Estimates Debate — Justice

Members, we now have the Minister of Justice. The Minister of Justice is going to be available from 4 p.m. until 5 p.m. I call on the chair of the Justice Committee, Vanushi Walters.

Madam Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity to make some brief remarks to lead off this debate on the justice Estimates.

Firstly, I’d just like to thank the Minister and the chief executive, Andrew Kibblewhite, and also the officials who provided us with information and advice on the day, and thank the committee members for their diligence through this process. The Justice Committee hearing forms an important part of our holding the executive to account.

In 2023-24, the appropriations sought for Vote Justice totalled $856.932 million. That is about 3.6 percent more than the previous year’s estimated actual expenditure of $827.013 million. Of those appropriations, they included $303.578 million for legal aid services and $196.59 million for services provided by the Ministry of Justice, as well as $72.968 million for community-based justice services including services such as the community legal service network.

Through our discussion with the Minister and the chief executive, we discussed subjects such as the cluster approach to Budget bids—and this is, of course, the second year that that approach has been taken—the sentencing of offenders, support and assistance for victims, legislation to address organised crime, and the appropriation within Vote Justice that is the responsibility of the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence. So with those brief remarks, I would thank the members, again, for their work.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, for those tuning in to this debate, this is a debate where we’re discussing the Government’s spending in the justice sector for the coming year in the Budget. As has just been indicated, you know, $800 million - odd are spent in the justice-specific area, but, obviously, a lot more is spent on the prisons through corrections and through the police, and in the broader sense that there are several billions being spent. Justice, as the overarching portfolio, guides the priorities for the Government of the day in terms of spending, and that’s guided by the legislation that they pass. We’ve been on the record a number of times querying the priorities of this Government in justice as a whole. It is a fact that the one, real, clear priority that they’ve set out so far, articulated by Kelvin Davis, is to reduce the prison population by 30 percent, irrespective of what’s going on in our communities and on our streets.

We contend that that is a misplaced focus. Everybody wants to see fewer people in prison, but it needs to follow a fall in crime. But, instead, we’ve seen an increase in crime over the same period. In terms of violent crime, we’ve seen a 40-odd percent increase in violent crime over the same period that we’ve seen a more than 20 percent drop in the number of people in prison. So that leaves people confused and confounded and trying to understand what the purpose is. Is it to keep us safe, or is it just to follow an ideological desire to reduce prison numbers, come what may?

So when we see the money that’s being spent—a lot of it on advice from the Ministry of Justice—we ask ourselves: “Well, what is the focus of the advice; what are they trying to achieve?” We are two months out from an election. If I was fortunate enough to be Minister of Justice, I’d be focusing on making better progress on reducing violent crime in our communities. So I’d be interested in where the Government sees her priorities are there and what the Government is trying to achieve there.

Then, we’d be trying to deal with the real problems that we’ve got on youth crime—we’ve seen a 500 percent increase in ram raids, and that’s got out of control over the past few years. Various schemes have been put forward, but they haven’t seemed to have been working so far. We have proposed some new tools, such as military academies. We’ve also proposed new legislative tools around young serious offenders, but we haven’t seen much progress made there.

The third area needs to be the focus on speeding up the processes of the courts, which is keeping people’s lives on hold for years, waiting for justice. But when we see this Government’s priorities—as well as reducing the prison population, we just heard today that they’re going to be introducing legislation to reduce the voting age to 16. Well, I mean, heck, thank goodness for that! That’s one thing that the people of New Zealand are calling out for when there’s violent crime increasing, youth crime is out of control, and there are long delays in the court system! But this Government is focused on reducing the voting age to 16. Now, they’ve also been spending millions of dollars on their crusade to ban hate speech, which is on and off again—I think it’s off at the moment—but has involved a lot of ministerial and official advice on that topic. So I’d be interested to know just what the Government is proposing to spend on the consultation and advice on that latest bill that they brought in around reducing the voting age, the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill.

Then, finally, we’ve heard from the Minister of Justice today, talking about being victim-centric and trying to focus on the needs of victims of crime. The fundamental question I ask her is: surely the thing that victims of crime want to be most focused on—well, first is not to become a victim in the first place, which is around improving public safety, but then, secondly, to see justice and justice done. We’ve seen a number of cases over the last few years where people—young men—have been convicted of very serious sexual assaults on young women, including rape, and have received home detention sentences. I would have thought victims would not be very impressed with that, frankly, and what that means.

