Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. I move, That the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I’m very pleased that this bill has reached its final stage in this House, and I would like to particularly acknowledge the work done by the Justice Committee. This bill gives effect to the Government’s commitment to bring back the three-strikes sentencing law. The three-strikes regime is a key component of the work this Government is delivering to restore law and order. Keeping repeat serious offenders off the streets also supports the Government’s commitment to 20,000 fewer victims of violent crime by 2029. We are proud to be sending a clear message to offenders that there will be significant consequences for repeat offending. For too long, not enough priority has been given to reducing the harm to victims and communities that results from violent offending. This bill is one of the steps the Government is taking towards changing that.

To quickly recap, the bill reinstates a three-stage sentencing regime so that offenders face increasingly tougher penalties when they continue to commit serious crimes. In general, offenders will be warned of the consequences of reoffending at their first strike, and will not be eligible for parole at their second strike. For a third strike, offenders will have to serve the maximum penalty for the offence, without parole.

Offenders will be subject to the regime if they commit a qualifying offence and receive a qualifying sentence. The threshold is above 12 months’ imprisonment for their first strike, and above 24 months’ imprisonment for their second and third strikes. We have also added the new strangulation and suffocation offence to the list of serious violent and sexual qualifying offences covered by the previous regime, increasing that list to 42 offences.

We have actively listened to New Zealanders impacted by serious crime, and responded to their calls for a tougher response. This is why we have lowered the first-strike threshold and reactivated warnings from the previous regime that meet the strike thresholds. More broadly, the bill makes modifications compared to the previous regime to support the new regime’s workability. These include imposing appropriately lengthy non-parole periods for people who commit murder of 17 years at second strike and 20 years at third strike.

We’ll be providing some judicial discretion to avoid manifestly unjust outcomes, and address outlier cases; setting out principles and guidance to help the court’s application of the new law; and allowing a limited benefit for guilty pleas to avoid retraumatising victims and to reduce court delays. We’ll be providing for when pardons are granted, and addressing the use of mental health orders under the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act 2003.

The Government is pleased to be reinstating a three-strikes regime that is workable and will endure. Serious repeat offenders will soon be facing the necessary consequences for their actions. I believe this new regime will enhance public confidence that law and order is being restored. ACT campaigned to see three strikes reinstated, and this formed part of the coalition agreement. The Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill will help make our communities and victims feel safe again, as they are entitled to and as ACT promised.

Lastly, we have provided for a six-month implementation period before the regime commences. This will allow sufficient time to make necessary operational changes. The Government is committed to the regime working as intended from day one. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is an example of the determination of this Government to pander to a small section of the community, which it seeks to nourish its hateful approaches to law and order. The evidence is clear that this bill—and the Ministry of Justice’s regulatory impact statement gave very clear advice that the better—

Tom Rutherford: Cheer up.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, someone says, “Cheer up.” It’s a sad day for justice when we’ve got a bill which cuts across constitutional principle, intentionally imposes disproportionate sentences, doesn’t have the effect of reducing the number of victims, and, in fact, if anything, it will have the likely effect of increasing crime in our communities in the long term, and, as I was saying, the regulatory impact statement says it won’t have any good effect but it will detrimentally affect many families, including families of Māori.

Then, we had many submissions—and we did have many form submissions organised by the Sensible Sentencing Trust and by email campaign by the ACT Party, which, essentially, said, “Go harder.”, which is what the Associate Minister of Justice has done against all advice. But the submissions that you would expect to look to, like the Children’s Commissioner, the New Zealand Bar Association, the Law Society, the Pacific Lawyers Association, the Human Rights Commission, Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa—the Māori Law Society—and the Law Association all opposed the bill. How many civil society groups like that and Crown entities supported the bill? None—none. But we’re pressing on anyway.

Of course, I was astounded when I heard Paul Goldsmith talk about this bill as “intentionally disproportionate”. What that makes it is an intentional breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which actually provides that everyone has the right not to be subject to disproportionately severe treatment or punishment. Yet that Government over there has actually said—the words came out of the Minister’s mouth—that it is intentionally disproportionate.

For the Minister in charge of this bill, the Hon Nicole McKee, to suggest it is not retrospective is some kind of gymnastics. There are people today who are on no strikes and, once this bill is assented to, will be on two strikes. They will be sentenced, if they commit an offence, to a more serious regime than was previously the case, because of things that happened in the past. You don’t get more retrospective than that. It is, in fact, the current intention of the Government to breach a fundamental principle of our criminal law, which is that when you change it, you change it for future conduct, not in respect of past conduct.

Hon Member: Change it for the good.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: I can hear the banal comments from the other side of the House, but I actually think the rule of law is important. I agree that we need a criminal justice system and I know that we will have prisons and that the community requires punishment, but we’re not in some police State where there’s no rational relationship between the offending and the punishment, but that’s what this bill does.

Of course, those people who, tomorrow, will be on two strikes or one strike, when they wake up, they won’t know the change, and even though the whole idea of this bill is to deter people because people ought to know that they’ll be in for more serious punishment if they’re on strike one or two—well, that’s simply not the case, because nobody’s told them and nobody intends to tell them. Do you know why no one intends to tell them? It’s because it’s too complicated, because this is an entirely different regime.

Someone has to sit there and take this confusing template and run it over every previous strike to see whether it complies. I think I heard the Minister say there was something like 700 first-strikers out there—that’s 700 criminal records that someone—this is an actual person that has to go through manually to check whether the sentencing meets the new strike regime.

We’ve had the Ministry of Justice in, and they accept their systems are outdated and creaking. They’ve got a project in place, which is five years away from completion, to upgrade their computer systems to be effective. The likelihood of this actually working is very low, indeed. Then, we’ve got the ridiculous situation where a person on a first strike will get a second first-strike notice when they commit another offence imprisonable by between 12 and 24 months. It’s the confusing situation where you’re on two strikes but it’s only one strike.

