Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take your call on this, the first reading of the Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill. And can I acknowledge the member Darroch Ball for bringing this bill to the House. It’s very unusual that—and the Opposition will be taking the first call. I have to say on reading this bill it’s very much like a National Party bill, and had we brought this to the House it’s highly unlikely that we would have had the support of the Labour Party or the Green Party. But I understand that both of them are supporting this bill through first reading and to select committee, so that’s great to know that the bill has got has got cross-House and cross-party support.

It is a very good bill because it is strengthening the penalties that the judge and the court can hand down to offenders that assault our first responders. And whether it be our police officers, whether it be our firefighters, or our paramedics, our St John Ambulance officers—we as a country ask them to go out and do a job that is tough, it’s challenging, and often they have to deal with unsavoury characters that are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. And a sad reality of their job is that they are often exposed to and subject to assault.

The one thing that they can ask us to do—the one thing that they can ask from us as a Parliament—is to recognise that and to take it seriously and to send a very clear message to offenders that, actually, they’ll be dealt with with the full force of the law. And if you want to assault a first responder, if you want to attack a first responder, then actually what this bill is saying is that you will face a minimum of six months in prison.

Now, there is a clause there—the manifestly unjust clause, which is contained also in the three-strikes legislation—which does allow a judge under extraordinary circumstances to be able to make a different ruling or apply a different sentence. But, fundamentally, if someone assaults or attacks a first responder, then they’ll now be sent a very clear message that you’ll be going to jail for six months. That’s a good thing.

The only problem that we do have with this bill—we could argue that it doesn’t go far enough. But one of the issues that we do have with this bill—and we’ll be talking to the sponsor of the bill, and we’ll be using the opportunity as it goes through the select committee process—is we actually feel very strongly that nurses and doctors and staff working in the emergency department are subjected to exactly the same threats, challenges, assaults, and attacks that our firefighters, our paramedics, and our police have to face.

We actually think that as a Parliament and as a country we can send a very positive message there as well. We could say that we’re not going to tolerate that. If you are taken to an emergency room, where, actually, these people are fundamentally driven by one thing, and that is to care for people and to try and make them well, and if they’re subjected to an assault or an attack, actually, we feel that the offenders should be sent a very clear message as well. They should be going to jail for six months—that’s the starting point. That is the starting point.

Can I just say that last year there was a debate that personally I was highly offended by in this House, and it was around the three-strikes legislation. And it is relevant to this bill because, actually, it related to our corrections officers. The same thing applies to our corrections officers as applies to our police officers, to our paramedics, and to our firefighters. We ask them as a country to take on a very difficult job—a job that most of us would probably not want to take on or have a crack at ourselves. So what we need to do is we need to say as a Parliament that if you are assaulted, if you are attacked, we’re going to back you up and we’re going to support you. We’re going to make sure that we send a very loud, clear, powerful message from this Parliament and this House to say that if you do that, an attack on a corrections officer is an attack on all of us.

I was disappointed that in this House last year we had a debate around that, because there was a trivialisation of an attack on a corrections officer, to the point where I received correspondence from other corrections officers saying that “We want to feel like we have the support of this Parliament. We don’t want to feel like you are going to trivialise an attack or an assault on us. We should be able to go into our workplace. We should be able to feel safe there.” And that didn’t happen in this House last year.

So I want to appeal to the Opposition—I see the justice Minister is in the House tonight, and it’s good to see him here. I want to appeal to the Opposition—[Interruption] Sorry; what was that?

💬 Hon James Shaw: You said you wanted to appeal to the Opposition. I think you’re the Opposition.

The Green Party leader is being very helpful in pointing out that the justice Minister is not in the Opposition. That’s helpful. So I appeal to the justice Minister and the Government—is that better?

I hope, Minister, that you’re going to take a call tonight on this bill. I’m not sure. I see you in the House; I hope that you are. And I hope that you are going to get up and you’re going to restate clearly for this House that actually you do support our corrections officers and you do support our firefighters, our police officers, and our paramedics—especially in light of what we saw transpire as the events unfolded in Christchurch two and a half weeks ago—and that, actually, you’re going to support a bill like this and you’re going to say, “The one thing that we can do in this Parliament is that we can back you up, we can support you, and we can say as a country that we’re not going to tolerate it. We’re not going to put up with it.”

