Flavell Te Ururoa: General Debate 
Flavell Te Ururoa: General Debate 
[Volume:676;Page:21728] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Thank you very much. Kia ora tatou. Yesterday in question time the Minister of Police when asked about the levels of recorded crime in New Zealand made an interesting statement. She said: “Frankly focusing on someone’s race is not going to make it any better.” I think that is an interesting statement with due respect to the Minister because immediately I think it distances her from the Government’s policy direction advanced by the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Maori Affairs and given sign-off by Cabinet. I am talking about the drivers of crime policy which is a whole-of-Government approach to reducing offending and victimisation with a particular focus on Maori. The Maori Party would I think love to pretend that ethnicity is not an issue in the justice sector but anyone can look through the Government’s own reports to know that this is simply not true. 
Let us take some of these for starters: the New Zealand Police and Ministry of Justice data tells us that Maori were four to five times more likely to be apprehended prosecuted and convicted than their non-Maori counterparts. The Department of Corrections report  
Over-representation of Maori in the criminal justice system 
 tells us that Maori were seven and a half times—seven and a half times—more likely to be given a custodial sentence and 11 times more likely to be remanded in custody awaiting trial. It is not as if the system itself has not realised it has a massive issue in what the reports are calling the impact of discretion. A Ministry of Justice report identifying and responding to bias in the criminal justice system made two key recommendations: first to develop responses that identify and seek to offset the negative impact of neutral law structures processes and decision-making criteria on particular ethnic minority groups—which is really just a flash way of saying that it is institutional racism—and secondly to enhance cultural understanding and responsiveness within the justice system and to improve public accountability via monitoring and publishing data on rates of ethnic disparity. The outcome of this apparent discretion is tragically seen in the collective impact upon whanau of Maori being imprisoned at a rate of six times that of non-Maori—six times. 
For the purposes of assisting the Minister to answer her own question—why focus on ethnicity—I will take a moment just to look at the role that discretion plays in the New Zealand criminal justice system. Opportunities for discretion to operate present themselves in situations from the decision to report an incident as a crime—I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Can I just ask that if members are having a discussion they could tone it down? I am struggling to hear myself in this very good speech that I am delivering to the Parliament of the land. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I just advise members that it is a convention in here that if they wish to have a private conversation they should do so outside the Chamber. It is discourteous to the member who is trying to address the House. We are all honourable members and every member shall be given the opportunity to make a good speech. Thank you. 
TE URUROA FLAVELL 
: I was talking about discretion and opportunities for discretion to operate present themselves in a range from decisions to report an incident as a crime through to prosecuting decisions on whether an incident should even end up in court and from the impact of jury discretion right through to sentencing and the decision to grant parole. Although discretion may be good in theory there are some anomalies and that is where we have some problems. 
I will take members to two things that happened in my electorate of Waiariki—two cases. Here they are—Paul Quinn whakarongo! In case one at Rotorua: a 17-year-old was killed when he was hit by a jet ski at Lake Okareka. His two friends both Maori were found responsible for his death after one of their jet skis performed a manoeuvre that threw up water obstructing the other’s view. The two Maori boys were charged with operating a ship in a manner likely to cause unnecessary danger to persons or property and they pleaded guilty in March 2011. They were sentenced in June and discharged with conviction. They were discharged with conviction even though the judge admitted that they had done everything possible to right the wrong. During their court appearance the young men were supported by their families the family of the boy who was killed and their school. Their school principal told the court that the two were academic achievers who would do well in their futures. Both lawyers for the defendants pleaded for the young men to be discharged without conviction. That was case No. 1. 
In case No. 2 in Tauranga a Pakeha man was killed in the harbour after his Pakeha friend accidentally steered his boat into a beacon. The Pakeha man like the two Maori boys was charged with operating a ship in a manner likely to cause unnecessary danger to persons or property and pleaded guilty. The person was discharged without conviction after paying a $3000 donation to the Tauranga Coastguard and $500 in court costs. The judge in this case said that the donation and the fact of the defendant having accepted his responsibility for the tragedy carried a deterrent effect. He said that the defendant had paid a significant emotional price—both him and his family. From my perspective both parties in this particular instance paid a significant price so what is the real lesson here? Is it that money counts? In every other respect these cases are absolutely identical apart from one thing—the ethnicity of those accused. All I ask is that we investigate this before we dismiss it.