP?

No—Mr Scott is chipping away, so we go now. If the member was deathly serious about this issue, why did the member not bring it back to the Table with an amendment saying, “Let’s make it life.” or “Let’s make it a minimum of 10 years.”? Let’s make it a minimum—not five years; a mandatory 10 years or a mandatory five years.

You see, this is a joke Mr Scott, and it’s been treated as a joke because it is a joke. The fact that his own members can’t stand up and speak for more than five minutes in support of him on this bill says it all—says it all. For the record, there is no one in Masterton, Dannevirke, Pahīatua, Woodville, or Eketāhuna screaming out for this piece of legislation to be passed, in valuable Government time. Mr Scott was a member of the Government with direct access to the executive—direct access, where he could have gone and said, “We’ve got housing problems in the Wairarapa.” Remember, you turkeys sold off 541 houses—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! I am not a turkey.

No. Mr Scott could have referred to his own Cabinet Ministers and been very forceful and very strong in his representation of the homeless in Masterton, but, no, we have this bill.

So forgive me, Mr Scott, if New Zealand First has a little bit of a chuckle or is somewhat derisive of the legislation, because it is not what’s beating at the hearts, pressing the minds, of the Wairarapa people. I acknowledge that 13,000 of them voted for the member to come to this House and make a difference.

This piece of legislation—if we are to look at the seriousness of the issue that Mr Scott raises, it’s dealt with in the Crimes Act, it’s dealt with in the Terrorism Suppression Act, and it’s dealt with—

💬 Alastair Scott: The Law Commission.

Well, the Law Commission’s not the only person who had an opinion, Mr Scott. He chips in again. I love it when they keep coming back for more, you know? The Ministry of Justice says it’s not required. So we have the Ministry of Justice versus the Law Commission, and I do recall Mr Scott himself, on occasion, being quite critical of the Law Commission and some of the advice that it gave, where the Opposition was happy with that advice. So he can’t have ducks and drakes—I like the Law Commission today, I didn’t like them yesterday, I’ll like them tomorrow if they agree with me.

Mr Scott, if one is really serious about this issue, come back again, like I did with the suppression of gangs bill. Come back again and again—that bill that the member’s party voted against. Lowering the age of criminal responsibility—remember the bill that his party voted against? Don’t preach at New Zealand First about being tough on law and order, in a sort of whimsical attempt to try and get this piece of rubbish across the table. We deserve something more substantive, Mr Scott, and so too, by the way, do the people of the Wairarapa. They deserve more substantive representation than this. They deserve someone to take the matter seriously. They deserve to know that when they come to the House with their issues, it will override pieces of legislation like this.

Mr Scott, we know that the Crimes Act, that the Terrorism Suppression Act, the legislation that New Zealand First supported—in actual fact, I think the Rt Hon Winston Peters brought that legislation to the House when we were in coalition with Labour the last time. We have tried desperately to get some heavier penalties brought in to deal with crime, to try to get gangs outlawed—

💬 Chris Bishop: Well, you’re in Government now.

—only to be thwarted by the National Party, Mr Bishop—only to be thwarted by the National Party, Mr Bishop. Time and time again, Mr Bishop. So don’t come in here all pious, Mr Bishop. He’s chipping in again; he loves it. Mr Bishop, stand firm on this bill and support your colleague. We respect and admire that. But, Mr Bishop, you know, in your heart, that this is a load of rubbish, and it’s going to be treated accordingly. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. What a spiteful speech. That’s the only way to describe it—just full of spite and vitriol. If the member who just resumed his seat wants a reason why he’s not the MP for Wairarapa, which he so desperately, obviously, vehemently wants to be, it’s speeches like that—spiteful, vitriolic, hate-filled. That was 10 minutes of hate towards my friend and colleague Alastair Scott. It was eight minutes on Alastair Scott—a sort of helicopter view of Alastair Scott, you might call it; a chopper view—and about two minutes on the bill, 90 seconds of which actually were on the substantive part of it. That was just a spite-filled speech.