So what I’d like to understand is why the Minister and the Government haven’t given more attention to the Sentencing Act and whether it’s working effectively, and whether the massive discounts that we’re seeing—sometimes up to 70 percent of sentences—from judges as they apply a whole lot of discounts—where people have come in, committed, and been convicted of very serious crimes, serious assaults, and, like I say, rapes, where the starting point might be eight or nine years in prison, and then a whole lot of discounts have been applied and they’ve ended up in home detention, on the Xbox, watching TV, and doing whatever they’re doing on home detention. So the question is: is the Minister satisfied with the situation where there is unfettered discretion on the part of the judiciary to reduce them as much as they feel due fit?

Now, we in the National Party have proposed a limit on that, and I’d be interested in her views on whether she sees that as appropriate. So when it comes to the $196 million that’s being spent on the Ministry of Justice, primarily to provide advice to the Minister, has she asked for some advice on that, whether we’ve got that balance right, and why should we change and why shouldn’t we change?

I also want to know whether she’s asked for advice on whether the community is safer as a result of her Government’s goal of reducing the prison population by 30 percent, regardless of what’s going on in the community? And I saw some interviews where she said, basically, they hadn’t asked and they didn’t really know. I’d give her another chance, I suppose, to answer that—perhaps a bit better—so that she can reassure New Zealanders or try to explain to New Zealanders why she sees that as a priority when everybody is seeing an increase in violent crime in our communities. We’ve had a dreadful number of shootings in Auckland recently. We’ve seen the increase in ram raids. We’ve seen the 100 percent increase in retail crime, such that the many shop workers up and down the country are concerned for their safety, and the many parents who’ve got young kids working in hospitality and retail worry about their safety. And yet the Government continues to be focused first and foremost on reducing the prison population, come what may. I want to know whether the Minister’s got advice from officials as to what impact that is having on public safety, so that we can get a better understanding of that.

Another area that I’d be interested to know is around the $6 million - odd a year that’s being spent on cultural reports, including some money going to the likes of Harry Tam, a lifetime Mongrel Mob member, to write some of these reports. His company has a nice website sort of promising reduced sentences from these cultural reports, if they do them well, and you can get a quote for doing one of these cultural reports. We on this side of the Chamber aren’t impressed with the cottage industry that’s developed there. It’s our view that that money would be better spent better supporting the victims of crime and giving them access to the support and help they need. The previous Minister, Kiritapu Allan, before she departed, did say that she wasn’t very convinced that we were getting good value for money from those cultural reports. I’d be very interested to see whether the new Minister, the fourth Justice Minister we’ve had in this Labour Government, following Mr Little, following Mr Faafoi, and Kiri Allan—the fourth Minister, I wondered what her view on the cultural reports was and whether she thinks we would do better by victims of crime if we gave them some of the extra support that they need.

Finally, I think, just some other random impertinent questions for the Minister to consider. Does she believe we are indeed in a crime wave in this country after six years of this Government? How would she describe the situation more broadly, given all the money that we invest, given the laws that are passed, and given all the talk that she has said about new legislation, extra police, and more resources? How would she assess the current situation that we face, does she believe there is room for improvement, and how does she think sticking with the current plan, which is to reduce the prison population irrespective of what’s going on in community, is going to help? And I’ll leave those questions for her to consider.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Following on from my colleague Paul Smith’s—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Goldsmith!

NICOLE McKEE: Goldsmith’s—[Interruption] Following on from his questions, I, too, have similar questions when we’re looking at the Vote documents. The justice Estimates, they don’t present a coherent picture of what or how the Government is seriously looking at tackling the crime that we’re seeing, the increase in crime that we’re seeing, but also how we’re going to tackle getting through the backlog of cases that are going through our court and justice system. We’re hearing of some trials taking up to three years and we’ve also heard some talk around whether or not courts should be sitting on a Saturday to help relieve some of that.

I wonder, Minister—when we look at the sector within the Vote Justice system, it’s really quite hard to ascertain exactly what some of these Estimates budgets are going to be spent on. And it makes it hard to actually figure out what is going on with crime, what is going on with our court process, and trying to make sure that everybody gets access to justice fairly, but our victims especially get access as well. So, Madam Chair, I just wonder whether or not the Minister can give us a bit of detail on what it is within the justice Votes that tells us what is the coherent picture of how the Government’s going to deal with the increased crime, and what is the picture in regard to dealing with the backlog of court cases?

Well, I’ve got some more questions for the Minister to consider as well. One would be when she talks about her Government, and again in the House today, being very focused on the needs of the victims of crime—yeah, she is aware, I presume, that her own officials in the ministry admitted during the previous Budget process that the victims assistance scheme, and I quote, “The Ministry and Victim Support have managed the cost pressure by deliberately under-promoting the scheme to minimise access and uptake.” I just want to read that again, just so people get that sort of clear in their head: “The Ministry and Victim Support”—this is from officials. This is from officials writing through the Minister to the Minister of Finance, saying: “The Ministry and Victim Support have managed the cost pressures by deliberately under-promoting the scheme”—and we’re talking about the victim assistance scheme, deliberately under-promoting the scheme—“to minimise access and uptake.”

