Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): I stand with you today to recognise that the Government is continuing to push forward the agenda of mass incarceration a colonial agenda that has just resulted in more violence more indigenous people being incarcerated and one that is unfortunately a global colonial product. What this bill aims to do in terms of removing legal aid for the creation of cultural reports—Todd Stephenson: They're not cultural reports; they're section 27 reports.RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: —will cause—section 27 reports—harm to communities who have been failed by successive Governments in a broken justice system.Tom Rutherford: You were in the last Government.RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Indeed and we were very critical in the last Government around the failure to address issues around mass incarceration. It's interesting that the member opposite to me jeering about the past Government fails to recognise their own complicity while in Opposition in actually just calling for more harm for the communities that actually are served by these reports.So it's really important that we contextualise actually what these reports were for. I'd like to quote Dean of Law at Auckland University of Technology Professor Khylee Quince who talked about how cultural reports are not just about reducing sentences but also about providing relevant contextual information about offenders including how they came to be the person before the decision maker what they've done to address the harm and this report that they have available to them that may provide the basis of the disposition. That process is part of the standard practice of sentencing that has largely left out Māori before the courts for many reasons. Most importantly she talks about rather than providing an opportunity for a lesser sentence as commonly touted in the media by people opposite to me it gives space for Māori whānau hapū and iwi and hapori solutions to be part of the way forward. This is such an important context because this is about building a justice system that isn't just about locking people up and throwing out the key and assuming that the problem will go away but actually being able to provide a much greater contextual basis for the justice system to operate. She also recognised that the benefits of these reports extend beyond benefiting Māori.In fact for migrant and former refugee communities these reports are critical—and were critical actually—in being able to provide that broader context in terms of migrants' and former refugees' experiences with the justice system to understand that certain behaviours are caused by the trauma that people may be experiencing from fleeing war and persecution and that is really important context that needs to be provided.The people who produce these reports are a lifeline into those people being able to be understood by the justice system and for the involvement of the broader community. We cannot underestimate the ability for these reports to bring about and shed light to context that would enable healing and restoration for Māori for migrants and for former refugees.By recognising that what this Government aims to do is increase sentencing times and effectively put more people into prison what they are doing is creating a life of hardship and inequality for those same people. As somebody who had the pleasure to work with formerly incarcerated people it was really clear that actually our prison system does more harm than good as it is and that we don't even provide adequate support for people who leave prisons to then reintegrate into our communities. If anything we have an outdated income support system and the bill that the ACT Party member talks about will actually only make things worse and forcing people as the ACT Party member wants to do to complete their rehabilitation processes before being able to properly reintegrate actually is not the way forward.But going back to the bill. This bill will only increase incarceration rates and will increase poverty and will increase violence by not being able to have in place systems that allow for healing and the involvement of the broader community within the operations of our justice system.