Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill

The House is resumed. The House is in committee for further consideration of the Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill and consideration of the New Zealand Bill of Rights (Declarations of Inconsistency) Amendment Bill and the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. I’ll just remind members that it would useful if you asked multiple questions of the Minister in charge. We come first to the interrupted consideration of the Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill. When we were last considering this bill, Part 1 was being debated.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, this has been an interrupted debate. We got started last week for about five minutes and then had to stop, and then we started last night for about five minutes and had to stop. So a little bit of indulgence from the Chair would help just to recap so that people who might have been tuning into this debate have a chance to catch up.

What we’re dealing with here is legislation that was passed by the previous National Government that targeted the most serious repeat offenders in New Zealand. After a first strike, and then a second strike—and this is not any old crime. It is for serious violent crimes or sexual crimes, and they would have to carry out the full sentence, the maximum sentence for that deed if they had the third strike. And if we look at the overall numbers after it had been introduced for 10 years, of 13,349 first-strike offences—and they got their first-strike warning—only 640 people have carried on to their second strike, where they’ve got their second-strike warning, and then only 21 have gone on to their third strike. So the initial concerns 10 years ago that you’d see lots of people locked away for ever because of trivial offences was never going to occur. What has occurred is that 21 of our worst serious offenders have been kept in prison longer than they would otherwise have been, probably, in order to keep them off the streets and to reduce the number of offenders.

This bill, introduced by the Government, repeals that. I have asked two questions of the Minister, which I’m hoping to get some clarity on. One was around the rationale for the bill, and Part 1, which we’re talking about is the crux of the bill—it is repealing the Act. I quoted Kris Faafoi’s first reading speech where he said, “It’s bad legislation. We know because it hasn’t worked.” And then we looked at the advice from officials that turned up, and low and behold, the officials’ advice was, “There is no substantial international or New Zealand evidence on the effect of three-strikes law on crime, and we need to do some more research.” So there was no evidence, so he was quite incorrect

The current Minister Kiritapu Allan told us that it’s clear, if you look, that violent crime has continued to increase and there’s been a stark rise in sexual offending and therefore the Act hasn’t worked—which struck me as very, very feeble logic and reasoning to be hearing from a Minister of Justice. It might be possible that there might be other factors involved in the rise of violent crime, other than the actions of the three-strike legislation, and I could suggest one or two. One is the soft on crime approach that we’ve had for the last 4½years. So I was keen to get the Minister to be a little bit more expansive on what she thought might actually be going on in terms of crime levels and the role that that one piece of legislation has played in it.

The second question was in relation to—I did have a second question and now I can’t remember what it was.

💬 Hon Member: It was the question after the first question.

That’s right, and it was a very good question, and I’ll come back to it at a later point.

There has been lots of reference to the fact that three strikes has led to people being locked away for trivial offences. The second point that she was raising was that having that legislation was somehow disrespectful to the judiciary and the judges as it limited the options that judges could have in sentencing, and that somehow this was a breach of constitutional practice or some other. I’d like to hear the official advice. Obviously, Parliament had many pieces of legislation put in place—minimum sentences and maximum sentences and it constrained the total flexibility that judges might like to have, but Parliament has got the ability to pass laws. There is nothing unconstitutional about that. It sets a framework and sends a clear message that we want the worst offenders to stay in prison for longer.

The other question I asked was why she thought this was a priority at a time of rapid rising—

The member’s time has expired.

Good morning and thank you to all those tuning in to this very important debate on the repeal of the three strikes legislation.

I want to just make a comment and thank my colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith for the range of questions that he has put to this committee this morning, and, as he rightly states, over the broken start to this debate. Last night he made a five minute contribution—and I’ll come to that in a minute—and we engaged, I think, very shortly on one other occasion for, again, probably about five to 10 minutes.

The first question that Mr Goldsmith put to me in our first debate and, again, last night—and he’s restated again this morning—is: on what grounds did the Hon Kris Faafoi—when introducing the bill—consider the legislation to be bad law? Mr Goldsmith puts forward the argument based on international evidence, as cited in the 2018 brief of evidence provided by the Ministry of Justice, that there was simply no evidential foundation to say it had not been an effective law. So we look to, therefore, the aspects of what makes a law or what might be indicia of success. Mr Goldsmith made quite some substantive comments and repeated the catch-phrase last night that the response when we are looking at indicia or evidence of crime and how we track whether violent crime has indeed gone up or gone down, was the most infantile response from any Minister of Justice he had ever heard. Therefore, let’s go through a few grounds on which we might, as lawmakers across this House, look to whether or not law has been effective for the purposes for which we intended to pass the legislation.

In 2009, when this bill was introduced into the House, the three strikes law, the primary lament was that it would incarcerate those that were the worst criminal offenders, and secondly, that this law would act as a deterrent to others who would go on or might consider conducting violent criminal offending in a repeat manner. Therefore, we cast our minds to or we, therefore, look at, after a decade, the state of evidence to support the proposition. Has there been a deterrent effect? Well, we should look to, therefore, the results, which is where I referred and directed Mr Goldsmith in our first engagement. Let’s look at whether offences like serious assaults have tracked up or tracked down since 2010.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Tracked down when we were in Government.

Unfortunately, I can hear the Hon Judith Collins saying that offences tracked down when they were in Government. Unfortunately, the stark reality is if we looked at the factual and evidential foundation in the documentation provided to the court that simply isn’t the case. So I can see that there has been a stark rise in both serious assaults, serious sexual assaults, robbery. All from the time of about 2013, we start to see a stark rise. So that would be the first type of issue that you’d turn your mind to: has there been a deterrent effect and, if so, is there the corollary of evidence to support that foundation—that proposition rather.