This is a sensible piece of legislation. No one’s pretending it’s changing the world. No one’s pretending it’s the Terrorism Suppression Act or deals with gangs or is all of the legislation that Ron Mark has spent a lot of time trying to introduce. My message to you, my friend, is that you’re in Government now. You’re the Minister of Defence. You’re the Minister of a lot of other things. If you can convince the Green Party and your Labour Party colleagues in the coalition to do all the things, like lowering the age of criminal responsibility and cracking down on gangs, fill your boots, son, because the National Party may well support you. But we’ll wait and see where the Labour and New Zealand First coalition goes with its “tough on crime” policies, because they’ve got a pretty big barrier sitting near to me in the Chamber, who I don’t think will be supporting that legislation. But, you know, let’s wait and see.

That was a very poor speech by Mr Mark—a very poor speech. He says it’s a waste of Government time. Well, this is members’ day, and, actually, Mr Scott has put forward a useful piece of legislation. We had a good examination of it in the Justice Committee, and it’s fair to say that there’s, basically, a division of views between the expert advisers. The Law Commission recommended this change; the Ministry of Justice, I’ve got to say, argued vehemently—vehemently—against it. We had a clash of the experts. It’s always interesting at select committee when you have a clash of the experts, because it seemed to me they almost got more involved in the bill than we did.

The select committee was unable to reach a viewpoint as to whether or not the bill should proceed. We think it should proceed, and the National Party will be voting for the bill to proceed. We agree with the Law Commission, essentially. We think it is a sensible change. Members often exhort Parliament and the Government to pick up Law Commission recommendations. In fact, the Law Commission itself has said, on numerous occasions, that the Parliament does not act quickly enough upon what it does. The Law Commission is the expert law reform body in New Zealand.

Frankly, with due respect to the Ministry of Justice, the days of Geoffrey Palmer’s Ministry of Justice, with the legislative drafting team and the great law reform unit within the Ministry of Justice, are over.

💬 Hon Ron Mark: Isn’t he on the Law Commission?

Exactly! Ron Mark says he’s now on the Law Commission. That’s exactly right. He makes my exact point. Back in 1988, Sir Geoffrey Palmer set up the Law Commission and we exiled, for want of a better phrase, the expert reformers in our bureaucracy over to the Law Commission. We said to the Law Commission, “Take the considered time to use the resources that Parliament gives you”—and we’ve given them extensive resources over the years—“use the time and the resources and use the money to propose recommendations for law reform.” Andrew Little is making use of the Law Commission now, when it comes to abortion law reform, for example, and that’s actually an appropriate thing to do, because it’s a very technical area of the law. It’s a contested area of the law. It’s a tricky area, and you want the experts to go away and look at things like this.

So too with the Crimes Act 1961 and the various very technical offences around explosives, providing explosives to commit crimes. So the Law Commission has recommended increasing the penalty level of section 272, in its report, Maximum Penalties for Criminal Offences, Law Commission report 21. They compare section 272 with section 55 of the Arms Act and consider that the two sections are almost identical. Section 55 of the Arms Act has a maximum penalty of five years and the difference in penalty has no possible justification. That’s the Law Commission’s recommendation. There’s no possible justification for the difference in penalties.

So Alastair Scott, my friend and colleague, has introduced a very sensible member’s bill. No one is pretending it’s changing the world, but, actually—and I’ve made this point on numerous occasions in Parliament—not every bill that Parliament considers is abortion law reform or euthanasia or gay marriage or anything like that. Sometimes the process of Parliament and the reason why we’re put here is actually to tidy up the statute book and to improve things, and, actually, that is a very important job of a deliberative body and deliberative legislature like the New Zealand Parliament. Alastair Scott is doing a good job in doing that.

So he’s put forward this bill. It’s gone to the committee. We agree with the Law Commission—there’s no justification for the differences in penalties—and therefore we’re supporting the bill going forward.

We look forward to New Zealand First’s vote on the bill. It was not clear from Ron Mark’s contribution whether or not they’ll be supporting the bill or not. They supported it at first reading, albeit with caveats, as I know Mr Mark says. I suspect from the spite and hate in his speech towards my colleague Alastair Scott that New Zealand First will no longer be supporting the bill, and I think that would be a shame. Although, if it does get voted down at second reading, at some point Parliament is going to have to consider this issue again, perhaps under Ron Mark’s stewardship as Minister of Defence and Minister for law and order—the self-styled “Minister for Tough on Crime”. Let’s wait and see, but this is a good bill; it deserves to go forward through its second reading.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this interesting bill, the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill. When I went down to the desk to pick up a copy of this bill, I picked up five, but I thought I was just going for one. So it’s quite short, this bill, and the purpose of the bill is to amend the Crimes Act 1961 to increase the penalty for providing explosives to commit an offence from a maximum of two years to a maximum of five years. Isn’t that interesting?

