Estimates Debate — Justice Sector

Members, we now come to the votes in the justice sector, B.5, Volume 7. The question is that Vote Attorney-General, Vote Corrections, Vote Courts, Vote Justice, Vote Parliamentary Counsel, Vote Police, and Vote Serious Fraud stand part of the schedules.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Justice Committee conducted Estimates hearings for Vote Justice, Vote Courts, Vote Police, Vote Serious Fraud Office, Vote Attorney-General, Vote Parliamentary Counsel, and, finally, Vote Corrections. The total annual and permanent appropriations for Vote Justice in 2018-19 are $478.989 million, and the appropriations for Vote Corrections are $1.966 billion. This compares with the final budgeted expenditure of $1.803 billion in 2017-18, and is 10 percent more than the estimated actual expenditure of $1.794 billion.

Reforming the criminal justice system is one of the highlights of Vote Justice. Minister Andrew Little told us that the rate of criminal reoffending has remained largely constant, and prison numbers are rising rapidly and more violent offences are being committed. We heard that harsher sentencing has not reduced the rate of criminal reoffending over the last 10 to 15 years, as intended. Moreover, reoffending among youth and offending involving violent crime has increased. This has been seen as a failure in the system, because the aim of the system is to have fewer victims.

We asked how the Government intends to reduce the rate of criminal reoffending, given that in 2012, the then National Government announced the target of reducing the rate of reoffending by 25 percent by June 2016. However, in the year of 2016, the reoffending rate decreased by less than 4 percent, and therefore the National Government at that time dropped the target. The Minister said that serious criminal offences justify a custodial sentence, but when someone’s offending is related to mental health issues or addiction, the focus should be on fixing those issues.

We also heard from Minister Kelvin Davis that 90 percent of prisoners have mental health issues at some point in their lifetimes. Forty-six percent of prisoners have had some kind of mental health issue in past years, and that’s one of the reasons why the Government has chosen to dedicate resources to 100 mental health units at Waikeria.

We heard from Minister Little about his plans to reduce Māori reoffending and to have additional funding for criminal rehabilitation. The Government’s priority is to start with the criminal justice summit, which will develop reform proposals.

We heard from Minister Stuart Nash that Budget 2018 has left police very well placed to deliver the high quality of service that the general public rightly expects from them. The Government’s priority is to ensure police are adequately funded to help keep the communities safe.

The safer ethnic communities forum held in May 2018 connected ethnic communities with several Ministers and their agencies, together with the Commissioner of Police and his colleagues, to work on a long-term plan to improve safety in the ethnic communities. The feedback from the ethnic communities was very positive. We also heard from the commissioner that the forum helped to break down perception barriers about the police and to open lines of communication.

For Vote Attorney-General and Vote Parliamentary Counsel, we heard from Minister David Parker about the appointment of judgeships, the judiciary resourcing model, and access to secondary legislation project. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I call Mark Mitchell—the Hon Mark Mitchell, I beg your pardon.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The last time I got called “Grant Robertson”, I think, so that’s a good start.

💬 Hon Member: It’s appropriate, anyway.

That’s right. It’s a pleasure to take a call. Look, can I start by saying that I just want to quickly go over the numbers. The other spokespeople will talk to the other areas of the justice portfolio: corrections, courts, police, and Attorney-General.

The total annual and permanent appropriations for Vote Justice in 2018-19 were $478,989 million compared with $551,123 million estimated actual expenditure in 2017-18. This was actually a decrease of $72,134 million. In all fairness, although that was a major decrease, we did have the new justice precinct that was delivered in Christchurch, and that, of course, involved some upfront capital costs that would not reoccur. However, it’s still a pretty uninspiring appropriation and I find it sad that actually the biggest new investment is for money that’s being put into an initiative around the 2020 general election. You could argue that actually that’s more about us than anyone else, so I feel that that money could have been used in much better areas like victim support services, the National Home Safety Service, or our community law centres.

I just want to very quickly touch on the reforming of our criminal justice system—and I know that we’ve got our criminal justice summit that’s fast approaching in August. I’ve had a meeting with the Minister and I made it very clear to him. I said, “If you can come up with some good criminal justice reform that we can see will have genuine benefits and gains for the country and for our communities, then we’ll support those—we’ll get behind them.” That’s what I came to Parliament for: to make the country better, not worse; to make it safer, not less safe. But I said, “If you put up proposals like we’ve seen recently around the repeal of the three-strikes legislation, then we’ll take a very firm position against that.”

Chlöe Swarbrick: How much safer has that made the country, Mark?

I’m sorry, what was that?

Chlöe Swarbrick: How much safer does that make the country?

I’ve just been asked by Chlöe Swarbrick how much safer that’s made the country. The three-strikes legislation has been shown to be successful as a deterrent when you look at the numbers reducing from the first strike to the second strike to the third strike.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Correlation doesn’t imply causation.

Let me just give you one example and you can respond to this—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Well, actually, you’re talking to the Chairperson, not to members across the House.

I’m sorry, Madam Chair, and I realise that I don’t have much time—although I may seek a second call. So let me give you one example from when we had this debate in the House around the three-strikes legislation.

I was contacted by a second female corrections officer—not the original one that we talked about, that had her case trivialised because it was referred to as a pinch on the bottom; but a second female corrections officer—that contacted me and said that she too had been the victim of an indecent assault in the workplace and that the offender had been convicted on a second strike. Do you know what she said to me? She said to me the best message she could get from her country was to say that they took it seriously enough that that offender got a second strike. So what is your comment to that? What would you respond to that—because I’m very, very interested to hear. This is a victim. This is someone that has actually been victimised. This is real; it’s not in this House. This happened to a female corrections officer who clearly had stated and said—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Serious sex crimes went up. That’s what happened.

—that the best message for her was that her country took that offending against her seriously enough that the offender had a second strike.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Look, order! I’m sorry. This is a debate on the Estimates, OK. The member’s had her opportunity to make her case. I would ask that she gives this member the opportunity to make his case.

So take a call. I’ve just laid out a very clear example for you that, for the general public, this actually makes them feel safer. It makes them feel that, actually, as a Parliament, we’re taking it seriously. So I ask you to take a call and respond to that and tell me why we should be repealing the three-strikes legislation.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Because all evidence shows the longer people—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): The member will cease interjecting, and may take a call.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So one part of the debate that was missing, in terms of that—and it was never highlighted, it was never talked about—is that actually you can implement or trigger the “manifestly unjust” part of the legislation. In the case of the other third-strike offender case that’s exactly what happened.