I was disappointed that the Associate Minister of Justice batted away all of the suggestions in a quite derisory manner. Those last exchanges which were in Part 2 were some of the greatest concern, and the Minister, although she stood up and said no to Amendment Papers, there were two really significant points that were raised—and I want to put on the record that it appears that there’s at least one situation when a person convicted of murder, who commits an offence, will retrospectively have their ability to have parole removed, and they will be in prison without parole, for life, because they committed another strikable offence. That was put directly to the Minister, the Minister was given advice by her officials on it, and she didn’t answer it. Now, that’s a real problem.

Then we had the disturbing proposition that people with critical mental health issues, severe mental health issues, if they are in prison on a second or third strike, cannot be referred to the appropriate treatment under the compulsory mental health treatment Act. That’s actually a community safety issue, because these people, in almost all cases, will get out eventually, and they’ll get out without having had one of the critical drivers of their offending treated.

If this bill was simply window dressing and it was signalling that they’re tough on crime but it didn’t have these very serious community harm effects, I could let it go, right? It would be like a silly piece of legislation, but I’d let it go and think, “Well, that’s what the National Party does when its ACT Party coalition partner tells it to.” But it’s not; it’s actually a vile piece of legislation.

I know the other side doesn’t really care about human rights, but it does cut across human rights, and it’s worse than that again. If it had the effect that they said, that might, in some sense, go some way to explaining why you’re doing it, but all of the evidence has piled up. A mountain of evidence tells us that this bill will have worse criminal justice outcomes. I’m not just talking about offenders; I’m talking about victims, I’m talking about future victims, for people who are incarcerated for periods of time unnecessarily and put in prison without the ability to get parole—to have no incentive whatsoever to engage in a corrective process, to undertake rehabilitative programmes. They will give the middle finger to the system. There is absolutely no reason for them, because they’re in for eight years and whatever they do it’s going to be eight years, and at year eight, they’ll walk out the door.

We heard from Corrections that the prisoner most likely to reoffend is actually the prisoner who has served an entire sentence without parole, because there is no softening of the transition into the community—no arrangements, no work done to prepare them for that. The bill is vile. It takes us backwards. It’s an abhorrent contravention of our human rights.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to start off by summarising some of the conversations that we had during the committee stage. I think the first thing that we’ve noticed with this bill is that there has been no conclusive evidence that the previous three-strikes regime worked. This is not an evidence-based piece of law. This is part of a contract. It is a key performance indicator that is being ticked off at the expense of everyone in Aotearoa New Zealand.

When we were looking at this bill between the select committee stage and the second reading, there were substantial changes to this bill. The Associate Minister of Justice, the Hon Nicole McKee, said that it was because she was listening to the people of New Zealand, but who are these people she is referring to, when we see those who are most affected, when we see the legal experts, saying something otherwise?

Rima Nakhle: The victims.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: I will come back to the victims—thank you. Crown Law’s advice on this in some ways said that it would be an improvement, based on the original bill, but as we see, post - select committee, a number of areas have been introduced, including lowering the threshold for a first offence from 24 months to 12 months so more people can get their first warning and their first strike. That was not Crown Law’s advice, nor was it Crown Law’s advice to have a retrospective element.

When we asked the Minister what advice she had received since the amendments to this bill, she said it was privileged. Now, a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report is not privileged, but we have not seen a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report on the updated element, including the retrospectivity of this bill, according to the Ministry of Justice’s own website. This is deeply concerning, because we have seen, under the previous law, that it violates section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and with the introduction of retrospectivity, it violates section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Yes, we do need to have consequences—I agree. Yes, we do need to ensure that we put victims at the focus, but is the Government willing to do that by violating one of the fundamental documents of this country, which is the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act? Apparently, they don’t care.

If we’re looking at some other elements of the committee stage, it was also the most peculiar thing that we have seen in this committee stage all together, where the Minister attempted to shut down some of the discussion by reading out every single person’s tabled amendment and saying that she would not support it, as a way of not engaging with the genuine debate, as is intended in the committee stage. There are some genuine concerns in here, as we have addressed during the committee stage. We have not addressed the fact, and no one was able to answer the fact, of whether the increase that we are seeing in crimes today is a direct result and has direct correlation with the three-strikes regime from last time. That topic was not explored during this debate, and that, I think, deserves further attention and further research.

We have seen the fact that there will be no parole for people who are on a second or third warning, and that is something introduced in here. What is that going to do for the rehabilitation effort? Now, the Minister talked a lot about rehabilitation during the committee stage. Let’s look at it from a behavioural psychology perspective. If you know that you have no chance of leaving, why would you bother? Why would anyone bother if you’re not going to be able to get out anyway? There’s no opportunity for parole. What’s the point—what is the point? These laws then fundamentally challenge and perpetuate the harmful practice that we’re seeing in our justice system right now.

Now, we know—we know—that there are going to be more people, more Māori, more Pasifika who are going to be harmed by this particular piece of legislation. We are going to be seeing—

Laura McClure: They’ve also the most victims.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: I will be coming to the victim point, thank you. Now, when we are looking at this piece of legislation, it says nothing about restorative justice. It says nothing about rehabilitation. It is a kneejerk reaction, and we have heard that from some of the submitters as well.

Yes, we do need to put victims at the centre of this, but this is not what this bill does. This bill has one job, which is to further entrench the discrimination that we’re seeing in Aotearoa and to further take a punitive approach to our justice system. Punitive justice is only one form of justice. There are other ways of justice—restorative justice, for example. Will the victims actually get any support from people being further in jail? We’re putting in more and more money. We’re costing more and more money, having more and more prison beds in order to address the increase that is going to be caused as a result of this bill. We’re going to see an increase in the prison population. That does not help the victims. It does not help the victims of Aotearoa. It does not help the victims of crime that is committed in this country.

