Collins Judith: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCollins Judith: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 11 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15764. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson a happy New Year to you and to the House. It is in fact with great pride that I speak in this debate because I am also privileged to be the Minister of Justice the Minister for ACC and the Minister for Ethnic Affairs. I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge my colleagues in the justice sector the Hon Anne Tolley the Hon Christopher Finlayson the Hon Chester Borrows and our chief executives for the very hard work and concerted work of working together that they have done over the last 2 years. Can I also acknowledge in the ACC area the Hon Craig Foss who is the Associate Minister for ACC. Craig and I work very well together and he has done sterling work particularly over the last 2 years. In the ethnic affairs area I would like to acknowledge Melissa Lee the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Ethnic Affairs and all of our ethnic affairs team in National which I have to say is a fantastic team working together for the people of New Zealand.The member who has just resumed his seat Phil Twyford made some very interesting comments about what he had learnt in his local newspaper about what was happening in his local electorate. Let me give him a piece of advice. As an electorate MP he should not be getting his stories out of his local newspaper. He should be giving the stories to the local newspaper. He should be getting up off his chuff getting around to the garage getting the story helping these people to get their home through the Housing New Zealand Corporation or some other provider. That is what electorate MPs do. They do not sit around waiting for the newspaper to give them the stories.Sue Moroney: That’s Simon Bridges’ job in the Bay of Plenty.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I understand that there are a couple of list MPs over on the other side of the House who do not agree with me. Well let me just tell them that that is how it works in the real world when you are an electorate MP and you want to stay one.Today is the first day that I have been able to speak in the House this year because I have been representing New Zealand at the United Nations Human Rights Council at Geneva. I have to say that it was a very proud experience for me because New Zealand’s record on human rights is frankly second to none. I would like to say that the good thing is that the Labour Party was still on holiday so it could not actually putout a press release attacking New Zealand or our record on human rights. However the Greens were not. So Jan Logie from the Greens put out a press release and made many other comments and you would have thought if you had listened to them that New Zealand was one of the worst countries in the world for human rights. Actually we are pretty much the best.The response that we got from other nations to our report where we acknowledged for instance that we want to do so much better as a country when it comes to things like domestic violence and where we acknowledged that children still live in relative poverty—but having said that look at our immunisation rates. Look at our rates of early childhood education. Look at the way in which people are given a chance to get ahead. We acknowledged those as well. We are never going to be perfect because nobody ever can be in the real world but we are always going to keep trying to be.Instead what did we get from the Greens these people who want to be in Government with the Labour Party and however many other parties that they would need to put together? Well we got that the next day after that. This week what did we get? We got them bullying Nauru—Nauru—and refusing to apologise for bullying Nauru on its record. For goodness’ sake! Why do these people not just get to work and do a decent living instead of attacking every country in the world except those that they think are going to do whatever they want? So Nauru. Nauru has its challenges; so do all countries. But we should applaud where people get ahead applaud where they improve their human rights record and applaud where there is democracy. These are the things that we want to applaud.One of the things that we need in the country is a lack of corruption. This country has been recorded by Transparency International as being the least corrupt country in the world by the perception of the public of our Public Service for the last 8 years in a row—either first or first equal. This is a fantastic record and what it does is it says to New Zealanders that when you want to get a passport in New Zealand you do not have to pay a bribe. What you do is you go through the normal process and in New Zealand that is something we should value.Crime generally—5 years after we came into Government recorded crime is down to the lowest level it has been in 33 years. When I came in as the Minister of Police in 2008 I was told that we could do nothing about the crime in the Counties Manukau Police District in South Auckland where my electorate of Papakura was. I was told that this was all demographics. That was utter rubbish—utter rubbish. What it needed was policing. It needed smart policing it needed preventive policing it needed strong morale and it needed a Government that backed the police and that is exactly what we did. All these years later what have we got? Five years later crime is down to its lowest level in 33 years. We have set Better Public Services targets and results. Our targets are to reduce by 2017 overall crime rates by 15 percent violent crime by 20 percent and youth crime by 25 percent. Where are we at the moment? Total crime is down by 12 percent violent crime is down by 8 percent and youth crime is down by 19 percent and we have still got 3 years to go on these targets.So what we are seeing is that things are changing. We got the alcohol reform legislation through. We changed the law on alcohol. In fact just before Christmas what did I get from the Green Mayor of Wellington? I got condemned by her because we did not think it was all right for people to be out drinking on the streets until 6 o’clock in the morning. She wrote to me and said that was dreadful; it was stopping business. These are the same people who rail day in day out at alcohol—apparently all other drugs are all right—except of course when they are running for local government or to be members of Parliament.What else did we do? Well we brought in maximum jail sentences with no parole for the worst serious violent offenders under the three-strikes law. One of the other previous Labour spokespeople on law and order and on justice said Labour was going to get rid of that. That was about four people back so I am not quite sure whether that is still its position. It certainly is the Greens’ position. We brought in tougher sentences for crimes against children. Now it is a crime to stay silent if you know that a child or a vulnerable person is at risk. We brought in tougher sentences for involvement in gangs and we have brought in 24-hour GPS monitoring for highest-risk and child sex offenders out on release in the community. We have toughened up and strengthened the bail laws. We have done this with the support of other parties in the House that believe that this is important. We have also made 17 to 19-year-olds subject to adult tests for bail if they have served time.What we have done is make it a lot easier for the police to do their job. We know there are 600 extra police on the front line. We also know and we heard again today from the Hon Anne Tolley that the technology that police are now using means they can spend more time on the front line and less time back at the office. We had 70 percent more police foot patrols in 2012. The police now have Tasers lock boxes in their cars DNA testing of offenders smartphones and tablets. What we now have is a much safer New Zealand.The police are not just getting tough on things; they are getting smart on things. We have got pre-charge warnings: 41000 of them in the 24 months up to May last year. That means actually dealing with issues straight away rather than waiting 6 or 7 months for a court case. We have rolled out the smartphones. Illegal street-racing offences—remember them? Remember how the Labour Party said our law would not help? Well by the way they are down 35 percent. There are huge changes: a clamp-down on gangs organised crime and methamphetamine.The big thing that is different from all the years that Labour was in office is we have put our victims first. We have put victims first. We have brought them back into the system and we have said that we will not censor them when they want to say what they want to say in their victim impact statements. We are bringing in the Harmful Digital Communications Bill the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill the Parole Amendment Bill the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill and the Victims of Crime Reform Bill.This is a Government that works very seriously and works very well on justice and on law and order issues. I would like to say thankyou to my colleagues for the support and the backing you have given us and thank you to the people of New Zealand for giving us the privilege of continuing to do this work.