Power Simon: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — First Reading 
Power Simon: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:6870] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 The National Party rises to make some comments on the Criminal Justice Reform Bill. I will do so slightly differently from the way the Minister Mark Burton did by concentrating firstly on Part 2 of the bill and then moving to Part 1 later in my comments. 
I start by saying that Part 2 does offer some positive contribution to the debate around incarceration rates and reoffending rates as opposed to the crime rate in the first instance. Part 2 represents a backing down on the Government’s Sentencing Act 2002 as it relates to parole and eligibility for parole. The Minister all but acknowledged in his remarks that the eligibility of offenders for parole after serving one-third of their sentence has not worked because it has created massive uncertainty around release dates and the length of time served. Although the National Party told the Government in 2002 that the Sentencing Act would create those problems the Government has now acknowledged that mistake and eligibility for parole will apply after two-thirds of a sentence has been served. That is to be welcomed. 
What is not welcomed by National is the fact that those sentence lengths will be 25 percent shorter on average than they would have been previously. [ 
Interruption 
] I ask the Minister to just wait. The explanatory note of the bill states: “Because the proposed parole changes are predicted to increase the average time served by prisoners from 62% of their sentence to more than 80% sentences imposed by Judges would need to be about 25% shorter on average”. The problem with that logic of course is that that is not what 92 percent of the population voted for in 1999. What they voted for and what the Government said it would deliver on were longer sentences for higher-end offending. That will not be the case if that particular measure is imposed. 
I agree that the sentences of community detention and intensive supervision have merit and I look forward to discussing those issues in more detail on the Justice and Electoral Committee. I think that the Government has its head around that portion of the sentencing problem and I believe that some constructive solutions can be offered there. 
I worry though when the Minister says as I recall him saying that the bill is designed to deal with the issue of crime and the issue of the prison population. This bill is designed to do one of those two things and that is to try to have as few people as possible end up being incarcerated. What the bill does not do—and members should remember that it is part of the Effective Interventions package—is to talk about solutions that will prevent crime from occurring in the first place. So National remains open-minded about parts of Part 2 and very concerned about the shortening of sentences that would come about as a result of that part. That I guess is the olive branch. 
Part 1 concerns me deeply. The introduction of a Sentencing Council really worries me. I understand the argument that the council is designed to bring consistency to the application of sentencing and to codify mitigating factors at sentencing in a way that makes sentencing transparent. But let me just tell the Greens the Maori Party and United Future to beware of a Government bureaucracy that comes between the powers of the executive to legislate and the independence of the judiciary to pass sentences. My great concern is that the Sentencing Council will become the district health board of the justice sector and that what we will hear is the Government simply saying the sentencing process had nothing to do with it and that because the Sentencing Council makes those decisions it is to blame for them. Then the Minister stands in the House and says we should not worry because the council will be directed to assess the cost-effectiveness of its guidelines and to undertake prison population modelling. Well we know how successful that has been. The Ministry of Justice has been unable to do that with any degree of accuracy for the last 4 or 5 years. Yet out of nowhere we are to create a Sentencing Council that will simply be able to do all the things to model and forecast the prison population that the ministry with all its resources has been unable to achieve. 
I worry deeply about the fact that the Sentencing Council will undermine the discretion of the judiciary. This is a move by the executive to shuffle into the judicial discretion an independence that should be guaranteed by the separation of powers. If we wanted to undermine the discretion of the judiciary or more important—perhaps more accurately—if we wanted to limit its discretion in a way that sent a message to the public that we were taking back as a Parliament some of the sentencing options available to the judiciary then we should legislate—we should legislate in this Chamber to narrow that discretion. I say to the Minister that we should not create a separate body and a separate bureaucracy that would act as a buffer between those two crucially separated powers: the judiciary and the executive. This is a big constitutional change and it is not to be undersold in this House today as just a mechanism to ensure that judicial discretion is limited and sentencing guidelines are tightened. This is a fundamental departure from the demarcation this country has had between the judiciary and the Parliament up until now and National remains gravely concerned about the prospects of it. The Minister said a similar system worked in Victoria. My understanding is that such a council has not been adopted federally in Australia and we should be asking in this Parliament why it has not. 
Although I agree that there is some work to do around the prison population—and the Minister of Corrections knows that is my view—and I am open to suggestions around issues of intensive supervision and community detention as part of a new sentencing structure National will not support this bill at its first reading because of Part 1: because of the Sentencing Council and because of the discretion that will be taken away from the judiciary in an effort for the Government—the executive—to separate itself out from sentencing which is always controversial in the public’s mind. But the public made it clear in 1999 what they wanted. This Parliament cannot say to the public that it will solve the problem by putting in place a Sentencing Council and reducing the length of sentences by 25 percent. I say to the Minister that we can argue about the sentencing options but I am not convinced by the proposal for the Sentencing Council. I will sit on the Justice and Electoral Committee myself to hear submissions on that issue but I remain determined that there should be a clear demarcation between the legislative arm in this House and the judiciary and its ability to sentence. National will not condone the creation of a district health board model in the justice sector.