When we are looking at this particular bill, what is a victim-centred approach? Restorative justice is a centred approach. Prevention is a centred approach. I like the fact that the Government members continuously talk about victims, but why do we need to have victims in the first place? We asked that of the submitters. In order for this bill to be triggered, there needs to be crime committed in the first place. There needs to be victims in the first place. Why are we doing that? Why are we taking the ambulance-at-the-bottom-of-the-cliff approach? Why can’t we envisage an Aotearoa where we don’t actually have victims? This is the thing: I like the fact that the Government parties talk about victims—they are important—but it is even more important if we mitigate crime in the first place. It is important for us to ensure that people are supported in terms of mental health. It is important that we are lifting people out of poverty.

It is to ensure that we do take a Te Tiriti approach when we are looking at this, particularly when it comes to the disproportionate number of Māori who are affected both as offenders and as victims. That can only be achieved if we take a Te Tiriti - centric approach, because what is good for Māori is good for everyone. I’m saying that as a tangata Tiriti. It is important that we have sufficient housing. It is important that we allow children to be lifted out of poverty—that we have a world-class education system where our tamariki and our rangatahi can dream in the first place. You talk to any child and no one will say, “Do you know what, what I really want to do is have three strikes. That’s what my life goal is.” No child will say that. They are a circumstance of the system and the society that we have put them in, and we can change that. We can change that, but not through this bill.

This bill will achieve nothing but spending more money on an approach that is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. It will put more money and more resources away from things that truly matter, from a preventative perspective into a punitive approach. And, fundamentally, I would say that everyone in this House agrees that we need to take that preventative approach first. This bill does not do that. What this bill does is it kicks the problem down the road. It is kicking the bucket down the road for future generations to deal with because we can’t be bothered dealing with some of the harder issues right now. So, with that, the Green Party will not support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, we support the bill on this side of the House. I want to acknowledge the passionate contribution from Dr Xu-Nan. I think he’ll be spending a bit more time with the Justice Committee, and I’m glad for that, because he is a passionate, intelligent, and, I think, well-intended member of Parliament, but he’s got this one wrong.

There are a couple of problems with his contribution. First of all, Dr Xu-Nan says this will lead to more prison beds. Well, if it’s a choice between more prison beds and fewer deathbeds, then we’ll take fewer deathbeds any day of the week. Dr Xu-Nan raised points around the fact that this does little around restorative justice and rehabilitation and prevention. Of course—because this bill is intensely focused on deterrence and detention. That is the part, the legitimate part, of our criminal justice system, the fundamental part of the criminal justice system, which the public supports, that this bill addresses.

If the members wanted to support restorative justice programmes, they would have voted for the Budget, which funds those programmes. If they wanted to support rehabilitation, they would have voted for the Budget and the Corrections Act, which introduced rehabilitation for prisoners on remand. If they wanted to support preventative action, they would have voted for the Budget, which established the Social Investment Agency, and endorsed their Government’s social wellbeing approach. They are the things that are going to meet the drivers of crime and prevent these crimes from happening well into the future.

We support this bill in the House. We supported it through second reading, all through the very good committee stage, we’ll continue to support it, and I look forward to seeing its passage in due course.

I would like to pause for a few moments, just to reflect on the history of the journey of the conversation about victims. I think, in the early 2000s, there was a quietly spoken, very passionate gentleman—Garth McVicar—who for the first time in my recollection started to talk about victims.

He formed the Sensible Sentencing Trust and he fought and he advocated in a quiet and methodical way to highlight how skewed our justice system had got because we had lost sight of the victim. We saw, time and time again, lives ended and lives destroyed by offenders that had committed heinous and horrible crimes and came out to do it again, and in his quiet and methodical way, he worked and he advocated, and eventually we saw the original three-strikes legislation come into law. People in this House talk about its effect and its impact and how the repealing made such a significant change to the rights of offenders, and yet we saw in the last six years the increase in violent crime, and they stand in this House and say that reinstating it is not the path we should take.

The member Cameron Brewer brought some logic into this debate when he recognised that we look at the numbers. We get told so much about not looking at the facts and “Where’s your evidence?” He reported the account of the time when it was repealed—that we had 13,400 convicted on first strike, 744 on second strike, and 26 on third strike. Then, again they argue, no, it wasn’t working. The point is it took the previous member from the Green Party, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, nearly five minutes to actually start mentioning victims.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Because it’s not part of the bill. We speak on the bill.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: And we’re speaking on the bill because the purpose of the punitive justice system is to actually prevent them making more victims. That is the purpose of legislation that looks at this specific aspect of how we deal with serious recidivous offenders who continue to make more carnage and more victims.

The upside is the fact that, in this Government, we know that this isn’t the solution to reducing crime on its own. We know that there is investment in education that is essential and prioritised. We know that we have to break the cycle of people being trapped on welfare dependency and give them the dignity and honour of a career and a job and allowing them to achieve their potential. This is one component that says, “If you do not want to go to jail for a long time, then stop committing crime.”

Tākuta Ferris: Really? How about you achieve the Ministry of Justice’s outcomes of lowering Māori overincarceration? How about you focus on that one?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: Yes, and we can talk about Māori, because I love that narrative. I love the amount of victims that are being created over and over again—60 percent of them are Māori, and we need to stand up and say that we will stop them being made victims. We will empower and we will respect them because—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Order! Order! I am going to ask members to not have a conversation across the Chamber. You can have it out in the hallway.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: I will return to the point of this legislation. We know that it has worked. We question whether there should be minimum thresholds at all—that will be told through the passage of time. The point is that this is about making sure that those who commit these heinous crimes—and we have to remember the level of seriousness of the offences they are committing; the harm that is caused. When you have looked in the eyes of the rape victim, when you have cleaned up the homicide scene, when you have seen the harm that is caused, and you tell them that this is a person that has already committed this several times before, that’s why you know that sometimes punitive is exactly what we need to prevent the creation of further victims.