That was the style; they talked a big game about how they’re focused on the needs of victims for years. Kris Faafoi would stand up on his hind legs and he would talk about it and Andrew Little would, before. And yet, at the same time, they were deliberately under-promoting the scheme to minimise access and uptake, because they hadn’t put enough money into it and they couldn’t cover the need. And so the first question is: have you changed, Minister? Are they still under-promoting the scheme or have they actually decided that perhaps they should let victims of crime know about it so that they can access the help that they need? And how can we have some assurance that that is going to actually lead to New Zealanders getting better access to the help that they need?

Because another example I could give the Minister, and another question that follows from it, is the big announcement made with great fanfare about a fund of $20 million around strangulation. Now, everybody knows—well not everybody knows, but a lot of people know—that when people strangle somebody else, particularly in a domestic violence situation, it is a well-known precursor of even worse violent crime and a real signal of danger. So strangulation is a big red flag fluttering everywhere. And so this big fund was announced, $20 million, to help victims of or complainants of strangulation to get through the court system and to get the help they need, and it was promised that it was going to be 800 people helped a year. But then it turned out that virtually nobody had—and I think they might be up to 50 or 60.

I’d like the Minister to give us an update on how many people have actually been helped, because it was, like I say, nowhere near what was promised. And then it turned out that actually that fund had been used to help more perpetrators of strangulation than defendants or complainants of strangulation. So, I mean, it is sort of beyond recognition. So on the one hand you’ve got a victims assistance scheme, which deliberately under-promotes itself so as to not draw attention to itself because it is inadequate to the task, and then, secondly, you’ve got a strangulation scheme announced with great fanfare and totally under delivering and actually giving more help to the perpetrators of strangulation than the defenders of strangulation.

So on both those instances, I’d like an update from the Minister as to what progress, if any, has been made on both of those important areas.

Before I call the next member, can I just remind the member who’s just taken his seat that it’s not really respectful to call another member who is not in the Chamber as having hind legs. So reflect on that kind of language.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Kia ora tātou e te Whare. Well, we know Aotearoa has one of the most imprisoned populations in the world, with 170 per 100,000 in prison. Of those people, 52 percent are Māori. The majority of Māori prisoners are locked up on drugs- and property-related offences. In other words, crimes of poverty. Since this Government began its programme to decrease the number of Māori in prison—in 2019—our prison population has gone up by 2 percent. Two-thirds of our prisoners have been denied their right to maintain contact with their whānau, due to the ban on face-to-face visits, long after the rest of us have had COVID19 restrictions removed.

So not only has the prison population increased under this Government but life for prisoners has gotten worse. In fact, this has been the case for the last 35 years. Since the publication of Moana Jackson’s groundbreaking report, He Whaipānga Hou, the rate of incarceration for tāne Māori hasn’t changed, at 50 percent. The rate of incarceration for wāhine Māori has risen significantly. Today, Māori women make up 64 percent of the female prison population in Aotearoa. Our people suffer unequal outcomes at every level. We are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, and convicted.

Despite what the ACT Party believe, and the National Party, tāne Māori receive special treatment from the Crown, as in, the criminal justice system. Does the Minister believe that the system is racist, and how is she going to decrease Māori incarceration rates? It was only last year that an investigation by the Privacy Commissioner and the Independent Police Conduct Authority found the police guilty of racially profiling and illegally photographing rangatahi without consent. Children as young as 15 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. That is not policing with consent; that is bullying. It is predatory behaviour and a total abuse of power. We know too well what happens when Māori break the law. We are reminded on the news every day.

But what happens when the police break the law? Well, in this case, the Minister of Police—who is now the Prime Minister—pledged to change the law to allow the police to continue to violate our rights. No consequences for the police. But we know what the consequences are for Māori: over-incarceration and the continued intimidation of our rangatahi by the State. The question I’d like to know is: how will the Minister ensure the police are held accountable for breaking the law as we citizens are held to account? After those particular reports have found that it was illegal to be photographing rangatahi without parental consent, the whakamā trauma of these incidents shouldn’t be carried by the rangatahi and their whānau; instead, it should be the police. Crime in Aotearoa is a result of colonial inequities here in Aotearoa. It’s past time the colonial Government stop feasting on the misery of our people.

Under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Crown has no right to take our people from their whānau, hapū, and iwi and put them in the State prison system. The impacts of the prison pipeline from State care and the education system are clear. Studies have shown that one in three children placed in residential care by the State ended up in prison later in life. Recent reports, including Ināia Tonu Nei and Turuki! Turuki! put forward a series of recommendations to restore power to tangata whenua and end inequality in our justice system.

