Mark Ron: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mark Ron: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 This is the first call I have taken on this bill. I start my speech by simply saying one thing: stop and wake up! I draw to the attention of the people who are voting for this legislation that everything in Part 2 is aimed at achieving a new extended supervision regime that will actively manage high-risk child sex offenders in the community. Members should think about that. Everything I read in Part 1—which I did not get the opportunity to speak on because I did not get the call when I asked for it—and everything in Part 2 is aimed at putting high-risk child sex offenders into the community under supposedly 24-hour supervision. We all know that nothing in this legislation will guarantee that. 
How do I know that? I know that because even yesterday there were articles in the paper stating that a home detention individual who was monitored with an anklet went missing for 4 months. Get that! Four months! I have one message for everyone on the Government benches who votes for this legislation. The day a high-risk child sex offender commits another crime on another child as a result of that offender supposedly being supervised 24 hours a day 7 days a week under this legislation I will do everything I can to put a billboard in those MPs’ electorates stating that they personally voted for it to happen. 
They should know that this legislation is fundamentally flawed. I go back to the third reading of the Parole Bill when Winston Peters stated that this legislation was fundamentally flawed. There are arguments in this Chamber to the effect that it does not matter what one does with parole. Frankly parole is past its use-by date. Eighty percent of people who are paroled offend within 5 years. Know that! Members should think about that. This legislation is all—a term I cannot use in this Chamber because it is not parliamentary; “Bravo Sierra” is an army term that springs to mind—Bravo being “b” and Sierra being “s”—and that is what this is. The crime here is that members like Mr Barker Ms Pettis Mr Benson-Pope and Mr Gallagher will all sit here and pass this legislation and working-class people will bear the results. Boy am I looking forward to the hustings the day after the first recidivist offender offends because I will nail them all as responsible. We over here in New Zealand First will vote against Part 2 because it is fundamentally flawed. 
There are some things that I can endorse. Why? Because we told the Government they were shortfalls and failures and it would not listen the first time around. Take the deferred sentencing. Why are we dealing with that issue now? Why is it in this legislation? Because the Government would not listen—and is that not interesting: again it is not listening. The result we had from deferred sentencing was that people who were sent to jail did not go to jail. Where did they go? They went back out in the community on deferred sentence pending a home detention application. What happened? There is a high-profile case of a man who committed aggravated robbery was sent to jail did not go to jail and was put out in the community. They suddenly find that hello DNA evidence shows he was involved in four other aggravated robberies and when they went to pick him up from the place he was supposedly living on his deferred sentence he did not live there any more. He had gone—flown the coop. No one could find him. 
Hello! If he had been locked up in jail for a start the police would have known exactly where to go. Well! The Government suddenly realises that it has a problem so it is moving to block that hole. But is it not also interesting when looking at the beginning of the bill to realise this Labour Government supposedly cloth-cap working class and union representative is now bleating the cry of an employer who wants to get off home get a deferred sentence because he is a rich guy. 
Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice) 
: 
 Firstly I say to the Committee that this debate reminds me a little of the fabulous old cartoon with Bill Rowling and Rob Muldoon looking out a window. The cartoonist observed that it was interesting that one could see blue sky and the other could see only mud. Law and order debates are very interesting because despite what the Opposition says the facts are that since the Bail Act was passed more high-risk defendants are being denied bail than before. Opposition members do not accept that. The second point is that there are projections now for an increase in New Zealand’s prison population of over 20 percent in the next 7 years. Those are not the statistics Ron Mark would have when he says we are soft on crime. The fact is that since 1996 when crime in New Zealand peaked there has been a continued drop and all members should say that is a good thing. But the Opposition members for their own purposes have to go and scare and terrify the electorate by saying there is more crime. 
I want to come back to Richard Worth who made an interesting point when he identified that a number of corrections were being made to the legislation. He put that forward as a criticism. I think Richard Worth should say it is a positive thing. If things are not right we try to constantly and incrementally improve the law. No one gets it absolutely perfectly right the first time and anybody who believes that is a fool. The Government has identified areas for improvement. For example there is concern about the deferral dates for the start of sentences. We are now tightening the rules on that in the light of experience and practice because we have now found that the words we wrote before which we thought were adequate are not. So we are now to require exceptional circumstances instead of special circumstances—we are going to do that. We are also to make it clear in sentencing that when considering non-parole periods of greater than one-third of a sentence those should be imposed in cases where the statutory minimum would be insufficient to deter denounce and punish a serious crime. I think that is a very positive amendment and the House should support it. Those are constructive amendments to improve the quality of our legislation and I think people should applaud them. 
Some people will condemn those amendments. Of course they will because it is the nature of the Opposition—oppose oppose—to lock themselves into that mentality. But the Opposition cannot deny the statistics. The facts are that the crime rate is on the way down the prison population is going up longer sentences are being imposed and it is now much tougher to get bail. So there are some positive matters and I think the Committee should have that put on the record.