Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I move, That the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill is a significant piece of legislation that delivers on the coalition Government’s manifesto commitment to restore law and order and to ensure that there are real consequences for crime. It also delivers on a specific promise in the Government’s third-quarter action plan to introduce legislation that ensures real consequences for criminals.

Under the previous administration’s misguided approach to crime, which focused on reducing the prison population by 30 percent regardless of what was going on in our communities, we saw an alarming increase in violent crime, ram raids, and aggravated robberies. Why? Well, in part this was because criminals knew that they would get away with a slap on the wrist and light sentences. We know that the undue leniency has resulted in a loss of public confidence in elements of sentencing and in our justice system as a whole. And we’ve developed, sadly, in this country, a culture of excuses for crime—that ends this week.

The reforms have three key objectives: making sure the punishment fits the crime, restoring the principle of personal responsibility, and better recognising the victims of crime. First and foremost, our reforms today, which will pass, will limit sentence discounts that judges can apply to 40 percent. Kiwis are sick and tired of seeing brazen criminals who have been convicted of serious offences—offences sometimes resulting in the death of fellow New Zealanders, people who are sons or daughters or loved ones of New Zealanders, or injuries that blight their lives for ever. People who have been convicted of these crimes are receiving massively discounted sentences for a whole variety of reasons, sometimes to the extent of not actually being imprisoned. In recent years, we’ve seen serious crime increasingly coming before the courts, but the response has been counterintuitive—a reduction in the use of imprisonment and shorter prison sentences overall—much to the dismay of victims.

Parliament, through this bill, is sending a different message: we’re putting a limit on the overall discounts. There’s been a lot of debate around this: “Oh, is this somehow unconstitutional or unfairly or inappropriately limiting judicial discretion?” Of course, Parliament sets the sentencing framework, and the framework in New Zealand is currently that a maximum sentence is put down in legislation, and there is judicial discretion under that. We could do things in a different way. We could have minimum sentences; we could have mandatory sentences. We haven’t moved to either of those things in relation to this, but we have, through Parliament, sent a clear message that we’re not content with very substantial discounts for a host of reasons, and we want to put a limit on it.

It is disappointing that the Labour Party is opposing this. We heard on a number of occasions after the election—there was a reflection, I remember, from the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Hipkins, saying that perhaps they had been too slow to respond to retail crime and community concerns about these issues. Perhaps they reflected upon that, but they seem to have forgotten that message. They seem to have forgotten and they’ve gone back to their old ways, which is to never support changes that will actually bring real consequences for crime.

Of course, I’m not surprised that the Greens don’t support this and they refer to this as “fearmongering”. If you talk to the victims of crime in our community, if you go down to a main street of Papatoetoe and talk to the retailers who are suffering and living in fear and surrounded by cages in their stores because of the extent of violent crime—if you say that they’re fearmongering, I think you will find you get a very hostile response. What we’re focused on is making some real progress.

Secondly, we’re putting an end to the repeated discounts for youth and remorse. We believe a sentence should primarily respond to a person’s decision to commit a crime, not solely focus on their circumstances and background. It’s particularly frustrating for victims when offenders receive a sentence discount for expressing remorse—not once but in every subsequent instance of reoffending. So we absolutely want to make some allowance when a young person—and when we’re talking about a young person, we’re talking about people typically between the age of 18 and 25; we’re not talking about 12-year-olds: that’s dealt with separately. Yes, you can get a discount for being young and remorseful, but not on multiple occasions—that makes a mockery of the justice system. These reforms will restore the principle of personal responsibility. And we particularly want to condemn certain types of offending, such as where the offender live streams or posts their actions online, or where an adult offender commits, or was party to, an offence committed by a child or a young person. On those occasions, we’re thinking of when you have an adult driving a car with a bunch of teenagers doing a ram raid—well, that adult needs to take greater responsibility because they have led younger people into a crime.

