Chauvel Charles: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 24 July 2007. Volume:640;Page:10636. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise in the third readings of the legislation arising from the Criminal Justice Reform Bill as this legislation was titled when it began its life. As the Minister observed and as the previous speaker also noted that bill has been split into five bills: the Sentencing Council Bill the Bail Amendment Bill the Sentencing Amendment Bill (No 3) the Parole Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Amendment Bill.  
It is a pleasure to be a member of a Labour-led Government committed to a society where all families young and old can be safe and secure. Of course central to this commitment is having a criminal justice system that protects our communities by more effectively rehabilitating offenders and by making better use of our prisons. It is great to see Mr Ardern on the opposite benches nodding his agreement because even he can see that this is bold and enlightened legislation based on the evidence and on the careful reports and research of the Law Commission.  
Clearly the recent increase in prison inmate numbers in New Zealand is no longer sustainable financially or socially. New Zealand’s prison population has increased sharply over the last decade and it is forecast to increase further over the next 5 years. This peak has been reached even though—and this is an important point—the rate of recorded crime is at its lowest level in over 20 years. That is an achievement of which I and members on this side of the House are extremely proud. None the less we do have to do something about these increasing prison numbers. So it was that the Law Commission in its report  
Sentencing Guidelines and Parole Reform 
 recommended significant changes to our justice system not only to cut inmate numbers but to make sentencing more transparent and more effective in rehabilitating and punishing inmates.  
The Government as the Minister noted based its Effective Interventions package announced last August on the commission’s recommendations. This legislation—this series of bills—puts the Effective Interventions programme in place. That package contains measures that are significant and far-reaching and once passed the bills under consideration will create a much better justice and corrections system in New Zealand.  
I want to concentrate my remarks on the Sentencing Council. I know that the headlines will be all about the other bills which are more sensational in the short term—and probably many of the speeches will be about them as well—but I think that the Sentencing Council will be the most important and far-reaching of the reforms that we are considering in the House today. The legislation that constitutes the council is similar in fact to the legislation that constitutes similar entities in comparable jurisdictions such as England and Victoria. The prime reason that it has been deemed necessary to introduce a creature such as the Sentencing Council is the extremely regrettable situation we have in New Zealand at the moment whereby people with similar situations who come before different courts in different parts of the country or before different judges can actually receive different types of sentences. In the District Court in particular where 90 percent of all criminal sentencing occurs there simply are no guidelines issued by the Court of Appeal to those inferior courts for many of the offences they are required to adjudicate on. 
 So the judges try to do their best. We saw the trend as revealed in the Law Commission research that when people charged with car theft come before judges in Hamilton they are very likely to go to jail whereas similar offenders in other parts of the country are very likely at the moment not to receive a custodial sentence. How can anybody defend that position? It is scandalous that people who commit crimes of a similar nature and who have broadly similar circumstances should receive radically different measures of justice in terms of the punishment meted out to them simply because they come before different courts or different judges in New Zealand. The excellent thing about this legislation is that it will put an end to that practice and it ought to guarantee that all New Zealanders in all parts of New Zealand coming before all courts receive broadly similar justice. That is something that all New Zealanders should be pleased and proud about.  
The legislation is excellent. It is welcomed by a clear majority of the senior judiciary and also by the judges in the District Courts and by reputable commentators in the criminal justice sector. Finally as I have said we will have a consistency of sentencing in like cases across New Zealand.  
Christopher Finlayson 
: Who? 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: It is interesting to hear one of the members opposite asking who those commentators are. I would have thought he listened to the evidence that came before the Justice and Electoral Committee where judges and commentators—[ 
Interruption 
] It is a shame if he did not because the evidence before the select committee was overwhelming from those who knew what they were talking about—particularly the practitioners and the deliverers of justice; the judges themselves—as to the overwhelming need for this measure.  
It is interesting to look at this legislation in some detail. I listened with some interest to Simon Power’s contribution. He told us that he would outline the three objections that the National Party has to the Sentencing Council; I heard him outline only two. One of them was that in his words the council would become the “district health board of sentencing in New Zealand”—that somehow this Parliament would lose its accountability for sentencing. That is just not right. Clause 6 of the bill is very clear that the Sentencing Council is to be “an independent statutory body” and there is a very careful process set out in the legislation by which this House and its organs have the ability to scrutinise the work of the council as it goes forward.  
The Law Commission is making sure that the Sentencing Council has a corpus of jurisdiction before it right from the start in the form of the inaugural guidelines. Those inaugural guidelines will like the other guidelines and groups of guidelines that come before the House be subject to what will be called a disapplication procedure. Standing Orders will have to rise to the challenge of meeting this procedure but essentially what it envisages is that after wide consultation by the Sentencing Council a guideline or a group of guidelines will come before a subject select committee of the Parliament and be subject to further consideration in the—hopefully—calm and less partisan environment of a select committee. If that subject select committee is not impressed with the guidelines or part of the guidelines it will be able to recommend to this House that they be disapplied in whole or in part. That actually enhances parliamentary scrutiny of the way in which sentencing is to occur. It also enhances public input into the process. So if anything the public ought to be more satisfied rather than less satisfied with the sentencing process once we have this process in place.  
The other criticism voiced by Mr Power was that somehow there would be an impingement on the independence of the judiciary. That is just not right either. Not only is the council to be an independent statutory body but it is to have a majority of judges on its membership—five of them. Those judges will be a Court of Appeal judge a High Court judge two District Court judges and the chair of the Parole Board—by convention a judge—all appointed on the nomination of the respective head of bench by the Chief Justice of New Zealand and the chair who is to be a judicial member will have a casting vote. So there can be no impingement on the independence of the judiciary given the clear scheme of the legislation.  
This is excellent legislation. As I have said it provides for proper consistency and transparency in sentencing guidelines and parole guidelines. There are procedures in place to guarantee the independence of the body but at the same time on a complementary basis to enhance the participation of this Parliament in the formation of sentencing guidelines that will be fair and consistent across the country.  
In conclusion I would like to pay tribute to the Law Commission—in particular to the president Sir Geoffrey Palmer and the deputy president Dr Warren Young—for its hard work in coming up with the report; to the officials who advised the select committee; and to the chair of the committee who ensured that there was a careful but expeditious consideration of the provisions of this legislation.