Collins Judith: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10529] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 Following on from that very good contribution from my colleague Simon Power one of the things I would like to talk about this evening in relation to Part 2 is the issue of parole hearings. 
Many of the members of the Committee will be aware of Mrs Croskery whose son Michael was referred to in the media as the pizza delivery man who was killed by the children in Papakura which of course is part of my electorate. In that particular case one of the things that Mrs Croskery says as a constituent is that every year when parole comes up for these young killers she has to relive this tragedy not once but actually about seven or eight times depending on the number of children we are talking about. She has to go the hearings and talk about what has happened how it has affected her how it has affected her family and why these people should not get parole. 
I would have thought it would be a very good plan to make sure when multiple assailants multiple criminals are seeking parole that one hearing would be enough; that they could be dealt with at one time. I know that that might offend some people who are more concerned about the rights of criminals than the rights of victims but frankly if they undertake the crime together perhaps they could do the time together and take some of the consequences together because clearly they want to hang out together. I think it is a good opportunity for people to address this issue. I am sorry that it has not been properly addressed in this area. 
I would however like to commend to the Committee Supplementary Order Paper 126 in the name of my colleague Chris Finlayson and in particular the amendment to clause 40 that states that the court must have regard to sentencing guidelines. One of the things we want to do is to make sure that when the court does have regard to sentencing guidelines as it must it does so if the guidelines are relevant to the offender’s case. One of the points we want to make sure of—and we have talked about this before in the House—is the fact that sentencing guidelines can become sentencing dictates rather than sentencing guidelines. That frankly means that judges are told what the sentence will have to be rather than they have the ability to look at the facts understand what is going on having sat through the case and then make their judgment based on that on their experience and on precedent. 
We have talked about sentencing guidelines before as being something that should be only that rather than the tick the box rules that this Government seems to want to impose on judges. It is hard enough getting good people to want to be judges and it is very difficult to get very experienced very good people. One of the things we do not want to do is to dumb down the judiciary just because this Government does not trust the judiciary to do its job and to make the right decisions based on what the judges see. Unfortunately the media in particular tend to go for the headlines and tend to put in a very concise form exactly what the case is about and what the evidence is. It is very difficult when we have complicated criminal cases to be able to put the essence of a case into three or four paragraphs. Maybe the evidence has not been heard by the person in the media maybe that person has not been able to see the witnesses and test their veracity but certainly a judge can see that and a jury can see that. 
That is why in many cases we are better to leave more power to the judges to do the sentencing because the judges have sat through the entire case. They have not read just the headline. They have not seen just the television review of it. They have not seen just the basic facts on a piece of paper. They have actually heard the witnesses give their evidence they have heard it tested and they have made their own decisions as to whether they think the witness is telling the truth. They have made their own judgment about whether there is something more than what is being told but which has not come out. Judges are actually the best people to make the decision. That is why one of the concerns we have had is that this Government has wanted to pull judges into line and tell them what they should be doing. Guidelines have the opportunity to become set rules rather than guidelines. Basically it is the State controlling the judges. One of the principles of democracy is that we have an independent judiciary.