Beaumont Carol: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Beaumont Carol: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20882. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak on Part 1 of the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. I will talk about clauses 4 and 5 and what they do but before I do that I need to comment on the points made by the last speaker Rahui Katene. The intention of the bill is very narrow and it is very simple. A mistake was made. The bill deals with a particular very narrow circumstance about maintaining identifying particulars of young people. It was not a constitutional outrage; it was a drafting error. We have a bill now to rectify a drafting error the impact of which was to accidentally omit some words that need to be in the legislation.  
I find it quite extraordinary that members would see this bill as the way to deal with what are very serious issues—which I have raised in the debate and which Green members and Maori Party members have raised—about our young people about the causes of crime and about the disproportionate impact on Maori and even the latter points that the Maori Party member Rahui Katene made about policing conduct. All of those are really important issues that I and many of my colleagues have a great deal of sympathy with. But this bill is not the way to deal with that. A minor technical narrow amendment bill is not the way to start to deal with some of the most significant issues that face us as a country. We need to be constantly looking at the causes of crime. As I said in my second reading speech we need to be looking at the impact of poverty inequality unemployment and all the other things that are disproportionately affecting our young people.  
Clause 4 states: “The purpose of this Act is to amend the principal Act so that it indicates clearly when it authorises the storage and when it requires the destruction of youth identifying particulars.” The purpose of this bill is to right what went wrong in 2008 when the legislation went through and if you like to reflect the intention of Parliament at the time.  
I am somebody who strongly believes in following good process but good process surely to goodness is about introducing a bill having select committee scrutiny reflecting on what happened at the select committee and passing legislation that reflects those outcomes. Obviously in the case of the 2008 Act as others have said—and Lianne Dalziel and Annette King have made this point—that did not happen. The process as Annette King outlined in her case was a very substantial process. There was a 2-year consultation period and then the track through the House after the select committee hearing went wrong. It went wrong; it accidentally omitted words that needed to be there. It was a drafting error. So let us not use that to try to create a much broader debate. If we want to do that then we should be raising the debate properly.  
Clause 5 makes it clear that the sections “substituted by section 6 of this Act apply and must be taken to have applied at all times after the close of 30 September 2008 to all identifying particulars obtained under the principal Act after the commencement on 1 October 2008 of that Act …”. This is the retrospective part and again I understand why people get nervous about retrospective legislation. I doubt that there are too many of us in this Chamber who do not see why it is problematic. But in this particular case it is necessary to ensure that our police are able to do the job they are meant to be doing and are able to identify youth offenders. In my opinion identifying youth offenders and ensuring that they are dealt with appropriately is better than not identifying them and finding them much further down the track when they are much more involved in criminal activity.