The second thing that we might look to is, OK if not necessarily a deterrent effect, let’s make sure, though, that the criminal justice process has really, perhaps, been more effective for victims of crime or those that have been the subject of criminal activity. So therefore, we look to whether or not there have been effective criminal justice procedural enhancements. Has there been a reduction in delays or has there been a reduction in prolonged periods by which victims of these serious crimes have to endure lengthy or elongated criminal justice processes? So, therefore, one of the comments that’s been raised in multiple briefs of evidence, or submissions, rather, that were provided to the select committee, one of the biggest implications that I could see as to why we might repeal this law, let alone for all of the principled reasons, is one merely for the procedural implications. This came through from the New Zealand Criminal Bar Association. This came through in evidence from—so the New Zealand Criminal Bar Association, of course, is comprised of the judiciary, prosecution, defence, criminal lawyers who work and operate in this area. This is their bread and butter, so to speak. The biggest thing that they said as to why this—one of the several reasons they put forward—law is bad law is that it takes away an incentive for a person that is in a position where they may plead, enter a guilty plea—it takes away any incentive for them to change their plea from guilty to not guilty through any of the procedural stages. So the real-life implications for those that are the victims of crime is that where there is an incentive for a hardened criminal offender to plead guilty because it might result in a reduced sentencing or other types of incentives, which usually come by entering in an early guilty plea, it reduces that proposition. So therefore, you have victims of crimes sitting through prolonged periods over many years, being exposed to the criminal justice process, and for those of us on this side of the House that are concerned about victims’ experiences, that in itself, removing any incentive for somebody that has perpetrated a crime against another, removing an incentive to truncate the procedural chain, therefore, in my mind creates bad law.

But if I was to step away from the procedural implications, and I start to look at it—well, let’s look at this just through a taxpayer’s proposition. I, as a taxpayer, want to ensure I get good bang for my buck, and if this law doesn’t create a deterrent effect, if it doesn’t create any procedural benefits, which would reduce the impacts on victims, well, surely there must be a cost benefit because I’d want to see something good come out of this law. If I turn my mind to the cost implications, though—and this was a point that’s been made in multiple submissions to the select committee. In one instance, one of the cases that was referred to, and I think that the select committee will be well familiar with it, on appeal the court held that had the judiciary retained their ability to prescribe the sentencing provisions, as one might, they would have incarcerated this person for committing a crime—it was around about three years and nine months. However, as a consequence of the three strikes law, this person was incarcerated for 11 years. Now, if we are to do the maths on that, the cost for incarceration of a prisoner per annum is roughly around $100,000 per year. I haven’t done the maths, but one would think that if we have these people incarcerated for far longer than, you know, what our sentencing guidelines would otherwise prescribe, without seeing any benefit like a deterrent, like a lessened impact on victim’s going through the process, and we just see an increase of cost, on that ground, one would think, again, that this is bad law.

My colleague across the Chamber has put multiple propositions to me on this point over, now, three occasions. Whilst he might not be able to grapple with the rationale for why this is bad law on any level, I would encourage our friend to cast his mind to Part 1 so that we can debate what this committee of the whole House is intended to do during this time. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I must say this is going to be an interesting debate this morning. We know that some of the people we’re talking about here, these offenders, have very little ability to deal with emotional issues if something goes wrong. For instance, a Minister who might lose their phone in a Crown car wouldn’t be expected to then turn violent or to ring the driver at 1 in the morning and scream and shout and swear at them. We would expect that that was unacceptable and unministerial behaviour.

💬 Hon Member: That’s terrible.

Terrible. The sort of people we’re talking about here are more likely to go and smash their face in, and that is one of the problems, and I’m sure the Minister has thought about that and the difference in behaviours that are expected and, therefore, are sometimes complied with or not. But I noted in here—as the Minister who was then the Minister of Police, actually, in our first term of Government and accepting and undertaking the work in our coalition agreement with the ACT Party at the time—that I was the Minister in charge of bringing the bill through.

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: A popular Minister.

Very popular. Thank you so much, Hon Mark Mitchell. Very good contribution, might I say. But there is something that’s sadly lacking in the policy analysis here, the impact summary. Their repeal of the three-strikes law, prepared by the Ministry of Justice—so the Ministry of Justice has prepared 16 full pages of writing and statements about how bad this law is and then another two-page summary on basically an Excel spreadsheet. So you’d think in there that they would have given some very careful thought to people like the Crown car driver that might have been rung at 1 in the morning and abused by a Minister losing a phone in the car or that they could have given some thought to the victims of violent crime.

When we were in Government, we brought down violent crime. That was part of our mandate; it was part of our responsibilities as Ministers in justice, police, and corrections. I have to say, I had all three of those, plus the Serious Fraud Office. And we did that. All we have seen under a soft-on-crime Government is a rise in violent crime, a rise in assaults on police officers, and a rise on danger for our corrections officers. By the way, in this entire 16 pages of writing about this bill, how many pages does one think have been dedicated to victims and their rights? How many pages out of 16 do you think? Eight? Seven? Six? Five? Four? Three? Two? One? No. There is, however, one paragraph, and I’m going to read this for the Minister because I’m sure she hasn’t noticed this, because she’s told us today how much she cares for victims who are bullied and attacked by people who are either physically, or in other ways, in a more dominant position.

It states that victims may experience some anxiety and stress as a result of knowing that people who have offended against them may be released or become eligible for parole earlier than expected. This risk will be mitigated. Oh, will it really? It goes on to say that at resentencing, the judge will be able to refer back to any previous victim impact statements, so victims needn’t submit again if they choose not to. Victims may choose to participate during resentencing and at parole hearings in accordance with their statutory rights.

These are violent offenders offending against people who they have bashed, smashed, and they have actually taken from them most of their enjoyment of life. Oh, and they can turn up again and have another hearing. What the hell is going on in this Ministry of Justice now it’s got such a weak Minister, who looks at the fact that, yes, Māori are disproportionately affected by three strikes. But I’ll tell you the other thing is, of course, that Māori victims are disproportionately benefitted by three strikes because Māori victims are so often in exactly the same proportion as those who are committing these violent offences. So I’d say my question to the Minister is: why is only one paragraph dedicated to victims and they’re being told by a Ministry of Justice official—clearly, really, on the ground!—that they’ll feel better?

I thank the former Minister for justice and police and the Serious Fraud Office and corrections for her interesting contribution. I draw my mind, though, to Part 1 of the bill that we are debating. I am stretching my mind to find a provision that might include a reference to a VIP car driver. I am stretching my mind to try find [Interruption] I am trying to stretch my mind to find a provision that relates to Māori in Part 1, on the amendments to the Sentencing Act 2002. I’m struggling to find any reference to, actually, any of the member’s contribution, so I welcome a debate, and I’m happy to answer questions on Part 1.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I do want to work through and I do want to address the issues that the Minister has raised in the committee. And I’m honestly sitting here scratching my head and wondering how this Government can justify repealing the only piece of legislation that actually wraps some proper consequences in sentencing around recidivist violent offenders at a time in this country when we’re seeing a massive tsunami of violent crime and offending in the nation.

