Adams Amy: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 10 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1392. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): Mr Deputy Speaker it is a great pleasure to be back in the House for 2015 and it is certainly a pleasure to welcome you back to your role in theChair a role that you have taken to with some gusto and are performing very well. Look I am delighted to be back and looking ahead to another year of the whole National-led Government delivering genuinely better outcomes for New Zealanders. You heard it from the Prime Minister today. We were elected with the strongest mandate this country has seen under theMMP system of Government. Every single one of us is committed to using our time here to make New Zealand a better place for its inhabitants. We are not here to think about how we can preserve our own political careers how we can further our agendas or how we can last the longest in this place. Most of us have come from successful careers in the wider world. We have come here because we are passionate about this country we are passionate about making a difference and we believe that under John Key’s leadership and with the team we have we have a team of people who absolutely can do that. That is what gets us up every morning. That is what we are committed to this year and throughout this term.This year you are going to see an incredibly busy programme of action from the National-led Government. You have heard the Prime Minister talk about it this afternoon. My colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith will be right at the forefront of that with some of the most important reforms that are facing New Zealand I think particularly reform of theResource Management Act which anyone who looks at it sensibly knows is fundamental to getting the outcomes this country needs both economically and environmentally. It is not serving anybody well. I wish my colleague the very best with advancing those reforms that he has worked very hard on. Similarly in thefreshwater space where excellent progress is being made in the housing space in the creation of more jobs and in the creation of better healthcare for all of our community and particularly for those under 13 we will be working to provide better outcomes for all New Zealanders.As well as doing that we understand that it is our job to play our part in the international community. The security of our people is fundamentally any Government’s first concern. In the world that we inhabit we all understand that security is no longer just a domestic issue. Security means taking our part in the international community taking it with great caution and care but knowing that it is not enough to sit at home and say: “Gosh isn’t it terrible what’s happening to those people?”. Sometimes action is required. It is a very difficult decision and one that is taken with extreme care but we know that playing our part in the international arena is a core part of what keeps our country safe.I want to take the rest of my time this afternoon talking about some of the areas that I am going to be focusing on in my portfolio. I want to start with the issue of connectivity. I am passionate about the fact that New Zealanders’ connectivity to each other and to the world is an absolute foundation stone of our success. I can tell you that over the time we have been in Government we have seen a step change in New Zealanders’ ability to connect with each other and connect to the world. Just recentlyStatistics New Zealand has announced that we have now seen a 34 percent increase in the number of Kiwi homes connected to the internet since 2006. We have seen significant increases in average speeds and we are moving up theOECD rankings. Last yearAkamai noted that New Zealand’s speeds had increased over that year by 37 percent placing us now well ahead of Australia which is always comforting.TrueNet also for the same period noted that our average speeds are up 34 percent. So whatever measure you want to choose one thing is being noticed internationally and that is that New Zealand is making incredible steps forward in both its connectivity and the speeds available to New Zealanders. We are now second in the OECD for the growth of fibre subscriptions so in 1 year we have seen 144 percent growth in fibre subscriptions.This has not happened by accident. It is not just the inevitable march of technology. It has happened because this Government has committed now $2 billion to the roll-out of better broadband for our cities our towns and our rural communities. We do it because—Tim Macindoe: And what a difference it makes.Hon AMY ADAMS: Exactly that. We know that connectivity means that every town—the smallest village the smallest rural community—can then trade with the world and build their own futures. That is what this Government believes in: providing the tools for regional provincial and rural New Zealand to access the world from wherever they are. That is why we have committed $2 billion and that is why you are seeing from us a big move now to go beyond our first target of 75 percent of New Zealanders connected with fibre to the home to now 80 percent of New Zealanders as the goal we are working on this term. We are spending $100 million more than we have already committed to rural broadband infrastructure and another $50 million to ensure cellphoneblack spots are filled. This is why New Zealand is increasingly seen to be at the forefront of connectivity. This will be our agenda to continue that rapid pace.Let me talk now broadly about what is happening in the justice space. Again we have a story that I think every one of us on this side of the House is rightly very proud of. We are seeing crime at the lowest level for 35 years. I want to acknowledge the Ministers who have worked before me yourself included Mr Deputy Speaker the Hon Judith Collins the Hon Simon Power—all of those Ministers who have worked over the last 6 years in this space. The record that we now stand on is a very strong one. But as ever there is more we can do. We are not going to sit back and say: “Isn’t that great? We can now put that one in the ‘done’ box.” There is more work we have to do. This Government set itself a very bold goal of better public service targets across all of the areas of service that matter to New Zealanders.Tim Macindoe: And we’re delivering.Hon AMY ADAMS: We are delivering but they are hard. We deliberately made them hard targets because we wanted to stretch the Public Service and ourselves. In the justice space all of our four targets around total crime youth crime reoffending and violent offending are on track to meet those targets. But if there is one area where I think we have to make better progress it is under that broad umbrella of violent offending. The thing that makes me sit up and really look at these figures the most is that half of our violent offending is related to family violence. We have one of the highest rates of family violence in the OECD. That is not something that I am prepared to accept and I am sure every member in the House would agree with me that as a country we cannot continue to accept this level of family violence. Fifty percent of our homicides are family violence - related. That means that on average we lose 14 women seven men and eight children every year to family violence. Every 6 minutes there is a notification to the police for family violence. This is not something that New Zealand should put in the too-hard basket. It is not something we should simply accept. All of us have to take steps to change this.I would love it if there was a simple initiative—well it would not be simple—that the Government could run that would simply fix it. I am certainly open to all suggestions from around the House and around society as to what the Government can do. It is not just an issue for the Government; it is an issue for every neighbour every friend every relative and every colleague when they see someone and think about how they can reach out.Some of the things that we are going to be doing in this space are certainly building on what has been done before. We have seen the roll-out of the victims’ offender levy which I remember our opponents across the House said would never work. They scoffed and said: “You’ll never get it paid.” There has been $16.5 million raised already—a 75 percent collection rate which is far and above anything that we had predicted and certainly yards ahead of what the doomsayers on the other side said would happen. Those funds are now providing better services for victims so that they can play their part in the justice system. We are going to go further than that. We have to look at more intensive case management for those most at risk. We are going to be appointing a Chief Victims Adviser and rolling out the safe home programme nationwide. We are just kicking off a comprehensive review of the Domestic Violence Act and how protection orders work in this country because there is room to do that better.We have to look more closely at how the court system provides for the victims of domestic and sexual violence. In my view there is not a system that will make appearing in court telling your story and having that evidence tested simple or easy but absolutely we can do better and I think we must do better. We cannot have a country where we have senior members of our society telling women: “Don’t come forward because the process is too horrific.” We will never get on top of the problem if we are telling victims not to come forward. We have to encourage them to come forward and we have to build a system that supports their doing that. That is going to be at the forefront of my time in the justice sector. I believe that we can do more. I have said before in this House and I will say it again that my door is open to anyone in this House who wants to work constructively with me on that.That is just one of the issues under way in the justice sector. We will be doing a lot of work this year around continuing the good work to ensure our courts work faster and more efficiently and that cases are progressed quickly. We will be looking at the ongoing review of our privacy legislation to ensure the right information is being supplied to the right people at the right time. And as I have been talking about just recently we are going to have to take steps to address the issue of deported criminals coming back when we do not have a good record of that so we can monitor them. We have a busy programme of work. It is a Government I remain incredibly proud to be a part of and I want to wish all members a successful 2015.