Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General) on behalf of the Minister of Corrections: I move, That the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. I begin by thanking the various officials who have worked on this issue and on the bill that is now before the House. They have provided valuable support in ensuring that the Government’s priorities of ensuring public safety and providing value for money are reflected in the approach that is being taken. Those priorities are reflected also in the commitment the Government has shown to improving the provision of drug and alcohol treatment in prisons, and to improving the provision of education in prisons, particularly in literacy and numeracy.

In the long term, those measures—coupled with the various other initiatives in the justice sector being promoted, particularly, by the Minister of Justice—will reduce the growth of the prison population. Reducing the rate of growth of the prison population is the Government’s preferred long-term approach to the corrections portfolio. However, in the short term, measures to increase capacity in the prison system and the flexibility of the prison system, such as those in the bill currently before the House, are necessary to ensure that public safety is preserved.

This bill allows the use of court cells that have been gazetted as parts of corrections prisons, notwithstanding the provisions of local district plans. It addresses an anomaly that was identified by the previous Government, and provides increased flexibility in managing the increasing prison population. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) : I want to make a couple of observations about the nature of the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. As I have said, Labour will support it. I thank the acting Minister for what has been the only semblance of a speech of substance and logic to come out of the Government thus far in the process. We had a rendition from somebody akin to a cross between Uncle Fester and Captain Mainwaring in the form of Mr Auchinvole talking about all manner of things, but he did not provide any justification, substance, or even any logic—

Hon Steve Chadwick: Or any meaning.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: —or any meaning to support his own case.

I will turn to the regulatory impact statement. I have taken some advice, having read the very brief six or seven lines that it appears to be. In that regulatory impact statement, there is no regulatory impact statement. There is a reference to a website, which is a very long-winded website; in fact it takes up 3½, nearly 4, lines. I am advised that that is quite unusual. Normally in a piece of legislation, even a short piece of legislation, one would expect a summary of the regulatory impact statement. One would expect some sort of summary of the facts around the regulatory impact statement. This bill is printed on one A3 piece of paper. I know we are trying to conserve trees in this environment, but there is a little bit of space at the bottom, actually, where I would have thought the Government could have put some words in. When one goes to the website, one sees an exhaustive three or four pages of regulatory impact statement hidden away. One has to ask why that is the case. I am advised that not 24 hours ago the URL link had not been inserted into the bill. That is how rushed this process has been.

I raise that issue because it is more evidence that this Minister does not have a plan or a logical strategy to deal with the prison muster numbers. As I said in the first reading, she has had the reports for 12 months. Prior to the election her party said that if it implemented all its law and order policies it would double the then prison muster—double it. So even before the election—over 12 months ago—this Minister and her party were planning for a doubling of the prison population, yet there was no plan as to where to house them. There was—and still is, I believe—a commitment to build at least one new prison, though we have heard and seen nothing about it. This just provides further evidence, with 7 or 8 parliamentary days to go, of how rushed and unplanned, with a lack of management, a lack of foresight and thinking—

Carmel Sepuloni: A shambles.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: It is a shambles, my colleague says, a bit like the emissions trading scheme.

Hon Member: You’re voting for it!

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Yes, we are voting for it to get the Government out of a hole. It could have put up these proposals 12 months ago, put in place a prison muster plan and a prison build plan—a proper prison—

Hon Steve Chadwick: Integrated strategy.

Dr Cam Calder: With respect, you could have done that yourself.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: My colleague is right. That is a big word for Mr Calder. He says we could have done that ourselves. Well, I tell Mr Calder that the problem is that we did. We built four prisons. We were criticised by Mr Calder, who I think was doorknocking for Judith Collins or something way back then. We were criticised by Judith Collins because Mr Calder’s party said we were not locking enough people up. Does he care to rebut that? No, he will not rebut it, because it is a fact. That is what he said as he doorknocked for Judith Collins: we were not locking enough people up.

Dr Cam Calder: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I submit that the honourable member has no knowledge of what I said when I was doorknocking.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is not a point of order; that is interrupting a debate. It is unnecessary.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: That is OK, Mr Deputy Speaker. It proves what a plonker he is, so it is OK. What his party said before the election and what it says today are two different things. I love the Toastmasters. I have helped Toastmasters a number of times to set up little branches around my electorate. It is a fantastic organisation. I mean no denigration by what I am about to say, but I have to say to Mr Calder that this ain’t stage 101; this is a debate of substance about a critical issue. Going through the dictionary late at night, as Mr Calder did, looking for words that start with the same letter and stringing them together does not actually add to the substance of this debate.

I will raise a couple of questions about the shambles that we have and the lack of planning we have around this. I suspect that the member does not know where the regulatory impact statement is; he might be running away to ask his staff to get on the web and look it up. I am happy to give him a copy of the regulatory impact statement, because he probably does not know what it means and he probably does not know where to find it, but it is on the web. In that statement it says: “Cabinet has agreed that the maximum period of detention in court cells would be four days (96 hours).”

As I said, I was talking with a senior person in corrections. I will not name the person, because Judith Collins will bring a machete down on that person if I do. The issues raised are ones of logistics for prison staff, with regard to 4 evenings, 4 days, and 96 hours. I would like to know from the Government—and hopefully we will get to it in the Committee stage—what budget has been put aside for logistics of prison officers. How will they be fed through the court system, for instance? How will prisoners themselves be administered to? What will the accommodations be like for prison officers if they require administrative support while they are there for their shift? What will happen in terms of the day to day interaction between court processes, court staff, and prisoners who are housed for 96 hours? I think those are quite important and germane issues to this debate because, of course, these provisions will effectively take away the right of people who may be living in that area to object. I am sure that they would like some assurance from the Minister as to just how those day-to-day logistical matters will be addressed.

It is not a political point; it is a fair point that communities will want to know. I think it is also a fair point in relation to the security staff—that is, the prison officers who will be charged with dealing with these prisoners and managing them day to day, often in what can be described as very confined circumstances where they do not have the logistical support they would have had if this Government decided to start building a new prison as it promised to do.

So there are some issues in here. As I say, I find it very strange—in fact, I am told it is unheard of—that the regulatory impact statement is not contained within the bill, but is ferreted away and buried on a website. The URL was not even inserted in the draft that I have of the bill, which I received, somewhat prematurely, before it came before the House. I just wonder why. Is there any devil in the detail? Of course, when one finds the paper, one sees that it notes and acknowledges that there are a number of risks in respect of use of prison cells. So I just raise those issues as a matter of course.

Sandra Goudie: Mr Speaker—

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Talking of premature! I just raise those issues as a matter of course, and I seek some assurance from the Minister. She or Mr Finlayson may be able to get some advice from the staff and explain to us without breaching security how in metropolitan areas, without the logistical support of a prison itself, these individuals will be managed day to day, and what protections are in place for the staff.

I hope as we progress through the second reading that we might actually get a speech or two of substance from the opposite side of the House. I would be very interested in some of them; I think Mrs Goudie is in the starting blocks ready to go. I wonder whether Mrs Goudie will address some of the points I have made, like what she said before the election, instead of getting up and saying that the Government of the day did nothing. No, we built four prisons. Those members say that the Government of the day did not lock enough people up—well, we did, and now they say there are too many in there. I wonder whether they will address what the plan is going forward, and why this bill, which is pretty simple and has the support of most of the House, is brought to us 7 or 8 parliamentary sitting days before the election, incomplete though it is.

Dr Cam Calder: Before what?

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Sorry, before Christmas, I should say. God willing, there would be an election! After we have had the emissions trading scheme and the shonky deal with the Māori Party and others, I think it would be a cracker to get on the stump and debate some of these issues. I can only live in hope. I hope we actually get some of those answers from the members, especially the member who purports to be the chair of the Law and Order Committee.

SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) : Is it any wonder that I tried to take a premature call after Clayton Cosgrove’s address? The previous Government never did do anything about the drivers of crime. This legislation is a new initiative from this new National Government, which will make—and is currently making—a difference, just by the fact that we have started that whole process of addressing the drivers of crime. While we are looking at the drivers of crime, we are also making sure that New Zealanders feel safe in their beds and in their homes.

This Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill is a sensible solution. You know, Opposition members think it is a sensible solution, because they are supporting it, so we have to wonder what on earth they are rabbiting on about in the House. They are raving on in the House when it is quite a simple, straightforward bill, and when they are supporting it.

I will cover a couple of matters in regard to the bill. Clause 3 states: “This Act amends the Corrections Act 2004.” Clause 4 amends section 32 by inserting new subsection (2A), which ensures that if a cell block is declared by notice in the Gazette to be part of a corrections prison, then section 9 of the Resource Management Act will not prevent that cell block being used to detain prisoners. That provision is pretty sensible, and the Opposition must think it is pretty sensible, otherwise it would not be supporting it. So that is great; everybody is in accord.

Clause 5(2) makes a consequential amendment to section 4 of the Resource Management Act, to signal that “Section 9 does not apply to the detention of prisoners in a court cell block that is declared by notice in the Gazette to be part of a corrections prison.’ ”. So I can see no reason why there is so much kerfuffle by the Opposition when it is supporting this bill. That kerfuffle is just bombast on its part.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) : I will respond to a few of the claims that have been made by Mr Calder and Sandra Goudie with regards to increases in crime. The perception has been put out there by this National Government that under the Labour Government crime increased. Let us look at the facts. A report from the University of Auckland states that crime decreased under the Labour Government. A New Zealand Herald article in April 2008 stated: “The New Zealand crime rate remained flat in 2007, while police resolved almost 10,000 more offences than the previous year.” That article stated: “New Zealand recorded its lowest murder rate for a decade at 45, with 41 resolved before the end of the year.” It also stated—I touch on this because Mr Calder brought it up—that “Overall the picture was less rosy” with regards to violent crimes, but “This is not surprising when we take into account that there has been a huge focus on family violence with publicity and media campaigns designed to reduce tolerance for such offending,”.

It cannot be held against the Labour Government that we did something with regards to family violence and domestic violence. It cannot be held against the Labour Government that women all of a sudden decided that it was OK to come out and report to the police that they were getting beaten by their husbands. We cannot be accused of doing anything wrong when we did that over the last 9 years. Perhaps violent offences increased in terms of reporting, but it is not due to anything done wrong by the Labour Government; it is because of the work that we put into ensuring that women felt safe coming out and reporting against family violence.

I will touch on just how safe this bill is with regards to our courts. “Just how safe is it in court?” is an article that came out in the Manukau Courier in April 2009. It discussed the fact that “PSA national secretary Richard Wagstaff says there aren’t enough officers to cover the three courts at all times.” He discussed the fact that the shortage is “mirrored at courts across the country and threatens the safety of the public”. He said: “They need an extra three security staff to enable them to cover the three courts at all times.” The article goes on: “Mr Wagstaff says public demand is increasing yet the government has put a cap on staff, which is ‘a recipe for disaster, and in the case of our courts and our probation service, threatens the safety of the public’.” This is an issue.

We support the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill because the Government is in crisis and crime is on the increase. We know that a big part of that increase is due to poverty. Due to the high unemployment rates under this Government, we are seeing an increase in the number of people committing crimes. Prisons do not have the capacity to deal with them. We support this bill, but only because this Government is in crisis. Therefore, there is no other option with regards to the safety of the public. However, that does not mean that this will be smooth sailing for the Government. There are huge issues here with regards to the numbers of security officers in our courts, and also with regards to the unrest that has arisen in recent months amongst the justice staff members about their working conditions. If the Government does not address those things then we will be in serious trouble when this legislation goes through. We will see an increased number of prisoners pushed to the cells in the courts because they cannot be held in our actual prisons.

I pointed out earlier, and I point out again, that last night what we may just as well call the “Privatisation of Prisons Bill” went through. The National Government was saying that the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill would result in safer, better, and cheaper prisons. How can they be safer and better when anticipation of a huge overflow results in the need for this Government to push this legislation through quickly so that it has cells to house the prisoners because the prisons will not be able to hold them? I cannot see how the private prisons that it says will be the remedy to what it perceives as all its problems will be any sort of remedy when we are seeing more legislation to deal with the overflow. The prisons that the Government is talking about improving will not be able to cope with the sheer numbers.

I will go back to the issue of our court staff and our justice staff. There was a New Zealand Herald article. Again, it was not long ago, at all—it was only Tuesday, 17 November 2009. Our court staff were out on strike arguing for better pay. They were pointing out the fact that they would no longer “continue to accept the ministry’s unjust pay system that’s responsible for their underpayment.”, and the fact that they are working in very poor working conditions. It is this Government’s responsibility to ensure that our public servants are taken care of so that chaos does not erupt in places like our courts. It will be our public whose safety is put at risk, and also that of the security officers who are working these courts.

My colleague Mr Cosgrove brought up the fact that there was an absence of a regulatory impact statement in the bill that we were handed. He also pointed out that this is highly unusual, given the fact that usually it is in the bill. He was advised that it was unusual for a bill not to have it. We looked it up on the website and got a copy. We thought that perhaps there was something there that the Government was a little bit worried about. When we went through what is reported in the regulatory impact statement we found that a couple of things should be brought to the attention of the public. No one would deny that holding prisoners in court cells is not a new thing; there was a way in which that could be done in the past. Now the Government is going to extreme measures to introduce this legislation because it is in crisis.

One of the things pointed out in the regulatory impact statement is that “The preferred option”—this option—“carries litigation risks, in that prisoners housed in court cells may claim that their treatment does not comply with provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or other legislative requirements. It is also possible that New Zealand’s compliance with international conventions could be challenged. In this regard, the Chief Ombudsman has indicated that the Ombudsmen may issue adverse reports under Part 2 of the Crimes of Torture Act 1989 if their concerns are not addressed.” Putting prisoners in court cells was done sparingly under the previous Labour Government; it was not done on a regular basis. We did not feel we needed to legislate for it.

When we were in Government—for the past 9 years—we were not in crisis. This Government is in crisis, so it is forced to legislate for it, and we have to support it in that, but this Government will have to face that issue. With the increasing number of prisoners whom they are planning to push into courts cells, there will be a much higher risk that their rights as prisoners and their treatment do not comply with the provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This is especially so given the fact, as I pointed out before, that there is a shortage of security staff at the moment. There is unrest amongst the justice staff because of poor working conditions imposed by this Government. It needs to be highlighted that there are concerns about this that have been pointed out in the regulatory impact statement.

To end, I want to say that last night we saw a bill pushed through stating that private prisons will apparently be better, safer, and cheaper, yet here we are today—and this is ironic—pushing through a bill that will legislate to allow for prisoners to be held in court cells because the Government is anticipating an overflow. It is anticipating that its prisons will not be able to hold the sheer numbers. This is an issue. It is ironic. It contradicts what the National Government discussed last night. Mr Mallard discussed the “h” word before; I will not bring it up. We support this bill because the Government is in crisis, but we have a few concerns that the Government will have to address.

JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) : I had not been intending to take a call in this debate. I will be very brief. I will make three points. First, I have never heard such a load of rubbish in my life. Carmel Sepuloni has just said that the Labour Party is voting for the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill because the Government is in crisis. Well, I invite Labour members to vote against the bill. Because the ACT Party supports the bill, it will be passed into law whether or not the Labour Party supports it. The Government does not need Labour’s support. It is welcome to give it. It is a good bill. But I have never heard such a load of rubbish in my life. Thank you.

SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) : Following on from the comments made by my ACT colleague John Boscawen, I am reminded very much of how awful it is in Opposition when one is voting for something but one is required to give a 10-minute speech putting forward the reasons why it is not a good idea. That is the reason we fight so hard to get into Government; it is so much better to be on this side of the House.

I say to my colleagues on the other side of the House who have debated the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill so far—the Hon Trevor Mallard and the Hon Clayton Cosgrove, who have come up with all the reasons why this bill is not a good idea, but who are supporting it—that they have missed one point. This Government has now been in power for 1 year. They were in power for 9 years. They talked of the prisons that they opened during the 9 years they were in power, but they forgot to mention that they also closed some prisons.

The question that has not been raised so far, given the importance of this bill because of the overflow from our prisons and the crisis that has been created as a result, is why they closed Ōhura Prison in the King Country during their time in Government. When we drill into the reasons they gave for doing that, we find that they argued that they could not get prison officers to live out there. Well, in the end, that was true, but why was that? It was because a decision was made 12 to 18 months prior to the closure of that prison to sell off the prison houses. Of course, when prison officers apply for a job they look at the whole package. They have to consider where they would live, how they would get there, and what the salary was. They found they would have to go out to Ōhura and try to find suitable accommodation for their wives and families, and, of course, it was not available. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophesy! The selling of prison houses, making them unavailable, was a nationwide decision, and in Ōhura the one-size-fits-all approach did not work.

And it was a tragedy. When I look back at it, I realise that the kind of people who generally make themselves available as medium-security or low-security prison officers are the kind of people who like a recreational sort of life. They might be hunters, fishers, foresters, or have other, similar hobbies that they do outside of their hours of work, and Ōhura was perfectly located for that type of person and that type of lifestyle. However, the decision was made, the prison was closed, and now we are here debating a bill under urgency to allow court cells and other temporary facilities to be used to accommodate the overflow of prisoners.

I would be interested in comments from the Hon Clayton Cosgrove, or from anybody else who wishes to take a call, to explain the merits of that decision. When Tony Ryall was the Opposition police spokesperson he identified a looming problem in terms of the growing prison numbers and a lack of construction of new prison facilities. So after 9 years of Labour we are now debating under urgency the need to allow the temporary accommodation of prisoners in facilities that could arguably be described as unsuitable for long-term corrections activity. The Government is aware of that, and it is moving to look at all options as quickly as possible. I am sure that the National Government will find a solution to it.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) : Mr Boscawen might not have read the regulatory impact statement, but Carmel Sepuloni was referring to the fact that managing the prison muster is in crisis, hence the necessity to pass legislation to enable this to happen. Therefore, there is nothing disingenuous about that; it is a fact. Why would we not support something when it is a reasonable thing to do and when it is something that we also find necessary to do? What is disingenuous is what members opposite used to do when this matter came up under the Labour Government. They would pillory this very kind of provision. What we do not see is a little bit of humility from them. Maybe they could apologise and say they can see why it was necessary. I know that Mr Ardern has had more experience of being in Opposition than we have. It is something he ought to think about. We do not intend to become as experienced at that as members opposite are.

Members opposite have taken this opportunity to legislate a simple provision under urgency. It would have been easy to get through this without too much complication. Members opposite have taken this as an opportunity to say, time and time again, that in the 9 years of the previous Government it did nothing about violence and crime. I do not know where those members were when day after day, year after year, and term after term, the Labour Government did bring forward many pieces of legislation and significantly resourced the addressing of crime. Mr Calder talked a lot about the increase in violent crime. As I said in my first reading speech, he displays his own ignorance about the figures for violent crime. I want to spend a few minutes educating members opposite about the figures for violent crime.

We indeed know that the majority of violent crime shown in those statistics emerged out of domestic violence; we know that to be the case. How did that happen? Did it happen because of 9 years of inactivity by the last Government, or did it happen because year in and year out Ministers and their ministries were working very, very hard to try to understand what some of the drivers were, what needed to be done, and how to bring everybody together and start a programme that in perhaps the next 10 years—because that is how long it would take—would achieve the necessary changes?

Mr Ardern and Mr Calder might not know about the family violence task force and the work that it did to try to find out what New Zealand society should do about violence. It brought all of the information together. It joined up all the agencies possible. I know, because I led the Families Commission at that time. We were key players, and the member’s party exempted itself from the multiparty group. So I say to members opposite that they did nothing to assist in solving the problem when they were in Opposition. In fact, they obfuscated it. They stood on the sidelines and criticised very, very reasonable efforts.

The task force started in December 2004 and it went through for a period after that. That task force, comprising all of the Government’s social agencies, plus the non-governmental organisation sector, has spent a lot of energy, effort, intellectual ability, and resources to begin to address those issues. I say to Mr Ardern that one of the major messages was that one must not live with violence in one’s domestic situation, that one must report it and find assistance. That has caused the major rise in the reporting of domestic violence. The member might want to talk to Mr Calder and explain it to him, so that members opposite can understand and stop this nonsense. It is intellectually dishonest. Ministers and members opposite ought not to do that, because it does them no justice and it does this Parliament no justice. It is a form of dishonesty that is just incredible to behold in this age.

I will go further and say that this Government has changed not one aspect of that programme. In fact, the Government’s programme to address domestic violence is exactly the same programme that the Hon Ruth Dyson led as a Minister, and other Ministers supported it at the time. At one point half the Cabinet Ministers were members of the ministerial group to which the task force was responsible. Maybe the next Government speaker can clarify for us whether that is still the case and whether the member’s Cabinet puts that much emphasis on it, because nothing has changed. The task force works on the same programme. The It’s Not OK campaign works in exactly the same way. The community-led initiatives work in exactly the same way. The member’s Government has added nothing to it, except for on-the-spot protection orders, I think. Labour members supported that measure as well. It was a slight tweaking of something that was already there.

Time and time again ethnic members in National—Mr Bakshi, Melissa Lee, and the Hon Pansy Wong are in the Chamber—

Hon Pansy Wong: Good morning.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Greetings, ni hao. Those members speak to ethnic audiences, and what do they do? They tout their achievements in reducing violence in our society, even though it is inappropriate to do so in many, many situations, where members of the audiences do not want to hear about the Government’s work on violence. They want to hear Government members celebrating those cultures.

