Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I move, That the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

In the last few years, we have seen an unacceptable increase in retail crime. Particularly in the last year, we have seen a spike in ram raid and smash-and-grab - type offending, which is hugely concerning for communities across New Zealand. To me, as a Minister, and to this Government, this is unacceptable. Ram raids harm business owners, and they harm families and the wider communities that they occur in. Ram raiding causes significant property damage and threatens the sense of security and livelihoods of victims. People deserve to feel safe in their communities, and shop owners and their employees should be able to go to work or lock up for the evening without the fear that their shop will be raided at night.

The Government has been taking action to address this offending. Many of these offenders are children and young people, and we have put in place a range of programmes to re-engage these children and young people in education, in employment, and into our society as well. These programmes are working. More than three-quarters of children and young people going through the fast-track programmes we rolled out in December last year have not gone on to reoffend.

On top of these programmes, as a Government, we have taken a number of steps to reduce offending and prevent harm to our communities and small businesses right across New Zealand: the retail crime prevention funding to better protect small businesses from the risk of ram raids, with tools like fog cannons, bollards, roller doors, and CCTV upgrades; the Better Pathways Package we introduced in September 2022 to improve education and employment opportunities for young people; the enhanced fast-track model we announced in July to increase the immediacy, the intensity, and the duration of support for the small number of children and young people we see engaging in serious and persisting offending behaviour; and the additional 1,800 front-line officers delivered in June, which is a 21 percent increase from 2017, and it makes the police workforce the largest it has ever been. These actions have been effective in reducing the rate of ram raids, which have declined by two-thirds since their peak in August of 2022. However, the number of ram raids has remained unacceptably high, and it is my view that one ram raid in New Zealand is one ram raid too many.

We know there has been a gap in the system for a small group of young offenders where our interventions have not been working and the system does not have the tools to respond adequately. As I have said, the system is working for three-quarters of young people, but for this small group we need to do more, and we need to focus in on the current gap in our system. This bill closes that gap and it provides a better range of tools to respond to the 12- and 13-year-olds with the most serious and persistent reoffending behaviour.

Let me be clear: it is already against the law to commit a ram raid. People can be charged and convicted with existing offences of burglary or intentional property damage. This bill adds a new offence for ram raiding to the Crimes Act 1961, with a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. This offence recognises the specific harms caused by ram raids and distinguishes it from other forms of burglary. There is the significant property damage from driving a vehicle front on into a building, along with the intent to commit an offence such as stealing goods from that shop, both of which seriously impact the livelihoods and, potentially, the lives of those victims inside that shop. This offence will capture not just the driver but it will also apply to passengers within that offending vehicle and the hangers-on waiting outside the building who share the criminal intent of participating in the ram raid. This means that the police will have to prove the offenders knew that the vehicle would be used to gain entry and that they intended to commit an offence once inside the building, such as theft.

Because we know there is a particular gap for children who commit multiple ram raids, the bill also amends the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 to allow 12- and 13-year-olds to be proceeded against in the Youth Court jurisdiction for the new ram raid offence without their having to be a previous offender. This does not mean that a child will receive a sentence of imprisonment for this offence. The maximum penalty our Youth Court can impose for 12- and 13-year-olds is six months’ custody in a youth justice facility, and supervision for up to 12 months in the community.

I want to emphasise that this is not about sending our children to prison, but, rather, recognising the serious impact that ram raids are having in our communities. The aim of this change is to give the police and Oranga Tamariki the tools they need in the tool box to properly respond to the high levels of youth offending we are now seeing in New Zealand.

Our goal is to break that cycle of reoffending, which we are doing by holding those offenders accountable for their actions and by resourcing our police with the additional cops and also the tools they need to get on top of this destructive behaviour. This will ensure that children who ram-raid face greater accountability for their actions and that the system can respond quickly. It gives our courts the options to impose bail conditions, including non-association, curfew, and residing at a specific address; detention in Oranga Tamariki custody where there is a risk of a child reoffending; intention to charge family group conference plan, with escalation available to Youth Court if the plan is not agreed to or fails to be completed; and Youth Court orders, including residential orders of up to six months being available if the charge is proven, and supervision of up to 12 months.

The bill also creates two new aggravating factors in the Sentencing Act 2002 to provide greater accountability for those who encourage offending by children or young people, or who post offending online. These will be considered by judges when determining the appropriate penalty at sentencing.

The first factor covers people who aid or abet the child or a young person to offend. This will apply if an adult is convicted as a party to an offence committed by a child or a young person. This further holds to account anyone who exploits the vulnerability of children or young people by encouraging them to offend, potentially leading them into a life of crime.

The second factor applies when an offender live streams or posts their offending online, such as ram raiding. With the rise in the use of social media glorifying this kind of behaviour, it can encourage copycat offending and create further harms to the victims, who see themselves broadcast. This factor will also apply in the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989.

This bill is targeted to close the gaps in responses available to children with serious and persistent offending behaviour, and to hold them accountable when they commit a ram raid. This is the latest in a series of actions that the Government has taken to crack down on offending, particularly youth offending, which is at an unacceptable level in New Zealand right now. It provides interventions that help to break that cycle and to build a justice system that ensures less offending and fewer victims of ram raids. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party will be supporting this bill, the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill, insofar as it gives the justice system, in the broader sense, more tools to deal with the real problem of ram raids. But we do make the point that here we are in the last week of Parliament and finally the Government has woken up to the issue.