Let me just work through them one by one. The Ministry of Justice advice: the Minister got up and somehow she spent 10 minutes saying a lot without saying much or addressing any of the issues that my colleague Paul Goldsmith raised. In relation to the Ministry of Justice advice, it was quite clear to the committee, and that is that there is no evidence to show whether or not the three strikes legislation is working or is not working. But if you actually took a pragmatic and a practical view to it, and you actually looked at what is the reduction between first strike offending and second strike offending, and what is the reduction between second strike offending and third strike offending, then you’d have to say that the legislation is actually working as a deterrent.

The proposition that she brought to this committee is that because we can’t clearly see that this legislation is acting as a deterrent, and because we still have a rise in serious offending in this country, which absolutely we do, then we’re going to get rid of it. Well, if you’re going to apply that logic, get rid of the Crimes Act and the Summary Offences Act and every other Act that sits on our legislation books, because they obviously aren’t working at all. So I’d like the Minister to get up and actually explain to me her logic and her rationale for cherry-picking and taking one piece of legislation that deals with serious recidivist offenders. And because we continue to have a serious increase in violent crime in this country, the Government is saying it’s the fault of the three strikes legislation—three strikes legislation isn’t working and containing and driving down serious violent crime. What a ridiculous proposition to bring to this committee.

If she’s offended by the comments of Paul Goldsmith that it’s an infantile approach and argument, then I completely and totally support that: it is infantile. It’s a case of coming to this committee and telling the country that because we’ve got a rise in crime in this country, three strikes is to blame, and we’re going to get rid of it and we’re going to repeal it. Well, repeal the Crimes Act and repeal the Summary Offences Act in their entirety, because they’re obviously not working and containing serious violent crime in this country as well. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I’d like the Minister to get up and explain to me her rationale around that.

The second part—and I find this deeply offensive, and the Minister in the Chamber that spoke to this bill, the Hon Peeni Henare, raised this in his opening comments as well. And the Minister just did, and said, “Well, we’re going to get rid of the three strikes legislation because we think it’s going to have an impact on serious violent offenders not wanting to plead guilty, and they plead not guilty.” Who cares? Who cares about that, Minister? The victims don’t. The victims want justice. They want legislation in place.

And I come back to the comments that the Hon Judith Collins made, which is that the victims get deeply traumatised every time they come back into our criminal justice system. It’s not a friendly place for them. It’s traumatising. So, actually, with the peace of mind that victims get when a serious recidivist offender is being sentenced under the three strikes legislation, they know that they aren’t going to have to go back and attend a parole hearing, they know they’re not going to have to go back and re-visit a victim impact statement, and they know that they can actually relax and get on and enjoy their lives as much as they can while they’re still trying to recover from what was some form of serious offending against them. And the Minister comes to this committee and says, “We’re more worried about the offenders. We’re more worried about the perpetrators. We’re more worried about having an adverse effect on them, and them not pleading guilty, and pleading not guilty, because they don’t want to be captured by the three strikes legislation.” What a ridiculous, perverse argument.

It comes back to the fact—and, again, alluding to the comments from the Hon Judith Collins—where do you hear about victims? Where do victims come into this—the victim advocacy groups that came to the committee made very, very good submissions? They raised the issues that were important to them and said that they want the three strikes legislation to remain in place.

So I ask the Minister to stand and address the issues that I have just addressed in terms of the comments that she has made to the committee, and outline them for us. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Mr Chair, thank you. I just do want to quickly respond to my colleague the Hon Mark Mitchell and respond to his contributions. But, particularly, I do want to just make sure that we are really debating what’s in Part 1, because it’s very limited to its provisions.

💬 Simon O’Connor: Now, she’s nervous.

Oh no, I’m quite enjoying the discussion this morning and happy to go lengthy. But I do think that the time of this House is precious, and therefore we must use it and acknowledge what this place is for: it’s to debate Part 1, which is a pretty limited part.

I will briefly respond to the comments since they’ve now come through from three of the speakers from the National Opposition. First, to the comment that victims do not care about whether or not a criminal or a person pleads guilty or not guilty during procedural issues. I would love to know where the speaker got those ideas from. A victim who has to go through a lengthy court process may be re-traumatised, and there was substantive evidence that was provided to the select committee on this point. This increases the exposure that victims have to go through in that process, and I just reject the proposition that Mr Mitchell is putting forward that this will somehow increase it.

Secondly, just to the misinformation, for those listeners that may be tuning in, of the proposition that was just made in this House that we are repealing the three-strikes law to solve violent crime—that was, essentially, the proposition I got. Now, we’re repealing the three-strikes law because it’s bad law. We’re repealing the three-strikes law because it doesn’t assist victims. Mr Mitchell is asking why, although I just gave four very detailed reasons as to why the law doesn’t work, but this isn’t a debate on whether or not the principal agreements or disagreements between this side of the House and the other—whether we agree or not. This is a very limited debate on Part 1 and the amendments to the Sentencing Act 2002, and I encourage my colleagues to debate those clauses.

Just before I take the next call: members, on the issue of victims, whilst I think it’s appropriate to deal with victims in a passing manner in the debate on Part 1, it would be more appropriate to apply your thought to that in Part 2.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, I really want to make a whole lot of comments on victims, and maybe we could carry on that conversation a little—and get to a question for Part 1, Mr Chair—especially when the Minister had just made the statement that the legislation doesn’t assist victims. I wonder whether or not the Minister is able to quantify that with any data, because there was certainly none produced to the Justice Committee that had anything at all to do with victims.

But I will say in answer to something else that the Minister said earlier—that there has been no deterrent—that in actual fact, in the Ministry of Justice’s letter to the select committee, dated 15 March 2022, they refer at paragraph four to a “2018 analysis [which] concluded that there had been a drop in second strike offending since the three strikes law, suggesting that it may have had a deterrent effect.” It further goes on, under paragraph five, bullet point two: “there has been a reduction (1.4 percentage points) in the rate at which offenders progress from a first to a second strike, further suggesting that the three strikes law may have a small deterrent effect.”

Of course, one of the needs of three-strikes law is to be in place for a time so that a person may serve their first sentence, their second full sentence, before being convicted again for their third full sentence. Therefore, time really is of the essence.