Hon Pansy Wong: They love the Government.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: But time and time again, I say to the Hon Pansy Wong and her colleague, that is what those members do, and their audiences are just bored with it. It is time to stop doing that.

Members opposite have also been criticising this provision, which we used and which they now want to use. Of course, members opposite want it for a purpose. We would like to hear for how long the Government intends to use this provision. Is it for the summer, because by that time the Government will have solved the problem? Is it for another 6 months, because by then it will have found the answers? Is it for only 1 year, because by then all of the Government’s new systems will be in place and it will have resolved the violence issues in our society? Or will it be for all of the Government’s term? I ask whether members opposite intend that this will be their policy for the rest of their Government’s term—because it will be their last one—and if it is not, then I ask what else they are putting in place. Members opposite have made this a violence issue. Members opposite have turned this into something that the Government is now guaranteeing. Members opposite are guaranteeing to New Zealand society that in your term you will have resolved this—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: My apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker. Will the Government members opposite have resolved this issue in this period of time? I would put money on there being no guarantee that they can give that this provision will still be there.

Todd McClay: How much?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Mr McClay can take me on; I will see him in the lobby afterwards. I would put money on it that this measure will not improve the situation. This is a generational shift we are talking about. Our society is violent, and there is much that we need to do about that. It is inappropriate for members opposite to promise that they can do much better. This will come to haunt their policies.

Sandra Goudie: Ha, ha!

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Sandra Goudie may smile, but what the Government is doing is explosive. It is appealing to the negative side of life.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) : I will speak briefly on the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. The Green Party will be opposing it. It is an extraordinary bill. We have court cells to house the people who are being taken to court, and suddenly these cells are to be used to house prisoners.

Hon Member: Shock, horror!

SUE KEDGLEY: Well, it is an indictment on the prison situation in New Zealand. I believe we have the second-highest number proportionally of prisoners locked up in jail of any nation in the world. We are second only to America. My understanding is that for every prisoner locked up for a year, it costs $70,000. We are all fretting about budgets, but no one is worrying about that cost. We just keep pouring people into jails and it costs $70,000 a year per prisoner.

But the problem, or the crisis, facing the Government is where to put the endless number of prisoners who are going into our jails. Now we will take court cells, which are normally used for people who are being taken to court, for this purpose. The first question I have to ask is what will happen once they are all filled with our prisoners—and, mark my words, they will be. The bill talks about occasional use, but this bill being rammed through under urgency will allow court cells to become de facto prisons. When our court cells are filled with prisoners, where will the people who would be in those cells because they are being taken to court go?

Hon Mita Ririnui: Caravans.

SUE KEDGLEY: Will we now have caravans outside our courts in an attempt to house those people because all the court cells will be overflowing with prisoners?

This bill is an absolute indictment on where we are in New Zealand with regard to this issue. Our prisons are overflowing but all we are doing is treating the symptoms and pouring more and more prisoners into jail, when we should be looking at early intervention, rehabilitation, finding non-custodial interventions for minor non-violent offending, and so on. We should be looking at rehabilitation and at the roots of crime. We know very well that the more unequal a society is, the wider the gap between the rich and the poor. The more that we have entrenched poverty, as we do in New Zealand, the more violence will occur and the more we will have prisoners. So why do we not deal with the root causes of why we have the second-highest number of prisoners in jail in the world, instead of resorting to these ludicrous situations such as turning our court cells into new jails? We will now have courts that are effectively jails. This is completely absurd.

The bill also breaches the Resource Management Act. Normally we cannot just turn a court building into a prison because that would breach that Act. There would have to be a specific amendment or an allocation of land for the purpose of a prison. This bill will grant a Resource Management Act exemption so that nobody can challenge or even be consulted when a court building is to be effectively converted into a prison in his or her neighbourhood. People will wake up and find that the courthouse they have been living near will now effectively become a dual-purpose building—a prison and a court—and they will not be able to offer any objection because of the exemption in this bill.

This is an indictment and the Green Party is horrified. I am certain that this bill will breach not just our human rights legislation but also international legislation. I would be grateful if the Minister of Corrections could confirm what human rights legislation the bill breaches and could tell members how the Government is planning to circumvent breaching that legislation. I ask where the Government will find room to accommodate the people who should be in the court cells, and I ask what impact turning our courts into jails will have. What will we do when the court cells are all filled up? This is completely ludicrous. We have double-bunking and we have containers to house prisoners being erected around New Zealand. As some of the earlier speakers have said, we have an absolute crisis that shows the absolute failure of our approach to reducing prison numbers. The number of prisoners is escalating. It shows the failure to deal with the root causes of the issue. It shows that this is the inevitable consequence of the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor in New Zealand, and the entrenched poverty we have.

There is one other point that I keep mentioning, and it is completely ignored. It is well established that if violence is screened continually on television, as it is here, it legitimises violence and encourages young boys in particular to think that the way to solve problems is through violence. The Green Party secured funding to do some research on this issue. Thousands of studies have confirmed the findings that prolonged exposure to incidents of violence on television normalises violence. Violence is shown in cartoons. There are up to 16 episodes of violence in an hour of cartoons. Violence is saturating our television and it is encouraging the normalisation of violence in our society. We are bringing up young men to think that violence is a legitimate way to solve conflict. Is this Parliament trying to do anything about that? Is it doing anything to reduce the amount of violence that pervades our television sets? It is one of the root causes of violence. Are we trying to do anything about that? No, no; the two main political parties thump the anti-crime drum. Their members rush up and down the country. National and ACT in particular join with the Sensible Sentencing Trust in beating the anti-crime drum, but they do absolutely nothing to reduce the causes of violence. A very simple cause of violence is the amount of violence shown on television. There are many ways we could be reducing the amount of violence shown on television. We could require that programmes that are filled with violence are screened only after 10 o’clock at night. We could be doing many things like that. But no, we are not doing anything to address the root causes of violence.

We are creating a society that is ever more unequal. We are entrenching poverty, as the report yesterday pointed out. Then we worry, and wonder why our prison population is out of control. It is one of the fastest-growing in the world—the second highest. What will we do next? We have turned the courts into prisons, we have double-bunking in prisons, and we have containers around the nation for prisoners. When will this Government and this Parliament address the root causes and look at the whole issue of rehabilitation, early intervention, and finding other ways to reduce the number of prisoners and the amount of crime in New Zealand?

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National) : I stand in support of the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. First of all, I would like to tell Dr Rajen Prasad that Indians do love this Government and really welcomed us. They were really disappointed that the last Government did not do anything about violence or anything about crime. This bill provides for the Department of Corrections to imprison prisoners temporarily in court cells. Court cell blocks have basic facilities, and an extended period of detention in such conditions would compromise prisoners’ rights to humane treatment. In order to ensure that all prisoners are treated humanely and receive the statutory minimum entitlement, it is proposed that an amendment to the Corrections Act limit to 4 days the length of detention in a court cell. Prisoners under the age of 18 years and disabled prisoners will not be accommodated in court cells. I commend this bill to the House.

JO GOODHEW (Junior Whip—National) : I seek leave for the Committee on the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill to take the bill as one question.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Leave is sought to take the bill as a single question. Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is no objection. We will take the bill as a single question.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) : I have a couple of questions for the Minister of Corrections, Judith Collins. I think that the Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister of Justice, Nathan Guy, will be able to answer them. The first question is with regard to the points that I made in respect of the regulatory impact statement. The Minister will know, presumably, even though he is a new Minister, that it is normal in a Government bill to have a reasonably robust regulatory impact statement. In fact, his colleague Rodney Hide, who holds the portfolio as regulatory tsar, pledged to the nation that he would cut through all the red tape and ensure that the bills that came into this House had been tested for their efficiency, that they were needed, and that the regulatory impact statements stacked up. The purpose of a regulatory impact statement is to test the strictures around bills like this. I would be grateful to know whether this bill got through Rodney Hide’s detailed gaze—whether he actually did his job and looked at it.

The problem we have with this bill is that it may well have made history in that there is no regulatory impact statement in it. There are a couple of lines that point to a regulatory impact statement, and there is the heading “Regulatory impact statement”. But until less than 24 hours ago—I know this, because a copy of the bill was given to me earlier—there was not even a URL included in the bill to link it to the actual regulatory impact statement that I have in my hand and that appears on a website. I would like to know why. I am sure the Minister will give us a long dissertation in this respect, because it seems to me that this proves the bill was rushed through.

The other issues I will raise with regard to the regulatory impact statement relate to some of the points I made earlier. Cabinet has agreed, on page 3 of the regulatory impact statement, that the period of detention in court cells would be for 4 days, or 96 hours. This legislation takes away the right of people to object to the use of court cells for the 96-hour period. It streamlines the process, and we will support that, for obvious reasons. But I think it is incumbent upon the Government to explain to this House and, through it, to the people in those communities that have courthouses that will be used—I think there are some 100-plus cells, if I am correct—how the logistical arrangements will be put together.

How will these folk be fed? Will prisoners be shipped out during the day when the court sits? How will prison officers’ logistical and security needs be dealt with? Where will the extra staff come from and who will pay for them? Where will the money come from? Who will administer to these prisoners whilst they are on additional sites in our courts? Will they be shipped out and back to prison during the day, and then shipped back to the court cells in the evening? How will they be fed, watered, and showered? Those are basic issues. I do not think that any of our courts have those logistical provisions. Court cells have very basic sanitation, but they are holding cells for people appearing before court, not accommodation for an overnight stay, let alone for 4 days. I would be interested to know how that will occur.

I ask whether there will be extra security, given the classification. Presumably these are low-classification inmates, but I ask whether there will be extra security for the 4 days that they are housed in court cells. I think that the Minister of Corrections does not know, even though this bill has been rushed through in urgency, because the Minister had no foresight to forecast and to look at the forecast that she is handed every day, if not every week.

We are in the last 8 sitting days of Parliament, dealing with what is a pretty simple issue but one that has risks, as noted in the regulatory impact statement. Those risks are acknowledged by the Department of Corrections, so I would be grateful if we could know where the extra budget allocation is coming from for staff, because there will have to be one. Presumably, it comes out of baseline funding, so I ask what else will slip. I ask what other sorts of costs there are, because there is no reference at all to costs in the regulatory impact statement. What sorts of costs will be put upon the taxpayer for the transfer of prisoners and for the other logistical arrangements that are required? The Minister should answer these fundamental questions.

Clauses 4 and 5 are pretty self-explanatory—we know what they are about—as are clauses 1, 2, and 3. But we need to know about the detail and the processes contained around this bill and the day-to-day logistics and requirements of security arrangements if this legislation is to be implemented. I am particularly concerned about the safety of prison officers. I ask how those issues will be dealt with where prison officers do not have the logistical or security support that they would have in a prison. These are not prisons, these are court cells. I ask how that matter will be dealt with, and what the added security for prison officers is. What arrangements will be put in place to assist the people who are at the front line?

If the Minister of Corrections does not respond to those questions, then we have to assume that the questions are unanswered, that there is no planning in place, that this is just part of the rushed process of this bill, and that those planning arrangements will be cobbled together in the same sort of shambolic way that this legislation has been as we move through to Christmas. We know generally that the prison release policy takes place pre-Christmas, and normally a little bit of space is created. The regulatory impact statement also points to this legislation being used in the early part of next year.

I would be grateful if the Minister could give members and the communities those assurances, because we know that these court cells are just basic holding cells. There are security issues for staff and basic transport and security issues for prisoners, and the welfare of staff and prisoners has not been addressed. Will we ship prisoners off to the local football club to be showered? Will they be transferred back to a prison nearby during daytime hours so that the court can function, and then shipped back in the evening? I ask what the cost of that will be. Where are the extra personnel who will have to do that task, and where are the extra vehicles and all the other ancillary services that we will need? I would be grateful if the Minister would answer those basic questions. I am sure she has a huge knowledge of this bill, and I am sure it will not be taxing, given that it is only five clauses long and fits on one A3 page.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) : There are quite a number of questions that the Committee deserves an answer to in addressing the clauses of the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. I would really appreciate if we could have some answers from the Government to the following questions.

First of all, does the bill breach the Human Rights Act in New Zealand? I suspect it does. If it does, the Government should explain that. Secondly, does the bill breach any international human rights legislation? Thirdly, now that we are converting our courts into jails, some very practical issues arise. I presume that prisoners in jails have to be fed. I presume that they have to have showers and so forth. Will we have cooking facilities in our courts now? Will we have showers in the courts, so that prisoners can be showered? Where will they have their exercise? Where will the prison guards, who monitor them in these cells, be located? In my second reading speech I asked where the people who normally would be in the court cells—people who have been taken to court—would go. Will they sit on the steps outside, or will there be caravans outside New Zealand courts? We should be given answers to all those questions. This bill is being raced through this House with extreme urgency. Ordinary New Zealanders have no idea that this is about to happen. The debate has been shallow, to say the least, and why would it not be, because we know hardly anything about the issue. The bill is 2 pages in length but, nevertheless, far-reaching in its consequences. So I believe we are owed an explanation of these issues before the bill goes through the House.

How many courts in New Zealand are in residential areas? In many small towns the court is right next to residences, homes, and so forth. How many people will suddenly find that there is a jail next to their homes, in their suburbs, without their consent or without their even being informed? The extraordinary thing is that this bill acknowledges that in most cases it will breach the Resource Management Act, because we cannot turn a court into a jail without breaching most district plans. There are rules about the location of jails. Suddenly, we will breach all of the rules in district plans about setting aside specific areas for jails. Suddenly, we will allow our courts to be turned into jails, and we will grant an exemption so that nobody has a right to be consulted when a court in his or her neighbourhood is to be turned into a prison, and so that nobody can challenge it. Does that sound reasonable? We have a whole resource management process, we have district plans, and we have a very clear process to go through for the establishment of a new prison. We have to go through lengthy consultation, we have to abide by the Resource Management Act, and we have to abide by the local district plan. But, suddenly, we can sweep all that aside with one little 2-page bill and allow courts all over New Zealand to be turned into jails that house prisoners, and we will not inform New Zealanders in advance of that and we will not consult them.

Has a select committee looked at this bill? Have we called for submissions?

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: No, they messed up the plan. It is rushed.

SUE KEDGLEY: Will there be submissions on this? [Interruption] There are not going to be any submissions. This is extraordinary. This bill will significantly affect hundreds, possibly thousands, of New Zealanders. They will wake up and discover that their local court down the road is now a jail, and they will not be consulted or informed about that. This reminds me of the national environment standard on telecommunications that was rammed through Parliament last year. It allows cell antennae, masts, and so on to be erected on any telephone pole anywhere in New Zealand. Mr Mallard rammed that one through. The Greens predicted in this House that it would cause outrage round New Zealand when it went through, when people discovered that cell antennae and masts could be erected anywhere in New Zealand without their knowledge or consent, even though they could affect their health and well-being and their property prices—their property prices could plunge by up to 20 percent. Have we been proven to be correct? Yes. All around New Zealand, groups are outraged. Every week someone else contacts me. Last week a guy in Invercargill discovered that a 15-metre high cell tower was about to be erected across the road. It is a 6-storey tower and no one had bothered to inform or consult him. I was speaking to a woman from Christchurch yesterday. When she took her daughter to school there was no cell tower; when she came home at 3 o’clock to pick her daughter up, there was a cell tower across the road from the school. Is this the sort of New Zealand that we think is acceptable? There is growing literature about the health effects of cell towers. In fact, places like France are taking down cell towers near schools, and here we are putting them up without anyone’s knowledge or consent.

This bill does exactly the same thing. New Zealanders will be gazumped by this measure. They will ask: “How did this happen? How come we have prisoners in our courthouse? Nobody told us about it?”.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Bad planning.

SUE KEDGLEY: It is not bad planning. The Government has rammed it through deliberately. Do not put it down to bad planning! How can such a bill not have gone to a select committee? It is about an issue of vital importance to New Zealand. We are converting our court cells into jails, and nobody is allowed to make a submission. Nobody will be consulted on it. Nobody will even be told of this measure. Someone will wake up, go to a courthouse somewhere in a suburb, and suddenly discover that it is a jail.

Would someone please explain how this measure will work? I see that we now have a Minister in the chair, the Acting Minister of Corrections. I ask the Minister to please explain to the Committee where the prison guards who guard these court cells will be. Where will food be prepared for the prisoners? Where will they take their showers? Where will they have their exercise? What about the people who should be in the court cells; where will they be held? Will there be caravans outside our courthouses around New Zealand to serve as court cells? And why will the Government not deal with the root causes of crime, instead of allowing more and more prisoners, overflowing jails, and the second-highest prisoner population in the world? How much is this measure going to cost us? It costs $70,000 every year for every single prisoner that we lock up in jails or, now, court cells.

This bill is an absolute travesty. The Green Party will be opposing it. We expect answers to every single question that I asked.

Hon MITA RIRINUI (Labour) : I stand to take a call because I think the timing is probably convenient, if not perfect. As Labour speakers have made it clear, we will be supporting the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. However, some issues need to be addressed. I want to acknowledge the issues raised by the Hon Clayton Cosgrove and Sue Kedgley in relation to the impact that safety issues will have on court staff, on the police, and on the general public. As you know, Mr Chair, having been a former Minister for Courts, and having visited courts, court cells are not the most secure places in our communities. They are not intended to hold prisoners for long periods. I know that this bill will require those prisoners awaiting sentence to be held for 4 days only. But there are still issues surrounding holding an inmate awaiting sentence for that period of time. I will not call them prisoners, because they are basically on remand. However, issues need to be addressed.

Certainly the House is aware of the reasons for which the Labour Opposition supports this bill. There were issues that we had to deal with in our time in Government, and they meant that some inmates awaiting sentence had to be held in court cells for a limited period of time. But I wonder why the Māori Party supports this bill, because there has been no clear explanation from them. I take this opportunity, while the Minister of Māori Affairs, the Hon Dr Pita Sharples, is in the Chamber; I know that he is a strong advocate for community justice. I take this call because the Associate Minister of Māori Affairs, the Hon Georgina Te Heuheu, is in the chair, and I do not really know what her views are in terms of retention of inmates in court cells. I hope that both Ministers will take a call.

I know that the Māori Party supported the bill that was debated previously in the House, the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill, and I wonder why that is the case, as well, given that the member for Waiariki totally opposes the establishment of the youth justice facility in the electorate of Waiariki, for ideological reasons. He claims that Māori do not support the prison system and therefore should not support the building of those facilities in communities, yet when it came to voting on the previous bill, there was overwhelming support from the Māori Party. It is the same old story. It is the same story with National, which says one thing when it is in Opposition and does another thing in Government. The Māori Party members say one thing in the community, but in the House they say and do things that are completely the opposite of what they claim they believe in. I hope that the Minister of Māori Affairs will take a call and explain the reasons why he thinks that Māori should be owners of the prison system. That ideology clashes with the traditional Māori cultural view. He is aware of that, as is the Minister in the chair. I wonder why they would not take the opportunity now to take a call and explain why they supported the previous bill that was in the House, and why they support this bill.

Labour members are very straight, up front, and honest about our views about why the Labour Opposition supports the bill that was debated previously in the House, and why we support this bill. We are straight, up front, and honest about why we support that position. We are here to help the Government, because it does not have a clue about what it is doing. It needs help. One year in Government and what has happened? It is scavenging for ideas. This legislation is the best it could come up with. National opposed this type of legislation when it was in Opposition; now it does not have to oppose the legislation, because it is making it law. Well, how about that! What does the member for Rotorua think? Will he walk down the streets of Rotorua and say to the community: “Don’t worry, bros. We will hold you in holding cells for 4 days, but the law says we can do it now.” How will he explain that to the Māori rangatira who supported him in some of the work he has done?

Carmel Sepuloni: I don’t think they supported him.

Hon MITA RIRINUI: They were at his meetings. They ate his food. They drank his coffee. I think we can accept the usual flip-flop behaviour by the National-led Government, but, once again, I really, really wonder why the Māori Party has come here today to be present in the Chamber. I am sure that its constituents are waiting with bated breath to hear why the Māori Party supported not only the previous bill but also this bill.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) : I have a few issues with the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill that are highlighted more effectively in the regulatory impact statement. I have one issue with regard to this point in the regulatory impact statement: “To ensure that all prisoners would receive their statutory minimum entitlements, Cabinet has agreed that the maximum period of detention in court cells would be four days …”. My question to the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Courts, is what happens if there is still not a bed in a prison for them. What happens to them then? Is the period extended in which they are allowed to be housed in the court cells? Where do they go? Will they just be released? Will they be told: “Go home, and we will come and get you when we have a bed.”? What will the Minister for Courts do? That is one question.

My other question is with regards to resourcing and the ability to cater to the needs of these prisoners in the court cells. Four days is quite a long time. In my head I have this visual picture of about 20 prisoners crammed into one cell, holding on to the bars, like we see in American movies. I am just wondering whether that will be the case. Will all these prisoners have their own cells in the courts? Will it be one per cell, or will there be double-bunking or triple-bunking in the court cells? I ask the Minister whether there will be one big cell where we put the prisoners all together for 4 days and just leave them to it. I wonder what will happen there. My colleague brought up the question of shower facilities, washing facilities, and food. How will we feed these prisoners? Will the courts be given a budget in order to feed these 30 prisoners that will be kept in a court cell for 4 days? What will happen, and how do we go about that? Will the security guards leave their post and go out to Pak ’N Save to buy some food to feed the prisoners? I ask the Minister how this will all work. That is what I would like to know.

