Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill.

The purpose of this bill that we will be debating tonight is to amend the Policing Act 2008 to increase the penalty for killing a police dog from a maximum of two years, to a maximum of five years’ imprisonment. The bill replaces section 53 of the Policing Act 2008 to extend the maximum imprisonment for killing a police dog from the current two-year maximum to a new maximum of five years. The current maximum fine of $15,000 remains unchanged.

One of the absolute joys of being an elected representative is to take the views of your constituency to Parliament, and I love opening my doors in my electoral office with a range of people coming in with a range of issues and ideas that they want to champion forward, and what I love about my electorate of Waimakariri is they are an electorate that cares. They care very deeply, not only about people, but about animals. In fact, I’d say Waimakariri represents and reflects New Zealand at its best.

I remember the day when the media covered the tragic death of the police dog Gazza, and I received, like many members of Parliament in this House, a number of emails and phone calls where people were appalled that that would happen in New Zealand. What people ended up being absolutely more exercised about was the lenient punishment that we have in New Zealand for killing a police dog, and I want to take the time to acknowledge one constituent, Thomas Tripp, who I know will be watching this tonight. Thomas is a caring man, and it was his idea for this bill, to increase the penalty, as a tougher penalty, as a tougher way, of supporting our police dogs, and I want to acknowledge his work in getting this bill here today, because what this bill is about is caring for the service dogs that go out and protect us.

I want to start off by putting it in the words of Chris Cahill, president of the New Zealand Police Association, who supports this bill. To quote the New Zealand Police Association, because I think they put it in a very articulate way: “A police dog is a key part of a police team, and within police, any act of violence towards the police dogs is considered similar to an attack on a police officer. It is a direct attack on law and order and needs to be recognised for the serious offence it is.”

We also note the cost of training a police dog is considerable. I think those words sum it up quite eloquently from me: an attack on a police dog in New Zealand is considered similar to an attack on a police officer. That’s the view of the many men and women in blue who serve out country. They go out every day and every night to keep us safe.

I was actually surprised when I worked with Thomas Tripp about this bill and we looked at the penalties, comparatively, overseas, and it is interesting. We are quite lenient compared to other jurisdictions. In the United States it is up to 10 years’ imprisonment; Canada, up to five years; and South Australia up to five years.

In fact, only through this bill now being pulled out of the ballot, with the Attorney-General’s New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report, I’ve since learnt that there actually is an inequity, currently, in New Zealand statutes, because the Animal Welfare Act puts the penalty as up to five years. However, in the Policing Act, it’s capped at up to two years. I would argue there is not one New Zealander who would say that that is fair and that is right. The reason I am confident of that is because many in this House would have seen on my social media that I put up a petition in the last week. That has received thousands of signatures, because what we know in New Zealand is we care about people but also about animals—more so our hard-working police dogs that serve us, to keep our families and to keep our communities safe.

We have around 132 police dogs in New Zealand, nine in training. It costs over $60,000 to train a police dog, and they are called out over 40,000 times a year. Sadly, in New Zealand, we’ve lost a number of police dogs; and not only have we lost a number of police dogs in service but a large number of police dogs have been injured in service, as well. Those dogs quite often not only go out on the beat with our hard-working servicemen and women but also they’re family pets. They go home to kids at night, and under the current law in New Zealand, it’s a two-year penalty. How is that fair?

I’m not saying this is the biggest bill around—this isn’t going to change the fabric of New Zealand—but what I’m doing is bringing the voice of people I represent, and this is the right thing to do for New Zealand’s Parliament tonight. Gazza, the dog this bill was based on, was the seventh dog that we’ve lost in the line of duty since 1972. Twenty-four police dogs have died in the line of duty.

What I’d like to see tonight is the support of all political parties to send this to select committee, because I actually think we can look at other types of service animals and how we look to protect them, and I’m looking forward to the submissions that we are going to receive. I’ve also had a suggestion by the New Zealand Police Association, who want to add to proposed new section 53A a provision around reckless disregard for the safety of a police dog: “Because the concept of reckless disregard is consistent with the wording in the Crimes Act, our reasoning for this suggestion is that showing reckless disregard covers a possible loophole for an offender to believe that they were trying to stop the dog biting them, or trying to get away from the dog and didn’t intend to kill it.” This is the wish of the New Zealand Police force.

