Collins Judith: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
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JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 It is a great honour to be able to follow my colleague Simon Power in his very good contribution on this issue. Before I start I commend to the Committee Supplementary Order Paper 125 in the name of Simon Power and Supplementary Order Paper 126 in the name of another of my colleagues Christopher Finlayson because they have put a huge effort into the Criminal Justice Reform Bill in trying to correct the problems that the Hon Mark Burton has inflicted upon this Committee. 
This bill is something that we do not agree with. I do not know why we bother to have judges if we are to have a Sentencing Council that is to tell them how to do their jobs. Why do we even bother? Why do we not just have a council here to tell MPs what they have to do? Why do we even bother to have a Sentencing Council? We could just have a little computer or a little set of boxes that judges can go through and tick to indicate whether somebody should have 5 years in prison 8 years in prison 2 years in prison or community service. 
The fact is that it is really hard to get great people to become judges. That is becoming harder and harder. Legislation like this bill is one of the reasons that it is becoming more and more difficult to do so. The very best lawyers who want to be judges are put off by being told that they will lose the right to look at a case—[ 
Interruption 
] That is something that someone in this Chamber like Mr Ron Mark would not want to do—to listen to all of the evidence not just the headline and really understand what is going on to look at the circumstances and to make a decision on sentencing. What will be left to judges in criminal cases? Mostly criminal cases are jury trials and the judge sits and listens to all the evidence runs the case is told what to do by the office of the court manager and goes from place to place. 
The Sentencing Council will be made up no doubt of a whole stack of Steve Maharey’s social empathy people who could not get a job anywhere else—and there are if Mr Mark would like to read about it a whole lot of social empathy people. I say to Mr Mark that he should listen; it might do him good to do so. The Sentencing Council will be full of people who will not actually listen to the case—will not hear it—and who have not been involved in the area. It will become a retirement home for Labour MPs and their mates. That is why a lot of judges and people who are asked to be judges will say “No thanks—not for me.” The people whom we should be appointing to be judges are people with a lot of experience of dealing with people in difficult situations. A lot of people have heard every story in the book. It is amazing to me from my experience in this area to see people who are often fine criminal lawyers and who one thinks will always be pro-defence as they have defended everybody from the most heinous crimes one can think of become judges. So often they are the toughest judges because frankly they have heard it all. One of the reasons they want to be judges is that they want to cut through the fog—they want to cut through the rubbish. 
I would love to hear from the Hon Mark Burton tonight and I do not know why he is so quiet as to why he—what was he a physical education instructor for Taupo council—is going to tell experienced judges people who know which way is up how to sentence. His bunch of mates Steve Maharey’s mates and so on are going to tell those judges how to sentence. Those people have not sat through the cases. They are not the people who have to take the consequences; it is not their name that is on the judgment. They are not the people who are vilified in the press because they give a judgment or a sentence that people do not like. [ 
Interruption 
] Mr Mark would like those top people to be told to basically go and sit in their little corner and tick their little boxes and if it all comes out a certain way that is what they are allowed to do etc. 
Frankly at the end of the day criminal cases are often 10 or 12 weeks long. There is a lot more in a criminal case than just a headline. So often people in politics and elsewhere get their ideas about criminal cases by reading a headline and the three paragraphs that are written about it or by looking at the photo. That is where they get their sense of things from. But there is an awful lot more to criminal cases than that. Mr Mark keeps looking at me and laughing. I do not know why. Frankly he should be thinking about the facts behind the headlines. One of the things Mr Mark should understand is that it is no good just to play politics with people’s lives like this. We are talking about people being sentenced we are talking about people being convicted and we are talking about this Government making a major constitutional change without members on this side of the Chamber agreeing to it.