Mark Ron: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMark Ron: General Debate[Sitting date: 10 October 2007. Volume:642;Page:12235. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RON MARK (NZ First): I rise in this House today to ask a couple of questions. First what do GregCarvell Daniel Ball andShyan Ricky Hill all have in common? Indeed how do the names Steven Wallace and Stephen Bellingham sit with these names?Well GregCarvell we all know was a gentleman who defended himself whilst under attack. He shot a man and was subsequently charged by the police run through the courts and was acquitted. Daniel Ball was a 17-year-old youth who was doing nothing more than sitting at a bus stop minding his own business and talking with his friends when he was set upon and attacked by a passing group of young thugs. He ended up in accident and emergency care and very nearly lost his sight in one eye. His mother took the phone call late at night. It was the sort of call all mothers dread. Daniel Ball’s assailant some time later when he was finally caught—a man by the name of Michael CharlesBrunning—eventually ended up with a 21-month prison sentence.Shyan Ricky Hill is a young man who by the age of 5 had been admitted to hospital 44 times due to chronic asthma. He is ofMāori descent although he looks like aPākehā. He was raised in a law-abiding family. He did not steal he was not a thug and he was always told to get a job to work and to be a law-abiding young man. Indeed I know some of his family and they are all humble—not wealthy—law-abiding Kiwis.Shyan Ricky Hill was a trained chef who is described by his family as a gentle giant. He never caused trouble. He is a relatively sickly boy who is going blind in both eyes and suffers from dyslexia. He is on the waiting list for eye surgery. He is on numerous medications due to his asthma. He left his house little when he was young for the reason that he was often too ill. He was a hard-worker attending polytech in Christchurch during the day and working until 11 o’clock in the evenings.On a particular day in ChristchurchShyan Ricky Hill was at a bus stop when he was attacked by a group of skinheads. Due to his gentle nature he did not react to this assault. He simply extricated himself from the situation. He was very angry and upset and he told his parents. In some ways he reacted as an angry young man should act after a mindless attack. But he got on with it.On another particular day he was returning home from work late at night. He was sitting on a bus with hishoodie up and his earphones in whereupon he was attacked by a gang of six youths armed with knuckledusters spanners a flick knife and metal pipes. The youths began taunting him. He was wearing red. The young thugs who attacked him taunted him struck him and spat on him were members of a little thuggroup known as the Aranui TownMāori gang affiliated to the AmericanCrips who just happen to wear blue.Upon getting off the busShyan Ricky Hill was assaulted by one of the youths. He defended himself and in that defence he pulled out one of his chef’s knives from the bag he was carrying stabbed an assailant and put him down. The youth he stabbed was 6 foot 2 inches and weighed 16 stone. He was one of a gang of six. The youths attacked him because he was wearing red. They saw him as a member of a rival gang whose colour was red and he was nothing of the sort. He was not a gang member. Upon stabbing the youth he made no attempt to flee. He took instructions from the bus driver then eventually walked home. The police picked him up and took him to the cells. He had been working a late-night shift and the police kept him up until 5 in the morning taking information.The upshot of this is that at the end of the day—after depositions where the police tried to charge this young man and expressed the desire to charge him with attempted murder—Shyan Ricky Hill pleaded guilty to a charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to injure. The sentencing judge sympathised with his predicament but gave him a 2-year prison sentence with leave to apply for home detention. His mother would have liked to defend the case vigorously and had she had an extra $50000 she would have done so.The question is: what price justice? The question is: what has happened to this young man’s attackers—these thugs these bullies these armed offenders? What has happened to them? We know that since then other young men have been assaulted. In fact the young man Daniel Ball was assaulted after that incident. The question for New Zealand is: how far are we going to go before we accede to the demands of the public that the laws of self-defence be tightened and that New Zealand citizens be given the right to defend themselves so that young men likeShyan Ricky Hill receive justice?