Robertson Grant: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — In Committee 
Robertson Grant: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:663;Page:10916] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 Firstly I take up Mr Garrett’s point about the amendments that the Labour Party has tabled here today to the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill. This is the Committee stage; this is where amendments are tabled. It seems as though the Labour Party cannot do any good any right in Mr Garrett’s eyes: either we are not proposing alternatives and therefore we are just politicking or we are proposing alternatives and therefore we are just politicking. I urge Mr Garrett to look at these amendments. These issues have been around throughout this debate. Probably nobody in this Chamber has been following this debate more closely than Mr Garrett. He knows what these amendments are about. He knows about the concerns about unjust sentencing. Those concerns were raised by the Ministry of Justice: they were raised by officials when commenting on the Cabinet paper. Mr Garrett knows what the concerns are about and I urge him to look at the amendments that Clayton Cosgrove has proposed and to consider whether this legislation fits with what the ACT Party has been telling people all around New Zealand about this bill. 
In respect of the “manifestly unjust” clause the ACT Party put out a pamphlet that said: “the judge sentencing a Strike Three offender will have no option but to sentence the offender to the maximum sentence. The only exception is if the judge determines it would be ‘manifestly unjust’ to do so.” That is wrong. This bill says the maximum sentence is mandatory—it has to be imposed. That is what this amendment is about. It is about making the concept of “manifestly unjust” mean something in this law. The amendment will address the point that was raised by the Ministry of Justice. So I really urge the parties opposite to look at the amendments that Labour is putting up. 
Labour opposes this bill because we do not think it will work and we think it is inequitable. We would rather be focusing on the other end of the system. But we are now in the Committee stage of the debate and we are prepared to put up amendments that will at least improve the bill and give real meaning in this case to the clause about sentences being “manifestly unjust”. 
I turn to the amendment in clause 5(1) that inserts new section 86D in the Sentencing Act to allow the court to reduce the sentence imposed by up to 25 percent in order to take into account the fact of a guilty plea. At the moment the incentive to plead guilty particularly as we get to the third-strike offence goes away. Why would somebody decide to plead guilty in that situation? We all know that if there are fewer guilty pleas it will mean not only that there will be greater costs obviously but also that victims will have to go through more trials. We are trying to amend this bill so that we can allow guilty pleas to be taken into account. We have to think about this bill in terms of how it will work not as a slogan not as a set of slogans that allow people to go forth into the electorate and like Ms Goudie say this legislation will deter repeat offending. I invite the member opposite to read the clause and the amendment. The amendment to new section 86D aims to insert a new subsection that will allow guilty pleas to be taken into account properly. 
It is very important to ensure that we make this law the best that it can possibly be. Labour believes this law is wrong. We do not support it in this Chamber but we do want to ensure that we give meaning to some of the terms that are here like the term “manifestly unjust”. We also want to make sure that we put incentives in place so that people will plead guilty so that we can reduce the number of cases where victims have to go through the horror again of what happened to them. 
We also have an amendment to new section 86C also inserted by clause 5(1) of the bill. The amendment is to insert in subsection 4(a) after “serve the sentence without parole” the words “unless the Court is satisfied that given the circumstances of the offence and the offender it would be manifestly unjust to make the order”. We are trying to cover off “manifestly unjust” as a meaningful statement in sentencing and in parole. It is vitally important as we go through this bill that we do not allow ourselves to be sucked into the belief that this set of slogans will provide the panacea to these problems. We need real proper amendments to be made to this legislation in order to give it meaning and we have not seen that at any point so far from the Government or the ACT Party. We have only seen a continuation of the clichés and the slogans rather than an attempt to see how the legislation would work. Mr Garrett has said earlier that he wants this legislation to work properly. If he wants this legislation to be meaningful he needs to adopt these amendments.