Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm grateful for following my friend Vanushi Walters in this debate—rather than some of the most emotive and as she stated offensive speeches from the Opposition—as someone who's also worked in the justice system and is deeply committed to preventing the kinds of harm that we've been accused of supporting or caring little about.I worked in the criminal justice system at that front line for about a decade before coming into this House and I can tell you the reaction at front lines from lawyers from judges from probation officers from all the people that the original three-strikes Act rendered impotent and silent when that law came into effect. It ranged somewhere between embarrassment for the lawmakers who had followed no evidence who had adopted something so regressive so perverse without the knowledge that people felt should have gone into lawmaking to something like indignation because we were being undermined in that way. This law when it came into effect did breach the separation of powers that Westminster systems like ours normally uphold. We as Parliament make law and the courts interpret and apply them in individual cases. It instead tells the courts and the public who come into contact with the courts that that discretion is gone that there is no discretion to take account of.Let's look at the principles and purposes of sentencing in the Sentencing Act that this bill washed away. They are things like the circumstances of the offence the circumstances of the offender the victims' views the purpose of sentencing that goes to keeping the community safe in that particular case what accountability looks like in each case what deterrents might look like in each case and most importantly because our justice system is geared towards keeping communities safe what rehabilitation and successful reintegration of a prisoner back into the community requires in each case. The three-strikes law said that none of those principles and purposes of sentencing matter as much as parliamentarians looking tough on crime. Washing away the courts' discretion said that to the courts and to the public.Who are the people who would ordinarily be making those decisions? They're judges who we have appointed to our criminal courts after a lifetime of service in the justice system—legal experts if you would. They've seen the prison system they've seen the justice system they've often worked on both sides and they've risen to the bench. We've got prosecutors we've got defence lawyers—and I'd remind us all that actually having a right to a defence is a fundamental New Zealand Bill of Rights Act right. So if your defence lawyer doesn't get to influence the outcome of your case you're also taking away that aspect of due process. We've got probation officers who write pre-sentence reports after having interviewed the offender and others involved in the case. We've got mental health experts who write pre-sentence mental health reports where it's appropriate. All of those people who deal with hundreds of cases per week if not per day were being told by that past Government who enacted the three-strikes Act that none of their expertise or their work matters.So today we're restoring the right of sentencing based on those principles and purposes of the Sentencing Act but also of our system of justice because if we do say that we're trying to keep communities safe we have to go with the evidence not what makes us feel good not what makes us sound tough but what we know works. Now rehabilitation has to be a part of that. It absolutely has to be a part of that because we know that most people that go into our justice system will get released at some point. How can we say that rehabilitation and successful reintegration of those who go into our overcrowded prejudiced prison system isn't going to be a part of the sentencing process? That's irresponsible. What does it look like when someone offends a couple of times but might not be suitable for something like a maximum sentence? Because I think the public get sold these types of laws as if they are dealing with a premeditated case of someone just callously going through the community committing crimes. What this law in fact did is say for example if you've committed a couple of this type of offending when you're 17 or 18 and then gone on to have a life without crime—lived a life for another couple of decades three decades—something else happens maybe a huge change in circumstances a relationship break-up a bankruptcy and you offend again the court can't take into account the way that your recidivism took place.What are some of these crimes? Because we've got that emotive language of You don't care about sex crimes. You don't care about violence." Something like aggravated robbery can be committed by two 17-year-olds going up to another person and saying "Give us your shoes." Now that's terrible; we don't want the community to be terrorised in that way. If they did it three times in one day and we don't know what the circumstances are—what we do know is that under-19-year-olds in our criminal justice system have overwhelmingly experienced a trauma-like abuse very close to the time that they start offending; leaving that to one side. If something like that happens two or three times in one day and you've got someone being sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment who does that help? I think New Zealanders would be horrified to find that kind of American-style so-called justice was imposed in New Zealand by the National and ACT parties in Government. The millions upon millions of dollars being thrown away instead of investing in the types of things that we know keep our communities crime free—like the mental health care system like addiction treatment like housing and jobs like the national action plan that the Hon Marama Davidson just announced as the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence an action plan that they didn't put in place having declared themselves the only party to care about sexual offending—that seems wild. Domestic and sexual violence has been at epidemic levels in New Zealand for quite some time and they didn't have an action plan but we do.So this law change is good. It's the bare minimum that the Government can do to return our justice system to a place where rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners back into the community safely is at the centre of our justice system but there is a lot more that we do need to do. We do need to invest like our Scandinavian like-minded nations do in alternatives to prison. What does community-based rehabilitation look like? What does having a rehabilitation system that's standardised across our justice system look like? Because we don't have that either yet. Investing in mental health investing in rehabilitation investing in housing and jobs and all of those things that keep communities stable with a Te Tiriti based approach is the way we should be going starting with this bill. I do commend this to the House."