But, Minister, getting back to Part 1. A question that I have actually relates to your Supplementary Order Paper 187, where you are looking to tidy up the commencement date from 1 July to the day after the Royal assent. It also appears to simplify the way that people are convicted and sentenced before this repeal. So, Minister, can you please explain why, and advise whether, the change of commencement date also requires a change of date for Part 4 sections 13 and 14, where 1 July 2022 is stated as a “on or after date” rather than “after Royal assent”, and whether the Minister is prepared to tidy that up. I invite her to be consistent with those dates. Victims out there, the ones that you want to be centric with and the ones that we are thinking about, will otherwise see that criminals will be treated less harshly from a date at least one month before the bill is actually passed into law. So we would like to see a victim-centric approach at least in the way that the dates have been administered. Thank you.

Mr Chair, thank you. Just in direct response just to the Supplementary Order Paper that the member is referencing, I note that this is talking to an amendment to clause 2, which is in the insularly provision. So right now, the debate is really focused on Part 1, but I’ll be happy to address that when we get to those provisions.

Point of order, Mr Chair. Sorry, Mr Chair. I did check with the Clerk earlier, who suggested that, because it was an amendment to Schedule 1AA, it falls within Part 1.

Thank you for the ruling, Nicole. I won’t take any more debate on whether it’s relevant or not. I think, if the issue has been raised and the Minister wishes to answer it, she should. If she doesn’t wish to answer it, then that’s fine.

Just responding to the point of order, though, I do want to make the case this is outside of Part 1, but I will respond to it in due course.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, there’s been an extraordinary amount of waffle, unfortunately, coming from the Minister and even the usual, I would argue, leftist tricks of trying to use a lot of words and, as Mark Mitchell noted, saying nothing. There’s just been incredible obfuscation around what is the critical part of this legislation—being Part 1 and the best illustration of that is that we’ve had the Minister probably for about 17 minutes of speech now talking about evidence, yet providing none.

So I want to start, very quickly, the contribution with, effectively, a statement and then a series of quite particular questions around Part 1. The statement is really around the nature of crime, which is happening actually and evidentially within my own electorate. We’ve had two sets of shootings in Glen Innes in as many months. Ram raids—we’ve had four shops broken into recently. Crime, definitively, particularly violent crime in the nature of burglary, is on the rise. It behoves the question, which side of the House is asking, which is how is repealing justice laws, in this case a three strikes piece of legislation, going to help? One would imagine—and the Minister can respond to this if she chooses—that a Government of the day would be looking to impose new laws to address rising crime, not to reduce them.

The second question is, again, around the basis of evidence. The Minister keeps talking about evidence, but has proffered none. In the select committee it was very clear, although it had to be dragged out—dragged out—of officials that in fact there is no clear evidence either way of whether three strikes legislation is working or not. And I’m very happy to admit that there is no evidence either way. And yet with the rise in crime, violent crime, this Minister thinks it’s a great idea to drop three strikes. Those are the first two questions.

The third one is—and she’s waxed lyrical around the nature of Māori in particular and Pasifika being overrepresented in the crime statistics. That of course in itself is unfortunate. It’s upsetting to all involved, of course. Proportionally, the victims of crime are also from Māori and Pasifika communities. So the question to the Minister, who seems to be basing some of her arguments around this disproportionate effect of law, is whether or not she believes those committing crimes are being picked up just randomly—is this overrepresentation just random, or is there a reason these people are being arrested? And is she suggesting, which would be interesting for the committee to hear, that there’s some sort of profiling going on? Or is she going to echo the sentiments of other Government Ministers who believe there’s some sort of systemic behaviour occurring in our police? I’d love her to tease that out a little bit because yes, marginalised groups are overrepresented, but it would be really interesting for her to explain to the committee why she thinks that is. And as I say, is it just because it’s random or are these people actually doing something? I suppose I’m also asking, and I’ll stop here because there’s a whole lot of other questions, but I’d be really interested to hear, because is she suggesting by repealing this law that she says that really there shouldn’t be consequences on criminals based on their ethnicity? Because that’s sort of the core of her argument when one thinks about it.

💬 Barbara Edmonds: I raise a point of order, Mr Chair. Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to reference your comment before your ruling around passing; you know, mentioning victims in passing. The last speaker has just spent the last minute not in passing, and references to potential races of people that may be perpetrators or victims. I just ask that the previous speaker actually speak to the point of Part 1 of the bill.

So I have ruled on that and I think I’ve probably made a judgment that’s fair. And I think that this is a new speaker and I think in that respect he’s got the right to address these issues in passing.

💬 SIMON O’CONNOR: Thank you, Mr Chair. And, look, very important if it helps the member resuming her seat, I am referencing Part 1. Ultimately, if you go through clauses 4 through to 10, we are talking about imprisonment. This is what Part 1 is amending, the Sentencing Act, and actually 95 percent of my comments have been directed to why someone may be arrested and ultimately in prison. So I think highly relevant.

So a couple of questions there for the Minister. Does she accept that the select committee was told there was no evidence either way? And I’d love her to just tease out her belief around marginalised groups of why she thinks they may be getting arrested. As I say, have they done something wrong or is there just something random happening on the streets?

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s clear the other side don’t want to debate this piece of legislation—we do.

Now, Part 1 is fundamentally about amending the Sentencing Act. What we’re trying to debate here is the Minister’s responses to our questions. I think that’s a perfectly legitimate thing to do, because her answers haven’t been adequate in our mind. So the whole point of Part 1 is to amend the Sentencing Act.

Now, the Minister has said that the continued rise of violent crime is evidence that the three-strikes legislation hasn’t worked. So then that raises the obvious question: well, if that’s the case, then presumably the whole of the Sentencing Act hasn’t worked because violent crime has continued to rise. So it’s a legitimate question to ask: well, if the Minister thinks that we should do away with three strikes because violent crime has continued to rise, what else in the Sentencing Act does she think may have contributed to this?

You know, it is perfectly legitimate to ask: well, you know, everybody understands that the causes of crime are complex. I could suggest that there would be a very strong link between the fact that more than 100,000 kids are chronically truant from school and wandering around the streets. That may be a very significant factor in the massive rise in crime recently, and we can talk about that—that’s off of the topic of this debate. But in relation to the cause and effect, she has argued in very simplistic terms, given the fact that there is a rise in violent crime, therefore three strikes hasn’t worked, therefore we need to get rid of it. So I look at that.