That is why New Zealand First will support this bill. We are glad that it is being made back into law, and we look forward to the impact on reducing the number of victims that we have to look in the eye in New Zealand. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā koutou. Kei te Pīka, e te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe.

Ka tīmata aku kōrero ki te whakamihi i ngā rangatahi o Te Aho Matua. Tēnā koutou i roto i Te Wiki Hā. Nau mai ki te kūaretanga o tēnei Whare. Ko rātou kei te whai mai i te ia o Te Pāti Māori, me tēnei Whare.

[Greetings to you all. Mr Speaker, greetings.

I will begin my speech with an acknowledgment of the youth of Te Aho Matua. Greetings to you during Te Wiki Hā. Welcome to the ignorance of this House. Those who are following the trend of the Māori Party, and this House.]

I’ve got a speech here, but I think I’m just going to—sorry, Himi, I’m not going to follow it. Let me start with victims—“Oh, but Māori are over-represented as victims.” This bit of legislation, as described by every single legal association in the country, is utter rubbish, but those members don’t like evidence, they don’t like legal opinion, and they haven’t got any ideas of their own. All they know how to do is rally up old white people’s votes. Good on you, Cameron Brewer; good on you fullas all in the Justice Committee. I know you were there listening to all of this the whole year, but you come back into the House and tell us how it’s such a great idea: “Māori are over-represented as victims.”

Do you know what Māori are victims of? Māori are victims of a deeply long-lasting racist justice system dispensed by the police, dispensed by the Department of Corrections. Māori are worth billions of dollars in jail, and you’re happy to line up the ducks so that Māori can continue to be delivered to jail at a rate that is astoundingly high and astoundingly consistent. Now, that’s a champion blow for colonisation but it is an indictment on the quality, the values, and the deep, deep belief of this House in its own justice. That’s what it is—it’s an indictment on the lot.

In 1986, Moana Jackson began the first of three deep investigations into the New Zealand justice system. His first one was called He Whaipaanga Hou. In 1986, he discovered that there were an alarming amount of indicators that showed that racism exists not only in the system but in the structure and in the attitudes of the people who run that place—all of it: Justice, Police, Corrections. Unsurprisingly, it delivers the indigenous population from point of interaction with the justice system to being locked up at a rate of about five to seven times faster than anyone else for the same set of circumstances, and you’re going to sit here and tell me that Māori are over-victimised?

Māori are the victims of the justice system, and it has been that way, clear as a bell, evidenced for over 140 years.

Carl Bates: Personal responsibility.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: “Personal responsibility”, he says. The fulla who knows nothing about the history of it—nothing. Take your personal responsibility and apply it to your job as an MP producing societal settings that provide a future for the 30 percent of this country’s workforce that are young Māori. You wouldn’t know that, āe “Wanganui”? You wouldn’t know that—it’s above your pay grade. Shocker!

Ka pai, kia kaha koe, kia kaha koe. Hoki atu ki roto o Whanganui, whāngai ai i ēnei kōrero ki a Aotea, ka tere te kupu whakahē i a koe.

Engari hoki mai ki tēnei Whare.

[OK, keep it up, give it heaps. Go back to Whanganui and feed these comments to Aotea, words of opposition to you will come quickly.

But let’s come back to this House.]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Hoki mai. Kaua e kōrero ki a ia. Kaua e kōrero ki a rātou.]

[Don’t talk to him. Don’t talk to them.]

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Tēnā koe e te Māngai. Here we are, dealing with an age-old problem that has a list of evidence and data, numbers and statistics that would blow your mind, and we’re still doing things like keeping up with laws that have been proven in the last, like, only three, four, five years to be utter failures.

Cameron Brewer: Ooh!

TĀKUTA FERRIS: “Ooh—ooh, ooh!”, they say.

Cameron Brewer: Someone’s angry—someone’s angry.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Oh, yeah—yeah, yeah, because I can count and read, and that side of the House, obviously, can’t.

Well, here you go: te Wiki Hā—that’s where I’ve been this week. It was a hui of about 1,800 young rangatahi. They’ve all been through Te Aho Matua. They all know exactly who they are and how to move forward, and they will be the voices that will arrive to this House in the future, with all of their mates, Māori and Pākehā, who actually don’t believe in any of the rubbish you’re peddling. Do you know why? Because they can read and count, too.

Obviously, you fullas can’t, so here’s a little bit of advice for you: He Whaipaanga Hou—someone write that down so that he can go and read it later. You could go and see Puao-te-Ata-tu before that, or any of the other two reports that Moana Jackson produced over 36 years, and that’ll give you a helping hand. We do not support the bill.

It’s one thing to stand up and say that we all want everybody to be safe, and the other one is to weaponise the experiences of victims to reintroduce policies that are not based on evidence, that actually do a disservice to the very same victims of crime, and that will entrench inequities in Aotearoa that many have warned us about. This Government, once again, doesn’t care for the evidence, the facts, or the experiences of people. We saw it yesterday when they introduced benefit sanctions that are completely just vibes-based, not grounded in evidence, and with the reintroduction of three strikes today—it’s, frankly, shameful.