In that case, the offender, yes, was charged under the three-strikes legislation. He indecently assaulted a female corrections officer in her workplace. I can’t remember the exact words in the victim statement but it obviously left her deeply stressed. She lost a lot of confidence in the workplace and, actually, what happened was the judge triggered the “manifestly unjust” provision. So what that meant was that the offender, yes, was convicted under three strikes. It was a very clear message that we were sending as a Parliament and as a nation, telling her that we take this very seriously, that we take a sexual assault on her in the workplace very seriously. But the judge had an option and that was to trigger “manifestly unjust”, which he did. So what it means is that that offender now doesn’t just get a seven-year sentence, as was portrayed in this House, and was portrayed to the general public—

💬 Darroch Ball: Quite a wide-ranging debate, is it?

Take a call, Mr Ball. I welcome you to take a call and respond to this. Tell me where I’m going wrong on this. So “manifestly unjust” was triggered, which means actually now that he’s eligible for parole next year.

💬 Darroch Ball: I’m not arguing with you.

But we didn’t—well, what are you arguing about?

💬 Darroch Ball: It’s quite a wide-ranging debate, isn’t it?

What’s that?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That is—

💬 Darroch Ball: Start talking about the appropriations.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Order! That is entirely up to me. There was a barrage of interjections about a particular point, which the member has now addressed, and I would ask him to come to the Estimates.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll come back to the Estimates, and the reason why I was using those examples is because I’m referring directly to the Estimates hearing where I asked the Minister about his reforms. The first reform that he tried to get through Cabinet was a repeal of the three strikes legislation—that was the first thing he tried to do. What happened? It got shot down. At the last minute, a Labour justice Minister was thrown under the bus. He was publicly humiliated because the coalition partner withdrew their support at the 11th hour, and he couldn’t take his reform to Cabinet to get approval to get it through. [Darroch Ball shakes head] You can shake your head, but that’s exactly what happened.

💬 Darroch Ball: No it’s not.

Well, I’ve read the Estimates transcript. Read the Estimates transcript and you’ll see what the conversation was, and you’ll see that’s exactly what he says. So then he had to go back to the Prime Minister, and then they decided, at the 11th hour, “Oh, we’ll reprioritise it, and we’ll reprioritise the justice summit, and we’ll go up to the justice summit and we’ll generate some ideas up there.”

The point that I want to make is this—and I see that Greg O’Connor is in the Chamber, and I want to acknowledge him and acknowledge that I respect his service and his background. I know that he didn’t come to this House to make New Zealand a less safe place, so my expectations are—

💬 Hon Member: Do you believe this, Mark?

—that he will look very, very closely at the reforms—you can be as shocked as you want; I’m telling you now, we will not be supporting reforms that will allow people out on the street that shouldn’t be out on the street. They’re in prison for a very good reason, and that is public safety. If we can come up, and if you can show that you’ve got some good reforms whereby we can continue a very strong rehabilitation programme but at the same time keep the public safe, then we’ll look at that—without a doubt, we’ll be interested in that. But right now, the only thing that’s been signalled to this House is diluting and weakening parole laws, bail laws, and sentencing laws. We will not accept that—we will not accept that on its own. Nothing else has been put up—nothing.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Can I bring the member back to the Estimates, please?

Madam Chair, I’d argue that I’m directly addressing the transcript of the Estimates hearing. This is exactly what I spoke about: the dilution of bail laws, sentencing laws, parole laws; the three strikes legislation; the plan that they actually have; the plan that’s been brought to us so far, which is non-existent—that’s exactly what I’m referring to. That’s exactly what I’m talking about at the moment, Madam Chair, so are you happy for me to continue with that? [Madam Chair nods] Thank you very much.

So in the first nine months, we have seen nothing put up at all by this Government other than a plan to repeal the three-strikes legislation. So I’ve clearly laid out the case that was put, and I’d welcome, now, someone to take a call and address the issues that I’ve raised. Maybe the Green Party will do that right now. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to stand and speak regarding the appropriations and Estimates debate for the justice sector. The Justice Committee heard from the Minister of Justice that harsher sentencing has not reduced the rate of criminal offending over the past 10 to 15 years. We also heard, on the Justice Committee, that reoffending among youth and offending involving violent crime have also increased over that period of time. The Minister of Justice himself stated that he saw this as a failure of the justice system.

In this, I’d like to directly speak to the point that was raised by the previous speaker, Mark Mitchell, that there is a clear point of difference that has emerged between this Government and the previous National Government. That point of difference is that this Government is focused on fixing the systemic issues within our justice system—those systemic issues that mean generation after generation of New Zealanders are being further exposed to being victims or offenders as a result of the very system which they are going through. I think that is the response to the member that has just spoken, that this is a Government that is focused on turning that around and making a real change, not scoring quick political points.

This Government wants a safe and effective justice system, and that was heard quite clearly through the Estimates process. Yes, it is important that those who offend are held to account—there will not be a compromise of public safety, as incorrectly inferred previously—but also something different, something on top of that, is the ability to rehabilitate people, to reintegrate people, and to provide support to victims.

In our justice system, we have 47 percent of people going through who have addiction issues, and we have 37 percent with mental health issues. Previously, those things have simply not been addressed, and those people have cycled through the system time and time again, causing damage to their lives and to their families’ lives, and wasting money that should be focused on rehabilitating and providing support where it’s needed. Again, I say: that is the point of difference and that is the fundamental plan that will be changing the way this justice system takes shape in the future. We want to see intergenerational change and to see that our children who grow up in New Zealand have all the opportunities of taking full advantage of what New Zealand offers. We should not have a system that continues to make people more likely to be offenders or victims by processing through it.

In particular, we also heard, through Vote Police—and I’d like to touch on that briefly—that there was much discussion around the 1,800 police officers that has the main target of delivering under this Government. In particular, there was discussion around the breakdown of that 1,800. So there are 1,100 sworn front-line officers; there are 700 authorised officers and 485 non-sworn, and I’d just like to quickly break that down.

So authorised officers—that 700—particularly address the area of fighting organised crime, and I think that that’s a point that’s been missed by those members opposite. In the areas of forensic accountants, who are tracing where money has come from during fraud and high-level white-collar crime, and also looking in the area of internet crime where you need expertise in those areas—that is the future, and that is where this Government is focused on investing money, not just by promising window dressing.

The 485 non-sworn—those are the people that back up the front line. Those are the people that do the work that enable police officers to get back in their cars, back on the streets, and get out doing the jobs that they need to be doing—not sitting back in front of a computer, not filling out forms, not doing work back in the office. By having more support in the back rooms, that enables police officers to work far more effectively and be better supported than they have been. Under the previous Government, we saw a cap on non-sworn, and that saw front-line officers doing back-duty work, and that’s a waste of money and a waste of our skills.

