Chauvel Charles: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 07 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:156. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 The Sentencing Act contains a number of instructions from Parliament which is the supreme lawmaking body in our system to the judiciary as to how that branch of Government should carry out one of its most basic responsibilities: the sentencing of convicted persons. Section 7 of the Sentencing Act sets out the purposes this Parliament tells the courts they ought to observe in carrying out the act of sentencing. Section 8 sets out the principles that the courts are to take into account when sentencing or otherwise dealing with offenders. Section 9(1) lists factors that judges are to take into account as aggravating ones when dealing with the exercise of sentencing. I want to list some of the aggravating factors that are currently in the Act so that members have a clear understanding of the context of what is being done by this amendment.  
The first aggravating factor is the actual or threatened use of violence in the conduct of the offence or the actual or threatened use of a weapon. The offence if it involves unlawful entry into or unlawful presence in a dwelling place will be aggravated. If the offence was committed while the offender was on bail or still subject to the sentence of the court that will also be an aggravating factor. The extent of any loss damage or harm resulting from the offence particular cruelty in the commission of the offence the abuse of a position of trust or authority in relation to the victim or the vulnerability of the victim by reason of his or her age or health or because of any other factor known to the offender are also aggravating factors that a judge must take into account in sentencing.  
Clause 5 of the Sentencing (Aggravating Factors) Amendment Bill will add a new aggravating factor to section 9(1) and I am going to read the aggravating factor that we are contemplating here. We heard the Minister of Justice refer to it briefly in her speech. It is: “that the victim”—presumably the victim of the offence in question—“was a constable or a prison officer acting in the course of his or her duty:”. So that is expressly said to be a factor that the courts must take into account. This is in response to we learn from the regulatory impact statement a 13.9 percent increase between fiscal years 2004-05 and 2008-09 in assaults on police officers and a 56.3 percent increase in assaults on corrections officers over the same time. 
 Labour did not oppose this amendment on its first reading and our members listened carefully to the evidence at the Law and Order Committee. We will not oppose this bill at its second reading because it seems to us that it is a measure that can do little harm. But the question we really need to be asking ourselves at this juncture is whether the bill will do any good. It stands to reason that if there has been a marked increase in assaults on police and corrections officers over the last 5 or 6 years then we have a problem. But we also need to not ignore the evidence and the evidence is this. There are already a number of specific offences that exist on the statute book in respect of violence against uniformed service persons in the police or the corrections service. For example there is already a maximum of 14 years’ imprisonment for using a firearm against any police traffic or prison officer. It is already the case that there is a maximum of 3 years’ imprisonment provided for the aggravated assault of a constable in the execution of his or her duty. Under the Summary Offences Act it is already the case that 6 months’ imprisonment is prescribed for assaults on a police officer and elsewhere in the Summary Offences Act there are special provisions for resisting a police officer a prison officer or a traffic officer with a maximum penalty of 3 months’ imprisonment.  
There is already a special regime in place. We put it in place to punish in particular assaults on front-line responders and yet we still have this big increase in assaults on them. That would tend to tell us that whatever appears in the law relating to sentencing is not a big deterrent to those who choose to assault police officers or corrections officers. The regulatory impact statement actually recognises that this is to be an Act of this Parliament that leads us very close to window dressing. I am going to read what is said in the regulatory impact statement: “The proposed amendment will not require the court to take any specific action in terms of the type or severity of sentence imposed. The court will be required to take this factor into account—along with other specified and unspecified aggravating factors—in arriving at the appropriate sentence to be imposed in a particular case. 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. As noted above the Government has decided to undertake the proposed amendment to the Sentencing Act. The narrow and specific nature of the proposal has restricted the range of options that can reasonably be considered.”  
The problem here is that the Minister has seen a practice that she rightly wishes to condemn. Nobody can support an increase in assaults on front-line responders. But then as so often happens in this Parliament the response that has been employed is suspect. It is not evidence based. In fact we know that there is no way to tell whether or not all the parliamentary time that we are now devoting to this measure will make one jot of difference to the safety of police or corrections officers. When we are in that situation we just need to ask ourselves why we are doing this: whether it is all about responding to particular interest groups and particular folk on a certain end of the political spectrum or whether we are actually sincere in trying to legislate for a solution.  
There are other questions about this bill. What about other first-line responders like nurses and ambulance officers who are also in danger of assault in their workplace? Why not provide for them in this sort of legislation? I think it would be an appropriate thing to consider amendments of that nature in the Committee of the whole House if this bill proceeds to that point.  
I think it is fair to say that as far as the cynicism inherent in this measure is concerned the Government knows what it is doing. This legislation has hardly been rushed through the House. It had its introduction on 13 October 2010 and it has wended its leisurely way through the processes of the Parliament since then. Clearly the Government does not feel there is any urgent need to move in this way. And that has been sadly typical of the Key Government’s approach to law and order—engage in window dressing and engage in legislation that sounds good on talkback radio and in sound bites but that makes no difference to safety on the streets. If we want any further evidence of that we can think of the three-strikes legislation we can think of the stalled alcohol law reform legislation— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Would Labour repeal it? 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Labour will repeal it; that is right. Labour will repeal all non - evidence-based measures that do not make one jot of difference to public safety. The three-strikes legislation the stalled alcohol law reform—all these measures have a common genesis. They are done because they are something that can be rehearsed in public and there can be chest-beating about it but actually there is very little difference that is made to law and order in the end. Now at the same time important measures like those defining the search and surveillance powers of our police languish on the Order Paper. We have a new Minister of Justice and she has the opportunity to make a new beginning. Sadly but perhaps not surprisingly we are not seeing it.