Dalziel Lianne: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 07 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:159. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am actually very grateful to that member Cam Calder for his contribution to this debate because he has actually spelt out in his contribution exactly why the top priority for this Government in this area should have been the alcohol law reform bill and why this Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill will not make the extent of difference it could make if in fact it was extended to first responders such as nurses in our emergency departments and other staff in that area.  
But more important and they have not been mentioned yet are our ambulance officers. They too are confronted with a situation and yes they may call the police. But the purpose of this is actually to state the abhorrence as the member said of the act of committing a criminal act against an individual who is acting in the course of their duty. A first responder in an accident situation will in fact be an ambulance officer more often than not. They will be there before the police are there and they are the ones who are subjected to outrageous attacks on occasions as well. And if the purpose of this legislation is as the member said—and I think this is the purpose of the legislation; it is not to act as a deterrent and thereby potentially reduce the number of assaults on anyone concerned; it is designed simply to state this Parliament’s abhorrence of such attacks being made on people in those positions—then there is no reason not to include people who work for our ambulance services and people who work at the front line of our health services. They are much more likely to come into contact with this kind of behaviour than any group other than obviously the police and the corrections officers themselves. So I think it would be a very good thing for us to expand this.  
Now I did see that the Justice and Electoral Committee considered this as an issue and its response to it was that the bill itself was to recognise the legal obligation of first responders to dangerous situations. Well I actually think that that language applies equally to our ambulance officers in particular but to emergency staff at our emergency departments as well.  
The other thing that I would just mention in relation to this is that when the select committee looked at this it felt that there was potentially a problem with the scope of the legislation and whether there was sufficient scope in the purpose of the law to recommend an amendment to extend it beyond that. I think the solution to that lies in this House because of course when it comes to the Committee stage it would be very easy for the Minister of Justice to move or seek leave of the House that any out-of-scope amendments extending the coverage of the legislation could be dealt with in the Committee stage. I certainly could speak for the Labour Opposition in saying that we would be very amenable to such an amendment. I think it would send a very powerful message if the House took that approach to our ambulance officers and to other staff as well. And if the reason is genuinely that the select committee felt that it could not go beyond the scope of the legislation as introduced well then the remedy lies in the House’s hands. That is something that I would ask the Minister to perhaps look at over the next wee while before we get to the Committee stage of the bill.  
The second issue that was looked at in select committee was the question of creating a reciprocal aggravating factor. Now I actually agree with the position that the select committee came to on this. As for the purpose of the legislation in sending a message in terms of how we feel about this kind of behaviour—that in itself—I do not think it is appropriate to reverse the obligation when that obligation already exists in fact. So I do believe that the select committee came to the right point of view on that.  
Now I want to turn to the regulatory impact statement. Those of you who know me know that I love regulatory impact statements. I think they are the most important part of the legislative process. I have been working very hard on ensuring that we have a really good process around regulatory impact statements and I know a good regulatory impact statement when I see one and I know a very poor one when I see one. I am sorry; this one fits into the very poor category. But that is because of the brief that the officials were given. I will just run through the regulatory impact statement because I notice some new members in the House and they will not have heard my speech before— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: They will be invigorated. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: They will be invigorated by it—absolutely. My normal speech goes something like this: the purpose of the regulatory impact analysis is to one state the problem; two identify all of the options for addressing the problem; three undertake detailed analysis—and that means risk opportunity cost and benefits so you really do have to undertake the analysis with all of the options on the table—consult with relevant stakeholders and then recommend a particular course of action. The final point which people do not always remember is to follow it up with a process for the analysis of the efficacy of what you have done—so that you are actually looking back over a period of time seeing how the change has actually been implemented. Now that is a very good process.  
Unfortunately this statement has not done any of them except for stating the problem and the solution in one sentence which is that there has been an “increase in the number of assaults on police officers and prison officers over the past five years and a spate of serious incidents in recent months [therefore] the Government has decided that the Sentencing Act 2002 should be amended to ensure that the fact that an offence is committed against a law enforcement officer will be taken into account as an aggravating factor at sentencing.” So all of the in-between steps have been left out of the process and with regard to that final one about analysis of its impact afterwards it says here: “Because judges’ assessment of aggravating and mitigating factors are not amenable to empirical analysis and the proposed amendment does not entail specific action by the court no monitoring or evaluation of the proposed amendment is possible.” It is not even difficult; it is just not possible. So it fails on that final point as well. We have had a statement of the problem gone straight to the solution and unfortunately I think we have missed a bit of an opportunity to do something a little bit more than this.  
I am not opposed to the concept of setting out in the Sentencing Act another aggravating feature—I am not at all—but I do not want anyone to think that the aggravating features in the Sentencing Act are in any way a method by which we reduce the offending concerned because in actual fact it does not work like that. Usually when we are talking about assaults we are talking about things that are done on the spur of the moment. We have heard of alcohol involvement which is why I think the Alcohol Reform Bill would have been a better priority for us to be dealing with tonight. So there are not any occasions that I can think of where people in the circumstances of being engaged in an assault say “Gee I wonder what sentence I’ll get for this if I get caught?”. That is the problem with the concept of it not reducing the problem. I think there has to be more than this; it cannot just be this to deal with the underlying issue.  
When we look at how the High Court regards assaults on police officers again the regulatory impact statement is a great source of valuable information. This is how the High Court has described an attack on a police officer. The High Court has said it is the “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 …”. The Court of Appeal has emphasised the gravity of using serious violence against police officers and upheld deterrent sentences in a number of cases. That was done on an ongoing basis. That case dated back to 1985. So if we had had the problem definition and the analysis done in between then we might have actually identified that in fact the law already allows the courts to take this matter into account and they usually do. In fact that has been the problem of the process—nobody has identified for us when they did not take it into account or whether they allowed a mitigating factor that this would not allow. This does still allow mitigating factors; it is only one of the aggravating factors to be considered and that is why it is very difficult to monitor. So I think that this whole legislation could have been improved and it can still be improved.