McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I take pleasure in rising on behalf of the ACT Party and saying we oppose the Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill. I'm going to start off by talking about what's just happened in the last week perhaps even just this weekend because it tells us why we need to have this sort of legislation in place.What have we heard about? Kids armed with hammers and crowbars doing daylight robberies. This is our next generation of three-strikers. What about the 60-second ransacking of stores? The best one from this week would be the six retail stores targeted in one night in Auckland over this past weekend and a youth caught in an aggravated robbery yelling to be freed because he's just 13 years old. In Taranaki they're investigating their fifth homicide in six months; the second one in a week. Violent crime is out of control and three strikes has done its bit to keep the worst of the worst locked up and away from participating in this free-for-all of vicious and violent crime that our communities are currently experiencing. This Government is giving these strikers an early Christmas present and it's at the expense of victims of victims' families and of society. We have a Minister who is wanting to take a victim-centric approach to her new portfolio but this just does not cut it. In fact this repeal is a disgrace and it's disrespectful to victims. Not once were victims a part of the policy process for repealing this legislation and I repeat here in the third reading our absolute dismay at the Human Rights Commission failing even to report on victims in their submission to this bill. No wonder there is a need for that commission to go. ACT have always expected that this law is to affect those serious violent criminals committing crimes in our communities regardless of their race regardless of their colour and regardless of their breed. When one argues with us that this law offers disproportionate sentencing to Māori I retort that this very same law offers protection to the disproportionate number of Māori victims victims of any one of the 40 most serious violent offences that sentence its perpetrator to a strike.Three strikes is not about locking up those petty criminals; it's about locking up those that commit one of the 40 named qualifying serious violent offences the worst of the worst criminals committing the most heinous crimes. The time for making excuses is up. New Zealand has had enough of being victims of violent recidivist offenders and having a Government that not only makes excuses for them but lines the pockets of gangs while they're doing it. The reality is that this law has not seen enough time to see its full potential. People have to serve the entire prison sentence on a second strike and there are 640 of them who will be doing this when the legislation got under way back in November last year. Now we have 24 third-strikers—21 when we started—that average 74 serious violent convictions each. Again these are not the petty criminals; these are the worst of the worst.Our second-strikers: I mentioned 640 of them being eligible for a third strike and there's been concern about disproportionate sentences having to be offered by judges. Well let's analyse that a bit shall we? In the second strike you still need to have a full sentence but a judge can actually look at what that sentence may be and we have a couple of examples here. What about Justice Cooke's sentencing of Wayne Reardon the Black Power member who was convicted of being the ring leader in the shooting of James Butler in his driveway? That sentencing happened in only April of this year—a second-strike sentence—and despite the finality of death for Mr Butler Reardon had his upbringing the trauma in his life taken into account at sentencing and Justice Cooke was also mindful of not being disproportionately severe in the second-strike sentencing because the entire sentence would need to be carried out. In Reardon's case it was suggested in one media report that the sentence was light because it would need to be served in its entirety. A second-striker sentenced to a full term of incarceration for taking a man's life—it seems fair to me and it seems fair to a number of Kiwis out there too.What about last year's sentencing of John Collins for the baseball bat killing of Brent Bacon? The injuries to the victim were so violent in nature that they were described as being akin to that of a severe head trauma comparable to a high-speed impact to the head often seen in car accidents which this was not. But Collins also tried unsuccessfully to justify the murder as self-defence which it was also not. The judge decided that a whole-of-life term would be grossly disproportionate and so jailed him for life and as a second-striker he got a minimum non-parole period of 17 years. These criminals need to serve their second-strike sentences and be back out in society either committing more crime or not for us to really see the full benefits of the three-strikes sentencing. We've allowed judges to take into account the disproportion that could occur in sentencing so that's no excuse really.There is data that shows a small deterrent having had occurred already contrary to what the Government and other Opposition parties will tell us and we expect that that would have grown especially as the Act has only been in place since 2010. Had the worst of the worst been able to be retained and rehabilitated having served their full second-strike sentences we would have seen a decrease I am sure of it in another 10 years' time. But you know what is disproportionate? Violent crime. Violent crime is showing a disproportionate occurrence every day in our communities especially if you live in Auckland or as it's playing out now anywhere in New Zealand. What's worse is the notoriety that goes with it all. One quote from research talks of a second-strike offender that had an offence take place in the prison where he was serving his second strike. In order to rally up the troops from his gang he—and I quote—smeared the injured inmate's blood on his hands and wiped it on the bars that covered the windows of his gang member's cell doors." Labour wants you to let these people out back out to a home near you. We won't have it and we plan on repealing this repeal when we get into power in 2023 with our neighbours National. We're going to have very busy time undoing this mess. We oppose this bill."