One of the things I’d be really keen to hear from the member who put this bill forward is where the idea came from. I’m assuming, maybe, it was the Law Commission’s view, but often with a member’s bill there’s a moment of clarity or greater good for all of humanity, where you see this great opportunity to make the world a better place, and you can tweak a piece of legislation in order to bring that wish or hope to fruition. I fail to see how increase this crime to a maximum of five years really makes any huge difference.

I will talk about the difference between the Law Commission’s view and the view from the Ministry of Justice that was debated at select committee, and look at those two different points of view. But before we get to that, I’d like a more general discussion around the value of increasing penalties, because that’s exactly what this member’s bill does—it simply increases a penalty from two to five years. So I’d like to know—and I’m interested to hear from members opposite as to how any given problem that society is faced with is addressed by increasing a penalty.

When I was thinking about this, I thought back on the things I’ve worked on in my past, where, time after time, previous National Governments have gone ahead and increased penalties. One of the areas that I worked in was fleeing drivers or failure to stop, and this is a fascinating area to look at. Time and time again, we’ve seen increased fines and increased penalties for those, and guess what? They still do it. Do you really think that the person—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order!

—sorry—whether they be carrying explosives or whether they be fleeing from police, pause for a moment and think, “Oh, that’s right, I just looked up law online and I realised that that penalty’s gone up by three years. I’ll pull the car over right now and say sorry.” That doesn’t happen. Increasing penalties in general, as this bill proposes to do, does not address the underlying problem.

If we have an underlying problem in New Zealand of more individuals carrying explosives, of there being a greater risk of terrorism, then those are issues of social cohesion. Those are issues of how we have a good, healthy community where everyone can celebrate their differences and feel like they belong to New Zealand. That’s the kind of society that disincentivises people blowing up things, not increasing a penalty to five years. So I question the ability to change and influence the benefit of New Zealand by simply increasing prison penalties. As we have seen, what that does is fill up our jails. As we have seen, what this does is increase the amount of money that taxpayers pay to keep somebody in prison.

In 2009, when there was a problem with boy racers, as they were called—illegal street racing—we saw the failure to stop penalty increase. The fine was increased to $2,000. Lo and behold, in 2015, we have Michael Woodhouse, the then Minister of Police, with the following quote: “Increasing these penalties”—this is four years after they’d been increased already—“enhances the deterrent effect and sends a strong message from government that failing to stop is a dangerous [risk] and [it] … will not be tolerated.” And yet, still we face the problem of the same issue occurring. So my problem, the fundamental problem with this bill as it’s proposed—we can talk about the nuances around the different views from the Ministry of Justice and the Law Commission, but the underlying problem is that a straight-out increase of penalties does not address the underlying problem.

Right, so let’s have a wee look at the differences between the two points of view that we examined at the Justice Committee. There’s one interesting point here—so what this bill, I understand, is endeavouring to do is to disincentivise those who may use explosives by enabling a harsher penalty for before the crime has been committed. It’s almost a bit sci-fi Tom Cruise movie stuff where you can have thought crimes. So they’ve not actually committed the crime, but they’ve got a detonator or they’ve got a cellphone, even, and so that is example enough that a crime is going to be committed with explosives, and that, in itself, warrants a harsher penalty.

It’s quoted here, from the Ministry of Justice, that “A person does not become guilty of a crime by merely thinking about it. There must always be some external manifestation of conduct to transform a criminal thought into culpable conduct. … Accordingly”—this is where the Ministry of Justice and the advisers do not agree—“while section 272 provides a mechanism to allow the Police to act in circumstances necessary to prevent another offence from occurring, we do not consider that a case has been made to justify a greater penalty than already provided. Indeed, the academic view expressed”—which I’ve just explained—“in [the paragraph above] may suggest that only a relatively low penalty is appropriate for such an offence.” So the view from the Ministry of Justice is the fact that the crime has not been committed means that it cannot be the same as the two compared. So it is not the same as section 55 in the Arms Act, and it, in fact, is a crime that has not been completed, so therefore it does not justify having a greater sentence.

