Walters VanushiVANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you Mr Speaker. Impassioned speeches are wonderful but incorrect ones are just incorrect. As one of the women in this House—and I don't just mean Labour women—who has spent decades advocating against sexual violence and against sexual harassment for ourselves for our friends for our colleagues and for our clients and now who do so frequently in the House I did take offence. But I am going to use my time to speak on the bill and where I want to start is actually our commonalities because as a member of the Justice Committee what I know what I have felt in those rooms at its best times is that we are all there for similar reasons. We all want safe communities and we all feel outraged when we hear accounts of people who've had to suffer as victims or as survivors. But there is a difference between that side of the House and this side of the House in terms of how we respond to issues of justice. Where that side reacts we respond and I think you can hear the verbiage of reaction from that side of the House today. It's cut and pasted a fair amount. It's sounds like soft on crime" and if any of you were keeping a tally we certainly got up there with Mark Mitchell the last speaker. It's things like "They say that we're being too tough on criminals."—that is the verbiage of reaction. Reaction is irresponsible. It does not bring us safer communities. Reacting loudly is still just reacting and it's a very one dimensional approach that the Opposition are bringing to this discussion which isn't surprising because they've actually removed reference to a number of the principles of justice which we ought to turn our minds to. That is what a responsive approach in the justice space brings. A responsive approach in the justice space is about turning our minds to the principles of justice in a democratic society which includes rehabilitation and accountability keeping communities safe and the experience of victims the context of the offender and—importantly—it includes the proportionality of the penalty to the crime and ensuring that the decision makers who are closest to the facts of the case retain reasonable discretion. The three-strikes law when it was embedded took a sledgehammer to those last two principles. So is it ever OK to entirely remove core sentencing principles? No it's absolutely horrific. Some people might say: well perhaps you can do it if you justify it but that hasn't been done here. In fact if you look at the minority reports on this bill there is no mention of some of these principles and why they're justifiably removed. In terms of judicial discretion the National Party minority report argues that judges can still choose whether or not to apply three strikes if it would be manifestly unjust to do so. They are ignoring the submissions of those who work the closest to the ground who told us that this threshold was far too high. It doesn't amount to proper discretion. So they've turned their heads away from the principles. The second piece that this side of the House looks at in the justice space is what does the evidence say. Now in 2010 if you hypothesise that applying a new three-strikes framework will dramatically reduce criminal offending and that years after that we don't have data that demonstrates that that's not a case to keep it going. That's the case that it doesn't work and if you ever had to worry about a statement by the Opposition read their minority report here. It essentially says along with the statements made when this law was brought in: "We'll put in the justice system a three-strikes system that takes a sledgehammer to two core principles of our justice system. There's now evidence that shows it's not really working but we don't think that there are grounds to repeal it." Wow I think we all need to be worried about the analysis here. Now I do also want to touch very briefly on what's happening internationally and we received several robust submissions that seem to have been disregarded by the Opposition. The Auckland District Law Society talks about what's happening overseas and they say in summary that "These overseas examples further demonstrate that three-strikes laws (or their equivalents) do not work are unjust are against human rights principles and unnecessarily contribute to high incarceration rates and disproportionate representation of indigenous peoples in the penal system." They reference Australia the United Kingdom the US and the EU all who show examples that it doesn't work and the system is seen to be unjust. Very briefly: in the select committee process we had robust submissions. We considered in detail submissions both from victims—as we always should—as well as from academics and from practitioners. The changes made at select committee were very briefly focused on the compensation provisions and we received an excellent submission from the Wellington Human Rights Lawyers Association on that point which was more really a clarification of the compensation section as opposed to changing it dramatically. Few changes but really robust discussions were had in that process.I just go back to where I began which is the value of community safety and a value that I genuinely believe across this House that we share. I am often really disheartened that discussions about justice and crime go into this automatically divisive space. They do not need to be there. You do not need to react. You can apply the principles of justice. You can look at the evidence. You can work through a rational logical argument in terms of addressing this important issue for New Zealand.This side of the House is doing that not only through repealing this bill but through the totality of the policy and legislation we're putting in place around that. That includes the $94 million announced in the Budget to go towards addressing gangs and organised crime. It includes putting the most police on the beat. It includes the $6 million announced by Poto Williams in terms of responding to the ram raids that have been happening. It also includes the investments in alcohol and drug courts. It includes the investment in mental health and addressing truancy. This is a Government committed to community safety. We are about responding. I commend this bill to the House."