I want to start with the rhetoric shift. So we had a couple of questions today asking the Minister of Justice about her “crackdown on crime” from this Government. It was only a year or so ago that the previous justice Minister would be getting stuck into us for “knee-jerk reactions to crimes”, she would say—knee-jerk reactions to crime. Then, she’d say, “You don’t want to be doing all this stuff, because they’d just end up in prison—the university of crime—and that’s just what the gangs want.” So there was all the rhetoric about how any criticism of the Government being soft on crime was a “knee-jerk reaction.” Now, the Government Ministers are talking about a “crackdown on crime.” It is interesting. Six years ago, of course, they were only interested in reducing the prison population, come what may. So we’ve had that change over a period of time, leading to this bill.

Then, we had a period where they denied the problem. So this is about ram raids. When we were raising the issue of ram raids, about a year ago or 18 months ago, when people were worried about the very serious crime of people stealing cars, smashing them into businesses, costing tens of thousands of dollars, frightening the business owners, the small mum and dad shopkeepers trying to make a living, putting up their insurance costs, making it so difficult to do their business—Mark Mitchell, myself, and Chris Luxon, we’ve all been visiting those businesses. We’ve seen the tears in the eyes of these New Zealanders who are terrified and so frustrated that they’re doing everything they can to build a business, give customers what they want, to grasp the Kiwi Dream, and it’s getting smashed in front of them, and there are no consequences for the young children. That is the repeated message that we get, time and time again: no consequences.

Now, when we put this to the Government, about a year ago or 18 months ago, they denied there’s a problem: “No, no, no. Crime is coming down”, the Minister would say. “Crime is coming down.” Well, of course, if you only do half the number of drink-driving tests, you’re going to get fewer convictions of drink driving—that stands to reason. And that’s what’s happened. There’s been a massive reduction in basic sort of testing for those sorts of things. And if you change your mind around drug enforcement policy and say you’re not going to prosecute people for possession of drugs, well, there’s going to be a massive drop in prosecution for drugs. That does not mean that crime has come down. But they would say, “Oh, crime is coming down. There’s nothing to worry about here. These guys are just fearmongering.” And now, about a few months later, they decided, “Well, actually, maybe there is something going on in our streets.” They heard the choppers overhead every night in Auckland and they realised, “Yes, there is maybe something that we need to deal with.” So Chris Hipkins’ police Minister started to talk tough about a year ago.

The problem is they talked tough about a year ago, and that was at the time when Chris Hipkins announced the “circuit breakers” that we were going to have. We were going to deal with this about a year ago, and still we’ve got two ram raids a day on average. The problem is not solved; the problem is getting worse. So here we are, one week before we close the Parliament, and the Government is piling in all these bills at the last moment—a flood of bills in the last week. The last gasp of a dying Government, in order to look like they are trying to do something on this issue.

They would be much better to have picked up the National Party’s suggestion, way back in October last year, around youth crime, which is about creating a new category: the young serious offenders. That would have been a useful thing they could have done about a year ago in order to deal with serious repeat youth offenders. Because everybody agrees that for most young people that have an encounter with the justice system—it’s that they do it, they do something stupid, they make a mistake, they get involved with the system, and a light touch is a good idea, because you don’t want to get them drawn into the maw of the justice system. A light touch, a rehabilitation focus, works. But that works for most; but it doesn’t work for everybody. For that small group of very serious repeat offenders—people doing things like ram raids and aggravated robberies—we need something more. We need extra tools. And that’s why we suggested the young serious offender category. That’s why we suggested the youth military academies, which was pooh-poohed on the other side of the House. What have they come up with—what have they come up with? Nothing, really. They’ve just, sort of—a lot of talk.

Then, finally—finally—in the last week of Parliament, they come up with a suggestion around making it an aggravating factor if you take a video of a ram raid. Well, we agree with that. That’s something that the National Party announced a month or so earlier. And yes, yep, we agree with it—good; great. And they’re going to allow 12- and 13-year-olds to be proceeded against for a ram raid offence, in the Youth Court, without being a previous offender—good, we agree with that. So yes, big tick, we’ll support this piece of legislation. If we’re in Government, it will form a part of the much wider and much more comprehensive process that we’ll have to restore law and order in this country, which is what we need in this country, right here, right now.

When we’re out on the doorsteps and when I’m out on the doorsteps of Epsom, doorknocking, there are two issues that people raise, time and time again: they raise the cost of living, and they raise law and order. Cost of living because everybody’s struggling to make ends meet; law and order because they know what’s going on in the community. They never believed when Kiri Allan and Chris Hipkins and Ginny Andersen and Poto Williams and Kelvin Davis and—who was other guy?—Stuart Nash—are there any others?—Kris Faafoi and Andrew Little, the whole kaleidoscope of these people over the years, tried to tell them that were talking nonsense when they said that they were worried about crime. They tried to downplay it. The Government said, “No, no, no. Crime is falling. There’s nothing to see here”, even though the police were only doing half the number of checks—and there was all sorts of reasons behind that. People saw it on the streets. They felt it. They saw the ram raids. They saw the violent attacks. They saw the knife crime. They saw the shootings. They hear the helicopter overhead. They hear the roaring of the bikie gangs in the distance everywhere. They know that they feel less safe in their communities, and they want a response.