I would like to round up by saying that, to be honest, I think that we could spend time in this House considering more significant issues than increasing penalties on the potential to blow things up. I think there are far greater issues that confront New Zealand in terms of housing, in terms of jobs, in terms of the state of our hospitals, in terms of the state of our schools. We should be looking at those issues that matter far greater than having to comb our minds for small pieces such as this to try and cobble together a member’s bill. I have a fundamental belief—and so, I’m pleased, does the Labour Party—that an outright increase in penalties might look tough and might come across as looking like some action has been taken, but it does not address underlying problems that are causing what will be happening in that space. I’ve already outlined that, yes, there are big concerns internationally with the threat of terrorism. There are big concerns in terms of how we enhance social cohesion, not just in New Zealand but right across the globe, but by threatening and by putting greater penalties and by alienating communities—that is not the way to go about it.

We have, here in New Zealand, a difference from other countries. We have the Treaty of Waitangi that provides a strong foundation for all cultures to work together to communicate in partnership and to have a greater understanding of the principles that are important to each other’s cultures. That is the pathway forward: greater understanding, greater communication, and greater ability to work together; not by standing over, by trying to increase penalties as a threat to make people work together more comprehensively. So for that reason, that’s why the Labour members of the Justice Committee did not support this legislation going further, and that is why we will not be commending this bill for further consideration. Thank you.

Whilst I do congratulate the member Alastair Scott, who has brought this bill to the House, for his work on it, it is a curious bill, and that’s largely because of the three premises that it comes to us with. In looking at this bill, I had a look at the previous file we have on it. The previous Green Party member dealing with this issue had on file a response from the previous Minister of Justice to an Official Information Act request in which the senior ministry official responding said, “Our original assessment of the bill is that the bill is not outside the range of comparable offences.” So the first premise of this bill—that the sentences for this type of offending need to go up to be in line with comparable offences—was actually rejected initially by the previous Ministry of Justice itself.

Then the letter goes on to say that section 202 of the Crimes Act, which the member referenced, broadly defines “offensive weapons” to include explosives. So, in fact, this type of offending can be charged to have the higher sentences applied to it in any case. As others have pointed out here, if terrorism is what’s being committed using explosives, or if murder is being committed, then those are also offences with much, much higher penalties—in fact, life imprisonment—available already within our criminal justice regime. So the initial practical premise of the bill in terms of consistency seems to be missing when we look at this bill more closely.

The second premise, of course, is that this type of offending is somehow on the rise or is of concern to us outside of, you know, terror, murder, and that type of thing, which are already crimes, as I’ve already just said. It doesn’t seem to be on the rise at all—I mean, we’ve already heard that there have only been two cases of this type of offending before our courts. So that seems curious, as well, in terms of why this bill has come so far.

But, of course, the third premise, and the one that concerns the Green Party—and this new Government, I happily note—is also largely refuted now by pretty sound evidence. That premise is that raising sentences in response to crime—even very serious crime that might actually be of concern within our criminal justice system—actually will reduce that type of offending. It will actually keep our communities safe. We now know, and we’ve known for about 15 years—it’s been 15 years since the first substantive study into deterrent effects of sentences was conducted—it’s just not true. It doesn’t work.

Luckily, we stand today at the start of a new era in responses to criminal justice issues. After nine long years of justice policy, of penal policy, being focused solely on making politicians look tough, we now get to adopt policy that actually works, that actually reduces crime, and that actually keeps communities safe. We will not do that by adopting the same old policies—by telling the victims of crimes and by telling our communities that raising prison sentences is going to keep them safe. That has now become callous.

As policy makers, as lawmakers, we have a responsibility to respond to the evidence. We know that every time we’ve raised sentences in any area of criminal justice, or in crimes of any nature, that type of offending has actually increased. Over the last nine years—and this was a policy initiated by Mike Sabin, the ex - member for Northland for the National Party—we raised sentences mostly in serious drug offending. We now know, based on evidence, that in terms of methamphetamine offending, every single year since we made that type of drug a class A controlled drug and raised the sentence to life imprisonment—every year—the instances of supply and manufacture of methamphetamine in our courts went up, to the point that right now, this year, methamphetamine offending is about to overtake cannabis in its prevalence before our courts.

