Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. What a spiteful speech. That's the only way to describe it—just full of spite and vitriol. If the member who just resumed his seat wants a reason why he's not the MP for Wairarapa which he so desperately obviously vehemently wants to be it's speeches like that—spiteful vitriolic hate-filled. That was 10 minutes of hate towards my friend and colleague Alastair Scott. It was eight minutes on Alastair Scott—a sort of helicopter view of Alastair Scott you might call it; a chopper view—and about two minutes on the bill 90 seconds of which actually were on the substantive part of it. That was just a spite-filled speech.This is a sensible piece of legislation. No one's pretending it's changing the world. No one's pretending it's the Terrorism Suppression Act or deals with gangs or is all of the legislation that Ron Mark has spent a lot of time trying to introduce. My message to you my friend is that you're in Government now. You're the Minister of Defence. You're the Minister of a lot of other things. If you can convince the Green Party and your Labour Party colleagues in the coalition to do all the things like lowering the age of criminal responsibility and cracking down on gangs fill your boots son because the National Party may well support you. But we'll wait and see where the Labour and New Zealand First coalition goes with its tough on crime" policies because they've got a pretty big barrier sitting near to me in the Chamber who I don't think will be supporting that legislation. But you know let's wait and see.That was a very poor speech by Mr Mark—a very poor speech. He says it's a waste of Government time. Well this is members' day and actually Mr Scott has put forward a useful piece of legislation. We had a good examination of it in the Justice Committee and it's fair to say that there's basically a division of views between the expert advisers. The Law Commission recommended this change; the Ministry of Justice I've got to say argued vehemently—vehemently—against it. We had a clash of the experts. It's always interesting at select committee when you have a clash of the experts because it seemed to me they almost got more involved in the bill than we did.The select committee was unable to reach a viewpoint as to whether or not the bill should proceed. We think it should proceed and the National Party will be voting for the bill to proceed. We agree with the Law Commission essentially. We think it is a sensible change. Members often exhort Parliament and the Government to pick up Law Commission recommendations. In fact the Law Commission itself has said on numerous occasions that the Parliament does not act quickly enough upon what it does. The Law Commission is the expert law reform body in New Zealand.Frankly with due respect to the Ministry of Justice the days of Geoffrey Palmer's Ministry of Justice with the legislative drafting team and the great law reform unit within the Ministry of Justice are over.Hon Ron Mark: Isn't he on the Law Commission?CHRIS BISHOP: Exactly! Ron Mark says he's now on the Law Commission. That's exactly right. He makes my exact point. Back in 1988 Sir Geoffrey Palmer set up the Law Commission and we exiled for want of a better phrase the expert reformers in our bureaucracy over to the Law Commission. We said to the Law Commission "Take the considered time to use the resources that Parliament gives you"—and we've given them extensive resources over the years—"use the time and the resources and use the money to propose recommendations for law reform." Andrew Little is making use of the Law Commission now when it comes to abortion law reform for example and that's actually an appropriate thing to do because it's a very technical area of the law. It's a contested area of the law. It's a tricky area and you want the experts to go away and look at things like this.So too with the Crimes Act 1961 and the various very technical offences around explosives providing explosives to commit crimes. So the Law Commission has recommended increasing the penalty level of section 272 in its report Maximum Penalties for Criminal Offences Law Commission report 21. They compare section 272 with section 55 of the Arms Act and consider that the two sections are almost identical. Section 55 of the Arms Act has a maximum penalty of five years and the difference in penalty has no possible justification. That's the Law Commission's recommendation. There's no possible justification for the difference in penalties.So Alastair Scott my friend and colleague has introduced a very sensible member's bill. No one is pretending it's changing the world but actually—and I've made this point on numerous occasions in Parliament—not every bill that Parliament considers is abortion law reform or euthanasia or gay marriage or anything like that. Sometimes the process of Parliament and the reason why we're put here is actually to tidy up the statute book and to improve things and actually that is a very important job of a deliberative body and deliberative legislature like the New Zealand Parliament. Alastair Scott is doing a good job in doing that.So he's put forward this bill. It's gone to the committee. We agree with the Law Commission—there's no justification for the differences in penalties—and therefore we're supporting the bill going forward.We look forward to New Zealand First's vote on the bill. It was not clear from Ron Mark's contribution whether or not they'll be supporting the bill or not. They supported it at first reading albeit with caveats as I know Mr Mark says. I suspect from the spite and hate in his speech towards my colleague Alastair Scott that New Zealand First will no longer be supporting the bill and I think that would be a shame. Although if it does get voted down at second reading at some point Parliament is going to have to consider this issue again perhaps under Ron Mark's stewardship as Minister of Defence and Minister for law and order—the self-styled "Minister for Tough on Crime". Let's wait and see but this is a good bill; it deserves to go forward through its second reading."