Hipkins Chris: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20857. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I find myself in the very uncomfortable position of rising to defend Judith Collins. I feel unclean. I support the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill. I have now had the opportunity to read it. Thanks to the waffle coming from certain other members in the House I have had the opportunity to sit down and go through it. I do believe this is a case where urgency is warranted. I am very critical of the Government’s overuse of urgency and I think a lot of cases where the Government has pushed bills through all stages under urgency have been totally unnecessary. But in this case I think there is actually a legitimate reason to do so.  
We want to be really clear about what we are doing here. We are fixing a mistake by passing the bill under urgency through all of its stages and retaining the status quo. We are not actually changing anything; we are retaining the status quo. The change was made by mistake and we are fixing the mistake. Parliament did not get all of the advice on the pros and cons of making the mistake in the first place. We are fixing the mistake and retaining the status quo. If members have a legitimate concern about the status quo there are other avenues to debate that. There are other ways they can raise those concerns but actually retaining the status quo is the responsible position for Parliament to take in this instance because this change was never intended to be made.  
The question is of course why we should fix the mistake urgently. The reason for urgency and the reason for doing it all at once and without a huge amount of publicity and notice prior is that we do not want to see a whole lot of young offenders who have been convicted getting off their convictions because the information the police held that allowed them to identify the offenders in the first place was something that technically under this mistake in the law they were not allowed to hold.  
I will talk particularly about what this might mean in the context of something that I hope people will be able to understand. In doing so I hope that members will acknowledge that I have had only half an hour to look at the bill and the notes. If I make a mistake the Minister of Police can correct me in her next speech. We have a problem with young offenders in Upper Hutt etching shop windows. They have caused thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of damage etching these shop windows on Main Street in Upper Hutt. As I read it if the police identified those young people and they had previously been found guilty of something by the Youth Court—anything other than that last provision section 283(o) I think—and they had not been sent to the District Court for sentencing because the Youth Court had dealt with it the police would then no longer be able to hold the photographs and fingerprints that they would have otherwise held.  
If those young people then reoffended and were caught reoffending because they left fingerprints when etching windows on Main Street in Upper Hutt the police had used those fingerprints to identify them and they were then convicted under this law that is technically open to appeal. I am looking at the Minister and I hope that she will correct me if I am wrong. But technically that conviction could be appealed and those young people having done thousands of dollars worth of damage could be let off. Everyone who had been the victim of thousands of dollars worth of damage to their shop front windows would be outraged at the thought that the offenders could get off on a technicality because of a mistake that this Parliament made that was totally inadvertent totally unknown and could not have been foreseen. I think we are doing the responsible thing which is making sure that those convictions are allowed to stand.  
It is also important to remember why we send young people to the Youth Court. The Youth Court was established to protect young people so that they do not have to go through the District Court process except if they come under a very limited range of circumstances. This mistake has effectively diminished the powers of the Youth Court in a way that was never intended. I am a defender of the Youth Court. I think it is important that we have a Youth Court and that we do not put young and vulnerable kids in the District Court system unnecessarily. In having a Youth Court we have to make sure that the powers of the Youth Court are protected. This inadvertent mistake has severely diminished the powers of the Youth Court in a way that I am sure Parliament never intended.  
In supporting this legislation we are moving back to the status quo. That does not mean that some of the concerns raised by Keith Locke and Rahui Katene are not worthy of debate; I am sure that they are. But in retaining the status quo we are deferring those concerns for another day and I hope there will be another opportunity for them to put forward their arguments on those issues in due course.  
I turn to the provisions of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act under which the Youth Court would deal with some of these young offenders. The Youth Court could be imposing a fine for example that would otherwise be imposed by the District Court. The outcome is effectively the same as it would have been in the District Court but the decision is being made by the Youth Court instead. The police technically therefore under this mistake that has been made would have to destroy all of the fingerprints and photographs that they hold of those young people potentially preventing the police from identifying reoffending by those young people.  
It could potentially prevent the police from doing the good work that they do in preventing youth reoffending. I think that is ultimately where we have to get to. We have to say that we do not want young people to keep reoffending and to end up in the District Court system when they are older. We want to give the Youth Court and the police the ability to deal with these young offenders straighten them out and get them back on the straight and narrow so that they are not getting into trouble any longer. I am concerned that this inadvertent mistake weakens the police’s ability to do that and that is one of the reasons why Labour will be supporting the bill.  
The Youth Court could impose a fine. The Youth Court could also make an order for the young person—or in the case of a young person who is under the age of 16 years for any parent or guardian of the young person—to pay a sum towards the cost of the prosecution. Under the mistake that has been made that would also result in all of the fingerprints and photographs of the offender being destroyed. The Youth Court could order the young person to pay a sum that it thinks fit by way of reparation to the person who had suffered emotional harm loss or damage to their property. The Youth Court has the opportunity to say that if a young person has done something wrong they can pay reparation to the victim or their guardian can pay reparation to the victim.  
Basically the young person has been found guilty; they have committed the offence. The Youth Court has heard the evidence and determined that the young person has committed the offence. In a District Court were an adult being convicted there would be no issue. The police would be able to retain their photographs and fingerprints. But because it is a young person who is being dealt with in a separate court that is set up to protect them we give the police a lesser ability to retain the evidence that previously they had been able to retain. That just does not seem right. One of the most important things about the Youth Court is that we set it up to protect young people and we should not diminish its powers because that undermines the legitimacy of the court.  
Overall as we go through the debate I will be interested to hear further argument. But it seems to me that we are correcting an anomaly.  
I will respond briefly to the comments made by Shane Ardern and reassure him that any evidence the police collected when he drove his tractor up the front steps of Parliament would not be covered by this legislation. He has long since ceased to be deemed a young person. So he is fine. He does not need to worry about this bill at all— 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: He’s childish. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Well he is childish but technically under the law he has nothing to worry about. All of the evidence that the police collected when they were investigating that matter will still be able to be kept.  
The Labour Party is supporting this legislation because we think legitimacy is urgent in this case and it does retain the status quo.