Here are the questions we would like to ask of the Minister. Would she take a look at establishing a Māori justice authority? A Māori independent justice authority—precedence has been used in the health space—and we want to ensure that we can mirror the opportunities that the Māori Health Authority has in the justice system to be able to come up with our own solutions by iwi, hapū, whānau, Māori organisations. We know there’s $97 million of Whānau Ora money sitting in prisons. What is happening with that money? What is Whānau Ora got to do with the justice system? It’s actually got absolutely everything opposite to do with the justice system. So those are some of the questions that I have for you, Minister, through the Chair.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’ll be quick, as we have limited minutes to respond to all those questions.

So the first point from Mr Goldsmith, who tries to draw a correlation between the decrease in the prison population and an increase in offending. So he’s asked if we’ve had any advice from officials. The advice is that there is no correlation between the reduction in prison numbers and an increase in some areas of crime. I can speak to that briefly by saying that the key areas of the prison population, under offence types, that we’ve seen a reduction in prison numbers would be for burglary and would also be for drug offences—for those possession offences of drug offences. They are the two main areas.

Interestingly, as the prison population has reduced, there is now a more significant proportion of the prison population that have been incarcerated as a result of violent offending. So the number of those in prison for violent offending has actually increased. So I’m happy to provide more information on that later on if he would like it.

He’s also asked in relation to the Sentencing Act, and I’m not sure if it’s his policy that I think he referred; he didn’t clarify it—but there were requirements. I think one idea was that to specify for the safety of the victim and also for the safety of the community, to be requirements for a judge to weigh up at sentencing. If the member would like to refer to the Sentencing Act, those are already in legislation. So those are factors already that are a requirement for judges to take into consideration upon sentencing.

In terms of the Section 27 cultural reports, those have been around for well over a decade. I have seen an increase recently in terms of a cottage industry that has sprung up to create those reports. I’ve already indicated in this House during question time that I will take a look at that. It seems like it does seem to be increasing, and I’m prepared to take a look at where that’s tracking and whether that’s a good use of funds.

In terms of the other questions that that member raised, he also specifically asked, I think, around youth offending. He asked around—I think it was ram raids was your question. So what we have seen is a sharp increase but that has been tracking down—and I think that tracking down for youth offending in ram raids has been tracking down as well. That is largely because those programmes that we brought into play at the end of last year, which was a whole range of better pathways for youth offenders—that is working well. We are seeing that those young people who have been repeat offenders are getting the wraparound support that will take them to stop reoffending.

In terms of questions—I’m running out of time, so I’ll go really fast. In terms of questions—and I’ve lost my piece of paper for Nicole McKee, sorry—that you raised in relation to court backlogs was your question. I have the list here of what the Government is currently doing to address court backlogs, which would be: increasing the number of judges in the Court of Appeal, High Court, and District Court through to 30 June 2025; the Government’s provided $15 million over four years as part of Budget 2021 to establish new Family Court associates to speed up that process in the Family Court; also the Criminal Process Improvement Programme, additional funding there for Police prosecutions to enable that; also in the Coroner’s Court, we’re seeing the appointment of special assistants in that space to speed that up; the development of demand-driven rostering and scheduling approach to ensure optimal use of all judicial officers, courtroom staff—to making sure that’s running as effectively as possible. They are some of the measures we are taking to address that backlog.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister Andersen, I’ll ask you two questions; one of them’s quite quick. The Human Rights Commission: they’ve been given $14 million and they have two chief executives. Its recent activity is to claim “the fundamental illegality of the State” and that the Crown’s claim to sovereignty is “illegal”. So why is the Government paying for the existence of a body which actively seeks to deny the right of Government?

My second question to the Minister is regarding sector leadership and support. At page 100 and 101—the bottom of page 100 and the top of page 101—it talks about “[The] appropriation is intended to achieve timely advice and support by the Ministry of Justice to the Justice Sector.”, and there’s an allocation of $13 million there. But when we look at the assessment of the performance, the assessment itself is based on “The satisfaction of the Justice Sector Leadership Board with the leadership, advice and support provided by the Ministry”, and it’s rated eight out of 10. Now, that’s the key performance indicator, just people being happy with a $13 million spend. So I wonder: what is involved in that? What is involved in the satisfaction of the Justice Sector Leadership Board for a $13 million spend, because I think the people actually should be well aware of what that entails and what the detail is around that spend.

So, $13 million in sector leadership and support, Minister, and $14 million to the Human Rights Commission, who are wanting to—actively seeking to—deny the right of Government. We’re just wondering why we’re funding them to do that. Thank you, Minister.

Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity to speak a second time. Just a couple of questions, Minister, before we end the session, around—I understand Operation Tauwhiro, Operation Cobalt, and the reasons why those particular operations are in action. My question is: what are you doing as a justice Minister around tax fraud and tax evasion in this country that’s costing this country $7 billion a year? Where is the operation in regards to tax evasion here in this country? Where is the operation—like Operation Tauwhiro, like Operation Cobalt—for those who are costing this country billions and billions of dollars of tax evasion? That’s one question I’d like to ask.

The other question is around ensuring that we look at a whole, transformative approach to the justice system. Again, I welcome the Minister to answer the question around the appetite for an independent Māori justice authority to allow Māori the dignity and the mana motuhake to be able to come up with solutions—because the current solution isn’t working for us—to allow us some dignity and to allow us the opportunity to reform ourselves as we climb from underneath the bonnet of years and years of colonial violence.

And so koina hoki aku whakaaro, e te Minita [those are my thoughts, Minister]. If you could answer those questions, that’d be much appreciated. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to the Minister for engaging in this discussion about Justice and its Estimates and various challenges in the sector. Obviously, it’s pretty broad ranging, and I acknowledge the Minister also has the portfolio of police, and, of course, courts, which is very dear to my heart, within that broader justice sector as well. I know the Minister will be au fait with some of the issues in our court system, having been chair of the Justice Committee before that.

As others, including my own colleague and friend the Hon Paul Goldsmith and Nicole McKee, have both quite rightly pointed out, one of the major barriers to justice in this country at the moment, from an access to justice point of view, is the huge backlogs involved in having cases heard in our court system. I might bring out some of those figures, not to quote them all across the different types of courts and tribunals necessarily but to highlight for the attention of the House just how dire the situation is, but by way of shorthand, Ms McKee is quite right when she says that it can be up to three years that it takes a case to go through. The key aspect of that is actually understanding that it can take, you know, the majority of that time even to get one’s case begin to be heard. It’s not even necessarily that the cases take a long time—and, of course, sometimes there are good reasons for that—but even to get to the start line of being heard is a major challenge in this country at the moment.

So I wonder if the Minister can offer her thoughts on using, much better than is currently the case, much more extensively, what’s sometimes called virtual meeting rooms, sometimes called AVL—audiovisual link—or other remote participation methods. By way of background to the question, she’ll be aware that it’s already possible under the statute book that we have now, with the remote participation Act, for people to Zoom in—you know, as we would say in colloquial fashion now—whether it’s from, maybe, a custodial situation to avoid the security risk and cost of transporting a prisoner to have a relatively minor hearing. We’re not talking about full trials or jury matters or whatever, but I wonder if the Minister can advise what thought she has given to working with the justice sector to have much more remote participation where that’s appropriate and where that would be in the interest of justice. I’m hoping she will reflect on the savings of time, of cost, of removing the postcode lottery of lawyers being available in one location but not another, to take away the challenges of a pandemic situation or other public health challenges—maybe ill health during the winter months in a more ordinary way—earthquake strengthening issues with courts, flooding issues, in the case of extreme weather events.

I hope that she will reflect that there is much more that we can and should do in this country working with the courts—yes, recognising that as a separate branch of Government, but working with them to provide them the tools to enable that more technology-based interaction through our courts, and thereby to improve the lives of those who so desperately need to have their matters heard. They need their day in court. They need for justice not to be delayed and therefore justice not to be denied. I sense the Minister is engaging in various matters of importance, so I’ll sort of seek an indication of when she’s able to address that question.

But maybe I’ll jump ahead to a related point, which is in relation to legal aid. I do acknowledge that the Government has recently announced an increase to the levels of legal aid, and I think that’s worth supporting, but in terms of the structure of how legal aid representation works, I wonder if the Minister has received any advice or would seek advice on whether junior lawyers assisting a more senior colleague might be able to attract legal aid funding in a way that will be helpful for the speedy resolution of the matters but also by way of succession training—that is to say, equipping the next level of the profession, the younger or at least newer practitioners, to be able to have the mantle passed to them and so to be able to provide that important representation into the future, particularly in criminal justice matters but not exclusively those.

Before I take the next call, I’d just like to inform the House and members that I’ve had a request from the main Opposition party that they would like to move on to transport soon, sooner rather than later, so if there are no further calls on justice—we will continue with justice?

Point of order, Madam Chair. I wonder if there’s been a slight miscommunication. The point is, I suppose, we’ve only got a certain amount of time left, and other parties likewise, and we’ll try and manage that as best we can. I’m sort of keen to understand what will happen if we finish the justice one earlier, and I think I understand from you that that would mean we’d go into transport more quickly, and if that’s the case then so be it, but we don’t actively seek to move on to transport more quickly than would otherwise be the case.

Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker, just to confirm that we’re happy to proceed through as planned.

Madam Chair, thank you. We’ve had a bit of debate, from various speakers, around prison and what that represents, and we’ve received a long-term report from officials around the changes in the make-up of New Zealand’s prison population; 20 to 30 years ago there were far more people there on property crime—stealing things—and on drug crime. Now the prison population is very much more—almost exclusively—serious violent crime and sexual crimes, with some very serious drug dealing in the mix. And so I struggle to understand the point of view of my colleague from the Māori Party Rawiri Waititi, who sort of implied that people shouldn’t be there, given the very significant crimes that they have been convicted of before being there.

And so I was just interested to know whether the Minister, in terms of the overall spending and the focus of policy in justice—as I’ve iterated, the current Government’s philosophy is to reduce that prison population, irrespective of what’s going on, by 30 percent. We had her predecessor as Minister of Justice saying, “Locking people up and throwing away the key is exactly what gangs want. They want New Zealanders to pay for their university of crime.” That was a quote—a tweet—from our previous Minister of Justice Kiri Allan. And I just want to know whether the current Minister of Justice has the same philosophy or view that prisons are some sort of university of crime and therefore something to not support or to try and avoid at all costs.

It’s relevant, I suppose, because of the very widespread public anger—I think would be the right word—over a recent prominent case where somebody who had been convicted of a serious violent crime was on home detention and then went on to commit a horrendous crime in Auckland; a shooting. And many people ask “Well, how is it that somebody convicted of a serious violent crime is left in the community and actually able to go and work?” And so my broader question is—and, of course, there are always going to be various instances and exceptions, but is she broadly comfortable with the practice that has developed of people convicted of serious violent crimes not going to prison but being on home detention? And if she is, well, that’s fine, because that seems to be the approach, because there is no significant change proposed by this Government. But I want to know whether she has given real consideration to restricting in some way the ability of judges to massively reduce sentences to the point of home detention for a whole host of reasons. And so that’s one area that I’d like to get some better understanding from her.

We would make the point that public safety should be the priority and where people have been convicted of serious violent crimes, in most cases the most appropriate thing is to get them out of circulation for a period of time so that they cannot create new victims. That seems to be the issue, and so I’d be interested to know what the current situation is: how many people are currently on home detention who have been convicted of serious violent offences? That would be a useful thing for us to know so that we can understand the scale of the problem. And, ultimately, does she think that is—not in an individual sense, because no Minister should comment on individual cases, but the Minister is responsible for the Sentencing Act and so I want to know whether she has a view whether the current arrangements where people can be convicted of serious violent offences and end up on home detention is something that she is satisfied with or whether she thinks some review of the Sentencing Act is required as the National Party is proposing, because she has been quoted as saying, “People are frustrated with the level of crime.” and so the fundamental question is what’s she proposing to do about it differently?

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. So as a result of the Auckland shooting recently, there are a number of inquiries currently under way. One will be the coroner, one will be through the police investigation. I understand the Independent Police Conduct Authority of New Zealand will also be conducting their investigation and also the Department of Corrections will also be looking at that. So I’m interested to see all of the outcomes of those investigations to determine if there have been any red flags which have been missed.

Saying that, Mr Goldsmith, it’s important to note that whether home detention is awarded or not is for judges—the judicial decision that is made for judges. So I assume that he is proposing that he would, in some way, limit or curtail what judges currently do in order to have an impact from this House into the courts in terms of what is able to be awarded. I don’t currently have a programme of work under way to do that. However, I think it will be very important to take a look at all of those inquiries currently under way to see what the findings are before we quickly jump to any conclusions.

I want to address, also, the use of audiovisual links (AVL) or virtual meeting room remote use that was raised by Mr Penk. So yes, it is available. It’s also important to note—I think the number I have is that there has been an increase of 97 percent of use of AVL, so it is encouraged and used at a far higher rate than it has been used before. It is still at the discretion of a judge when that AVL is used or not. Obviously there will be some instances which would probably be inappropriate, such as sentencing or a first appearance potentially, where the use of AVL would not be appropriate. But there is a movement towards utilising it more and, by that statistic, there has been a big increase in the use of AVL.

In terms of the question he raised in terms of legal aid, a second lawyer can be funded under legal aid. But this is more generally for those big or more complex cases—and he’s already noted that there has been a significant increase, under this Government, for funding of legal aid. So that has been in place.

There was one other point made—I think there was a point raised by Mr Waititi in relation to Operation Cobalt and I think Operation Tauwhiro. Both of those fall under operational activities of police. We’re in Estimates now for justice, so I can’t really go into discussing what’s under that appropriation when we are discussing justice. I would point out in relation to improving outcomes for Māori in terms of the justice system, that Te Pae Oranga—Māori justice panels—have been rolled out right across the country. They continue to prove that reoffending rates and getting people on the right pathways within their communities—all of those reviews are proving that they are providing far more positive outcomes for Māori, and I look closely to see how we can continue to support that work.

