Whaitiri MekaHon MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. Otirā e ngā mema katoa tēnā tātou katoa. I'm pleased to take a call on the members' bill the Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill in the name of the member Darroch Ball. The bill proposes three things. It creates a new offence of injuring a first respondent or prison officer—and I want to acknowledge the Supplementary Order Paper that the member has mentioned in his first contribution tonight—under the Crimes Act 1961. It amends the Sentencing Act 2002 to require a minimum sentence of imprisonment of six months for those convicted of the new offence unless the court considers that would be manifestly unjust. And thirdly it expands the existing offence of assaulting a police prison or traffic officer in the Summary Offences Act 1981 to apply to first respondents. Can I just from the outset recognise the incredible job our first respondents do in this country: our ambulance drivers our police officers our prison officers. A day doesn't go by that we don't acknowledge the hard work that they themselves do and the risk to their safety they put themselves and their colleagues at. The Justice Committee received 74 submissions on this bill: 53 submissions from individuals and 21 from groups and organisations. Of those submissions 41 supported the bill and 30 opposed it. I want to take the time for the House to just highlight some of the submitters that came before the Justice Committee and what they submitted to the Justice Committee. I guess the one I want to reference firstly is the New Zealand Law Society which came before the Justice Committee and made the following recommendation: that they themselves consider the bill to be unnecessary and recommend that it not proceed and if it did proceed we recommend the select committee seeks advice from officials and drafting assistance to ensure it is fit-for-purpose". So the Law Society in their submission to the Justice Committee raised some really important concerns they had around this bill. I want to summarise where I've come to in terms of being a Government member on this particular bill. The other submitter I want to draw the House's attention to is the Howard League who we all know do some amazing work in our prisons with prisoners to help them in their reintegration. Their written submission to the select committee said "We do not support this Bill. We believe that New Zealand cannot continue to invest in what may in practice amount to systemic vindictiveness. Our prisons are a glaringly dysfunctional foundation to our criminal justice system and continue to be moral and fiscal failures. Passing this bill will be an ill-placed step [forward]." Labour won't be supporting this bill for two clear reasons. It does introduce a minimum mandatory sentence a piece of law that we don't currently have in this land. The member himself also raised the running of the extra sentencing for injuring prison officers or corrections officers over and above as opposed to concurrent. For Labour I want to say on behalf of the Justice Committee we really took the effort and time to understand the bill and invited the member himself to attend the Justice Committee to seek some clarification around what part of the legislation or law is broken and doesn't address protecting our first respondents which I believe is at the heart of this bill and which I totally support. But unfortunately this bill introduces like I said a mandatory minimum sentence and there is also the second issue around compulsory cumulative sentences. So on that basis Labour will not be supporting this bill."