Roy Heather: Young Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill — Second Reading 
Roy Heather: Young Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16206] 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the second reading of the Young Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill in the name of the member Ron Mark. Like other members in the House I too acknowledge the years of work that have gone into this bill and his commitment to it. ACT will be supporting this second reading. I think it is a shame that the Law and Order Committee was unable to recommend that the bill progress further especially noting Mr Mark’s willingness to be very flexible about the outcome. He was very much of the mind I think that anything moving towards an improvement in the youth justice system was a positive move and therefore he was quite prepared to listen to the opinions of people from other parties around the table to take those into account and to work hard to see whether something could positively be brought back to the second reading and Committee stage in this Parliament. I understand that Mr Mark has signalled his willingness if the bill were to make it through to the Committee stage to consider further changes too. I think he should be congratulated on that. 
I like the previous speaker was also going to read from the conclusion of the select committee report. I do not think I heard Ruth Dyson read out the first sentence of the committee’s conclusion which I think is very pertinent. She started on the second sentence and I would like to bring to the attention— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: I referred back to the first sentence. 
HEATHER ROY 
: Oh the member went back—OK. Well I will start with the first sentence because I think that it is the crux of the matter and it is very telling on where the select committee got to. It states: “We believe much work still needs to be done to improve the youth justice system.” I think that few in this House would disagree with that statement. In light of that I think it is a great shame that we do not have before us today a bill that a majority of members in this House feel they could support. I think that Mr Mark has done great work and that he has moved the debate forward—as many members have suggested—but we want more than debate. We actually want some action in terms of youth justice because violent criminal activity occurs amongst far too many of our young people. It is impacting on our communities and our society and it means that New Zealand is not heading down the direction that many of us would like to see it go in. 
I will refer to a couple of other comments in the select committee’s report and I will touch on just a couple of areas. The first one is under the heading of “Youth Offending Strategy” and I will make a brief comment about the youth justice dataset. The report states: “While examining this bill we found it difficult to get statistical information that tracked youth offenders into the adult system. We were concerned that after 18 years of the CYPF Act there has been limited study of subsequent appearances in the adult jurisdiction of those who first appeared in the Youth Court or were dealt with by the Police Youth Diversion scheme.” There are a couple of other comments too but I think that comment itself is very telling. 
If we have very little idea of what happens to youth offenders as they wind their way firstly through the youth justice system and then for some of them through the District Court and further courts for serious offending then I think it is very difficult to make proper decisions about how we should deal with youth offending. If we have no idea how these criminals progress through the system and if we have no idea how they enter and leave it then how can we make proper decisions? This is a criticism I have not just of the justice system but also of many other systems too particularly the health system where a lack of data is a huge problem when it comes to making proper decisions. That needs to be dealt with. I think it should be dealt with immediately whether or not this bill proceeds and I would like to see some action from the Government in this regard. 
I will also make just a few comments about family group conferences. ACT has been pretty vocal about this. Family group conferences have been shown to be pretty effective for some first-time offenders and I think that those who then do not re-present gain something from the family group conference process. But far too many do not—particularly youth offenders. I have been along to a family group conference when I was a victim. Our ACT bus was stolen after the last election by a young woman—a 13-year-old—who decided to take it for a joyride and crashed it through a brick fence. I went along to a family group conference as a victim because I was curious as to how the process worked. I had heard a lot of criticism about the process. 
Pita Paraone 
: Representing the bus? 
HEATHER ROY 
: Representing the bus; we were the owners. I went along to see how that process would work. Two young women stole that bus. One did not get as far as the family group conference process because she established a contract with the police. She went off and—to the best of my knowledge—she has not reoffended. But the young woman whose conference I went to was a repeat offender. She was offending not just a second time or a third time but was actually well down the track. At the age of 13 she was well under way. A thousand dollars’ worth of damage had been done to our bus and I thought the family clearly would not be able to pay for this. I was right; they had no money. So I thought that the way to deal with it was to get the young woman to do something positive to perhaps realise the error of her ways. ACT was about to deliver some crime pamphlets so I said to the family group conference that I would be prepared to forgo the $1000 worth of damage to the bus if the young lady would come and do 80 hours’ worth of pamphlet delivery. The family group conference felt that that was a bit tough so we compromised on 40 hours of effectively community service. 
The family thought that was a great idea. They felt that that community service was well worth undertaking and that it might teach their young woman a lesson. So she came along with the social worker—[ 
Interruption 
] This is a true story. The people on the other side of the House do not believe me but this is a true story— 
Hon Members 
: No we believe you. 
HEATHER ROY 
: I was not referring to New Zealand First members. On the first day she came along with the social worker and helped stuff some of the pamphlets. After that she was left to her own devices. She was supposed to come into our office and I was to take her out delivering pamphlets the next day. Well guess what? 
Pita Paraone 
: She never fronted. 
HEATHER ROY 
: She never showed up sadly. I had great hopes for her. She seemed like quite a nice girl but no sadly she did not turn up. I rang the social worker after a couple of weeks and said I was very disappointed because I thought that we had a reasonable deal and that this young woman could have got something out of the process. The social worker was very disappointed too. But the family group conference process has absolutely no teeth; there was no come-back. There we were—we were victims who were $1000 down and with not one pamphlet delivered. I rest my case. Where family group conferences are shown not to work in the case of repeat—recidivist—offenders we have to admit that they are a failure and that greater measures need to be taken into account. I felt that Mr Mark’s bill provided the ability to do that so I am very sorry that we will not see this bill progressing any further. I think that it had some good initiatives. 
The previous speaker the Hon Ruth Dyson mentioned the bill in her name that is currently before the Social Services Committee. Some provisions in it do overlap slightly with the provisions in this bill but many of the provisions within this bill cover much wider areas with much greater serious offending in mind. I think that for that reason it is a great shame that the members of the Law and Order Committee could not have come together more and provided something more positive as an outcome and I know that Mr Mark feels very strongly about this. I also acknowledge the comments made by Judy Turner because I agree with her in part. I think that great effort has been made particularly by the Labour Government with regard to other bills that have come before this House when perhaps it did not agree with many of the provisions but it bent over backwards and those bills looked set to progress even further. That willingness did not seem to be here on this occasion. 
ACT New Zealand will be supporting this bill. We believe that serious youth offending is a very very serious problem in this country; it is one that is escalating. The incentives in our current laws do not prevent many offences or much recidivist offending. We think that it is time for action not for just more talk. I would hope in the future that legislation with some of the provisions that this bill has in it will be considered more seriously and put into practice. Thank you.