In terms of—Mr Goldsmith had one other question. Oh, that’s who I had—Nicole McKee raised whether it was value for $14 million for the justice senior leadership board; whether that’s a good use. I would say that the justice cluster, in general, are put in all of those Votes in one, being able to get better value for money. All the chief executives I speak to think it’s working well, that it is good value for money, and to have that level of coordination going right across Courts, Police, Justice, Corrections does require a level of administration. But I would say, overall, having that coordination—having that oversight—actually holds the key to getting better outcomes for victims of crime, and that has been the missing case in our justice system.

Without that coordination, it’s each of those agencies taking their own lens, without having the ability of looking at how that, in fact, impacts upon the victim. So that coordination, I think, holds real opportunities for New Zealand to increase the rights of victims and the visibility of victims within our justice system.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister, for the answers to that. The question about the sector leadership and support was not so much whether it was value for money for the $13 million, but what was it that they provided specifically for $13 million. The request in the question about value for money was directed at the Human Rights Commission and them having two chief executives, and them actually undertaking a project looking at the sovereignty of New Zealand and coming to a conclusion, so far, that it’s illegal. So it was asking a question about that. I have two more quick questions for you, Minister. One is looking at the biggest driver of costs in our justice system, which appears to be our legal aid bill. When we looked at it, it’s gone from $180 million in 2018/19 to $281 million in 2022/23. Now, it’s an estimated $304 million cost for 2023/24; that’s a 56 percent increase in legal aid requirement over the last five years. So I’m wondering: what is the driver behind this?

This then leads on to my second question, which is about the elimination of family and sexual violence. I understand that it’s not the Minister’s portfolio, but the budget actually comes under the justice cluster, and it has $22 million attached to it. So the question is: what has actually been done in that portfolio? The performance in page 95 of the Vote is essentially saying that it’s overseeing actions in the plan and that the Minister’s satisfied with advice—so it looks like we’ve spent $22 million on actions that we don’t know about and that the Minister is happy with the advice. We know, and the Minister in the chair has said herself, that we have an increase in family harm occurring at the moment. The police commissioner has said the same thing. So with the $22 million and everybody being happy, but we’re seeing no progress, is the Minister able to answer as part of that justice sector, what has that $22 million been spent on, and will we see some tangible results in the next 12 months? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, hoping for some good answers from the Minister on these things. So ultimately it all comes down to the Government’s priorities for the $190-odd million dollars that it devotes to the Ministry of Justice to work on problems that we’re trying to fix as a society. When we look around the justice space, the three, four things that spring to mind are the increase in violent crime that is the scourge in our community—the fact that the gangs are recruiting faster than the police, and a sense of disorder on our streets.

Secondly, there is a real worry about the massive increase in youth crime and this is particularly exemplified by the ram-raiders who are running amuck and causing so many difficulties across our communities. The third issue, which would strike me as top of mind, is the very long delays to justice that many New Zealanders face, whether they are in the criminal system, in the family court system, and all the other elements of the courts with people’s lives being on hold. That partly relates to the previous question that my colleague Chris Penk was talking about, the very significant increase in the legal aid budget. Well, a big part of it is that everything takes so much longer and there are so many lawyers involved in the whole process.

So those are three big challenges in the justice space, the fourth area I’d identify would be around electoral law and the importance of reasserting equal voting rights for all New Zealanders. Now, equal suffrage is a core part of our human rights legislation, but it only directly applies to general elections. This Government has undermined that at local elections through its Canterbury Regional Council bill, which moves away from equal voting rights for all citizens and democratic accountability.

So given those priorities, what I want to understand is why this Minister and this Government has instead prioritised reducing the prison population by 30 percent, irrespective of what’s happening in our community. Secondly, they spend an enormous amount of time and official advice, millions of dollars on an ill-conceived proposal to ban hate speech and whether the Minister regrets all that diversion of effort. Another area has been on reducing the voting age to 16, which is not something that I would have thought was top of mind for most New Zealanders in that justice context. Then a whole lot of electoral law, financing boondoggles, which weren’t carried out in the normal process of being bipartisan, but rammed through, we think, in order to skew things in one direction.

So I suppose that what I’m putting to the Minister is: why have you prioritised those things at a time when, as a country, in the broader justice space, we have these very substantial pressures when it comes to violent crime, youth crime, and very long delays to justice in our justice system? And does the Minister believe that she, and her Government over the past six years has given enough attention to those real pressing issues on the front line that all New Zealanders are focused on?

