Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. As a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee with my colleague Jacinda Ardern what I would like to take the opportunity to do is to highlight the outputs of this justice system over the last year.In December 2016 our prison population hit 10000. Is that congratulations to the Government? I do not think so. That is an extra 1500 prisoners in the last 2 years. Why are our prisons exploding? And why have our prisons forced the Government to come out and say it will invest in a billion-dollar 1800-person new prison? Hopefully it is not the Government's form of social investment because if that is what social investment looks like for our country then we are in serious trouble.We have over 20000 people going through our prisons each year and about 75 percent of the 1500 increase over the last 2 years are remand prisoners. The other 375 new prisoners are there because of violence issues and also breaching non-violence orders. For people who do not think we have a family violence issue in our country those statistics speak for themselves.What I am really interested in are the people who end up in our prison system. What we do know is that 91 percent of people who go through our prison system end up with a drug alcohol or mental health issue. When they enter the prison system—and my colleague Kelvin Davis touched on this—61 percent of them have drug alcohol or mental health issues. So what our prison system is actually doing is teaching them to be drug addicts become alcohol addicted and also to develop mental health issues.We have got to do something serious about people going into prison. We have got to prevent them going into prison in the first place. But going into prison should not mean that the outcome of that if you are Māori—and this is where it gets really interesting because 51 percent of the male prisoners are Māori and 57 percent of the female prisoners are Māori and if you are Māori 80 percent of you within 5 years will be back in prison again. So that is the biggest challenge.I want to highlight the Waitangi Tribunal case that Tom Hemopō took on behalf of Māori. The finding of that particular Waitangi Tribunal case was that urgent action is needed to address the failure of the system. Māori going into prison actually should be a sign of the system supporting them to never go back again. But what it does do as I said earlier is create more drug addicts more alcohol-addicted people more people with mental health issues and it actually keeps them in the system. That is an absolute failure and we must do something about it.The other highlight I want to make is The Backbone Collective which was formed by Ruth Herbert who also formed this group with two others Deborah MacKenzie and Tania Domett. Now what are they there to do? They are there for victims of domestic violence and abuse. They are there to support women and children and they are an independent watchdog of the system. What have they said of the system? They have said that the system actually revictimises women who are going through the court system. They have said that the engagement with police and the process with Government departments actually does not help them; it hinders their experience of family violence. I know that they have put out a challenge—a wero—to the Minister of Justice. They have 160 questions that they want answered and I hope that the Minister is going to answer those questions really quickly because from The Backbone Collective's perspective our justice system is failing our women and our children who are suffering from family violence in our country.As a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee we had an opportunity to go to Australia earlier this year. We were the chosen select committee. I want to highlight two particular issues and visits that we made. The first was to White Ribbon Australia which obviously focuses on reducing family violence. What White Ribbon highlighted to me—and we also visited the Canberra office of family violence that is attached to the Prime Minister's office. And what that office said to us—Mr Chair I am going to ask for another call; I will do so now; [Bell rung]—was that when women experience family violence they need support immediately. What type of support do they need? They need a home they need adequate income they need to be diagnosed and they need wraparound support. Guess why? So that they can keep children with their parents.One of the biggest issues that I think we are having at the moment is that if women who are experiencing family violence go into the system and Child Youth and Family (CYF) is involved guess what we are doing? We are taking their children from them. If that is what the justice system is doing and if that is what the justice system thinks is the solution then again I think that is an indictment on this Government's social investment strategy.The other issue that I want to highlight is that while we were in Australia we got to speak with Justice McClellan. Justice McClellan is the chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He has been chairing this process now for 5 years. What did he tell us? Actually he told us that over 66000 children have been sexually abused in institutions either run by the Government—that is 40 percent of those who were sexually abused but 60 percent of the abuse actually happened in Church institutions. What have they committed to? They have committed to providing victims of sexual abuse with counselling and support for the rest of their lives. What they are talking about in Australia is trauma. The trauma caused by suffering family violence sexual abuse and other forms of abuse that actually end up following you for the rest of your life.Why is that relevant? I went to an event that the National Council of Women hosted about a month ago. It was titled Towards a Gender Equal New Zealand. One of the people there Louise Nicholas talked about going to a prison and talking to 21 women in that prison. They were all preparing to leave and of those women 19 of them had been sexually abused as children. This issue of sexual abuse is a huge issue. On Thursday we will hear from Grant C West who is bringing a petition to this Parliament to call for a royal commission on institutional responses to child sexual abuse.If we do not think that that royal commission is relevant to the justice sector then we are kidding ourselves. Based on what Louise Nicholas told me most of the women in prison are there because they have been sexually abused as children. That abuse has never been validated. They have never been assessed. They have never been diagnosed. They have never got the support that they want. And how does that affect their lives? Well obviously it means they end up alcohol dependent drug dependent in prison and with mental health issues. So if anyone wants to consider or ponder the relevance of an inquiry then maybe they should look at the statistics starting to emerge in this particular sector that we are discussing today.I quickly want to talk about the increases in aggravated robberies that have happened in New Zealand in the last year. That is a 10 percent increase nationally. That is 2841 aggravated robberies. What has that resulted in? Actually it has resulted in the formation of the Crime Prevention Group and I want to do a little bit of an acknowledgment of their president Sunny Kaushal. I was at a hui with other members of this Parliament on Thursday looking at this issue specifically and how it relates to our Indian community how it relates to our Chinese community and what we are going to do about it. This is because people who are going about their lawful business should not have to be confronted with—unfortunately—young people and also gangs of people who are stealing specific commodities. Those commodities are cigarettes; those commodities are alcohol.What we heard actually was a cry for help and I am here to add to that cry for help. We need more police front-line staff serving our community. We need more support for Neighbourhood Support. So I have got a meeting with my local police and Neighbourhood Support because guess why? Neighbourhood Support is in our community binding our community together being vigilant together and trying to stop the drivers of crime so that people can be protected when they are going about their daily business. And if this Government thinks that 800 new front-line police officers are enough I think that it needs to do some recalculations. From my perspective the justice sector is in disarray.