One of the issues raised was that people who live in neighbouring areas will not be able to make a complaint about this legislation. They will not be able to ring up and say: “Actually, I do not agree with the fact that there are prisoners held in the court cells next door to where I live.” What will happen if—or when—something goes wrong that affects the neighbouring community, and the public’s safety is put at risk because of court cells being in an area where there people around. What will happen then? Will the Government respond to public safety concerns about any incidents that happen? Will it respond to those, how will it react, and what action will it take? I am not sure whether any of these things have been thought through, given that we were presented with this bill only last night and it has not had time to go up for any public scrutiny whatsoever. I think the people who really would have liked to have made a submission on this bill are those who are situated close to a court cell. Those who are living in such an area would probably have some concerns and would have liked to express those concerns in the form of a submission to the select committee. But, unfortunately, the Minister and this Government has taken away the right of the public to have a say on this bill. It is not the first time this has happened; it is something we have experienced on an ongoing basis since this Government got in a year ago.

Chris Hipkins: Standard practice!

CARMEL SEPULONI: It is standard practice. The Government refers to the country when it was under Labour as the nanny State, yet it has pushed through a number of bills that have had no public scrutiny whatsoever because it thinks it knows what is right for all New Zealanders. It thinks New Zealanders do not need to have a say on anything. That is what we call a real nanny State.

Some of the issues that have arisen across the course of the debate have been with regards to security officer numbers and their shortage in our prisons. That has been pointed out in a number of different articles in the New Zealand Herald and in various other sources. I ask what the Minister will do with regard to recruiting a higher level of security officers. Has she increased the budget for security officers in courts so they can cater to the needs of these prisoners; if so, how much did she increase the budget to? We would like to know how much the Government is anticipating it will need.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (Acting Minister of Corrections) : I rise, not necessarily to answer all the myriad issues that have been raised, some of which I missed the argument on anyway, but to comment on one or two things. As the members on the Opposition side know, this proposal is about enabling temporary accommodation of corrections prisoners in court cells as a last resort where there is insufficient capacity in the prison system. Part of the reason I took this call was to acknowledge the Chairperson, the Hon Rick Barker, who, of course, did quite a lot of work previously in his role as the Minister for Courts to address this very issue of rising prisoner numbers and where and how to accommodate them. That is my first point, and it is an important one.

Sue Kedgley: Where are they going to be fed and showered?

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU: I tell the member I am coming to that. It is not new that we have people in these cells. It is not something new or different that we have never before catered for. As is done anyway with prisoners on remand, accommodation is made to have them showered. They are taken to nearby prisons. Part of the implementation of this is that they do need to be showered and fed, but those things are done anyway.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Soft on crims!

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU: No, we are not soft on crims—not at all. But we do want to make sure that we can house the prison population properly. Issues such as how they will be housed and how they will be fed are interesting to raise but if that member thinks about it, we have to do that anyway. People already use those cells, just not in relation to using them as prisons. The issue about—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Cost?

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU: —no, no—double-bunking and triple-bunking is, I think, a red herring. There is no intention for that to occur in the cells. For a minute one could let the imagination run wild with this; I do not know where triple-bunking came from and I do not know how it would arise, anyway. I do not think it is worth spending much more time on.

As I said, corrections brings food into cells because the people who are locked in those cells have to be fed. Exercise will be on site if possible, but more likely they will be returned to the prison for that and for showering. During the day, court proceedings will take precedence, and prisoners will be returned, depending on whether there is enough room in the cells, either to the cells or to the prison.

The real reason I wanted to stand up was to address the issue that I believe was raised by the member Sue Kedgley regarding human rights implications. It is proper that that is raised. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights affirm the right of every person deprived of liberty to be treated with humanity and respect. The Act and the Corrections Regulations 2005 provide for prisoners held in New Zealand prisons to be treated in a manner that complies with these international instruments, and it is consistent with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

Among other things, this legislation sets out prisoners’ minimum entitlements, requires certain categories of prisoners to be separated—for example youth or unconvicted remand prisoners—and provides access to inspectors of corrections and other complaint mechanisms. All requirements of the Act and regulations will apply to prisoners who are detained in court cells, and these requirements will be met. The proposal to limit the period of detention in court cells to a maximum of 4 days will assist in that regard. Depending on their implementation, because everything is in the implementation, the proposals in this bill appear to be consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We have not ignored it, and I believe that goes some way to addressing the concerns raised in particular by the honourable member Sue Kedgley.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) : I thank the Minister in the chair for addressing some of the questions, as Minister for Courts. I was interested in a couple of the comments she made. She said triple-bunking does not exist. Firstly, if she goes up the road to a place called Mount Crawford prison she will see that it does exist in some of the cells there. Secondly, the Minister might want to get advice in respect of the Employment Court case—and I will not go into it, because it is a current live court case—that is occurring with the prison service, where I am advised that there are arguments for triple-bunking now.

Hon Georgina te Heuheu: In the cells?

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Well, we do not have triple-bunking outside the cells; we have triple-bunking inside the cells in our prisons. Also, if we can make that leap of faith and if there is an overflow, because there is no reference to it in here, there is no guarantee in the legislation to say there will be one prisoner per cell or two prisoners per cell in a court holding cell. If the Minister is giving us that commitment, I would be grateful if she could reiterate that it is one prisoner per cell. The reason I raise this is that it raises security issues for prison officers. There are a whole series of issues—food, transportation, staff security, and sanitation—that the Minister did not address. The questions we raised were where, how much, where the money was coming from, how many staff would be needed, would it be the case that in order to access sanitation facilities—

Sandra Goudie: This is repetitive!

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: I am sorry?

Sandra Goudie: I said this is repetitive, incredibly repetitive.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: It is repetitive for those who are sharing the family brain cell. They are legitimate questions that we should ask. I know that that member, who is the chair of the Law and Order Committee, has not taken a call and did not advocate to have this legislation before a select committee, and now she does not want any questions raised.

The reason why it is repetitive, I say to Ms Goudie, is that we have not had the answers. The Minister has been generous enough, I admit, to address a number of points but the reason we are raising questions is that we cannot do it in a select committee. We can do it only in this forum. If we want to earn our pay, our job here is to ask the questions and to test the validity of the legislation. That might be a bit beyond that genius over there, as she squawks away and has a go at us for doing our job.

Hon Trevor Mallard: She’s one of their brighter members!

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: I make no comment on that. I ask the Minister—

Hon Trevor Mallard: She’s one of their more intelligent members!

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: My colleague says that she is one of National’s brighter members—well, God help us!

I asked the Minister a serious question: if there has to be food, water—and obviously there does—and sanitation, and prisoners will be shipped out, how far will it be? Will it be 50 kilometres, or 100 kilometres to the nearest prison? I suspect it could be. The Minister’s department will require extra salaried staff, extra transportation, and there will be a cost in the downtime of moving people in and out of the courts, day and night. They will have to do that; the courts operate during the day, so prisoners will have to be shipped out during the day, as the Minister said.

This is my question. Nowhere in the Minister’s statement did she address the issue of cost. I assume that the extra costs for staff, security, sanitation, and transportation will be addressed out of the baseline, because there is no new Budget allocation. Of course, the Department of Corrections is before the court at the moment over the whole double-bunking issue. We know from the chief executive, Barry Matthews, that there are military, logistical plans in place if there is a strike and a lockout—he has told us that. These costs are up in the air. I would like the Minister to tell us whether she will give us a guarantee about “one person, one cell” as the issue of the safety of the prison officers then arises.

Will the Minister also address another issue that I think one of my colleagues raised? If something goes wrong, who will be accountable? We know that the Minister of Corrections is very fond of taking credit for anything that is good news, but when something goes wrong it is an operational matter—“go and see those people in the department.” This bill has not had any consultation; Ms Goudie does not like consultation. There has not been any time to look through it and pick apart the logistics. The bill has just five clauses, but it is the implementation that is more important. What will occur in the circumstances I have mentioned? Will this Minister guarantee that her colleague Judith Collins will stand up and be accountable?

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) : I take a short call to raise three matters. Before I do so I refer to something my colleague Sue Kedgley said. She is absolutely right that there are many drivers of crime. Government members have made the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill a crime issue as well, so it would be useful if Government members could address this when they are looking at the drivers of crime. Ms Kedgley is right that the notion of television violence ought to be looked at again, because a precautionary risk management approach was recommended some time ago. It ought to be put alongside a host of other factors that result in the rise in crime and criminality. I hope Government members will do that, but I rather suspect they will not, because it is far sexier to take one driver as if it will answer everything. It will not, but that might be what members of the public want to hear in the “get tough on crime” rhetoric that we often hear from Government members.

Clause 4 of the bill seeks an exemption from the Resource Management Act; the regulatory impact statement says that this prevents residents and others affected from challenging overnight accommodation of prisoners in court cells. That is pretty clear. I am not familiar with all of the cells that are associated with our courts around the country, but perhaps the Minister in the chair, the Hon Georgina Te Heuheu, could clarify for us whether this provision applies to all of them or whether some are in such a position that they would be precluded from being accessed through this particular provision. If so, how does the Minister intend to go about regulating for that or making it clear? That might assist those who are losing their rights to take the matter further through the Resource Management Act, and it might satisfy them that their concerns will be addressed if there are good reasons why particular courts with cells in them should not be used for this purpose. I would like to hear the Minister talk a little about that so that those listening can be satisfied.

There is also a reference in the regulatory impact statement to an agreement between the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Corrections. I would like to hear a little more about what is to be in that agreement. It simply says that there will be an agreement, but what kinds of things will be in that agreement? Other members of the Opposition have identified some elements, but there are others as well. What has been the experience of using this facility in the last few years and how will that impact on this particular agreement? What risks are there, and how will those risks be managed?

People have also raised the question of guards and how their needs are to be met. We would like to hear a little more about that agreement between the ministry and the department—

Sandra Goudie: I think we’ve heard enough.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD: I say to Ms Goudie that we have heard nothing about those agreements. Perhaps Ms Goudie has been sleeping. I know she is bored by this discussion, but if she had been following the discussion she also would have raised this question. Perhaps she will raise it in her caucus; perhaps she ought to. Certainly we are not bored by this; it affects people and it affects many in the communities in which we live.

The third point I raise is reasonably serious. The regulatory impact statement states: “it is considered that the option of using court cells for over-flow prisoners needs to be available on an ongoing basis,”. In much of what members opposite have talked about they said that this provision was a temporary thing. But the regulatory impact statement states that it is an ongoing provision; there is nothing short-term about it. We would like it to be clarified whether it will be used for ever or whether it will be used for the short term. We would like the Minister in the chair to address that. Thank you.

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES (Associate Minister of Corrections) : I would like to take a short call on the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. We agree with most of the speakers—there are a lot of dangers in this legislation. Although we will support it, we think there are a lot of things that have to be taken care of before it proceeds. I am not worried about the food, I am not worried about the latrines, and I am not worried about the showers. I think those issues can be dealt with. But I am worried about safety. Safety is a major issue. There have been several break-outs from court cells—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairman. I think we had better check. I think Sir Roger is asleep, but I just want to make sure it is not something more serious.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): I say to the member that that is not a point of order, and the member should reflect upon that and what it does for the Committee.

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES: I would like to carry on after being interrupted by the observant member Trevor Mallard. As I said, those safety issues need to be taken care of. There have been several break-outs from court cells. One was through a window and another was through the ceiling. In fact, I think one of my nephews got away from the Waipukurau prison in that way. I think it is important that 18-year-olds continue to be kept separate from older prisoners, even when in a holding period and not in a semi-permanent period.

This measure has to be temporary; it cannot be any longer than that. Given that those things are taken care of, the Māori Party will support this bill but only as a temporary measure. The reality is that by June next year more cells will be needed to incarcerate the many people who are in there now. We are in this situation because prison numbers swelled under the previous Labour Government. Numbers went from about 5,000 in 1996 to 8,400 now. So I am not saying that Labour is at fault for all of that increase, but, quite clearly, that is what happened over that period.

We need to do something about it, and to me the solution is the work that we do in our society. We have to create stable families. We have to put our effort into the community. It is through education and well families that people will turn away from a life of crime. I think we all have to work on that across parties, as well.

I will humour the member Mita Ririnui as to why I supported the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill last night. I gave two speeches—[Interruption] I guess he must have been asleep at that time, but never mind. I supported the bill for a number of reasons. One of them is that a lot of groups want to go into partnership with iwi and have a joint venture, if you like. Now, the number of Māori in the population has not dropped as a percentage, but Māori make up more than 50 percent of the people in jail. What is there now has not worked, so we should try something different, and that measure is an option.

In terms of recidivism, we have some buildings in the pipeline called Whare Oranga Ake, which is basically a rehabilitation institution. It is still a prison; it caters for the last part of an inmate’s lag. Prisoners will put into a programme of therapeutic analysis so they can analyse their own situation. They will be reconnected with the community and with family. They will be trained in an occupation, and so on. They will live in self-care units for four persons. But they will have to earn their way to get into these units.

The good thing about this whare is that if we have a whare for 32 or 36 people, then the majority of the people will not reoffend. So we are actually creating 32 more beds each time there is a roll-over, whereas right now in prisons we are just refilling the beds, sending the inmates out, and then getting them back in again. To me the first emphasis has to be on the rehabilitation of those inmates in jail now and on attacking the recidivism rate. The second emphasis is to look at alternatives to deal with the prisoners in jail now. Over the years the job of prisons has been to just incarcerate, not to rehabilitate at all. Despite brilliant attempts by a lot of people to do a lot of things, the reality is that the prison system as it is now is a “good guy, bad guy” place where they learn a lot of stuff that is not helpful when they get out.

It is very important to me that we break the cycle of recidivism, but it is also important that we do more than just incarcerate people and then send them out. If prisoners cannot make it when they get out and if the support is not there, they re-associate with the former inmates they have known, and sooner or later it is easier for them to go back to jail. A lot of recidivism is deliberate. They find it difficult to make it out there so they commit a crime, knowing that they will ultimately be caught, and they go back into prison. I have been there when prisoners have been readmitted. I have seen them walking down the corridor.

I remember going to the annex, which is where inmates go for the last part of their sentence before they leave Pāremoremo prison. I remember some guys who were going to go flatting. They were going to do this and that—they were full of ideas and hope. I visited them a month later and there were no light bulbs in the flat, there was no money, and there was no food. They were down in their boots, and they had no jobs. Two months later they were back inside.

I have seen people go back inside, walk down the corridor and say: “Hi, Jim, hi Joe. Still got my guitar? Put me on the list for Christmas.”, and this and that. They are back home again. That is what we are dealing with and that is what we have to break. That is the reason that I supported the legislation last night. Let us try something different, something innovative. Kia ora tātou.

Hon MITA RIRINUI (Labour) : I thank the Minister of Māori Affairs, who is also the Associate Minister of Corrections, for his contribution to the Committee stage of the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill, although I am flabbergasted at some of his comments. He stands up in the Chamber and says that questions about this bill need to be asked and answered. But he is the Associate Minister of Corrections, so he should have all the answers. He should come here and provide the answers. There should be no issues with this bill. The problem is that, as usual, the Minister is not in the loop.

Sandra Goudie: Well, the Opposition is thwarting it.

Hon MITA RIRINUI: I am not surprised that the chair of the Law and Order Committee does not want this bill to go to the select committee. She does not want to hear about the problems that it will create. She wants it to pass through the House uninhibited, without any problem whatsoever. Well, life should not be like that. Any bill that passes through this Parliament without proper and full scrutiny will be flawed.

I take it from the contribution of the Associate Minister of Corrections that the major flaw in this bill is that he did not know anything about it. He may have stood up in the Chamber last night and made some grand statements about Māori owning the corrections facilities, but he has made that statement on a purely commercial platform. He also has this ideology that if we change the nature and the way that prisons are managed, then Māori will not reoffend. Well, life is not like that. We have to deal with the social circumstances that affect these people if we are to reduce recidivism. The Associate Minister of Corrections may have made two speeches in the Chamber last night, but I did not hear them. He thought I was asleep in the Chamber, but actually I was in his electorate listening to the concerns about his performance in the Chamber on the emissions trading legislation, on the two corrections bills, and on a whole lot of other issues that he has failed to deal with. However, he is learning the realities of politics on the front line.

I turn now to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Georgina Te Heuheu. Some very practical issues are involved with this proposal. The Minister raised the first one, and I thank her for responding to the queries raised by the Green member and by my colleague Carmel Sepuloni about the safety issues and logistic issues with the bill. I take it that the Minister probably has not been into a courtroom holding cell, because if she had she would have a better understanding of the way they are constructed. They are far different from prison cells. They are far different from police cells. They are not staffed by trained security people or police officers; they are staffed by court staff. They are staffed by people who are administrators of court procedures and the like. These people are not trained to deal with inmates who are held on remand, awaiting sentence by the courts.

The problem is that the Minister and the Government have not given this proposal a lot of thought. One thing the Minister is very good at is exalting your good work, Mr Chairperson, as the previous Minister for Courts. The Minister certainly seems to know everything about that. I endorse everything she said, and I say well done for that period of time.

I wonder whether the Minister, apart from answering the questions raised by my colleague Rajen Prasad—and there were only three so she should not have any trouble doing that—can take a call on this scenario. She said that inmates will be taken to the nearest prison for showers and other facilities. I suppose she would dial a pizza, and the inmates would be fed. Take, for example, the district courts at Whakatāne and Tauranga, which have holding cells. The nearest prison is something like 3½ hours’ drive away, right next to her electorate office in Taupō and further south in Tūrangi. It seems to be a huge drain on resources to get a security vehicle, staffed by two members, to take prisoners 3½ hours down the road for a shower and then bring them back—and I suppose they will want to go to the toilet while they are there. They might even want to be fed on the way there and on the way back. I know that the Minister’s portfolio is not resourced to handle those sorts of contingencies, because the Minister of Finance is cutting back.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) : I would like to make a number of points about the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. The first is that we have been told by the Associate Minister of Corrections—and I thank him for responding to some of those questions—that we should not worry, because prisoners will be held in court cells for only 4 days at a time. I thought that that was interesting, so I looked through the bill, and I found nothing in it that says they are to be used for only 4 days at a time. There is nothing about that in this bill. There is no regulation and no legislation to require that prisoners will be held for 4 days only in court cells. Let us be absolutely clear about that. The regulatory impact statement says that Cabinet has agreed that prisoners will be there for 4 days only. But what will happen if it has another meeting and agrees to extend that time? Cabinet can extend it without regulation, without legislation, without even having to go through the charade of ramming another bill through Parliament under urgency, and without allowing any submissions to be made. It can just quietly agree to extend the time period way beyond 4 days. Let people be absolutely clear that nothing in this bill states that this measure is for 4 days only.

The second point, which my colleague pointed out very well, is that the Government has said that this measure is just temporary. We are told we should not worry, because it is just temporary. But the regulatory impact statement says this option needs to be available on an ongoing basis, so let us at least have a little honesty in this debate. This measure is a permanent one that will be used to convert courts into prisons. It is permanent—it will be used on an ongoing basis. The spin says it is temporary; the spin is that the time period will be 4 days only. But nothing in the bill limits the practice to 4 days, and the issue of prison overcrowding will be ongoing.

One cannot help but wonder what the Government will do next. Once it has converted court cells into prisons, where will it go next? Will prisoners come to Parliament? There are some spare select committee rooms here. Perhaps we could convert those into cells. At least we have some facilities here; at least prisoners could have showers here. At least they would not have to travel for 3 hours to have a shower, as we have been told would be the case with many of the court cells, and at least they could get their food from Bellamy’s. I think that would be a much more cost-effective option than the use of court cells. Furthermore, we have security here, so we could even double up on security. So my suggestion is that we start by looking at using Parliament before we look at using court cells.

One of the things that astonished me is that the Associate Minister himself—in fact, both the Ministers who have spoken—acknowledged that there are huge issues here. There are huge unanswered questions. Nobody knows—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Someone talked to the Associate Minister.

SUE KEDGLEY: Yes, the Associate Minister says he does not know the answers to these questions. We have been told that prisoners will travel to the nearest prison to have their shower, but, as some of my colleagues said, that could mean travelling for 3 hours. There is a world of difference between a prisoner going to a court cell for a few hours and a prisoner being kept in a court cell for 4 days and 4 nights. My prediction is that it will be for 4 months—it will be ongoing. Nothing in the bill restricts the length of stay to 4 days.

We have all those unanswered questions. The Associate Minister himself says there are serious security issues here. The court cells are not built as prison cells, so there are huge security issues. The court cells are staffed by court staff. Will we suddenly have prison guards coming in from Rimutaka Prison and so on to patrol and to look after prisoners who are holed up in the court cells? We do not have answers to any of these questions. This is astonishing. A bill is being rammed through Parliament in the dead of night—actually, during the day, I must admit—and the Government has allowed not one New Zealander to be consulted on it.

SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) : I move, That the question be now put.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) : I want to pick up on something that Mita Ririnui said. It is a serious issue and it raises questions about management inside the Government and inside Cabinet. Dr Sharples got to his feet, said that he was supporting the bill, and that the Māori Party was supporting it—we are not quite sure whether that includes Hone, but I put that aside.

