Clendon David: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 31 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:4140. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a brief call on this bill the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill firstly to affirm the Greens continuing support. We have supported this bill through previous readings and will continue to do so. Indeed we will certainly support the Supplementary Order Paper in the name of Mr Chauvel. Support for this bill was initially somewhat diffident I have to say a couple of years ago when it first surfaced simply because we could not see that it would change a great deal. On our experience and observation the evidence was that courts the judiciary actually did consider an aggravating factor—that is if the victim of an assault was a uniformed officer a police officer then certainly that was deemed to be an aggravating factor albeit it was not written into the law. But nevertheless it certainly did no harm and we are pleased to support it. As it has evolved and particularly with reference to Supplementary Order Paper 14 we think that is a particularly useful addition. It does extend the protection offered or the acknowledged seriousness. 
Like other speakers I have personally witnessed ambulance officers being assaulted by people so drunk—when they had usually suffered some injury as a result of getting involved in a punch-up in a pub—that they thought to lash out at that ambulance officer a person endeavouring to mend them. I had up until recently a family member who was also a volunteer ambulance person. That is clearly a matter we have to take really seriously. 
I am intrigued by the chair of the Law and Order Committee who commented earlier that when a number of assaults on police is measured in thousands clearly we do have a problem here. It does seem to me that the problem seemed to have peaked in around 2010. My understanding is that in fact in assaults on police the trend is downward. That is something of course that we all could only be pleased about. The latest version of  
Ten One 
—the police journal its monthly magazine—talks about a more strategic approach to risk minimisation. Clearly I consider that to be an extremely intelligent approach to policing. Not wishing to sound patronising but I will say that just having this very very structured framework of minimising risk to serving police officers means as I understand it—not to pick a fight or argue numbers—the assaults are diminishing and that has got to be a good thing. And to the extent that the judiciary can send messages by treating the status of victims as an aggravating factor has got to be a good thing. 
I have already said that we will very happily support Mr Chauvel’s Supplementary Order Paper. I have just one question and I hope that New Zealand First or some other person might be able to enlighten me. Supplementary Order Paper 9 talks about extending this protection if you like or these provisions to people working in the Department of Corrections essentially police officers. It is very specific about employees of the Crown. I just wonder in that context what this means for employees of private contractors such as in respect of Auckland Central Remand Prison and people who are not employed by the Crown but by Serco a private contractor. Does that exclude those prison officers from the provisions of this bill? Does it mean that for a prison office in Rimutaka an employee of the Crown an assault on that person would then be an aggravating factor but not if that person happens to be employed by Serco albeit that they are obviously working in a very similar environment and in an environment of equal risk? In fact I would argue that in a private contract prison the likelihood is that there would be a greater risk of a prison officer being assaulted given the characteristics of private providers and private contractors. 
So we are very happy to support this bill and to support the two Supplementary Order Papers under discussion but I do pose that question about whether this is intended and whether it would cover those who are employed by private contractors in our prison service. Kia ora.