We are a Government focused on changing the system and delivering the changes that people need to be stronger and to live healthier lives. That is something that the members opposite are yet to realise. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I acknowledge the Minister in the chair, the Hon Kelvin Davis. I just must admit that I feel a bit sorry for the Minister because he’s having to deal with a promise that has been landed on him by the Labour Party, and that is to reduce the prison population by 30 percent in the next 15 years. That Minister may have had the best intentions when he took on that promise as well, but he is soon coming to the very stark reality that that is a promise that he cannot deliver and will not be able to deliver.

It will mean one of two things for the Labour Party: either they have to backtrack on another promise to the Parliament and to the public of New Zealand that they went to the election with, or they have to have a significant reduction in the prison population. When you’re looking at a prison population which is over 10,000 prisoners at the moment, and a projected decrease to around 7,000 to meet the goal that that Minister and that Government set—and that prison population is projected to actually increase further, not decrease, going up to over 14,000 prisoners. That means that that Minister will have to actually, effectively, reduce the prison population by half—by half—to actually achieve their goal.

Now, when you consider that 70 percent of all prisoners are there for serious offences, how are they going to reduce that prison population by half and keep the New Zealand public safe? You just can’t do that. New Zealand First I know are shaking their heads. It’s one of those situations where New Zealand First will talk the big talk, but actually will be silent on this matter in this House over the next 2½ years, as it knows that this is part of that coalition agreement they signed up to and they have to enable this to happen. That means that the New Zealand public will face 7,000 prisoners in their communities in the next short while—otherwise you can’t achieve the promise that’s been set.

Now that is the stark reality of what will happen. Let’s see if the actions of the Labour Party support that—of course they do; they didn’t build Waikeria Prison. Instead of building a prison for 1,500 prisoners that had a projected cost of $950 million, that Minister signed off a $750 million prison for only 600 prisoners. That is a gross negligence on the behalf of the Government in regards to the safety of New Zealanders.

If there was a plan of how that prison population will be reduced, we would love to see it, but there isn’t. All we have is some summit that’s going to come up in a few months’ time, and that will be used as a mechanism to try and endorse the policies of the Government of the day. But then there is help coming, because we know that this Minister has said there will be 976 pop-up beds in our existing prison network, taking some of our bigger prisons to over 1,000 prisoners in each of those. And there will be no rehabilitation services given in addition to the current rehabilitation funding. The Minister said that at Estimates. He said there will be no extra funding, and then a couple of weeks later in the House he corrected himself around that and said there may be some. There’s none in the Budget.

In fact, rehabilitation funding in the Budget is going down. When National was there it was a 13.7 percent increase year on year; there’s only been a 6.7 percent increase under this Minister. Effectively, it has gone down from what it should be. The Minister isn’t spending on rehabilitation. Now we’ll hear about this lauded mental health programme for 100 prisoners at Waikeria. I bet you that’s what the Minister’s going to stand up and talk about and say, “This is going to make a difference.” Well, that’s 100 prisoners out of a population of 10,500 at the moment, going up to 14,000—and you’ve got to let 7,000 out. So how are we going to rehabilitate the others when we know that there are serious mental health issues within the prison population?

The Minister has been landed with a promise he cannot deliver. He knows that, and the Labour Party and the Green Party and New Zealand First will spend the next two years trying to manage the fallout from failing to deliver that promise, and all that will do will be to put our prison officers at risk for their safety, put New Zealanders at risk in their safety—[Time expired]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to express my thanks to the member who’s just taken a call, David Bennett, for his concern for my well-being, but let me just say that it’s really unnecessary. He’s saying that it’s an impossible task for a Government to reduce a prison population; well, let me say that there are jurisdictions all around the world who have successfully done that and the crime rate hasn’t risen and communities have been kept safe. So our goal in corrections is to make sure that those people who should be in prison will be in prison.

Here’s the good news: the member spoke about the forecasts and the prison population rising—we know that the previous Government took those forecasts as a target; we treat them as a warning and we’re doing something about it. He’s already said, “Well, what are you doing about it? Where’s the plan?” Let me say now, if he looks at the trend in the prison population since we became the Government—it was about 10,400—it actually went up to 10,800 and is now actually less than what it was when we became the Government. They keep saying that we’re just going to ease up on bail laws, sentencing laws, and parole laws. Well, actually, none of that’s happened, but just through good practice and helping people, the prison population has reduced.

So what have we done to help people? Well, one of the things that we’ve done is to assist people who are seeking bail. Here’s a nice little story: there are people who are arrested and then they’re asked to fill out applications for bail, and if they don’t have the application filled out, the judge has no alternative but to remand them in prison. Simply by having Department of Corrections staff help people who are illiterate to fill out a bail form, it actually gives a judge a choice on what to do with that prisoner. It’s a simple little thing that has really started to work.

In Budget 2018 we have $517.6 million extra for operational expenses. I’m not going to stand here and crow about it, because that means actually that something’s wrong if we just keep on investing in prisons. The member who just spoke also said, “So what is the Government’s plan?”—well, everything that the Government is doing, in every area really, is working to reduce the prison population. If you look at our Families Package and those sorts of initiatives, they’re helping people get the best start in their lives so that they don’t actually go on to commit crime and end up in prison in the first place.

So we’re looking to lift 384,000 families out of poverty. If only 0.1 percent of 384,000 we had an impact on, making sure that 0.1 percent of their children didn’t go into prison, that’s something like 400 children who over the next 15 years won’t actually end up in prison. So we’re talking about the long-term stuff in all of our Government’s practices, not just the short and sharp end of the stuff in corrections.

We got $57.6 million in the Budget over four years to help with housing, because we know that when an offender is released from prison and has nowhere to live, nowhere to go, then chances are that that person will reoffend. Not only are we helping them with accommodation, but we’re wrapping support around them so that they don’t go on to reoffend in the future as well. It’s all about looking after people, not just while they’re in prison but also while they’re out of prison.

One of the things I’ve asked corrections to do is start to reach further into a prisoner’s sentence to start supporting them on their transition out of prison. At present, they might get help a couple of days before they leave prison, and they might get help for a couple of weeks afterwards. I’m saying we might have to reach further into their sentence and take longer to transition them, and for some people we may need to take longer to transition them out and support them not to go on and reoffend. The previous Government, the mistake they made is they just said, “Do a course while you’re in prison, and when you go out, be a nice person and don’t reoffend.” The thing is that we need to keep supporting people long before their sentence ends and later.

