Introduction of Bills — Second Reading

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in support of the second reading of the Legal Services Amendment Bill, defunding—urgently defunding—the section 27 reports. In fact I just got a text from the last bastion of front-bench common sense in the Labour Party—Stuart Nash—and he says, “[The previous Government] was not responsive [enough], [not] fast enough to nail the crime issue. [In my view] the gangs need to be taken down. We need to give police…every tool.” That was a text from Stuart Nash; no sorry, that was an interview he had with TV ONE last night.

These section 27 reports have cost taxpayers millions of dollars, and have done nothing for victims of crime; in fact they’ve led to further sentencing discounts. So, in the immortal words of Karen Carpenter, when it comes to law and order, we’ve only just begun. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Labour opposes this bill, the Legal Services Amendment Bill, which affects section 27 reports. We oppose it for a number of reasons, and I want to bring those to the House to help viewers at home understand the reason why Labour opposes this bill.

This is a Government that is mean-spirited. It does not care about its lowest socio-economic citizens, and so people at home, who are not in the Chamber, will understand that this particular section, section 27 of the Sentencing Act, was to assist judges when they are considering sentencing. The cultural value reports are put forward because the offender may not necessarily be able to be in a position to have a background report. Especially, we understand that Māori and Pasifika offenders may not necessarily have the resources, whereas this funding is being repealed by this Government—the mean-spirited Government—to fund their tax cuts. They are picking on individuals and whānau and aiga and families who need necessary funding.

The option to put it forward is still there. However, offenders that are in a situation where they do not have the financial means will not be able to have this section 27 report. It is not an excuse; it is to provide a report that provides further explanation for the sentencing judge to consider those circumstances. More importantly, the sentencing judge will have further intel or insight or extra information, providing good research, that could probably give a more purposeful report that could provide extra weight and have further information to be considered.

We have heard that Māori and Pasifika offenders are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Section 27 reports, as I’ve said, will bring about social values with the why, with the what, and with the who, and they will also provide some extra psychological information that could or may assist with that offender’s rehabilitation programme.

So section 27 reports help provide a better alignment, specifically for Māori and Pasifika and low socio-economic offenders who have found themselves in a situation where they need the section 27 cultural value reports. It is the chance for the average person who may not necessarily have the funds and don’t have the ability to pay that for themselves.

I come from a community in South Auckland where there is an overrepresentation of some of our most vulnerable citizens who have found themselves in front of a sentencing judge and who actually want to change their offending behaviour. This Government is mean-spirited. It wants to find funding so that it can fund its tax cuts and not care about those who need a hand up.

Labour opposes this bill. It does not want to have a mean-spirited Government who does not care about some of the offenders, so Labour opposes this bill. Thank you.

When we consider the fact that taxpayer-funded section 27 reports—the amount spent on them—has increased by at least 190-fold, when we think about $40,000 in 2017 to $7.7 million in the last financial year, I’m pretty sure that most Kiwis would agree that this money is better spent on victim services. I support its progression.

This is a vile little bill that the Government once again is sneaking in through urgency. Here we are at the second reading, and what does the public have to say? Well, nothing, because they haven’t been given an opportunity. Why? Because this Government doesn’t want to hear what the public has to say. The Government doesn’t want to hear the concerns of the community. It’s obsessed with its 100-day plan, and it’s doing violence to the parliamentary process and riding roughshod over democracy.

You know what this Government’s really afraid of? Evidence. There is no lawyer, no academic, no criminologist, no psychiatrist, no judge—there is no expert at all who thinks that defunding these reports is a good idea. Even the Minister’s own officials think it’s a bad idea. We know what the Law Society has to say about cutting funding for these reports for the poorest New Zealanders: “With funding for these reports removed,”—it said—“the only way a person facing sentencing will be able to access them is by paying privately. Those who can afford this would then have a greater level of representation in Court than those receiving Legal Aid. [This] is a significant breach of fundamental rights”—that’s what the Law Society’s got to say.

And what does the Bar Association have to say? “there are significant risks that it will make it harder for judges to impose appropriate sentences, undermine rehabilitation and adversely impact reoffending rates.”—that’s the Bar Association of New Zealand.

And Joe Williams of the Supreme Court, what does he have to say about these reports? “Understanding background and context is not only a key to addressing asymmetry in incarceration but the key to achieving justice,”—the key to achieving justice has just been thrown away by this Government.

I asked the Minister of Justice by parliamentary question: what are you basing your actions on? What’s the evidence you’ve got? His reply, in short: none, nothing, nada. He is basing it on his reckons; what his 100-day plan is; and what he hears, I imagine, down at the Epsom Bowling Club. The Minister of Justice is basing his policies on dogma and dog whistling. The truly horrific thing is that by appealing to the basest basic instincts, by generating fear and loathing, by driving policy by hate over evidence, fear over facts, he’s creating real and lasting harm.