Importantly, this bill will recognise the needs of victims, particularly those who have suffered from years of increased retail crime; encourage the use of cumulative sentencing for offences committed while on bail, in custody, or on parole; amend the principles of the Sentencing Act to have a stronger focus on the victims’ needs and interests; and introduce a suite of new aggravating factors for offenders who are targeting victims working alone—those whose homes or businesses are interconnected—and public transport workers as well. But I particularly think of people working in dairies, for example, where they’re living upstairs and they’ve been subjected to ram raids or violent offending downstairs. That has a horrendous impact on the family due to the fear that is associated with it. I’m frankly amazed and shocked that we’re not getting support across the House for this legislation. Retail crime increased by 85 percent between 2019 and 2023, including a 91 percent increase in victimisations relating to theft. Small-business owners have been left feeling powerless and at the mercy of those who robbed their livelihoods. It’s only right that offending against people who live in fear of theft and assault, often with their families nearby upstairs, result in a tougher sentence.

The sliding scale for guilty pleas will be intimated with a maximum sentence discount of 25 percent if a guilty plea is made at the earliest opportunity. But we’re not going to give 25 percent if it’s on the morning of the trial; only 5 percent is available at the last minute. Earlier guilty pleas will spare more victims from having to prepare for and give evidence at trial, and they will help improve timeliness, so we’re determined to do this.

We also see the opportunity to progress a couple of recommendations from the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in care—specifically, amending the existing aggravating factor that requires the court to consider that particular vulnerability of a victim, by adding in State or faith-based care as an example of vulnerability which may be known to an offender when the offence was committed; secondly, the requirement for the court to consider additional aggravating factors in cases involving violence against, or neglect of, a child under the age of 14, so that they can also apply to cases involving a young person who is under the age of 18. They were recommendations of the royal commission, and we’re happy to progress them in this legislation.

I extend my thanks to the Justice Committee, the Sentencing and Rehabilitation team at justice, and the Parliamentary Counsel Office for their work to help this passage of the bill through the House.

In conclusion, we’ve set two clear targets: ensuring that there are 20,000 fewer victims of violent crime by 2029, and also reducing serious repeat youth offenders by 15 percent. This is a significant milestone in this Government’s mission to restore law and order. It signals to the victims of crime that they deserve justice and, to the wider public, that the Government is committed to ensuring that they feel safe in their homes and in their places of work. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I mean, criminal justice isn’t simple, and it’s not simplistic, and that’s what this bill is. I’ve found it a little hard to listen to the Minister of Justice talking about how his Government is allegedly making progress on a target to reduce victims of serious crime or violent crime by 20,000 when, in fact, they’ve gone up by 6,000 and the best he can do is find a tweet with some misleading figures to trumpet his Government’s success.

This bill is a knee-jerk reaction. Look, in other areas we are supporting the Government’s work, particularly around the experience of victims in court, and we agree that there’s work to be done and we need to do better in looking after victims. But sentencing, in particular, is a very difficult task. The community does want to see punishment, but the State and the court has a critical role in standing between victim and offender, between the community and the offender, and balancing a whole lot of competing interests. That is why we have judges—judges who can stand back, listen carefully, and balance those competing considerations.

The Minister, straight out of the National Party election playbook, talks about real consequences for crime. But when we look at sentencing, we’ve got to ask: what are the objectives? And they’re, in fact, set out in the Act. And they’re in no particular order, but right up there is to hold the offender accountable, as well as to provide for the interests of the victim of the offence. But equally in there is to assist in rehabilitation and reintegration to protect the community from the offender, if necessary. That’s all in section 7 of the Sentencing Act. If we take that together, criminal justice has a difficult and complex project of not only dealing with this offender but creating a community in the future which is safer than the one we have today.

