McKelvie Ian: Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcKelvie Ian: Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13753. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IANMcKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I too want to congratulate Asenati Lole-Taylor on bringing this Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Bill to the House—I guess on having it drawn by what I should term the process of the roulette wheel. It is quite an achievement as I understand it. Many have sat here for years with no success at all in getting a bill drawn. It is a bit like going to theSkycity Casino and leaving with nothing which of course can happen.Andrew Little: Not by this Government. They’ve got plenty out of theSkycity Casino.IANMcKELVIE: Have you worked that out?The bill—[Interruption] They are rather noisy Mr Assistant Speaker—they are rather noisy. This bill has the potential to complement National’s law and order legislative programme which I think is having spectacular success. Aside from significant reductions in crime at almost all levels particularly in the youth crime area we have also of course seen recently in the youth crime area a great reduction in road deaths amongst young people. That is a pretty extraordinary achievement.My brief time in this Parliament has been spent on the Law and Order Committee and I have seen and learnt a lot about the outstanding role our police play in our communities keeping our communities and our young people safe. I want to briefly mention the work of our youth aid officers in our communities particularly in our rural communities. They really are the key to our policing success and of course to some extent this bill sets out to deal with the harm that comes to young people from their association with crime. Our youth aid officers play a critical part in the success that we have in keeping those young people safe and keeping them out of crime and those sorts of things.I also want to talk briefly about the work of the Department of Corrections and about what are at times testing intimidating and even dangerous conditions. I think the corrections department does a pretty amazing job. We have had the opportunity in the last 18 months to visit a number of New Zealand prisons to look at what goes on there and to see the efforts that have been made to repatriate those prisoners and re-educate them and get them back into the workforce. I think again that we are making significant progress in that area.This bill seeks to I guess impose tougher penalties on those people who by association involve young people in their criminal efforts. There is no doubt that young people associating with crime leads to them being much more likely to have a life involved in crime. So I think that the bill from that perspective has some great potential. There are already of course some opportunities for tougher penalties for people who involve young people in crime but this bill certainly clears it up.I want to talk briefly about this Government’s targets for reducing crime. We have a target of reducing reoffending by 25 percent by 2017. We want to reduce the overall crime rate by 15 percent and of course those results are significant already. I would have to say that some of the legislation that has gone through the Law and Order Committee in the last 18 months has certainly contributed to the improvement in those targets and no doubt the legislation that was put through in the previous 3 years had made a huge difference to those targets.The other area that the Government has firmly concentrated on is putting victims first. As the previous speaker Jacqui Dean said we have a bill currently before the select committee that aims to improve the opportunity for victims to protect themselves once those criminals who have done them the damage get out of prison. That is a pretty good start I think. There are also numerous other means by which the Government has moved to improve the lot of victims. I think that is a great bit of work. It is currently a work in progress of course. As Jacqui Dean said the bill that I am talking about is the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill which is currently in the House.Andrew Little: This is the silliest piece of legislation the House has seen in a long time.IANMcKELVIE: Those of us who have the opportunity to serve on the Law and Order Committee have a greater understanding of these things and clearly we do not need to engage in this kind of discussion.Finally I want to congratulate the member on bringing this bill to the House and I commend it to the House. Thank you.