King Annette: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20904. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 Part 2 of the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill has one clause. This clause repeals section 34 of the Policing Act 2008 and inserts new sections 34 and 34A. It clarifies the instances under which the identifying particulars of a young person can be stored as intended by Parliament.  
We are talking about young people who have appeared before the Youth Court have been found wanting and have been convicted—a case has been proven against them. These are the young people whose particulars we are talking about. We are not talking about young people who have never done anything are innocent and walking along the streets of New Zealand. We are talking about young people who have been brought before the Youth Court and have had a charge against them proved.  
It has been decided by the Youth Court that there are number of responses it could use. In fact there are seven levels in the hierarchy of court responses if a charge against a young person has been proved. The responses go from quite minor through to quite serious the most serious being to send the young person to the District Court for sentencing. So there is the ability for the Youth Court to make a decision.  
The fact is that this measure concerns young people who have committed crimes and the ability to retain their particulars—Part 2 sets out what those particulars are—and it is plain common sense. Why would we not retain the particulars of young people when they have committed a crime and the Youth Court has made a decision on it?  
Keith Locke has said today that we should come to this bill from a judge’s point of view. I say no he is quite wrong. Members should come to this bill facing up to our responsibility to pass a law that reflects our intent and it is then up to the judges to interpret it. This Parliament is going through a process to ensure that we have a law that reflects our intent.  
I am surprised at some of the comments from Keith Locke because he was the Green spokesperson on the Policing Bill during the 2 years that we—that is the Greens and the previous Labour Government—consulted on it. He met with me on many occasions. He must think again about what he said. He made it sound as though the previous Government knew the mistake was there and did not change it. If we knew we had made a mistake does he think we would have left the bill in that position? If we knew there was a mistake would we not have fixed it? It is nonsensical to say we knew there was a mistake and we did not fix it.  
Of course we did not know there was a mistake in the Policing Bill nor did the Green Party and the Maori Party. If the Maori Party and the Green Party knew that it was a mistake and they wanted to talk about it—or perhaps they did know there was a mistake and they did not want to talk about it. I do not believe that was the case; I believe it was a genuine error—an oversight. Now we have the opportunity to rectify it so we can proceed on in a manner that existed in the past.  
I cannot see why this House would not support this bill. It seems to me that many of the arguments we are having are dancing on the head of a pin. We want to ensure that young people who offend get the opportunities to have different orders made on them so they are not all sent off to the District Court. We would not want that. When one looks at the responses that are available to the Youth Court and are available for young people one can see that many of them will help young people and their families work with those young people and give those families an opportunity to put those young people on the right path.  
So I would say that we ought to be passing this bill as soon as we can. There is nothing wrong in our view in taking urgency on this particular matter. We do not always agree with urgency—in fact we think some of the urgency has been wrong and we have said so—but we are talking about genuine omission in legislation that needs to be corrected. Unfortunately it has been used today by the Maori Party and the Green Party as a stalking horse for other issues and I think that is a terrible shame.  
I do not disagree with some of the points Rahui Katene of the Maori Party has raised about the broader issues but they are not the issues of this amendment. There are many reports on other issues and never did I say to Rahui Katene today that there were five reports on this particular issue. I said there were about six or seven reports on the overall bill that looked at many parts of it and that we consulted on them. No I did not say there were five reports on this particular part of the bill.  
The wider issues are worthy of a debate but they are not what this bill is about and the bill should not today be used as a stalking horse for something else. There is a time and place to raise those issues and that is when they should be raised. An amendment to correct an omission should not be used as ploy. I do not agree with that. I think we should concentrate on the issues before us and make the amendment as soon as we can.