Faafoi Kris: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Faafoi Kris: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 08 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:225. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on the second reading of the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill and offer happy Chinese New Year to Mr Bridges as well. As has been said in this debate already police officers and prison officers do a job that few of us would want to do. When there is danger or harm we are probably more inclined to run away from it but it is their job and their duty to head towards it to protect Kiwis to protect our communities. It is a job that is not the highest paying job in the Civil Service but it is a job that demands bravery guts and a deft touch too with the communities when they are trying to prevent crimes with a feather rather than with a baton. In their line of duty they can pay the ultimate price. I have a family member who is a prison guard. I do not really like the fact that he is doing that job but it is his choice and I want to make sure that we take every opportunity to make sure he is safe in his job. So I think in terms of a very personal touch we as a Parliament have a real duty to take real measures within our powers to make sure we ensure the jobs of our police and our prison officers are as safe as possible so they can keep our communities in peace. 
In fact we know that their jobs are becoming much more dangerous. I have read in the regulatory impact statement that in the 5 years since the 2004-05 fiscal year serious assaults on police officers have gone up somewhere around 40 percent and on prison officers around 120 percent. So let me state quite clearly that we share the Government’s will to make the role of prison officers and police officers much safer but we do not share the opinion that this bill that is going through the House at the moment will make a real difference. There is no evidence that this bill will be a real deterrent to those who take the action of attacking police or prison officers. But there is some evidence that the judiciary has already taken into account the fact that these assaults are carried out on police and prison officers when they are sentencing. Earlier in this debate Jonathan Young took a call and he said that we on this side of the House thought this bill was unimportant. Well he is quite wrong. It is very important and it is our role to stand here in this Parliament and talk and debate about the issue to make sure we are making a real difference at the front line. So we do think this legislation is important. That is why we are saying that we will support it but we do have some serious reservations with it. 
We do not think the bill goes far enough to tackle the real cause of these attacks that are happening on our prison and police officers. I think Lianne Dalziel mentioned yesterday during the same debate that we should be looking at alcohol reform to make sure our police officers are not getting into these situations where they are being attacked because I am sure the taking of drugs and the use of alcohol is a big factor when police officers are being attacked. Jonathan Young said in one breath that the Government wants to send a signal but in another breath he said that the attackers have no regard for the rule of law at all. So that does not quite marry up in my opinion. If he thinks these guys are going to completely disregard the rule of law bringing in this bill is not going to change their behaviour so we think that he has made our argument for us. Will it be a meaningful deterrent? We do not think so. What we do need to do is make sure we are addressing the root problem and preventing the situations where officers get into a situation where they could be assaulted.  
Mr Young also quoted a case from the Police Association’s  
Police News 
 December issue. It was around an incident in Christchurch where two police officers got shot and unfortunately a police dog got killed. Gage was killed in July 2010 and Christopher Graham Smith the gunman was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment for his reckless attack on the police officers and the dog. Smith was handed a non-parole term of 7 years meaning he will have to serve half his sentence before being considered for parole. I believe that when we are talking about sentences of this length—14 years—someone is considered for parole after a third of that term so we think that in this case the judiciary has actually taken action. It has said: “You have attacked two police officers you have killed a police dog.” and they have made that a mitigating factor when the sentence has been handed down. When he tried to appeal the judge in this case said that Mr Smith had “offended against people who were protecting the community and he had not expressed enough remorse to warrant reducing the sentence.” So the judiciary is already taking action. When people are presented in our courts who have attacked our police officers and who have attacked our prison officers the judiciary is making sure that it is sending the signal that the Government wants to send at the moment to the community to say that these people are the guards of the community. If you attack them it is sending the signal that that is not good enough and you will receive a harsher punishment than you would have for an attack on a normal citizen. I think from that example we can have confidence that our judiciary is taking action. 
We have had—and I stand to be corrected here—only one case of a prison officer who has been killed in the line of duty and that was Jason Palmer who was killed at Spring Hill prison in May 2010. He was killed with a single punch; he was felled by an inmate Latu Kepu. For the killing Kepu was sentenced to 6 years and 4 months of jail on top of the nearly 3 years he was serving for another crime. Kepu appealed this sentence saying it was manifestly excessive but our Court of Appeal disagreed. The three judges in that case said: “The sentences to be imposed in [these] cases must demonstrate to other prisoners that the courts will not tolerate unprovoked attacks on prison officers.” and that “Kepu’s offending had the seriously aggravating factor that it was a deliberate and premeditated attack on a prison officer who was carrying out his duties within a prison environment.” That is another case where our judiciary is already doing the job that the Government wants to set out in this bill. Our judiciary is already taking this action. Although we do support this bill because we want to make sure we are standing next to our prison officers and police officers we do not think that this bill does enough in terms of making any real meaningful difference to make sure that our prison officers and our police officers are as safe as they possibly can be. 
So where does that leave us? We all agree on one thing: we want to make sure that our prison officers and our police officers are protected. They are doing a job that none of us would probably want to do looking after the worst in society making sure that the worst in society who are incarcerated are rehabilitating themselves in trying conditions. But I do not think and our party certainly does not think that this bill is going to make any difference to making sure that those people who put themselves in harm’s way to protect us are safe. I do not think it is going to make any real difference. So I hope that although this bill is going to go through and we will support it and it will become law at some stage we can actually get our heads together to make sure we are making a real difference. Sure there is politics involved in this but there is also the safety of people on our front line who do not get paid as much as us to do a job that is much worse than the job that we have. We support this bill through to the next stage.