Her second argument was around, well, this is inappropriate because it forces judges to impose sentences that they might not otherwise want to impose. Then, of course, we look down to the clause 6 of this bill, which is in relation to the imposition of minimum periods of imprisonment—that’s amended—and the presumption in favour of life imprisonment for murder. We see two examples of Parliament giving a clear steer to the judiciary about what Parliament wants to see in terms of sentences.

Now, her argument is that we should never do that and the three strikes is inappropriate because it constrains judges. I suppose the question I had to ask was: why is she then comfortable with the presumption in favour of life imprisonment for murder? Is that not equally constraining the ability of judges to make whatever decisions they choose? So I’m trying to tease out the logic.

You know, quite frankly, the Minister has been flailing around looking for reasons for this—another one that she raised in response to our questions was around cost considerations and whether this bill was being cost-effective. That reminded me of the logic of Kelvin Davis, which is to say that prisons are expensive, therefore we want to reduce the number of prisoners by 30 percent. Everybody wants to reduce the number of prisoners, but I think most people think that there should be a connection between crime and imprisonment. You reduce the number of prisoners by reducing crime first, not the other way round. I don’t know, it strikes me as a logical way to follow. So I just wanted to get an understanding about what comes first. Is it public safety that comes first, that is a consideration that is a factor here when it comes to the Sentencing Act, or is it fiscal policy, which is, I would argue, somewhat separate?

Finally, the Minister mentioned some comments from the Criminal Bar Association of New Zealand in terms of being no encouragement for people to plead guilty. Well, the criminal bar made a number of points and they rang the same weak argument, I thought, that the continued violent crime suggested that the three strikes didn’t work.

The other thing that they raised was that it caught relatively minor crimes. We heard the spokesperson there referring to minor crimes leading to excessive punishment. I’d like to understand whether the Minister agrees with that and what evidence she has for it. But, of course, the three strikes bill, which is being repealed, included the ability for judges to alter things if it was a manifestly unjust outcome. If Parliament is concerned that that is not working effectively to avoid manifestly unjust sentences being imposed, then an obvious suggestion is to amend the Act to make that more explicit or more effective.

I want to ask the Minister whether any thought had been given to amending the Act rather than repealing it. If there is a concern that this legislation has led to manifestly unjust outcomes—somebody being convicted on a third offence and being sent to jail for 10 years for a relatively minor crime; bearing in mind that the crimes involved here are violent crimes and sexual assaults and not minor instances, but at the low level of spectrum—and the ability of judges to alter things if the outcome is manifestly unjust. If the argument is that that is not working effectively and is too tight, what thought was given to amending that rather than repealing it? I’d like to get a sense from the Minister about that.

Also raised by the Criminal Bar Association was another point, saying, “Well, because there is no parole for these prisoners, that removes the ability for rehabilitation and that’s a reason why we should repeal the bill.” I would have thought a much more logical approach would be to say, “Well, if that is a problem, why don’t we amend the bill to ensure that prisoners who are captured by the second or third strike do have access to rehabilitation in prison?”

That’s something that the law could be amended to deal with, but that doesn’t seem to have been an option considered by this Parliament when it moved—under Part 1—to repeal the changes to the Sentencing Act. So there’s a number of questions there. Why did the Government not consider amendments around the “manifestly unjust” element of this, and whether it’s working effectively? Why did they not consider amendments around the ability for rehabilitation for those prisoners? Why did they think that the only option available was repeal?

Mr Chair, thank you. Just in response to some of those comments made by my friend Mr Goldsmith, with respect to manifestly unjust sentences, our side of the House did consider whether or not the broader sentencing regime that has been accepted by Governments and Parliaments over many years was satisfactory. In alignment with constitutional law experts, criminal law experts, and, of course, all of the relevant bar associations—we aligned with their view that the sentencing regime was appropriate. We aligned with their view that this indeed was bad law.

There was a range of comments made by my friend Mr O’Connor relating to evidence. I think in my opening remarks this morning I set out four reasons related to deterrence, cost, procedural implications, and then victims. With respect to his comments on Māori and Pacific Islanders, I wasn’t quite sure what the question was there, so I’ll just note that I’ve heard his remark, and if there’s something I missed I’m not quite sure what I was intended to respond to. He also made some inference that whether or not—something about consequences and races and sentencing. Again, I didn’t understand the question. I particularly didn’t understand it in the context of Part 1.

But what I will say as my broader response to that question and query is that again we fall back to the Sentencing Act and the primary principles prior to the three strikes law being incorporated. We think that there is a very sound Sentencing Act and sentencing regime in New Zealand. We think that there is a very sound distinction between the executive and the judiciary for them to exercise their discretion.

I think those are the main points that I’ve picked up over the last two contributions.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, I am going to come back to you and I am going to put my questions to you again very briefly, and I am going to ask you to stand in this Chamber and address them because they were your four opening comments in relation to this bill. I’m going to start from the back. First, in relation to victims, let me explain very clearly, I don’t know whether you’ve read the submissions made by victim advocates groups to the Justice Committee, but they were very, very clear about the fact that they felt strongly that the three strikes legislation was working, it was designed in favour of victims, and it should remain on our statute book.

Victims, Minister, like I said, on the whole, want to avoid our justice system and coming into the court. Some don’t, some want their day in court, they want to be able to have their say. But, certainly, in my experience, those that have been the victims of serious family violence, sexual violence, find the court process deeply stressful and re-traumatising for them. I don’t know whether the Minister fully understands that the three strikes legislation provided certainty for those victims. They knew what was going to happen to the offender inside our criminal justice system. They knew that they could have some peace of mind and feel safe in their homes knowing that they weren’t going to be called back early to a parole hearing, or having to revisit a victim impact statement. That is the real impact and effect on victims.

The Minister said, in her opening statement, that one of the reasons why they’re repealing this is because they want to be able to protect an offender’s right to be able to plea bargain. Effectively that’s what it is. They want the defendant to be able to plea bargain. I think that’s a perverse position to take for any Government, to bring a bill to this Chamber to repeal because they’re trying to protect the rights of a defendant to be able to plea bargain.

What I’d like the Minister to do is stand in this Chamber because when the Hon Peeni Henare made that comment in this Chamber, I was shocked. I went away and I did some research and I tried to find some evidence to show that that was actually the case and whether there’d been any negative, perverse, or bad outcomes in relation to victims because of that change. I could find nothing, Minister.

