Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise proudly to speak to a subject that's close to my heart and had been for a decade before I entered this House and that's justice. Our justice system should be fair and equally accessible to us all. Justice should not be available only to the wealthy; it should not fail anyone based on their race or their gender their sexual identity their disability or their mental illness. It should not target or persecute anyone in our marginalised communities and our justice system—if it's here to keep us all safe—must acknowledge that imprisonment as the driver of all of our justice initiatives has failed. The evidence shows that it does not keep our communities safe it does not rehabilitate anybody and it does not provide a safe and successful pathway for people to reintegrate back into their communities. I am so proud to be a part of a Government that has the courage to look at that evidence and to change what we do when it comes to justice. One of the things that I am most proud of as a member of this Government but also as a Green is the work of my colleague Jan Logie in leading on prevention and addressing the harm of sexual and domestic violence. She has led for the first time an all-of-Government approach that brings together agencies departments grassroots organisations and supports that work in a way that acknowledges that our solutions need to be both sustainable and focused on prevention. That is something that no previous Government has done so far. She's spoken about that work today herself so I'll focus on some of the other work that we're doing on this side of the House some of the work that may fall under the radar but for the grave need for it—and it will be noticed and it will be felt by the communities who need it the most. One of those things is the extended funding for community law centres. We've funded an extra 24 centres across New Zealand. That's an acknowledgment that legal support legal representation and advice on our rights should be available to us all equally whether or not we can afford to pay for it at the high rate that we would otherwise be paying. Those community law centres do extraordinary work and they'd been starved of funding for far too long. We have extended funding to get children out of the adult criminal justice system. We know that the children that come through our Youth Court system suffer all the harms that we also see in the adult population that comes into conflict with our criminal justice system. They suffer predominantly from mental illness from trauma from head injury and from addiction issues. They come from backgrounds of poverty have experienced victimhood themselves and a whopping extraordinary statistic that we've all learnt over the past couple of years as we look at the evidence is that 90 percent of young offenders suffer from what is categorised as serious learning disability. We're failing these kids elsewhere in our system and our Government wants to focus on preventing them from coming into conflict with the law altogether. We want to invest in housing in accessible inclusive education and making sure that all the kids that we're then sending off to those schools are fed. That's how we stop them from coming into the criminal justice system. But the other thing we need to acknowledge and reports that have been released recently keep confirming this is that Māori are experiencing the justice system differently and are being targeted disproportionately by it. We've learnt this and we've learnt also that that means that the Crown if it is to be effective must allow Māori to lead on justice solutions. We've learnt that with the Rangatahi Courts with the tikanga-led solutions that we've seen modelled there and with the incredible results that they're getting. So we do need to go further and we do need to do it faster if we are to transform our justice system into what it should be: an equal system a just system an accessible system for us all. Thank you.