Sepuloni Carmel: Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 03 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1123. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston):I would like to address some of the inaccuracies that have been brought up by the previous member Christopher Bishop but I think I might start by actually addressing the bill that we are here to discuss in the House tonight. I am not sure whether the previous speaker actually even mentioned what that bill is. In fact I do not even know whether he came to the House knowing what the bill was that he was speaking on. But I will speak just to the bill. The bill is the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill. I am happy tonight to take a call on this bill. We will not be supporting the bill but we do support the intent of the bill and I do want to acknowledge Asenati Lole-Taylor for her work. We may not have always aligned exactly in our political views but I do respect her as a former parliamentarian and I respect the work that she did with this bill despite the fact that we may not agree with it or support it at this stage.This bill amends the Sentencing Act 2002 to make criminal offending in the presence of a minor an aggravating factor at sentencing. Where the offender endangers or exposes a minor to potential adverse effects from that offending the sentence must reflect this. Criminal offending by adults often exposes minors to serious harm and we all agree in the House that that is the case. A primary example of such offending that has been spoken about by several members tonight is the production of drugs particularly methamphetamine. Production of these substances is regularly conducted in residential buildings putting the lives and health of resident children at risk of poisoning and burns resulting from the highly dangerous and unstable chemicals used in such production. My colleague Jacinda Ardern talked earlier tonight about the large proportion of households buildings and places where methamphetamine is being produced where there are actually children who are living in that vicinity or where there are children who are exposed to the harm of that methamphetamine. So it is something that we here tonight all of us in this House share some concern for. We accept and we are concerned about the fact that minors are often the innocent parties to criminal offending by adults and deserve protection from adult offending that puts them at risk of harm.We oppose this bill. However as the Law and Order Committee report states: “we support the intent of the bill and consider the safety of children to be paramount.” We cannot support this bill though because there are several problems with it. Some of those problems have been cited by my own colleagues and some of those problems have been cited by members of other parties. The application of the bill as introduced would be too difficult to enforce. Under clause 4 the definition of “in the presence of a minor” is far too broad and would encompass everything. The definition of “in the presence of” could potentially encompass public areas such as shopping malls or roads; as such it would be difficult to apply in practice. The select committee stated that it is “confident that judges already consider the presence of and potential harm to children when sentencing and requiring them to comply with a rigid framework might hinder the use of judicial discretion” in those situations. The report also states: “Case law demonstrates that the Police and the courts already take the presence of a minor into account when prosecuting and sentencing offenders in the situations the bill is intended to address.”I have not been on the select committee so unfortunately was not there for the public submissions but I have gone through some of the submissions. One of the submissions that I was particularly interested in which really aligns with the views of many people in the House tonight is the submission that was put forward by the New Zealand Law Society. I think the submission that has come from it is credible. It has analysed what the legislation would entail and whether or not it would be effective and the answers it has come up with really are the answers that align with what we have heard here tonight. The New Zealand Law Society like many of the parties in the House welcomes the opportunity to comment on the bill. In its submission it states that the bill amends the Sentencing Act and what that entails. It points out that “The objective of protecting children in these circumstances is laudable but the Law Society considers the bill is unnecessary. The courts already routinely take the presence of minors into account as an aggravating feature for example in prosecutions for domestic violence drink driving and drug offending.” The Law Society points out: “This was illustrated in a recent methamphetamine prosecution where the Court of Appeal endorsed prosecutions for neglecting a child in circumstances where the child was exposed to methamphetamine: ‘It is appropriate to observe however that we are satisfied the charge under s 195 was properly brought in this case and that it is an appropriate charge for a situation such as this where a parent with control of a child allows that child’s health to be habitually compromised by exposure to an unsafe environment made so by her own criminal offending.’ This is relevant to the general policy of the Bill: the Explanatory Note notes that ‘[a] primary example of such [criminal] offending is the production of drugs particularly methamphetamine. Production of these substances is regularly conducted in residential buildings putting the lives and health of resident children at risk of poisoning and burns resulting from the highly dangerous and unstable chemicals used in such production’ ”—which is what was stated earlier from the Labour Party point of view and which is shared across the House—“In the Law Society’s view whether minors have been put at risk of harm by offending is a factor that should be left to the courts’ discretion to assess in each case.” This is rather than through this bill because actually the Law Society and many of the other experts who came to submit on the bill pointed out that this bill could actually put at jeopardy the discretion of the court to assess each case in the way in which it currently is able to.It is good when we are in a situation where the majority of the House agrees on legislation. I did hear earlier one of the other members pointing out that this particular bill that we are considering tonight has been floating around Parliament for 7 or 8 years. I accept what the other member said in that things have changed over the last 8 years so the intention although good may be overridden by the fact that other legislation has come into play that actually discounts the need for this particular bill.I said I would initially start by actually addressing the bill which the previous speaker did not do but I would like to address some of the issues that the previous speaker did bring up. When we are talking about sentencing and protection of children—a serious matter that we all take seriously in this House and share concerns for—I thought it was a bit of a cheap opportunity to take which that member did to try to push the National agenda and to try to imply that National has been successful on the law and order front when actually what we are getting out in the general public is the exact opposite. The feedback that we are getting from the general public is that the National Government has failed abysmally when it comes to law and order. Just addressing some of the things that were raised by the previous speaker Mr Bishop when he raised that we have had reoffending rates drop well my learned colleague Jacinda Ardern did bring up actually that that was because reoffending has gone down because of community-based sentences.I also wanted to say in addressing the statements made by the previous speaker that unfortunately what we have seen under a National Government is the dissuading of the reporting of crimes. In fact we have police who are not even attending crimes such as burglaries to the same extent anymore so people are not even taking them to the police. That does mean there has been a reduction in crime; it means there has been a reduction in reporting because of the fact that we do not have the police numbers or police on hand to attend to those cases. We also had some statement made by members on the other side that they have done wonders in the area of rehabilitation. Can I just point out that it was really just a continuation of the Labour work that had been done during the 9 years that we had in Government.Finally when the National Government talks about the decrease in crime I have to point out actually that we are not seeing that in west Auckland. What we are seeing in west Auckland is that we have become the murder capital of New Zealand and we are certainly not feeling any great service by the National Government in the area of law and order. So in fact I want to point out before I go back to the bill that the National Government has failed New Zealand on so many fronts when it comes to law and order. The one good thing that I can say the Government is doing is that alongside us it is opposing this bill because it actually does not do what it was intended to do. Thank you.