So after years of denial and years of focus solely on the target of reducing the prison population irrespective of what’s going on in the community, the Government’s finally woken up. But, I’m sorry, it’s too little, too late. They should have got their act together a lot earlier and actually come up with a comprehensive bill. They should have listened to what the National Party was talking about and maybe we could have done something together some time ago. Having said all that, this bill will go some way. On that basis, we support it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Can I begin my contribution just by acknowledging all the businesses who have been affected by ram raids. I know there are a number in north-west Auckland, including in Westgate, Unsworth Heights, and Greenhithe. It’s not acceptable. It’s never acceptable, which is why our Government has implemented a suite of measures to break that cycle of offending, including the Better Pathways Package, including fast-tracking local teams to address youth offending, and including the “circuit-breaker” programme, which has demonstrated some real success, but also in targeting organised crime.

But the Minister is correct that one ram raid is one too many, which is why we are introducing this bill. There’s one aspect of this bill which a number of big and small retailers have spoken to me about that this bill addresses. This bill introduces measures to penalise people who commission or reward children and young people to offend or who post offending online, and creates a new aggregating factor in the Sentencing Act, which will apply when an adult encourages or incites a person under 18 to carry out an offence.

This is an issue that’s been raised with me by a number of people. This is part of a suite of changes the Government has introduced. We are focused on community safety. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. If I can rewind back to 2019, and then I’ll link it back to this bill, the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill. If we go back to 2019, the National Party tried as hard as we could to draw the attention of the Labour Party to the fact that we were having a developing gang problem in New Zealand. As part of our package, as part of our law and order discussion document that we put out, we said that we were going to use the highly successful, highly respected gang task force Raptor that the Australians had used. And the response that we got from the Labour Party was the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway jumping around in his seat pretending to be a raptor, and the entire Labour caucus thinking it’s a great joke. Well, it’s not such a joke now, is it? When we had a 70 percent increase in gang numbers in this country; when we’ve had an enormous increase in drive-by shootings and gun violence in this country; when the gangs are recruiting faster than we can recruit, train, and deploy our front-line police offices. So it’s not so funny now, is it, Labour? Five years on, when the country is suffering and you at the time thought that it was a joke. Everyone’s looking down now. There was a lot of heckling going on before; they’ve gone very quiet.

And now let’s fast forward—let’s fast forward to today, when I asked the fourth police Minister in the last 12 months about Kiwis’ safety—about public safety. And what did she do? She cracked another joke. She thought it was funny, with the entire Labour caucus laughing at it again. And that is exactly why we find ourselves in this position with this bill that we’re supporting because we’ve taken the position, on this side of the House, that we will support any bill that might go some way to somehow making a shopkeeper or a retailer or their worker or their customer or a member of the public and a Kiwi safer. But this is ridiculous. You’re bringing this in the last week of Parliament as the House rises.

They keep using this language around a spike. Let me tell you how long you’ve been talking about a spike for—sorry, Madam Speaker. The Labour Party have been talking about spikes for over two years. This so-called spike has been growing over the last six years—an over 500 percent increase in ram raids and aggravated robberies. A 33 percent increase in violent crime. Not so funny now is it, Labour caucus? It’s not so funny now. And I notice that—

Angela Roberts: Just get on with it.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry, what was that? What was that? If you’re going to say something, say it loud enough so I can actually respond.

Angela Roberts: Get on with it.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh, get on with it. Don’t worry—don’t worry—I’m getting on with it all right.

I notice that you’ve got your senior whip in the chair tonight. I’ve just visited his town of Palmerston North with our outstanding National Party candidate there, Ankit, who is working extremely hard. While I was there for the day, let me tell you what I did. I met with six shopkeepers. I went to six businesses who haven’t seen their local MP. And it might be nice for him to go and actually visit them. The first one—a female that owns a shop by herself—she’s so fearful of what might happen that she uses access control. She keeps the door locked. And when she sees a customer, she checks to see who they are, she checks to make sure that she thinks that she’s going to be safe, and she’ll open the door.

They think it’s funny again—they think it’s funny again—they’re joking again. You are a disgrace—you are a disgrace—because you do not understand. Sorry, Madam Speaker. It is a disgrace to see Labour Party members huddling and laughing when I’m talking about a woman that is fearful in the shop that she works.

Anna Lorck: Who’s laughing? No one’s laughing.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Take a call—take a call and respond to that, because it is a disgrace.

So then I went to the next shop—I went to the next shop—

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Which business? You haven’t told us the business.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: This is on the main street of Palmerston North. Very happy to give you the details.

Tangi Utikere: Broadway. Oh, I know already.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: So we went down to the—oh, he says he knows. He says he knows the shops. He says he knows who they are. That’s good. I went to the next shop. It was two ladies there that said they won’t walk through the town at night—they won’t walk through the town square at night because they are scared, because they’re fearful.

I went and saw another business owner in Palmerston North who had boy racers—

Anna Lorck: Talk about the bill.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: No, I will address the issues that the Minister raised. We’re a first reading, you’re not the Speaker, and I will address the issues that the Minister raised.

So I went to another business. Guess what happened there. Boy racers turning up in a cul-de-sac, tearing up the paddocks, tearing up the grass, tearing up the tar seal and the seal in the cul-de-sac. So guess what happened. They called the police and a brave policewoman on her own came down that cul-de-sac to try and stop one of the vehicles that was tearing it up. Guess what happened to her. I’m sure the member knows—I’m sure the member knows this. I’m sure he would have done a welfare check. The boy racers surrounded the police car. They surrounded her so she could not leave. Guess what else they did. They tried to interfere with her brakes and they urinated on her vehicle.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Is this about ram raids?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh, don’t worry, I’ll get to the ram raids—don’t worry about that. The member doesn’t want me to talk about this; it’s a bit uncomfortable. The truth is a bit uncomfortable for them.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! I think all members can leave it up to the Speaker to determine what is and is not—

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Including that member, thank you. All members can leave it up to the Speaker to determine what is or isn’t within the scope of this debate.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: So let’s move on to a couple of the dairies that were in there. You want to talk about ram raids, let’s move on to a couple of the dairies in Palmerston North, with one owner that has not only built a cage around him and his wife that run the dairy, but he’s also put automatic access control at the door so he’s got bars that go across the door, he checks to see who it is, he presses a button and the bars slide back.