I know this as somebody who’s been a victim of crime. I recount how in 2018, in Christmas season, I had people come into my house—literally while I was sitting in my room—and take away my belongings, while they were armed. Like, I don’t want to hear people weaponise the experience of people who have been victims of crime to push through a bill that will do literally nothing. I recall when I talked to my whānau in Mexico about my experience that happened on that week and whether incarcerating those people would have made me safer. I think about the fact that, actually, the interventions that need to happen are far more complex and take far more political bravery than a bunch of empty discourse that is not based on evidence, from people across the House, in relationship to crime.

The Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill will literally simply entrench inequities, criminalise the poor, and will not do the things that researchers, the victims, and, actually, people who been through the carceral system have told us actually helped with rehabilitation. If this Government was so serious about supporting some of the communities that are most at risk from violence, they would not be defunding our public housing sector. If this Government was serious about supporting the communities who have been most at risk from violent crime, they would be committed to actually ending homelessness. If they were actually serious about supporting the victims of assaults, for example, and addressing the criminalisation of ill mental health, they would be resourcing our health system to ensure that everybody stays well. That is absolutely not happening.

I heard people talk about deterrence, but let me tell you what, we’ve seen how in countries where they have some of the most punitive measures, in relationship to crime, you actually have some of the worst crime statistics, because they haven’t done the hard work to invest in the things that actually prevent crime in the first place. This is why, if you go down the slippery slope of putting these policies in place, you actually don’t end up addressing the drivers of crime and you end up just paying lip-service to the people who have experienced violence throughout their lifetime.

I think it’s honestly disingenuous from members across the House to talk about victims when the evidence that supports this bill tells us, time and time again, that this is not what this bill will do; that, if anything, this bill will result in a larger prison population, in a prison system that has not been shown to rehabilitate people, that has been shown to actually entrench cycles of violence and cycles of poverty. This Government is turning their back on the evidence and turning their back on the lived experience of those who have gone through the carceral system, simply to pay lip-service.

Again, look, let’s talk to the people in the community. They themselves have spoken in recent polls about whether they feel any safer with the Government’s recent policies—or even rhetoric—and, actually, most people have said they don’t feel any change. If I think about the people who many of us on this side of the House actually organised with—formerly incarcerated people, people on low incomes—we know from their own experiences that, actually, we need to do the hard mahi to actually have housing for all, a good health system that stops criminalising disabled people who are often in distress, who actually need a range of really complex interventions that require funding. What they do not need is empty lip-service from members of Parliament who clearly do not know what they are doing.

I think it’s actually quite a scary thing to have the chair of the Justice Committee completely ignore the evidence, completely ignore the research of this bill. Like, how shameful is it to have somebody chairing the select committee in charge of this bill who actually doesn’t give a crap about the evidence, who actually just decides to throw it away and not care because it’s easier to pay lip-service to a bill that will not actually make people safer. Just because they will feel it, doesn’t mean it will happen on the ground. I think what we need is a change of Government, one that is willing to ensure that there’s the resources to do the complex interventions to keep people safe.

The member’s time has expired. Before I take the next call, can I remind members that interjections should be rare and infrequent. Also, if you want to have a conversation, there are plenty of places around the Parliament for you all to have a conversation—and acknowledging the high emotion in the room and the importance for all of you to be able to have your say.

What another great day for law and order in this country, and what another great day for democracy, something that this Government campaigned hard on since 2022: the reinstatement of three strikes. Won’t the public be happy today, because that’s why they backed us. They backed us to get on top of law and order. They backed us to get on top of the economy, and they’re seeing some great results. They’re seeing ram raids down 60 percent. They’re seeing foot patrols up 30 percent. They’re seeing serious assaults down 3 percent and aggravated robberies down 11 percent too.

The package is coming—the package is coming. It’s being delivered. What we saw under the last Government was crime just tracking up, tracking up, tracking up. They repealed this legislation and we just saw serious assaults and the likes of sexual offences continue to increase. This is a great day for law and order. This is a great day for the victims of New Zealand. I commend this bill.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. It’s a pleasure to take a call in the third reading of this bill. If this Government was actually serious about reducing the number of victims in New Zealand, they wouldn’t pass this legislation, but they’re letting things like evidence get in the way of their arguments. It’s important that we do point out the evidence and we do understand where the ball has been dropped on this one.

This Government has made it incredibly clear throughout this debate that they’re not interested in evidence. They’re not interested in the regulatory impact statement developed by the Ministry of Justice, they’re not interested in international research, and they’re not interested in the mistakes made in New Zealand’s history. They want to blindly power on with their slogans and bumper stickers that make them feel good so they can go out and tell everybody they feel safe in their beds, but the reality is it does the actual opposite of what they’re proclaiming it will do.

This bill first passed back in 2010. It was an ACT coalition deal back then, and I was working in New Zealand Police getting ready for the changes to the system when this new three-strikes legislation was going to be put into place. I was involved in identifying which of those offences would be classified as a strikable offence and getting into practice how we would implement this in courtrooms and how it would be rolled out for police throughout New Zealand. There were some significant problems in the roll-out. The first time this legislation was implemented in New Zealand, it resulted in people not receiving a strike who should have been receiving a strike. It resulted in confusion in courtrooms, and there were multiple instances of data that was not being used between police, corrections, courts, and the justice system.

The questions we have continually asked of the Minister throughout this process still have not allayed those concerns that those considerations have been taken into place as we put this bill back into action, and we will watch and wait to see how many instances there are when there is confusion as a result of the changes put through from this bill.

We’ve heard from the Minister in the committee stage that, because the threshold in this reinstatement has been, I think, lowered from the previous one, there’s going to have to be an exercise where somebody goes and figures out whether they’re up for a first or a second strike compared to the previous regime. I have no idea, as an official who worked to implement that, how the person is going to identify who those people are, where they live, how they’re notified, and how the records within the courtroom can record that accurately in order to show that we have justice.

