Locke Keith: Sentencing (Vehicle Confiscation) Amendment Bill Summary Proceedings (Vehicle Seizure) Amendment Bill Privacy Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Locke Keith: Sentencing (Vehicle Confiscation) Amendment Bill Summary Proceedings (Vehicle Seizure) Amendment Bill Privacy Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 20 October 2009. Volume:658;Page:7275. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is opposed to the vehicle confiscation and seizure legislation. We think this legislation along with some other bills the Government is introducing goes in the wrong direction of thinking that the answer to criminal behaviour is just to extend the penalties and get tougher and tougher and tougher. That response is only filling up our jails—overfilling our jails—and now we are talking about double-bunking and all the rest of it. There was a reaction to that approach by the Chief Justice some weeks back. More recently I saw a very insightful column by Colin James a well-respected commentator who was worried that we are going in the direction of more penalties longer sentences etc. 
David Garrett 
: You’re a criminal sympathiser. 
KEITH LOCKE 
: There is an interjection that I am a criminal sympathiser. The legal fraternity particularly a lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington has made the point that the prison rate in countries like Sweden that have taken a different course is much lower than the prison rate in New Zealand. So we are increasing the rate of crime. That is the people who are on this law and order offensive are the pro-criminal ones because they are creating more criminals. They are reducing the possibility of rehabilitation; prisons are by and large schools for crime. If members are anti-crime they should be against this legislation. 
The report on the bill from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee says that it offended against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in terms of the provisions for confiscation destruction and seizure. This idea of a penalty of crushing an object in this case a car is not one that the Greens support. We do not support physically destroying material such as the cars which could have another use. There may be cases for forced confiscation and the like but surely the vehicle itself should remain to be of use to somebody if not the offender. So this whole idea of crushing cars seems to be offensive to common sense. We are very much against that. It is surely offensive to any ecological approach of recycling material and continuing objects in circulation and in use. 
We also disagree with the Labour minority report which said that the judges should not have discretion on whether there should be confiscation or destruction—crushing of a vehicle. We think the judges should have discretion because it is very complicated. In fact the whole issue is intensely complicated and the more the Government goes down this law and order track the more complicated it becomes in terms of who has ownership rights and might reuse the vehicle who it might be onsold to and all the rest of it. It is getting into a total tangle. The more we go in the direction of extreme measures like destruction the more tangle we get into and probably the more appeals court cases and cost to the Government and the taxpayer. So in general we are against this bill and will be voting accordingly. Thank you.