I carry also the wishes of the people of Waimakariri, and the thousands of people that have signed the petition, but what I took the greatest heart from was an email I received yesterday from the police dog handler of Gazza, who had tragically lost his dog. He had heard about this bill through some of his police colleagues. He was stoked. He was stoked that this bill would come forward and would actually recognise the service of the police dogs and the protection they provide our families and our communities.

So I’m looking forward to full support for this bill tonight. I genuinely think, although a small bill, it is significant. It shows we care and we have full respect for police, and also for the police dogs that serve them well. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to thank Mr Doocey for his contribution tonight and acknowledge the fact that so many New Zealanders have wholeheartedly contributed to a matter that is dear to all of our hearts. In fact, we respect the duty that is done not only by police officers and the back-up staff of the police service but also police dogs.

I’m going to be honest: tonight I will speak from the heart to say that my husband served in the New Zealand Police for 25 years, and Mark Mitchell will know that because he served alongside him as a dog handler. My husband was unfortunate enough to lose a dog in the line of duty. So I can say that within our household, we know firsthand the ability of dogs to track offenders where no human can do so, and the ability that they provide to the justice system to make sure that offenders are held accountable and victims receive the justice that they deserve.

I think it is also important to acknowledge the bond that exists between a dog handler and the dog. That is probably unimaginable for most of us, so to lose a dog, whether that be through accident or through the harm done by an offender, is a huge thing to think about and a huge thing to imagine. I think that is why we have the memorial at the Police College which records the name of every single dog handler who has lost a dog in the line of duty. I always look proudly to see my husband’s name there.

The practicality is that when someone kills a dog in the line of duty, that is not the single motive that they thought about when they woke up that day. They commit a series of offences. Some of those are against police officers, some of those are against property, and some of those are against members of the public, so when a police prosecutor charges someone for killing or hurting a police dog, it is a series of charges that are laid. In those charges it is very interesting to look over the history to see the time served for that particular offence. So the problem that I have is that increasing the current penalty from two years to five years seems to not really understand or even, I guess, identify the problem this piece of legislation is trying to address.

I would like to know the nature of the problem. I agree—I see that there is a great need for support, for understanding of those on the front line, and for compassion and understanding when we lose a police dog. But I would find it hard to understand in real terms how you would have a specific instance where an offender would be charged alone with killing a police dog. Therefore, that is probably why we have never seen, as far as I can ascertain from looking through the list of police dogs that have been lost in front-line duty, where anyone has ever served that time of two years. Currently, that time is at the discretion of judges and it has never been served currently. So I would question what the merit is of extending that period from two years to five years when I can’t see how that is currently, in the history of these instances, being actually administered to someone who’s been accused of this offence and held to be accountable for it.

So I would also go back to looking, to try and understand the thinking of the member Mr Doocey, how he came to this. The point was that there was a particular instance, I understand—and I may be enlightened at the end of this debate—where a police dog was injured, and that took action to bring this member’s bill to the House. But the problem I have is that the bill that’s been put forward by the member leaves the penalty for injuring a police dog unchanged, meaning that it would have no impact, for example, on the person who injured but did not kill the dog. But for the police dog in the case that inspired Mr Doocey, that was exactly what happened. So it is fundamentally unclear that the higher sentence in this bill would provide any significant deterrent against dogs being killed or even, in fact, injured in the line of duty.

Offenders who kill or injure a police dog are often, as I’ve said, charged with more serious crimes, and I’d like to provide members with a particular example. Christopher Graham Smith, who killed police dog Gage in 2010, also pled guilty to the attempted murder of Senior Constable Bruce Lamb, and, subsequently, he received 14 years in prison. So the point I’m trying to get to is I’m really keen to understand an instance in New Zealand’s history where the particular offence that the member has identified would actually occur.

What the bill does is increase the maximum penalty from two to five years, and the main point, from what I understand from what the member has unpacked thus far, is that this would be a deterrent. So the person who set out to do a bunch of other offences or who was in the commission of those would somehow be deterred from injuring the police dog in that range of other instances of, potentially, murder, property damage—the person would be deterred from the police dog offence if we increase the penalty from two to five years, and that’s kind of where I have the problem. That’s the wider kind of problem that sits with the National Party, in that if you just increase the penalty, then that will somehow change how people think or operate.