So I’d like the Minister to stand and actually give us some clear evidence, in terms of what she’s basing those comments on, because the only evidence that we heard was from defence lawyers that came in front of the committee, and when questioned by the committee, they couldn’t give any examples either. It was just some sort of idea that was out there in the ether. I thought that when we passed law, as lawmakers, when we take this type of legislation seriously, that it should be actually backed up with some evidence. It should be actually backed up with some examples. The only evidence, clear evidence, that I’ve heard given in the Chamber today is by Nicole McKee, who stood up and actually referred to the justice report saying that even though it might be minor, there’s actually evidence there that it could be a deterrent. By the way, she made a very salient point: you actually need time to see what’s going to happen.

Another point that I want to raise is incarceration. And the example was used: someone that might have committed a minor offence has been caught by three strikes and gets an 11-year sentence. By the way, let me be clear: offenders that have been caught by three strikes have got, on average, about 72 convictions. OK? So let’s just look at that for a second. If we’ve got an offender that is a recidivist offender with multiple convictions and, actually, they’re going into prison, and they got a prison term of 11 years—if we extrapolate that out, just think about the amount of offences that haven’t been committed. Think about the amount of victims that haven’t been created in that time. And here’s a novel idea for us all to remember: part of the reason why we have prisons and we have our corrections facilities—they do an outstanding job, although they’re under enormous pressure at the moment—is fundamentally to keep communities safe. We would all in this House, as lawmakers, love to live in the utopia where we don’t need prisons, where we don’t need to incarcerate people. But do you know what? There’s people in our community, and this has happened through the generations, as long as man has walked on this earth—there’s bad people that do bad things. We need them to actually protect the community.

So I’d like the Minister to stand and answer my questions. I want her to answer my question and explain to us why she has used the rationale, as laid out for us in this Chamber, that because serious violent crime and serious crime in this country is on the rise, they’re having to come to this House and repeal the three strikes legislation because that hasn’t been a deterrent. I’d like her to stand and give us the evidence for that. I’d like to see what advice she’s had. I’d like her to refer to the advice that she’s had from her officials. I’d like her to give us the evidence of how she has arrived at that position—it’s one of her four key planks that this legislation is being repealed upon. And I would like her to stand, and I would like her to give us examples and evidence of the proposition that she has put forward, another one of her key planks for the repeal of this legislation, in terms of how three strikes legislation is going to have a perverse outcome because it removes the right of a defendant to be able to plea bargain. I’d like to see the evidence; I’d like to see the advice that she’s received to actually back that up. Thank you, Mr Chair.

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to speak on Part 1 of the Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill. I’ve been interested in the conversation. I think that many valid and valuable points have been raised on this side of the Chamber, and to the extent that the Minister has engaged with them, I thank her for it.

I know that she shares with me an interest in constitutional matters and that she’s got something of a background in public law, so I hope that she will engage on some points around the constitutional issues that are raised, the relationship between the judiciary, Parliament, and the executive. These are issues that have been raised in New Zealand courts specifically on the legislation, effectively, leading to its repeal or at least being used by the Government as a justification for movement in this space. I think some of the significant issues are policy areas, in essence, including as related to Part 1, the heart of the bill, which is the repeal of that provision in the Sentencing Act.

So first point, then, translates to a question for the Minister: what is her view on the necessity, as the Government MPs might have it, that an Act or a measure be repealed on the say so of judges with those judges having determined that the three-strikes law, as it’s commonly known, represents inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act? The first point that I’d like the Minister to address is for her to provide some assurance to us at that high level that Parliament remains sovereign lawmaker in this country and that she can justify at least in her own mind and in the collective mind of the Government, the measures they are taking and that they are not merely saying that it’s because some judges in this land have a view on, essentially, a policy matter.

Of course, it’s been dressed up in the language of inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and creativity—I choose my euphemisms carefully—has been applied in that Parliament couldn’t possibly have intended a disproportionate sentencing regime, because that would be contrary to some provisions within the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Well, of course, Parliament did intend that, for better or worse. It’s the right of this Parliament to make decisions that are ostensibly inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and that is the role of this the primary law-making institution in this country.

So that’s the first question—just to get some comfort from the Minister that at least she understands and acknowledges the respective roles of those branches of government and which one it is that ultimately has the ability to speak to the other one in that regard. That’s not to say, of course, that we should be unaware or unconcerned with the courts’ views on these matters. Indeed, the next item on the Order Paper, Madam Chair, as you’ll know, is a discussion about declarations of inconsistency and how Parliament responds to that. So I don’t want to get too far into that. But Part 1 of this bill is very clearly concerned with a policy matter on which the courts have been speaking.

The second issue is whether she actually agrees—let’s say for a moment that the courts have that ability, and they do, to comment on these matters. Is it correct that it’s a disproportionate response in policy terms for the right not to be subjected to disproportionate treatment? Is that not outweighed by the serious policy objective in terms of our most serious offenders in this country, those causing the most degree of victimhood on multiple occasions? And, of course, the iteration of offending is at the heart of the policy. Is that not sufficient to outweigh that starting point, which is the right in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in the first place?

Finally, on that—and it’s a related point but it goes into another place which goes to how the community view these things—if the judges’ expectations and desires in relation to sentencing policy differ greatly from those of the New Zealand public, which should prevail? I’m not saying that should have some sort of system whereby there’s a popular and populist approach to sentencing and that it should be the guiding light, but I would strike a note of caution for everyone who has engaged with constituents who are concerned about violent crime over a long period—and I don’t mean to say, necessarily, that it’s higher over the last five years; that might be the case but it’s irrelevant for current purposes—that if the community loses faith in the institutions such as the judicial system, if it takes into its own hands vigilante actions or disrespects these democratic institutions that we have, then we will all be the poorer for it, including in the way that we respond to violent crime. So the Minister’s engagement on that point would be very welcome indeed.

Can I thank my colleague Christopher Penk from across the aisle. I enjoy the application of his mind to these legal issues, because that’s exactly what they are, and in particular the separation of powers, which is at the heart of his questions, and how that relates to Part 1. So I just really appreciate that finally we have a speaker from the other side of the House that’s actually directed his questions to the subject matter before us.