A class A - type drug, since we made it a class A - type drug—since we started imposing sentences of 18 to 20 years regularly—is about to overtake cannabis. That’s frightening, and it is a testament to the total failure of this policy. We should be embarrassed as policy makers if, in the face of that evidence, we continue to do the same thing.

Last week, the Green Party was very happy to welcome the report by the Prime Minister’s chief scientist, Sir Peter Gluckman, that said that, in fact, imprisonment has failed to keep us safe in all the broad spectrum of criminal offending, that our justice system is in fact broken, and that doing the same thing over and over again is not going to fix it. It’s damaging to our communities. It diverts billions of dollars away from initiatives and from remedies that can actually stop crime and that can rehabilitate prisoners once we actually do lock them up.

I know from personal experience, from over a decade working in criminal justice, that our prisons are now not really well-equipped enough or staffed enough. Some of those are Serco corporation - run prisons not equipped enough to run programmes like drug and alcohol counselling, or even literacy programmes or anger management programmes. We can’t parole people—which is actually their legal right—based solely on how under-resourced these institutions are. So once they serve their lengthy sentences and we put them back out into the community, we’ve not invested anything. We’ve lost this invaluable opportunity to rehabilitate people, to help them to rejoin their communities, and to help them not to return. So recidivism is on the rise, filling our prisons again and again, because we’ve diverted money—resource—away from remedies that we know will actually keep us safe. As politicians, we have chosen—or the previous Government has chosen to make itself look tough, and that is callous.

So this new Government isn’t going to keep doing the same thing in the face of overwhelming evidence that it will not work. We are going to invest in people, whether that’s in housing, whether that’s in creating jobs, or whether that’s in mental health care. We’re not going to use prisons as mental health institutions any more, as we’ve been doing, unfortunately—sadly, heartbreakingly—in New Zealand for a decade now. We’re going to invest in people, so that we actually stop crime and so that we actually keep our communities safe. This will be a new era.

Our focus in justice policy is going to be on stopping crime, not on making ourselves look tough. That is why the Green Party will not be supporting this bill today.

I understand this is a split call. Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi—you have five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to stand and support Alastair Scott’s bill. I think it is a very sensible bill which addresses an issue which was raised by the Law Commission. Increasing the penalty makes sure that we address the issue which was raised. National has been tough on crime, and we know that this present-day Government is very soft on crime. The contribution by Ginny Andersen clearly shows that they are going to be soft on crime.

I would like to acknowledge the contribution by Raymond Huo, the chair of the Justice Committee—a very sensible contribution which talked about the bill. Some of the Government members did not even mention about the bill, but were having a personal vendetta—for example, the Hon Ron Mark. He clearly, in his speech, wanted to just say that Alastair Scott—he lost the election to him by 13,000 votes but he could not say that. He kept on targeting Alastair Scott—that he won by 16,000, but he did not mention that he lost to him.

Coming back to what Raymond Huo mentioned—the intent of the bill is very clear, and that’s what is the crux of this bill: that we have to address the issues which have been identified. The identified issue was that imprisonment of two years is too low; it should be five years. That’s what this bill intends to do. I hope that there could be a change of minds still—there are a few more speeches—that the Labour Party might change their mind and support the bill brought by Alastair Scott. I commend this bill to the House.

I must admit I’m taken by surprise to have to speak so early. I thought at least the previous speaker, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, who stood to speak in support of his colleague’s bill, would be able to last five minutes, but he couldn’t. But I’m not totally surprised. It’s not a great bill. I’ve got to be honest: it’s not that flash, because it doesn’t actually provide us anything that’s worthwhile. But I do want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the member that introduced it to the House, the current Wairarapa MP, Alastair Scott. I want to reassure you that I will not use this opportunity to attack you personally, as tempting as that may be. The point is that you’ve put forward a member’s bill, and I believe it deserves the respect that it should get in this House, despite the fact that I don’t agree with it. I say that respectfully.

