Borrows Chester: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBorrows Chester: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19085. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Associate Minister of Justice):I would like to draw attention to a number of initiatives within the courts space that we on this side of the Chamber are very proud of and also to the excellent work of the team at the Ministry of Justice building on changes made within legislation over recent times. Under this Government the Ministry of Justice has turned round rising court waiting times. In 2013 for instance we cut the age of cases before the court. For all court cases the averages are down 8.9 percent. For criminal cases the average is down a staggering 18.3 percent and disputes tribunal cases are down an average of 21.2 percent. Over the course of the last few years we have introduced audiovisual links into prisons and 11 courts and with crime at historic lows there were 86000 fewer court cases last year than in 2011.Today is the anniversary of the introduction of the Criminal Procedure Act and after a year’s implementation there have been 176000 new charging documents issued under this new legislation. We are getting better at enforcing court fines as well with $250 million less owed in fines since National came into office. When we came in the number of outstanding fines was over $800 million and now it is just over $500 million and that is good news for the taxpayers of New Zealand because that is money we can spend in other ways particularly around the social sector. Specialist courts have brought down their number of days in consideration and waiting times. Coroner’s court cases are down 54 days. We all know the devastating effect that dragging out coroner’s court cases has on the families of those who have passed away. Employment Court matters are down 85 days and the Environment Court is down 64 days. Māori Land Court matters are down 69 days. Time waiting to get in front of a court is dead time and it is a huge frustration.Within the youth justice space we have applied a number of initiatives introduced with the Fresh Start policies in 2008. They were quite contentious as they traversed through the Social Services Committee but based on court data from June 2011 to June 2013 youth crime as measured by Youth Court prosecutions has dropped 27 percent from 3345 cases down to 2490. These are young people for whom their appearance before the court is delayed or does not occur. The best way as we know to keep young people away from a career in crime is to prevent them going to court the first time.So there is excellent work by Police for Alternative Action and the excellent work by Child Youth and Family in dealing more appropriately with young people as they come before the court. The result of a family group conference review found that family group conferences had a number of improvements that they could make in terms of the timing of those family group conferences; the venue where they were held in regard to being off Child Youth and Family premises and into the neighbourhoods and communities; the use of lay advocates to assist families to come to good resolutions in their decisions as to what should happen to their young people who were offending; and the encouragement of bringing complainants before the family group conference to enter into the restorative justice process. This has seen far better resolutions.When I was in Opposition attending for instance the youth justice residence at Rolleston the very sad thing that we found there was that most of the vast majority of young people incarcerated were there on their fourth or fifth stint of 2 months. Fresh Start applications—which allowed people to be sent to the youth justice residence or to have supervision with activity for slightly longer periods but also to add on to the back of those sentences drug and alcohol therapy and intensive supervision—means that those people are not coming back and in the meantime are not creating further victims for which they are incarcerated.It gives young people significant hope. It gives their families help through mentoring and parenting programmes. We are very pleased with the results that we are seeing there with 27 percent fewer young people appearing before the Youth Court. Thank you.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member—what is Scott’s name—Scott Simpson.