The point is that those people on the other side of the House, they don’t even care. They don’t care how it’s implemented or whether it’s fair; they just like to talk about the fact that it’s tough. That’s the only point here, and that is concerning.

I spoke on this bill when it was repealed in 2022, and the points made then are the same points now. Deterrence doesn’t work. It disproportionately impacts upon Māori and further entrenches inequalities within our justice system and our society. It creates more victims by increasing offending and continuing that cycle of reoffending. It’s not interested in addressing the underlying drivers of crime; it is simply a bumper sticker that makes them look tough but achieves nothing.

I look forward to the third stage of this, which will be repealing this bill in 2026, and I look forward to being able to do that and introduce a justice system that works for victims, that actually delivers outcomes for New Zealand’s justice system, and that’s not just a bunch of cowboys looking tough. What it demonstrates is that this is a Government with no new ideas—no new ideas. They’ve dialled the microwave up to reheat and chucked it back in there and put it on full. The only answer they have in the law and order space is to take old ideas, reheat them, and try and make it look like something new when, quite frankly, it doesn’t.

The regulatory impact statement gives really good information, so full credit to those officials who took the time to actually read and understand what the legislation does. The main point in terms of what deterrence does or the threat of having a greater sentence—all the research shows that it does not work for serious violent offending. Where it does work is white-collar offences such as fraud and tax violations. I’m sure there are a few members who might know in that space that maybe it’ll be more effective for deterring those for white-collar crime, for tax evasions. Those are the areas where deterrence as a theory works, because the threat of punishment alone does not have an impact on someone committing a crime. It does not. The reality is it is done on impulse and it is often done sometimes under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Let me be clear: no way should our society tolerate serious criminal acts. Serious violent criminal acts do need to be punished, but we have a system that does not want to make more offenders and to further entrench offending and to increase victimisations, and that’s exactly what reinstating this three-strikes system does.

In the Ministry of Justice’s 2018 evidence brief, it recorded crime rates for the three most serious offences—sexual assault, serious assault, and also robbery—from 1996 to 2014. What that research showed, based on the trends in recorded crime rates, it was concluded that there was quite simply no impact of the previous three-strikes regime on reducing serious offending, even though the Government claims it did and it did again, the research from New Zealand is that the last time this regime was put into New Zealand, there is simply no research to demonstrate that it had an impact on serious violent offending. We’ll watch those numbers again as it comes in.

The second main point is that it stops the judiciary from doing their job. Under three strikes, judges must sentence offenders to the maximum sentence on those final strikes. It is an anomaly in New Zealand law because it severely limits judicial discretion at sentencing by requiring judges to do that. It ignores the reality of what our justice system currently provides judges being able to do, which is preventative detention for repeat serious offenders, public protection and extended supervision orders, minimum periods of imprisonment, and maximum penalties, up to life imprisonment. All those opportunities for sentencing currently lie with justice, and what this bill does is it says, “The executive knows better than judges and we’re going to implement that.” It is simply taking away from the courts what they know how to do.

The final point I’ll make—and it is a point that’s been made very well across all parties in the Opposition—is that Māori have been disproportionately represented in the past in the three-strikes regime and that will continue again. I think the hardest figure for me personally was those who received a third strike under the previous regime, 81 percent of those were Māori who received a third strike. Māori are significantly overrepresented in the group in this area, and this Government knows that and does not care. If we are serious about getting on top of repeat victimisations and repeat offending, we would not be reintroducing a system that has such negative outcomes for Māori.

It is important to note what does work. We know that Te Pae Oranga Māori justice panels reduce reoffending, intervening early on and addressing the root causes of crime, and having justice that takes place on the marae setting gets people early, understands why they’re offending, and takes them out of the justice system. The 24 Te Pae Oranga panels funded under the previous Government are working. That is how you get on top of victimisation. That is how you get on top of reoffending. It is not kneejerk reactions like trying to be tough with a three-strikes bill.

I’d like to conclude by saying that usually we see National and ACT actually making a reasoned argument, looking at data, looking at outcomes, but when it comes to this space, they stray and they go to the push button of fear, of scaring the public and trying to look tough because they like to garner votes in that area. The people that lose at the end of the day are those people who are stuck in our justice system, who don’t have access to mental health support, who don’t have access to alcohol and drug treatment facilities, and who don’t have opportunities to turn their lives around. Instead, they are further entrenched in a system that is disregarding of their rights, disregarding of their culture, and, quite frankly, a system that keeps New Zealand in the dark ages. I do not commend this bill to the House.

I too rise to add my thoughts here on the third reading of the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill, a bill that I wholeheartedly support. We’ve heard a lot of conversations from the other side of the House about an apparent lack of evidence. The evidence that I’m interested in—

Tākuta Ferris: There’s plenty of evidence, Rima.

RIMA NAKHLE: —is not the evidence of elitist academics in their little—oh, it’s wonderful to see Mr Tākuta back from holiday.

We haven’t seen him on the Justice Committee for quite some months, after he got upset that I challenged a submitter. It’s wonderful to—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): I would like you to focus on the bill.

RIMA NAKHLE: Welcome back from your holiday. The evidence I’m interested in is the evidence of the store owner in Takanini that has had to build a cage inside his store for him and his family to serve customers from because of repeat serious offenders. The evidence I’m interested in is Uday in Wattle Downs, who was bashed all over his body when he was trying to open his store in the morning, by repeat serious offenders. That’s the evidence I’m interested in, not elitist academics.