This doesn’t do that. Most fundamentally, this doesn’t do that because it removes from the judge the ability to weigh up what the best response to offending is. Sometimes the offending is serious and the offender is irredeemable or the crime so vicious and violent that the community needs it to be marked out by a long term of imprisonment. I get that. In other circumstances, that is not the case. The offender and the community—the offender will be better off, the victim’s needs will be better addressed, and the community will be safer if a different sentence is imposed or a shorter period of imprisonment or better reintegration or rehabilitation or home detention or alcohol and drug treatment. There’s a whole world of possible responses out there, but this Government is saying, “No. Just put them in prison for longer.” That is the extent of their thinking around justice policy.

The Justice Committee, as it listened to submitters and looked at evidence, had a stream of thoughtful submitters, coming in and saying, “This is taking the wrong path.” But the Government was not interested in it. And consistent with what it’s done in other areas, it’s just saying, “We’ve said we’re going to do it. We don’t care about the evidence, so we will press on regardless.”

One of the real problems with this is that it will distort judges’ behaviour. The judges, through many years, have a set of guiding principles for sentencing. One of those is assessing a starting point. Looking at the circumstances of offending and saying, “Well, given those circumstances of offending, the starting point for consideration of the sentence is here.” So it might be a serious assault with a 10-year maximum sentence. They’ll look at the overall circumstances and say, “Well, for this kind of offending, I would start at seven years and then apply discounts.” And it’s worked—that process has worked—and aggravating factors as well.

What we now have is a rule that says, “You can get a maximum discount of 40 percent from the starting point.” So if a judge wants to give a lower sentence, what are they going to do? They’re simply going to lower the starting point. There’s no rule against lowering the starting point. They’re going to look at it. They’re going to backwards reason: “That offending deserves imprisonment of three years. To get that within the 40 percent discount rule, I need to lower the starting point accordingly.” So all of a sudden—and this is what fiddling with these kinds of matters does, particularly in reducing discretion—they’ll just get a workaround. That’s one problem.

The other thing that I’m actually more concerned about is discharges without conviction. Now, there’s no particular rule about when or what kind of crime you can get a discharge without conviction for. The question is whether the conviction would be a disproportionate punishment, given the circumstances of the offending and the nature of the offender, and so on and so forth.

Now, if you’re going to make sentencing by definition excessive, by definition unjust, then recourse to discharges without conviction will increase. That’s problematic, because there are circumstances right now where you wouldn’t get a discharge without conviction but tomorrow you will. So you’re having an opposite effect. This is the perversity that happens when you go in with a slogan and make it policy. Slogans make bad policy.

It may well be that there’s work to be done in sentencing. For a long time there has been an argument that sentencing should be removed from the political arena but that judges should be given guidance—that they need a unifying principle. On the other side of the House, they would say that there’s been this tendency to give softer and softer sentences. Well, is that true or false or is it just an impression we have through the media? Well, a sentencing council which looks at sentences—and I know the Minister’s had meetings overseas about the sentencing council. It’s a good idea because we need to depoliticise this, because we’re not making the community safer by just simply having a blanket approach to sentencing. If we are going to say we need better guidance to the judges, then a sentencing council is one way to do it and a very useful way where you have the ability to look over all of the decisions being made, see where there are wrinkles, see where there are inconsistencies, and provide guidance and advice that the judges are expected to pick up. So that’s a further thing that is well worth consideration.

The other thing in here is that there are just some outright injustices. So, for example, the remorse discount—that if you come and you convince the court that you’re genuinely remorseful, the court can take that into account and reduce the sentence imposed. You want to see that it’s real. You don’t want crocodile tears, I get it—absolutely appropriate. But you can’t get it twice. But there’s a carve out. You can get a discount twice if you provide compensation. So the court can take into account compensation to victims—a payment for the harm that’s been caused. So people who can afford to make compensation can, effectively, get remorse discounts every time they pay. But people who can’t afford to make compensation payments can’t get those discounts. That’s just one of the kind of twists and turns of this bill in trying to pander and not taking a careful, considered, evidence-based approach. By not taking the time to develop policy, rather than just implementing slogans, we’ve got a bad piece of legislation.