Kia orana, Madam Chairperson. I’ll just start by acknowledging Mr Mitchell’s comments—the Hon Mark Mitchell, who did bring me into his speech and talked about my determination, and I’m sure it will be the same as his and his colleague Matt King’s and, in fact, my colleague Ginny Andersen’s, who, while not a front-line police officer, was a very important part of police—she worked in the policy area. The really important thing is the four of us, along with everyone here, want to achieve the same thing. We actually want the best. The best is less people in prison, less victims, and a safer New Zealand.

Going on to the comments of the speaker from Waikato, the Hon David Bennett—he spoke to the Minister in the chair at the time, the Hon Kelvin Davis, and said, “He will not achieve this.” He left a vital word out, which is the key to this debate. As Minister of Corrections he will not achieve it “alone”, and that’s the incredibly important part of where we’re at now. I have come to this House from a 40-year career in and around the justice sector. What actually has happened—for the first time, as I’ve seen the Ministers, particularly the Minister of Police, the Minister of Corrections, and the Minister of Justice, come through on the appropriations. For the first time, I understand that we are not going to achieve this by the narrow approach taken, which is basically a soft-on-crime claim, which, I have to admit, we’re hearing from the Opposition now, and we’ve heard it from Oppositions for time immemorial. What that does is focuses down to a tiny part of the criminal justice system that simply means we are so focused, so down—we’d have heard it today across the floor—it means we can’t see the bigger picture, and that prevents us from making sure we do what it is that is absolutely necessary.

I look, particularly—the previous Minister in the chair spoke about the need for cooperation between departments. There is nothing so basic as people not being able to leave correction facilities currently because they don’t have housing. So what do you do? You cooperate between the housing. That is a very minor example of the sort of cooperation we are going to need, because, again, we get focused down on the reed but what we need to do is step back and actually look at what the real problem with crime in New Zealand is now—why serious crime is increasing. It is because of the rise of gangs and organised crime. Prisons not used smartly, not used in conjunction with sentencing, not used in conjunction with policing, and not used in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice and other departments just simply means that prisons become actually a part of aggravating the problem instead of helping it out.

Let me just give you a little example. There’s one group of offenders who are the lowest reoffenders, right across the board, when they come out of prison. They’re very serious offenders: it’s sex offenders. Now, interestingly enough, that is a group that, funnily enough, when they go into prison, unlike most prisoners going in there, are not forced to join a gang. No one wants to know them. What it actually means is, while it’s not a particularly comfortable stay there, they aren’t forced to join a gang for survival—in fact, nobody wants them.

It means that when they then go out in the system they’re unlike much of the jailbait which goes into prison because they’re doing the work for gang members, are recruited, are forced to get tattoos while they’re in there, and therefore, when they come out, it doesn’t matter what other programmes they do in there, it doesn’t matter what Māori initiatives or what any other initiatives we have to help them, the gang culture is stronger than any of those initiatives. So looking back at the very unlikely group of people who don’t reoffend, it is those sex offenders. So what we’ve got to do is—whatever we do it’s got to be about controlling the gangs, and we’re only going to that by a multi-departmental approach.

So while the Opposition—can I make a plea? You’ll want to out-compassion us—you really want to be part of a joined-up sector here. Please do not allow this to be focused on sentencing, because if you do, it means—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order!

—nothing will be done if eventually you do—sorry. If the Opposition does get back in, they’ll face the same issue. So the joined-up approach means looking at what the real issue is that is facing us today. It is gangs, it is organised crime. If we only in this House talk about sentencing, talk about that narrow focus, we will fail.

Madam Chairperson, I wish to take a call about the muddled and duplicitous approach of the Government in respect of the issue of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the justice sector, an issue that I raised at the select committee.

Now, in Opposition, Labour rallied against PPPs. I could read quotes, and I’ll read one specifically for members opposite: “The difference between National and Labour is that we believe in the public sector and we won’t be having the private sector running or owning our prisons.” Then right before the election even the Prime Minister said this: “Labour does not agree with PPPs when it comes to building core infrastructure, like prisons.” And then, even after the change of Government and Mr Davis got his ministerial warrant and there was discussion about Waikeria Prison, Mr Davis said, “We are yet to make decisions but we will not”—not—“be agreeing to a public-private partnership.” So when the Estimates came along and we have a $750 million public-private partnership I choked on my Kornies. I said to myself, “Well, what possibly could have led a political party that’s rallied against PPPs to suddenly do one for three-quarters of a billion dollars?”

But it gets worse than that. When the Government announced the PPP, they said they were doing it because they had to, because the previous Government had signed a contract. At the select committee we asked the Minister what date the contract for the Waikeria Prison was signed. And do you know what the answer was from the Minister and officials? “It hasn’t been signed yet.” And so we have this incredible situation where not only has the Labour Party gone back on its word to New Zealanders on PPPs in the prison sector; it’s then had the audacity to dishonestly blame National.

Now I don’t know what words we might use for that sort of behaviour, but I think it completely lacks integrity. It completely lacks integrity, and the Minister of Corrections’ performance at the select committee was truly bizarre. The only answer he could give the select committee was, “I’m perfectly happy that Waikeria Prison will be built by a PPP.” Well, New Zealanders deserve far better in the justice sector than that sort of dishonesty. If that’s the sort of behaviour we’re getting from the Minister of Corrections, what sort of role model is he setting for the honesty that, actually, our justice system depends on?

Finally, I want to make some comment about the so-called electoral integrity law. I would love the Minister in the chair to please answer the question as to where the integrity is in members of the Green Party—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! That did not come up in the Estimates.

Well, no, actually, the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill is on the Minister’s work programme for this financial year. It is part of the Estimates, Madam Chair, and I’m perfectly entitled to raise it and I’m perfectly entitled—as much as the Government wants to shut down the debate—[Interruption] As much as the Government wants to shut down the debate, it is completely lacking integrity for a bill changing 330 years of constitutional history to pass it without a majority of support in this House—[Time expired]

Kia orana e Maine Vaa Tuatua. Madam Chair, it’s a great pleasure to get up and speak. The member who just spoke, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, spoke of bizarre behaviour of members of this House, and I want to acknowledge his leadership in one thing at least, and that is he is the leader of bizarre behaviour of members in this House.

Let me respond to a couple of things that he has said, because if you want a class—a lesson—in disingenuous behaviour, then that member’s speech just now is it. So he lamented this public-private partnership over Waikeria Prison, completely ignoring the fact that millions upon millions of dollars of work had been done, designing an American-style mega-prison to house 2,500 prisoners under his Government’s watch. They signed up a procurement agreement with the outfit who was doing the design, who would go on to do the build, and who it was intended would run that prison.