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Look, as we only have a couple of minutes left, I’ll touch on the issue of violent crime. The member has raised the issue that violent crime has increased and I’m pleased that he mentioned that the large reason for that increase has been family violence. That has been a significant driver of that area, and it’s for that reason that this Government has invested, more so than any other, in Te Aorerekura, which is the first time we have the funding in place in those NGO sectors like Women’s Refuge, for those outreach groups to actually get involved and fund our communities, not only to respond to family violence, but to engage with those families to stop it happening again. So I would say that there has been the biggest investment New Zealand has ever seen to reduce family violence and stop it from happening to the next generation.

When we talk about youth crime and the increase we have seen—a spike in ram-raid offending, that looks like it is tracking downwards, and that is because there has been significant resource invested in those wraparound programmes like Kotahi te Whakaaro, like Circuit Breaker. We see that around 80 percent of those young people who go through those programmes do not reoffend, and I put that in stark contrast to the National Party’s policy of introducing boot camps, which have an 80 percent number of those who do reoffend after going through those camps. So they don’t work, and we continue to be a Government that goes on evidence. We have evidence-based policy and that is why investing in family violence, and that is why investing in reducing youth offending addresses and tackles those route drivers of crime that do take time, but we know that they do track our communities in the right direction.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s traditional when the gallery starts filling up for valedictory remarks to sort of comment self-deprecatingly on how they might all be there to hear you, the speaker, on justice Estimates, and I have to say that it’s good to see the debate being so warmly welcomed. Actually, I do want to acknowledge, if I can, and take the liberty to say that there’s a couple of people from the Kaipara ki Mahurangi electorate who are here, no doubt, in support of Marja Lubeck. So I acknowledge them coming from the Labour Party and supporting her, and Marja herself, who is about to give her valedictory.

Just briefly in relation to justice matters, I wonder if the Minister can address now or undertake to find out if it’s the case that the scheme whereby duty lawyers have been incentivised to have their clients plead guilty early—that was something that has come up previously, and I think most people have understood that that programme had been discontinued. Her predecessor the honourable Kiritapu Allan had indicated that she was unhappy with it and that it would be discontinued, which I would say is a good thing, but my understanding anecdotally recently is that, actually, that isn’t the case, and in other District Courts that would continue to take place. So I ask the Minister to take that on board and find out if that’s indeed so.

Finally, in relation to the Criminal Process Improvement Programme, or CPIP, as it’s known, I wonder if the Minister can explain in her remaining time—short as it is—what positive changes have derived from that, or, for that matter, the Te Ao Mārama programme, which had been designed to improve our justice system. But it seems to many casual observers and, actually, to those who have followed it more closely as well that there hasn’t been much tangible gain from those. If the Minister can say otherwise, then I would be very interested to hear it in order to be convinced that it’s a worthwhile programme to have continue.

I call on the Hon Paul Goldsmith, but just a heads-up that we will be going to valedictory speeches soon.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just wondering if we’d had an answer from the Minister to my previous question around the strangulation fund of $20 million that had been announced, with great fanfare, to help 800 people a year—I think the number was—who are victims of strangulation, or complainants, to deal with it. We’ve found out that a very small number—maybe 50 or 60 a year—had been receiving the help, and then, secondly, we found out that there had been more perpetrators receiving help from that fund than victims or complainants. Given the context of her speech, I was wanting to get an update on that figure. Then, secondly, on the Victims Assistance Scheme, which, as I said, had been deliberately under-promoted “from the officials” because they didn’t have the funds, I wanted to know whether that was still the policy of her Government to deliberately under-promote that scheme, or whether she had changed her mind on that and was actually promoting it in order to help victims of crime.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just very quickly, as I know that we’re short on time, in relation to the member’s question around strangulation, or the offence of “impedes breathing”, that was a new offence that was introduced under this Government that has resulted in a large increase to the number of family violence offences being reported. So the question he raised was that there was funding made available to the defence in a court case that is made available to the defence if they request it for specialist evidence. That has not made any difference in terms of what the outcomes are, and I do have the statistics there that show that the judge’s having that information before them assists them in making a good decision. I wouldn’t say that it potentially assists either way the defence or the prosecution.

So there are approximately just over 1,000 people charged with strangulation each year. Since 2019, there have been over 4,000 charges and, roughly, 50 percent of those people who were charged in 2021-22 were convicted, and so that was a slight increase on the year before. Of those people charged who were convicted, about 37 percent faced imprisonment. So that statistic indicates that while the defence may have had the opportunity for specialist advice, we’re still seeing good numbers in terms of not only prosecutions but convictions, and even a prison term being served for that offence.

Members, the committee is suspended for valedictory comments. We will resume at 7.30, after dinner.

House resumed.