We see it time and time again with a range of offences, whether it be failing to stop, whether it be making it illegal to be a gang member. I clearly remember having to advise Judith Collins, who was then the Minister of Police, when she asked how many we convicted of those people who are in a gang because we made it illegal, and the answer, I think, was zero at the time and she was really cross about that. We had to explain that when someone gets charged for being a gang member, they’ve often done a bunch of other stuff, and so those things are the primary offences.

So I think what really underlies this is the lack of understanding from those members opposite of how the real world actually works—of how prosecution, how front-line policing, and how the real world actually works. Yep, police dogs are important. Yes, we love them—we would never do a bad thing to them. People would die for them, but the reality is, and how the justice system works, is that people get charged with more than just killing or wounding a dog. That is the truth of the matter.

So if you want to create a meaningful and good outcome, you would be resourcing and making sure there are better efforts in that space, but merely increasing a penalty from two to five years fails to address what you’re trying to fix. I don’t even, actually, to be honest, know what the problem is that they’re trying to fix indeed, because while they’ve said some really good things that connect emotionally, I fail to see what the actual problem that this member’s bill attempts to fix is, and I think that the member opposite knows that quite clearly.

I would like to really spend the last part of my speech acknowledging the work that New Zealand Police do on a day-to-day basis, the fact that they put their lives on the line on a daily basis, the fact that they work so hard making sure that people are safe in their homes, no matter where we go along the streets—whether it’s Courtenay Place—in terms of family violence, or making sure our roads are safe, they do an amazing job. They go above and beyond. Quite frankly, I think they deserve more than being politicised by trying to increase a penalty on a dog being killed from two to five years, and I think the member opposite knows that as well.

So I would like to thank the member opposite for his good intent in an area where I think that he’s got all the right feelings and emotions in place, and I agree with those. However, I would like to point out that his understanding of practicality and how the real world operates and how people are prosecuted for offences—what he would propose when it’s applied in practicality would have an unworkable effect on day-to-day life. That is the primary reason why Labour will not be supporting this bill.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in regards to the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill, and I believe it’s—no pun intended—nothing short of a dog whistle. The purpose of this bill, to increase the penalty for killing a police dog from a maximum of two years to five years of imprisonment under section 53 of the Policing Act 2008, won’t result in keeping people safe. It also goes against our Green Party’s policy that aims towards a rehabilitative purpose.

It is highly unlikely that increasing the penalty for killing a police dog will actually reduce instances of this crime. As the member to my left pointed out, addressing the issue of violent crime doesn’t come from imprisonment; it actually comes from addressing the determinants that lead people to commit crimes in the first place. So to follow the example of the US or Canada or Australia—who all have mass incarceration problems, who all have issues of inequities within the prison system—is not a model that I would like this House to follow.

We know—and I’m quoting here a piece from Mark Hanna titled “We need to talk about police dogs”, published in Honest Universe—that there’s also a wider issue with the use of police dogs in general and the fact that despite being used at only 6.9 percent of incidents in 2018 where police used force, attack dogs actually caused more than half the moderate and serious injuries inflicted by police that year.

Tim van de Molen: What’s an attack dog?

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: It’s a police dog that is used to attack. We have to make it clear that the purpose and the use of these dogs ultimately results in harm.

We also want to bring to attention the data from 2020, in May, “about the high proportion of mental health or emotional distress in incidents where people were hospitalised by [police] dog injuries”, and despite the “NZ Police [defending] their use of this extremely dangerous tactical option”, we know that ultimately Māori were disproportionately affected by this.

Tim van de Molen: So they’re racist dogs too?

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Well, as the members to our right will point out, dogs may not be racist, but our criminal justice system and prison system is, and this bill will just not address any of these issues. If the members to the right are so concerned about keeping people safe, they may as well be supporting issues like increasing benefits, public housing, and preventative approaches to our justice system. The Green Party won’t stand by dog-whistle politics that will not keep people safe, and we will not be recommending this bill to the select committee. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call to speak to the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill, a bill that is really about the maximum sentencing for this offence, which would increase the maximum prison sentence from two to five years. I also do want to acknowledge the intent that’s given rise to the bill, which I do believe has come from a really good place and is about recognising the significant and tragic loss of those dogs who have been killed. It is about acknowledging what they meant to those handlers and to the families who have cared for them as well. When I learnt that I was speaking to this bill, I also reflected on the stories of police dogs who had passed not in tragic circumstances but who have been honoured in New Zealand media in some ways, such as the dog Ike who passed over after a long career of service last year, so we, as a New Zealand community, are a community who hugely respect the important role that police dogs play in our police force.