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Wait for a Labour member to speak. Don’t be so arrogant.

Sorry what was that, Mr McAnulty? If you’re going to say something, say it loud enough so I can hear you. What was it?

💬 Kieran McAnulty: I called you arrogant for a start, and, second of all—

Mr McAnulty’s calling me arrogant. You’re calling me arrogant for what, Mr McAnulty—for what?

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Do you really want to get into that exchange?

Oh, he’s speechless now. He doesn’t know what to say. If you want to get up and say something—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! [Interruption] Order! Don’t bring me into the debate. And, second, if you two want to have a discussion, take it out into the lobby. Finish your speech.

Well, I’d suggest—I take offence at your tone too, actually, Mr Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Really? Order! E noho. No, no. This is a time for members to debate this bill. I’m not going to tolerate having a conversation going on where the member is questioning another member, and that’s kind of the interaction. This is the time to take a very serious bill seriously. But my ruling is really I made a ruling and then you questioned it—that’s out of order. Don’t do it again.

I agree with you, Mr Assistant Speaker. This is a serious bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! I just made another ruling, and you’re commenting on it. Just go to the speech.

So this is a very serious bill, and I’d ask any of the members opposite, if you want to be brave enough to make an interjection and call something out, take a call. Let us hear what you have to say on this bill.

We do support this bill. We do want to see the protections that are going to be provided for our first responders extended to our emergency services personnel—in particular our doctors and our nurses in the ER. We actually feel that they do deserve that same level of protection. We believe that they deserve to have a message sent from us as a Parliament saying that we will take it seriously if they’re assaulted. And I can tell you now, if you visit an emergency department in any major centre around the country on a Friday or Saturday night, you’ll see what they have to put up with. You’ll see what they have to face—mainly because of drugs, mainly a lot of synthetic drugs, and alcohol. And, actually, although you may not believe it, Ms Curran, they do actually deserve to have the same level of protection. They do actually deserve to be recognised the same way that our first responders do. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on this bill and to say I agree with the member who’s just resumed his seat, Mark Mitchell, to say the principles and motivating forces behind this bill are very, very important. We call on our first responders—police, ambulance workers, other health workers, and fire and emergency workers—and, of course, prison officers, provided for in the bill, to do some of the most dangerous work and deal with some of the most dangerous people we have in our community.

We can think back to the incredibly courageous and heroic actions of those two police officers on 15 March who effected the arrest of the Christchurch mosque shooter. Think about this week and Monday this week, where in three motor vehicle accidents on roads in New Zealand, nine New Zealanders lost their lives. And who turned out to deal with the issue, to deal with the trauma, to mop up the pieces, to get people who survived off to hospital to get the care? It was the police and the ambulance workers, and in some cases fire and emergency workers as well. They do an incredible job, and we owe it to them to afford them respect and dignity and—actually, through a range of decisions, not just law-making but resourcing—the protection that they need to do their job.

We already do that in many respects. We give police officers powers that no other citizen has. We give ambulance workers the power to get to places in a hurry and do their job and do their work so they can save lives and get people to be treated carefully. We give prison officers powers inside prisons to deal with some of the most harmful people in our communities so they can keep us safe. So we thank them for that. I’m sure many of those people, those professionals, will say there’s more we can do, and we should be doing as much as we can.

We support this bill in this first reading so that it can be examined closely by the select committee, but the select committee will have questions to answer—questions that we want answers to. The fundamental question will be: what is it that this bill is adding that is not presently in our current law? When you have a look at the Crimes Act, we see a number of sections that deal with violent acts against our first responders and emergency workers. So section 188 of the Crimes Act has the offence of wounding with intent. There are two different penalties: 14 years if you cause grievous bodily harm, seven years if you cause injury. Section 189, “Injuring with intent”—10 years if you cause serious injury, five years lesser injury. Section 191, “Aggravated wounding or injury”—14 years and seven years, depending on the extent of the harm or the injury. Section 192, “Aggravated assault”—and interestingly, with section 192 of the Crimes Act, there is a specific and separate provision for aggravated assault against constables in the execution of their duty. Then there’s section 193, “Assault with intent to injure”.