Guess what! The qualifying sentences that we’re adding in, they’re not jaywalking, they’re not graffiti; it’s things like aggravated burglary, robbery, and causing grievous bodily harm with intent to rob. That’s what we’re doing. That’s the evidence that we’re basing our laws on, and we commend this bill to that.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for an opportunity to take a short call on this bill. This three-strikes bill that was introduced under a previous Government, then repealed, is pretty unique in New Zealand. It prevents judges from considering the unique circumstances and evidence around the offending. That is something which does not exist in any other sort of offending. These are laws which we see have been introduced at different times and repealed at different times in the jurisdictions around the world that we like to compare ourselves to. I’ll come back to that, about the evidence basis, because not only do we have New Zealand evidence but we also have international evidence about how these laws work to incentivise and disincentivise different behaviour, which ultimately impacts on the rights of victims to be able to work these things through the court systems in a way which is fair.

I’d just like to begin my comments by saying that this law is not needed. This is not something that impacts on any of the people we are trying, in this debate, to help. The courts already have the equivalent sentencing provisions and options for serious offending. The limits on parole right through to the more serious life imprisonment without any parole conditions is something that judges can already impact on offenders. When we think about those victims who the member who has resumed her seat speaks about, we also have to consider that those are the offenders which are being considered right now by judges with exactly the kind of discretion that she is advocating for, that they will receive serious sentences, and that serious offending is treated seriously by those judges.

The three-strikes provisions that we’re seeing being introduced now have actually also been shown to have a disproportionate effect on sentences. There’s little to show that the law as it existed previously had any deterrence or preventative impact on serious offending. As my colleague the Hon Ginny Andersen has said, where deterrence is most effective is in white-collar crime, but in this kind of offending, it was shown over and over again by New Zealand researchers—not the elite, but the people who care about the system and have studied it because they want to show the evidence and how it impacts on real, ordinary people. They have found over and over again that it isn’t changing serious offenders’ behaviour or patterns of offending in New Zealand.

What it does show, though, is that that disproportionate impact is excessive on those rights that are protected by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is important, because it lets everyone in New Zealand understand exactly what their minimum level of human rights is, and it should be protected and it should not be impinged upon by Parliament’s process of lawmaking. Ordinary people are being told here that in these situations where there is a political call for harsher punishments, their rights that they understand are protected will not be protected by this Government, and that’s a shame.

We have to do everything we can in this Parliament to recognise the rights of victims. It’s really important, and considering the impacts on exactly those people that Rima Nakhle has spoken about is our job. We have to create laws which actually work for them and actually deter offending against them. What’s important to acknowledge here is that three strikes never did that. It does not achieve safety for victims in the way that Government MPs are talking about it, and the international evidence shows that, so let me talk about that. The research clearly shows that laws with a deterrence effect can discourage offenders, but what they discourage offenders from is pleading guilty. You see over and over again in jurisdictions who have tried this that offenders who know they will be on a strike or a second strike or a third strike will do everything and anything they can to avoid pleading guilty, to avoid admissions, to avoid presenting evidence which casts them in a light.

Grant McCallum: Maybe they should avoid the crime.

ARENA WILLIAMS: Well, that means, Mr McCallum, that victims are dragged into a court system which does not serve them. They are dragged over and over again into a situation where they are presenting more and more evidence where, if this law that is being passed today did not exist, they would not be back into the system over and over again. This actively impacts on many victims who will be in a system where they do not belong and they could have avoided.

I want to thank everyone who made a submission on this bill, but I also want to acknowledge that the way that the Minister treated the submissions from the Sensible Sentencing Trust meant that there was a second bite at Cabinet for the retrospectivity provisions, which meant that most submitters were not able to submit on that very important part of the law and were locked out of that process. The evidence is clear. This bill doesn’t help. It’s bad law.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Restoring three strikes forms part of the National Party’s and this Government’s suite of actions that confirm our commitment to restore law and order in New Zealand. All reasonable minds in New Zealand would agree that law and order has deteriorated greatly over the past six years, especially the past three. This situation is turning, but more needs to be done—this legislation being one. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the third reading of this hideous bill. We’ve heard from several contributors today who have quite rightly focused on victims, and that is always at the heart of any discussion, let alone any lawmaking, in so far as that is always what should be top of mind. I don’t think that anybody on this side of the House would ever deny that the whole purpose of reducing crime is to reduce the impacts on people who suffer from crime. Of course, that is exactly what we should be talking about.

The difference that we have before us, though, is: how is the best way to go about doing that? We can choose a way that sounds good on the surface, that makes us feel better about having done something, that makes us feel as if we’ve resolved an issue or solved a problem, and then we can move on with the rest of our life, because, let’s face it, the people sitting in this House aren’t typically those that are the victims of crime. We can avail ourselves and remove that dissonance and that dread that we might feel of our responsibilities by just doing something, or we can actually buckle down and inform ourselves and look at evidence and look at overseas examples, look at previous New Zealand examples, look at the New Zealand context, look at the huge amount of information that we have available to us at our fingertips, should we want to actually be better lawmakers and we should do that part.

On this side of the House, clearly we favour the latter. To hear members on the other side—and one in particular—describe it as elitism and academic in the same sentence, I found quite appalling and a move towards a popularism that we see overseas that we know only ends in one direction. That is a watering down of confidence, a watering down of the faith and the hope that people in this country should have in our institutions and should most definitely have in this place.

As I said, if we were serious about doing something, then we wouldn’t be doing this. That is not the same as saying that serious offenders should not be treated seriously. People who are recidivist, serious offenders do need to be dealt with so that society can feel safe, so that we can reduce crime, so that we can have fewer victims, and so that people can have faith in the criminal law and order space that we’re in charge of, but it’s incumbent on this Government, as I said, to do the things that actually work. As we’ve heard, this one doesn’t. There are very few people that agree that three-strikes regimes anywhere in the world have been even remotely effective.