We all want a safer community. We all want victims to be accorded their rights and treated with respect. We want fewer victims overall. And we do want to set aside serious offending and show the community disgust and distaste for it. But this bill doesn’t do that. It just increases longer sentences.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa to oppose this bill strongly. Here we are talking yet again about a bill that does not genuinely serve our communities. This bill, for what it’s worth, is complex, and there will be repercussions from this bill for years and generations to come. Future generations will look at this bill as a repugnant bill that will harm and will not break the vicious cycle that we are seeing in Aotearoa in our criminal justice system.

Let’s start with some of the things we discussed during the committee stage. Fundamentally, we know that one of the fundamental principles of Aotearoa’s constitutional arrangements is the principle of comity, whereby the legislature and the executive are separate and independent from the judiciary and that the court system is allowed to operate independently and fully in its own right. We have heard from submitters that this bill particularly about the limitations—the 40 percent cap on discounts to sentencing—that go against that fundamental principle of our constitutional arrangements.

We have questioned the Minister of Justice during the committee of the whole House stage over and over again, but all we received from the Minister are sound bites and hot takes and not actually evidence-based material. We know that the Minister and the Government are not using evidence when it comes to deciding a bill like this.

We questioned the Minister around our concerns when it comes to party liability. The Minister never once mentioned how the introduction of section 66 of the Crimes Act 1961 on party liability would further harm particularly women in abusive relationships, because if they are an accomplice to a crime, there is no way for them to withdraw from that in our current legal framework, yet they are being punished both under the Crimes Act and now under the Sentencing Act. That is not about victims.

We have seen that by not allowing young people the opportunity—because apparently when you commit a crime, and if you commit a crime again, suddenly you’re not young any more. That fundamentally goes against our agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international legal instruments, not to mention the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, when we are looking at a bill like this. So, fundamentally, we are going against what we signed up for internationally when we introduce this.

Why? Because of the fact that the Minister and the Government are hearing from people to say that this is what’s been happening; there are victims. Victims are important, but this bill does not address victims. The one section of this bill that does address victims is actually a rewording of an existing section of the Sentencing Act that already exists. There’s nothing in this bill for victims other than the slogan of “tough on crime”, which we know does not work. If we look at any other country that has a tough on crime approach but doesn’t address the social concerns and the social issues that people are experiencing, we know that it does not work.

But let’s talk about victims. I already mentioned that under the new aggravating factor that includes section 66 of the Crimes Act, we are not going to be seeing women, in particular, in abusive relationships being supported by this legislation. We are not seeing how this legislation is going to break the cycle of violence, break the cycle of poverty that we’re seeing in our communities.

The one thing the Minister mentioned was in terms of the fact that, yes, we have taken on the recommendation of the report on State abuse and also faith-based abuse, but then the Minister failed to mention that the one recommendation that will support those victims of the report by allowing a mitigating factor for those victims of State and faith-based abuse has not been taken up by the Government. Why? Apparently it is too hard to manage, yet we have seen new aggravating factors being introduced as a part of this bill.

So what does this bill serve? What we are seeing here is something that will harm our young people, that is anti - Te Tiriti. We reaffirm that this Government’s only housing policy for Māori is by increasing prison beds. That is what we will see as a result of this bill. We will see more young people who will be harmed as a result. We will see that lawyers and judges will find different ways, like the previous speaker the Hon Dr Duncan Webb has mentioned, of being able to balance what they see in front of them.

Let’s be perfectly honest: those of us in this House are not judges, and very few of us are lawyers that have that experience in youth justice, in criminal justice, in Māori justice, in Pasifika justice, in migrant justice. Very few of us can say, hand on heart, that that is our background, that is our experience. So why, then, would we introduce a bill that does not listen to advice from officials, that does not listen to advice from the experts, from our communities? We have heard submissions from the New Zealand Law Society. We have heard submissions from Community Law saying that this is not going to address the levers of crime.