I said during the last campaign that if I was lucky enough to get into this House, having been an opponent of Mr Scott at the previous election, then I would work collaboratively, and I would not have a go, and so I won’t. But the bill is pretty poor because it addresses an issue that doesn’t need to be addressed, and that was reflected in the Justice Committee process. Of course, it does suggest that section 272 of the Crimes Act be extended from the two years’ imprisonment to five years’ imprisonment, despite the fact that there have been only three instances since 2007 of people being tried under this legislation. That is not an example of some drastic need in this country to change this law through what is proposed here, in the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill. I note that the heading of this section, “Providing explosive to commit crime”, does not reflect the elements of the offence. No part of section 272 requires that an explosive be provided to another person. There’s simply not enough need to warrant this.

It is somewhat of a wasted opportunity, because there are many pressing issues facing this country, and I know of many MPs that have gone their whole career without having a member’s bill pulled from the ballot. I understand that the right honourable Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, is one of those MPs. After 27 years in this House—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Can we come back to the bill, please?

This bill?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): It would be useful.

This shocking bill? I’ll get back to this poor bill in front of us now.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): That would be useful. If you have nothing further to say, you can take your seat.

Oh, look, I’ve got plenty. I’ve got a minute and 53 seconds more to speak, Madam Assistant Speaker. The point here is that—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Make it count.

—increasing the length of a prison sentence is an expensive and, arguably, an ineffective way to reduce offending. There have been many examples brought forward to the House this evening that highlight the fact that increasing sentences just for the purposes of deterrence is not effective, and that is, essentially, what this bill proposes.

I do note in the opening address Mr Scott indicated somewhat of a frustration that intent, in his view, is essentially the same as the act, and that is something that I just simply cannot agree with. The member used the example of “pulling the trigger”, and I can’t see how the logic is there, that the intent to commit that act, to commit pulling the trigger, is as bad or almost as bad as actually doing that itself. If that is the logic behind this bill, then I’m not surprised that this has failed to get unanimous support at the select committee stage. There are numerous examples in the past, not just in New Zealand, where increasing the term of imprisonment in a bill has not acted as a deterrent.

There’s one point that I want to make, in my remaining time, around New Zealand’s prison population. It is at capacity already. There would be no sense whatsoever, if indeed anyone was tried in the future under this legislation with an increased prison sentence, to increase our prison population just for the sake of it, which I fear is what’s being proposed today. So, along with my colleagues here in the Labour Party, we will not be supporting this bill, but good on him for giving it a go.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on this bill, and I’d like to start by congratulating my colleague the MP for Wairarapa, Alastair Scott, for working hard on this bill and getting this bill through here to its second reading. Well done. On this side of the House, clearly you can see we’re making no apology for being tough on crime, and, clearly, providing explosives to commit a crime is a serious offence and warrants a tough penalty. Surely there’s no one who cannot see that sort of linkage. Now, the current penalty is two years, and during the Justice Committee process Alastair Scott pointed out that the crime of conspiracy has a penalty of seven years. Surely we can see the disproportionality between those two.

Furthermore, as the committee was looking into this disproportionality, the committee was informed by officials—and I actually found it quite interesting, too, as I was reading through the document—as to how penalty levels are actually set. I wanted to read from the transcript here. “When assessing appropriate penalty levels for offences the Ministry of Justice does not take into account just one element of the offence. A range of factors including the mens rea (mental element), the actus reus (the physical element), on whom the burden of proof lies, the nature of harm being addressed and the proximity of the acts being criminalised [in] the commission of a prohibited (harmful) act are all taken into account. In addition, the relativity of the penalty to other offences dealing with the same or similar subject matter is [also] taken into account in assessing the appropriate hierarchy of penalties.” So I learnt something there as to, you know, how we come to have two years and seven years and so on and so forth.

Now, there were three submitters to the select committee, all in favour of the bill. There was one supplementary, also. Ben Fraser made three points. He was very much in support of the bill. He recognised the risk of explosives, and cited international incidents. He also said that the increase in penalty for the offence would be proportionate to the risk and harm, and he thought that increasing the penalties would be beneficial. The second submitter, Mr Forsyth, was also in support of the bill, and the third submitter, Mr Bryce, again was in support of the bill. He wondered if it could also be extended to include safety ammunition and propellant powders. This was kind of interesting. Officials came back and said, “Look, that’s probably actually covered under section 272, in that where it says ‘any explosive substance, or any dangerous engine, instrument, or thing,’ it’s likely that the court will also interpret that into existing legislation.” So, in summary, all the submitters supported this bill. We clearly support this bill. It makes sense, and I commend this bill to the House.