So stepping back, one, I think we can all be assured within this House that the supremacy of sovereignty of this Parliament is utmost. I presume all lawmakers will do this, and I’ve certainly seen that over many years observing this House: we look to the courts, and in particular the senior courts, as to how they interpret our laws that we make. We are the stewards and custodians of lawmaking. They, of course, are the stewards and custodians of interpreting those laws and applying them. What we have here—and it’s not to take into any consideration their viewpoints on policy; it’s to take into consideration how the law has been interpreted in light of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and, of course, in light of broader sentencing principles.

I think the question that my colleague asked me is, you know, what is—I think the presumption there was whether there has been an overreach of the judiciary into policy matters and whether there’s been an overly open ear of the executive to the courts. On those grounds, I am assured that that certainly is not the case and there is very much respect for the separation of powers.

When you have the senior courts find—actually, when you have every court level, from the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, through to the District Courts, noting that there is a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and that it’s so disproportionately severe that it undermines the integrity of the three-strikes sentencing regime, I think all of us as parliamentarians in this House should be concerned. Post the Queen v Fitzgerald, of course, which the members of this House should all be well versed with now, I think that there’s been a summary by some legal academics that have found that four of the six third-strikers have received disproportionate sentences, so that would amount to a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Briefly turning, though, to the point with victims, to briefly respond again to my colleague Mark Mitchell, I don’t know whether we’re seeing the same submissions from multitudes of groups with respect to victims, but I have here, through multiple receipt of submissions that I have, the impact on victims when you have victims going through a prolonged judicial process through the courts—confronting your victims on multiple occasions, and having that system stretched out and appealed and gone through that process.

So, look, that’s not the primary reason, of course. The primary reason that we’re repealing this is because it doesn’t align with good legal practice and in particular the sentencing regime that New Zealand has had in our country for many years, which is a sound and principled approach to sentencing. Of course, any law that consistently has results and findings of a breach of our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, I think everybody in this House will agree, is something that is an issue that we as lawmakers should be turning our mind to. Is this law fit for purpose? Does it reach the objectives? If so, what are the benchmarks by which we seek to see how it reaches those objectives, and how can we capture that? On all of those grounds, as I’ve made statements on multiple occasions this morning, we find that there is not a case to be made.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am looking at Part 1, where we are looking at the imposition of minimum periods of imprisonment, a presumption in favour of life imprisonment for murder, the minimum period of imprisonment—what a kookaburra’s codswallop this all is.

Now, one of the things that I think is really important is that we do address the victims in this bill in Part 1 because we’re looking at the minimum period of imprisonment that will be placed upon a criminal, and here’s just an example of a person. It may not have been a third strike. It won’t matter now because they won’t be able to be eligible for it, but here’s what we have in sentencing. A man named Shannon Joseph Henry shot a police officer in Hamilton in July last year. He was jailed for just seven years and eight months and he only needs to serve 3½ years as a minimum non-parole period, and this was after a starting point of 13 years in prison. So that’s the result of sentencing for a person who actually took a shot at one of our front-liners—another one of our police officers—and we are, effectively, saying that we don’t want the victim to have to go through a prolonged court case. Well, I disagree.

The ACT Party believes that we have victims out there that actually want full justice served upon those criminals who affect their lives and cause them ongoing pain and suffering. That, for quite a number of victims, means that they end up having to go through a process, and repealing the three-strikes law is no guarantee that we’re going to have a whole stack of criminals all of a sudden pleading guilty; in fact, I would suggest it’s quite the opposite.

When we’re looking at a Minister who has taken a victim-centric approach to legislation, the reason why you have the ACT Party and the National Party constantly coming back at you about victims is because once you start changing the effect of imprisonment or the number of years in which a person may have non-parole or may be serving under Her Majesty’s regime, you have to take into account the role of the victims here, and I was extremely disappointed to see that even the Human Rights Commission could not do a submission looking at the role of the victims in this as well. So it’s really important that somebody take on the banner of the victims, and it’s really great to see that both National and ACT put them at the heart of this legislation, because, effectively, that’s who it was that we were protecting: the victims. We in the ACT Party believe that they’ve been severely missed out in consultation—in real consultation—over this bill.

So, Minister, when we’re looking at a starting point of 13 years in prison for shooting at one of our front-liners, a police officer, but the actual impediment is only 3½ years of minimum non-parole, then we have to ask who are we looking after—the criminals?—because we’re certainly not looking after the victims. Thank you.

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The first question—I’ll only hit four, very quickly—is that I’d love to have the Minister repeat what I think is the speech of the day—what is it, a kookaburra’s something or rather? If she could repeat that, it would be amazing!

Secondly, the Minister needs to clarify her understanding of the comity between the Parliament and the courts. She’s given an array of views which are ultimately confusing. Parliament is sovereign. It gives instruction to the courts. Now she’s telling us, because of the courts, in academics’ view, that things are disproportionate, that Parliament, therefore, has to make changes. Now, of course, we can listen, Minister, but does she affirm parliamentary sovereignty? I think she does, because in Part 1 she’s now talking about minimum sentencing, just as ipso facto, the three-strikes legislation was imposing maximums—in other words: we are still imposing things. The Minister is still directing the courts, despite dancing on the head of a pin, I would argue, and trying to suggest that they are somewhat independent. So we need absolute clarity, number two, on her understanding of parliamentary sovereignty and comity.

The third is that she’s touched on in, her contributions, the money-saving benefits. I think, to many at home, it sounds like if we don’t imprison people longer, if we don’t exact proper consequences on criminals, we’ll save money. That’s the argument I heard. As the corrections spokesperson, I hear it from her colleague, as well, around prisons—basically, let the prisoners out; it’s going to save money. I’d like her to disabuse me of that argument, when she did earlier talk about saving money.

The last point—the last point—is I’ve just picked up what she’s tabled in a tabled amendment in the committee in, I think, response to Nicole McKee. It’s a change to the Part 4, which relates, of course, to clause 10 of Part 1—just for the Labour side, before they get too worried! She’s changing clauses to do with the commencement. Now, that makes sense, but the question, Minister, is: you’re already making mistakes with this legislation, you are now racing proposed amendments on to the Table; what confidence can this committee have that you’ve got the rest of this bill accurate and correct?

I move, That the question be now put.

I’m still seeing members making different contributions, but thank you for that.

