O'Rourke DenisDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): It is really good to see the Government actually doing something useful in this term of Parliament. This is that thing and what a wonderful piece of legislation it is. For that reason most uncharacteristically New Zealand First is going to be able to continue to support the Statutes Repeal Bill. So that I think is really good; it is really good to be able to do that. It is good to see a process for repealing redundant Acts because they actually do get outdated and I totally disagree with the previous speaker Barry Coates about that.This is the right kind of process to get rid of a lot of very small often totally outdated completely irrelevant—in this day and age—pieces of legislation. I do not have any problem with using a statutes repeal process to do that. After all it has been through the select committee process there have been submissions it has been well and properly considered. I see no problem. Actually it can be dangerous to leave redundant statutes on the statute book because you can have situations where the police feel obliged to actually enforce them. The blasphemy law would be one of those and it is only good fortune that nobody has recently—or in fact ever I think—been prosecuted under that piece of legislation. It should have been removed by this process. Other laws—latent Acts as we know them—actually never get activated because they should not be and one of those is the provision for the sentencing council in the Sentencing Council Act. I am glad to see it go. It should never have been enacted in the first place. It impinged on the job of the courts. It would inevitably if it had been used have led to political interference in the sentencing system and that is a very bad thing for the justice system and for New Zealand. I do not accept that there is necessarily anything wrong with what is called the disparity between sentences between Māori and others because we actually have no evidence whatsoever that that is the result of inherent racism within the justice system. It may actually just be a fact that emerges without any particular reason at all except maybe more Māori actually carry out more serious offences than Pākehā on average. Who knows? It may well have been the other way around but it just happens to be that way this time. I do not accept that there is necessarily any racism about that whatsoever. This council in any event would never have made any difference to that situation even if that had been the case. So I am very glad that this stupid sentencing council and the legislative provision in the Sentencing Council Act is going. It should have gone; it should never have happened in the first place. It has never been activated and neither should it have been. I hope we never see it again.For those reasons we in New Zealand First are perfectly satisfied with this bill. We know that the Government Administration Committee has done a good job in looking at it. We have come through that process and it is quite clear that those enactments that are going to be repealed should be repealed. For that reason—that totally objective reason only—New Zealand First will continue to support it.