But I do think we also need to recognise that the intent that this is coming from is really about deterrence. As my colleague Ginny Andersen has already spoken to, there are practical reasons for why we aren’t supporting this through to select committee at this stage—the biggest, of course, that we don’t believe that this would act as a deterrent; that the provisions in place, therefore, are sufficient; and, because it won’t act as a deterrent, then we simply don’t think this would be an effective use of our House time to send it through the select committee process.

Because we’re talking about maximum penalties, I just wanted to reflect for a bit on what we as lawmakers ought to be considering as we turn our minds to maximum sentences, and the Sentencing Advisory Council of Victoria makes some useful observations. In a paper published in 2020, they talk about the fact that maximum penalties should place really some clear, legally defined upper limits on the courts’ sentencing power and that they should be reasonable and proportionate. But as reasoned lawmakers, we also need to turn our minds to what I would call the legal principle of parsimony, which is a principle that states the maximum penalty should be set at the lowest level that achieves its intended purpose. So again, here, the intended purpose is deterrence.

I think while we look at the number of times this has occurred in New Zealand’s past, there is some evidence that the settings are correct at present. So just reflecting on the scale of the issue, I think when we all hear those stories, like Gazza’s story, we’re all extremely outraged. But we also have to look at the big picture, which is that almost 40,000 call-outs are made each year and, of those, there are actually very few police dogs who are injured, let alone killed. I think it was 24, 25 dogs who have been killed, many of whom have been killed in accidents, not intentional incidents to kill them. Secondly, I do think we have sufficient provisions at the moment and I looked at a few examples overseas. I did reflect on some of your articles last year—to the MP in the House—and I noted that in the UK there’s the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which was amended by the Animal Welfare (Service Animals) Bill. And the penalty there—it’s a comparable though not exact comparison—is more or less for one year for unnecessary suffering for an animal. In Queensland, there’s a penalty of 40 units or two years of imprisonment for attempting to kill a police dog.

My colleague, again, has reflected on the fact that we don’t believe that making this change from two years to five years will be a sufficient measure of prevention or a motivation for people to not engage in this because people often don’t walk into a situation intending to do this to an animal. We’d also question whether that act of increasing it by three years does anything to deter whatsoever. My colleague also spoke about the fact that there’s no change to the penalty for injuring a police dog so there would be no change of deterrence on that front. So, again, while I would recognise that there is really good intent here, we are unable to support this bill through to select committee because of its practical inefficiencies.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this bill, the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill, on behalf of the ACT Party. I just, before I start, would like to perhaps make some comments on comments that were raised from across the Chamber. I’ve heard about this law being a deterrent and that not being good enough. Well, you know, I don’t have a legal law degree, but what I would have thought is that every law we make is for some form of deterrence. That is why we make the laws.

Further to that, when we talk about or hear about situations where police dogs have been killed and the two-year sentence hasn’t been placed on the perpetrator—so why increase it to five? Well, I would have thought, this uneducated person over here, that by increasing it to five, the judges might actually start to use the ability to give a deterrence—oh, I got that wrong; give a sentence to the perpetrator who has killed an animal.

The third point that I would like to make is in regard to all of this good intent that we are hearing that could be fixed—with some of the issues that have been addressed from across the floor there—in a select committee hearing. But what I have heard, bill after bill after bill, is just a flat-out “No, we don’t even want to go there. Oh, we like your attempt. We thank you for what it is that you’re trying to do, but, no, that’s it, we’re going to leave it there. We’re not going to allow the community to come in and have a say on this.”