Hon Member: He’s in limbo.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: That is right. Here is the serious issue: Dr Sharples is the Associate Minister of Corrections. He got to his feet, and I concede that he raised some very legitimate questions. He asked for answers. I have a question, through the Chair, to that Minister. He shares an office somewhere down the corridor from the Minister of Corrections. He shares a portfolio called “corrections” with the Minister of Corrections, and, as Sue Kedgley and others pointed out, that Minister, who is a member of the executive, has raised serious questions about a bill that comes under his portfolio. He does not know the answers.

That raises a serious issue. It could mean a number of things. It could mean that he has not read his briefing papers—and we know, from the financial review, that the Minister of Corrections received in the order of, I think, a couple of hundred briefing papers. The Associate Minister of Corrections received 17 in a year. So either he does not read his briefing papers, or—and I suspect that this is closer to the truth—the Minister of Corrections does not communicate with her associate. I would have thought that the Associate Minister would, when he was in the Chamber, be the Minister in the chair, not Georgina te Heuheu, the Minister for Courts. This issue is not within her portfolio brief. I would have thought that the Minister of Corrections would be in the chair, because she knows this bill—all five clauses, one A3 piece of paper, and 3½ pages of the regulatory impact statement on a website—backwards, and she would have been able to rattle off in a microsecond the answers to the legitimate questions around security, transportation, sanitation, and budgetary costs.

Here is the point: the Associate Minister gets up and makes history by questioning his own bill. He worries about the consequences of the actions in terms of implementation in a bill that is under his partial control as the Associate Minister of Corrections. I ask to members opposite what show they are running in a Government, an executive. What is the management around this issue? The bill has been brought in with 8 parliamentary days to go, and the Associate Minister of Corrections has questions. I used to be the Associate Minister of Justice. When the Minister of Justice was not here I often took the chair in the Committee stage of bills. I was expected to be able to answer questions about justice bills. Why? Because the Minister of Justice and I talked to each other, we read our briefing papers, and we took an interest in bills as we had shared responsibility for them.

But today we have made history. The Associate Minister of Corrections gets up, laments, worries, and raises legitimate questions about a bill that he is partially responsible for as the Associate Minister, and he cannot or will not answer those questions himself, because either he was not briefed or he was not treated in a mana-enhancing way. I mean that in all seriousness.

So there is a management issue within this Government. Surely Dr Sharples could take a call and answer his own questions. And I do mean it; I say that to “The Maestro”, Dr Coleman, over there. He has an Associate Minister of Immigration. I wonder whether they talk to each other. I wonder, if there were an immigration bill, whether Kate Wilkinson could take the chair, or whether she would have another folic-acid moment. There is a serious management issue within the executive of this Government. I am astounded that an Associate Minister could not get to his feet and say that he would put up his hand and answer those questions, rather than raising questions himself and saying that those issues have to be satisfied and dealt with.

I ask him where he was when the bill went through Cabinet. Where was he when the bill was drafted? Why did he not raise those issues with his own Minister? Or, if he did, why did she not listen to him? She cannot have listened to him, because he has raised those same issues on the floor of Parliament. He is looking quite legitimately for some parliamentary support, which he has not received from his own Government.

CHRIS TREMAIN (Senior Whip—National) : I move, That the question be now put.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) : I have to take a call, because my colleague Mita Ririnui did not get to finish the scenario he was putting to the Minister of Corrections. I really need to finish explaining that scenario, because it is a scenario that could happen, and the Minister needs to take it seriously. The Government has not had enough time to consider these types of scenarios, because it has not put the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill through the appropriate select committee process.

I shall carry on from where my colleague Mita Ririnui was when he finished. The issue relates to courts and their distance from prisons. He talked about courts like those of Whakātane, Tauranga, and Ōpōtiki, which do not have a prison in the near vicinity, and which are quite a distance away from the nearest prison. In fact, to get from the Whakatāne court to the Tūrangi prison, which is the closest prison, takes about 3 hours.

Hon Mita Ririnui: Plus.

CARMEL SEPULONI: It takes 3½ hours. I have an issue in regard to what the Minister said earlier in terms of sanitation and the health of the prisoners. She said that the prisoners will be driven to the nearest prison so that they can shower. We thought about that, and we thought that it would be difficult for the security officers driving the vans to provide the prisoners with food and everything else. Perhaps along the way, on their 3½ hours’ drive in the security van, during which they are listening to Bob Marley and singing, they will drive through Kentucky Fried Chicken and get a feed, and on the way back they will drive through it again so that they can pick up a party pack for the prisoners’ mates back in the court cells in Whakatāne. So on their way there they will get a feed, and then they will get to the prison, where they will have a shower. The security officers will then turn round and drive for another 3½ hours to get those prisoners back to the court cells where they are being held. What if one of the prisoners all of a sudden thinks it would be really funny to soil himself, so that he would have to be driven for another 3½ hours all the way back to Tūrangi to be cleaned up? The security officers would not want to leave him like that; they would not want the other prisoners to feel any discomfort because one of their mates has just soiled himself. I do not know whether the Minister has actually thought that one through, and thought about that sort of scenario. It is the kind of very real scenario that she might be faced with after the Government has brought this legislation through the House.

As I said earlier—and as all the Labour members have said—Labour will support this bill. We are supporting this bill because the National Government is in crisis over this situation. It is in crisis over it. It knows that its prisons will not have the capability to deal with the numbers of prisoners it is expecting due to the rise in crime that is already happening, and the expected further rise in crime. So Labour has to support this bill. We in Labour know that the Government needs somewhere to put those prisoners, and the only option for it is the court cells. This issue has come up before. It is not a new thing; it is something that has happened before. But the National Government is taking it to the extreme in legislating for it, and it is doing that because it is in crisis. Its prisons will not be able to deal with the sheer number of prisoners coming through because of the amount of crime being committed.

My colleague from the Green Party Sue Kedgley brought up a very, very good point earlier on in relation to the regulatory impact statement, which points out that prisoners can be held in court cells for no longer than 4 days—I think it is 96 hours. That is the longest time they can be held there. She pointed out that although that provision is mentioned in the regulatory impact statement, it is not in the bill itself. Therefore, if that aspect of this bill is not fixed up, the Government will be able to house prisoners in court cells for as long as it wishes—for as long as the need is there, for as long as the prisons are in crisis, and for as long as crime is on the rise. More crimes are being committed, and the Government cannot cope with the numbers of prisoners. The Government now can keep prisoners in court cells. That is a real issue, especially given the fact that the public have not had a chance to make submissions on this bill. The public are at risk—that was pointed out in the regulatory impact statement—in regard to court cells holding prisoners, given the proximity of court cells and courts to people living nearby. That has not been addressed, and we need to address it. The public would have a concern about it. So I thank the Green member for pointing out that issue.

She also pointed out that there is perhaps a secret agenda of the National Government to convert the courts into prisons.

CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) : I move, That the question be now put.

• Motion agreed to.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (Acting Minister of Corrections): I move, That the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill makes one amendment to the Corrections Act and a consequential amendment to the Resource Management Act. This bill will provide the Government with increased flexibility in its response to the growing prison population. This bill is part of a range of measures, both short term and long term, that the Government is introducing to help manage the growth of the prison population. Passing the bill before the House rises on 22 December will mean that the changes in this bill can be put in place in time to be used in the new year if necessary. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) : This started off as a pretty mundane sort of debate, with Labour supporting the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill because there needs to be some flexibility in the use of court cells. But as the debate moved forward, a number of legitimate questions were raised about how this five-clause bill would be implemented. The Green members raised questions, my colleagues in Labour raised questions, and the Māori Party’s Associate Minister of Corrections himself, the Hon Dr Pita Sharples, raised questions on his own bill. We will get to that in a minute.

The Minister of Corrections did not take a call in the Committee stage, never sat in the chair, never answered any questions, and now has not taken a call in the third reading. The Associate Minister of Corrections was, presumably, not allowed to sit in the chair to have questions put to him. Rather, he bizarrely raised questions on his own bill. Nor was he, presumably, allowed to read at least his third reading speech as Associate Minister of Corrections. One has to ask why.

As I said in the Committee stage, a number of possibilities present themselves. Dr Sharples says that he and the Māori Party support the bill—presumably Mr Harawira does, wherever he is. We think so, but we do not know. But the most bizarre thing to come out of this debate is something I have not seen in my 10 years in this place, and that was an Associate Minister raising questions on, and expressing dissatisfaction or concerns about, a bill before the House. The question is: why? Either he did not raise those concerns with his Minister or his Cabinet colleagues, or he did raise them and they were completely dismissed, or he did not have his eye on the ball, or he was not shown the respect that an Associate Minister should be shown by his Cabinet colleagues and by the Minister herself. One or a multitude of those possibilities have to be true, because otherwise why would an Associate Minister of Corrections come down to the Chamber and lament, and raise concerns and risks about the implementation of a bill that he is partly responsible for? What is the answer to that? I hope we might have a call from him. Sandra Goudie is over there giving him the benefit of her vast experience and knowledge on those matters, feeding him lines. I think Dr Sharples is not a bad bloke, so I advise him not to take any advice from Sandra Goudie, at all.

Legitimate questions have been raised about this bill. There will be extraordinarily large costs dealing with the logistics of transportation, food, security for staff, and security for the community, especially in relation to transportation. As Mita Ririnui, a former Associate Minister of Corrections, pointed out, it is a 3-hour drive from Whakatāne to the nearest prison. None of those issues have been addressed, and I thought they would be addressed. This bill, in its essence, takes away the right of a community to object. We support that because we have to house these prisoners somewhere, but I would have thought that the Government, or the Associate Minister especially, would use its time in the House to at least address the basic logistical issues of implementation that we and others have raised, to give those communities a level of comfort, especially around the issue of security.

So I just express quite a bit of amazement that the Associate Minister of Corrections has presumably been treated so shabbily by his Minister and his Cabinet colleagues. I cannot see how that sort of treatment being meted out could be considered mana-enhancing according to National and the Māori Party’s coalition relationship. Maybe things are starting to fall apart on the back of the emissions trading scheme, Hone’s comments, and other things. I would have thought that the Associate Minister would at least phone Judith Collins—maybe he has. Maybe between the Committee stage and the third reading he has phoned Judith Collins and said that he has some concerns about this; maybe he asked her to at least listen to those concerns before they tick off the bill. Obviously that has not happened. That says a large amount, and it tells us and the community a lot about the management style and culture inside this Government.

This is a five-clause bill on a piece of A3 paper, bolstered hugely on a website by a regulatory impact statement that was not even included with the bill, because the bill was so rushed. As the Green member and others have pointed out—and I am sure communities will be interested in this—the so-called maximum period of time that we can house a prisoner in a court cell, according to a regulatory impact statement that is on a website but not printed with the legislation, is 96 hours. So the question then is: is it by regulation or Government fiat that those hours and those days can be increased? Maybe the Associate Minister of Corrections might be involved in these future discussions, but I would not bank on it.

I am told by reliable sources whom I trust and who work in the Department of Corrections that, as we speak, some 800 beds are available and free to house prisoners in. I believe those sources because they are in the front line. I will not name them, for obvious reasons: Judith Collins may administer the political version of the crusher. But if that is the case, the question is: why is this bill being rushed through? Why has it taken until there are 8 parliamentary days to go in the year for the Minister to ante up, throw a bill on the Table, and say that we need to do this? It could have had correct parliamentary scrutiny through a select committee.

Carmel Sepuloni: They must need it before Christmas.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Well, that is interesting. That is the contradiction. Is it required before Christmas? We do not have the prison forecast on this side of the House. If 800 prison beds are indeed—and I believe my sources—available today, then why is the bill being rushed through? Why could it not have been given the parliamentary scrutiny of a select committee? It is a five-clause bill. Ms Goudie reared up and said we were being repetitive. Well, we are. We are raising legitimate concerns that are not rocket science. How will we feed people? How will we make sure prison officers are secure? How will we make sure the community is secure? How long will these folk be incarcerated in a court cell? Where will the money come from to transport them the 3 hours my colleague Mita Ririnui talked about between the Whakatane District Court and the closest prison? Where will the staff come from to do this? What will be cut out of the baseline?

I must give Georgina te Heuheu credit. Even though corrections is not her portfolio—it is Pita Sharples’ portfolio—she attempted to actually answer some of those questions. Given that it is not her portfolio, I extend some goodwill because she made as decent a fist of it as she could. She was not aided or abetted by the Minister of Corrections, and she was not aided or abetted by the Associate Minister, who sat through the whole debate.

This bill is flying through the House, and it will go through with our support, for practical reasons of security, but none of the issues raised by members across this House have been addressed. They are not political issues; they ask how we will transport people, how they will be secured, how prison officers will be looked after, and what logistical arrangements will be put in place for prison officers. They are not political issues; they are practical issues of implementation. None of those issues has really been addressed.

I will talk for a moment, in conclusion, about the nature of this debate. In the earlier speeches in the first reading debate, members got up and said a couple of things. They said it was a disgrace that we have so many people in prison. They were the same members, from the same political party—the National Party—who trumpeted the fact before the election that the then Labour Government was not locking enough people up, and that the Government had done nothing, when it had built four prisons. They were the same people who went to the country at the last election with a party manifesto that said that if they implemented every law and order policy they had, they anticipated a doubling of the prison population. Then they say that they did not know about this problem. Judith Collins says she did not know about this, even though she was planning, pre-election, for a doubling of the prison population, and even though the day she took up the warrant, the limousine, the salary, and the flat, she got a briefing to incoming Minister giving her the prison forecast, which everybody knew anyway. Most journalists knew—for the last few years, anyway—because the forecasts were made public. But she says she did not know.

Those members try to say, of course, that the Labour Government did nothing to incarcerate prisoners. Well, I invite them to go into the four prisons we built. We did not drop containers from the sky or off the boat; we built four prisons. We selectively double-bunked where we needed to, with the agreement of staff and with resources provided; we did not just cobble together a deal and bully some staff, then end up with staff taking us to court and the department being at war with itself. We did not then rush down to the House with 8 parliamentary days left this year because we did not have a plan, and then try to rush through a five-clause bill. We did have a plan. So I say to the Minister and to the National Party that it would be helpful if they answered some questions.

SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) : I rise in support of the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill and I state that upfront because it would have been fairly difficult for people listening to this debate to know which bill the Opposition is debating. I will run through the list of questions that the Opposition has asked repeatedly over the last few hours: why are we doing it now, where are those prisoners going to be fed, how will they be showered, will they be safe, and is this the most suitable use of legislation to cover that issue? All of those questions have been canvassed in the last few hours.

I say to members on the other side of the House that I have a few questions of my own. Why is this necessary now? After 9 years of the previous Labour Government and all of the forecasts it was presented with, and all the warnings the Opposition gave it as early as 2005, it did not build sufficient accommodation. Those Labour members talk about how they built four prisons. We know about the cost of overruns of those four prisons. We know what a shambles that was. We have not heard why it closed prisons like Ōhura Prison. The Opposition corrections spokesperson—

Hon Trevor Mallard: We closed it down because there was sewerage going right through the town and it was going to cost $12 million to fix it!

SHANE ARDERN: Well, there we go. Finally someone from the Opposition knows why it closed it down. It was going to cost $12 million to fix it. How much did it cost to build the new prisons, which did not meet the standards? That member should take a call.

In his excitement to speak in Opposition for something Labour is voting for—and another question is why it is voting for the bill—Clayton Cosgrove said that he wished there was another election coming. Well, so do we, but I cannot understand it. There is something wrong with the psyche of someone who loves to be thrashed by the amount he would be if there was another election tomorrow.

I say to members over there that there are a few questions they need to answer. Another question—and the Hon Trevor Mallard will no doubt have a crack at answering this—is why are we in this situation where there is a crisis in the accommodation for prisoners after 9 years of the previous Labour Government?

Dr Rajen Prasad: You’re in Government now. What’s your plan?

SHANE ARDERN: I tell that member to go and look at what the plans are going forward. Dr Prasad made a very interesting point when he talked about the good work that he has done in terms of trying to put the ambulance at the top of the cliff, of identifying problems with families and looking at doing something about that. I acknowledge him for the work he did. But Dr Prasad did not say how this Government has picked up on that work and is putting more resources into it than the party he now represents did for 9 long years. His party picked up work, looked at it, and said: “It is not broken. We’re not going to fix it—we’ll support it.” I say to Dr Prasad that when he stands in the House and starts accusing us of inaction, he should know that when we were in Opposition and we did not support something, we voted against it.

For this whole debate we have heard that Labour is supporting the bill, but its members speak against it. If that is not speaking with a split tongue, then I do not know what is. I think that is probably enough from me. The points have been made. Our whip is giving me the nod, so it is presumably time for me to sit down. Thank you. We support the bill.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) : I have been stimulated by the member opposite, Shane Ardern, to make a speech, which I was not going to do. The Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill is about the use of court cells. The vast majority of that speech was about prisons, why they are open and why they are not open. I have never heard of a local member so ignorant about the reason for a prison closure in his own electorate. There were complaints from his electorate. There was complaint after complaint about the Ōhura Prison and the effect it was having on the local sewerage system, which was not working. Stuff flowed down the streets whenever the water levels of the Ōhura River came up. Complaints were made to the local member. The previous Labour Government had the choice of putting in a $12 million sewerage scheme, an extra scheme that was unnecessary, or picking up the prison and taking it to Rangipō.

I think I know why that member is complaining. We know that Ōhura Prison was known as the gentlemen’s prison. It was the prison that was out in the country. There was no perimeter fence. It was a holiday camp. It was not locked at night. I think the reason the member did not want it to shift to Rangipō was that it was just too far for him to visit his mates. It was too far for him to go and visit his gentleman mates who had been held in the gentlemen’s prison at Ōhura. It was a very low security prison. What has happened? The logical thing has happened. The buildings have been picked up and shifted across to Rangipō. That means that fewer court cells have to be used.

SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) : I am delighted to speak in the third reading debate on the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. It is a very sensible bill, and, of course, one that is supported by Opposition members. One would not think so, though, from all their rhetoric. To give members a little bit of background, 10 blocks of court cells—that is 111 cells—are currently gazetted as being part of Department of Corrections prisons. However, using the cells to house overflow prisoners is subject to section 9 of the Resource Management Act, which includes a requirement to comply with the rules of district plans. How many people would have any idea that the rules of district plans had some jurisdiction in regard to cells? I think this bill is a very sensible move to remedy that anomaly in the legislation. I commend the Minister of Corrections for bringing it before the House. I am delighted that it is done and dusted and will be enacted in due course.

DAVID CLENDON (Green) : The Greens will continue to oppose the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. The principle that underpins it seems to be one of passively accepting that the number of people in our prisons will continue to increase. This is deemed to be inevitable, apparently. The prison forecasts suggest that current capacity will be exhausted from June 2010, presumably even with the imposition of the very dangerous and undesirable practice of double-bunking, which has been flagged for some of our prisons. The corrections officers at the sharp end of this debate are resisting this option, as well they might, given that they will suffer the inevitable negative consequences in terms of the safety and security of both staff and inmates. Given the date of June 2010 as the crisis point, it is surprising and, I have to say, disappointing that our Labour colleagues—who have made some very strong, well-informed, and powerful statements opposing this bill—nevertheless choose to support it. There is still time for a proper process to engage decently and properly with this issue. We have, according to these documents, until June of next year to have a proper process around this matter.

The regulatory impact statement accompanying the bill notes that the option of using court cells to accommodate overflow prisoners has been used during periods of acute accommodation shortage. The word “acute” suggests something unexpected and short term. Here we have, in fact, a long-term and chronic problem that demands a long-term vision, a long-term strategy, and some decent investment in real solutions. The bill is a classic band-aid solution—or an attempt at a solution—and it does not even pretend to address the long-term chronic issues and problems that demand urgent attention.

Court cells are designed to properly house people in custody while they are appearing in court. They are designed for short stays, and as such they have never been designed or constructed to provide the level of basic facility, or to meet the minimum requirements of longer stay prisoners. My colleague Sue Kedgley, who has been supported in a number of the Labour speeches, has identified the very basic issues. How will prisoners’ meals be delivered and prepared? What toilet and bathroom facilities will be available to them? What facilities will there be to provide for family visits or other support? Where will prisoners exercise their right to physical exercise? How will prison staff be provided with adequate facilities as prescribed by their employment conditions? How will rehabilitation programmes—which are invariably highly sensitive to interruption and depend on a carefully staged, managed, and sustained engagement—be sustained or maintained?

We are asked to simply accept that administrative safeguards will be put in place to ensure that this wholly inappropriate treatment of prisoners will occur only if it is strictly necessary, and that prisoners will continue to receive their statutory entitlements. This test of strict necessity is an interesting one, and I wonder what criteria, what indicators, and what standards will be established against which this very vague and amorphous notion of strict necessity will be measured. The statutory entitlements of prisoners that are referred to in section 69 of the Corrections Act include entitlement to physical exercise, to a bed and bedding, to food and drink, to access to private visitors, to access to statutory visitors, to access to legal advisers, to receive medical treatment, to send and receive mail, and to be able to make outgoing phone calls. How will any of these statutory minimums be met in the context of a court cell?

We are assured, but by no means reassured, that the normal functioning of the courts will not be compromised. An interesting experiment could demonstrate the veracity of that assumption. Perhaps we could require the courts and the police at one or two of our larger courts to function for a few days at a time without access to the court cells—let us just assume for the moment that those cells are full of long-term prisoners—and see what effect this has on the proper functioning of the court system, which already works under considerable pressure. That fairly simple experiment would quite readily, at no cost, reveal the shortcomings of the propositions of this bill.

