SpeechHon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): Good morning and thank you to all those tuning in to this very important debate on the repeal of the three strikes legislation.I want to just make a comment and thank my colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith for the range of questions that he has put to this committee this morning and as he rightly states over the broken start to this debate. Last night he made a five minute contribution—and I'll come to that in a minute—and we engaged I think very shortly on one other occasion for again probably about five to 10 minutes.The first question that Mr Goldsmith put to me in our first debate and again last night—and he's restated again this morning—is: on what grounds did the Hon Kris Faafoi—when introducing the bill—consider the legislation to be bad law? Mr Goldsmith puts forward the argument based on international evidence as cited in the 2018 brief of evidence provided by the Ministry of Justice that there was simply no evidential foundation to say it had not been an effective law. So we look to therefore the aspects of what makes a law or what might be indicia of success. Mr Goldsmith made quite some substantive comments and repeated the catch-phrase last night that the response when we are looking at indicia or evidence of crime and how we track whether violent crime has indeed gone up or gone down was the most infantile response from any Minister of Justice he had ever heard. Therefore let's go through a few grounds on which we might as lawmakers across this House look to whether or not law has been effective for the purposes for which we intended to pass the legislation.In 2009 when this bill was introduced into the House the three strikes law the primary lament was that it would incarcerate those that were the worst criminal offenders and secondly that this law would act as a deterrent to others who would go on or might consider conducting violent criminal offending in a repeat manner. Therefore we cast our minds to or we therefore look at after a decade the state of evidence to support the proposition. Has there been a deterrent effect? Well we should look to therefore the results which is where I referred and directed Mr Goldsmith in our first engagement. Let's look at whether offences like serious assaults have tracked up or tracked down since 2010.Hon Judith Collins: Tracked down when we were in Government.Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Unfortunately I can hear the Hon Judith Collins saying that offences tracked down when they were in Government. Unfortunately the stark reality is if we looked at the factual and evidential foundation in the documentation provided to the court that simply isn't the case. So I can see that there has been a stark rise in both serious assaults serious sexual assaults robbery. All from the time of about 2013 we start to see a stark rise. So that would be the first type of issue that you'd turn your mind to: has there been a deterrent effect and if so is there the corollary of evidence to support that foundation—that proposition rather.The second thing that we might look to is OK if not necessarily a deterrent effect let's make sure though that the criminal justice process has really perhaps been more effective for victims of crime or those that have been the subject of criminal activity. So therefore we look to whether or not there have been effective criminal justice procedural enhancements. Has there been a reduction in delays or has there been a reduction in prolonged periods by which victims of these serious crimes have to endure lengthy or elongated criminal justice processes? So therefore one of the comments that's been raised in multiple briefs of evidence or submissions rather that were provided to the select committee one of the biggest implications that I could see as to why we might repeal this law let alone for all of the principled reasons is one merely for the procedural implications. This came through from the New Zealand Criminal Bar Association. This came through in evidence from—so the New Zealand Criminal Bar Association of course is comprised of the judiciary prosecution defence criminal lawyers who work and operate in this area. This is their bread and butter so to speak. The biggest thing that they said as to why this—one of the several reasons they put forward—law is bad law is that it takes away an incentive for a person that is in a position where they may plead enter a guilty plea—it takes away any incentive for them to change their plea from guilty to not guilty through any of the procedural stages. So the real-life implications for those that are the victims of crime is that where there is an incentive for a hardened criminal offender to plead guilty because it might result in a reduced sentencing or other types of incentives which usually come by entering in an early guilty plea it reduces that proposition. So therefore you have victims of crimes sitting through prolonged periods over many years being exposed to the criminal justice process and for those of us on this side of the House that are concerned about victims' experiences that in itself removing any incentive for somebody that has perpetrated a crime against another removing an incentive to truncate the procedural chain therefore in my mind creates bad law.But if I was to step away from the procedural implications and I start to look at it—well let's look at this just through a taxpayer's proposition. I as a taxpayer want to ensure I get good bang for my buck and if this law doesn't create a deterrent effect if it doesn't create any procedural benefits which would reduce the impacts on victims well surely there must be a cost benefit because I'd want to see something good come out of this law. If I turn my mind to the cost implications though—and this was a point that's been made in multiple submissions to the select committee. In one instance one of the cases that was referred to and I think that the select committee will be well familiar with it on appeal the court held that had the judiciary retained their ability to prescribe the sentencing provisions as one might they would have incarcerated this person for committing a crime—it was around about three years and nine months. However as a consequence of the three strikes law this person was incarcerated for 11 years. Now if we are to do the maths on that the cost for incarceration of a prisoner per annum is roughly around $100000 per year. I haven't done the maths but one would think that if we have these people incarcerated for far longer than you know what our sentencing guidelines would otherwise prescribe without seeing any benefit like a deterrent like a lessened impact on victim's going through the process and we just see an increase of cost on that ground one would think again that this is bad law.My colleague across the Chamber has put multiple propositions to me on this point over now three occasions. Whilst he might not be able to grapple with the rationale for why this is bad law on any level I would encourage our friend to cast his mind to Part 1 so that we can debate what this committee of the whole House is intended to do during this time. Thank you Mr Chair.