We had the Minister stand in this House and say as if it was a matter of pride that we’ve delivered bollards and we’ve delivered fog canons and you can put garage doors on the front of your shops. What? We want our country to look like Mogadishu—because that’s where we’re going. I don’t want our shopkeepers to have to come to work each day and have to lock themselves away in a cage to be safe. That is not the New Zealand that I grew up in. That is not the New Zealand that we’re going to accept. But that is the New Zealand that this Labour Party—this Labour caucus that continues to laugh and mock and carry on, that’s the New Zealand that this Labour Party has delivered for New Zealand. You can look around, Mr Bennett, but the best thing you may do is just tell the members around you that it’s actually a serious matter. These are real lives. There is a massive human cost to what is going on in this country at the moment. By the way, there’s a massive economic cost too.

So it would have been nice—the police Minister has been a bit mystified about the fact that I’ve been standing in this House and asking the Minister the entire time she’s been the Minister about her incoming statement about the fact that Kiwis feel safer, because I can promise her that the majority of Kiwis and New Zealanders in this country at the moment do not safer. I think that it was lost on her that she stood up 17 times in this House. She’s never bothered to correct that. She has continued to say that Kiwis feel safer.

She raised the 1,800 police officers. Let me tell you now that if you can find one police officer in this country that says to you that we can feel the positive effects of being reinforced by 1,800 police officers, they’d be very hard to find. By the way, it’s not 1,800. This Government’s been very good at being deceptive and trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes. It’s actually 530 sworn police officers with the power of arrest. We’ve had over 60 stations in this country that have lost police officers. We’ve had well over 100 that have had no additional numbers. And when our front-line police officers are trying to deal with a 33 percent increase in violent crime, a 500 percent increase in ram raids, a 41 percent increase in victimisations, when they’re trying to attend to a 60 percent increase in mental health callouts because this Government’s failed on that as well, they don’t feel reinforced. The demand side of their work has well and truly overwhelmed them, and they are fighting to keep their heads above water. And they’ve had to deal with and serve under a Government that came in and prioritised two things: reduce the prison muster by 30 percent and repeal the only tough piece of sentencing law that we have on our books. That is why, as a country, we find ourselves in the dire situation that we are in today.

It saddens me to hear the playing of politics that I just heard for the last 10 minutes. My history in work has been in places like restorative justice and working with young victims and offenders of crime, so I know it firsthand—I’ve seen it and experienced it. We’ve been fortunate, but, sadly, many communities around Aotearoa New Zealand haven’t. We haven’t had ram raids or the issues of it in New Plymouth, but we did have one drive-by smash-and-grab several months ago at one of our jewellery stores, and it was tragic. I went and met with the victims of that and I understand what they were going through, but I looked into and followed up in terms of who these people were who perpetrated these offences, and in conversations around where they came from in terms of their offending, we could see a decade earlier—a decade earlier—that these young people had been let through the gaps, had been dropped and ignored by Government policy. Yes, they offended and what they did is wrong and they should not have done it, but the system failed them.

This kind of legislation isn’t the silver bullet to fix it all, but it is something that’s going to go some way to ensure that we make sure there are stopgap measures in place. Yes, we need to be tough on crime. We also need to be relentless in finding solutions to the causes of crime, ensuring we work with young people and their whānau to ensure that victims don’t have to go through this. That’s why this is a step forward. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak to the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill. At the first reading, ACT will support this bill, and we’re just so rapt that this Government has finally accepted that there is a crime problem. It’s especially concerning that it’s not just a crime problem; it’s mainly a youth crime problem going on at the moment. The bill has four main parts: there’s a new offence created targeting ram-raiding specifically; you can enable bodily samples to be taken, including from 12- to 13-year-olds; digital streaming can be a factor in sentencing, as well as other aggravating factors; and the change to enable 12- and 13-year-olds alleged to have committed the new offence to be charged in the Youth Court. It all sounds pretty sensible but a long time coming.

On 9 August last year, at question time, I asked the then Minister of Police: “Is there a specific offence code for ram raids; if not, will he commit to creating one so that the Government’s progress on this issue can be measured over time?” The response was: “How [police] code offences for their purposes is a matter for the police—it’s an operational matter.” Anyone would think there’s an election coming up! The statistics for ram raids are really quite shocking: 1,953 ram raids in the last four years, which is an average of 40 a month. In 2017, there were 119; 55 of those, no offender identified. Five years on—2022—899 ram raids; 429, no offender identified. So far this year: 412 ram raid and 193 offenders have not yet been identified. The number of victims created, the people directly affected by these ram raids, really amounts to the tens of thousands. It’s a shocking statistic.

The police are doing a great job, but the reality is that they shouldn’t have to be dealing with this crime explosion. It’s the result of soft-on-crime policies that just don’t work. The Government has constantly been told by people with more experience and knowledge than them that this would be the result. Six years on, the blind ideology has proven even more damaging than anyone thought would happen. Fog cannons were never the answer, and the dairy owners’ group said that a couple of years ago. Bollards are a sad indictment on this Government’s ability to keep New Zealanders safe, and it’s certainly not the New Zealand I grew up in.

