Turei Metiria: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — New Zealand Bill of Rights Act Compliance First Reading 
Turei Metiria: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — New Zealand Bill of Rights Act Compliance First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1432] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 I fully support the very rational analysis that my colleague the Hon Tariana Turia has put forward today and it has been very nice to hear that on a debate as intense as this which is often full of fluff and drama but no proper analysis. I very much appreciate that. 
The Green Party will oppose the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill and we cannot see any reason why it should proceed any further than this first reading debate. We would like to see it go up in flames if at all possible. The legislation is dangerous it is discriminatory and it will fail to achieve a safer community. The Green Party policy is focused on keeping the community safe by eliminating the causes of crime poverty under-education and unemployment; by supporting victims and promoting the rights of victims as being central to the legal system; by focusing on the rehabilitation of offenders to reduce reoffending rates; by fully supporting restorative justice programmes to restore and rebuild community relationships; by investing in Maori justice systems and in Maori restorative justice programmes; and by relying on imprisonment to keep only the worst and most dangerous offenders away from the community. This policy direction of the Green Party requires less of an obsession with retribution and punishment for their own sake and looks instead for evidence-based solutions that work for the community. This legislation that we have debated today absolutely fails to achieve any of the Green Party goals in our policy. 
The bill is the result of lobbying by the Sensible Sentencing Trust and ACT as I understand. There is no inherent evil in that process but I make the point that the Sensible Sentencing Trust has distressingly abrogated its principle of supporting victims of crime with the recent statements made by Garth McVicar concerning the killing of Pihema Cameron by Bruce Emery. That case was a tragedy for two families—a terrible tragedy for the families of the victim and the offender. I note that under this bill Bruce Emery would have risked a minimum 25-year sentence and no parole in some circumstances. But it is especially awful for the victim’s family in this case when the spokesperson for a supposed victims’ support group has stated that the offender convicted of the manslaughter of a young man should have been discharged from that crime because minor crimes like graffiti need to be “dealt with seriously”. One cannot get more serious than the taking of another’s life. In no circumstances can such a killing be justified let alone for a base property infringement. The Sensible Sentencing Trust is advocating vigilantism and lynching and the trust has both raised the stakes for Mr Emery and abandoned the family of the victim in that case. 
This bill also arises from the agreement between National and ACT. The agreement says that National has agreed to introduce this legislation as part of a package of stuff. National has agreed to give the ACT bill a fair hearing at the select committee based on the evidence but I note that National has made no promise to pass this legislation into law. That might explain why the bill’s regulatory impact statement which was written into the bill by the Ministry of Justice completely slams this legislation. The statement has nothing good to say about this bill at all and surprisingly enough I largely agree with it. 
I will describe some of the comments that the regulatory impact statement makes. It states that the provisions lead to the possibility of disproportionate outcomes that may affect public confidence in the judicial system. This bill is supposed to be about increasing public confidence; it will reduce public confidence. It states there is no evidence that the bill will improve public safety and indeed there is nothing in the bill that deals with the causes of crime. It states there is little if any evidence that such provisions will act as a deterrent to offenders or that offenders will even understand the consequences of this legislation in the process of their offending. So there will be no deterrent effect. Even if we accept that offenders will weigh the consequences of whether this bill will apply to them the bill leads to a perverse incentive for offenders who will become liable for a life sentence regardless of the severity of the crime they commit as long as that crime fits within a wide range of different crimes. So the bill incentivises them to commit the worst crimes. There is the danger of disproportionately harsh sentencing that could lead to judges avoiding the imposition of the qualifying sentence of 5 years in order to ensure a later or long-term just outcome. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report on this legislation clearly sets out that this approach is irrational; it is not a rational approach to dealing with issues particularly around disproportionately harsh sentencing. 
The regulatory impact statement states that the bill will impact on Maori disproportionately more than on any other population group in this country. It is rare for the ministry to make statements such as that I have to say. Mr Garrett referred to the comment in the legislation that Maori are more likely to be convicted. Well that is quite right because there is absolutely clear evidence that there are racist filters in the police and in the legal system that lead to a greater number of Maori being stopped by the police being arrested by the police being convicted by the legal system and attracting harsher penalties from that legal system than do other population groups in this country. I note that for young Maori offenders there is an even greater increased risk of disproportionate treatment. In 2004 research showed that young Maori come to the attention of the police more often even though their offending is less serious than that of their non-Maori counterparts. This bill entrenches the impact of those racist filters in our system leading to an increased number of Maori being kept in prison for the length of their natural lives. We are talking about a significant proportion of our Maori talent—our rangatahi our pakeke—spending their whole lives in prison. This is especially grotesque because we know that the Maori lifespan compared with the Pakeha lifespan is so much shorter. Some Maori will spend their whole lives in prison because of a ridiculous dangerous irrational bill. This bill entrenches racism and perhaps given Garth McVicar’s comments about the Cameron whanau—who are Maori victims of crime—we should not be at all surprised. 
This bill also deprives offenders of the possibility of rehabilitation which disproportionately compounds the impacts on whanau and families of offenders and there has been some discussion about that already this afternoon. From even a purely economic point of view this bill will subsequently increase the prison population with a significant higher cost and there has been very little cost-benefit analysis to suggest that the bill will work or be of benefit in terms of the use of taxpayers’ money. The money that will be used to keep people predominantly Maori in prison for the term of their natural lives will come from a limited pool. Indeed that pool of money which comes out of Government coffers is the same money that is used now for the support of victims of crime for restorative justice programmes and community-building programmes for rehabilitation and for education programmes in prison. It is the same pool of money with so much of it to be directed to just a few when if that money were used for the purposes of dealing with reoffending rates rehabilitation and the causes of crime we would get a much bigger bang for our taxpayer buck. That will not be the case if this legislation is passed. The more money that is spent on those few offenders the less will be available to implement the programmes that will actually keep our communities safer by reducing offending. 
If this bill is set into the general context of the policy on private prisons the story gets even dirtier. If corporations are able to make a profit from public money and a bums-on-seats model of shifting people into jails then this “three strikes” legislation will become a profit-generating mechanism for those corporations. That has happened in the US. This week two judges have been charged with corruption for taking kickbacks for sending young offenders to privately owned boot camps whose owners had then given the judges money for those sentences which had been imposed for very very low-level crimes. That is happening elsewhere where this system exists. It will happen in this country because neither this legislation nor any other Government policy has put in any protection mechanisms to make sure it does not happen. There has been no discussion of the relationship of all these different bits of legislation and the private prisons’ corporate profit capacity that this Government is proposing as part of its supposed crackdown on crime. There are no safeguards. 
This legislation will cause extraordinary harm particularly to Maori communities but also to people in general. It will be enormously expensive and it will do nothing to solve the crime issues in this country. The Green Party will not support this bill.