Some reference has been made to the likelihood of transgressing the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We already have case law. Taunoa v Attorney-General relates to a situation where it was deemed that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act had been contravened when a person who had been held in custody did not have a cell with sufficient standards of hygiene, where bedding and clothing fell below standards established by prison regulations, where there was inadequate monitoring of inmate mental health, and where exercise conditions were inadequate. All of these conditions are likely to apply in court cells. Clearly we now have legal precedent that there will be responses and implications from those conditions.

A rather sneaky mechanism in this bill that is being used to achieve its outcomes is an amendment to the Resource Management Act that overrides the authority of district plans. The Resource Management Act speaks of enabling people and communities to provide for their social, economic, and cultural well-being, and for their health and safety. The processes of preparing and enacting district plans demand a very high level of public engagement. An absolute requirement is placed on territorial local authorities to hear and respond to the public’s views, and incorporate their preferences into the plans. The plans themselves are very powerful and influential documents. They enable and constrain members of our communities in the use and development of natural and physical resource. It is critical to the ongoing success of the Resource Management Act regime that there is a high level of public confidence in the process of plan preparation and enactment. This very brief but pointed bill, being pushed through under considerable urgency, is a very shabby mechanism indeed that will almost certainly undermine people’s confidence in the integrity of the plan preparation and Resource Management Act processes more generally.

Over many years I have been involved in a number of issues and disputes around provisions and processes related to the Resource Management Act, and I know very well that in recognising its central and even unique ability to influence so much of our daily lives, members of the public become highly engaged—and, indeed, passionate—about the content and the application of the legislation. The initial surprise of any community that has worked long and hard to get provisions that meet their needs and ambitions in the plan will very quickly turn to cynicism with the whole process to the extent that Parliament passes a bill such as this that very neatly circumvents the work done to make district plans operational. The complete absence of any consultation on this bill, the lack of a select committee process—all of this signals to the public that this Government is willing and able to jam through legislation that will have negative social and, indeed, economic impacts, and that the Government will provide absolutely no avenue for members of the public who will be affected to participate in the decision making.

We do not actually need to surmise what the practice of putting prisoners into court cells will lead to. We have the benefit of overseas experience. There is a very interesting report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Court Administration in the UK, dated 20 August 2007, where inspectors from the inspectorate visited court cells that were being used in the context of significant prison overcrowding. The report “raises serious concerns about the use of such cells.”, which is exactly the practice that this bill is intended to facilitate. It highlights that “it is in the early days of custody that prisoners are most vulnerable:”, and that most self-inflicted deaths occur within the first days, yet none of the support systems to prevent these tragedies existed in court cells. There was a lack of any “proactive reception or healthcare screening”, “Prisoners were being held in bare cells over a weekend, with no activity, no natural light … and with no exercise facilities”, “Prisoners spent long periods travelling in cramped vans … often arriving late and having to leave early the next morning”, “Prisoners could not contact their families”—indeed, families of prisoners did not even know where their family member was—and “Shower facilities were inadequate and there was no opportunity for prisoners to change clothes, so they slept in what they were wearing.” The inspectorate highlights that this was no shortcoming of the prisons or the court staff.

This is an abysmal bill. It is a disgrace, and the Green Party opposes it in its entirety.

RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) : The basic proposal in the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill is that the Department of Corrections will have access to court cells in order to house overflow prisoners from the first half of 2010, when the court cells may be needed. Once the bill has passed today, the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Corrections will fast track work specifying the cells that may be used for overflow prisoners, the circumstances in which the cells will be made available for this purpose, and how the cells will be operated. So, in many respects, we are already well down the road towards implementation while this debate proceeds. This is not unusual, of course. The Department of Corrections has been forecast to run out of baseline beds early next year, so there is an immediate issue around prisoner accommodation and public safety. We are in this situation because prisoner numbers swelled under the previous Labour Government, from about 5,000 in 1996 to 8,400 now.

Changes in New Zealand’s criminal justice policy in the past decade have been extraordinarily rapid and this rapid change is set to continue. But another facet of this increase in the prison muster is of note. From 1997 to 2007, although the number of those sentenced to prison increased by 37 percent, those remanded into custody increased by a staggering 214 percent. This bill is an attempt to do something about housing those prisoners and to do it quickly.

We know that this bill fits into the context of a range of other measures that are being taken to address prison population pressures, including approval for extended double-bunking at five prisons. However, there is some uncertainty about the ability to access the additional double-bunked capacity, which may mean there may be insufficient accommodation for prisoners from June 2010. It is estimated that a further 5,000 beds will be needed by 2018. One of the more controversial operations has been the proposal to establish a 60-bed container unit at Rimutaka Prison. This is the first such project of its kind in New Zealand, and the emphasis has been on the fact that it is cheaper and faster to construct than facilities for a new prison. We in the Māori Party are not convinced as to whether the recycled container solution is an effective solution to the overarching issue of prison numbers, but we will leave that and the double-bunking issue for another time.

Today’s debate is basically the option of last resort. The proposal is that once the regional capacity at police jails is exhausted, court cells will be used to accommodate overflow prisoners. Although there are currently 10 blocks of court cells, some 101 cells that have been gazetted as parts of prisons, the Resource Management Act prevents them from being used for the overnight accommodation of prisoners. The approval sought in this bill is to amend the Corrections Act so that the requirements of section 9 of the Resource Management Act do not apply to the detention of prisoners in court cellblocks. In effect, this means that where there is an acute shortage of prison accommodation, court cells can be used to accommodate overflow prisoners without undue delay or cost. The Māori Party is willing to give begrudging support to this bill, to basically ensure that there is short-gap inmate accommodation in place for prisons to access if there is no other facility available. The last thing we want in prisons is overcrowding, triple-bunking, or for our prisons to be under any more stress than is necessary.

But there is an important rider that we place on our support. The Associate Minister of Corrections, Dr Sharples, raised during the Committee stage the issue of safety and spoke of some break-outs from court cells in the past. He spoke from his wide experience of some 35 years of working in the prisons and courts, but he made it clear that the Māori Party is supporting this bill as a response to the crisis over prison cell shortages. We recall that more than half of the most serious prison escapes in the 2006 financial year were made from court cells. In that year, six of the 11 break-outs took place from courts throughout the country. In one of the more embarrassing cases, two remand prisoners escaped by breaking through the ceiling of their cell. In another case, an inmate was just 20 minutes into a 9-month prison sentence for burglary, when he escaped from a holding cell at Waipukurau District Court. Concern has been raised about prisoner deaths while in custody in court cells, given they are multiple occupancy. There are some real issues around public safety that may fall out of this new proposal, which I trust the Minister will give attention to.

Another key issue is the one around the emotional and physical safety of prisoners located in cells. The investigation of the circumstances surrounding the death of Liam John Ashley reported that Liam, a 17-year-old teenager, had been held in a court cell with adult prisoners for the whole of the day on which he received his fatal injuries. Action for Children and Youth Aotearoa, a coalition of non-governmental organisations and individuals interested in children’s rights, drew on this situation to petition the Law and Order Committee about the Department of Corrections. I draw the attention of the House to that recommendation, namely that the department should ensure that when prisoners under 18 years of age are moved to court cells, either the department or the police ensure that they are kept separate from adult prisoners.

There is, however, a much bigger debate that needs to be held in this House, which forms the broader context for this bill on the use of court cells for prisoner accommodation. It is the urgent need to comprehensively review the criminal justice system, and particularly the high levels of incarceration—specifically of Māori.

Many of the speakers before me have referred to the fact that the Vote Corrections budget continues to escalate as a result of prison being the priority response to offending by both the previous and current Governments. The total appropriations for the Department of Corrections have increased by $368.731 million, or 33.54 percent, since last year. The total vote is now over $1.5 billion per year. This is a substantial increase, given the context of the world’s deepest recession in at least 60 years. We are aware that Treasury projections for Vote Corrections 2020 are a massive $2 billion per year.

There are fiscal reasons why we need to review the overpopulation of our prisons. But there is a far greater moral and ethical issue about the rising trends in prison populations. In 2007 the Ombudsman, Mel Smith, carried out an investigation into issues involving the criminal justice sector. His report suggested a royal commission of inquiry should be called to undertake a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system. The overrepresentation of Māori should be an area of significant focus of any commission of inquiry. One of the reasons why the Ombudsman made the suggestion for a commission of inquiry is that it will allow an opportunity to stop and reflect on why the punitive treadmill seems to grow and pick up speed. It is hoped to find constructive ways to slow it down.

The Māori Party believes that crime prevention needs to be looked at in a different way—holistically—to try to change contextual factors as well as the outcomes. A kaupapa Māori justice strategy will be a starting point for doing things differently—doing things from a Māori values base of restoring and transforming. The idea is to have a strategy that will address practical things that whānau, hapū, iwi, marae, communities, organisations, and institutions can do to get going with the doing of creating alternatives to police, courts, and the prison system. The Māori Party supports the good work that the Associate Minister of Corrections has been doing to this end. We will, as we said earlier, give begrudging support to this legislation to use court cells as an emergency stopgap measure until the more enduring solution is available.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) : I begin by pointing out some of the comments that Mr Ardern made earlier. I think that the noise from his tractor has impaired his hearing in some way, because he has not really been listening during the course of the debate. One thing he continues to say, and a number of National members continue to say, along with a few other members in the House, is with regard to Labour’s track record for law and order over the last 9 years. It is one of their catchcries. They like to say what Labour did in 9 long years. Well, what we did was reduce crime. They point out, however, that there was an increase in violent crime, mostly family crime—domestic violence. I point out that Labour members on this side of the House will not apologise for an increase in reporting family violence during the 9 years that Labour was in Government; we will not apologise for that. The fact that there was an increase in reporting family violence is due, as far as we are concerned, to the fact that we did as much as we could to help women in violent situations. The fact that there was a high level of reporting says a lot about what the previous Labour Government did, and we will not apologise for that.

I point out to Mr Ardern and his colleagues that since the National Government has been in office we have seen a real increase in crime. It has been a real increase, not just a perception that a few members of the House have decided to put out there. This increase has been recorded.

I say to Mr Garrett, who never yells in the House, that for his sake I will look at the New Zealand Herald and also at a press release put out by the university that gives information on the fact there has been an increase in crime since the National Government came into power. We all know there is a correlation between poverty, unemployment, and crime. This Government has done nothing to solve the problems around unemployment and poverty. In fact, all it has done is to implement policies that do nothing to help those who are the most vulnerable, and, therefore, we are seeing an increase in crime. The reason this Government is putting this bill through, as we have pointed out on a number of occasions throughout this debate, is that it is in crisis.

Mr Cosgrove pointed out something earlier that is a little bit concerning and would be concerning to the public. Why does National need to push this bill through before Christmas? We know there is something like 800 beds available in prisons at the moment. So why is there such a push to get this bill through—all of a sudden—before we hit Christmas? What is concerning to us is that the Government has access to forecasted numbers; we do not. So is it anticipating an even steeper increase in crime over the Christmas period? Is that the reason for getting this bill through, to cope with the sheer numbers of prisoners whom it will not have the capacity to hold in the actual prisons, and who will need to be held in court cells? If so, the Government needs to take responsibility for that. Crime rises in line with poverty and unemployment, and unfortunately it looks like we will possibly see an increase in crime during what should be our festive season.

An issue that has come up over and over again in this debate concerns the security guards who are in the court cells. It has been pointed out that they are not trained prison officers; they are security guards in the courts.

• Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister of Customs) : I seek leave for the Committee on the Border (Customs, Excise, and Tariff) Processing Bill to take the bill as one question.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there anyone opposed to that course of action? There is not.

SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere) : Labour supports the Border (Customs, Excise, and Tariff) Processing Bill for many reasons. One of the key reasons, of course, is that our people Rick Barker and the Hon Nanaia Mahuta have worked on this issue for some years. This bill clarifies and enhances the Customs and Excise Act in terms of law enforcement capability. Its provisions include enabling customs officers to stop and search a vehicle, to use reasonable force to gain entry, and to search a vehicle that is unattended or abandoned. The use of reasonable force is needed in order to open a vehicle if it is locked or unattended. Otherwise, customs officers cannot search the vehicle without a court order, and in the time it takes to obtain a court order the prohibited goods could have been disposed of and the people responsible for the vehicle could be gone.

This bill is important particularly for communities that have a serious concern about illegal drugs and P coming through our borders. The bill also allows customs officers to arrest any person committing an offence under the Customs and Excise Act, whether or not that person is on a craft. These provisions simply streamline enforcement processes by the Customs Service and aid efficient law-enforcement procedures.

The bill also creates a new offence of making a false allegation or a false report to the Customs Service. If anyone does so, he or she commits an offence and can be prosecuted. The bill allows customs officers to use future technologies to detect tampering with containers or interference with goods and packages. Using future technologies is seen as being more effective than the currently utilised customs seal. That is especially pertinent now, as I have been made aware that the United States is making rapid advances in the use of technology for its trade security.

There are, however, a couple of things that I seek clarity on from the Minister of Customs. The first is that the bill gives customs officers the power to arrest not only when reasonable cause to suspect has arisen but for a period of 7 days after the offence. That raises the question of why the period is limited to 7 days. What happens if the offender immediately goes to ground and is not located for another 3 months? Do police and customs officers stop searching for the offender after the 1-week period has expired? We want some clarity on that.

The other point I want to make concerns new section 274A, inserted by clause 22. It allows the chief executive to arrange for the use of automated electronic systems for any purposes that he or she sees fit in exercising a power. Labour asks where the checks and balances in this process are. Although Labour members have the deepest respect for our customs and border control officials, we do not believe that it is a good thing to have a chief executive with unfettered power. We would expect checks and balances in that regard.

As I said before, Labour members support the bill. We will be supporting the amendments. In the third reading debate we will emphasise our concerns about the issues around P and other drugs. My colleague the Hon Chris Carter has also highlighted our concerns about ensuring that our borders are well-resourced. Despite having SmartGate—a tool that customs officials need—the job of the Customs Service is still labour-intensive. That is what I understand from what I have learnt about the service at the border.

Cutting the budget of the Customs Service may send to criminals some signals that we do not want to be sending. The signals could say to them that we are putting our customs officials and border agencies under strain. It could mean that we are sending them the signal that they can compromise our borders. That is not what we want. I will leave it at that, and give my colleagues the opportunity to speak.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister of Customs) : I will take a brief call to answer a couple of things that Su’a William Sio raised, and also to try to head off a little of what Chris Carter may raise, because he raised it in his second reading speech. First of all, with regard to the 7-day arrest period, the reason that customs officers have the 7-day period of arrest from an offence having been committed is that, simply, in a number of cases now, we actually track offenders into the networks rather than arresting them at the border. We may catch a very low-level functionary—for example, somebody who is a mule—who has been paid $1,000, but who does not even know he or she is doing anything wrong. We really want to try to work back through the networks to catch the Mr Bigs at the top. We want customs officers to have the ability to put a track and trace procedure in place, in order to follow the person. It may be that after the fourth or fifth day of watching motels and hotels, we want to make an arrest. The 7-day limit is just for practical purposes. If we want to go beyond that, customs officers can get a warrant if they wish, or by that stage we could have the police actively involved and it may be that the police would make the arrest. I think the 7-day limit is set at a practical level. It gives customs officers the chance to track and trace people into hotels and motels, and then to make a decision about whether to arrest them.

With regard to the other one, I do not think there is anything sinister about empowering the chief executive to use some electronic systems. I tell members that one of the biggest problems we have in this portfolio is that crooks can nearly always get better equipment than we can. For example, a number of people who have been arrested recently for the customs offences of bringing in P and precursor substances to pseudoephedrine have been found to have a funny little scanner sitting on the seat, which they had bought at Dick Smith Electronics for $200, and with which they could scan the entire analogue bands of all of the customs officers, hear them talking, and know what they were doing. So we need to be able to move to some new digital equipment—some stuff that cannot be interfered with; all of those things—along with new computer systems and GPS tracking devices in packages, as well. Technology will become our biggest friend in the fight to try to deal with some of the real nasties. I think that answers the two questions raised by the member for Māngere.

In the case of Chris Carter, I want to make matters really clear, so he gets them sorted out. He was quite firm in his second reading speech about some of the biosecurity issues. He talked about the painted apple moth and the varroa bee mite, and about his concern about the impact of biosecurity breaches on the conservation estate. But I tell the member that the Customs Service does not do that work. The service did not have a budget cut in Vote Customs. The cut was done to Vote Biosecurity. It was done in Mr Carter’s portfolios as Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Forestry, and the biosecurity people, the ones in green whom we see when we come through the airport. I know everyone will know—those who travel a lot, like Mr Carter—that the customs guys are in dark navy blue, and the Biosecurity New Zealand guys are in the green shorts and socks. We do both the customs and the immigration roles at the border. We check people to make sure that they are the right people, and so on, but once they have come through, picked up their baggage, and headed on down, the Biosecurity New Zealand people do the checking of them as they go through the border, to make sure that their bags do not contain fruit or any of the other pests and bugs. That is not a Customs Service role, so this bill has no impact on that role.

I want to confirm—well, not confirm; members know this, as was announced in the Budget, and they saw the figures from a press release. I tell members—and I really want to get this very clear, as well—that the error rate with SmartGate is actually lower than the rate of human error. If someone dresses up with a bit of hair colouring and different glasses and puts a beard on, a human being who is working busy shifts and processing a lot of people could look at that person, think he looks all right—that his photo is from 5 years ago or so—and through he goes. But with SmartGate the machines measure the distance between the eyeballs, from the tip of the nose to the eyeballs, from the tip of the nose to the chin, between the ears, from the top of the forehead down to the chin, and so on, and one cannot actually forge that. One cannot change that, no matter what one does. That is why SmartGate does not work for people under the age of 18: their faces are changing in shape and size as they grow, but from 18 years on they do not change. These machines will fast process the very low-risk, mainly good-quality New Zealand and Australian citizens and get them out of the place. That will free up the front-line customs officers to do the role that they are best trained for, which is to identify the bad people, to deal to them, to move them off into secondary-line processing, and to make sure that we keep our nation safe.

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatū) : I appreciate the Minister in the chair, the Hon Maurice Williamson, making some points on the Border (Customs, Excise, and Tariff) Processing Bill and reminding us again that biosecurity staff have been cut. I hope that he, as a person who is partly responsible for the security of our borders with immigration and customs, was a strong lobbyist to see that biosecurity did not lose 50 workers and over $4 million, because I am sure Mr Williamson, like all New Zealanders, wants to see our borders safe and secure, especially as he has partial responsibility for them. He made some good points about SmartGate, and about the work that customs and immigration are doing.

I seek an assurance from the Minister that some of the practices that have not been very fair—in fact, that have been quite discriminatory by, particularly, immigration—will be dealt with. For 6 years I was the Minister for Ethnic Affairs, and on a number of occasions during that time I and my colleague Nanaia Mahuta—and, prior to that, Rick Barker—met with different migrant communities to reassure them that racial profiling was not taking place via customs and immigration officers, because a large number of cases were brought to us. To be absolutely fair to the chief executives of the Immigration Service and the Customs Service, I tell members that they engaged with these communities.

However, only a month or so ago I received a delegation of Pakistani New Zealanders, who raised the case of a young Pakistani man in Auckland who had been through New Zealand immigration several times in the last year. He has just graduated as a nurse and got permanent residency as a result, making a contribution to our country as a firm and committed New Zealander—or a person seeking to become a New Zealander. He was plucked out of a queue just a month ago, taken in for 3½ hours, and subjected to a lot of questioning and a lot of rude and abusive behaviour while his partner was waiting for him on the other side, unable to access any information about this young man. Sadly, I have to say to the Minister that in the 6 years I served as ethnic affairs Minister, this was not a unique case. I thought we had dealt with these cases, but this case was just a month ago.

Hopefully this technology will make sure that there is no more of that racial profiling. Sure, we have to keep our borders safe, but at the same time people who are New Zealand residents should not be subject to 3½ hours of intensive, rude, and aggressive questioning while their families are waiting to see them.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) : I want to take only a very brief call on this bill, which is relatively non-controversial, and is supported on all sides of the House. I had the opportunity to sit on the Government Administration Committee that considered this bill and made a few amendments. I had some concerns as we began the select committee hearings on this bill, and I will talk about a couple of those briefly.

The Labour Party agrees, obviously, with the need to stay up to date with the latest technology to keep our borders safe. We need to protect against things such as the menace of P. Often smuggling is undertaken by organised gangs with very sophisticated techniques, and the Customs Service needs to have the tools to keep on top of that threat. One of the things that we talked about for a reasonable amount of time at the select committee was the powers of arrest that this bill deals with. I guess I just wanted to receive a reassurance in the committee that we were not, in fact, extending the powers of arrest or giving new powers of arrest. Having looked at all of the evidence on that, the committee was satisfied that the bill does not extend those powers, and it clarifies what can be done under the existing legislation. We spent quite a lot of time probing that in the committee, to make sure that that was, indeed, the case. We were relatively comfortable that it was perfectly all right, although other members have raised issues around the 7 days, which I think the Minister in the chair, the Hon Maurice Williamson, has subsequently addressed.

