Franks Stephen: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Franks Stephen: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:623;Page:18198] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party in this debate having listened carefully to the Prime Minister outlining her plans for this year and gloating about her achievements or the Labour Party’s achievements. As she was speaking I was thinking of how I felt at around 20 past 6 this morning at the top of Mount Victoria where a friend and I ride many mornings. It was a beautiful still morning and the city was just waking all around when we were up at the lookout. We could see a panorama of Wellington with the sun coming across. I thought of all the people in the city who can live there today knowing that none need be hungry none need go without shelter and none need go unclothed. That has been the state in this country for many many years. 
But right in front of us was a panorama of a different sort—a noticeboard set up for visitors to Wellington and Wellingtonians to identify the things we were looking at. In other words like the Byrd Memorial up there it was something intended to add to the lookout as a place of beauty. Like the Byrd Memorial it showed just where this country has really gone. That noticeboard was completely trashed. Some time the night before—I had seen it the previous morning—someone had come and left his or her signature all over it in spray paint. I suspect because of what it is that it will have to be replaced which will take quite a time to do. Someone had also stuck a steel pipe through the bars that now protect the Byrd Memorial and tried to shatter some of the tiles. 
This may seem just a triviality. We are all so familiar with this kind of mindless vandalism with this kind of destruction that it may seem that I am not addressing something very important or worth raising in a debate of this nature but I heard the Prime Minister telling us that crime was dropping. What the Prime Minister did not say was that the amount of reported crime had reduced and that this Government had declined to take part in the only survey that is internationally recognised as the measure of real crime rates—namely the International Crime Victim Survey in which 17 developed Western countries participate and which is run on their behalf by the Dutch Government. This Government instead ran its own survey at a cost of $1 million and then took a year and a half to edit the figures before it let them out. 
We know that the incidence of crime is not falling. We know it because the number of crimes that really matter—the crimes of violence and crimes of intrusion—according to the Government’s own explanations for increasing prison populations are not falling. If anything in relation to youth justice—the best indicator of where our future lies—our crimes are getting worse. The number reported or recorded may be falling but of the 35000 to 40000 apprehensions by the police in the youth justice area only around 2000 are going through a formal process. It is pretty easy to monkey with the figures when all they are recording is the number of offenders the police have actually decided to charge and put through a formal process. 
This is serious for another reason. It is a shame that family group conferences tell young offenders three four five nine or 10 times that they can get up to 10 second chances. Family group conferences could seem funny if it were not for some of the more serious offending. In the past month as Rodney Hide explained to the Prime Minister we have had nine homicides and that is stretching the police. When Rodney Hide was born we had nine in a year. 
Among the nine homicides last month was an elderly woman in Marton who had led a blameless life as far as we can tell but who was tortured and murdered. Just 40 kilometres up the road a young woman on the morning of her 20th birthday was left bashed and naked and it appears that more than one person knows something about that. We will probably find on the odds when the offenders are eventually caught that they are repeat offenders who have been through a justice system that has taught them that crime pays and that the community does not really mean what it says. We see it publicly and privately. 
It does not just concern youth. This month we saw that Te Kaha on his way to delivering half a tonne of paua was caught for being in possession of 100 kilograms. Anyone who knows about catching and using shelled shucked paua knows that 100 kilos of shelled paua is a lot of paua. On a charge for which he could have received 5 years in jail or a $250000 fine he was told to go off and do some drug and alcohol counselling or perhaps some carving. This is what Corrections says it will do: it will put him in front of young people as a model as someone they should copy. 
Is that a punishment? Is that a price for the crime? He probably could not ask for anything he would rather do. [ 
Interruption 
] I am glad Dover Samuels is expressing his disgust at that. I am glad Mita Ririnui is joining in with interjections. [ 
Interruption 
] I do not know which side they are on—the member is correct—but I assume they are disgusted. 
What sorts of men are they in the Labour Party when they allow their Prime Minister to deliver a speech claiming victory in essence in the crime war when we have just watched this travesty of justice? The broken windows principle is very clear: small crime does matter. It is all about getting on top of the environment. That crime pays that the police cannot handle it that the courts will turn a blind eye that any feeble excuse will be accepted and that the parole system will let offenders out when they get in are the perceptions that create serious crime. The New York murder rate did not drop from 49 per 100000 to seven per 100000 because the authorities focused on murder; it dropped because they focused on small offences. 
So the relatives of Tania McKenzie and Mona Morriss have the Labour Government to thank for the climate we live in that says crime pays. No Minister has fronted up and responded to the call by the Mayor of Marton for the death penalty. We can understand that call. What an outrage that someone can do that to an old lady and not expect the public to want the death penalty debated! 
We have had no leadership on that from the Minister and we have had no leadership from any Minister on Tame Iti. There was Tame Iti brandishing a shotgun in public threatening judicial officers—the members of the Waitangi Tribunal—and gloating the next day on  
Morning Report 
 about having got his message across—and he was not arrested. The Arms Act has three separate offences designed for that punishable by 4 years and 3 years in prison respectively—possessing carrying or brandishing a weapon with no lawful excuse. Tame Iti set out to do precisely what the Arms Act says one cannot do which is to threaten. Section 202A of the Crimes Act has another offence that incurs 2 years in prison for that. 
But the Government would rather send the message that for a crony of the Government the law does not apply. The Government is perfectly happy for New Zealanders to see that might is right that cheats do prosper and that the police are scared. That is the message that has come out here. 
Just think—in October 4 months ago one deluded foolish inoffensive peaceful demonstrator for the National Front was arrested charged and convicted because he had a knife in his car after his car had been trashed by people who did not like him demonstrating. That demonstrator was arrested for his knife; Tame Iti was encouraged to take his shotgun to politics.