Horomia Parekura: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — Second Reading 
Horomia Parekura: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10679] 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Labour—Ikaroa-Rawhiti) 
: 
 The Labour Party is very clear in its support of victims— 
David Garrett 
: Oh yeah! 
Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA 
: Our period of time in Government proved that as our learned friend down here would understand if he had followed us over that period of time. But the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill is an outrageous bill. Enough international research says that lengthy prison sentences do not correct behaviour or get people on a better plane. I hope the Maori Party is voting against this bill because there is no evidence to suggest that this will reduce crime. Regarding recidivism in Maoridom it is common knowledge that young Maori who commit a crime under the age of 22 or 23 will appear in court six times. 
I remind the Government about that great public servant Margaret Bazley who recently let a report come out that suggested that the process of legal aid had a lot to answer for. I am appalled about that and I relish the speech that my fine whanaunga Hekia gave apparently out at the marae about people’s attitudes to how we should manage crime. She said that when the subject is Maori the articles are splashed all over the front pages of the  
Dominion Post 
 or something like that anyway. And that is a fact—for example if it is about a kohanga reo misusing $20000. But I remind members that a lot of those quick deliverers of profit and finance companies have gone down the gurgler—it is outrageous—yet we hear hardly anything about that. We hear hardly anything about that at the time; that is terrible. Small businesses are struggling at the moment; that will not help it. 
We can already hear the Government complaining about the lack of bed space in prisons. It is amazing. So the Government has a policy of “three strikes and you’re out”. If we listen to previous speakers we can get that hint of “Bash ’em over lock ’em up and everybody will know that we’re tough! This is about tough love.” But that is a whole lot of rubbish. If we go back to the time of the previous National Government we heard them say time and time again that in correcting the insidiousness of crime longer sentences were not the way to go. We recognise that and that Government did say that and meant it. But all of a sudden now we have this huge flip-flop. 
The Minister of Justice Simon Power has slowly and carefully distanced himself from this legislation. Everybody knows that. The commentaries from some of the senior judges of this country are saying the same thing. I could stand and hypothesise about history and cite the facts about being colonised but I will not. But if people were working-class people I tell Mr Garrett like those in the 1950s 1960s and 1970s and all those people were used as factory fodder and the landed gentry and the upper class managed all the wealth what would that member say about that? Of course there would be trouble. And the working-class Pakeha were no different. 
Now we get to this supposedly great time and we ask how this will attract the vote. How will this attract the vote? We will sting them with it. It is unreal. It is said that this bill is good for victims. Well if we read the writings about victims we find that one of the real fears is how they broach it—how they manage it. Of course our families having been victims know that it is a horrendous experience. But there is all the essence for prolonging that hurt that agony in this long period of sentencing. 
The previous speaker Sandra Goudie was really trying to play stand-over tactics. Yet the Attorney-General Chris Finlayson has found that the bill as introduced has an apparent inconsistency. So we can see that the gap in the Government is widening is splitting over the section of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protecting New Zealanders against “cruel degrading or disproportionately severe … punishment”. We had Hone Harawira and his colleagues huffing and puffing and celebrating about signing up to a United Nations declaration. That process will evolve and history will tell us how it can help us. But that was about rights so how can people in the Government support this bill? How can they do that? Where I come from people still line up in the courts in Hastings and so on. There are huge queues of them. Can we blame them if they are trying to feed their kids? Can we blame them if they are getting nicked for everything they are getting into? 
It is all very well to be clean and clear and to pontificate about how well the world should work but we were sent to Parliament—some of us anyway—to protect and support those people. In my case they are a whole lot of Maori but they have not been recharged and counted up again through no fault of their own. 
This party believes in being tough on crime but it is quite clear that some people have taken just a single line in legislation and are making tougher sentences and bringing down crimes to benchmark something that is really academic. Experts say that. Mr Bolger was great in the sense of trying to push for and have people understand that there were different ways of correcting and penalising people for crime. We are supportive of the rights of victims and we are supportive of those who are victims of people who are consistently committing horrendous crimes but this is spreading the blanket so far that it is catching the people who are being penalised through no fault of their own. 
When young Maori of 16 or 17 years of age go to court the legal aid lawyers—who have guaranteed payment—say to them that they had better plead guilty till the lawyers work it out. They go to court again in 3 months’ time and the lawyers tell them again they had better plead guilty but the lawyers get paid. Those young men go back the next time and the lawyers tell them that they might get a deal for them. The young people say they will consider it and then the lawyers try to bargain. So those lawyers are getting paid four times but at the end of the day the Maori get locked up. Why should they be punished for minor issues and other such crimes? “Three strikes and you’re out”—the only place that that is fit for is the softball paddock. We have the Minister here pitching the ball down to a whole lot of other fancy-footed academics but the Minister is being unkind and trying to make out that this legislation is about getting tough. 
Then Government members are squealing because it is about beds. What about the 15 staff who are being put off in Gisborne at the moment? What about the 47 percent unemployed in Wairoa? That is how crime busts out but it has to be managed. I heard the Minister one day or someone over there today saying it was about being intelligent. If this is how the Government wants to be perceived as being intelligent then God forbid what will happen in our prison system as we go forward. Thank you.