Clendon DavidDAVID CLENDON (Green): I am very happy to speak to this Statutes Repeal Bill—I think I got that right. It is a good and useful bill. It is a necessary thing occasionally to have a clear out of the statutory cupboard. New Zealand has been on occasion referred to as having the fastest legislature in the West. I think we are also one of the most prolific. There is legislation in this repeal bill that dates back over 100 years. It simply serves no purpose and for that reason we support most of what we see in this bill.There is one considerable exception to that however. If one goes to schedule 1 on page 7 of the bill you find the Sentencing Council Act 2007 is one of those Acts to be excised from the statute books. We are entirely opposing the proposition that we ought not to retain that legislative opportunity because that is all it is so far. The bill was passed of course and the Act came into being during the last Labour Government towards the end of its term. This Government has chosen never to actually put it into existence. A sentencing council has never been established; if it is repealed in this bill then one never will be able to without yet another Act of Parliament. We will be supporting this bill to select committee but at the select committee we will be arguing that rather than repealing this bill the National Government should look at amending it to suit them. That would be very much in line with their contribution to the debates at the time the bill was passed. To be fair the Government has been consistent. They did oppose the passing of the bill in 2007 but as I will come to later the National Party in Opposition did not object in principle to the idea of a sentencing council they simply proposed that the Government of the day the Labour-led Government of the day had got the wrong model for a sentencing council.We are very strong on the fact that we actually need a sentencing council. The primary function of such an entity of course is to even out sentencing to ensure that there is a level of consistency. I think it is a well-drafted piece of legislation as it sits. It does not take away Parliament's right to make law. It does not see Parliament interfering more than it ought to in the business of the judiciary. It does enable a judiciary to within its own realm come to some sensible guidelines about what sentencing should look like. We have had quite recent high-profile instances where people have really questioned and challenged what appear to be significantly different sentences for offending by offenders where there seems to be a great deal of similarity. As I said we will support the bill to the first reading but we do think that it is a mistake to repeal the sentencing council legislation.The 2007 Act as it stands was written in response to a Law Commission report at the time called Sentencing Guidelines and Parole Reform. The commission published the useful report and a set of statements about why a sentencing council was both necessary and useful to have. As I said in 2008 with a change of Government Simon Power who was the Minister at the time referred to the council as just another layer of bureaucracy" and suggested that it was unnecessary. But sadly the very evident and measurable disparity in sentencing outcomes has been obvious ever since then and indeed I would argue they are getting worse. There is evidence that we are getting considerable disparity in sentencing outcomes and that is a very unfortunate outcome indeed.I will not dwell on it at any great length given the time available but I would encourage people to go back to the 2006 Law Commission report headed A Sentencing Council and Sentencing Guidelines a fact sheet. It is a good summary sheet of what the intention was what the outcomes could be and indeed what the nature of the problem was at the time. We roll forward a little to 2013. The Law Society published a report of a piece of PhD research done just 3 years ago and talked about massive differences in the severity of sentences imposed by District Courts. It used the example of aggravated drink-driving offences. It controlled for things like the number of offences an individual may have committed the severity of offence and a number of other variables it took into account. And even allowing for those variables this particular piece of PhD research came to the very obvious conclusion that there are serious and significant disparities depending on where one is sentenced. Often it is geographic and it is also to do with the individual judges. That report has been anonymised so it does not identify individual cases or individual judges but it is a very compelling piece of work that won the support of the Law Society and I do believe it needs to be taken seriously.It is also informative to go back to the original Hansard of the third reading particularly when the sentencing council legislation was passed. As I say Mr Power at the time—Simon Power as he was; still is—who became justice Minister was somewhat scathing of it. He said that the sentencing council would become the district health board of the justice sector and he suggested that the Minister of the day would be able to hide behind it if there was any criticism or critique of the operation of the courts. I think a close reading of the legislation indicates that is actually not a reality—that it would absolutely not protect a Minister from reasonable critique if things were not working well within the court system. Charles Chauvel for Labour at the time of course made the point that we had a very regrettable situation in New Zealand where people of a similar situation have come before different courts in different parts of the country before different judges and have actually received different types of sentences—not only of severity but type. I would hope the Māori Party would also look long and hard at this repeal Act specifically in terms of this sentencing council legislation because of what Pita Sharples—Sir Pita Sharples as he is now—said at the time. I should say that this sentencing council legislation was one of a raft of bills that I think may have been debated as co-joint—wrong word but you know what I mean: a raft of justice bills were debated together. Mr Sharples said at the time: "The key measure to bring about change in the justice system as mandated by these five bills is the Sentencing Council." He went on to say "The Māori Party supports the establishment of this new forum to ensure a consistent application of justice whether one is sentenced in Whangarei or Dunedin; South Auckland or the South Island." He went to say that he hastened to suggest that tangata whenua expertise must be considered a core priority in considering the appointment of membership—and that indeed would be a valid point at the point that we ever did establish such an entity.As I said earlier Chris Finlayson the current Attorney-General made a very typically well-informed and thoughtful contribution at the time. He did say that Labour members had got it wrong in terms of the model they chose for the council but he did not dismiss the idea or the value of having something like it. I will quote him again. He said: "The National Party moved a great deal from complete opposition at the outset to offering a model that would have achieved the Law Commission's aims while still being constitutional." Earlier in his speech he called it "unconstitutional" and "odious"—a splendid word—but I would ask the National Party members and particularly at select committee to reflect very closely on the speeches that were made both in support and in opposition to the sentencing council legislation in the 2006-07 debates and think that maybe we are throwing out some babies with the bathwater here if we repeal the Act.I think there would be considerable value in retaining a council. We are entirely open to the notion of an amendment. It is perfectly possible that the model chosen was not the best and that we might potentially do it better. But we absolutely believe that there ought to be something like a sentencing council to endeavour to moderate to ensure that the judges—the judiciary themselves—have a forum where they can look. A level of self-awareness could emerge I think which could enable much better much more consistent sentencing and inevitably emerging from that would be much greater public confidence in the outcome of our judiciary and our justice system. So I look forward to the select committee with interest and I would encourage as I say Government members particularly to have a think about the potential for an amendment rather than repeal. Thank you."