Walters VanushiVANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker and thank you for the opportunity to take a short call in relation to this bill. I don't support the progression of this bill through the House as I don't believe that it's the right way of addressing the issues identified. But I do believe that there have been some valid concerns identified and I do believe that they deserve a response. So I'd like to start with the problem identification itself. The member began by outlining this for us in terms of the fact that a carjacking is often hard to prove the offence of burglary because of the definition of theft within the definition of burglary which includes the intent to permanently deprive a person of their possessions. The proposed change that the member is bringing today is to include unlawful taking within that definition. Now the reason I think that this is problematic is that the criminal law ranks offences both on scale of the acts that have been committed and secondly on the intent or mens rea. It matches a particular actus reus and mens rea to define clearly and predictably the offences we criminalise. That categorisation also allows an appropriate scale of maximum penalties to exist alongside offences.So this syncs quite well with what most people generally understand to be justice. It's why we feel differently about someone spotting a bike in a school playground riding it for a bit and then leaving it there versus how we feel about someone spotting a bike in a school playground picking it up riding around taking it home putting it in their garage and keeping it there. What this bill proposes is to conflate two distinctly different mens rea components—Erica Stanford: It's about robbery with violence.VANUSHI WALTERS: I will address that valid concern that you've raised about violence shortly through the Chair. The intention to permanently deprive with the very different and much broader intent of unlawful taking—there is a conflation there. Those are two distinctly separate mens rea offences for a reason and blurring the lines between the two offences results in a lack of clarity for New Zealanders and may result in unintentional inclusion of other acts into the offence of burglary as well.Now I want to stop there and just acknowledge the member who's brought the bill her intervention. She was saying there's violence as well; that's absolutely true. There will be types of conversion that are so serious they should receive additional penalties—for example where serious threats or assault and violence are present. I'd suggest there are two ways of addressing that; one which the member and the chair of the Justice Committee have both addressed is other penalties so I suspect that one of the problems the member is trying to address is the scale of the penalty but there may already be a solution to that. As the member herself has referenced there are other sections within the Crimes Act that police can also charge under including section 307A threats of harm to people or property; section 306 threatening to kill or do grievous bodily harm; or section 193 assault with intent to injure. Then of course it's up to the judge to decide the actual appropriate weight of the penalty.There is another option as well which I don't think we have traversed yet and it may be the more suitable one and that's to—oh actually the chair of the Justice Committee did refer to this as well; it's to create a distinctly separate aggravated offence to cover this particular mens rea and actus reus. This is international best practice and it's actually already been done in Australia where they inserted section 154C into the Crimes Act. The offence there is titled Taking motor vehicle or vessel with assault or with occupant on board". It carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. It would make much more sense to consider the valid issue that the member has raised as part of a broader policy process considering it alongside other relevant parts of our Crimes Act as this would be a more effective use of our legislative time. Thank you."