Collins Judith: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Collins Judith: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20030] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 It has been a very interesting morning listening to all the contributions. I will take just a moment to correct the member who just spoke Georgina Beyer. Rob Moodie was the president of the Police Association as I recall not the police commissioner which is quite a different role altogether. I cannot quite imagine the current police commissioner in a kaftan but one never knows. As long as it does not hurt other people it is fine with me. 
I come back to the more serious issues. I have been wondering why the Government has not changed this bill given all the very good contributions from members about the deficiencies in it. Even members who will support the bill have pretty much the same complaints about the deficiencies. I wondered why the bill had been on the Minister’s desk for the last 6 months and then the answer came to me as clear as a bell. Mr Tamihere told us what it is. It is because the Labour caucus is so split down its politically correct lines that it cannot get the bill back to caucus for agreement. Obviously that is the answer. 
The Hon Tony Ryall mentioned some of the offending parts in the official documents on this bill. I will read them out for the benefit of the Committee: “The ministry proposes however that any brother-sister sexual connection involving abuse of trust authority or dependence where one of the parties is under 20 be covered under the proposed offence of sexual connection.” In other words for anyone over the age of 20 brother-sister incest would be just fine. 
 This is the sort of nonsense that a politically correct Government driven by various special interest groups would go along with. How many people who voted Labour in the last election—nice decent people who look after their kids and pay their taxes—would have signed up to that sort of nonsense? But we should say: “Good on you!” to the Minister because he did say eventually that he would not go for that—we know he did not agree with it. But by goodness we know how this Government works. It puts up these ideas then we come out and say: “That’s shocking.” then the Government sees what the people want to do then it looks at the polls and then it decides whether it will go ahead with the idea. This Government has a real problem making any negative value judgment—that is what it calls it; a “negative value judgment”—on any sort of lifestyle issue. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Anything goes. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Anything goes and the only time it makes a negative value judgment is when somebody stands up and says: “No actually it’s not OK to do that to our communities.” 
I say again to the parties in this House who are voting for the bill that I cannot understand what in the bill they could possibly vote for. Indeed there are some good things in it but they are so small compared with some of the bad things in it. My colleagues Dr Wayne Mapp and the Hon Tony Ryall have both put forward substantial amendments to try to make the provisions in this bill a little more sensible. But the Minister will not vote for them. We know that. He will not vote for anything like that because it is a bit too sensible. He does not want this bill to go back to the select committee. He talked about how the committee had spent 1 day—24 hours—on this particular provision. 
Ron Mark 
: It was 21 hours—less than a day. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Oh it spent 21 hours on it. It spent less than a day’s hearings on it spread over 2 days. That is nothing compared with how important these provisions are. It is a remarkable thing that the Minister can say the select committee had plenty of time. I certainly sensed from the plaintive little cry from Martin Gallagher the chair of the committee—the plaintive little male cry from the back benches of the Labour Party—that there was not sufficient time. He certainly came across that way when he made comments like: “We really did have a lot of good discussions.” and “I’d really like to sort of thank everybody.” and “There were lots of issues that we couldn’t quite resolve.” He came across as saying: “There are lots of issues that aren’t particularly right but I got bullied into it because I can’t take it back to caucus.” Poor old Mr Gallagher! What else can we say.