Of course, the Minister has received some good advice, and that can be found in the very Cabinet paper that he presented. It noted that the savings of the costs of these reports will be wildly offset by the costs of court delays and the costs of psychiatrist reports, and that’s not even mentioning the increased incarceration rates. And we know that this will have a disproportionate impact on Māori, especially rangatahi and tamariki. And if you don’t care about that, you shouldn’t be in this House. We know that children who have parents in jail are much more likely to end up in jail themselves. This is a step towards future incarceration. How the Attorney-General concluded that this was not in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, by being both discriminatory and not providing adequate legal representation, I do not know. The derisory two pages she wrote don’t address any of the real issues.

In the regulatory impact statement, it provided five options. And what did it say about this one? It said it was the worst—the least likely to achieve the objectives. It was more expensive and less effective than many of the other options, including simply accrediting the report providers. So what we have is a Government that has no interest in actually achieving real policy objectives, no interest in engaging with evidence, and no interest in undertaking genuine policy work to get the best outcomes for New Zealanders. It’s interested in dog whistling to its mates and pandering to the basest instincts of New Zealanders.

Let’s be clear—and the Minister knows this—this will lead to more people in jail for longer; people who, if they had the money to pay for such a report, a judge would know all the facts and wouldn’t have imprisoned them in the same way. That’s bad for everyone. So here we have it: a Government not interested in evidence and is prepared to actually waste taxpayers’ money and ignores advice. It’s prepared to take the worst option available because of their election slogans.

The lie spread about these reports is that they lead to light sentences. As if, in some way, they mislead a judge. This Minister shouldn’t have his office. Only last week, he was in this House suggesting that home detention was some kind of not real consequence for crime. This Minister is embarking on a programme of undermining the ability of judges to make good decisions. Depriving the court of useful information by defunding these reports is just one of the spiteful things he’s doing.

He’s also going to reduce the discretion of judges in sentencing. And, of course, now the judges won’t be able to look at these reports and understand what the victim’s views are in terms of reparations, in terms of a restorative process, in terms of the offender cooperating with an investigation. But don’t worry, Minister—he’s got nothing to worry about. His kids and my kids will be fine; they can afford these reports. All of the facts can be put in front of the judge for children of people who have salaries like we do, but it’s the kids of those people on low salaries, or the workers on the minimum wage who can’t rustle up enough to get an effective report done to put before the judge. That is discriminatory; it’s wrong.

Let’s talk about reducing the number of victims of crime. Is that the policy objective of this legislation? If so, it will do the opposite. I want to give judges the tools and information they need to impose the right sentence on the offender—a sentence that reduces the likelihood of crime in the future, based on evidence and on expert advice, not a reckon and an election slogan. What does this Government really want? It wants to blind one eye and block one ear. It actually wants to shackle the judiciary. Does it want to enable the judges to stick with their oath to do right by all manner of people? I don’t think so. They want judges to be able to listen to people who can afford to be listened to, and they don’t care about those that can’t.

So the National Party policy is, basically, to fill up our jails—to put people away. They don’t care that home detention is useful; that supervision and alcohol and drug rehabilitation actually works; that mental health treatment can be effective; and that care in whānau, by whānau can be effective. Those are the things that come out of these reports, but the people who need these reports most now can’t have them.

We want to solve the problems that create offending, and this includes a rehabilitative approach as well as punishment where appropriate. They don’t care that the voice of the victim in these reports is going to be shut out. Section 27 looks at information about processes that have been tried to resolve or are available to resolve issues relating to the events involving the victim or victims of the offence. That information is no longer going to be in front of the courts in most of these cases.

So the National Party dogma, it’s not going to be without consequences. As our already pressured prisons fill—prisons that are already not resourced to give basic services to prisoners—they won’t be able to meet their legal requirements. These offenders will be putting their first foot on the conveyer belt of disenfranchisement. If they weren’t already gang-connected, they will be soon; if their connections to whānau were tenuous, well, they will be broken; and if their sense of community was fragile, it will be gone. As a nasty, little aside, this Minister has been calling this a cottage industry. Again, using the politics of division to gaslight the people who diligently try to inform the judge of important context of offending: the family, social, and cultural background in which it occurred.

I wanted to know the basis of this allegation so, again, I asked the Minister who was paid by the legal services agency to prepare these reports? Who and how much? Who are these cottage industry people? What did he say? “I don’t know. I don’t have any information on who’s been getting these reports.” Once again, he made it up.

This bill is just one of the wedges that the Government is driving in our society. One of the ways they are making our society less just; one of the ways in which they will create more victims and more offenders. This policy and the others aren’t based on evidence or thoughtfulness—

The member’s time has come to an end.

The use of section 27 reports is to inform the judicial system—the judges—in the process of sentencing, the background and family information of the accused. So the process for going through the allegations and the charges and the defence of them has already passed. At this stage, section 27 reports have to do with sentencing—there is no removal of the right of anyone for evidence to be presented in their favour throughout the whole process, what is being abolished is the funding for section 27 reports, because it was created to allow family and people who knew the accused to provide evidence in support of their background. Section 27 reports are not being abolished by this amendment. I commend this bill to the House.