Franks Stephen: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) — In Committee Third Reading 
Franks Stephen: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) — In Committee Third Reading 
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STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this third reading the final debate on the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) which was introduced by the then National Government in 1999. It was introduced as No. 6 out of I understand 10 or 11 bills on criminal matters introduced that year by the National Minister the Hon Tony Ryall and the bill reflects that. We only just removed from this bill about half an hour ago the provisions that reflected the great debate in 1999 on home invasion. So sitting here in front of us today we have had a whole series of amendments required to take out references to home invasion from parts of the Crimes Act where they have been sitting for a number of years. 
Mr Goff began his speech commending himself for finally getting this bill through by gloating over the removal of the home invasion provisions. What were his reasons? According to him people all over the country had criticised them. What were their criticisms? They were that they had been politically inspired. He told us proudly that the Court of Appeal had criticised the home invasion provisions and criticised Parliament for putting them in. I think that that says a lot about the agenda this Government has been running in the area of crime. 
It says an awful lot that he should think the people of New Zealand will be glad to hear that about politicians who responded to the concern about serious violent crime which has more than quadrupled in the time I have been a lawyer—that people should think it was wrong for politicians to respond to that and to pass a law that had such widespread public demand. For the Minister to think that anyone outside the tight little circles and cabals of politically correct feminists and other academics that he moves in will be glad to hear that we have responded to the— 
Hon Paul Swain 
: What’s this? As opposed to your 3.2 percent? 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Minister Swain has arrived. That is handy because we will have a few comments about Minister Swain later as well. We will be commenting on the enormous amount of action that he has involved himself in in his corrections portfolio and the answers he has been able to give to the concerns of people who are quite rightly asking why he is letting out convicted paedophiles rapists and robbers into their communities hiding them in their communities without any warning or without even letting people know when they ask who is coming to live next door. Mr Swain watches the news and he buries his head in the newspaper but he will not be burying his head in the newspaper deep enough when people finally get to the bottom of what his department has been doing to hide criminals amongst innocent people. 
But let me get back to the speech from Mr Goff. He told us in withering tones that the Court of Appeal had complained that the home invasion law was political. Of course it is political. What does he want—a court that stands above the requirement of representative democracy? Does he like law being made by judges who cannot be removed by the people when they are sick of a lack of response to legitimate concern about where crime and justice have got to in this country? Is it a recipe for good law to respond to those who despise democracy and who regard the word “political” as the ultimate insult? That is the sense of what we got from Mr Goff’s speech welcoming his own inaction for 4 years on the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6). 
What does this bill do? As we heard from the Labour member who interjected earlier this bill does not address anything that was not raised by a Government 4 years ago. It does bring up to date a few provisions that can now reflect the most current forms of computer crime but if we were to wait until we knew all about computer crime before passing legislation it would never be passed. Computer crime will evolve. It was quite proper to bring this law in. It should have been passed 4 years ago and it should have annual attention if necessary to bring it up to date instead of the Government using as a justification for it having done nothing for 4 years the fact that computer crime is fast moving. 
 The bill delaying of the bill was criticised. But the delay was justified by Mrs Steve Chadwick on the grounds that it deals with very serious topics. Just so Mrs Chadwick—the entire area of property crime is updated in this bill. I can only surmise that the Government actually put it aside from a resurgence of that old ideological hostility to property. Government members look at the bills on the plate that they inherit when they become the Government go through the list and say: “Here is one that is all to do with property; let’s drop it.” It has probably taken the Ministers 3 or 4 years to realise that burglary and property crimes are among the best indicators of the likelihood of other forms of offending that in fact we get a better prediction of the risk of violence from offenders by looking at their burglary record than by looking at their violence or sex-crime record strangely enough. 
The Minister who tried to justify the delay in pushing this bill along had a complete own goal in getting Mrs Chadwick to get up and commend the Government for having delayed getting it right when property crime should have been amongst the Government’s highest priorities. If Government members really want to tackle violent crime they should go first to the precursor crimes the crimes that accustom young people to thinking that the law does not mean what it says—the crimes that accustom young people to feeling that penalties do not mean anything the crimes that accustom young people to feeling that other people’s space and other people’s castles are their own. 
I also want to have a quick look at just what this law does in relation to the other priorities this Government has had. We now have a maximum sentence of 7 years for reckless damage to a computer 5 years for taking trade secrets and 2 years for hacking. Let us compare that with some of the other offences. Changing it would have caused too much uproar I guess but without changing it we have blackmail at 14 years. Blackmail can be simply disclosing something about a person to cause him or her to act in accordance with the will of the person making the threat. What is wrong with saying: “You’ve been lying to me and unless you resign I will have to report you to the police. Go and don’t come back.”? Why should that justify a 14-year sentence when reckless damage gets only 7 years or taking a trade secret—it could be the genetic code to kiwifruit—gets only 5 years? 
The bill actually maintains a lie. It states that these maximum sentences are 7 years when the public and the court know that 7 years actually converts to 2 years 4 months unless a non-parole period is set. Five years converts to 1 year 8 months unless a non-parole period is set. Two years automatically converts to 1 year and there is nothing the court can do about that. Anything under 2 years means 1 year or half the period of the sentence and the court has no power to set a non-parole period. So the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 6) is fraudulent and deceptive on its face. 
If the Minister had been truly wanting to deal with priorities in crime he would have been dealing with the series of promises he has made in relation to the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act to deal with what he likes to call loopholes and unintended gaps that are actually a reflection of the Government’s deliberate policy to treat criminals as victims of the class struggle and as unhappy products of a cruel upbringing and not responsible for their actions. He would have whipped through the bill that had been done by National. It would not have sat for 4 years. The Government would not have put the Prostitution Reform Bill in a higher place or the Local Government Reform Bill which set up racial constituencies for local authorities in a higher place. Of course the Government would think that that had far higher priority than a bill to amend crime. I am glad to be able to support this bill to a conclusion; I am just sorry that it has taken so long.