We also questioned some of the technology—I can see Jacqui Dean over there; she was also interested in this particular area—just to make sure that the technology was at least as effective and at least as reliable as human checking. I think we found, as the Minister has just pointed out, that in some cases the technology is actually more reliable than human judgment as to whether the person who is presenting himself or herself is actually the person on the passport. We spent a considerable amount of time considering the issue and we are relatively comfortable about that, as well.

The final things that we spent a reasonable amount of time talking about, that I can recall, were issues around search and surveillance, and making sure that this bill did not give a whole range of new search and surveillance powers that were not there previously, particularly with regard to containers and the fitting of electronic devices on containers. Having gone into that issue in some detail, although we had some questions around it still, I think we were comfortable enough that this bill did not confer huge additional search and surveillance powers, which, of course, is a debate that is being held in another part of the parliamentary process at the moment.

So overall I think the committee was pretty comfortable with this bill. We had some questions and issues along the way, but I think the Committee can be reassured that the select committee interrogated the officials on this bill quite thoroughly. I think as a result this is a good bill, and I commend it to the Committee.

• The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Papers 100 and 104 in the name of the Hon Maurice Williamson be agreed to.

• Amendments agreed to.

• Parts 1 and 2, schedules 1 to 3, and clauses 1 and 2, as amended, agreed to.

• The Committee divided the bill into the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill and the Tariff Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper101.

• Bill reported with amendment.

• Report adopted.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Revenue) : I move, That the Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill be now read a third time. This bill’s content is technical in nature. It introduces a number of measures to fine tune earlier changes to the tax rules. I will speak very briefly about these.

The principal feature of the bill is the alignment of the resident withholding tax rates on interest with recent changes to personal tax rates and the 30 percent company tax rate introduced last year. As a complementary measure the bill also aligns the portfolio investment entity tax rates with the new personal tax rates so that portfolio investment entity rates will be 12.5 percent, 21 percent, and 30 percent. It also adjusts the income thresholds at which the portfolio investment entity rates apply so as to ensure that people who invest in portfolio investment entities are not disadvantaged relative to direct investors. Other minor changes have been made to help reduce compliance costs for taxpayers and to smooth the Inland Revenue Department’s administrative functions, including allowing the Inland Revenue Department to accept corrections of minor errors in subsequent returns, and allowing tax agents more time, if needed, to allocate beneficiary income. In addition to these changes the important Supplementary Order Paper 93, in which several urgent tax measures are proposed, has been added to the bill.

The first of these measures proposed under the Supplementary Order Paper deals with the longstanding debate that has surrounded the GST treatment of facilitation services for tour packages for overseas visitors to New Zealand. Under the changes proposed, these services will be subject to GST at the standard rate of 12.5 percent, but the legislation also includes a transitional provision allowing inbound tour operators to zero-rate these services for the year ended 1 July 2008, which will help minimise any adverse affects on any inbound tour operators, including those operators who did not zero-rate services for that year. The second item proposed under the Supplementary Order Paper makes changes to the supplementary dividend rules in the Income Tax Act to allow newly signed tax treaties with Australia, Singapore, and the United States to come into force. The third set of changes introduced by the Supplementary Order Paper, and which I should make reference to, will ensure that the recipients of New Zealand’s superannuation and the veterans pension will remain subject to New Zealand tax while they are travelling overseas, but if they decide to live overseas the pensions will not be subject to New Zealand tax.

I want to record my thanks to all of those who have worked on the passage of this bill so far. My particular thanks are due to the Finance and Expenditure Committee members for their consideration of the bill, for passing the test, and for the recommendations that they put forward to improve the outcomes for taxpayers. I also thank the drafters and the policy officials who worked on the detail of the bill, those who made submissions on the changes it proposes, and to everyone who took an interest in it. Finally, I thank those members of the select committee and those members of the House who have contributed to the debates on the bill for their input and for their contribution to its progress. I am more than happy to commend the bill to the House.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) : Labour supports the Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill. Labour believes this bill is a technical bill that continues one of Labour’s work streams and makes some necessary changes to the underlying tax law. In the Committee stage debate the Committee has considered the role the Finance and Expenditure Committee played in ensuring the House was not presented with a bill that would have unfortunately ended up with some 3 million New Zealanders paying more tax than they legally owed. The Committee reflected on the fact that that would have been an unwise and improper precedent for this House to set and it further reflected that it shows the importance of a proper select committee process.

The Minister of Revenue in his closing remarks in the Committee stage quite rightly said that this was a tax bill unlike the previous one, and we thank him for that because the process in the previous tax bill, the international tax bill, was a bit of a shocker, I think is the technical term, and we faced inordinate pressures. But at least the material for that tax bill was presented to the select committee, albeit with a very tight turn-round, and that does stand in contradistinction to the process followed by the emissions trading scheme bill that was considered yesterday.

It is on the record of this House, in the annals of this House, that the emissions trading bill was deadlocked in its select committee and discharged back to the House without amendments, and, indeed, without even seeing a departmental clause by clause report or a redline. That was added to by the fact that very substantial Supplementary Order Papers, including a late amendment around a very important Treaty clause, were presented to this House for consideration on the day on which the final bill was passed. We are happy that this was not a bill like that bill, and happy that the select committee could play its role, which was with the help of officials and a very useful submission from the New Zealand Bankers’ Association to make a significant change around resident withholding tax default setters. So we have ended up going for the default rate at the modal income tax rate of 21c in the dollar, not the 38c in the dollar that was originally proposed by the Minister. He has been appropriate in accepting the recommendation of the committee. It should not, in the best of all worlds, require a committee’s intervention on a matter such as that, but we are very pleased that the committee was able to work together to achieve the change.

There are a range of other matters in the bill. I do not think the House needs us to go through all of them. There has been comment before about the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative, the tax treatment of that, and what defines a forestry business. It has been a matter of consideration at the Committee stage and in the second reading debate that has thrown into relief the provisions of companion legislation around climate change. My colleague Mr Nash has taken us through a summary of other important changes around beneficiary income rules, electronic communications, tax recovery obligations, personal tax summaries, GST and waste disposal levies, and various other remedial matters. It remains at this third reading to commend the Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill to this House.

In closing, I guess it is not a bill that is likely to see itself on the front page of a major daily newspaper, but New Zealanders may reflect upon the fact that in giving this bill good consideration, this is Parliament doing its job cooperatively, and, indeed, consensually, in the interests of all New Zealanders.

CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) : It is tempting, but I will not take the previous speaker’s bait. I will speak briefly and pick up on the acknowledgment and thanks of the Minister of Revenue and the previous speaker to all those who got the Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill to its third reading. I also acknowledge the cooperation of members and parties in facilitating the bill’s progress through the House tonight to the third reading.

Most of the issues were discussed during the second reading, and, as the previous speaker also noted, there was consensus all round on this particular bill. I thank the Minister for his continuing with the general tidying-up, cleaning up, modernisation, and synchronisation of our various tax laws and regulations within New Zealand. He is keeping a constant eye on the big picture and, of course, a constant eye on what is going on in Australia when carrying out the reviews that our various pieces of legislation must undergo. There is also a reflection on modern technology, by hopefully saving the taxpayer a few stamps with the 100,000 mail-outs per day from the Inland Revenue Department. I say that is absolutely unbelievable. I think the person who will not like that is, interestingly, the new appointee to New Zealand Post, who might have somewhat of an interest in the issue.

National commends the bill to the House. Again, as Finance and Expenditure Committee chair I acknowledge the officials and advisers who got us to this point. I will pick up on the point that other members have made, that the committee worked very well together to come up with solutions or amendments to the bill that were accepted by officials, and by the Minister and his colleagues. It is a great example of good process, and long may it continue.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) : The previous speaker, Craig Foss, said that there was consensus all round on the Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill. I will clarify by saying that actually there is not complete consensus in this House because the Green Party will be opposing this bill.

People have suggested that it is simply a technical bill, and it is true that there are some technical issues in here that the Greens support. The bill clarifies issues around, for example, the waste disposal levy, which the Green Party supports, but overall the consequential changes in this bill are changes to the original bill. It was introduced in mid-December 2008, just after the election, and it was a bill that we strenuously opposed. These changes flow out of that original bill, and for that reason the Green Party opposes them. We oppose them because we oppose the giving of very large, very substantial tax cuts to the well-off, while giving absolutely zero—zilch—to those who earn under $40,000 a year. We believe it is immoral and unethical, because by doing that we are further increasing the already huge gap between rich and poor in New Zealand and the incredible inequality we have in New Zealand.

The extraordinary thing is that thanks to the policies of the 1980s and 1990s, New Zealand has become a world leader in inequality. New Zealand may not be a world leader in many things any more, but it has become a world leader in inequality because our society is becoming more and more unequal. In fact, it has become more unequal at a faster rate than any other country on the planet. That is extraordinary. It is something we should be deeply ashamed of, and this bill, which amends the original bill, will continue to make our society more unequal at a faster rate than that of any other country on the planet. This bill is making amendments to a bill that gave very substantial tax cuts to the well-off and nothing to those who earn under $40,000 a year. Through that original bill, we effectively will force New Zealanders to borrow around $10 billion over the next 10 years because of those tax cuts to the wealthy. This means that we will have to borrow more from future generations to fund those tax cuts.

I also point out that not only is it unethical to have this sort of tax policy, but also it is bad policy. When tax cuts are given to those who are paid under $40,000 a year they tend to spend that money, so it is stimulatory, whereas when tax cuts are given to the very rich, as the original bill did, in general they tend to save that money. The Green members think that although this bill contains a number of consequential and technical amendments that we do not oppose, we opposed the original bill and, therefore, we oppose these amendments to that original bill. Thank you very much.

RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) : I will take a very brief call to raise three points of particular interest to the Māori Party in the Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill. The first point is that the bill’s definition of “forestry business” includes Permanent Forest Sink Initiative activities so that all foresters receive the same tax treatment. It is highly appropriate to be considering this legislation in the light of the new emissions trading scheme that was passed into law last evening with the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill. The Māori Party was proud to advocate for the creation of large scale permanent forests to breathe new life into an environment that has often been taken for granted.

Planting permanent forests is an intrinsic good in its own right, and it will also reduce the amount of money that taxpayers will be liable to pay to meet this country’s financial obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. The afforestation provisions that the Māori Party negotiated as part of the amended emissions trading scheme legislation will enable iwi to plant permanent forests on Crown land and to accrue carbon credits in return. The Permanent Forest Sink Initiative encourages indigenous tree planting by issuing assigned amount units for carbon uptake. We have also asked for a review of the initiative with particular emphasis on the impacts on landowners. A review of the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative would increase the incentives for all landowners to plant trees. We are pleased, in the interests of equity and fairness, that the inclusion of the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative in this bill means that all foresters receive the same tax treatment.

The second point I raise is the amendment to ensure that GST is payable on the waste levy imposed by the Waste Minimisation Act. The Māori Party supported every stage of the Waste Minimisation Act as it was taken through this House by former members the late Rod Donald and Nandor Tanczos. Our policy position acknowledged that waste disposal can damage and destroy the mauri, the life essence, of our land by reducing or destroying the life-supporting capacity of soils. The establishment of a waste levy incentivises us all to try to think carefully about the amount of waste we take to the landfill. It encourages us to recycle, reuse, repair, respect, and replace. We in the Māori Party believe that peoples have a fundamental right to clear air, land, water, and food. This right means being protected from the production, release, and disposal of toxic and hazardous waste. It also brings with it a collective responsibility to ensure that we use the resources of the Earth in ways that preserve the planet for current and future generations. We are pleased to support the amendment to provide for GST being payable on the waste levy imposed by the Waste Minimisation Act 2008, as part of the long-term plan to protect our environment.

Finally, we note the importance of the amendment to the definition of “associated persons” in the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985. The definition of “associated persons” will be amended to ensure that the activities of charitable and not-for-profit bodies that do not involve the supply of goods and services in exchange for payment, such as collecting or making donations, are not subject to GST rules as they are not performed for profit. The Māori Party really supports this move, which is another significant step in reducing the barriers that can get in the way of enabling the not-for-profit sector to continue to contribute so significantly to the well-being of our communities. We therefore are pleased to support this bill.

STUART NASH (Labour) : I rise in support of the Taxation (Consequential Rate Alignment and Remedial Matters) Bill for the last time, in this debate on the third reading. It is basically a technical bill, but it is a very necessary one. I was a little surprised and disappointed to hear the Green speaker Sue Kedgley say that they are voting against the bill. The Green member on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Dr Russel Norman, never once voiced any concern or any prejudice against this bill. Perhaps if he had at any stage, we could have addressed some of his concerns. But not once did he articulate any concerns, so it is a bit of a shame to hear that the Greens are voting against it. I thought we had full consensus on the committee. The bill is not about cutting tax, at all; it is just about aligning tax rates. In fact, this bill will probably make it a lot easier for taxpayers. But that is democracy.

As articulated by the chair of the committee and my colleague David Cunliffe, I would like to thank the Inland Revenue Department officials and the independent advisers for the work they have done on the bill. It is greatly appreciated, and I think we have good legislation here. People talk about technical and non-technical bills. However, in my very brief experience, every tax bill is technical in nature, because tax, by its very nature, is complex. Even though the mandate of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and the Inland Revenue Department is to make tax legislation as simple as possible, tax is not simple. Simple is an education Minister standing in front of a secondary school teachers union conference and reading them a children’s story, and telling Parliament it was a very good read. It might be at the same intellectual level as those on the Government side of the House, but I tell members that it is not for those on this side. Simple was also putting forward a bill that will cost every New Zealander around $45 a week up to 2050—such a liability of a legacy for future generations. That is simple, but this tax bill is not simple. That is why we are very reliant on the advice and the excellent work done by officials and advisers, and I thank them very much.

This bill has “remedial matters” in its title, because it contains remedial amendments to the Income Tax Act 2007, the Income Tax Act 2004, the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985, the Tax Administration Act 1994, the Income Tax Act 1994, and the Māori Trustee Amendment Act 2009. That is why I am a little disappointed in the Green member, because this bill makes tax just that much easier for taxpayers. It meets the six tests that any tax legislation should meet: economic efficiency, revenue adequacy, revenue integrity, simplicity of administration and compliance, coherence, and equity and fairness. As I mentioned, and as all my colleagues alluded to, there were concerns over the equity and fairness of the bill, and the Labour members of the committee have a slight level of disquiet over the fact that so many people—I think it is around 1.4 million New Zealanders—will still be overtaxed on their interest as a consequence of this bill. People asked where the 1.4 million figure comes from. Children from 0 years of age and all the way up, whose parents have set up their bank account, pay resident withholding tax as well, so there are a lot of taxpayers who are affected by this. However, I think we have come to a good compromise. There are a lot of people who will be overtaxed, but the Inland Revenue Department has assured us that it will put education strategies in place that will mitigate the risk of overpayment. We have accepted that, and we will follow progress with interest.

The main issue that the bill addresses is to align resident withholding tax on interest paid to individual taxpayers with the new marginal tax rates. I spoke at length about it in the second reading debate—

Hon Darren Hughes: Very well, actually.

STUART NASH: Thank you very much, I say to the senior whip. I urge the 1.4 million New Zealanders who will be taxed at the incorrect rate to contact your bank and get your resident withholding tax rate changed. That includes you, Mr Speaker; I said “you” on purpose there, because it also includes every MP. So make sure you contact your bank and sort that out. There are other provisions of this bill that did not receive nearly the time and effort put into the resident withholding tax issue. They were debated, though, when debate was necessary. They have been spoken about in this House today and in the first and second reading debates. I probably do not need to allude to them again. As I mentioned, I think this is good legislation, and I commend it to the House. Thank you very much.

Hon TIM GROSER (Minister of Trade) : I seek leave for the Committee on the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill to take the bill as one question.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Is there any objection to that course of action? There is none.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) : The Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill is a very important measure that the Committee is debating tonight, and I think it is a shame that members do not have a unanimous position on it. I think that that would be respectful to those who suffered throughout the trial of the Sophie Elliott case. I find it incredible that the one example that has been brought to the House as a reason for voting against the passage of this bill is a case that did not occur. It is the “case” of a close relative of Sophie Elliott coming into the room as she was being killed and expecting that a particular response—seeking to defend the life of a sister, in that particular case—would not fall within the definition of self-defence. In that entire contribution no mention was made of Ronald Brown. Ronald Brown died at the hands of somebody who said that Ronald Brown had approached him in a manner that was a homosexual advance, and that he was so affected by this approach he felt that it was within his right to claim the defence of provocation against a charge of murder, and he claimed that defence for himself. Mr Ambach was found guilty of manslaughter, not murder. I find it incredible that anyone can stand in this Chamber and put a hypothetical story ahead of the real case we have had played out in our courts. It was not on our television screens in the way that the Clayton Weatherston case was played out, but it was a case that happened pretty much at the same time. We saw the provocation defence being used.

I think what members—perhaps only a few—have overlooked is that provocation is only a partial defence. The partial defence existed when murder attracted either the death penalty or, subsequently, a life sentence, as the only mechanism for showing society’s abhorrence for the action that had been undertaken. For a person’s intentional taking of someone else’s life, society said that that person’s life would be taken—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or whatever the expression might be. The death sentence was the original sentence for murder. That was replaced in this country—and I cannot recall the exact date off the top of my head—with a life sentence for murder. [Interruption] I cannot remember when the death penalty was replaced with a life sentence, but I believe it was in the 1960s. In 2002 a further step was taken, and that was to remove the obligation on the court to impose a life sentence if a murder conviction was entered. That was to recognise that there would be circumstances where the intentional taking of life would be proved, but the imposition of a life sentence would not produce a just result.

I heard the chairman of the Justice and Electoral Committee, Chester Borrows, use the example of the individual who entered into a suicide pact with his wife. That was a tragic, tragic case. The suicide pact was a two-way thing. It was effective for the taking of his wife’s life but was not effective in his own case. He survived his suicide attempt even though he had assisted his wife’s suicide. In that case he pleaded guilty to the charge of murder. He had intentionally taken the life of his wife. There is not a Court in this land that would have felt comfortable with imposing a life sentence on somebody in the tragic circumstances that played out in that particular case. So the court exercised the discretion that it now has under the Sentencing Act and imposed a sentence of 18 months, with leave to apply for home detention. That was an acceptable way of saying that there was a difference in such cases.

My deep and abiding concern about leaving this issue to a jury is that we invite jury members to put themselves in the place of the person who has been accused. We invite them to apply every prejudice that they might hold against the person who has provoked the individual. Nothing justifies the acceptance of provocation. I have felt very angry with people on occasions, but not so angry that I would want to take their lives. I cannot imagine a circumstance where I would be so angry. I have noted before that, when a lot of the feminist literature about the subject of the provocation defence was written back in the 1980s as a response to Dr Minnett killing his wife Leigh Minnett, many headlines changed the word manslaughter to “mans laughter”. The two words of course join to form the word manslaughter. The point was that it seemed that the characteristics of the reasonable expectation around self-control, and what would breach that self-control, applied only to men in those circumstances; they certainly did not apply to women.

In fact, women were far more likely than men to end up in front of the courts accused of the murder of their spouse or partner than men were. They would be far more likely to do so in what the court might consider to be a far more considered and cold, calculating fashion, because obviously the respective strengths of a man and a woman are different. Often, the woman’s response took the circumstances a little more into account. For example, in the case of the woman who took her husband’s life while he lay sleeping, the court accepted fully in that case that she was the victim of domestic violence, that she had been subject to severe threats, and that those threats had been made not only to her but also to her wider family. There are other instances where women have not been able to rely on the defence, because of the method of responding to the fear that they have felt. Nothing excuses the level of provocation that has been claimed in the cases that have been played out in the media over recent times, either.

Historically, this defence has had its time. Those who say that we are debating this legislation in Parliament now because of the two cases that we had in front of the courts over recent times actually have not bothered with the history of this defence. The Law Commission came down very, very clearly on two occasions for the repeal of the defence. The issue went back to the Law Commission for the second report because there was a concern about battered women’s syndrome and about people with mental impairment. There was a concern that, in actual fact, in the kind of defence where we would expect provocation to play a role, the defence had not been able to be used by the very people whom the Law Commission was concerned about. The Law Commission took a lot of time to do the research. I know that we have the figures in front of us somewhere that detail the number of successful uses of the provocation defence over the 5-year period that the Law Commission looked at. In 2007 it found that provocation was successfully relied upon by very few defendants. Crown prosecution files showed that during the 5-year period provocation was successfully relied upon in only four out of 81 murder cases.

So the defence really is an anachronism now, and it is time for it to go. I think it is unfair to use a hypothetical example arising out of a tragedy, when we know that the effect of having that defence there led to that particular family having to listen to things about their daughter that, in fact, nobody could get up and refute, because the only person telling the story was the one who had silenced for ever the other witness to the events in that room that tragic day. So I believe that we owe it to the families—not just of the recent cases, but also of the ones that have gone before—to them to act in unison in this Parliament and remove the defence. The reason for the defence has gone—it went with the death penalty and it went with the automatic life sentence—and it is time that we leave this matter to the judges. We are inviting juries to substitute their prejudices for law. That is what the Law Commission said, and I believe that it is absolutely vital that we take this opportunity to act as one and remove the defence that should no longer be on our law books.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) : I want to go back to the hypothetical situation that was set out by the Hon Rodney Hide, then followed up by my colleague Lianne Dalziel. I feel that Rodney Hide gave a disingenuous presentation of the way that a situation like that would currently be dealt with in our criminal justice system. I would be loath to leave the public or anyone else believing that when the Justice and Electoral Committee reviewed this repeal we felt that it would in any circumstances give rise to situations such as the scenario painted by Rodney Hide, where a family member who retaliated on seeing a family member murdered would be landed with a 17-year prison sentence. That is not the kind of scenario we would see, given the way that the Sentencing Act 2002 is currently drafted.