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Ah! Now the truth comes out—the real story.

He missed that out. It’s funny that that member missed that stuff out. But he, not very artfully, fails to distinguish between the long-term procurement agreement that his Government signed with the builder of the prison and a contract to deal with the specific facility once there was agreement on what was going to be built. He ignores completely the exit payment that would be required from the procurement agreement if we did not proceed with that construction firm with that particular prison—missed all that out. That’s the lesson in disingenuity that that member is an absolute master of.

Well, the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill—let me say that if he wants a lesson in a lack of integrity, then let’s look at those National MPs who earlier this year trumpeted to the public at large that they were going to vote for the member’s bill on medicinal cannabis and when it came to the vote, all National MPs voted exactly the same way, which was contrary to what the indications were of the particular MPs who said they would do something differently. That member’s got nothing to worry about. Nothing will change in the National Party as a result of the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill—apart, perhaps, from his own seat. Perhaps he is afraid that members of his own caucus—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! [Interruption] Order!

—will not be afraid to do what the members of the National Party will do—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I apologise to the honourable Minister. If he could stick to the Estimates—

Can I just take a moment to talk about some very important things in the justice portfolio—for example, the fact that in this year’s Budget there’s extra money for youth justice facilities and for the youth justice system, because what we do there is absolutely vital to make sure that the pipeline of young people who would otherwise head off to adult prison is curtailed and we do the right thing at the right time.

Can I acknowledge, also, in this Budget, a 20 percent increase in the funding for community law centres—the front door of legal access for so many New Zealanders. It’s important that we maintain and strengthen that network of support.

Can I also refer to the $50 million in new operating funding for the court system, because it is important that we have an environment in which courts can dispense justice, in which lawyers can do their job, the judges can do their job, victims can be safe, and the offenders can be managed correctly and properly.

Can I also say that we’ve had to provide extra funding to undo the disastrous Judith Collins Family Court reforms. We’ve now got a review going under way on that, because we’ve got to fix that up because far too many New Zealanders are being harmed and damaged by the 2014 Judith Collins reforms.

Finally, and Parliament has already, under this head, talked about the criminal justice reforms—when you look at what this Government was faced with when it took office: a rapidly rising prison population, more and more people on remand, more people in prison than ever before, more and more people serving longer sentences. But here’s the thing: no plan to deal with it. No plan to deal with the underlying issues; just build another American-style mega-prison. That was the only response they had.

Yet, when you have a look at what’s happening in our prison population—more than a third of them with depression and anxiety; nearly half of them with addiction problems; so many with traumatic brain injuries, many of them undiagnosed; and many of them themselves victims of violence—it’s time we had a prison system and a justice system that dealt with the underlying problems. We fix prisoners, we stop them reoffending, then we have fewer victims of crime. That’s about community safety, that’s about a better way of running a justice system, and we’re doing it.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Before I go into the report from the Justice Committee, I just want to go into a couple of things that the National Party members have been saying. Mr Bennett stood up and he spoke for about half of his five minutes, rambling on about how much of an issue the huge prison population was. He was asking the Minister of Justice, “What’s the Minister going to do about it? The Minister can’t fix it.” But then he started saying things like that it was over 10,000 and in a couple of years it’s going to be over 14,000. It beggars belief that he is actually standing there while he’s making his speech, thinking that this has all been caused over the last nine months and that anything that we’ve done over this side of the Chamber has caused that horrendous corrections hand grenade to be lobbed over our way. It is demonstrable that it has taken at least the nine years that that National Party was in Government and that it caused the very issues that he’s complaining about now. He started spouting off about the mental health issues and the rehabilitation, and how we’re going to fix that. He talked about the rehabilitation rates in general and how we’re going to fix that. And then he puts it all on us.

Yeah, it is all on us because we’re in Government right now, and we’re doing something about it. All of the Ministers in the sector have put forward a plan not only for this Budget coming forward but for the rest of the term as well, and we’re going to do something about it. We’ve got an actual ambitious goal. That’s probably what’s surprising for the likes of Mr Bennett and the other backbenchers sitting over that side of the Chamber: the ambitious nature—the challenging nature—that we have when we set goals like 30 percent reduction in the prison population. But we don’t look at the mountain and say that it’s too high; we come up with a plan, and we come up with policy that backs that up as well.

What Mr Mitchell said when he spoke—and he was actually first to respond to the Minister. He said that he came into this House as an MP to make it better, more safe, and not to make it less safe for the public of New Zealand. Well, perhaps he just needs to look over the last nine years. First of all—I’ve already mentioned the increase in prison numbers—the decrease in the police numbers under that Government. It wasn’t just a decrease in the rate of police numbers being added; they actually had a decrease over the term—a decrease over the term. So when we’ve got another aspirational, ambitious, challenging target of putting 1,800 new front-line police onto the streets, all they want to do is complain—all they want to do is complain. How many police did the National Party end up adding over the last nine years? Minus 16.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: It went down.

Minus 16. It went down, and all we’ve been hearing is complaining about when and why and how we want to have 1,800 new police. What their excuse is when they don’t like it is that, apparently, 1,800 new police is going to cause more prisoners and it’s going to cause more crimes. Well, if you look at it one-dimensionally like that, perhaps they’ll be correct, but we look at it in multidimensional facets over this side of the Chamber. There will be a couple of hundred more beds that are needed because of the police that’ve been put on the front line, because they’re there to combat the crime that is being committed right now: but for the added front-line being put out there, that crime would go undetected. That’s what the National Party is saying. That’s what the National Party wants us to accept—that’s what the National Party wants us to accept—but it’s very important to note that, actually, the Commissioner of Police, during these hearings, told us that New Zealand’s operating model focuses on preventing harm and crime in the community.

One of the questions when Mr David Bennett stood up was, “How are you going to do it? How are you going to reduce the prison population by that much?” Well, there’s a new word—perhaps it’s new for that member, but it’s not for this side of the Chamber—it’s called prevention, and that’s one of the major roles that police officers have in this country. They don’t just go out there and arrest and be reactive like that Government thought they did and how that Government utilised our men and women in blue. They’re there to prevent, and that’s what they’re going to do.

I can’t go through all of the good things that this Government’s going to be doing with this appropriation in these sections in five minutes, but we will deliver.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’m surprised that member, Darroch Ball, managed to get to five minutes, to be honest, with all the Government’s doing in terms of the appropriation, because this Government is—[Interruption] They are doing some things, and what they’re doing is cutting successful and innovative programmes.