The rhetoric we’ve listened to over the last three years—that harsher penalties don’t work and we need a wraparound approach, and that all ACT wants to do is lock them up—seems to be forgotten with this bill. Again, is there an election coming up? I realise how difficult this bill must be for Labour, the party of no consequences or accountability, and the public should always remember that this Government’s allies are even worse. The Greens want to defund the police. They refer to police dogs as “attack dogs”. And the Māori Party are openly hostile to police, with one leader stating that more police on the street means more dead Māori. The other one stated that young people can’t commit crime, they don’t understand what they’re doing. They’re despicable and naive comments, and they’re good reasons they should never be in power.

This bill is a great example of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but things should never have got this bad. There will be some interesting debates regarding this, with the Attorney-General chiming in today on technicalities that are going to need sorting, but it’s a start. The irony of this Government being comfortable with these changes after being so critical of any suggestion of harsher sentences and ensuring accountability is not lost. ACT looks forwards to really stopping the crime wave and lawlessness that, unfortunately, has become all too familiar in New Zealand. Until that happens on 14 October, we will support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s with a heavy heart that I stand to speak on this bill. It’s a disappointing turnabout from the Labour Party Government away from evidence-based policy on justice; away from framing that policy within not only evidence, but what we know to be true of what happens in our communities and what we know to keep them safe. It’s not often that I agree with an ACT Party member—and I don’t think that he meant it in the way that I do—but Chris Baillie is right, this seems like knee-jerk reaction to an election. It feels like moving toward the Opposition, in the worst possible way.

We, none of us in this House, stand here without compassion for victims of crime. We feel that fear, that is valid, as communities face violence or property offending—a crossroads of which is captured in this new term that we use, “ram raids”. Nobody here is saying that they stand for crime; that they lack that compassion for those communities; what we disagree on are the solutions. But the thing that breaks my heart about youth crime in particular is that it is where we have the most data, the most reports, the most evidence of who these young kids are, what works and what doesn’t. And what we actually also have is a fulsome child rights framework that we can work within to bring kids that come into conflict with the law out into healthy, thriving lives. We actually have that evidence—we don’t need to debate it anymore. We don’t need to talk about a “tough on crime” approach when we’re talking about something that’s tough on human persons involved, and actually really making it easier for crime to grow and propagate in our communities. Because what we do know, if we step into the child rights framework, it is where New Zealand’s most clear breaches of any international human rights law sit—in our age of criminal responsibility which is 10 rather than 14 years, age-mixing in places of detention, and laws like this one.

If we actually step away from the National and ACT Party frame—because New Zealand voted for a Labour Government—and we look at the child rights framework, we would see that children who are bought into formal criminal justice mechanisms and in this law, 12- and 13-year-olds to be proceeded against in the youth court without being previous offenders, there was that little bar already existing in our already breaching laws and we’re removing that. Bodily samples being taken from 12- and 13- year olds who are proceeded against; specific criminalisation of ram raids, which is already contained in other crimes. When we look at how far this proposal works to bring very young children into extremely invasive formal criminal justice processes and we ignore the evidence that says that is what creates recidivist young offenders, we are not being tough on crime; we’re actually being reckless; I’d say callous. We are choosing the taglines that make politicians look tough on crime rather than keeping our communities safe. It’s not even about just compassion for these kids that we are damaging—because that’s what all of the data and the evidence says. It’s not just about these kids that we are actively sending towards a life of crime and a life of gangs. Let’s just focus on the victim communities: more crime means more victims, so we’re letting everyone down.

And I am so disappointed in my Labour Party colleagues, that leaving the story of what actually resolves the upsurge in crime; leaving aside the equity frame of everyone having a life where they can go to sleep in a warm, dry home, can get access to mental health care and addiction treatment, can have jobs that pay for the lives that they need—and if they don’t have those jobs, that they have the social safety net that will lift them. Leaving aside the fact that they have failed to tell that story for three years, for right now, right before an election, to pivot towards the frame of punishment and away from what we know actually works—you’re not going to “out - Paul Goldsmith” Paul Goldsmith or Mark Mitchell. You’re not going to do it. We have to hold the line for what we know our communities need, rather than just the rhetoric.

So this bill is not only disappointing because it will not manage crime; it is not tough on crime—it’s actively harmful, generationally harmful, and it degrades our system of justice. It degrades our ability to fulfil those rights for young people and children. We know who those young children will be, we know they’ll be Māori and Pacific kids. We know they are kids with a history of trauma. If they’re girls—because all of the data is there—we know that they will have had very recent trauma. We know that they are kids with neurodiversity. In under-19-year-olds, around 89 percent of those we bring into formal justice processes will be then diagnosed with a serious learning disability. We know that the ball is dropped in education, in health, in incomes, and in housing. And now, with this bill, we’re going to harm them long term. We’re going to raise the rate of youth crime because we failed to tell those stories, to have the courage of our convictions to rely on the evidence and keep telling those stories in the face of the likes of Paul Goldsmith and Mark Mitchell. So I don’t commend this bill to the House.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill. It’s a bill which amends the Crimes Act 1961 by creating a new offence of ram raiding with a maximum penalty of 10 years.

