Sabin Mike: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sabin Mike: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5205. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MIKE SABIN (National—Northland) 
: 
 I will take a short call just to round off this particular debate on the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill and I want to touch on these points. 
I reject the notion that this provision is already provided for in legislation. This bill explicitly provides in legislation an aggravating factor for these particular people and I think that is a good thing. In terms of the deterrent which I will come back to I also think it will have a deterrent effect. I can certainly regale members with a situation that involved me that would allude to that. I joined the police in the mid-1990s the same day my brother joined the New Zealand Fire Service. He is still a serving firefighter and I resigned from the police in 2008. I spent time obviously as a front-line police officer as all sworn officers will do then became a detective and worked particularly in the drug area. I saw the growth of methamphetamine and with that saw an amazing increase in violent crimes and indeed assaults against police. 
Drivers of crime have been touched on. This bill is not necessarily going to do anything about those but it is another tool in the armoury if you like in terms of the many approaches that are required. As a serving police officer I was—to name a few—punched kicked spat at bitten assaulted with weapons and cut with a knife and I had a gun pointed at me. I was hit on a couple of occasions with full bottles over the head when I was working in team policing. Unfortunately I got to a point where it just became something I accepted as a police officer that I would be assaulted and that the impact of this was just something you had to suck up. I also worked with other serving police officers who had their arms broken and had their jaw broken and were beaten unconscious stabbed shot and run down and one was run over. On numerous occasions there were other incidents for which charges would not even be laid. 
The thing that I noticed as an individual police officer when I was assaulted was that the times that the charges were actually laid I cannot remember a single time when there was an additional penalty applied in the sentencing process. In fact on one occasion I recall an incident where a violent man with a knife would not leave his car. Dogs batons and sprays did not do that. I effected an entry through a window with a baton. He was wielding a knife I held his knife hand off and I was bitten in the arm. The charges were dismissed and at sentencing the judge made the comment that that is the sort of thing that goes with the territory of being a police officer and that it is just what a police officer needs to get used to. I reject that. I believe that swiftness and certainty play a huge role in deterrence and that the quicker an apprehension can be made and the more certain it is a consequence will be applied the more significant the effect is of deterrence. 
I would also like to add that with regard to the role of this bill sending a message to the community sending a message to police that we back them and sending a message to offenders they are not all at the hardest scale and end of offences but certainly there are many who will stop short and think: “Well if I clock this guy then that is going to be an extra black mark against my name.” Certainly in my experience this has already applied significantly with emergency services such as ambulance and fire but less frequently—far less frequently—with serving police officers. 
I commend the Minister of Justice for this bill. The other work that she has done both as justice Minister and police Minister—this Minister was a very very popular Minister of Police—has restored much to the spirit the heart and the morale of that service and it is in good heart now. I commend this bill to the House.