I want to get to that in my remarks on the Estimates, but I, firstly, want to start with the Vote Police appropriation about—well, it claims to be for 1,800 new police over the next three years, and that’s the big coalition commitment between New Zealand First—Darroch Ball’s party—and Labour, that will add 1,800 front-line police. Well, we had the interesting experience in the Justice Committee of the Minister of Police, Stuart Nash, turning up and actually admitting to the committee that despite his press release trumpeting $298.8 million in additional operational expenditure over the next four years, this was not enough to deliver the 1,800 police over three years.

We had this comical exchange with Mr Nash where he said, “Well, I’m going to go back to Mr Robertson and I’m going to have to ask for more money. I don’t exactly know how much more, but I’ll have to go and get some more.” So the Minister, in his own words, admits that not enough money has been appropriated. I might just add, in passing, that the $298.8 million over four years is a considerable increase on Labour’s pre-election estimates of $40 million being required for their promises around extra police—or, it was $40 million on one occasion, then it turned into $80 million, and I think there was $140 million thrown in there at some point. It’s certainly not $298.8 million. So, as with many other things, the Labour Party have proved that they can’t count.

But then we get to the point about how long it will take for these police to be delivered. Minister Stuart Nash is fond of saying “We’re striving to do it within three years.” Well, that’s all well and good, except we know that he received official advice from his officials about phasing the extra police in over five years, not three years. We had this, again, very comical exchange in the select committee, in which Stuart Nash, the Minister of Police, openly admitted to the committee that he hadn’t even read that advice. Members opposite may disagree, but on this side of the House, we just find that extraordinary. Frankly, it is treating the Parliament with contempt. It is treating the public with contempt.

Look, members opposite and members on this side of the House will disagree with official advice. Any Government is entitled to disagree with official advice put by its officials. The advice is contestable. Ministers are perfectly entitled to do different things, but at the very least, I do not think it is unreasonable for the public to expect Ministers to read advice. I’ve worked in a Minister’s office. I know there’s a lot of paperwork. I know it’s a tough job. I know that Stuart Nash is the Minister of Fisheries as well as the Minister of Police, but at the very least, I think members—on this side of the House, certainly—think it is perfectly reasonable to expect Ministers to read advice. But we had this extraordinary situation of Stuart Nash saying “I didn’t even read it. Paid it no attention. Didn’t even read it.” I just find that remarkable.

So that deals with the 1,800 new police. I also want to talk about the highly regrettable funding cuts to the mental health and police co-response pilot, which has been highlighted in the public—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Fake news, fake news—making it up, making it up.

—over the last couple of weeks. Again, we asked—well, he’s saying, “Back it up.” Well, the backing it up—it’s in the Minister’s own written Estimates answers, Mr Jones. We asked Mr Nash, through the Estimates process, what the status of the programme was, and the answer came back: “It doesn’t exist any more.” It’s gone. The money—I think the exact phrase was “The funding has been reallocated to other priorities.” An $8 million programme instituted by the previous Government—it hadn’t quite got off the ground yet. It was due to start in a couple of months. In September, it was due to start. It was universally supported by everyone in the sector. There’s not a mental health worker out there or a police officer who wouldn’t say that this is a fantastic initiative.

In fact, we had this extraordinary situation of the Minister sitting next to the Commissioner of Police, and the police commissioner, in the Estimates hearing, said, “Oh, I’m actually very hopeful it will continue.” But no, no, this Government knows best. Stuart Nash and David Clark have decided that $8 million, which, frankly, the Government has spent in the 30 seconds I’ve just spent talking about this issue—they’ve decided that the money can be reallocated better to fees-free education for middle-class kids to go to university for free, or something like that.

So, frankly, the cutting of this programme is a disgrace. The fact that the decision to cut it has been universally panned should make the Government pause and reflect and reinstitute it.

I haven’t even covered the cutting of very important targets around 24/7 police stations, or around attending burglaries within 48 hours—98 percent of them within 48 hours. All of these programmes and all of these important targets have been cut by this disgraceful Government.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Under this coalition Government, we are in the process of delivering the greatest increase in the New Zealand Police service in its history: 1,800 more front-line officers are heading to our communities, and it is not only 1,800 more front-line officers, but 485 back-office staff as well. Now, how did this come about? Well, how it came about is because in the last annual plan of the previous Government, it actually said in the appendices, “There will be no more police until at least 2020, and we expect police to do more with less.”—no more police.

This was at a stage where, in the last workplace survey, 60 percent of respondents—so these are front-line officers—said that they experienced an undue level of workplace stress, and only 40 percent of these officers said that they were meeting the promises that they were making to our community. But the surprising thing was you had over 80 percent of officers saying that they were completely committed to the New Zealand Police service and committed to the communities they served. So what we had was a group of men and women who were passionate about the job they did. They knew what needed to be done to keep our communities safe, but they just did not have the resources.

The problem is when you get 60 percent of a workforce saying they have an undue level of workplace stress, then cracks begin to appear. What happens is that partners—their husbands, their wives, their partners—say “I know you love your job, dear, but I can’t put up with this level of stress. I can’t put up with you coming home every single day absolutely stressed.” So something had to change.

Something had to change, and I’ll tell you what that change is. For the second time, Labour and New Zealand First came together and said, “We really need to drive change in this area. We need to do something differently.” We’re using technology pretty well—that’s a given—but the thing that we knew was going to make a difference was actually having more men and women on the front line, keeping our communities safe.

What I will say is everyone from the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister down buys into the police’s operating model of Prevention First. This is about having men and women on the front line, working in our communities, and engrained within our communities and knowing what is going on, to the point where they can make decisions at a very early stage, as opposed to fighting fires and locking people up. That is not the way to run a modern police service, and it’s certainly created huge problems for our whole justice sector. So 1,800 more police is what we said we’d deliver, and we’ll do it.

Now the interesting thing is I have said that I have only two key performance indicators (KPIs) for the Commissioner of Police. One is 80 percent trust and confidence—i.e., 80 percent of our communities have trust and confidence in the New Zealand Police force. That is also one of the commissioner’s KPIs. The only other KPI that I said I want from a governance perspective is that 90 percent of the New Zealand Police officers say that they have the resources they need to deliver on the promises they make to their Government. That is up from the 40 percent that it was under that Government, and it was only going to get worse because there were going to be no more police for at least three more years—three more years.