So getting back to my speech, I’m going to start to repeat some of the stats because I think that they really are quite important: 24 police dogs have died since 1972; four of them have occurred just since the 2000s came in. That is an average of one police dog every two years. And when we have 40,000 callouts, that is, really, pretty good stats, but we’ve still lost 24 dogs. We had Gazza in an armed incident in 2016, we had Gage who was shot dead in Christchurch in 2010, and then we had the Tangowahine, Dargaville shoot-out in December last year, where, thankfully the animal was not killed. I think what we have here is legislation that has not fixed the problem about criminals with guns, because now they are shooting our police dogs. That falls on your heads, over there, because the Labour Party put through a piece of legislation that has not protected them.

Not only that, I’d also like to address the fact that it is not just police dogs; what we have are guide dogs, hearing dogs, mobility dogs, therapy dogs, epilepsy dogs, assistance dogs, medical alert assistance dogs, service dogs, and police dogs. They are there to do a job, and there are seven organisations in New Zealand who can certify that these dogs are not purely attack dogs but are actually able to complete a task to help their humans and help society.

Blind Low Vision New Zealand have approximately 250 dogs. It takes 18 to 20 months to train them and it costs $75,000 per dog. Now, if that is what it takes for a Blind Low Vision dog, imagine what it takes for a service dog. Imagine what it takes for a police dog to be trained. And then we’ve got the Ministry for Primary Industries detector dogs. They are not attack dogs; they are dogs that have been trained to go into major airports and ports and look after our communities and make sure there are no bombs in those places. The New Zealand Army have over 100 teams of patrol dogs and detector dogs. So, ideally, I’d like to see a bill where we can protect all of the dogs that help society.

But, at the end of the day, ACT does like to stand up for the minority parties. I believe that a dog specifically trained to help and protect humans deserves respect for the taking of its life. The trainers of all these dogs—whether they are service, disability, detector, or police—deserve closure upon the untimely death of their family friend. This bill is not about all of those dogs; it is about the police dogs—it is about the police dogs in the Policing Act 2008. And if this bill can be amended to include all service dogs, ACT would howl in approval!

But on behalf of Nero, Nick, Thor, Barlow, Jon, Ebba, Panzer, Luke, Sarge, Ozi, Rada, Josh, Lance, Ryka, Rex, Spike, Kone, Jock, Mal, Valour, Duke, Enzo, Gage, and Gazza—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I am grateful to rise and take a call on the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill tonight. I know that this debate so far has been a bit emotional, and I know where that emotion comes from. It does come from a good place. We are a nation who loves our dogs. They are our friends. They are loyal. They are a part of our families, police dogs included.

As I’ve mentioned in this House previously, my parents had a sheep and beef farm in South Taranaki, and to help us out on that farm we had over the years a number of working dogs. You spend hours with your dog, training them, building a relationship, earning their trust, and they your trust. Each dog has its own personality. Dad would always remind us that we weren’t to spoil the dogs; they were working dogs and weren’t to come inside, but that rule was never strictly followed, and we all knew, at the end of the day, that they were part of our family too and treated with respect. When one of them passed away, we all grieved and we missed them.

I acknowledge that the bond between a police officer and their dog is even more special and unique, and the trust in that relationship is unwavering. I saw as a child, as well, growing up at the prison village, the relationship that police have with their dogs. I recall watching local officers bring their dogs down to the prison to run training drills. In fact, I remember one day—one wintery evening—Mum taking us down to the prison to drop off Dad’s dinner when he was working a four to midnight shift, and one of the local officers asking if we would mind the dog sniffing around our car as part of their training. I saw the bond and the trust in that relationship. Police dogs do provide huge value to our communities, and the loss of any police dog’s life is tragic. It’s tragic for the dog’s handler and for the wider police communities.

I was interested to learn, when doing some research to take this call tonight, that the first police dogs came to New Zealand in 1956. Since those first dogs arrived, some 65 years ago, 24 police dogs have tragically lost their lives in the line of duty or in accidents associated with their service. I think that low number shows how well our police officers take care of their dogs, how well they protect them and are devoted to them, and they should be commended for that. Tonight, though, we are debating an amendment proposed to the Policing Act, in particular the current section 53 of the Policing Act, which, as mentioned, makes it an offence to intentionally kill, maim, wound, or otherwise injure a police dog and carries a fine of up to two years in prison or $15,000. The bill before us tonight proposes to increase the penalty for killing a police dog from two years to five years.