How do we actually measure effectiveness? We’ve heard several people conflate and confuse and try and turn things into correlations and causations that simply don’t make sense today and, actually, over the whole process of this bill. If it was as simple as simply introducing a three-strikes bill, then it would have been resolved already. We know it doesn’t work. We know evidence from California in the US, for instance, has shown that, but the means by which we choose to measure it is by deterrence or by public confidence.

The regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Justice—the people that were actually charged with doing the work behind the scenes of advising the Minister, of advising the Government—said that they weren’t a fan of this; they would have preferred the status quo. They said explicitly throughout that regulatory impact statement that it wouldn’t work. Why this Government has therefore been hell-bent on continuing to introduce a lame duck when they know that they don’t have any evidence—when we know that one of the Ministers literally said that we know that it worked, and then repeated and went on to just talk about anecdotes and a mishmash of information, concept, and some facts, but nothing that actually related or was provable in so far as working—I find that really, really quite disconcerting.

Throughout the process, we then had a couple of things that just seemed a bit bizarre. We had this whole confusion around the warnings, and that tended to occur in two parts. First, we had the record-keeping side of things, where the Minister said that there’s, essentially, six months’ time to prepare for readiness. We know that there have been big holes in the systems that we’re expecting to do a lot of the heavy lifting here. We know that the courts system doesn’t have the capacity to date, and they’ve only got six months to get that capacity to make sure that all of the record-keeping—which is kind of complicated in terms of who’s got a strike, who hasn’t got a strike, under what regime, under what changes between the two, under what part of the continuum does that information need to be recorded so that it’s ready to be online when someone appears in court and can then be given that verbal warning. That doesn’t fill me with a lot of hope that that is going to work properly.

Part of the impetus for this bill is about public confidence, so if we know that it doesn’t improve public confidence in the law and order space—three strikes in general—and then we implement it and it kind of falls over at the first hurdle because we don’t have the operational capacity to actually make it work, then the public surely will continue to lose confidence in it as well. That is on top of a courts system and a justice system that has had to face cuts—6.5 percent cuts—and where those cuts were made tended to be in the back-office roles, tended to be in the IT spaces. There’s been specific projects in the justice sector that have been canned because they needed to make up those cost savings. That is exactly the same space that we’re now expecting to do all the heavy lifting here and make this operational.

We also heard today through the committee of the whole House stage—which was wholly unsatisfactory, where the Associate Minister of Justice, the Hon Nicole McKee, I felt, was belligerent, didn’t choose to answer actual questions, clearly did not take seriously the amendments, some of which I think would have been welcome additions to the bill, and then didn’t answer some questions, to the point where we’re now at this stage at the third reading, straight after the committee of the whole House, because this is under urgency, and we haven’t had the chance to sit back and evaluate the veracity of some of the answers that we received in the prior stage, particularly related to amended section 34 and the power of the court to commit offenders to a hospital or facility on conviction. What we heard, essentially, is that it limits the courts’ discretion to apply treatment-focused orders for people on their second or third strike. That doesn’t really sit right on this side of the House, and I think that we deserved a little bit more time and a little bit of a stronger and more robust process to see that through.

The Labour Party certainly does not support this bill. We think it’s a terrible bill. Fundamentally, we know that there is no evidential foundation for the three-strikes regime in any way, shape, or form. It is literally taking us backwards—figuratively and literally. As I said yesterday, it’s the epitome of a bill that would do that. The regulatory impact statement backs that up. There’s no information to suggest otherwise. The only people that seem to be supporting this bill are the Government members. They don’t seem to be backed up by anybody other than the few people on the Sensible Sentencing Trust who emailed the Minister and, therefore, seemed to cause the Minister to have a last-minute change of heart. You could very clearly see that she was more concerned about being perceived as not going far enough than doing the right thing—that she, at the last stages, interfered with the select committee process and made those changes that we’ve heard about over the last couple of days. It was particularly offensive, I think, that the Minister did that or saw fit to do that, but also announced it publicly before the select committee had the opportunity to discuss those changes.

All in all, I think it’s a dog’s breakfast, I think the process has been rubbish, it won’t work, and we will keep a close eye on it. We do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am the last speaker for this third reading of the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill, and I’m pleased to stand on behalf of the Government, which clearly is supporting this bill. It is a bill we campaigned on as a party; it is also part of a coalition agreement with the ACT Party.

The purpose of this bill is clearly to keep people safe primarily, as far as I’m concerned, and there are certain elements of the previous speaker’s—

Steve Abel: So-called centre-right. Just lurching to the far right.

DAVID MacLEOD: [Member pauses]

Tākuta Ferris: Nice pause.

DAVID MacLEOD: Thank you, Mr Speaker. There are elements of Dr Tracey McLellan’s speech that I did actually agree with, and that was primarily around the fact that this here is about serious crime that has been committed on a repeated basis, and keeping people safe. As it clearly states in the bill, there are 42 qualifying offences and these are the serious violent and serious sexual offences under the Crimes Act. This is not menial offences; this is the most serious stuff, particularly stuff that is against humans and against members of society.

I want to acknowledge the work on behalf of the Associate Minister of Justice, the Hon Nicole McKee. I want to acknowledge the work by the select committee from around the House—the Justice Committee, a very busy committee; it had 28 different bills it has worked on and a lot of work being done in that space there. Ladies and gentlemen, three strikes are back. I’m happy to commend the bill to the House.

Point of order, Mr Chair. Thank you, Mr Chair. I was waiting for the end of the vote for that. There’s a longstanding convention that voting is heard in silence. The reason for that is so that the Clerk can count the votes correctly. In this circumstance, we’re in urgency on a Friday when we only have one Clerk. It is very important that votes continue to be heard in silence, Mr Chair, and I hope you enforce that next time.

I take that point. It was quieter than usual for me, so if there was noise, I noticed it less, but thank you for that observation.