Borrows Chester: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Borrows Chester: Land Transport Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1942] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I follow on from a point made by my colleague earlier in respect of the application of sections 134 and 135 of the Crimes Act and how that relates to women. For years we did bad things by women and women complainants in respect of sexual matters. We did a lot of those things while investigating complaints or while women were trying to make complaints in respect of section 134(1) of that Act. Some pretty archaic stuff goes on within the Crimes Act and remains there today. An example of that is section 134(7) which reads: “No person shall be prosecuted for any offence against this section except under paragraph (a) …”—which is indecent assault—“unless the prosecution is commenced within 12 months from the time when the offence was committed.” 
I will just use the example that Gordon Copeland used. He talked about an offender who was 24 years of age and who was convicted of having sex with a girl who was at least 9 years younger than him. She could have been as young as 12 or 13—who knows? What we do not know is the nature of the relationship between the man and the girl or when the sexual offending started. When we look at men who offend against young girls like that we see they often do something known as grooming. In other words they set out to entice young girls because they have a preference for prepubescent girls—girls of that age. It seems very strange to me that Mr Copeland a member of United Future would so strongly defend somebody who even though the offence was as long ago as that had sex with a girl so much younger than himself. 
Pre-1985 we find as I alluded to earlier that as a society we took sex crimes very very lightly. Let us go back in time—perhaps to the time when my friend Bob Clarkson or when Peter Brown were young and could buy an ice cream for a penny. At about the same time Mr Brown could have been deported to Australia if he stole a loaf of bread. Maybe 30 or 40 years ago if someone had stolen an overcoat he or she would go to jail. That would not happen today. People can do burglaries or commit all sorts of what we consider to be serious crimes and not go to jail. The complete reverse of that has happened in respect of sex crimes because the further we go back the more lightly those crimes were treated. The penalties for sex crimes have now become significantly more serious than they were. 
Let us look for instance at section 134(2) of the Crimes Act in relation to indecent assault. A point that I made at the beginning of this debate was that the offence of indecent assault included things that are now treated as a rape offence. A person could now go to jail for 20 years for what would have been charged as an indecent assault in those days. Somebody who was convicted of indecent assault in 1983 or 1984 might well have gone to jail for 6 months. Today if he or she was charged with the same offence or the equivalent offence for doing the same act he or she would go to jail for 6 or 8 years no problem at all. 
I take the point the Minister made earlier that such a person would not automatically get a P-class licence but that the application would go for consideration before the director. The problem with that is: how do we know what information the director will have available to him or her? We know that in some cases for instance the offences go back 40 years - plus. What information will be available on them? Mr Copeland in relation to the incident he quoted could not tell us how the relationship with the girl started. Was the man involved with her as a teacher or babysitter? How did that relationship start? We do not know. All we know is that the man has not been convicted since then. Does that mean he has not offended again or that he has not been caught? Who knows? The point is that we just do not know. Are we prepared to take that risk with members of the public who ride in the back of taxis or who happen to be the last passenger on a bus? I can tell members that those people are vulnerable people. They are in a position to be picked up and taken away by a taxi driver and it seems ludicrous to me to take that risk. 
The point was made that a person who had committed an offence of kidnapping could still reapply for a licence. That seems strange to me.