For those of you who have been familiar with some of the earlier work of Plato, in 375 BC when he authored The Republic, he talks about the rise of the demagogue. It talks about how when political leaders take a populist approach to law and legislation and running of city-State and of the country, they then fail to see the common good. That is in the 4th century BC, and we are seeing a repeat of that right now with this Government. We’re seeing people not taking an evidence-based approach to the criminal justice system but a populist approach.

What is justice? What is law? We have heard too many times in this House that if people commit a crime, commit an offence, there should be punishment and there should be repercussions. But who determines that law? We do. So we decide who criminals are in Aotearoa. We decide in this very House who commits crime in Aotearoa. That is not about justice. It reminds us of the obligation and responsibility that we have in this House, that we have to the people of Aotearoa.

If we really want to talk about crime and justice, where is the legislation I’m seeing around white-collar crime? Where is the legislation I’m seeing around tax evasion? If you really want to take a tough on crime approach, where are those who avoid paying tax in Aotearoa? We are not seeing that. Instead, what we are seeing is punishing the beneficiaries. We are punishing those people who are already finding it difficult to put food on the table. That is not justice. That is not just. That is not how we make law. That should not be how we make law in this very House.

To conclude, the Green Party of Aotearoa absolutely will not support this bill because we do not see this bill as being one that will break the cycle of harm and break the cycle of violence in Aotearoa. We see this as a bottom-of-the-cliff approach to crime and justice. What we want to see is everybody having a warm and safe home to live in. What we want to see is having a fair tax system so everyone is able to thrive. This bill does nothing for that.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very pleased to rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the third reading of the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill. ACT is supporting this bill, and we’re very pleased to do so.

During the election campaign, ACT went up and down the country campaigning, like many members in this House, and we heard from New Zealanders about their concerns around law and order. We know that in the last five years, gangs have recruited a huge number of people into their midst—up by more than 3,000 people. We’ve seen an escalation in violent crime, ram raids, dairy owners being attacked—really unacceptable things in our society. It’s really good to see that the Government has taken a measured approach with a number of different law and order reforms—this being one of them—and I want to thank our partners in National and New Zealand First for picking up some of ACT’s ideas, along with us supporting some of theirs around more police numbers and, obviously, around gang patch bans.

So, you know, ACT has been very pleased to be able to get three strikes back in place. Obviously, we’ve got the serious youth offenders category coming. But in this bill, we’re actually also seeing a couple of things that ACT is very pleased to be able to campaign on and now deliver. And that really is around the aggravating factors for those in particular roles, whether that’s in public transport or sole-charge workers—you know, people living on their premises who are particularly vulnerable to violent crime.

And then what’s also been talked about is limiting the reduction around sentencing and the 40 percent discount. And, again, you know, it’s appropriate. This House actually does provide guidance to judges. That’s why we set sentences in the Crimes Act, and so this is not unorthodox; it’s just a Parliament taking an interest in our justice system and actually what people have told us, and what kinds of sentences the community expects to see for violent offenders.

So it is good to see these changes. We did campaign on them. It doesn’t address all of the issues in our criminal justice system; we’ve never pretended that this bill does. But it is a part of a suite of measures that this Government is taking. So I’m looking forward to having this law in place—actually seeing it flow through to consequences for offences; actually making our community safer, which is what ACT is here for; and making sure victims are actually put first and that there are consequences for serious crimes in our community. So ACT commends this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill. I was a member of the Justice Committee that heard from a number of submitters, and, I must say, we’ve heard one view from the other side of the House, but there was also a view that this bill is going in the right direction. It restores real consequences for crime. There are three key areas that the Minister of Justice has pointed out: making sure the punishment fits the crime, restoring the principles of personal responsibility, and recognising victims.

