Little Andrew; Rurawhe AdrianHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I'm pleased to take a call on this bill and to say I agree with the member who's just resumed his seat Mark Mitchell to say the principles and motivating forces behind this bill are very very important. We call on our first responders—police ambulance workers other health workers and fire and emergency workers—and of course prison officers provided for in the bill to do some of the most dangerous work and deal with some of the most dangerous people we have in our community. We can think back to the incredibly courageous and heroic actions of those two police officers on 15 March who effected the arrest of the Christchurch mosque shooter. Think about this week and Monday this week where in three motor vehicle accidents on roads in New Zealand nine New Zealanders lost their lives. And who turned out to deal with the issue to deal with the trauma to mop up the pieces to get people who survived off to hospital to get the care? It was the police and the ambulance workers and in some cases fire and emergency workers as well. They do an incredible job and we owe it to them to afford them respect and dignity and—actually through a range of decisions not just law-making but resourcing—the protection that they need to do their job. We already do that in many respects. We give police officers powers that no other citizen has. We give ambulance workers the power to get to places in a hurry and do their job and do their work so they can save lives and get people to be treated carefully. We give prison officers powers inside prisons to deal with some of the most harmful people in our communities so they can keep us safe. So we thank them for that. I'm sure many of those people those professionals will say there's more we can do and we should be doing as much as we can. We support this bill in this first reading so that it can be examined closely by the select committee but the select committee will have questions to answer—questions that we want answers to. The fundamental question will be: what is it that this bill is adding that is not presently in our current law? When you have a look at the Crimes Act we see a number of sections that deal with violent acts against our first responders and emergency workers. So section 188 of the Crimes Act has the offence of wounding with intent. There are two different penalties: 14 years if you cause grievous bodily harm seven years if you cause injury. Section 189 Injuring with intent"—10 years if you cause serious injury five years lesser injury. Section 191 "Aggravated wounding or injury"—14 years and seven years depending on the extent of the harm or the injury. Section 192 "Aggravated assault"—and interestingly with section 192 of the Crimes Act there is a specific and separate provision for aggravated assault against constables in the execution of their duty. Then there's section 193 "Assault with intent to injure". So there are provisions there and the benefit of having a number of different provisions in the Crimes Act as front-line police officers will tell you is that you then have some flexibility and some choice about what you charge the offender with because the circumstances of offending will differ from one case to the next and you'll want police officers to have a range of different grades of offending that they can then lay a charge in relation to. Then we have the Sentencing Act which is a very important Act at the back end of administration of justice because it gives judges then the scope to weigh up a whole bunch of different factors to decide what is just in the circumstances of the offending. The sentencing principles laid out in section 8 of that Act lay out a number of things: "the gravity of the offending … including the degree of culpability"; the impact on the victim—absolutely important. There is no question that ambulance workers fire and emergency workers and the prison officers who are subject to assault—that can have a huge impact on the future career of that emergency professional. So those are factors that ought to be taken into account in sentencing if the offender is charged with a serious offence. You have the seriousness of the offence as a principle that has to be taken into account as well as the circumstances of the offender. That's what you do when you administer justice. Then section 9 has a whole list and a growing list of aggravating and mitigating factors and amongst the aggravating factors is—Mr Assistant Speaker you look like you're standing.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I apologise to the member but this is a five-minute call and it had 10 minutes on the clock."