At this point, I think it’s worth mentioning that, in the past, when someone has been charged with killing a police dog, those charges have also been laid alongside a number of other charges associated with the individual’s actions and offending. In fact, as my colleague Ginny mentioned earlier tonight, the individual charged with the murder of police dog Gage in 2010 was actually sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison for the total of his offending, which related to a number of offences.

As I’ve said, I do acknowledge the value that police dogs provide us. However, I also come from a legal background, and one of the things that we are taught to do is to step back and look at all of the evidence. That means not just to take knee-jerk reactions. The evidence is pretty clear, and that evidence says that, in general, increasing penalties and sanctions does very little, if anything, to deter individuals from committing crimes. What does deter individuals is actually taking steps to address the causes of crime: reducing poverty, making sure that individuals can live with dignity in their communities and participate in a meaningful way.

I would like to finish tonight by acknowledging the incredible work our police force does, and I am proud to stand alongside a Labour Government committed to supporting that work and providing them with the support that they need to keep our communities—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. It’s a privilege to be able to speak on this bill, because it is entirely appropriate for harsh penalties to be administered for people who kill police dogs in the line of duty. It is entirely appropriate for harsh penalties to be administered for anyone who hurts an animal and for anyone who abuses an animal.

What’s not appropriate is for the Opposition to propose raising the penalty from two years in prison to five years in prison when the effect of that is, frankly, nothing, and when they know that, and when they are leading public discourse in this area, knowing full well that increasing the penalty will not result in charging offenders who kill police dogs, will result in longer sentences, and it will not result in a deterrent effect in cases of violence against police dogs.

I thank the member from ACT for her contribution in memorialising those police dogs who have lost their lives in the line of duty. It’s useful and it’s right for us as parliamentarians to acknowledge the work that police dogs do for us, and our gratitude to them. We are the recipients of selfless, loving service of these dogs, both for their constables who are their handlers and for the public who they protect. It’s right for us to acknowledge all of those lives lost of those dogs in service in protecting our communities. But it’s not helpful for us to have this discussion on the backdrop of merely looking tough on crime without following an evidence basis about this.

When we talk about the deterrent effect of this, it’s useful for us to consider in what cases and in what scenarios these dogs are losing their lives. These are situations where an offender will be facing a raft of serious charges—serious assaults on police officers, evading police officers—the charge that they were going to be charged with in the first place, which may be a serious offence, because they are evading police. These are situations where the people who are apprehended are already facing serious charges, long-term prison sentences, and there is, in fact, no deterrent effect in the heat of the moment where they are injuring and committing violence against a police dog, if we are proposing here to increase the sentence from two years to five years.

What is helpful for us to do is to place more importance on the work of these police dogs, to acknowledge in this House their service by acknowledging their names. And I want to turn to the member Nicole McKee’s acknowledgment of the names and just highlight for the House a few of those dogs which have died in the line of service.

We’ve made a few references to the first police dog that died in an accident in Napier. His name was Nero, and that accident was the first in this country for what was a very new system where we use police dogs with our police officers in enforcing the prevention of crime. The next dog who lost his life was in 1975 and his name was Nick, and he was shot in Wellington. That was the first incident where it was deliberate harm against a police dog that caused a police dog to lose his life. And it highlights, I think, the importance of acknowledging these crimes. But in those incidents, there would have been no deterrent effect if the penalties had been harsher. It’s important for us to remember that this already exists as a penalty in law and that it can be prosecuted. And it is. It is treated as a very serious offence by police and prosecuted to the fullest extent, because police and prosecutors recognise this offence as an offence against police.

It’s also right for us to acknowledge that the safety record of police dogs is very high, that the police officers charged with the care of police dogs take their duties really seriously to what are their partners in work. And considering that they’re called out 40,000 times a year, the rate of safety is very good. So we need to be able to acknowledge the important work here and also acknowledge that increasing penalties is simply painting this as a political issue, which makes some parliamentarians look tough on crime and does not address the root cause of this problem.

I want to, finally, conclude my remarks by saying that 30 years of locking more people up for longer has failed to make our communities safer and has resulted in a reoffending rate of 61 percent. That’s why on this side of the House we will continue to do things differently and use evidence-based methods to determine what the penalties in these situations should be in all areas of our law and order system, in order to reduce—

Order! The member’s time has expired. This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.