We have had for too long, the Opposition, the Labour Party, for instance, being soft on crime. They, under their watch, wanted to reduce the prison population and they actually achieved reducing the prison population by 30 percent, but by reducing the prison population, criminal activity and serious violent crime increased by 33 percent and that was the consequence of their doing. They want to develop a culture of excuses for people that commit crime, and that is wrong and it’s why under their watch criminals kept doing what they were doing—because they could get away with it.

This Government is setting in place consequences for what they are doing. And New Zealand First supports this bill. It’s the Government’s aim to reduce violent crime by 20,000 by 2029. We favour more accountability by the courts and tougher punishment for those who opt for hurting others. And through the speeches so far, isn’t it so often the case that we never hear from the Opposition about the victims, those who are being hurt? The people we should be caring about are the victims, and this is what this piece of legislation does—it puts the victims at the forefront. I commend this bill to the House.

Tākuta Ferris—this is a split call.

Ka pai. Hei aha ngā kōrero o tērā taha. [It’s OK. Never mind what the other side is saying.] E tū ana ahau ki te waha i ngā whakaaro a Te Pāti Māori [I stand to deliver the sentiments of the Māori Party] and I am going to do it in English. I want to start by addressing and dispelling the myth that because Māori are overrepresented as victims of crime, it is OK for the Government to ignore the fact that its own justice system has systematically, structurally, and attitudinally allowed the brutalisation of the Māori people for 171 years, since its inception.

Māori have been the victims of the justice system since it first appeared and began passing laws that systemically strip Māori of their legal rights in our own country, like the suppression of rebellion laws of the 1860s and 70s, like there being no requirement for trial before imprisonment of Māori for two years—laws from the same period. “Let’s not look back.”, they say. Add to that the disposition of land laws—far too extensive to list in a five-minute speech—that stripped Māori of their economic, social, and cultural bases, condemning Māori to the ever-intensifying intergenerational poverty and everything that comes with it.

The Government have another catchcry for justice: take personal responsibility, as we’ve just heard Mr Arbuckle spout. This is their retort to our presenting of historical and current evidence. “Take personal responsibility.”, they say, whilst ignoring the fact that they take no responsibility for the actions of successive Governments in this country that are the root cause of the current poverty and justice settings we are dealing with in this country today. And they do this while ignoring the now exhaustive evidence and datasets, most of which are published by their own agencies. It defies any sensible logic, and this bill is an extension of it.

What it does explain, though, is the Government’s approach to the formulation of justice policy and lawmaking in our country. And that is to study voting trends of the public and then use that as the basis for the formulation of justice policy and lawmaking in our country, while simultaneously ignoring all of the historic and current evidence and data, including their own agencies’ recommendations and advice. I don’t know why they bother to have agencies. There is little hope for te iwi Māori when it comes to justice in Aotearoa. Te Pāti Māori presents information and analysis to improve, to implore the Government to take into account all historic and current evidence when formulating justice policy and law. We are ignored, as is all of the evidence, I might add. Instead, they study voting trends to develop catchcries.

What they should do is study the drivers of poverty and then turn to formulation of justice policy and law. This would ultimately lead them to fulfilling their own overarching departmental slogan for the Department of Justice with the aspiration of lowering the overall representation of Māori in the justice system. Unfortunately, as they are organised now and led, they will never realise this and Māori will bear the brunt of it and will remain perpetually and intergenerationally trapped in the justice system.

Disproportionate exertion of force is experienced by Māori throughout the entire justice system, not just at the sentencing end but right throughout it: the beginning, first point of contact, through the process, sentencing, in prison—the lot. It’s not being disputed; it’s well understood. So this disproportionate exercise of force on Māori is felt at every instance, be it at the initial point of contact, like the experience of the young 15-year-old Heretaunga boy, in the early hours of Sunday, 16 March—yeah, only just a couple of weeks ago, not long ago, not even 10 days—who, in the process of being detained, had his jaw broken and then was denied any medical support for three hours. This is the nature of excessive force for Māori families—injustice: denied any support for three hours until the next shift came along and said, “Hika, you look bad; better get you to hospital.” He had to be flown to Wellington for an emergency surgery. His jaw was broken.