The reason I find his presentation disingenuous is that l would be very surprised—I do not know for sure; I would like some clarity from Rodney Hide as to the way ACT voted on the Sentencing Act 2002—if, in fact, ACT supported the level of flexibility that was purposely drafted into the law to allow for the very scenarios that he is painting. I would be very pleased to hear Rodney Hide speak again during the Committee stage to clarify his party’s position on the Sentencing Act 2002, which I think deals with the very issue and the very concerns that he has raised as a consequence of the repeal of the partial defence of provocation.

I will go over the parts of the Sentencing Act that would deal with this situation. Section 102 sits under Subpart 4 of Part 2. I referred to it in my previous speech. It sets out that although there is a presumption in favour of life imprisonment for murder, “An offender who is convicted of murder must be sentenced to imprisonment for life unless, given the circumstances of the offence and the offender, a sentence of imprisonment for life would be manifestly unjust.” I think the situation and the circumstance that Rodney Hide set out would, by any layperson’s reading, fit the criterion of being “manifestly unjust”. Indeed, further on in the Sentencing Act a number of explicit criteria are set out; when the imposition of a minimum period of imprisonment of 17 years or more would be required, there are a series of mitigating factors that, again, explicitly exclude the kind of scenario that Rodney Hide has set out for the Committee. So I think it is misleading to claim that this repeal could give rise to that kind of scenario. Chester Borrows, the chair of the committee, set out the case of someone involved in a suicide pact. At the time of the Sentencing Act discussion and debate, examples were frequently used of elderly couples and euthanasia. Again, those are situations where that threshold of “manifestly unjust” is very likely to be reached. I invite Mr Hide to explain to the Committee whether ACT supported the Sentencing Act 2002, and, if it did not, to explain how he reconciles his two differing positions on those provisions.

I will also dwell briefly on another point, which also was touched on by my colleague, and it is around the idea of battered defendants who are mentally ill or impaired. Some submitters presented to the committee in defence of use of the partial defence of provocation by defendants who are considered to be battered. The phrase “battered wife syndrome” was raised a lot in the select committee. My colleague has already pointed out that in cases where this partial defence has been used, it has been highly unsuccessful. So the argument could be raised that even if a defence is necessary for those particular circumstances, this defence is not it, because it has not worked for those groups of defendants.

The majority of the select committee concluded that it would be more appropriate for most of those defendants to rely on the defence of self-defence. I would add one qualification to that. There was quite considerable discussion in the select committee as to whether self-defence was a useful or successful defence for those particular defendants. A lot of people working in that particular sector—domestic violence, in particular—pointed to a number of scenarios and examples of battered women for whom we might consider it would be appropriate to argue self-defence, but the minds of a jury may perceive self-defence as the kind of defence that would be used if a woman retaliated after an immediate act of violence or felt herself under an immediate threat. They made the point to the committee that that does not fit with the psychology of battered women, and that there perhaps is a disconnect between what we see as the characteristics and behaviour of battered women and a jury’s perception of what constitutes self-defence. We did not reach a conclusion as a committee as to how we would appropriately deal with that particular problem and that disconnect. The only conclusion that we came to—on Labour’s side of the table, in particular—was that it was the exact kind of situation where we would be inclined to ask a Sentencing Council to consider where it would be most appropriate for these kinds of women to look in terms of their defence, given their situation. That is another reason why it is disappointing that the Government has removed the idea of a Sentencing Council, and has used all of the funding for it for the administration of a costly and potentially unsatisfactory offender levy.

I am pleased, though, that we are finally repealing the defence of provocation. The scenarios that have been painted by other members of the Committee are adequately covered, I think, by existing law. Again I invite Mr Hide to explain to the Committee his position on the Sentencing Act 2002.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) : I will take a very brief call in support of the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill because Kevin Hague is not here to do so and I know that he was very, very passionate in support of this bill. Without being a lawyer, I appreciate the comments of the lawyers in the Chamber who have spoken about this bill from the point of view of evolving law. I highly support the comments of Lianne Dalziel about the use of discretion being maybe a heavy burden on judges, but it is preferable to an outdated mechanism such as the provocation defence.

When talking about the evolution of law I am thinking back to my earliest memory of kneeling in front of the radio the night that Parliament voted out capital punishment. My father was standing there virtually crying with joy because he campaigned against hanging in this country. One of my earliest memories of political participation was seeing what he went through and how happy he was that the law had evolved. I am thinking also about when I was travelling through Ireland and it was described to me that a gypsy was found stealing something from a farm in Ireland and was killed by the farmer with a fork. The defence was provocation, not because the gypsy had attacked the farmer but because the Roma—the travellers—are regarded as less than human. Therefore, the Irish judicial system had accepted that provocation was acceptable. The farmer was able to get away with killing somebody, simply because of who that person was.

I think about homophobia in this country and how it is still alive and well. I still hear young people, particularly young males, speaking in a homophobic way constantly about the idea that if anyone should approach them, that would easily provoke violence in them. I think we have a long way to go when it comes to addressing these things, which is why this bill is really important. We are removing a risk that that can be used against a person such as the victim of a homophobic murder.

We have come a long way. We have only to think about the Ku Klux Klan and how they have justified ethnic cleansing, and all the other stereotyping and violence that has been used to justify the murder of innocent people right across the planet. Battered woman’s syndrome is another example of how the law has evolved.

That is what we are here to do—to help the law evolve in a way that will be fair and just, and allow the courts to exercise due discretion and wisdom. I am sorry that Kevin Hague is not here to speak more eloquently. I know he did at the first reading. But the Green Party is pleased to support this bill and pleased to see so much unanimity around the House about it. We will be delighted to see this bill progress into law, for the sake of all the people who have been unjustly killed simply because they were different from the violent offenders who took their lives. Kia ora.

DAVID GARRETT (ACT) : I start by acknowledging my colleague Catherine Delahunty, and more particularly my colleague Kevin Hague, who spoke to me about the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill some weeks ago. I have thought about it, and our caucus has thought about it. I have just walked into the Chamber, as you know, so I am not entirely aware of what has gone before me; members will forgive me if I am repeating what has already been said.

Nobody could be comfortable with the success of provocation defences in the case of Mr Ambach and in the case of—to cite the victim’s name—David McNee. I will start with him. That case was an example of a rent boy who was hired by Mr McNee to perform a service. His defence was that the terms of the contract, if you like, went way outside the boundaries, so he panicked and killed Mr McNee. I cannot remember the name of the offender; somebody will remind me, no doubt.

Charles Chauvel: Edwards.

DAVID GARRETT: Edwards, yes. If I had been on the jury—and I never have been and never will be, because I am a lawyer—I would have found a great deal of difficulty accepting that an experienced rent boy who had agreed to do x could suddenly become beset by panic when he was asked to do y back at the contractee’s flat. However, 12 ordinary people selected at random from the community accepted that defence.

Before I came down to the Chamber, I heard the Hon Lianne Dalziel speaking. She said, and I have the same information, that of 81 murder cases over the last 5-year period, the defence was offered in 15 and was successful only four times. Lianne Dalziel said that that was evidence that the defence had done its dash. I am sorry, but by my logic it is evidence of exactly the opposite. It is evidence of the fact that the defence will be rarely argued and even more rarely successful. I am sure that other speakers—including, probably, my leader—have noted the Weatherston case that everyone is talking about. I am afraid I do not accept that it is merely coincidence that we are debating this bill 6 months after the Weatherston case. Everyone seems to have forgotten that in the Weatherston case the defence was offered and it was unsuccessful. Twelve ordinary people listened to that swine of a man offer as a defence for mutilating and killing that young woman that he had been tormented beyond belief, beyond endurance, and had killed her.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: They didn’t believe it.

DAVID GARRETT: That is right. They rejected it.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: So what about Ronald Brown? Mention him.

DAVID GARRETT: Ronald Brown was the victim of Mr Ambach. Is that right?

Hon Lianne Dalziel: That’s right.

DAVID GARRETT: I say to Ms Dalziel that if I was on that jury, I would have had a great deal of trouble with that verdict. From what I know, and you were not there either, as you very well know—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

H V Ross Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I know what the member is going to say. I ask the member to sit. The Chair cannot be brought into the debate.

DAVID GARRETT: I am well aware of what Ms Dalziel is going to say. The only people who heard all the evidence of that case were the 12 people of the jury who sat through the entire trial. We stand to one side, read the newspaper, and listen to the television, and I have the same reaction as Ms Dalziel. I wonder how this could be. This does not read well. This was a younger man with a much older man—stronger, one would think—but those 12 ordinary people sat there and they accepted that defence.

I understand that my leader has already offered one hypothetical example based on the Weatherston case, so I will offer another one. Late in life, I have become a father. It has been the most wondrous experience of my life. Looking around the Chamber, I do not know on that side or this side who are parents and who are not. But certainly speaking for myself, it has been an incredible change in attitude. It might sound a bit soft, and I do not really care if it does, but I would die for my children. I hesitated whether to even raise this in the Chamber, but every father has the fear of coming upon their child either in the process of being molested or having been killed. Let us hope and pray to God that that never happens to any of us here. I would like every member in the Chamber tonight to think about how they would feel and react if they came upon such a scene. If I came across my little Charlie, aged 4, being interfered with or worse, I do not know how I would react.

I suspect that I share the feeling of most, if not all, parents in this Chamber that we do not know how we would react. We may literally go off our nuts, to use the vernacular. Should it not be the case that the defence of provocation is decided—is adjudicated upon—by 12 ordinary people taken from, let us say, this Committee? We range in age, in sex, in profession, and in education. This Committee is as good as any as a sample. I would rather my fate be decided that way—in fact, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, I probably would not offer the defence. So let us talk about a hypothetical father.

Chester Borrows: You’d happily do the time.

DAVID GARRETT: I would probably happily do the time. But some parents would not. I say to this Committee that I would rather have 12 ordinary people with the attributes of ordinary people judging me, and that is what the defence is about. Would an ordinary person with the normal powers of self-control react in this way? That is the decision in nutshell. I would like to think that that decision is made by 12 jurors and not by a judge.

Hon Rodney Hide: Not by Parliament.

DAVID GARRETT: And not by Parliament. We could talk about the Weatherston case. I will be careful because I have got in trouble before. Weatherston is appealing his verdict so I will need to be very careful. Suffice it to say that senior prosecutors of my acquaintance were astounded that Weatherston received an 18-year non-parole period. If I had been a betting man I would have won because they all said it would be 25 years at least. That decision was made by a judge; we are talking now about verdicts, because that is the province of a jury.

I suspect that before I came down to the Chamber there was great quotation about the Law Commission and supposedly learned persons who are in favour of this move. Well, the Law Society, of which I am no champion, is not in favour of the removal of this defence. I took the trouble of ringing two senior prosecutors who made submissions to the Law Commission 2 years ago and asked them what they thought now. Both of them were of the view—I have to be fair and say that one was more strongly of the view than the other—that the defence should remain.

Professor Bill Hodge, a constitutional law expert at the University of Auckland and not a noted right-wing maniac, has noted that the sentences for manslaughter range from nothing through to life imprisonment. He said that the defence should not be repealed in the absence of alternative defences such as diminished responsibility—what the Americans call temporary insanity, and the French used to call crime passionnel. We do not have any of those alternatives. We are being asked to rely on the wisdom of judges to use section 102 of the Sentencing Act to depart from the presumption of a mandatory life sentence. It is true that that section of the Sentencing Act allows for a less than life sentence to be handed down, but I believe this decision should remain with a jury of the person’s peers.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Why?

DAVID GARRETT: For the very reasons I have outlined, I say to Ms Dalziel. I do not know whether she is a parent, but it has certainly changed my attitude to life in many, many ways, and it changes my attitude to this matter.

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatū) : I stand to support the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill. After listening to the previous speaker, David Garrett, I say that I am a parent and I am a gay man, and I could hear the dog whistle in that speech. It was all about molestation; all that emotive stuff that has been used all too often as an excuse for bigotry and prejudice.

Mr Garrett did not say it, although I did sense that it was there in the background, but all too often people have stood up in the New Zealand courts and said: “I killed that guy because he hit on me.” I would like to ask the women in this Chamber how many times they have been hit on in their lives when they did not want it. It is probably lots of times. It was offensive, degrading, and it made them angry, but it did not give them the excuse to kill someone. They did not have that excuse, but that excuse has been used so often in the defence of people who killed gay men. They said they were so offended that a guy hit on them. I say again that the women in this Chamber know what that means. They know how offensive it is, but it does not give someone an excuse or a reason to kill another person. Saying no is enough, and if that does not work, there are other strategies and mechanisms that can be used, but we do not kill someone.

I do not think there is any excuse to give someone a licence to exhibit their prejudice. After all, where would end? It still sits there with gay men. It used to sit there with race. I suspect in some cases it probably still does, and that is totally unacceptable. Once it sat there with religion. My ancestors came from Ireland, which is a nation that was divided on religion. Religion was used as an excuse to kill people. No one would accept that today, and no one should accept sexual orientation as a basis to kill someone or to excuse their actions in murder or violence.

I say to Mr Garrett and to those who are opposed to this legislation that our law is robust. It is designed to keep people safe, and it has processes that are tried and true. There should be no loophole for a person to use prejudice to excuse actions that are illegal. Thank you.

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) : I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Did the Māori Party just cast 5 votes in favour?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Yes, the Māori Party cast 5 votes in favour.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : I seek leave of the Committee to change the vote. I have just checked with our people. I would like to change the Māori Party’s vote.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought to change the Māori Party’s vote to 4 votes in favour. Is there any objection? There is no objection. I will declare the result again. The result now is that the Ayes are 116 and the Noes 5, and the motion is agreed to.

• House resumed.

• Bill reported without amendment.

The TEMPORARY CHAIRPERSON (Charles Chauvel): I move, That the report be adopted.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The purpose of this bill is to repeal the partial defence of provocation. Provocation is included in section 169 of the Crimes Act and states that a verdict of murder can be reduced to manslaughter if the offender can show that the crime was committed under provocation. Recent examples have illustrated the significant issues posed by this defence. Extensive consideration by the Law Commission and other bodies has emphasised the need for the defence to be abolished. It is with pride that I stand in support of the bill, on behalf of my party. I will defer to the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, Chester Borrows, who will contribute more fully to this debate on our behalf.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) : It is said that hard cases make bad law. Tonight we had a new maxim from the ACT Party—hypothetical stories spun for electoral rhetoric make for rotten politics. Let me recall three of the hard cases that illustrate the bad law that we have now. And unlike what we heard in the second reading from Mr Hide, and in the Committee stage from Mr Garrett, these are facts—not hypotheticals. These are the most recent cases in which the defence of provocation has succeeded.

In the case of the Crown and Ambach earlier this year, Ambach beat Mr Brown to death with a banjo and then with the weight from a dumbbell. Ambach ransacked the downstairs of Mr Brown’s home, whether before or after the beating is not clear. The police arrived and found Mr Brown unconscious on the stairs with very serious head injuries, including the bridge of the banjo rammed down his throat. While detained in a police cell, Ambach manipulated a cut to his finger and heavily smeared the walls of the cell and his face with the blood. Police officers in attendance thought his injuries to be serious, owing to the amount of blood, and took him to hospital. There, no injuries other than a cut to his finger were found.

In an interview the next day Ambach was calm and through an interpreter gave an account of the previous evening. Ambach said Mr Brown touched him on the thigh after he had been drinking with Mr Brown for a time. Ambach said that he indicated he was not interested in Mr Brown in that way and said he pushed Mr Brown’s hand away. Ambach said he then had another drink and that at some point Mr Brown went upstairs, turning the downstairs lights off. Ambach says that Mr Brown called him to come upstairs. He claimed that he wanted to leave but said he could not find the way out. Ambach claimed not to be able to remember anything after that. But later in his police interview he said he thought he went upstairs. In no clear sequence he remembered flashes, including Mr Brown chasing him round a table and Mr Brown throwing things at him. Ambach claims to have barricaded himself in and claimed to have no memory of how he hurt Mr Brown.

At trial Justice Winkelmann allowed the partial defence of provocation to be put to the jury. The partial defence succeeded. Ambach was convicted not of murder, but of manslaughter, and sentenced to 8 years in prison. The sentence but not the verdict is under appeal, but as with the comments made by Lianne Dalziel and I throughout this debate, nothing I have said bears on the sentencing appeal.

The case of the Crown and Ali was one I mentioned in my first reading speech on this issue, so I will not repeat its revolting facts here. I will record, though, that on the facts that were similar to those I have just recited in respect of Ambach, at that trial Justice Williams allowed the partial defence of provocation to be put to the jury. The partial defence succeeded. Ali was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment.

In the case of the Crown and Edwards, on the evening of 20 July 2003 Mr McNee was driving his car along Karangahape Road in Auckland. Edwards, in the company of two friends, noticed Mr McNee’s car. Edwards concluded that Mr McNee was looking for somebody to pick up. Having been released from prison 10 days earlier—he had some 50 previous convictions—he had no money so he jumped into the car when it stopped at the nearest traffic lights. Edwards said he concluded a bargain with Mr McNee to perform sexually in his presence for $120. Mr McNee said that his home was nearby and as Edwards needed a shower they went there. Following the shower, Edwards went into the main bedroom. According to him, after some sexual contact he got to his feet and started hitting Mr McNee with his fists. In court he admitted to striking Mr McNee between 30 and 40 times.

Edwards said he felt very angry and that everything afterwards became a blur, after the first few blows. When Edwards stopped beating Mr McNee, Mr McNee was on the floor and there was blood everywhere. Edwards then made off with items of Mr McNee’s property.

At trial Justice Frater allowed the partial defence of provocation to be put to the jury. The partial defence succeeded. Edwards was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 9 years’ imprisonment.

Each of the three cases over the past 6 years that I have outlined shares four very disturbing features. First, the account we are left with of the events in question is inevitably that of the killer. The killer goes out of his way to besmirch the character of the victim, portraying him as sexually predatory and therefore somehow deserving of the agonising death meted out to him. Grotesquely, the voice of the victim is silenced, and substituted for by the only surviving witness, the person who stabbed, beat, or otherwise brutalised him to death.

Secondly, aspects of the evidence indicate dishonesty on the part of the killer. Ambach’s and Edwards’ alleged blackouts, Ambach’s smearing of blood from a flesh wound to make it look as if he were wounded more severely, Ali and Edwards’ theft of their victims’ property after killing them, and Ali’s wiping of fingerprints from the crime scene and the selling of his victim’s property, are not the actions of people with a propensity to tell the truth. Their claims of blackouts during which they experienced uncontrolled rage, the essence of the provocation defence, just do not ring true.

Thirdly, horrific violence was inflicted in the killing. In Ambach’s case a banjo bridge was found rammed down the neck of his victim; in Ali’s case there was a stabbing five times; and in Edwards’ case there were 30 or 40 blows.

Fourthly, a High Court judge in each instance instructed a jury, letting each killer get away with murder by allowing a manslaughter verdict, in each case to a man who claimed to be the unwitting victim of sexual advance from another. Uncontrolled rage led to a reward: a lesser verdict, in circumstances where more controlled anger or violence would have seen the killer penalised with a more severe verdict.

The overwhelming majority of submitters to the Justice and Electoral Committee supported the abolition of this outdated and discredited defence. The Law Commission rightfully recommended its repeal. My colleague Lianne Dalziel rightly introduced a member’s bill to effect that repeal. I was glad to draft it for her. She rightly and graciously withdrew that appeal so that Simon Power could advance the Government’s decision to progress repeal, and I commend that decision in the House today.

It is wrong for the ACT Party, which masquerades as the liberal party and as a champion of victims’ rights, to be the only group in this House to oppose repeal. That is an insult to the victims of violent crime, but it shows that party’s true colours. It votes today to continue to sanction a defence that legitimises violence against gay men and against women. I say shame on it. Having heard David Garrett’s contribution during the Committee stage, I think Chris Carter is right. We understand the coded message being sent about which New Zealanders’ lives and votes are worth more than others in the ACT Party’s estimation. I congratulate the rest of the House on moving to take this Dickensian defence off the statute book by the end of this evening.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) : The Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill amends the Crimes Act 1961 to abolish the partial defence of provocation. Section 169 of the Crimes Act provides that “Culpable homicide that would otherwise be murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who caused the death did so under provocation.” Section 170, an adjunct to section 169, would also be repealed by this bill.

It is fair to say that society has high expectations of the criminal law. We expect it to be efficient and effective, and, most important, to be fair: not just fair for defendants but fair for all participants, including the victims of crime and their families. There are times when we must look at the system with fresh eyes and ask whether the law is still serving the interests of those it was designed to protect. In this case, I think we all agree that the answer is no. The partial defence is notorious for allowing the defendant to tarnish the character of the victim at trial. In particular, it allows irrelevant factors such as the sexuality of the victim to be raised by defence counsel. This causes unnecessary distress to victims’ families and friends. Limiting any defence argument about provocation to the sentencing stage will greatly reduce the media scrutiny of a victim’s conduct.