So there are provisions there, and the benefit of having a number of different provisions in the Crimes Act, as front-line police officers will tell you, is that you then have some flexibility and some choice about what you charge the offender with, because the circumstances of offending will differ from one case to the next, and you’ll want police officers to have a range of different grades of offending that they can then lay a charge in relation to.

Then we have the Sentencing Act, which is a very important Act at the back end of administration of justice, because it gives judges, then, the scope to weigh up a whole bunch of different factors to decide what is just in the circumstances of the offending. The sentencing principles laid out in section 8 of that Act lay out a number of things: “the gravity of the offending … including the degree of culpability”; the impact on the victim—absolutely important. There is no question that ambulance workers, fire and emergency workers, and the prison officers who are subject to assault—that can have a huge impact on the future career of that emergency professional. So those are factors that ought to be taken into account in sentencing if the offender is charged with a serious offence. You have the seriousness of the offence as a principle that has to be taken into account, as well as the circumstances of the offender. That’s what you do when you administer justice. Then section 9 has a whole list, and a growing list, of aggravating and mitigating factors, and amongst the aggravating factors is—Mr Assistant Speaker, you look like you’re standing.

I apologise to the member but this is a five-minute call and it had 10 minutes on the clock.

Well, that was an interesting speech from the Minister of Justice, Andrew Little, who’s clearly got used to the trappings of being a Minister very early on, in the sense that he’s used to the 10-minute calls and he’s had to take a call on a member’s day in order to speak on the Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill. It was sort of hard to know if the Labour Party is going to support this bill or not, because, if you listened to his speech, it was a laundry list of reasons as to why the bill shouldn’t pass, but yet we’ve got this strange hybrid coalition relationship between the New Zealand First Party and the Labour Party. So the Labour Party is going to vote for it.

I’m going to make a prediction—I’m going to make a prediction. I’ve made a few predictions in the last couple of weeks and they’ve all been proven correct, and I’m going to make another one: the Labour Party—

💬 Hon Dr Megan Woods: What about the polls? Are you picking the next poll?

I’ll make a prediction. I’m going to make a prediction, Megan Woods. Power prices are going to go up and you guys are going to lose the next election—OK?—largely due to your own incompetent management of the portfolio. You have no idea what you are doing in the portfolio.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! [Interruption] Order! Don’t bring me into the debate, and, secondly, can you address the bill, please.

Sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker. Mr Assistant Speaker probably would do a better job of managing the power portfolio. But I’m going to make a prediction, which is that the Labour Party will not vote for this bill when it comes back to the House for its second reading, and it certainly will not vote for it at third reading. I predict this bill, if it does pass into law, will only pass into law with the support of the New Zealand First Party and the National Party, because Andrew Little gave a list of reasons as to all the reasons he did not want to vote for the bill: all of the existing offences in the Crimes Act, all of the various things that could already be done to recognise crimes and protections against first responders in the Summary Offences Act 1981 and the Crimes Act 1961. He knows—and Mark Patterson’s sitting there grinning, next to Clayton Mitchell—and they know what I’m saying is true.

I actually think it will be the first bill, if it does pass, that passes with New Zealand First and National Party support, and that will be, actually, a bit of a totemic day for the New Zealand First Party, and, actually, maybe the Labour Party will be a bit upset about that. They may come to rue the day that they allowed this bill to go through.

But, anyway, here we are—Darroch Ball’s bill. He’s, unfortunately, absent, but I know that he would be very pleased, and I want to congratulate him on—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Not supposed to do that, Chris.

Well, I’m just congratulating him; I’m not passing judgment on him. I just want to congratulate him on his bill being drawn from the ballot. We will be supporting this to select committee because we think the intent of the bill is good. Actually, I do have to say, I do partly agree with some of the points—

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Three minutes, and he tells us what he thinks.

Oh, Clare Curran, goodness me. That member over there is really not one to critique speeches. I sat in Government, as a Government backbencher, for three years, at this time of night, and I watched Clare Curran come down to the debating chamber and give the world’s worst parliamentary speeches about a succession of legislation that that member had no idea about, for month after—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): That would make a really good general debate speech but this is not a general debate.