Madam Assistant Speaker, I rise to take a call on the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill, the title of which is potentially longer than the substance of the bill. I actually felt for the member Alastair Scott. As the member Kieran McAnulty said, I’m not standing up here to have a go, either, but it was actually quite heart-wrenching to see the member’s speech, which was a display of an abject lack of conviction in his own bill. It was very sad to see, because, you know, all of us, as members of this House, when we put members’ bills into that ballot, wait for them to be called. They’re often pieces of legislation that we are passionate about, and it was quite sad to see that complete lack of passion.

But anyway, I want to begin by addressing a couple of comments that were made by members opposite, one of which was the rhetoric “tough on crime” that we’ve heard a number of National Party members talk about. Apparently, increasing a penalty from two years to five years is them being absolutely tough on crime and stamping down on crime. Frankly, I find that a little bit insulting for two reasons—for many reasons, but I’ll go into two. One is that recent evidence has it that Mount Wellington, which is in the Maungakiekie electorate where I’m based, is the burglary capital of New Zealand. The Indian communities, where I do a lot of work, and a number of members which I have engagement with are often at the forefront of crime by virtue of the fact that they own dairies and work in small businesses that are targeted.

Frankly, I think that wasting the House’s time and the Justice Committee’s time with this bill, which is in essence about one and a half sentences long, is a travesty, because there’s so much more that needs to be addressed, and this will not do it. It will not keep our communities safer. New Zealand taxpayers collectively pay over $110,000 to house a prisoner for one year. If this bill were to pass into law, the additional three years’ imprisonment that it proposes will actually add $330,000 to the public bill per offender. I want people who may be watching this to let that sink in a little bit.

We’ve heard that rhetoric of the Opposition members being tough on crime. We’ve heard the narrative that they are sound economic managers, but does this sound like good economic management to anybody? It doesn’t to me, definitely. Prisons have been referred to as being extremely expensive training grounds for further offending. There was a recent report by Sir Peter Gluckman that said this. It also said that increasing the length of sentences can increase the likelihood that an offender will reoffend and, potentially, to a greater degree. So not only is this unsound economic management but it is actually not going to work either.

What actually works much better—and there’s extensive research on this—than increasing sentences and tougher sentences is the likelihood of offenders being caught, which is why this Government is focusing on measures like increasing the police force by 1,800, with a strong focus, which was talked about, on community policing. It’s not that we’re not tough on crime—that’s actually just scaremongering. It’s that we want to do what works. We want to do what actually keeps our communities safe, holds offenders to account, and provides victims with protection. We don’t just want to stand here and do what sounds popular, what potentially makes a few of us feel better—that’s not what we are here for—but that’s exactly what this bill will do. It’s not going to achieve what it sets out to achieve.

The other way to look at this bill, or the purpose of this bill, would be to see perhaps whether it addresses the fact that there is a crime wave and that there are a number of people out there busily running around providing explosives. We’ve heard that from a number of members who’ve spoken previously this evening, but that’s just not true. In the last, I think it was, at least 11 years, if not longer, we’ve only seen three people who have fallen into that category, basically. That doesn’t sound to me like it’s a massive area that we should be focusing so much time and energy on. So the second assumption fails, as well. There isn’t a massive crime wave of people providing explosives, where we absolutely have to increase the penalty from two years to five years. That falls flat, as well.

Now, the third assumption posed by this bill is that it needs to be somehow brought in line with other similar legislation and that there’s some sort of an inconsistency in the law that needs to be fixed by the tweak that’s proposed by this bill. Now, section 272 of the principal Act, the Crimes Act, contains an intent element. I think this is the crux of Mr Scott’s speech on this—that section 272 contains an intent element. Now, there are two other sections that deal with similar offences and so on: section 202A of the Crimes Act and section 51 of the Arms Act. But I think the point that Mr Scott was making was that the increase in penalty would fall in line with those.