Recently, the Government announced eight new initiatives to support the victims of serious crime. Four of those initiatives will provide further assistance to the families of homicide victims. I am pleased to add the repeal of the partial defence of provocation to the list of steps taken by this Government to improve the responsiveness of the criminal justice system to the needs of victims of crime and their families.

I am also confident that the repeal of provocation will strengthen, rather than dilute, the protection offered by the law to the victims of domestic violence. The defence is rarely relied upon by battered defendants and is more often used by the perpetrators of domestic violence to excuse their homicidal violence against a partner. In one example that I have been told of, provocation was successfully relied upon by a man who killed his partner after she broke a promise to him to not report a beating he had given her on the previous day. I can think of no clearer evidence that the partial defence of provocation allows the law to be used against those most in need of its protection.

The labelling of an intentional killing as something other than murder is inconsistent with the State’s obligation to protect the value of all human life. This is where I have a significant problem with the position of the ACT Party, because essentially it wants to have a different class of offender and a different class of victim. This comes from the party that protests that it is the party that argues for victims’ rights most of all. It says in one situation there is an excusable murder, and in another situation there is a murder that is not excusable, depending on the role or the circumstances of the victim. I find that to be completely abhorrent. I also find it to be inconsistent that the earlier speaker on this bill from the ACT Party, David Garrett, said that if provoked, for example, by a situation where he came across someone offending against his own child and he went on to take that person’s life, the member would be prepared to do the time for that. In fact, he said in his opening remarks that he would be prepared to kill for the sake of his child.

I say murder is murder. The intentional killing of one human being by another is murder. It is not manslaughter; it is nothing less than murder. We should be honest enough, in this fair and democratic society, to understand that and to expect to stand up and pay an account for doing exactly that. At a time when the Government is working to send the message that people must find ways to manage their anger other than through the use of violence, it is inappropriate that a defence that effectively rewards a homicidal loss of self-control should remain on our statute book. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) : I will begin my contribution to this debate by congratulating my colleague Charles Chauvel. He came to this Parliament already an advocate for repeal of the partial defence of provocation, and I know that he has worked tirelessly to see that law removed from our statute book. I pay tribute to him. He drafted the member’s bill that I had the privilege to have in my name for a short period of time, and I thank him and congratulate him on all that he has done.

I also acknowledge the Minister of Justice, the Hon Simon Power. He introduced the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill at the point where we were able to have such a bill introduced. I think it is important to say that, because various members of this House have made the point that we are having this debate now because of the Sophie Elliot case and the Ronald Brown case. That is not the case. In fact, the member’s bill that Charles Chauvel drafted for me was ready for the ballot some weeks before those cases hit the headlines. The reason that we deferred putting it in the ballot was to ensure that our participating in a public debate on the defence of provocation could not potentially give a lawyer grounds for appeal. As soon as we knew that those two cases would be dealt with, we felt that it was important that the bill not be submitted to the ballot until an appropriate time. I felt that the Minister introduced this bill in a very timely fashion as soon as he was in a position to do so. I pay tribute to him as well.

I also pay tribute to the chairman of the Justice and Electoral Committee, Chester Borrows. I think he has presented an extremely compelling argument to this House throughout the whole of the debate on this bill. With his experience in the police force and in the legal profession, I think he has brought a very useful contribution to the debate, but I also think he should be congratulated on his personal knowledge and his understanding of the issues.

I do not normally do this—this sounds terrible—but I want to thank Simon Bridges as well. I thought he gave an incredibly sensitive and thoughtful speech, and Jacinda Ardern and I gave him big ups before. I want him to know that it was very moving. I thank him on behalf of all of those whose memories of their loved ones have been ruined, in may respects, by the people who murdered them claiming this defence. I thought he added a very, very powerful message tonight.

I will follow on from some of my colleagues and say that I regret that we could not speak with one voice in Parliament tonight. I think that would have been the best way that we could have offered something to the families of Sophie Elliot and Ronald Brown. I was asked during the Committee stage of this bill whether I had children. No, I do not have children. The reason I was asked whether I had children was not to question whether I would be prepared to die for my child; it was to question whether I would be prepared to kill for my child. Even though I do not have children, there are people whom I would die for, but, no, there is no one whom I would kill for, because I do not believe that it is my right to kill another, to intentionally take a person’s life from him or her.

As my colleague Chris Carter pointed out, the ACT Party has disgracefully employed a dog whistle technique in this House tonight. Those members use the hypothetical example of a father responding to a direct threat to a child—to a child being abused or attacked. That was the example we had given to us—a hypothetical case. Not one case in the litany of cases presented by two Law Commission reports—not one case—mirrors the hypothetical example. Why? Because not one such case would see a lawyer recommending pleading provocation; he or she would go for complete acquittal. That is the point I am making. The lawyer would argue that the father was incapable of forming intent. I ask members to tell me if they could find a jury that would convict a father in those circumstances.

This defence is not about those cases. This defence is about men who determine that the anger they feel about being approached by somebody of a different sexual orientation is grounds for them to take that person’s life, or that the subsequent behaviour of a former partner, former wife, or former girlfriend, even—their former partners’ choosing to be with somebody else, or not considering that their sexual prowess is up to it, as it were—somehow justifies their taking their former partners’ lives, and, often, the lives of the new men in their lives, as well. That was the example we had from Simon Bridges. That is what this defence has been used for, and no amount of sophistry from the ACT Party will change that.

The law change is not happening because of the Sophie Elliot case or the Ronald Brown case, but we would pay tribute to their memories by passing it unanimously. I believe that in this House we have a responsibility to keep our statute book up to date. This defence is past its use-by date. I commend this bill to the House.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa. I thank all of those who have contributed their kōrero tonight. I find it a bit strange to come back to the House today. I have been away all day at a tangi for a young man, Hāwea Vercoe, who was taken just a couple of days ago in Whakatāne. We are talking about provocation, and I do not know what provocation caused that young man’s death, but he lost his life at a very young age and leaves behind a young family. A couple of hundred people were at his marae today. It is a bit difficult to come back to the House and to think of him, and to also think of the stories that other members have provided as background information this afternoon and this evening. Nō reira, kia ora tātou katoa.

As others have said tonight, the aim of the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill is to amend the Crimes Act in order to abolish the partial defence of provocation. I was thinking of how we would describe this concept in te reo rangatira, in te reo Māori. “Whakakārangirangi” is to provoke. Or we might refer to “te mura o te ahi”, the heat of passion. There are concepts that refer to an out-of-control state of being, like wairangi, which is the losing of all self-discipline—a state of mental disorder and chaos that leads to an offence.

In the language of the street, though, provocation is a term that is associated with the myth most commonly associated with the attitude that he or she asked for it. In other words, possibly the way that a woman looks, the clothes that she is wearing, the location that she is visiting, the activity that she is involved with, the time of the day when she is out, and the look in her eye are all, apparently, sometimes valid reasons for taking advantage of her. The Māori Party states categorically that no one asks to be raped, no one asks to be abused, and no one asks to be killed. Nothing—I repeat, nothing—that a victim does, says, or wears is any justification at all for an offence.

It is absolutely appropriate to be debating this bill on the day after White Ribbon Day, an international day of action on which we wear white ribbons to show that we do not condone violence towards women. In celebration of our families and our universal hope for their peace and safekeeping, we will today take out the partial defence that has been used for the ultimate violence, the violence of murder.

As other speakers have noted, provocation is a partial defence that, when successful, can reduce a charge of murder to manslaughter. In effect, that means in practice that the charge laid against an offender can be reduced from murder to manslaughter if the offender can prove that the circumstances were enough to deprive him or her of self-control, and that this induced the offender to commit murder.

We were particularly persuaded by the logic of the Human Rights Commission, which acknowledged that at the heart of the defence of provocation is the need to balance conflicting sets of human rights: the rights to life, to justice, and to a fair trial. The Human Rights Commission considers that the interests of victims’ families are of particular relevance, and that this bill protects and respects their dignity. We were also interested in the views of the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges. The collective stated unequivocally that it is unacceptable for this defence to be used by people who have struck out in anger. All that it does is to reward a lack of self-control by enabling an intentional killing to be characterised as something other than murder.

In the experience of the victims of family violence, they have not benefited from this defence, at all. Indeed, perversely, the defence has been used more often and more successfully by the perpetrators of family violence against their victims. We all know that reality, having observed the highly televised ordeal of the family, the whānau, who had to suffer the indignity of witnessing their loved one being subjected to a horrific trial in which the one who had incurred the greatest injustice was unable to take the stand in defence. Her voice had been silenced and her truth was unheard, while the offender had the luxury of the court of public opinion in which to put forward his version of events. I agree with Lianne Dalziel, who said that the media fascination cum obsession with recent trials was certainly bordering on disrespectfulness towards the families who have suffered the humiliation of hearing their loved ones being insulted and degraded by an offender’s defence.

In our consultation with Māori working in the law profession, we found that there was support for repealing the defence of provocation, provided that something is written into the Sentencing Act for judges to take account of provocation in sentencing and, in doing so, to have regard to an offender’s special characteristics when assessing whether that person was likely to have been provoked. We sought advice about the process by which we might make an amendment to the Sentencing Act 2002 to add the statement “and any special characteristics” when judges are considering circumstances such as provocation for sentencing after a conviction for murder has been given. It appears, however, that such an amendment is outside of the scope of this bill, and is, therefore, out of order and unable to be tabled. In effect, the bill is very narrowly focused; it simply repeals the provocation defence. To amend the Sentencing Act is to extend the scope of the bill, which is not possible under the Standing Orders.

Notwithstanding that advice, we suggest that the cultural characteristics of a person should be brought into account when making the assessment for a sentence. We are aware that some things that are not hugely offensive for the average person might be highly offensive for a particular offender because of their particular Māori, Islamic, or other cultural background. We recall that section 16 of the Criminal Justice Act 1985 allowed an offender’s supporter to present information at sentencing about an offender’s ethnic or cultural background, and about the way that it may have related to the offending and the way that it may help to avoid future offending, as well. It may well be useful to look again at the application of that provision.

I acknowledge the initiative taken by Lianne Dalziel—tēnā koe—Charles Chauvel, and Simon Power working together across the House on such an important change to the legislation. We in the Māori Party are proud to stand with the other parties and say that there is no excuse for violence. Whether it be the questioning of sexual performance, homosexual advances, the lifestyle, the clothes, or the way of being, there is no excuse for violence, and provocation most certainly is no excuse, not even as a partial defence for murder. The Māori Party is pleased to support this bill. Kia ora tātou.

DAVID GARRETT (ACT) : I stand as the representative of the only party opposing this bill, and I am happy to so.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Shame!

DAVID GARRETT: Well, that party is shameful for attacking me personally and questioning my motives and my commitment to victims. I will leave others to judge that.

The irony of today is that I was a great believer in majoritarian democracy, which basically means that the majority, and certainly the vast majority, knows best. In deciding what ACT members were going to do with regard to this bill, I read widely. I looked at a quote from Benjamin Franklin. He said this about democracy: “Democracy is a vote between a two wolves and a lamb about what to have for dinner.” I am quite happy to be the contrarian here and say that what the majority might think on this occasion, or any other, might not necessarily be correct. We have seen in recent days, amusingly for ACT members, that the contrarian mentality—some would say the denier mentality—about global warming might just be right. So we will see.

As I said in my first reading speech and in my speech during the Committee stage, it is easy to hold up Clayton Weatherston’s case as an example of all that is bad in the justice system. As I said a few minutes ago, the central point is that the defence failed. The jury saw him for the scumbag that he is. This bill does not entirely remove the power to determine provocation. There have been some disingenuous statements about that. What the bill does is shift the consideration of the argument for provocation from juries, as arbiters of fact, to judges. It makes provocation a potential factor to be considered by a judge under section 102 of the Sentencing Act in deciding whether to depart from the presumption and impose a term less than life imprisonment because to do otherwise would be manifestly unjust.

That Sentencing Act is the same Act that that automatically, in a Kafkaesque or Orwellian way, reduces sentences to just one-third of what is handed down by the judge. The Sentencing Act itself is manifestly unjust. It lets persons who are given 10 years in jail serve 3½. The bill before us suggests that we do not trust the community to judge its peers, when, on the evidence quoted by Ms Dalziel and confirmed by me, juries have shown themselves on the whole to be more than capable of fulfilling that role and deciding whether the partial defence is justified.

Members on the other side of the House have tried to portray this defence—and I am sad to say that Chester Borrows, whom I respect greatly, has done this also—as synonymous with a gay panic defence. Well, that is simply not true. One successful case involved a female victim of long-term domestic violence. Another involved the son of a terminally ill woman. No one has mentioned tonight—and I am not surprised, sadly—the case of Epifania Suluape, a Samoan woman who killed her husband after years of physical and emotional abuse. She had been cheated on countless times, mocked, and taunted by her former partner, who was a noted artist, while she stayed at home in Māngere and looked after the kids. She had been cut with a machete, and even infected with a venereal disease.

Finally, the partner said he was going off with his latest floozie, and she asked him whether that was the case. He laughed at her, and she hit him with a hammer and killed him. The jury decided that she was provoked. The judge disagreed and said there were no significant mitigating factors and that the offence bordered on murder. [Interruption] No—no Labour members mentioned Epifania Suluape. Her sentence of 7½ years for manslaughter was reduced to 5 years on appeal. But had the trial judge listened to the jury in the first place, there would have been no need for an appeal. To me and the ACT party, it makes sense to trust a jury of one’s peers rather than a judge in terms of a decision about whether provocation is an acceptable factor or defence.

All of us in the House want to avoid a repeat of the Clayton Weatherston trial. What a terrible spectacle it was! But a law change would not and will not avoid that. All it will do is move provocation from a defence to be put to the jury to a factor to be put before the judge at sentencing. Why would any offender now, even if it is fancifully imaginable, not put the factor of provocation? We will not be sparing the families of this country. We will still be subjecting them to the kind of thing that the Elliott family had to put up with—it will just be in front of a judge rather than a jury.

The Law Society and I—we are somewhat unusual bedfellows—would be more inclined to support a law change if we replaced it something else, such as a diminished responsibility defence. Other common law countries that have abolished this defence have done so only when it has been replaced by an alternate defence like that of diminished responsibility, battered woman’s syndrome, or temporary insanity. The Law Society says—and, as I have said, I have checked with the submitters—that its position remains the same—before we tamper and remove a defence that has been a part of our law for centuries, we must replace it with something else, such as diminished responsibility.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: Oh God!

DAVID GARRETT: I am quoting the Law Society, I say to Ms Dalziel, so she should not groan. That member is normally a big fan of the Law Society. Well, I am agreeing with it on this occasion.

One of those submitters said that if the provocation defence was to be abolished “juries might convict on the alternative charge of manslaughter based on their sympathy for the defendant rather than on rational grounds.” Another learned prosecutor said that there is a real possibility of the number of hung juries increasing as they become split over whether those who would argue provocation should be found guilty of the offence of murder.

Finally, I noted in my first reading speech that this bill needed to be considered by a select committee. That is why ACT members voted for it at first reading. I said in my first reading speech that I hoped it would receive at least as many submissions as the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill, which had more than 1,000. I ask members to guess how many submissions were received on this bill. Mr Chauvel loosely talked about a majority of submissions. Well, there were 14 submissions—14 submissions on a defence that has been part of the common law for centuries.

I urged the House to calm down, take a breath, and think things through. Well, that will clearly not happen. I believe that if we abolish the defence of provocation as we are about to, we will create a whole host of other problems instead. I am happy to be the representative of the contrarian party in the House and vote against this bill.

PAUL QUINN (National) : I thank the National whip for allowing me to take a short call on the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill, because I want to say a few words. I want to record that at the start of the process, notwithstanding that I was always going to support this bill simply on the basis that it is a Government bill, I had some personal reservations about it. Those reservations were particularly captured in the contribution of the leader of the ACT Party.

When I entered into the select committee process, I did so with some trepidation about my personal views and the fact that this was a Government bill. I am pleased to be able to stand here tonight and say that through the Justice and Electoral Committee and particularly because of the contribution and guidance of the chairman of that committee, Chester Borrows, and also David Parker, I was able to be persuaded, in a personal sense, to support this bill in its totality. A lot of my change of mind has been captured in this debate, but particularly in the poignant contribution of Chris Carter and also Lianne Dalziel’s final contribution. On that basis, I just wanted to say those few words. It gives me great personal pleasure to support this bill.

KEVIN HAGUE (Green) : One of the vagaries of urgency is that sometimes one is not in precisely the place one would like to be. It is with regret that I missed the second reading and Committee stage of the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill. It was a huge privilege and pleasure for me to be able to stand in the first reading debate to make a contribution. I want to thank my colleague Paul Quinn for giving me the opportunity to collect my thoughts before standing here tonight.

Te Ururoa Flavell spoke in the third reading debate of the fact that this third reading comes just one day after White Ribbon Day. One of the things we do on White Ribbon Day is comment on, and take a stand against, a culture of violence in our society. Today we have an opportunity to do just that again. A culture of violence is one that we should oppose and we must do just that in this House today. I know also that my colleague Catherine Delahunty has spoken about a culture of homophobia. Members may recall that my first reading speech referred in the strongest possible terms to that culture and the requirement and duty upon all of us to take a stand against homophobia also. It is a great pleasure for me to note that this House chooses to do so on this day.

It sounds as if I have missed some great speeches, and to my colleagues who have made those I am sorry about that; I will read the Hansard and watch the tape with the greatest of interest. One of the interesting things for me about this issue is the culture change that has occurred. I spoke about that culture of violence and culture of homophobia, but I well recall that it was not so long ago that raising this issue would have met with the fiercest resistance. In listening to what I have heard of the debate tonight and the discussion around this law change in our wider community over the past few months, I draw a clear conclusion that there has been a sea change in culture on this issue. That is not only a sign of hope on this issue and in our capacity to challenge homophobia and violence, but it is also a wider sign of hope for other changes and for the possibility of holding out for important change even when it appears hopeless.

I started my first reading speech with a toll of those gay men who have lost their lives and whose assailants have been found not guilty of murder because of the reprehensible defence of provocation. Tonight I again pay tribute to the memory of those men. I also want to thank some members of the select committee and some other members of this House who have campaigned on this issue. In particular, I think of my colleagues and friends Lianne Dalziel and Charles Chauvel, who have led the way on this issue.

I also pay tribute and give thanks to other members of the select committee, in particular Chester Borrows. It was kind of him to allow me to participate in the select committee proceedings, and I found him to be an excellent and fair-minded chair, one who has justice in his heart. I also want to say thanks to the other members of the select committee, from all parties. I note in particular Simon Bridges’ contribution on the select committee, which I found to be really helpful, and I acknowledge Paul Quinn’s comments just now. I think the stories of those of us who have listened to arguments and changed our minds are great stories, and they are stories that should give hope to this House and to our nation. I also make what may seem a surprising acknowledgment of David Garrett. In the first reading debate I particularly appreciated the comments and the spirit that David showed in supporting the move to allow this to go to the select committee. I know that, even though he has spoke passionately in this debate about his opposition to the passage of this bill, he holds that view sincerely. I respect him for that, albeit I profoundly disagree with that view.

This bill removes one of the most loathsome provisions that stand in all of New Zealand law. It is a provision that provides for a charade in which the lives of gay men—and I unashamedly speak again about this one particular aspect of the law—are considered second-class and not worthy of the full protection of the law. It is a shameful law, and it is a credit to this House that we stand tonight in its repeal. Thank you.

Hon KATE WILKINSON (Minister of Labour) : I move, That the Remuneration Authority Amendment Bill be now read a third time. I conclude very, very quickly by thanking the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—its chair, David Bennett, and its members—for the prompt and efficient passage of this bill through the committee. I also thank the House for unanimously endorsing it, at least to this level.

As we have explained, this bill will enable the Remuneration Authority to take into account adverse economic conditions and will allow it, as a result, to set remuneration at a rate lower than it would have otherwise determined. The bill aligns the Remuneration Authority’s reporting requirements and makes some minor and technical amendments. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) : I see that the only omission members made tonight in the Committee stage was not inserting a Supplementary Order Paper to ensure that temporary Speakers and temporary Chairs of Committee could be recompensed for the very hard work they have been required to do this evening. I think that is an oversight on behalf of the Government and the Opposition in that particular respect.

I join with the Minister of Labour, the Hon Kate Wilkinson, in thanking the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for its work. The truth is that these are never easy issues to deal with. Parliament is required to make a decision on these things, and the truth is we are on a hiding to nothing whenever we try to move in this area. But the intention of members in this particular case has been to do the right thing. The motion that the House moved earlier this year was taken up by the Remuneration Authority, and we are now passing a law to ensure that the conditions of the country in terms of the economy will be one of the factors considered by the authority in determining the remuneration of a small group of New Zealanders who are paid a lot more than the ordinary person.

I think that the privilege we have in serving in this House and being servants of the public means that we have to be mindful that many of the people who send us here to advance their views and values, regardless of how they may vote, are paid a lot less than we are and work equally as hard. Those values will now be reflected in the Remuneration Authority Act, and that can only be a good thing. The non-partisan nature of the passage of this bill shows how serious parliamentarians are about serving all of the communities that we represent. The Opposition commends the bill for its third reading.

• Bill read a third time.