Dyson Ruth: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — Third Reading 
Dyson Ruth: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:663;Page:11233] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I am very pleased to be able to stand in opposition to the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill. I am ashamed that Parliament is using its time to progress legislation that will not achieve one single point of what is described as being its aim. 
This bill will do nothing at all to reduce offending. If there was legislation before the House to reduce offending and make our families and communities safer there would be unanimous approval of it. This bill does nothing to reduce reoffending; something that we should all be very seriously concerned about. If the bill did something about reoffending it would receive unanimous support from this House. The bill does nothing at all to support the victims of crime which is something that the Minister who is now responsible for this legislation said she cared about when she spoke in this debate. If she does care about that why does her legislation not do anything to better support the victims of crime in our community? Then Labour would support it. The bill does nothing about that. That view is backed up by the advice from many of the officials although they were not able to give that advice directly to the Law and Order Committee. The bill does nothing to address the causes of crime. 
Simon Power the Minister of Justice who should have been responsible for this bill had a big get-together that was intended to look at the drivers of crime. He did it in a very inclusive way; he invited all sorts of people to that conference. He was serious about asking what the drivers of crime were what caused crime in our community and what we as a Parliament should do about it. Instead we got this load of drivel which frankly I think Simon Power is relieved not to be responsible for because he knows that it is an embarrassment to him his Government and the big get-together that he called to look at the drivers of crime. 
This bill offers false hope to victims and I think that is actually the most despicable thing about it. We as a Parliament should be upfront about the fact that if there is not enough support for people whom we care about we should agree to do more. Instead the Government offers this drivel driven by one of the biggest drivellers of all in terms of substantial policy the Sensible Sentencing Trust representative in our Parliament and it offers victims hope that will never be delivered on. I think that victims deserve better than that from our Parliament. 
I will now pick up on the process point that my colleague Grant Robertson raised during his contribution earlier this afternoon. It is an absolute outrage that the proper officials—the Ministry of Justice officials—who are entitled to give their opinion to the executive and to Parliament through the select committee process—were stopped by Minister Judith Collins from giving their advice on this bill to the Law and Order Committee. I have never heard of such a breach of rights in an open democratic parliamentary process. That was just extraordinary and members in this House should be outraged about it. Actually they should demand the Speaker’s consideration of that very point: that when members of the select committee asked for the proper Ministry of Justice officials to give advice to the select committee—they could have done it with other officials; that is a very common practice—the executive of the Government barred those officials from giving that advice. I think we have a right to obtain advice and we have a right to obtain competing advice if that is what the officials recommend. That is the advantage of having a Public Service. 
It is not surprising that that advice was stopped though. I will give the House an example of what Ministry of Justice officials said about this bill. They said it was unlikely to be consistent with the Government’s publicly announced policy regarding the drivers of crime. The Ministry of Justice said this legislation goes absolutely against what the Minister of Justice said was the Government’s policy intention in terms of the drivers of crime. The issue is not just that this legislation fails to be very competent or very robust; it goes against the stated Government policy outlined by Simon Power. It was not only justice officials who said that; Te Puni Kokiri the Police Treasury and the Department of Corrections have all said this is a rubbish bill driven by a—no they did not say it was driven by a rubbish member because they are high-quality public servants. But they said this bill would not achieve the purpose that the Minister has outlined: that it will not reduce offending or reoffending and it will not support the victims of crime. This bill is just a way of keeping ACT quiet. Well I wish the Government good luck on that particular point. 
I will talk about another group of people apart from the Ministry of Justice officials who were not consulted about this bill: the Ministry of Health officials. That ministry was not asked for its opinion on the implications of transferring large sections of the Crimes Act into this bill and completely redefining the nature of offending. Public health experts were not asked about the provision in the Crimes Act that has been moved into this “three strikes” bill. The public health advice would have been that including section 201 of the Crimes Act—the section referred to by the chair of the committee—which deals with infecting with disease sends entirely the wrong message to people whom we want to be free of disease and free of infecting other people with disease. It gives them entirely the wrong message from Parliament about discrimination and stigmatisation and it drives risk-taking behaviour underground. That would have been the public health advice if the select committee had bothered to ask for it. 
The Minister of Health should know about those issues. He is responsible for public health in New Zealand and he has recently been alerted to the concerns of the New Zealand AIDS Foundation in that regard. Transferring that section of the Crimes Act to this legislation sends the wrong message about public health. When the Minister of Health the Hon Tony Ryall was asked to put public health considerations first on the agenda of this Parliament what did he do? He was asked to put public health first and he referred those concerns to the Minister of Corrections. The Minister of Corrections the Hon Judith Collins interestingly enough is not responsible for public health in New Zealand. I do not know why the Minister of Health collects his salary if when he is asked about a major public health concern he refers it to one of his colleagues. If he cannot do the job he should hand the whole lot of it over to someone else. 
Another interesting bit of information that has come to light during this debate is that the public health bill that is on the floor of Parliament will also be moved into a justice environment. So we will be putting public health messages and concerns into a criminal and justice framework. Clause 127 of the Public Health Bill will be moved into the legislation that deals with crimes against a person. I implore the Minister of Health to do better with regard to that legislation than he has done in his response to this legislation. When a public health issue is raised with the Minister of Health he should take it seriously. He should have used the privilege of his position to respond to those concerns even if it was a matter of delaying the progress of this legislation in order to get the concerns aired properly debated and hopefully resolved. I certainly would have been supportive of that. But the Minister of Health took no such measure; he washed his hands of it. It was bad news it was a bit tricky and it was a bit difficult so he washed his hands of it and left it to Judith Collins to respond to. 
If this legislation did anything to reduce offending or reoffending or to better support the victims of crime in our community Labour would support it. It fails on every single measure. It does not offer us safer prisons safer communities or safer families. It is a wasted opportunity.