When I’ve been reflecting on the contributions in this House, I have been thinking about the shop owners in my electorate of Manurewa. Their experiences very much inform the way I’ve approached this bill. Quite simply, I believe that they deserve to go to work every day feeling safe in their work, and the workers who work in their shops, who are often family members, deserve to know that they will be able to go home at night unharmed.

This bill goes alongside a suite of Government work in this area. These are legislative measures which sit alongside those programmes which keep young people from offending in this way in the first place—things like the Better Pathways Package, the fast-track programmes, and the enhanced fast track, which I’ve seen for myself. It’s a group of agencies sitting around the table dealing with each young person’s case as it comes through the night before, working out what is the best way to wrap around support and get these kids back engaged in school or in work or in something positive in their lives.

We’re talking about a really small group of young people and when I think of the experience of one of the local shop owners in my area—he’s just around the corner from me, Kharag Singh—he said to me that nobody who runs their shop thinks that the only answer to this is that there has to be harsher consequences. That is a big part of it for him and the people that he talks to, but he wants to make sure that these things don’t happen in the first place. That is what the Better Pathways Package does. That’s what Kotahi te Whakaaro, which reengages these kids into something positive, does. It’s why we need to do all of these things together and that’s why I’m happy to commend this bill to the House.

Simon O’Connor—a five-minute call.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. What’s quite striking is the very short, exceptionally fast calls which the Government side are taking, which is striking because after six years of a ram-raid situation which has got out of control and a left-wing Labour Government that has done absolutely nothing—let’s underline that; absolutely nothing—here in the last, dying days of their Government, the last hours are ramming this law through; all puns intended. We’re going to support it because like other justice bills, it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s a case of a little too little and a little too late.

So when I think of my own electorate to do with ram raids, we’ve had I think over 50—five zero—in the last year, and I’ve tried to visit as many of those businesses as I can. So in the likes of Glen Innes we’ve had our literal gas station ram-raided multiple times. In Glendowie, we’ve had a dairy owner who’s so sick of what’s been happening he closed up. We had another area in Glendowie where the dairy and takeaway store were ram-raided with such ingenuity that those involved built a ramp to get over the concrete ramparts. In St Heliers where my family and I live, various stores, including the liquor store, have been hit with tens of thousands of dollars of damage. Only a few months ago in Kohimārama, three of our stores in Melanesia Road again ram-raided, smashed into—very little taken, but, again, tens of thousands of dollars of damage done. In Mission Bay, one of the dairies: six times—six times—has been ram-raided. And just up the road, a liquor store run by an amazing young woman who lives in fear for what is to happen. In Ōrākei, one of our dairies there: four times they’ve been hit. They’ve sold up and retired. The liquor store was also hit, and if you drive into Ōrākei you’ll find that the plywood is still up. Stonefields: multiple times the little shops there have been hit. Meadowbank: only a couple of weeks ago, three stores on Dorchester Street, all ram-raided and broken into. Let alone—do I mention—the wonderful people of St Johns where their butcher, their fruiterer, and their cafe were also broken into, with one of those owners now sleeping on the floor to protect themselves.

Why? Because ram raids are out of control, and the Labour Government has had absolutely no answer—no answer. To give a little bit of credit, they have put together a fund, and, actually, I’ve been grateful for that in terms of bollards and fog cannons and the like. I’ve actually spent a lot of time with these business owners making sure they can access that, and, look, bouquets where required. That’s a good step, but that’s the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and it’s a failure—a failure to address some of the most fundamental causes, including, I might add, poverty and all those issues. This is a left-wing Labour Government that’s supposed to have cared for people, but we’re seeing those on welfare, child poverty targets, all of that get out of control, and these are some of the consequences.

The other aspect, too, is that there are not enough consequences, and anyone who knows me knows that consequences always have two aspects or two faces. One is, if you will, the direct consequence—there is a punishment, a consequence. I am repeating the words there, but there is a punishment, for want of a better term, but there are also consequences of helping when these young people are involved in crimes. What are we doing to assist people? The answer, unfortunately, again under this Government, is not much, which is why these young ones, in particular, are continuing their crimes. Look, there’s a multiplicity of reasons, there’s a multiplicity of factors, but they are not being addressed. Yes, this bill will do something; it’s not bad, but it’s hardly the great step forward.

But the little caveat I might put at the end, and it’s a challenge to all of us in this House, and it still upsets me for reasons I don’t fully understand, but it’s the story of that seven-year-old who was involved in a ram raid in Hamilton stealing a plushie toy. I just find that immensely sad. I want to make it really clear to the House: this is not an excuse, by any means, to criminalise someone like that, but I think it’s a challenge to me. It’s a challenge to all of us regardless of our political stripes of how we actually address this problem when we have seven-year-old kids involved with ram raids stealing plushie toys. I think it’s just utterly, utterly tragic. So we will support this bill, but we have a great challenge ahead of us.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer—five minutes.

Kia ora. It’s not good to see something of this significance being rushed through the House. Te Paati Māori notes the irony isn’t lost on us: the same day our Government is seeking to lower the voting age for local elections to 16, they’re also looking to lower the age for our tamariki who can be charged and locked up for burglary to 12 years old. I mean, with your left hand you are giving a voice to our rangatahi, but with your right hand you are taking the voice away for those who are in need the most.

So what I would like to warn this Government is that you cannot have it both ways. When you reach a crossroads, especially involving the rights of our mokopuna, of our tamariki, you need to be really careful which path you choose because you may find yourselves walking alone in October. Our rangatahi are not a problem waiting to be punished. They should not be pushed aside and rushed through; they are solutions waiting to happen, and this bill is not a solution. I put to you, sadly, it’s a knee-jerk little response to the fearmongering which the parties on the right have been doing for the last year plus.

