Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's my pleasure to take a call on this the Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill. As my colleague and friend the Hon Simon Bridges said we oppose this bill. And I have to say I would hope that one of the Government speakers will get up and actually use the full 10 minutes to outline clearly why they're repealing this legislation. I listened very carefully to Ginny Andersen the chair of the Justice Committee—and I acknowledge her past experience and role around policy and with the police—but she didn't outline it for me. The only real reason I could hear that she gave for why this Government is repealing the legislation is that they don't like the fact that our Parliament has legislated and has asked the judiciary to apply a much stronger sentence for recidivist offenders serious recidivist offenders. That's the only reason I can see put up tonight for repealing the legislation. That is not a reason; in fact quite the opposite.I just want to support the comments that Simon Bridges made. Right now in this country we've probably got the worst situation that I have seen certainly in my lifetime of a proliferation of gang numbers serious violent gang members that are well resourced and highly organised that now are regularly carrying high-powered firearms and using them. In the last three days in Auckland there's been three serious firearm incidents. My greatest fear is we lost Matthew Hunt last year and of course we're very lucky that Constable David Goldfinch wasn't killed as well in broad daylight on the streets of West Auckland with a gang banger that had a high-powered AK-47 type military-style firearm.Simeon Brown has been doing an outstanding job in supporting the police and trying to hold the Government to account and make them understand just how serious the situation out there is how much more at risk members of our community are and actually how much support our police need in trying to deal with a gang situation that has rapidly escalated and got out of control. But I can tell you now in the last three or four years of trying to hold this Government to account normally what we get is a whole lot of barracking from the other side we get jokes we get told that somehow being tough on crime and taking community safety seriously is something to be scoffed at and laughed at by the Government. But actually get your heads around this: we believe that communities deserve to be safe. We actually believe that law-abiding Kiwis should have the freedom to be able to move around in our country without the fear of being tied up in some type of gang violence being intimidated having their property stolen—we believe in that. That's fundamentally a core part of our DNA. The reason why we supported the bill from the ACT Party is because it's a good bill and actually it was in response to some fairly horrific violent crime that occurred in our country. Christie Marceau—can anyone remember Christie Marceau? That was horrific. I just want to acknowledge her parents and especially her mum that went through a living hell. Actually as a country we decided—and actually if you go back and have a look at the polling that was done in terms of the support for the three-strikes legislation when it was brought into the House National Party voters were 78 percent in support of this bill. You'd expect that because fundamentally National Party voters and members take community safety extremely seriously. But then you look at Labour—you'd expect Labour to poll very low wouldn't you? When you hear the rhetoric on that side of the House when you hear their position you'd actually expect them to be polling very low; I'd say in the 20s maybe down in the teens even. Do you know what Labour Party supporters thought of this bill when it was brought to the House by the ACT Party? Sixty-three percent of Labour voters supported it—63 percent of Labour voters supported that bill. And this one will really blow you away because I would have thought the Greens maybe scrape up on a good day 5 percent—maybe 5 or 6 percent support. Fortyeight percent of Green voters supported the three-strikes legislation to come into this House and be passed.We've actually had this debate in the House before. I had this debate when I was justice spokesperson and Andrew Little was Minister of Justice and he tried to get this repealed through the House. That was when they were in coalition Government with New Zealand First.Hon Simon Bridges: Bit of common sense there. Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yeah there was a bit of common sense applied and probably through Darroch Ball who's now one of the joint CEOs of the Sensible Sentencing Trust. He could see what was going on. He took a stand. Good on him and actually New Zealand First said they would not support Labour and therefore they didn't have the votes and therefore the bill was thrown out of the House. The right thing to do.Hon Member: I mean to be fair you and I pressured them in to that.Hon MARK MITCHELL: That's true—that's true. But now it's back in the House they have a majority and they're going to force it through. The worst thing about this is that they're going get away with it to a certain extent because we're in COVID. Because of their poor response to that the whole country is focused on COVID right? So it's like look at the squirrel over there. It's a complete distraction. Sadly this is going to go through.The other point that I just want to raise very quickly is—and Simon Bridges touched on this—that unfortunately in this country sadly Māori are overrepresented inside our criminal justice system right? We all recognise that as a problem and an issue that we have to be serious about and address. You cannot address it by trying to legislate your way out of it by removing laws. Because where are we going to go to next? We'll repeal this law then let's get the Crimes Act out and let's start going through it. Let's go and say OK look young Māori offenders there's lots of theft ex cars and serious assaults. Let's just legislate that away." Let's just legislate it away. Because then you're not going to have the offending. Then you're not going to have them in front of the courts. It's ridiculous—it's ridiculous. You're trying to legislate away a problem in this House that you cannot do.You need to take a social investment approach to it. You need to get into people's lives much earlier. I saw this working on the East Coast of New Zealand. I spent 10 years policing on the East Coast of New Zealand from Ruatōria down to Wairoa. If you want to have a front-row seat into the social issues that this country faces and continues to face go and try and work on the East Coast of New Zealand; it's tough. It's a tough area. I realised very very quickly as a young policeman—I didn't know what social investment really meant then. But one day the light bulb came on when I'd been called to a job where a young guy had broken into a car. He was prospecting for the Mongrel Mob there and I tracked him with the dog we caught him we took him back to the police station. I had him in the charge room and we had a charge sheet there we had to fill out I said "What's your occupation?"—he was only 17. I said "What's your occupation?" He said "Unemployed." I said "But that's not an occupation." I said "You know what do you do for a job?" and he said "No that's my job: unemployed." He said "That's what my dad does as well." His dad was a patched up member of the Mongrel Mob. The light bulb went on right there and then and I realised that this young guy who should've been full of aspiration and should've had the education and the support and the mentoring to allow him to take advantage of all the incredible opportunities that exist in this country was instead on a pathway into the criminal justice system because that's the environment that he'd been born into. If you want to change the system if you want to stop young Māori coming into our criminal justice system we have to be committed to a social investment model where we invest in their lives much earlier—not come into this House with a piece of legislation repeal it and throw it out because you think that's going to deal with the problem. It's not going to deal with the problem. All it's going to do is it's going to put more serious offenders back out on the street and put the community and the public at risk.When you say that this legislation didn't work get up and talk to the numbers. Someone on that side of the House get up and talk to the numbers for me. Because I'm looking at them right here. The study that the Ministry of Justice went through in 2018 on the effectiveness of the three-strikes law showed that 10433 offences went up for first strikes so that's about 10000 first strikes 338 second strikes. Do the maths in terms of the reduction. Let's go to third strikes: six. So if someone on that side of the House stood up and said to me there were 10433 first strikes and there were 10400 third strikes then I would agree with you and I'd say that the legislation wasn't working. But it's not the case; it's very clear this legislation is working.It's very clear what the agenda is on the other side of the House and it is a shame. I'm sorry to my ACT colleagues because this was a very good piece of legislation that was campaigned on and we were pleased to support and we continue to support it. I think it's a serious indictment on this Government that there's not even a Government speaker that can stand up and actually speak to this bill.Debate interrupted."