Clendon DavidDAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to make a short contribution to this debate. The Greens support this legislation. It is a useful exercise as others have commented. I recall that Sir Geoffrey Palmer speaking to a select committee recently identified the fact that we have something like 65000 pages of statute in New Zealand which is a great deal of law for a relatively small country and a small population.I am sure we have all taken some amusement from looking at some of the legislation that is being repealed in this Act and considering what was sufficiently important to generations past to pass law about. It begs the question whether in the future future generations may look back and wonder at some of the things we have seen fit to pass laws about and perhaps that is something we might consider as we progress bills through this House.We support this bill but with one major reservation and Minister Nathan Guy did touch on that. It is the repeal of the sentencing council legislation and we regret that this Government has seen fit to do that particularly at this time in the electoral cycle. The Sentencing Council Act was passed by a Labour-led Government. We will be returning to that situation after September at which point the legislation could actually be implemented.I think that would be important and useful to establish a council. We know that the purpose of the council—according to the legislation which has never been given effect to—is to promote consistency in sentencing practice to ensure transparency in sentencing practice to promote consistency and transparency in Parole Board practice and overall to reinforce and increase public confidence in the justice system. In all of those provisions and all of those elements of the Act's purpose I think we have seen a weakening. We have seen public concern expressed in recent times about inconsistency in sentences. Overall I think we have seen a reduced confidence in the justice system.Towards the end of last year I went to the UK and one or two other countries looking at aspects of its justice system and actually I had a meeting with the head of the office of the UK sentencing council and got a feel for the value of that operation that agency in the UK setting. The UK council has somewhat more authority to direct rather than guide than is proposed in our New Zealand legislation but it has had some considerable success in all of the purposes which are shared with our Sentencing Council Act to endeavour to maintain public confidence not least of all about consistency in our courts. With all due respect to the judiciary it is on a day-to-day basis no doubt difficult to assure that sort of consistency.It is interesting to see some of the parties that are supporting the repeal of this bill or speaking in support of it—and I am thinking particularly of the Māori Party. When the original Sentencing Council legislation was passed Sir Pita Sharples the then leader of the Māori Party spoke very strongly in support of it particularly in the sense that he was observing young Māori who were getting very different sentences depending on the geographical location of the courts they were in. The present Attorney-General the Hon Chris Finlayson at the time the sentencing council legislation passed said that he had no objection in principle to the idea of having a sentencing council albeit he believed the Labour Government had somewhat the wrong model at that time. So it is very unfortunate that this Government is seeing fit to repeal this legislation rather than to interrogate it and potentially bring it back to the House for amendment and put in place a model that it could see value in.We will no doubt return to this point in the Committee stage of the bill. For the moment I will flag that the Greens continue to support the legislation but we will be looking very hard at the repeal of the Sentencing Council Act when we come to the Committee stage. Thank you.