Webb DuncanSENTENCING (REINSTATING THREE STRIKES) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed.Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Well this bill is about choices and values and this Government chooses window dressing over substance. It chooses rhetoric over outcomes. We know that three strikes doesn't work. We absolutely agree that we want to see a reduction in offending and a reduction in the number of victims and we want to see reoffending reduced as well. But this reheated policy flies in the face of all of the evidence. The Minister's own officials have said that there is no consistent pattern to changing crime from three-strikes regimes. The officials have made it absolutely clear that this proposal will do no good whatsoever—in fact quite the reverse. Not only that but every other jurisdiction in the world more or less where these regimes have been introduced have been rolling them back have been watering them down or getting rid of them entirely.This regime that will have no impact on reoffending will not keep communities safer will cost $10 million a year and we'll see around 90 people in prison who wouldn't otherwise have been in prison. Well look the fact of the matter is that we do think that where there is serious offending there should be a serious sentence. In fact we think a rule that says that a judge must impose the maximum penalty prescribed for the offence [where] the offending is within the most serious cases for which the penalty is prescribed unless there are circumstances [which make it] inappropriate;"—we think that would be a good rule. It sounds a bit like this legislation except it's not. It's actually section 8(c) of the Sentencing Act. So the fact of the matter is sitting there right now in the Sentencing Act is a provision which says a judge must give the most serious sentence to the most serious offending.This bill is simply taking New Zealand backwards. It will have an absolutely disproportionate effect on Māori as well. We know that under the last regime of the people who were subject to a third strike 81 percent of them were Māori. Let's be clear. The Minister has been clear here that this is intentionally disproportionate sentencing. The punishment by definition doesn't need to fit the crime. And that is extraordinary. The idea that we are in a modern First World country where the legislation itself says even if the sentence is disproportionate that is not an extraordinary circumstance.It's true that this bill is not as terrible as the former legislation. It does things like raise the bar to make it a two-year imprisonment sentence as the triggering offence. And then we have a perverse section in there as well a section that says to a judge "Sentence as if you didn't know that was the case. Ignore that." Well the way the justice system works is that people take into account all of those factors when they come to litigate a case. The prosecutor themselves will know what the consequences of a strike sentence will be. The prosecutor has a very significant role to play in what sentence is sought. It's often the prosecutor who undertakes plea negotiations and makes submissions on sentence indications. So those kinds of statements or provisions in the legislation which say "Don't take that into account when sentencing" are largely meaningless.And not only is this a vile piece of legislation in the sense that it's intentionally imposing disproportionate sentences; it's entirely unworkable. The provisions setting out how judges should impose sentences simply won't work. They take no real account of how the justice and sentencing system works and they will have no impact on the safety of communities or the number of victims. Kia ora."