Clendon DavidDAVID CLENDON (Green): I will just take a brief call obviously in support of the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) in my name SOP 319 which seeks to remove the sentencing council legislation from this repeal bill. Some good points have been made by Labour colleagues. I will not reiterate those. I will pick up a little where Mr Parker left off. I will just remind people of something of the history of the Sentencing Council Act. It derived from a Law Commission report that highlighted the importance—the necessity in fact; it used that word that a council of that sort was actually a necessity in New Zealand. That is quite strong language coming from a Law Commission report. The bill was then enacted became an Act obviously and has sat on our statute book ever since without actually having been put into action to be implemented. I think that is most unfortunate. The council's purpose primarily is to ensure consistency in sentencing. What it does not do in any way is impose the parliamentary will if you like on the judiciary. It does not seek to have Parliament take over the role of the judiciary or unreasonably influence it; far from it in fact. It simply creates a forum where the judiciary can look at its own sentencing practice and establish some rules of engagement if you like—some level of equity some level of consistency.Clearly at the time it was a Labour Party bill—the Labour Government then as it was. It was supported by the Greens. It was also supported by the Māori Party and I would hope that the Māori Party will support this SOP. Mr Sharples—Sir Pita Sharples as he now is and at the time this bill went through the co-leader of the Māori Party—spoke very strongly in support of the sentencing council. The legislation that established the sentencing council went through with a raft of other justice bills some of them quite substantive. Sir Pita Sharples made the point at the time—I think I quote him accurately—that this was the key measure of change in the justice system. Of all the points of all the changes that were being made back in 2006 and 2007 Sir Pita identified the establishment of a sentencing council as the single most important measure contained in all of those bills for the very reason that Mr Parker began to discuss: the fact that we have got institutional bias in our justice system.That is something I am sure we all regret. It has been acknowledged at least by the Police and other parts of the justice system and the sentencing council was a practical pragmatic positive measure towards ironing that out to ensuring that judgments made are consistent irrespective of other factors not least of all ethnicity—so that if a Māori person in the Bay of Plenty offends in some way he or she will be sentenced in the same way that a Pākehā person in Northland or the South Island would be. Not identically—no two cases are identical—but to get the level of consistency and consistent practice that is sadly missing and it is obviously missing currently. There is no guideline. There is no forum for judges for the judiciary to debate this stuff.I was in the UK last year and took the opportunity to speak with the head of the office of the UK sentencing council. Frankly initially they were surprised that we do not have such an agency in New Zealand. There were some differences between the UK model and the model adopted here in this legislation the Sentencing Council Act. In fact the UK model is probably more authoritative—I was going to say authoritarian; that is wrong. The sentencing council in the UK probably by my judgment has more power to direct the judiciary than the model selected in our own domestic legislation.At the time again that the legislation was passed the National Party did oppose the legislation but the Hon Chris Finlayson in his third reading speech at that time made the point that the National Party had come from a point of complete opposition to the whole notion to a point where it thought that actually in principle a sentencing council was probably a good idea. Mr Finlayson's objection was that it was the wrong model. He claimed that the model as reflected in the legislation was unconstitutional. He used the word odious". But he also conceded at the time that there could be a model that would be acceptable to the National Party.So the challenge I put to the Government is to support this SOP: to not repeal the Sentencing Council Act but simply to bring an amendment to the Committee. Consult with the very wise and able Mr Finlayson—I am sure he would come up with something that would be acceptable and arguably acceptable to all parties. Amend the legislation by all means but it would be a serious error I believe to repeal it at this stage. It has also been argued that in fact the repeal itself would be unconstitutional—or rather the failure to implement this legislation is itself unconstitutional. So I will leave that there. I certainly would seek Government support—all parties' support—for this SOP.I will just speak briefly to Mr Hipkins' SOP 315 on the matter of section 123 of the Crimes Act simply to say the Greens wholeheartedly support that. When it was first pointed out to me a few weeks ago that we had such a provision in our statutes I found it quite extraordinary. It bordered on the medieval the notion that we should have anti-blasphemy legislation. New Zealand is a more secular country than it has been in previous times not overlooking the fact that many people do have a faith and practise religion. More power to them. I think anybody who consistently or publicly or loudly condemned or attacked any particular religion any person practising a religion any church or any faith would very quickly find themselves at odds with the court of public opinion. I think they would be taken to task even by people who may not practise a particular belief system.But I think Mr Hipkins acknowledged that we are a fairly tolerant society I think and long may that continue. So I do not think it is at all necessary to maintain this very strange and sadly out-of-date notion of illegality of blasphemy. I think we can safely agree that this SOP would do no harm. It would take off a very peculiar provision in our law and I think our statutes would be better for it. Thank you."