Little AndrewHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you Mr Chairman. It's a pleasure to take a quick call on this very important issue which is about the Estimates for the justice sector. There were a number of points that the member Mark Mitchell who's just resumed his seat has made.Kieran McAnulty: Oh God he went on didn't he?Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Well I think I could charitably describe them as unfortunate.So let's be very clear about the legacy that we inherited when we took office. We had a prison population at nearly 11000—11000 people in our prison system—after a rapid rise after the members opposite were in Government. What was happening was more than $1 billion—nearly $1.5 billion—was being spent on locking up containing and controlling 11000 prisoners and nothing useful happening. Worse than that 60 percent of them—60 percent of them—after they were released reoffended. They call that success. They call that a criminal justice system. Absolutely hopeless—absolutely hopeless. They hang their heads in shame as they should because that's not a justice system; that is a failure of a justice system.Now the member opposite the Hon Mark Mitchell talked about the alcohol and other drug treatment court. They've been under a pilot for seven years. When we came here they had just renewed the pilot for another two years so we let that pilot go because we had to because they'd set up an evaluation process at the end of that two years. Seven years they ran the pilot because they did not want to make the hard decision about rolling them out. Then they came up with another great idea: We'll pilot another court—the sexual violence court." They didn't even start that pilot; we started it—we started it. That has now come to its end and we're now undergoing the evaluation and I think we're going to get some good information from that. I feel very confident about the future of that because the reality is when you look around the world—and here's an interesting place to have a look at and it's the state of Texas in the United States regarded as kind of the lone cowboy and all the rest of it. They had one of the most amazing transformations in their criminal justice system supported by both Republicans and Democrats at the state level and at the federal level as well. They managed to reduce their prison population by something like 45 percent over a number of years.They reduced criminal offending by 25 percent serious criminal offending by 20 percent because they just made a decision. They said "You know what?"—the equivalent in New Zealand—"spending a billion and a half dollars on just locking people up and seeing a 60 percent reoffending rate ain't doing anybody any good and we have to change it." They had the courage the Republicans and the Democrats in Texas to say "We've got to do things differently."Members on this side of the committee have said we've got the courage to do things differently. But here's the other thing—here's the other challenge we have in New Zealand: we know that in our criminal justice system Māori who comprise 15 percent of our general population are well over half of those who go through our criminal justice system whether it's at the point of arrest whether it's going through the courts or whether it's entering prison. You've got to actually deal with that issue seriously and you've got to talk to the people affected.You see the culture on this side of the House—one of the underlying values of this Government is we proudly have departed from the old Tory value of "We know best—we know best—and we will just tell everybody what's good for them." We've had quite a few years of that—in fact some would say nine long years of that—years and years of telling people what's good for them without talking to the people affected themselves. It's amazing when you give people a chance to have a say on the stuff that's affecting them what comes out of it. There's a bit of venting there's a bit of talking about stuff that's been deeply held for a long time but actually you give people a chance to come up with some constructive suggestions and it's amazing what they'll come up with. Now that's just in criminal justice.We've reviewed the Family Court because the previous Government's changes in the Family Court system have been an absolute disaster—an unmitigated disaster. People left bereft children left for month after month after month not knowing what their care arrangements are because mum and dad can't reach agreement and the court doesn't have time to tell them. So we had to make changes there.Right across the board this Government has taken on the hard issues the long-term issues the difficult issues because that's what decent responsible Governments do."