White Helen; Goldsmith PaulHELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Mr Chair thank you. I want to just take the point a little bit further from my friends who've talked about the concerns they've got about what this will lead to. One of the concerns I raised is because I saw what happened when there were closing-down actions by this legislature of the role of various people in the Family Court. So in that situation what we saw when we closed down those avenues was others spring up that were way less efficient for the system. So what we ended up with was a whole lot of people told they shouldn't have lawyers in the process and the process got clogged up by a much less focused approachSo these reports while not necessarily your cup of tea Minister need to be replaced with something because of the nature of the objectives. What I am concerned about is that if this is going to happen that there is sufficient direction in the legislation so that that happens in a way that is efficient. So what I've heard the Minister say outside of this Chamber and I think in the Chamber in question time People just do oral reports." I'd like to know from the Minister—I really would like to know—what does he think that looks like? If somebody does an oral report does that mean they're bringing in a professional to do it or does it mean they're bringing in a whānau member to do it? And how is it going to be constrained so that it's focused in the right way and not just become a complete mess of a long amount of time in front of a judge who's trying to get information out of someone who may or may not be articulate or focused on the issues that the judge needs them to focus on? So I'd like to know about that—how is this practically going to work as far as the Minister's concerned?Has he talked to lawyers about how this will work in that area and what it will look like? And whether in fact there will be an issue with equity in that case—whether if you're paying for someone who's going to be focused in that way and know what to do versus you're not paying for someone and it's a whānau member who turns out best of motives but might not have been through this process a lot of times might not be using any kind of checklist that it may actually be an issue. So I'd like the Minister to tell me has he talked to people about this? Because there's no ordinary process for this legislation. Who has he talked to? How does he see the system working in replacement? Does he see the judges taking control of it; the lawyers taking control of it?And what is the place of the oral participation? Who does he expect to participate and how does he expect to do it? And if that is a member of the public—so a whānau member for example or a community leader—then isn't the cost that's being borne by the party for that actually quite a significant cost? Does he know how much it will be in comparison to the cost being borne at the present time by the taxpayer of what has become a very standardised focused written report? Thank you.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Thank you Mr. Chair. Look this is clause 4 of the bill which is the substantial piece in relation to changing the legislation. So it will be worthwhile just outlining what the Government is seeking to achieve. So the broad issue if I could cast people's minds to a website that is a company led by Harry Tam a former gang-member which is touting for business in these cultural reports and saying "Come to us get a cultural report." and "We've managed to get discounts off sentences of up to 35 percent."—I think was the figure that they referred to. That sort of touting for business for these reports was something that has led over the last six years to a very steady and substantial increase in the outlays for these reports: starting off about 40000 in 2017 and stepping up to a million and then to 2 million and then to 3 million and by the time we got to 7.5 million last year and the graph was going up like that [gestures a steep incline]. So the trajectory was clear: if we didn't do something about it we'd be heading for 10 million and then 15 million as the industry the cottage industry developed.A member asked me who had we talked—well one of the people that I talked about was the previous Minister of Justice Kiri Allan who accepted that there was a problem with this cottage industry developing and that we'd have to do something about it. Now in the previous Labour Government that would have meant not doing very much and maybe getting a report and thinking about it and in 10 years' time maybe considering it. This Government is much more focused and determined to deliver change in a timely fashion and so we indicated through the campaign that we were going to change that for two reasons. One because we were concerned about the continued growth of money being spent on these reports and given that there are many other opportunities for the background of offenders to be considered in such as pre-sentencing reports and many other factors that have been around for a long time; and secondly we're also concerned about the broader context of very significant discounts being given to sentences over the year.Now of course everybody in this Chamber will recognise that we should take into account the background of an offender and the challenges that they've had in their upbringing. There's obviously a very strong connection between a deprived background—being a ward of the State for example coming from a gang family and many many other elements that are very much to be considered in the understanding of and the sentencing of prisoners. But of course at the same time no society can function effectively if people aren't held personally responsible for their actions and in particular for serious crimes. So there is always an interplay between a background understanding and characteristics of an offender and also the reality that no society can function if people aren't held responsible for criminal acts. So that balance between the extent of discounts being offered in this category is an area that we as a Government are concerned about and there will be further legislation down the line restricting the ability of judges to have a combined total set of discounts more than 40 percent—and that's for future legislation. But the purpose of this legislation is to deal with that rapidly increasing amount of money being spent on what has been described on both sides of the House over the past as a cottage industry. And that is what we're trying to achieve."