I want the reality of that to sink in for you a bit. This is what we are talking about when we talk about Māori being disproportionately everything in justice; albeit when you’re in prison, when you’re going through the court system, no support for Māori—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi. We do not commend the bill.

Well, this is the sad state of this House, that you’ve got a significant bill coming though and you’ve got the Government parties who have led this legislation stand up and give two-minute pathetic speeches. That side of the House is so out of touch with the reality of New Zealand; they get up and they give their stump speeches, give their key lines, and then they sit back down because they don’t have anything valuable to contribute to this discussion. That is a disservice to victims: that the summary of your thoughts and ideas on justice is to spit out some lines that some communications adviser wrote for you. Pathetic.

This sentencing reform bill is going to result in more people being funnelled into our prisons and it does not make our communities any safer. I don’t know what la-la land you might be living in on that side of the House, but if you’d actually set foot in a prison there’s no rehabilitation going on in there. I’ve been to 10 prisons in the last year; there’s no rehabilitation going on at all in there. What do you think people are doing in there? Making better connections; that’s why it’s called “the Ministry of Connections”, not “Corrections”, because that’s not happening in there.

Rehabilitation is virtually non-existent. You’re sending people in there for a longer time to make more friends to be better criminals. Well done, you’ve achieved something today.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Please don’t bring the Speaker into the debate.

TAMATHA PAUL: OK. We know for a fact that only 7 to 15 percent of rehabilitation programmes in prisons are actually successful, and prisons don’t even have the time to consider what kind of a service they’re offering to people in those prisons because they are so busy trying to accommodate a growing prison population. I don’t know why the other members are looking at me in disgust; that is the consequence of your actions, the Government’s actions. Yes, they are.

Prison capacity is the summary of your justice approach and response. It’s not to address the drivers of crime, it’s not to address poverty or trauma, or mental health issues or drug addiction, which are the reasons why people end up in prison. Your response is to make our prisons larger. You want to make Christchurch prison larger, Auckland prison larger, and continue to build prisons. That is not going to solve anything. I spoke to a corrections officer and he said, “As the muster grows, the quality goes.” That’s what they’re preparing for, and at the moment they are dealing with double-bunk cells, they are at capacity, and this bill will make those prisons even fuller. There are too many people in our prisons.

This bill is particularly disgusting, though, because it attacks our young people, the people who are supposed to be our future. You’re saying that their age should not be taken into account by judges when they’re sentenced. There is a reason that those provisions are in place and it’s because people in their lives, when their brains are developing at a certain age, make decisions differently. They do not weigh up the consequences. They are more susceptible to being peer pressured into doing things that they don’t want to do. But it’s easy for that side of the House to sit there and hand wring and talk about personal responsibility because they’ve had more options in their lives than all of the young people that are in prison. How do I know? Because I talked to them. I went to the youth unit at Mount Eden Prison and asked them why they were in there, and it was because they had no options, because they are disabled, because they are poor, because they come from places not like the ones that this side of the House come from.

Have some compassion and some empathy for the people that you talk about and that you lock up, the human potential that this Government wastes—absolutely wastes it. This bill oversteps judicial discretion. There’s a reason why judges stop sentencing people—because they know that prisons don’t work—and then here comes this ideological Government who has no care in the world for evidence, who continues to do the same thing over and over again, and it does not work. Eight hundred million dollars over five years is going into Corrections. Meanwhile, our hospitals are degraded, our schools are collapsing, our public services are in absolute disarray. You spend $151,000 on locking one person up; $80,000 per person in the Corrections system. You spend $1,000 per person in the health budget; you spend $4,000 per person in the education budget. It’s pathetic, and I know it’s not where taxpayers want their money going.

You guys, this side of the House, needs to buck their ideas up when it comes to justice, because all it is failure after failure. It is ruining lives, it is wasting human potential, and it is not the answer.

Debate interrupted.