Power Simon: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Power Simon: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10449] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I cannot help but comment on Parekura Horomia’s contribution. It think it is the first time I have heard a speech in this Chamber move over such a wide range of topics in such a short period of time with each sentence beginning with the phrase “at the end of the day”. I look forward to the same latitude being allowed in the debate on justice matters as was allowed for matters relating to Maori Affairs. 
We come now to Vote Justice one of the Government’s areas of serious failure. This area—alongside its sister or brother portfolios of courts corrections and youth justice—continues to be an area that has been handled appallingly by this Government. The tricky thing about this particular portfolio which in some ways is a helpful thing is that the Minister responsible for the Law Commission is also the Minister of Justice Mark Burton. He is currently the Minister in the chair and as he is the Minister of Justice we should give him the opportunity to explain why all the serious law reform work this Government has put before the House in the last 12 months has been done by the Law Commission and not by the Ministry of Justice. 
We have seen changes in the laws relating to sedition and a massive law change in the area of evidence and the Government’s flagship policy of effective interventions—and we will come back to this—was again driven by the Law Commission as was the introduction of the Sentencing Council. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: And your point is? 
SIMON POWER 
: The Hon Lianne Dalziel asks what my point is and it is this: what has the Ministry of Justice been doing for the last 12 months? I have a question for the Minister: when the Prime Minister needs legal advice over such matters as the unfortunate tragedy surrounding the death of young Liam Ashley or when she decides that the parole matters around the release of Graham Burton are too legalistic why does she go to the Law Commission for advice and not to the Ministry of Justice? 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Well why wouldn’t she? 
SIMON POWER 
: Because I tell the Minister the Law Commission is not there to provide legal advice to the Prime Minister. The Ministry of Justice is. 
The interesting thing from my point of view when it comes to law reform is why this Government has abandoned the Ministry of Justice as its primary law reform vehicle. It has done nothing in the last 12 months. When we look at New Policy Initiatives by Appropriation on page 739 of the estimates we see the forecast for some of the matters this ministry will be considering. 
 The first on the list is Effective Interventions which is a compact parcel of policy designed to do one thing and that is to reduce the prison population. It is not designed to prevent crime but to reduce the prison population. That is what is stated in the explanatory note of the Criminal Law Reform Bill. We know that the Ministry of Justice has become consumed with this problem and it is a problem for the ministry because it cannot forecast the prison population in any meaningful way. 
We know that in May of this year the ministry forecast that 7800 people would be in our prisons by the end of September at the end of May there were 8100 people in our prisons. It cannot get simple forecasting issues right and that is why it is so concerned about the prison population—it cannot control it. The downstream work from the deal cut with New Zealand First—over 1000 new police and the impact on our courts corrections and justice systems—was not done. We asked for papers under the Official Information Act we have seen that that work was not done. 
Even if having 1000 new police is a laudable outcome—if we get there and if they can get over the reduced hurdles for the mental entry test and for the various other matters that have been dropped by way of criteria for joining the police in order to meet the target—we still do not know what the downstream effects of this new initiative will be. When we ask people from corrections courts or justice during the estimate hearings they cannot tell us. 
In the meantime the only initiative that this Minister and this ministry have been able to come up with is to introduce the Sentencing Council a body—which my colleague Chris Finlayson has talked about on numerous occasions—that is designed to do one thing: to create a buffer between the public’s expectations of sentencing by the Government and the incidence of something going wrong in a sentencing area. In the same way the Government introduced district health boards to the health sector so that when something went wrong in the health system the Government was simply able to say: “It’s nothing to do with us; it is all the district health boards. All we do is fund them.” The sentencing council will become the district health board of the justice sector and we will see Government members stand up and say: “Oh that parole outcome was nothing to do with us.” or “That short sentence was nothing to do with us. Take it up with the Sentencing Council.” Well that will not wash with the public of New Zealand at this coming election. 
The other thing on the list of initiatives for appropriation is the conduct of the 2008 general election. Let us hope that we do not have a repeat of the 2005 conduct for the general election where a credit card was funded by taxpayers. Let us hope that during the 2008 election we do not see another credit card funded by taxpayers. 
We know too as we look forward on these appropriations about the implementation of the Coroners Act. We know that the Attorney-General was caught out by his own colleagues in not reappointing Garry Evans to the job of coroner. He had to back off once local members of the Labour Party and Marian Hobbs told him what a mistake he had made in implementing that piece of legislation and omitting such an experienced and neutral—neutral—coroner who was prepared to make some tough calls. 
So when we look ahead to the following 12 months from the time of this estimate being approved by the Committee we know that it can only get better for the justice sector because the last 12 months have been an unequivocal disaster—for justice for this Minister and for corrections courts and the like. We will come to those organisations later in this estimates debate. But in the meantime on those four or five issues I have raised this evening this Minister has some explaining to do. He needs to explain why his department and his ministry have spent so much time worrying about the prison population which they cannot forecast accurately in any shape or form. He also needs to explain why his ministry has not spent time talking about how to prevent crime and how to make sure that rehabilitation programmes in our prisons and in our justice system work and do not actually create better offending patterns for people who go on to those courses. 
He needs to explain why drug and alcohol rehabilitation has been such a low priority for his Government when there are 8000 inmates and only a couple of hundred specialist beds currently for drug and alcohol rehabilitation. He should answer some of the tough questions about his portfolio which has been under the gun for so long—and the next 12 months will be no different.