Radhakrishnan PriyancaPRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Madam Assistant Speaker I rise to take a call on the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill the title of which is potentially longer than the substance of the bill. I actually felt for the member Alastair Scott. As the member Kieran McAnulty said I'm not standing up here to have a go either but it was actually quite heart-wrenching to see the member's speech which was a display of an abject lack of conviction in his own bill. It was very sad to see because you know all of us as members of this House when we put members' bills into that ballot wait for them to be called. They're often pieces of legislation that we are passionate about and it was quite sad to see that complete lack of passion.But anyway I want to begin by addressing a couple of comments that were made by members opposite one of which was the rhetoric tough on crime" that we've heard a number of National Party members talk about. Apparently increasing a penalty from two years to five years is them being absolutely tough on crime and stamping down on crime. Frankly I find that a little bit insulting for two reasons—for many reasons but I'll go into two. One is that recent evidence has it that Mount Wellington which is in the Maungakiekie electorate where I'm based is the burglary capital of New Zealand. The Indian communities where I do a lot of work and a number of members which I have engagement with are often at the forefront of crime by virtue of the fact that they own dairies and work in small businesses that are targeted.Frankly I think that wasting the House's time and the Justice Committee's time with this bill which is in essence about one and a half sentences long is a travesty because there's so much more that needs to be addressed and this will not do it. It will not keep our communities safer. New Zealand taxpayers collectively pay over $110000 to house a prisoner for one year. If this bill were to pass into law the additional three years' imprisonment that it proposes will actually add $330000 to the public bill per offender. I want people who may be watching this to let that sink in a little bit.We've heard that rhetoric of the Opposition members being tough on crime. We've heard the narrative that they are sound economic managers but does this sound like good economic management to anybody? It doesn't to me definitely. Prisons have been referred to as being extremely expensive training grounds for further offending. There was a recent report by Sir Peter Gluckman that said this. It also said that increasing the length of sentences can increase the likelihood that an offender will reoffend and potentially to a greater degree. So not only is this unsound economic management but it is actually not going to work either.What actually works much better—and there's extensive research on this—than increasing sentences and tougher sentences is the likelihood of offenders being caught which is why this Government is focusing on measures like increasing the police force by 1800 with a strong focus which was talked about on community policing. It's not that we're not tough on crime—that's actually just scaremongering. It's that we want to do what works. We want to do what actually keeps our communities safe holds offenders to account and provides victims with protection. We don't just want to stand here and do what sounds popular what potentially makes a few of us feel better—that's not what we are here for—but that's exactly what this bill will do. It's not going to achieve what it sets out to achieve. The other way to look at this bill or the purpose of this bill would be to see perhaps whether it addresses the fact that there is a crime wave and that there are a number of people out there busily running around providing explosives. We've heard that from a number of members who've spoken previously this evening but that's just not true. In the last I think it was at least 11 years if not longer we've only seen three people who have fallen into that category basically. That doesn't sound to me like it's a massive area that we should be focusing so much time and energy on. So the second assumption fails as well. There isn't a massive crime wave of people providing explosives where we absolutely have to increase the penalty from two years to five years. That falls flat as well.Now the third assumption posed by this bill is that it needs to be somehow brought in line with other similar legislation and that there's some sort of an inconsistency in the law that needs to be fixed by the tweak that's proposed by this bill. Now section 272 of the principal Act the Crimes Act contains an intent element. I think this is the crux of Mr Scott's speech on this—that section 272 contains an intent element. Now there are two other sections that deal with similar offences and so on: section 202A of the Crimes Act and section 51 of the Arms Act. But I think the point that Mr Scott was making was that the increase in penalty would fall in line with those.But there are a few different issues with that way of thinking or tweaking one piece of legislation and not looking at how it fits with the entirety of the legislation that we have. The Ministry of Justice has come out and said that it is difficult to make direct comparisons between offences that have different objectives that have different essential elements and that have different burdens of proof that are involved as well and different penalty levels. And I'll go into that a little bit.There are justifications. Justice officials have come to the select committee and at this juncture I'll just mention that it was great to be part of the select committee that considered this bill. So we heard from justice officials on this. There are justifications for those other sections to have higher penalties—for example section 202A of the Crimes Act. The first limb of that basically is that it poses a much higher severity of harm to people. It's about offensive weapons and it includes explosives as well and it's about those explosives being in a public place—so potentially more people are harmed by that. It also talks about people who have no legal authority or reasonable excuse for having that which is absent from section 272 which is what we are discussing today.What that really means is that increasing the penalty in section 272 from two years to five years would potentially mean that someone who has a legitimate reason for carrying that explosive—perhaps they work as a courier perhaps they work in a mine; they have a legitimate reason for having that—could actually be penalised by this and potentially even more so if it was increased from two years to five years. Section 202A(4)(b) of the Crimes Act requires evidence of prima facie "intention to use [the offensive weapon] to commit an offence involving bodily injury or the threat or fear of violence."Actually one of the main points that justice officials have made is that you can't really tweak one bit of legislation without looking at the implications on other pieces of legislation. I'm just going to read this portion of the Ministry of Justice report because I think it lays it out quite well—it gives a really good example of what they mean when they say that: "An attempt to commit an offence generally carries not more than half the maximum penalty for the completed offence" and I think that makes logical sense. So if you actually do something that's one thing. If you have the intent to do something but you haven't actually done it then the penalty under the law is half—seems fair to me.By way of example of the point that they were trying to make section 54(2) of the Arms Act provides a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment for committing certain offences while in possession of an explosive. If the person attempts to commit that offence while in possession of an explosive but fails the maximum penalty that person could face under section 311 of the Crimes Act would be 2½ years of imprisonment. So that's half of the five years that they would have got if they'd actually gone through with that. Section 272 deals with the conduct that may not be sufficient to create criminal liability for an attempt. In relation to the previous example it would be perverse if the penalty under section 272 was actually double and so I cannot support this bill."