It would be a good general debate speech. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Look, as my friend and colleague Mark Mitchell said, we are fully supportive of our first responders. In particular in the last couple of weeks, we’ve had cause to reflect on that in quite a serious way, actually—if I could make a serious point—in the House. We’ve reflected on them in the last two weeks, both in this Chamber but also as MPs go in and around the community and the vigils and the memorials. Actually, I think it’s coincidental but it’s actually also appropriate that the bill in New Zealand First’s name has come to the House at this time, because, more than ever before, New Zealanders are thinking about the great job that our police officers have been doing, our emergency, health, fire services, and our corrections officers have been doing, as well. So we’re going to vote for the bill to the select committee—

💬 Jamie Strange: What’s the name of the bill?

The Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill, Jamie Strange. You don’t actually have to read out the bill’s name to make a speech. One of the things you learn in third form debating, Mr Strange, is you don’t have to read the title of the debate out to have a debate about it. You should know that, as a school teacher. We’ll be voting for this at first reading, and we welcome this bill to the House.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It’s my understanding that there’s not supposed to be a reference to an absence of a member from the Chamber, and in that speech just then, there was, regarding the sponsor of this bill. So I’m just seeking your guidance.

That is correct, but it needs to be raised at the time. It’s actually my job to do that. I was satisfied that the member actually addressed it when it was pointed out to him. As I said earlier in the evening, I could be the whistle-blower all night and, at this time of the night, I don’t really want to be. I’m going to rely on members to actually know the rules and observe them. So we’ll have the next call. I think it’s the Greens.

Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. This is actually an incredibly quite serious bill despite the jovial nature of the debate that has preceded my contribution tonight. This bill, obviously being debated tonight, is the Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill, which I state on the record for the member Chris Bishop.

I think it’s, as I noted, an incredibly serious topic that we are addressing tonight, particularly in light of recent events over a fortnight ago in this country, in Christchurch. For that reason, I think it’s important that we here in this House acknowledge the incredible work that was undertaken by the first responders. In line with the Minister Andrew Little, we absolutely, as the Greens, recognise and respect the intention behind this bill, but reflecting on some contributions, such as those made by the Hon Mark Mitchell, around how we have to recognise and respect and ensure the safety of these first responders, the unfortunate thing about a response like this in legislation is that it occurs after the fact. So we do need to be ensuring that we are bolstering the resources as well to ensure that there is that safety provided so that these kinds of events don’t actually happen and that we don’t need to be using these greater increased penalties.

In light of these recent events and in light of respecting the work that is undertaken by our first responders, the incredibly brave people around this country, the Green Party will be supporting this through to select committee so that we can have that informed and, hopefully, mature and respectful discussion about how we ensure the safety of our first responders and aren’t just having an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff after these events have occurred.

💬 Hon David Bennett: Do we really have to listen to this?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Thank you, Mr Speaker. All yours, mate!

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’d just like to follow on from my colleague Chris Bishop. We all know what’s going to happen with this bill. The Labour Party has just approved this bill to go to select committee. This bill actually went through its first reading late last year—the start of the first reading, when Darroch Ball did the first speech on it—and it’s taken some time for the Labour, New Zealand First, and Green parties to come to an arrangement. That arrangement is that the Labour Party will pass it through to select committee.

Now, that’s the fallacy of having those three parties in coalition, and how it’s all smoke and mirrors. They’re going out to the public and saying, “Look how we have done something here.” The reality is that it was one of those deals that Winston had to get through late at night when Jacinda Ardern was getting her changes around mining and that, and this was one of the little deals on the side that Mr Peters put on the table and said, “Well, we need to get at least this bill read the first time.” So the Labour Party will use their time in this House, if they use their time, to really advocate for why this bill shouldn’t go through, and they are setting up the argument for why they will vote against it when it comes to the second and third readings. The Labour Party cannot vote for this bill; it goes against everything that they are saying they are trying to do in the criminal justice sector. It actually sets a mandatory sentence to go to jail.

We all know that the Minister of Corrections doesn’t want anyone jailed. The Prime Minister doesn’t want anyone in jail. They’re doing everything they can to release prisoners hand over foot. They will not pass something that has a mandatory sentence of six months to go to jail. So the New Zealand First Party is sitting there; they know this is a failed policy by them, because the Labour Party is going to pull the rug out from under them at the last minute. The Green Party is ambivalent as ever because they don’t know what’s going on in this Parliament—

I’m afraid I have to interrupt the member. This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Pō mārie.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.