McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): I stand before you tonight in support of this bill for our first responders and I'd like to throughout this speech address some of the comments that have been made from across the floor but I'll start off in the first place with just a couple of points from the ACT Party.One is that we think this bill sends a powerful message that we support and wish to look after our first responders and when I hear of going to a festival and there being lots of people around and we cannot imagine whether or not we're going to see somebody assault a first responder I'd like to tell you that it probably doesn't happen at festivals with a lot of people around. What we see on the reality TV programmes is that it's happening late at night; it's happening where there's only a few people. What I'm hearing from my colleagues next to me is that there's a nurse that got head-butted. It's too late then to actually jump in and help that person. What I've heard of is a niece of one of our members a nurse who has been punched in the stomach. Again it's too late to do something then.I don't see this as being a deterrence; the ACT Party sees it as being a consequence to the actions that somebody takes on one of our first responders. And while I hear from across the House where they say St John Ambulance don't want this or first responders don't want this that's not what we're hearing when we've been lobbied especially by the prison officers. I'd like to commend the National Party for the three Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that they put in because the ACT Party was quite prepared to support those and actually see them as a really good compromise to the issues that the Labour Party had brought up during the select committee process.I too sit on the Justice Committee. One of the questions actually that was asked was Do we need to create an offence?" And the answer to that is actually yes we do need to create an offence to show that there will be a consequence to the actions of going after one of our first responders. We also had made the point of saying in the select committee that we needed to extend this so that the first responders included the GPs included the doctors the nurses the fire response people and also the prison officers—the prison officers who National have already told us are living with a 92 percent increase in violence that is occurring within the prisons. They are looking for support and we would like to support them. When I heard from the member from Taieri her sad story I tautoko her story but I also heard her say that she has a high regard for St John and I wonder: how can you have a high regard for any organisation but not for their safety when it comes to discussing looking after them as first responders?I also heard the other side talking about us wanting to lock up the offenders and throw away the key. Now I've not seen in the first bill or in any SOPs anything at all to say that we were wanting to lock them up and throw away the key. We want to see a consequence to the actions of going after one of the first responders. We'd like to see the support from this Government to all of those first responders. And I've seen heads shaking over there. I've seen the Labour Party actually talk about wanting to create other solutions so that we don't have people wishing to attack the first responders when the reality is from where I'm sitting you've had four years to actually get into that and make some positive changes and it's not occurring. What is occurring is an increase in the violence that is occurring to our first responders.We are hearing about other solutions that are needed but haven't been told exactly what those solutions are. So I am going to factor in that it's probably that we need more mental health help we need jobs out there we need people in homes and people are just getting frustrated and they're attacking others and this is where we need to make sure that they know there is a consequence to that. To have no support of this bill is actually to not support the first responders and we need to do that because there's actually a failing in the other issues that are causing this response. So we need to do something in the first instance for them. To ensure that a general practitioner that his nurses that Fire and Emergency that our constables that our prison officers are actually held in high regard does mean that we need to pass a bill to help protect them and it does send a message that this Government actually values the work and the effort that they put into our communities.And further to that I have four children; three of them are girls. One of them is studying to be a doctor another one is studying to be a nurse and the third one when she leaves school will become a paramedic and I want to make sure that my three daughters are protected that society will have the same respect for them that everybody in this House says that we have by introducing a piece of legislation that will help protect them. So it's disappointing to hear what's happening from the other side of the House but ACT will support National's Supplementary Order Papers and we would have wished that this bill could have gone further in order to support those first responders those that are there now and those that will be there in the future. Thank you Madam Speaker."