Now I understand my role. I understand my role. My role as the Minister of Police is to ensure that our men and women on the front line have the resources they need to keep our communities safe. That is my role. The role of the Commissioner of Police is to determine how to best allocate those resources. The Commissioner of Police has been in the New Zealand Police service for 40 years—for 40 years. Imagine me coming to the commissioner and saying, “You must do this. You must allocate your men and women here. You’ve got to keep that station open 24/7.”

Well, I suspect that the commissioner knows more about policing than I do. I suspect that the men and women who are in charge of our policing districts know more about how to best allocate their resources to keep our communities safe. So I am not going to tell our police officers how to run operationally.

Let’s get down to this mental health pilot. If that member Chris Bishop really wants to know about this, in the last Budget, there was $100 million of unappropriated money—$100 million unappropriated. So when they talk about a scheme, they hadn’t even allocated any money to it. There was no money in the Budget for it. There was no money in the Budget for it.

Kia orana e Maine Vaa Tuatua. It is indeed a pleasure to rise and take a call to speak to the Appropriation (2018/19 Estimates) Bill in its committee stage, looking at the votes that sit within the ambit of the justice sector. Now we just heard from the Minister of Police, who said that we need to do something different, and that was actually a running theme that we heard from Ministers who spoke to the Justice Committee, as well. In fact, there’s a quote that’s been attributed to, I think, Albert Einstein that, basically, says that “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of madness”,

And that’s what we have seen. For too long, we have seen a previous Government that has pursued justice policies and shaped public discourse around the idea that we should just be locking up more and more people and giving them tougher, longer sentences.

We have heard, from previous speakers on this side of the House this evening, that that doesn’t work. That has resulted in what our Ministers of this coalition Government have inherited—so, basically, increasing violent criminal offending, the fact that our reoffending rate has pretty much stayed at about 60 percent, and the fact that our prison population is ballooning. So, basically, we’ve got a criminal justice system that has failed, and we need to do something different. And that’s what this coalition Government is committed to, and that’s what we heard from successive Ministers who spoke at the select committee: that we want meaningful, sustainable change within the criminal justice system. We want to reduce reoffending, reduce offending, and also ensure that we have fewer victims of crime. We need a criminal justice system that holds offenders accountable but that also looks at how we can provide better rehabilitation and reintegration so that, when these people are outside of the prison system, they’re actually able to reintegrate better into our communities. We also need to support victims better, and that’s what we’ve seen in terms of Budget 2018 allocations, as well.

We’ve heard from the justice Minister that there will be a package of reforms that will be shaped by the criminal justice summit. This will, basically, be a much better public discourse. It’ll be a national conversation that will bring together victims of crime, victim advocates, those who have worked at the front lines, from different backgrounds, people who have experience in the criminal justice sector, and experts in the field, to then come up with reform proposals—what are we going to do, what are some of the possible solutions, informed by evidence rather than led by some arbitrary targets that the previous Government set, half of which weren’t even met.

We’ve also heard from the Minister that there was a Safer Ethnic Communities Ministerial Forum that aimed to also better that conversation and ensure that various aspects of our diverse communities understand what the priorities are that this Government has, and also have the opportunity to feed into some of those possible solutions and put forth their experiences of the criminal justice sector as well.

So what did we hear from Ministers in terms of holding offenders to account? We’ve actually just heard from the police Minister about the commitment to increase the number of new police officers in New Zealand. We’ve also heard from the member Darroch Ball that, actually, the previous Government cut the number of police officers that we’ve had. So this goal of increasing police numbers by 1,800 is ambitious. The Minister acknowledged that at the select committee process, as well. He explained that it would enable the deployment of 1,100 police on the streets, 700 to combat organised crime, and would be supported by 485 non-sworn staff as well. Budget 2018 takes the first step towards that. All our Ministers who spoke at the select committee acknowledged that one Budget will not fix the mess that’s been inherited—the mess that was created, largely, over the last decade. But this Budget takes the first step towards that, and that’s important to note.

We also heard an assurance from the Minister that the quality of police—[Time expired]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to speak in relation, particularly, to the subject of courts within the justice portfolio. I refer, of course, to the Estimates process and, particularly, the discussion that I had, along with other members of the Justice Committee—myself not being a permanent member thereof, but attending for the purpose of that hearing—with the Minister of Justice, Andrew Little. I’d like to touch on a couple of key points in particular. One is the relationship between the Parliament and the courts. I’ll be using the three-strikes rule and its application as an example within that, and some thoughts that the Minister has around “mechanistic sentencing”, as he describes it. So that’s the first area that I will be discussing. The second is the discussion about having a plan for reform, or a lack thereof, in relation to targets being set, or rather not being set, in the justice sector.

Before I get on to that, I’d like to mention, at least in passing, the fact that what’s not being said throughout this process is really in relation to courts reform that will improve the timeliness of decision making. That would be the first place that this Government should start if it is serious about its stated goal of reducing the population of the prisons by 30 percent. That would be a relatively easy win, at least on the remand side, and so I encourage the Government and the relevant Minister, in particular, to give some thought to that.

Also, as a footnote but very relevant to the discussion in the justice sector, and, particularly, again, on the subject of courts, I’d like to recommend to the Government that they continue—and, indeed, extend—the alcohol and other drug treatment courts. I think it’s widely acknowledged around this House and, indeed, by those in the sector, that these have been very successful on the trial basis where they’re currently implemented. I acknowledge the work of the previous Government but also Judge Lisa Tremewan for her leadership in that regard, getting those under way. I’ve seen them in operation myself. I’ve gone to visit them. I do commend to the Government—indeed, implore them—to roll out what is needed by way of funding and resources to extend those throughout the country.

So, speaking, as I say, on the subject of the relationship between the Parliament and the courts, it’s probably more in sorrow than in anger that I note some of the comments of the Minister for Courts at that hearing—in particular, the false choice that was made between having people in prison who have offended as against completing rehabilitation. Of course, it’s a false choice, because it’s the very opportunity that we have, through placing people who should be in prison for the sake of the wider community, and also for their sake, in the sense that they can receive the rehabilitation while they are detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. So I would challenge the Government not to be ideological on the subject of imprisonment and actually view it as a genuine opportunity to reform lives for their good and indeed for the good of the whole community.

Speaking to the subject of the relationship between Parliament and the courts, I was seeking to make the point through a series of questions to the Minister for Courts that, while he is of course correct in saying that Parliament speaks to the courts through legislation, that doesn’t mean that we should not set strict boundaries in terms of what the community’s expectations are—that is, the community whom we represent here in the House of Representatives. Indeed, it is precisely because of our democratic mandate to make laws and not apply them that we must be mindful of our role in directing the courts to appropriate sentencing and, indeed, criminal procedure in general.

