Dean Jacqui: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dean Jacqui: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 31 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:4137. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 The Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill is just a small bill. It really makes one change and that is to require judges to make an assault on a police officer or a corrections officer an aggravating factor in the sentencing of that person who has been accused. But I think it is a bill that yet again highlights this Government’s approach to the police to the corrections service and indeed to their personnel because Minister Judith Collins when she was the Minister of Police and Minister of Corrections very firmly said that she valued the police and she backed the police as Minister and backed corrections. I think that in the last 4 years and I have been associated with the Law and Order Committee for perhaps only two of those years I have noticed the police and corrections responding to that backing. There have been a number of pieces of legislation that have gone through this House and this is one of them—this is another one of those—that expressly confirm this Government’s backing of our police and of our corrections service. 
Further to that I would say that the Law and Order Committee has had the privilege so far this year of visiting several corrections facilities and seeing for ourselves the work and the challenges that our corrections officers face in facilities all around New Zealand. It is hard work. They are dealing with people who do not necessarily wish to be confined who do not necessarily wish to be confined for a period of months or years and they have to deal with those people on a daily ongoing basis—and so too for the police. When the Law and Order Committee which is a cross-party committee with colleagues from around the House visited the Counties-Manukau community policing initiative we could see for ourselves that our police are highly motivated as are our corrections staff to do the best job they can for our community. 
So it is the responsibility of us in Parliament to return the favour if you like and say that we back the police and corrections. When as happens there is an assault on a corrections officer as there was within the last couple of weeks—a serious assault I believe—and there are frequent assaults on our police personnel as well if the District Court judge can say to the alleged offender in sentencing that this assault is an aggravating factor that shows that this Parliament and this country do back the police and do back corrections. 
I was very pleased to be part of the consideration of this bill. It is really interesting and regrettable that the number of assaults against police officers and corrections officers has been increasing quite alarmingly over the last few years. For example in 2008-09 there was a total of 2481 recorded assaults on police officers and of those 412 were serious assaults. This is something that our police officers and corrections officers have to deal with all the time. In this bill this Government—and I do hope it enjoys wide support through the House—and this Parliament are saying to those officers “We back you. We have your back.” Those officers are doing a great job. Thank you.