Now look, we’ve got a situation where even the Police Association agrees: creating a separate crime for burglary is a superficial virtual signalling, and we’ve also known for decades that a punitive approach—you’ve said it numerous times in the House—to crime doesn’t work. But if this is indeed proposed as a suite of tools, and if you’re serious about supporting rangatahi to make better choices, then we need to actually give them some choices. Instead of alienating young people for committing crimes of poverty, we should be aiming to eradicate poverty. I know it’s not the easy road, but we’ve said numerous times in this House that it’s the right road. Where are the rights of our tamariki—collecting bodily fluids, unreasonable search and seizure—even the Attorney-General says the ram raids legislation violates the rights of children. We have existing law which you haven’t acknowledged which already deals with burglary. So we’re really, really compromised by the fact that you of all parties are here today saying that this is the right way forward for our tamariki and our rangatahi.

Now we’ve got a population here of rangatahi that make up more than half of Aotearoa’s homeless—more than half of Aotearoa’s homeless. They deal with mental health pressures. They’re a generation that we can’t begin to ever understand. They carry the trauma of every other generation before them, but most importantly, they’ve also had their natural development interrupted by numerous things, starting from at the least, COVID. Politicians and media need to look at what we could do across parties to stop this continual alienation and reacting to treating our rangatahi, again, like they are the problem waiting to be punished. We’ve seen—and I’ve mentioned this earlier today—the Independent Police Conduct Authority and the Children’s Commission found that police were guilty of racially profiling and illegally photographing rangitahi without their consent. Children as young as 15 in Whanganui were approached in broad daylight and threatened with arrest if they refused to have their photo taken. All for the crime of looking “out of place.”

This is not policing with consent. This is bullying, it’s predatory behaviour, a total abuse of power, and it worries us that here today, instead of standing up for our rangatahi—as our police Minister, who is actually now the Prime Minister, said at the time—that we’re continuing down this path. It’s medieval. It’s a medieval approach to criminal justice that we know just doesn’t work. We need to start talking to rangatahi and to our youth about what it is that we could be doing better, because I’m sure as hell our tūpuna did not sign this Te Tiriti o Waitangi for our mokopuna to be in care, incarcerated, and continually traumatised.

We must do better, all of us, across this House, and if there’s anything we say in the eleventh hour before we all depart in a couple of days: we cannot be tough on crime when collectively we were allowing the soft on poverty. And we cannot continue arresting inequality out of society and ignore the state of our tamariki and our rangatahi. We will not be supporting this bill. Kia ora rā.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just want to pick up one particular aspect of this bill. I don’t know, maybe being an educator and working with young people, I’m always looking for opportunities to be optimistic. There are parts of this bill that I want to talk about with regards to making restorative practices (RP) more accessible to young people.

RP, for those of us in the education sector, doesn’t mean that accountability and consequences are not there; it just has a different way of addressing it. It invites everyone present into positions of responsibility. I’d like to think that the next stage of this bill, when this goes to select committee, that everybody—victims, the perpetrators, and the entire community—take the opportunity to step up to positions of responsibility.

I’d like to reflect on the fact that we have talked about “making it 16”, and this is an opportunity—every young person can make a contribution to the select committee, regardless of their age. We need to hear your voice if we are going to fix this. So, please, stand up and be heard. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill. It’s been an interesting debate. I’ve followed it as closely as I was able. I’ve missed a few minutes here and there of various contributions, but I think I’ve had the gist of it in terms of most of the respective parties’ positions.

I’ll take a slightly different tack in terms of some of the analysis that I think’s really interesting in terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Actually on a very day in the House—if I can just place that in context, Madam Speaker, without obviously testing your patience in terms of straying too far from the hill—but we’ve had an interesting discussion earlier today about the implications of a declaration of inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act by the Supreme Court, ultimately, and prior to the High Court and Court of Appeal making different decisions along the way. But that was the basis of a report that was made to the House, as required by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (NZ BORA) now, and the House’s Standing Orders.

Of course, we heard all the arguments and, actually, to be fair, I didn’t listen to a lot of that debate. Again, I wasn’t able, but I presume that a lot of the reasoning in favour of amending the local electoral age of eligibility to vote was around that idea of inconsistency or possible inconsistency with NZ BORA, and it’s right, as far as it goes, that we should debate and discuss that. I’m, obviously, not going to get into that substantive issue now, but from a constitutional point of view, it’s interesting because we have in front of us tonight a very detailed and interesting and helpful report of the Attorney-General under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in relation to this legislation. Actually, passing reference was made to it by Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, which I think was commendable on her part. I haven’t heard much other discussion of this aspect of the debate, although of course the purpose of that requirement for an assessment under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is to bring to the House’s attention the matters that are raised in it.

So perhaps I can start by noting that the Hon David Parker has concluded that this bill is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act on three different bases, in terms of the sections of that, and then, obviously, we talk about how that relates to this legislation: the right of a child to be dealt with in a manner that takes account of their age, the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure, and the right to freedom of expression.

I’ll just pause there, lest it should appear as though I’m arguing against the bill. I’m not. My position is consistent with that of other National Party colleagues, but I’m approaching the debate from a point of view that recognises that these are fundamental rights that are in play, that I’m sure we all would wish to have the outside world know that we’ve considered and turned our mind to. And of course, for the avoidance of any doubt from anyone who’s listening or following this debate or perhaps even considering it later—it may even be that the courts are called upon to consider this debate later, and it will be very interesting to know what they make of the positions taken by various parties around the House.

