Dalziel Lianne: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5195. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I too rise to support the final reading of the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill. I am pleased that the Government has moved to add to the aggravating factors to be taken into account by a sentencing judge the fact that the victim was a constable or prison officer acting in the course of his or her duty and also for adopting Supplementary Order Paper 14 in the name of my colleague Charles Chauvel which includes as an aggravating factor the fact that the victim was an emergency health or a Fire Service provider acting in the course of his or her duty at the scene of an emergency. The reason I am pleased that these matters have been attended to is that they do place on the record really of the House the importance of the front-line activities that these hard-working members of our community undertake and the risks that are posed when they do put themselves in harm’s way when they are actually trying to help people. 
When I discussed the issue of the emergency health and fire service providers with my colleague Charles Chauvel we were both very much aware of individual firefighters and people who worked in the emergency health area particularly ambulance officers who had found themselves in a situation where they were trying to assist people and in fact were not able to provide that assistance because of the resistance that they met from the individual concerned. Can I say to this House that in every single one of those cases alcohol was involved. Serious quantities of alcohol had been consumed before either an accident ensued or a crash or indeed a major assault. To that occasion would be brought the first responders of the emergency health sector and in these instances they would be our ambulance officers. 
To hear ambulance officers talk about being assaulted as they attempted to resolve difficult situations as a result of the amount of alcohol that had been consumed was kind of a double whammy. Here we are talking about what a judge has to take into account when sentencing somebody after that assault has taken place and the consequences have been carried by that individual and their family instead of actually at the front end talking about the alcohol-related issues that this country has failed to face up to year after year after year after year. 
I know that we are going to be debating in this House the Alcohol Reform Bill and I have to say to this House that it does not go far enough. It will not resolve this problem here that we are having to confront with the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff shall I say literally in this case rather than the fence at the top of the cliff which would have much more control over the amount of alcohol that is in our communities and is causing so much violence so many injuries and hardship right across the board not only from those who have consumed too much but also obviously for those who are the victims of their actions as a result. 
I would actually call upon the Government to think very seriously about some of the amendments that we are proposing to the Alcohol Reform Bill and we have taken it on as individual members of Parliament—and I will keep to the point which is that if people are going to end up having to go to the scenes of emergencies as we are talking about in this bill here we have to seriously think about maybe some of the aggravating factors that are involved in bringing people to that particular situation. 
Leaving the front end of it aside can I say also that I have spoken also to a number of volunteer firefighters who have found themselves in exactly the same situation where they have turned up on the front line in order to assist and found themselves in the situation where they are confronted by people who do not want them to assist for whatever reason. There may be circumstances relating to a particular occasion that has caused the fire to occur and so they find themselves in this incredibly difficult situation. I really do support the fact that these aggravating factors are to be taken into account. 
I would like to make a comment to the member who just spoke Jacqui Dean. She said that she hoped that this law around sentencing would have a deterrent effect. I can say from all of the experience that I have and certainly with all of the literature that I have read on the subject that sentencing has almost no deterrent impact unfortunately. I actually remember— 
Mike Sabin 
: We won’t bother having any sentencing then. We won’t bother having any sentences if that’s the case. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The member might want to listen to this. I remember a very interesting speech that David Lange once made in this House. He said that if you really wanted to have a deterrent sentence that actually resulted in 100 percent compliance with that particular law then you would introduce the death penalty for parking offences. I think the point that he was making was that deterrents operate on the basis of the knowledge of the behaviour and the consequences the risk of getting caught and the consequences of getting caught. The higher the risk of getting caught and the more outrageous really the consequences of getting caught are as he proposed in that particular scenario the much more likely it is that there would be compliance. 
He was simply making a point which I think is a valid point and it is that most of the sorts of crimes that we are talking about here are carried out in the heat of the moment. Nobody stops and thinks for a minute: “I am going to get caught for this particular illegal act and as a result of that I think that the judge is going to add some aggravating factors to my sentence.” Because that is not what happens very few of these kinds of sentences actually have a deterrent impact. 
So I do not support this legislation for its deterrent impact; I actually support this legislation for what it says about our police and our emergency workers as they work on the front line for us. I just want to quote something that a judge said about them and this is why I think we should support the legislation. It was a comment from the High Court where they were describing the attack on a police officer. This is the quote: “as ‘equivalent to an attack on the community because our police are the representatives of the community in the matter of law and order in society. They are society’s frontline.’” I think that is the strongest argument for this law that you could possibly have. 
So it is not that the law provides a deterrent effect; it does not. The truth is that people do not take the sentence into account when they commit a crime. What I am saying is that we should support the law not for deterrents but because it says that society believes in what they are doing recognises that they are our representatives in the matter of law and order in society and therefore it is actually a statement by society to those who offend against these people while they are acting in the course of their duty of how offensive that is to us as a society. So that is why I think we should support this legislation but do not think for one minute that it will prevent an offence from taking place. What it will do is state very clearly what we as a society think is highly worthwhile work that requires our House to make a very strong statement about it. 
We support this bill. I am very pleased that my colleague Charles Chauvel was able to bring the wider context to this House and that the Government was gracious enough to accept that the bill was improved by the addition of our front-line health workers. On that basis I certainly support the passage of this bill.