But there are a few different issues with that way of thinking, or tweaking one piece of legislation, and not looking at how it fits with the entirety of the legislation that we have. The Ministry of Justice has come out and said that it is difficult to make direct comparisons between offences that have different objectives, that have different essential elements, and that have different burdens of proof that are involved as well, and different penalty levels. And I’ll go into that a little bit.

There are justifications. Justice officials have come to the select committee, and at this juncture, I’ll just mention that it was great to be part of the select committee that considered this bill. So we heard from justice officials on this. There are justifications for those other sections to have higher penalties—for example, section 202A of the Crimes Act. The first limb of that, basically, is that it poses a much higher severity of harm to people. It’s about offensive weapons and it includes explosives as well, and it’s about those explosives being in a public place—so, potentially, more people are harmed by that. It also talks about people who have no legal authority or reasonable excuse for having that, which is absent from section 272, which is what we are discussing today.

What that really means is that increasing the penalty in section 272 from two years to five years would potentially mean that someone who has a legitimate reason for carrying that explosive—perhaps they work as a courier, perhaps they work in a mine; they have a legitimate reason for having that—could actually be penalised by this and potentially even more so if it was increased from two years to five years. Section 202A(4)(b) of the Crimes Act requires evidence of prima facie “intention to use [the offensive weapon] to commit an offence involving bodily injury or the threat or fear of violence.”

Actually, one of the main points that justice officials have made is that you can’t really tweak one bit of legislation without looking at the implications on other pieces of legislation. I’m just going to read this portion of the Ministry of Justice report, because I think it lays it out quite well—it gives a really good example of what they mean when they say that: “An attempt to commit an offence generally carries not more than half the maximum penalty for the completed offence”, and I think that makes logical sense. So if you actually do something, that’s one thing. If you have the intent to do something but you haven’t actually done it, then the penalty under the law is half—seems fair to me.

By way of example of the point that they were trying to make, section 54(2) of the Arms Act provides a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment for committing certain offences while in possession of an explosive. If the person attempts to commit that offence while in possession of an explosive but fails, the maximum penalty that person could face under section 311 of the Crimes Act would be 2½ years of imprisonment. So that’s half of the five years that they would have got if they’d actually gone through with that. Section 272 deals with the conduct that may not be sufficient to create criminal liability for an attempt. In relation to the previous example, it would be perverse if the penalty under section 272 was actually double, and so I cannot support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise to take a call on the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill. It seems to me that it’s worth starting with a constitutional nicety, if I may. There’s been some talk on the other side of the House about Parliament increasing penalties for people who commit the acts to which this bill will apply.

In fact, of course, it is the judiciary, the judges themselves, who will apply the penalty in any given case. So it’s worth noting that as a Parliament what we will be doing, if this law is to pass, is not in fact to increase the penalties, but the maximum penalties. Therefore, what we are doing in fact is providing a greater range, and we are increasing the discretion available to the judge in her or his discretion in any given situation. So to me, that’s the first point to be made.

Then we come to the point that it is true, however, to say that a piece of legislation of this nature does send a signal—or a message, is the language that is sometimes used—to people who might be contemplating offences or who have indeed carried out such offences. That signal is important, to have consistency with other equivalent legislation, and certain sections of the Arms Act have been discussed by this House on both sides already, so I don’t intend to traverse that ground further.

In absolute terms, however, I do think it’s important to note that the excellent member’s bill by my colleague Alastair Scott includes an understanding that explosives are, by their nature, somewhat indiscriminate in their effect, so their effect in legal terms, by way of punishment for those who dabble in them, should also be not insignificant.

I also wanted to make a point regarding the purpose of this legislation. It seems to me that the parties opposite have focused rather narrowly on the deterrence aspect of our criminal justice system, in somewhat sarcastic terms at times. But, of course, punishment and also prevention are also valid objectives of our criminal justice system and, indeed, this bill—namely, that if a maximum penalty of five years as opposed to two, for example, is exercised, then that’s a three-year period for which the community can feel safe against those who would knowingly supply explosives to people who would use those to harm others.

So, for those reasons, it seems to me this bill is very worthy of support, and I am very pleased to do so, along with other members of my party.