The three-strikes law, it is well accepted, has been applied in a way that, I would say, is unexpected, to use perhaps a euphemistic phrase for the situation that has arisen, whereby manifestly unjust exceptions have, in fact, become the rule. Statistically, that is the case; certainly in the case of subsequent-strike murders, every single one has seen that exception invoked. So I would challenge the Minister of Justice to think about how law reform could be made—far from scrapping that programme, as he has indicated that he would like to do, notwithstanding that he was stopped by a coalition partner, but actually to give serious thought to how that law could actually be applied as Parliament intended and what he could say to the courts, again through legislation, to achieve that.

Finally, in my brief remaining time, I would encourage the Minister to get serious about setting targets and not simply set up a process of review to inform the fact that there are targets.

Kia orana, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to rise to speak on the justice sector. It’s a sector that’s close to my heart, having worked for most of my working life, before sitting in this Chamber, in that sector. It is an expensive sector, both in real terms, in the cost to victims, to their whānau, to their communities, and in terms of broad social harm, as we’re forced to remove more and more people and lock them up. And it is expensive in terms of the bottom line. So to know all the failures that came through this sector as the previous administration refused to change tack as the evidence mounted against its tough-on-crime approach to imprisonment, in particular, is heartbreaking.

In fact, all that approach did was make politicians look tough. It did nothing to keep our communities safer. It blew up our prison populations, costing us billions upon billions that could’ve been spent on preventing crime, on treating addiction, mental health—all the things that we know cause people to commit crime.

While I watched our justice system be gutted, while the previous Government’s legal aid policy was declared unlawful by the Court of Appeal, while community law centres lost most of their mandate and funding—the stats speak pretty loudly against all of that. In the annual reviews earlier this year, we found that serious crime went up in almost every category: serious sexual assault and violent crime, including homicide, went up; illicit drug offending went up. In fact, methamphetamine offending—in terms of supply, manufacture, and importation—is about to overtake cannabis offending in our courts. Imagine if we’d taken an addiction healthcare approach to drug offending and treated the source of the problem, which is addiction. But we didn’t. Robbery and theft went up, and offences involving offensive weapons went up by a whopping 20 percent.

Our communities were being made less and less safe as we were locking people up, and that’s callous policy. Recidivism was at about 50 percent. So we know that we weren’t taking the opportunity, while we had people in custody, to help them overcome the issues that had led them down that path. So we locked them up, in Serco-run prisons often—in Auckland, at least, where I’m from—and I know that rehabilitation programmes weren’t really there. I know that people were, essentially, being unlawfully held, because they weren’t able to become eligible for parole because they weren’t able to complete the courses they needed to complete. That’s courses as simple as literacy courses but also in terms of drug and alcohol treatment, in terms of anger management treatment. What a lost opportunity.

So now we are changing that. I am delighted to see that instead of building the American-style mega-prison at Waikeria, we’re actually building a smaller prison that includes a mental health unit. So we are investing in what we know will make our communities safer once we release people, instead of holding them for longer and longer and longer, and then releasing them as more hardened criminals—again, callous policy-making. Ignoring the evidence is dangerous.

We’re investing in probation officers, in service managers, and in psychologists to make sure that people on bail and on parole are supported into a crime-free life. We’re putting 20 percent extra money into community law centres, reviewing their mandate, and consulting with the actual sector, because we know that access to justice is important at that level. We’re also investing in youth justice, and this is a subject that’s close to my heart, because it is actually one of our biggest violations in both the justice and the child rights sector. We’re investing in finally—finally—facilitating a move of 17-year-olds—children—out of the adult criminal justice system, out of adult prisons, and I welcome that. Thank you.

I want to speak to one particular aspect of the Estimates, and that concerns the Attorney-General’s appearance before the Justice Committee. I must confess, it’s my misfortune to have to follow on from the Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, whose speech was nothing more than melodramatic and formulaic drivel. There is a lot that I could talk about in her third-grade effort, but I would rather concentrate on what could be, potentially, an important issue. It’s one I’ve raised with the Attorney-General offline, but I do need to get it on the record so that if it all blows up, at least I can say, “I told you so.”—not you, Mr Chair, but I mean that in a general sense. It concerns temporary judges.

The previous administration decided that temporary judges were constitutionally improper, and so when the courts legislation was reformed a couple of years ago, the new District Court Act provided that one could no longer appoint temporary judges. The former Attorney-General Dr Cullen had appointed quite a number of temporary judges, and at one stage I think there were 22 temporary judges who were appointed for fixed terms. What normally happened would be that District Court judges on a temporary warrant would be made permanent after a period of time. Toward the end of the National Party’s term in office, we decided that one could no longer simply increase the number of judges every couple of years—although the cap had gone up from 156 to 160 when the new District Courts legislation was passed—and that one needed to have a sensible assessment of just what the population projections were, so that there could be a proper discussion about the cap. That work, I understand, is almost completed now.

At the present time, we have nine temporary judges whose terms are going to expire between the end of this year and about June next year. My concern is that their terms may expire before this Parliament has had a chance to look at the question of the judicial cap, or whether indeed there should be a judicial cap, because what we’re seeing is that District Court judges continue to be appointed but they are being appointed as permanent judges, and that the temporary judges stay in that limbo state of temporary judges. So there is, at least, a possibility that those persons’ terms could come to an end and then they cease to be judges, and that could cause problems for the administration of justice. So I think the Government is going to need to get on with this matter pretty urgently, to complete the piece of work that has been done, as between Mr Little’s ministry and the Chief District Court Judge, on a judicial resourcing model, and then make some decisions about what the cap is to be, so that if Parliament needs to move to increase that cap to protect the position of those temporary judges, it can do so, and those judges will not necessarily cease to be holding judicial warrants.

So it’s a rather arcane but very important point that this Parliament may need to address at relatively short notice. I’ve been given to understand that there’s no problem, but I think there could be a problem, and that at least a number of temporary judges’ warrants will come to an end. Of course, we did not approve of temporary judges, because it’s unconstitutional for the executive to be appointing people to the judiciary for, say, a term of two years, because the implication—or, at least, the fear—is that people will say, “Well, if that person’s appointed a judge, in order to get a permanent warrant he or she has to please the executive.” The important thing is that as soon as judges are appointed, they should be able, as a separate branch of government, to get on with the role of judging, without fear or favour in terms of what the executive wants. But it’s very important that they not be appointed for fixed terms.

So that was the rationale about why temporary judges, as a category, were disestablished, but there is this small remaining group. We need to make sure that if the cap is to be increased, it can be increased in such time that these people do not lose their warrants.