But, of course, it’s right that Parliament should be able to pass the law, even though it’d be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That’s the case for two reasons. One is constitutional. This House, at least theoretically, is responsive to the requirements of New Zealanders, and we have some form of electoral mandate or democratic mandate. It’s not the perfect system, of course, but famously it’s said to be better than all the others that have been tried and are even less perfect. So it’s constitutionally appropriate that we can make laws despite a judgment of inconsistency against the BORA yardstick.

But also of course, an inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is subjective to some extent. I don’t mean that in a way that is dismissive of any assessment that’s been made by any Attorney-General, but when we see, for example, in the analysis of this bill by the current Attorney-General, which I think—as I say, I emphasise that it is actually a very good piece of analysis. Their policy considerations—I won’t say “political” but certainly their “policy” considerations and it’s a judgment along those lines as much as a legal one—have led him to conclude that the bill is not consistent with the fundamental rights that he’s mentioned.

So in terms of what actually is done by the Act, we’ve got the case of 12- and 13-year-olds able to be subject to criminal proceedings in the Youth Court in respect of first-time offending, and that’s a bit of a change from the current regime. So section 25 of NZ BORA concerns itself with minimum standards of criminal procedure and mentions specifically at subsection (i) that a child’s age is to be taken into account in the way that they’re treated by the criminal justice system. In fact, I think again it was Debbie Ngarewa-Packer who has referred to the fact that that debate previously in relation to where the line is drawn, be it 16 or 18 in terms of eligibility for voting in local government, is an interesting juxtaposition with the debate that we’re having now in the House whereby it seems there’s agreement between both the major parties and, I presume, our ACT colleague that 12- and 13-year-olds can be treated in the criminal justice system in the way that’s described in the bill.

We’ve also got a mechanism in the bill, whereby bodily samples can be ordered by the court to be taken from 12- and 13-year-olds. This is a pretty serious matter. It is, in fact, for any human being at any age to be ordered to give up a bodily sample even for the legitimate purposes of determining the way that offending might be ultimately avoided in the future—one would hope. And of course that’s the ultimate aim and I think we should give credit to the Government for putting forward a bill that is designed to do that. As I say, we support it for that reason as well. But nevertheless, this is a serious step. So when I read the bill quite recently and realised that that was an aspect of it, it did occur me to see what the Attorney-General had had to say in the matter and I wasn’t disappointed to see that he’d turned his mind to it and, as I say, analysed it along the lines of inconsistency.

Then, finally, there’s a mechanism within the bill to do with posting content online; that’s to say recording the offence, this new offence of a ram raid so-called—and that’s the colloquial term that we’re all using; in fact it’s in the name of the bill. But I think the new offence itself is something along the lines of ram raiding—I don’t have the wording in front of me, but you know, it’s quite a specific description of a thing that happens with what we know as ram raids. Oh, there we go: “Using motor vehicle to damage building and enter it with intent to commit imprisonable offence.” So an aggravating factor to film and to post that online, and, of course, that’s, at least on the face of it, inconsistent with, or a possible breach, or a limit on the right to freedom of expression at section 14 of NZ BORA.

These are worthwhile considerations. It’s good that the Attorney-General has turned his mind to them, and he sets out in a pretty classical kind of fashion the way that this analysis takes place, starting with the policy background, the clear public interest in addressing the rise in ram raid offending, and then considering whether these measures are a justified limitation under those various rights. Of course, section 5 of NZ BORA allows that kind of weighing exercise—that calculation, if you will—on whether the aims of the policy are worthwhile, whether there is a logical connection between the measures that have been taken and whether the aims can be met. And then whether there is a proportionate connection between the aims and whether, for example, there are other methods that could have been taken that would have achieved the same result in a less intrusive or less rightslimiting way.

So, as I say, I think it’s good analysis. It’s helpful. For what it’s worth, I would agree with most of it. I’m less certain on the freedom of expression aspect in section 14, relative to the element of posting the footage online, whereas the bodily samples element, certainly from such young people as 12- and 13-year-olds, I think I can quite readily concur with from an NZ BORA perspective.

But, as I say, as a lawmaker more generally and as a member of the National Party caucus who’s considered this bill, considered the awful effects of such offending in the community, including not least of all, actually, on the young people themselves and the life into which they are getting themselves, I will just say—and others have made comment already—that it’s unfortunate that it’s taken this long for the Government to realise, in the words of the explanatory note, that “a wider range of options to deal with child offenders”, “a greater range of interventions that could make a more significant difference to stop repeat offending” is actually a worthwhile aim. We’ve been talking about consequences in that sort of quite broad, holistic kind of way for a while. We’re glad the Government has joined us on that journey. And so with that care and attention to all the relevant background factors, we commend the bill to the House.

In listening to the debates tonight, I believe we’ve got a whole younger generation growing up with no relationship to police outside of seeing them in a car or when they’re in trouble. We’ve heard from the National Party about all the things that are wrong, and, yet, no acknowledgment that the National Government froze police numbers, closed our community police stations, and continued to close down and stop community policing.

I actually think that that has had a huge, huge repercussion on why we are seeing a whole generation grow up with no relationship. I listened about the seven-year-old involved in a ram raid; you have to wonder, has there ever been anything worse than taking our community cops off the beat? I think that is an acknowledgment that the National Party should really think about.