Locke Keith: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Locke Keith: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20901. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I think it is worthwhile teasing out particularly the Labour argument in this debate and that is that a mistake was made and the intention of Parliament was not reflected in the final bill. Well I would come at it from the point of view of a judge. When judges look at legislation they look for a start at what the law actually says. It is quite clear from any reading of the law as to what it says—that there is an exclusion from taking identifying particulars from young people with low-level offending who have not been convicted as such but have suffered very low penalties for their disobeying of the law. Under section 283 of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 there are Group 1 responses up to Group 7 responses. Group 1 responses are when the Youth Court discharges the young person from proceedings without further order or penalty and admonishes the young person. The judge looking at that would think: “Perhaps as my colleague has said there’s a distinction here between young people and old people. That is very much the modern thing so I will read the law as it is written.”  
But the other thing judges do is look at the debate in Parliament particularly at third reading speeches but even at the whole debate. When we look at the whole debate in 2008 on the Policing Act we can see the conclusion—and in the very rushed time we have had some people have looked through all this stuff and they “have not located anything which indicates a specific policy position was taken on this issue.” That is the parties in this House including the Labour-led Government at the time did not put forward in any of the parliamentary debates any specific policy position nor did any other party including the Greens. I was the Green spokesperson on police during that time and spokesperson on that bill and there was no conception that there was any misinterpretation of that particular provision or that there was any policy position that would lead a judge to offer any interpretation other than what the legislation actually means.  
People say: “Oh well you’ve got to go back to the 1958 Act and what that meant.” The 1958 Police Act was written for an entirely different time when as my colleague says there was no differentiation between older and younger offenders there was no Children Young Persons and Their Families Act and there was no Youth Court etc. If the Government had put out in 2008 an options paper saying that one option is that we distinguish between young people and older people and people who have been convicted and people who have not been convicted and if it had referred to the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act and all the rest of it; and if we asked the parties in the House which option will we take—tell members the option the Government supports and then have a debate about it—then there would be some clarity. It would be quite clear what was meant by Parliament.  
I think the fundamental misconception is that both Labour and National are defining Parliament as the Government and that is very offensive to other parties in an MMP climate. We have never been part of the Government. We come to this debate and to all the debates in this House in good faith. We discuss the bills as they are the wording as it is and the motivations as they are put forward. There was no motivation or wording or anything whatsoever to construct the interpretation that Labour is now putting on this bill. Also there was no explanation of how it fitted in with previous legislation including the 1958 legislation on this issue and to what extent that took account of the huge changes in the way we respond to youth offending now as compared with 1958.  
Carol Beaumont said it was drafting error and some words were missed out. Well if that is the case let us see the proof. Let us see the words that were missed out. I do not think that is the situation but I challenge anyone in Labour to show that.