I just want to pick up on the comments of the Minister around disproportionate sentences, and maybe I’m a bit slow; I don’t know—the Minister on the other side is very quick to assent. She seems to be arguing that because some judges consider outcomes as a result of the legislation as being disproportionate sentences, we should repeal it. And she gave the example of a person who, in the normal course of events, might have got a three-year sentence and ended up with a 10-year sentence because of this bill.

The thing that I can’t quite understand is: was that not the purpose of the legislation? The whole purpose of the three strikes legislation was to say that if you’re on your second or your third strike, rather than getting the heavily reduced normal sentence that you might get, you will get the maximum sentence. So the whole purpose of the bill was to bring about disproportionate outcomes for third-strikers and second-strikers. That was the purpose of the bill. The whole purpose of the bill was to create disproportionate outcomes for people on the third strike. And then to turn around and say, “Oh dear, this has led to disproportionate outcomes. Therefore, we should repeal it,” seems to be hard to understand from a point of view of logic. That is the purpose of the legislation. So I want to get a better understanding. We have the Supreme Court saying, “Where things would be so disproportionate that it shocks the conscience of the nation,”—or words to that effect—“things should be changed.” And that is a point of view, and the legislation, of course, has a provision that if the outcome is manifestly unjust, then the courts can take that into consideration. But the mere argument that the three strikes legislation, which Part 1 repeals, in relation to the Sentencing Act, has led to disproportionate outcomes seems to me to be a very odd argument, given that that is the exact purpose of the legislation.

The purpose of legislation quite often is to send a message. I’m reminded of one of the comments from one of the submitters on this bill and that was Sunny Kaushal, the president of the Crime Prevention Group. His point was that this is not the time for Parliament to send a message. And the message that is sent by repealing this legislation is that less punishment is required for our very worst offenders. The message is quite clear, from Parliament, that the Government is passing by this bill: we are too tough on our worst repeat offenders, and we need to reduce those sentences and make it easier for those worst repeat offenders. I suppose what’s leaving people scratching their heads is that given the rise in violent crime, given the doubling of gun crime in Auckland, or trebling, or quadrupling, and the sense of lawlessness on our streets, why would we be wanting to send that message now? And the quote from that submitter was that it showed a lack of respect for law-abiding New Zealanders who are struggling and concerned.

So those are the two questions that I had: why is the Minister surprised that the legislation brought about disproportionate outcome when that was the intent of the legislation, and why is that a reason for repealing it? Second, what exactly is the message that the Minister is trying to send in the repeal of this bill, and how does she think it’s appropriate for the times?

Thank you. I just want to briefly respond with respect to some of the disproportionate sentencing outcomes that have been subject of inquiry in the senior courts. I’m sure these cases have been provided and discussed at the select committee stage, but I’m happy to just touch on a couple that I think highlight why the move from the discretion for the judiciary to be able to apply ordinary sentencing principles and therefore put them in the position where they’re consistently breaching section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is not good law for all New Zealanders.

I refer to a case, Queen v Love in 2020. This offence here concerned a gentleman who had severe mental health issues. He was an out-patient at a mental health hospital who had been to the hospital that day. He was in a state of crisis of some sort, smashed a door at the hospital where he was an out-patient, and he took $380 from a local cafe. That, of course, is unacceptable behaviour, and the sentencing regime had an ordinary judiciary approach to this through the sentencing regime that they would ordinarily apply. The sentence indication was that that would result in a penalty of 18 months. The sentence imposed in that case was 10 years—10 years for a man who was mentally ill, that the system knew suffered from significant mental health issues. He would, and is, serving a 10-year sentence for a crime which the courts have indicated should carry a penalty of 18 months.

So that’s one case of many. We saw the deep inquisition by the Supreme Court in cases like Queen v Fitzgerald that highlighted that you have a majority of the court in that case saying that the right under section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act was not one that was subject to a reasonable limitation under section 5 of that Act. And they spoke on multiple occasions, and have, through all levels of the courts, about the disproportionate composition element that is passing through to victims. I don’t know that that was the intention—and if it was the intention to incarcerate mentally ill patients for extremely lengthy prison sentences, it’s certainly not an intent that this side of the House would agree to.

As to comity, I found it almost comical the analysis offered by my friend on the other side of the Chamber as to his understanding of comity when it comes to separation of powers. To be clear, of course, Parliament retains the right to make laws. We have, I would hope, though, a general moral obligation on us all as parliamentarians to make law that serves the intent of our laws that guide us, primarily, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, those other critically constitutionally significant, important laws that enable us to guide and make good law in this House that results in outcomes—whether those are deterrent effects, whether that results in outcomes like reduced time going through the criminal justice process to get the appropriate sentencing outcomes that victims deserve, whether that creates cost outcomes—and that we as taxpayers can be assured that those who are deserving of harsh sentences are receiving them, and that those in the best place to be able to make that determination have the tools that they need. Of course, I feel that’s an obligation on all of us in order to ensure that we’re looking deeply and critically at the laws that are being passed through this House, and I reaffirm our party’s position in 2009, and one that we’ve taken seriously again in this Parliament, that three strikes law was bad law, continues to be bad law, and has proven to be bad law over, now, a decade’s period of time.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to start with the last statement the Minister made. She keeps standing in this Chamber and saying that in 2009 the Labour Party identified this was bad law, and that from that point forward this has been bad law. But the Minister has not been able to stand in this Chamber and give us one example or one stat, any advice to actually explain to New Zealand and this committee why this three strikes legislation is bad law. I have asked now for direct responses to my questions twice and they’ve not been responded to; they’ve been ignored completely. So I think that speaks volumes in itself.

The final thing that I’d say, and I’d ask the Minister, is this: at the moment, in this country, there’s a very strong feeling within the public, certainly within the police, within our first responders, and with our corrections officers that there are no consequences currently sitting inside our justice system. I want to acknowledge the example that Nicole McKee used of the police officer that was shot in Hamilton. He has been in contact with me in recent months. There is a very strong feeling inside this country that currently there is a lack of consequences for offenders, and especially recidivist offenders, that are committing crimes. Can the Minister explain, and at least acknowledge or show, that she’s in touch enough with the mood in the country to explain why this Government is taking the time of this House to repeal the only legislation on our statute book that actually, from a victim’s perspective and from the public’s perspective, gives them some confidence that there’s going to be proper sentencing and consequences put in place?

I move, That the question be now put.