Borrows Chester: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Borrows Chester: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:658;Page:7051] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I am pleased to stand here as chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee and acknowledge the work of the other committee members and their good faith especially Lynne Pillay with her frequent use of terms such as Sentencing Council during the course of the debate around the Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill. I acknowledge the goodwill with which members from across the House debated this bill and it is also good to be part of a Government that is delivering on the promises we all made on that campaign trail. Of course law and order was a very big factor in the last campaign. There was an expectation on behalf of the public that the new Government would deliver and what do you know we have. 
The thrust of this bill is assisting victims and it is certainly moving towards that at a great rate of knots. People before the select committee roundly endorsed the purpose of the bill. They had some reservations and those reservations have been articulated by previous speakers. But it is also interesting to note two different approaches in relation to this bill between National and Labour. There has been a lot of mention of the Sentencing Council but we have to remember that that council was in effect a district health board introduced by the Labour Government to be put into the criminal justice system to put the responsibility of court outcomes at arm’s length from the Government. The fact is that when we get elected to this House we are charged with the job in respect of law and order and in respect of justice to set penalties and to give the courts a clear indication of where we want them to go. If they do not do that then there are mechanisms to be able to do that and there was no need for a Sentencing Council which was going to take $5 million of hard-earned taxpayers’ money just as some sort of posterior-covering manoeuvre on behalf of a Government that was not prepared to take responsibility for court outcomes. 
Another sad fact to note from listening to one speaker who spoke before me and to others who will follow is that it must be a long time since they have sat in a District Court and listened to the process of sentencing and imposing fines and court costs on people who appear before the court for fairly low-level offending—those who will be paying the vast majority of offender levies under this scheme. The fact is that most people who appear before the District Court receive a fine or an order for reparation of some kind and the vast majority of them pay it. There is an administration cost in recovering that. There is an administration cost in recovering just about anything that we impose on society at large and we have to expect that. The fact is that this legislation will generate a vast amount of money that was not in the system and was not available to victims currently and it will be as a result only of this piece of legislation. 
I will finish off by remarking on the cost of being a victim in this country. In relation to crimes against property for instance theft and damage people can get their heads around it very quickly; it is the cost of recovery or reinstating that property that was damaged or stolen. But when it is a crime against a person it is a totally different kettle of fish. There are so many costs that go hand in hand with being a victim of a crime against a person that are not currently covered within our accident compensation system our victim support system or our justice system. This legislation will allow those costs to be met. 
I ask members to consider for instance the example of the mother of Michael Choy the man killed by six young people about 8 years ago. From about 2005 those six young people were coming up for parole every year and the family of that victim had to keep going out of a sense of duty a sense of need and a sense of worth back and back and back to six parole hearings a year. The cost of attending was not necessarily covered by the taxpayer but the vast majority of taxpayers believe that it should be. Under this legislation there is the ability to cover some of those costs. It could maybe cover increased counselling or supervision costs the costs of travel and the cost of assistance. I believe wholeheartedly that the vast majority of the New Zealand population and thankfully the vast majority of this House agree with National on this point no matter what little quibbling points they may have.