Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Chair and I thank the Minister for her introduction. My first question will relate to what's changed in her thinking. When the Ministers first introduced this bill they—and I quote from Minister Faafoi's first reading speech. His quote was It's bad legislation and we know that because it hasn't worked." And his main argument was that the three-strikes legislation hadn't worked and that's why we were going to repeal it. The slight problem with his argument however was that there was no evidence whatsoever that they could draw on to say that it hadn't worked because the advice that we got from the ministerial evidence brief from the Ministry of Justice from the Police from Corrections—all combined in an evidence brief—was "There is no substantial international or New Zealand evidence on the effect of three-strikes law on crime." Oh dear. So we have a Minister bringing in a bill saying "We're bringing this bill in because the current regime the three-strikes regime hasn't worked." And then the officials come out and say "There is no substantial international or New Zealand evidence on the effect of three-strikes laws on crime." They went on to say the existing evidence is mixed and more robust research is needed to understand the true effects of these laws. And now so having basically waffled and—I think quite frankly—misled the House because the Minister said it hadn't worked and all the evidence showed it didn't work and then we were told "Hang on there is no evidence" we now hear from the Minister who's subtly changed her argument which is to say "This bill the three-strikes legislation so changes things that it shouldn't remain in place without clear evidence to the effect that it's working and therefore we need to repeal it" which is a rather circuitous kind of logic but I suppose there is a strange logic to it. So my first question to the Minister is: am I right in assuming that the basic purpose or rationale for this repeal Act has changed? And I suppose people might be wondering "How does this all fit in to the context that we face today as a country?" Where we all look and I as I was waiting for this piece of legislation to come up was looking at the New Zealand Herald website and was saddened to see a video of a smash-and-grab attack on a shop not more than a few hundred metres from my home in the Epsom electorate where people have smashed into a jewellery shop and people from the community have fought back and there's been fighting on the streets in our house—in our neighbourhood not in our house thankfully; in our neighbourhood—and many New Zealanders are confronting that reality day in day out. And all New Zealanders are conscious of the rise of violent crime in our communities and this Government has presided over a more than 20 percent decrease in the prison population at the same time as a more than 20 percent increase in violent crime. And people are legitimately asking the question: "Well how do those two things work?" Should the focus of Government right now—looking at the situation looking at the prevalence of crime in our community looking at the rise of violent crime looking at the increase of gang membership and gang activity on our streets looking at the more than 500 percent increase in ram raids associated with youth crime in particular looking at all that my fundamental question to the Minister is: why has she and her Government then come to the conclusion given all that that the priority for legislative change is to reduce sentences for our worst repeat serious criminal offenders? Where is the logic? "Looking at the situation today the main problem we face is that we're too tough on our worst repeat criminal offenders." So the first question is a broad logic question."