Sabin Mike: Bail Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sabin Mike: Bail Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 10 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2198. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MIKE SABIN (National—Northland) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on this very very important bill the Bail Amendment Bill. It will be a short call but I just want to address a couple of the points that have been made by previous speakers. It seems so often that the Greens will oppose anything—in particular the matters that are ultimately about supporting innocent members of the New Zealand public who go about their lives and through no fault of their own become victims of crime. The scales of justice that the Greens see should be tilted in the vicinity of the offender because it the offender’s human rights that matter most and those of the victim can be put to one side. Well I can tell you as a former police officer the reality of what happens out there on the street is something that the Green Party should get itself more in tune with. 
We have also heard some comments about political spin from the Labour Party. This is the same Labour Party that sat back on its hands for 10 years while the methamphetamine problem in this country went from nothing to the worst in the world. Labour sat back and said that it was perfectly under control and that the problem reached its peak back in 2003. That Labour Government was in power when I was a police officer and we watched crime rates go through the roof the number of victims rise the number of offenders in prison rise and the number of offences rise. So I find it highly ironic that Labour members sit here tiptoeing around this notion of political spin when they know as much as anyone in this House that this is good law and this is necessary law because it makes our communities safer and puts the onus back on those who would perpetuate crime against innocent members of our society. 
But this is not all that we are doing. This National Government takes very seriously the implications of crime: the implications for victims and the financial implications that this has for our nation just as much so. What we have seen over the last 12 months is yet another 4.8 percent decrease in crime which is a 15-year low. This is in the main because Minister Judith Collins as Minister of Police saw the police steer their strategies far more to the areas of prevention because it is quite right as members have alluded to that drivers of crime must be addressed if you want to see crime rates fall. I commend the New Zealand Police for the work for the prevention that they are doing. 
The Methamphetamine Action Plan an initiative with which our Prime Minister John Key has taken leadership has seen dramatic changes in something that the Labour Party seemed to think that it could sit back and ignore because it was going to go away of its own volition. That action plan has been delivering. We see a doubling of the treatment in prisons and we also see a greater emphasis on rehabilitation because so many of the offenders who go to prison are going to come out and statistically will reoffend. These are all part of a suite of policies of legislation that responds to an increase in crime and an increase in victims that Labour members sat by for 9 years in Government and watched happen.  
When we talk about political spin we are actually saying: “You know what? This is pretty good law and we need to find a way to say we support it but we are going to try to pick it to bits.” Well the reality is—and I can tell you as a serving police officer—that I have liked nothing more than to have this bill in front of me because it gives us the opportunity to say that the onus should rest with the person who has prima facie committed the offence and that the police are not left in a position where they are left to watch an offender walk out the door of that courtroom knowing full well that they will more than likely reoffend. 
This legislation deals with the most serious of offences. It is not to say that offenders will not get bail; it is just that the onus of proof is on them to prove that they will not reoffend. So we are talking about class A drugs we are talking about murder and the most violent offences and the flippant comments about the regulatory impact and one or two murders are a disgrace. The lives of New Zealanders have been taken because people have walked out of a courtroom and committed an offence while on bail. Sexual offending is also in the suite of changes in terms of the reverse burden of proof. This is part of the National Government’s continuing programme to support our communities to be safer to support our police and to support the notion that victims should be at the centre of the justice system. I commend this bill to the House.