Little Andrew: Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13758. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): I rise to speak on this important piece of legislation Asenati Lole-Taylor’s Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill. I want to say as many others in this House have said tonight that we are duty bound to ensure that the laws that this House passes afford proper and real protection to the most vulnerable in our society and children are foremost amongst those.However now I want to be the fly in the ointment or thejeremiah and say that I have some concerns about this bill. I have concerns on the basis of longstanding principles of criminal justice and the drafting of criminal legislation. We all understand the need for an appropriate penalty to be in place when a crime involving violence and/or harm to others has been committed. There are important principles when it comes to our criminal statutes. One is that crimes because they attract the coercive powers of the State through investigation detection prosecution enforcement and sometimes incarceration or other forms of punishment are expected to be very clearly and unequivocally defined so that people know what the boundary is that they have to cross before they attract the label of criminal or before they have committed a crime. That is fundamental.What I see in this bill is some vague language some uncertainty and some equivocation. When it says that a minor is put at risk what does that mean? What is the nature of the risk? And what is the extent of the risk especially if there has been no material impact or effect on the minor? Given the definition in the bill of “the presence of a minor” what does it mean to say “where a minor … could reasonably be expected to be present;”? Well if the minor was not present and has not suffered harm what is the basis of attracting a criminal sanction and punishing the person?Let us punish the wrongdoers. Let us punish those who do wrong things and who cause harm and danger to others. Let us not try to criminalise a whole bunch of activity that in the absence of anything else would not be criminal. That is one point. Let us not have wishy-washy vague terms as the basis of our criminal statutes. We live in a time and sadly in a Parliament where it is very appealing and attractive to create more crimes and create more criminals and all the rest of it. We should be very cautious about doing that.The second point I want to make is whether or not this bill will actually add anything to what is already there. If you have a look at section 9 of the Sentencing Act 2002 it lists 15—actually more than that because some of them are broken down into subsections—aggravating factors that a judge has to take into account. Five of them—at least five of them—would cover the very situation that the member who has sponsored this billLe’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor is trying to cover. If we have a look at section 9(1)(d) of the Sentencing Act one of the factors that a judge could take into account is “the extent of any loss damage or harm resulting from the offence:”. Paragraph (f) is “that the offender was abusing a position of trust or authority in relation to the victim:”—that includes a parent not using the house for the proper reason forwhich it ought to be used. Paragraph (g) is “that the victim was particularly vulnerable because of his or her age or health or because of any other factor known to the offender:”. There are some other ones there.Then you go on to subsection (3) which states some things that the court must not take into account including whether or not the offender was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. And then subsection (4) is very clear that nothing in those earlier subsections “prevents the court from taking into account any other aggravating or mitigating factor that the court thinks fit;” and it goes on to say that that provision does not imply that any particular factor is any less or more important and that they ought to be taken together.The real question when this bill goes to the Law and Order Committee is what it is actually adding to our present law. Although we will support this bill going to the select committee we do not want to continue the trend of criminalising ever more behaviour and adding ever more to our criminal statutes when it may in fact be totally pointless.Tim Macindoe: Mr Speaker—