O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Could I just stand up and speak as someone who knows just a little bit about crime a little bit about law and order as I can see does the sponsor of this bill but certainly not that previous speaker Simeon Brown who could've just taken that speech from what about 15 I've heard him give in this House which actually bear no relationship—stand up here talk tough talk about soft on crime hard on crime"; completely irrelevant. I just get angry sitting here when I hear that.I recall that part of my 41 years in the police I spent teaching and training detectives and as the detectives would come in—these are people that have come in they have reasonable knowledge of the law they've spent time on the streets as uniformed police officers didn't really need the in-depth knowledge of perhaps the Crimes Act or some of the serious legislation that they'd subsequently need as detectives. Well the first thing you'd do when you start testing—they would open up the Crimes Act and start looking at the variety of offences in there. The first thing they would sit and do is they'd go through the assault provisions and the various definitions of them and they'd sit there and say "Well what's the difference between that and that?" Essentially you're talking about injuring wounding with intent—a large number of offences. Just about all those offences had been put in there to satisfy generally a political requirement at the time because they didn't make anything safer.What this House should be about is making sure that anything we pass in this House is going to make things better for people. What we need to do is make sure: is this thing that we're passing this piece of legislation actually going to make a difference? Well I'm afraid Mr King—good on you for having a look at this but it's not actually going to make any difference. He like myself was a detective and he will know that when you come to look at a set of facts when you start doing a criminal liability the first thing you do is look—was there a death and you start working backwards from that. Actually there is ample legislation now to look after this. There is manslaughter and there is murder. There are sentencing regimes around both. There are aggravating factors around both.This is just simply not necessary. This is just going to be another confuser and it's not going to make anything—it's going to be another trade-off. It'll be another thing that Crown solicitors will be lambasted with by lawyers who are saying "Well if you charge with this we'll let you off that." It just adds another layer. I can't help but be passionate about this. If you confuse the issue the only people who will benefit will be the defence lawyers because where you don't have a clear set of facts clear law to work on where you have alternatives that's what any good lawyer will say: "Right we've got an alternative here. We've got a trading point here." Once you've got a trading point you've got a weakening point and that's what this will do.In fact it's quite interesting looking at the background of this. The single-punch bill actually came from New South Wales and it wasn't designed actually to this sort of situation. What it was actually designed for was the incredible number of problems they had around their liquor licensing problems at the time. What was actually happening was they were getting a lot of violence around inner-city Sydney and again it was a piece of legislation that was brought in to highlight what they thought was a part of a package of offences a package of measures they brought in at the time around that whole trying to stop what was a lot of violence.In fact murder wasn't really the issue death wasn't the issue; it was actually the serious injuries that were caused. If this legislation actually broadened and talked about the effect of the single punch because actually most—and I'm sure if he's quite honest Mr King will deal with this—of the factors around offences like the single punch that came up actually resulted in quite bad injuries. It was actually people who had may have ended up with sometimes long-term brain injuries etc. It wasn't actually death. Death was an easy part of it. So this doesn't even address the real issue of what it copies which was New South Wales and New South Wales actually weren't looking at the death part of it. They were looking at serious injuries and this doesn't even actually address that.So good on the member for bringing it across. You know he's come here he's been a long-time police officer like myself. You come here and you want to sort of make a bit of difference but actually this simply isn't going to make a difference. The member will remember when he first went on his detective course as a constable on trial. He'll remember sitting down looking at the legislation—look he's smiling over there because he knows this. He looked at the legislation. He was tested on this and he couldn't work out what was a wounding. He couldn't work what was an injury. This is just another layer that's going to confuse those that come after him. It's not necessary. It won't make anyone any safer. It may make him feel a little better and that may not be such a bad thing but I cannot recommend this. With my experience of the law this will just simply add and create a confusion and a gap for the defence lawyers. I do not commend this bill to the House."