Nash Stuart; Mallard TrevorSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Look I actually felt for the member Alastair Scott—you know when he stood there silent for 20 seconds—because I have got to speak for 10 minutes on this bill as well and if I read this bill out very very slowly including the explanatory note I think I would make it to 4 minutes and 22 seconds. So making a 10-minute speech out of a 4-minute bill is actually a real challenge but it is one that I will take up with gusto.The interesting thing is that the member before Mr Scott Andrew Bayly stood up and he spoke passionately. He was really passionate. He talked about finance and expenditure and he talked about closing tax loops and he talked about foreign companies and he was raging. He was on a roll but unfortunately he was stopped. He was stopped. When he talked about all the great things and the meaningful things the Government is doing he was stopped so we could debate the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill.As a member of Parliament I take my role very seriously and I take seriously the fact that passing legislation in this House is one of the privileges that we actually get when we are members of Parliament. Debating legislation and giving it a full debate is very very important and I think that is what New Zealanders expect. But the thing is that we have a bill in front of us now that is five clauses long. Maybe it is important because the last thing we want to be honest is you know cowboys riding horses down the main street and blowing up safes after stealing dynamite from the local goldmine.Kris Faafoi: Is it a member's bill though?STUART NASH: Well Mr Faafoi has a very interesting point. There may well be a discrepancy in the Crimes Act if a person provides explosives for the purpose of committing a crime. The last thing we want as New Zealanders is for criminals to say: Well you know I might as well just give this bloke explosives because if I give him a gun I could go down for 5 years but if I give him a stick of dynamite I'm only going to go down for 2 years."I have not seen evidence and that is why—I suspect this is going to go to a select committee I am on—I would be very keen to hear evidence from the police as to whether in fact the term of only 2 years for providing explosives for the purpose of committing a crime has been either a deterrent or an enabler in terms of the weapons people use to commit crimes. Maybe what we will find—and only the police will know because I must admit we have not got a regulatory impact statement or anything like that—is that the police will say: "Hey no this is a real problem. We do have a real problem with this and what we've seen is around about a thousand people a year providing explosives for the purpose of committing a crime. And what we want is—we need the ability to lock them up for 5 years because 2 years isn't enough." If that comes across a select committee table—if the police provide that evidence to our committee that shows that the law is an ass because people are not providing guns they are providing explosives—then Mr Scott will have done us a favour.But I suspect—and I have nothing to go on this and we have just done a firearms inquiry and we have heard a lot of evidence from the police and a whole lot of different interest groups—that in fact there have not been many New Zealanders over the last 10 years who have actually provided explosives to commit crimes. And I also agree with Mr Scott on one point though which is that the sentence has got to fit the crime. But what happens in this House as we are well aware is there are a number of amendment bills. There are you know Crimes Act amendment bills. There are statute amendment bills. There are a whole lot of amendment bills—Kris Faafoi: Statutes amendment bills.STUART NASH: —yes sorry; statutes amendment bills—and omnibus bills—that actually have a look at these sorts of things and our officials are forever going through pieces of legislation because of course when one piece of legislation changes then it affects another piece of legislation. If a new crime is introduced and the penalty is X you know we have to get things in whack—of that there is no doubt. But I am just saying that the time we are going to spend on this bill I think could have been better spent if in fact this was part of a Crimes Act amendment bill because I suspect that next Crimes Act amendment bill—and this goes back to 1961. I do not know how many amendment bills there have been for the Crimes Act but I suspect there are a whole lot. But what I think could have happened is in the next crimes amendment bill there will be—let us figure—15 or 20 different amendments to penalties for different crimes because what we are seeing with the advent of things like P with new weapons with Tasers and with all this debate going on in the community is that people are looking at the different penalties for different crimes.I mean let me give you an example. One of the recommendations that we have made—and this has not been passed by the committee yet—is that in terms of firearms offences we need to look at the penalties and not only do we need to look at the penalties in a New Zealand context but we also need to look at the penalties in a global context. What are the Australians doing for example? What happens in Canada? What happens in the UK—so different Commonwealth countries. But when it comes to this bill when the only purpose of this bill is not to redefine explosives it is not to look at a different type of weapon—because the irony is that we are not only amending a certain section of the Crimes Act we are amending a subsection of that section in the Crimes Act. We are amending section 272 of the Crimes Act but in fact section 272 talks about "explosive substance" which of course is what we are dealing with here but also a "dangerous engine instrument or thing with intent to use or enable another person" to commit such an offence. There are a whole lot of different things within the specific clause. So really if the crime does not match the time there is a much better way to deal with this which I think could have really optimised members' time in the House.You know the cynic in me says that Mr Scott put this in the ballot. He was told by his whips to put this bill in the ballot. He knew it was not going to get drawn out because there are what 120 bills in the ballot. When this was drawn out I can imagine Mr Scott in his office going "Oh my gosh! What am I going to talk about?" and the reason I can imagine that is that when he was actually standing here charged with speaking about the bill there was a 20-second gap. Twenty seconds is not long if you are holding your breath or you are doing something else—Peeni Henare: Enough for an explosive.STUART NASH: —yeah ha ha exactly Mr Henare—but when you are supposed to be giving a speech on your own bill after about 3 minutes it is a long time because there is nothing much to say about this bill.Of course we support it. Of course we are going to support it. I mean I do not want someone who provides explosives for the purpose of committing a crime to get away scot-free or to go down for only 2 years. In fact I wonder—and we will find this out at the select committee and I think the member gets another turn to speak on this later on does he not—whether this is actually being led by the judiciary. Maybe a member of the judiciary has approached Mr Scott—and he can enlighten us in his last speech—and said "Mr Scott as my local MP I have a real concern because I've had a whole lot of people in front of my bench in my court who have been done for providing explosives and I can put them away for only 2 years and it is just not right because the potential harm of their actions if they had not got caught would have been significant." and maybe that is why we are here. Maybe this is a really important piece of legislation and Mr Scott just forgot to elaborate when he was giving his speech.But again I suspect that there has not been a well-meaning judge. I suspect there has not been a constituent delegation that has approached his office and said: "We have this issue." In fact I suspect that if Mr Scott actually spent some time in his electorate he would find that there are a lot of issues that people in Waipukurau and in Masterton have that are more important than this.In fact I suspect that Mr Scott will not be putting out a press release after we conclude the reading of this bill stating that his member's bill on Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill has gone through. And I suspect that if he did it probably would not make the front page of the "Masterton Star" or the Wairarapa Times-Age. It might but I suspect it probably would not.So at the risk of sounding a little arrogant—and I do not mean to at all because I think that is a most ugly trait—could I suggest to Mr Scott that perhaps in future he concentrates on things that are really important in an electorate.Aupito William Sio: Like housing.STUART NASH: Like housing like jobs like economic development like growth—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will resume his seat."