Moroney Sue: Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13755. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise and speak to the first reading of the Sentencing (Protection of Children from Criminal Offending) Amendment Bill. Can I at the outset congratulate Asenati Lole-Taylor on bringing this bill forward and on having the good fortune to have it drawn out of the ballot—well done. In a previous speech I made on a Government MP bringing forward a piece of legislation I was critical of course that it had not been turned into a Government bill. On this occasion I will not afford that same criticism to this bill because of course the member has no option but to bring it forward as a member’s bill and that is the right and proper use of the members’ ballot in my humble view. So congratulations.It is an important issue that Asenati Lole-Taylor puts before this Parliament because what more worthy cause of this Parliament is there than to be protecting children from harm and to be putting children at the centre of what we do? The Labour Party made a deliberate decision some 4 years ago that at the heart of all of its policy development would be the impact on children. So of course it is supporting this bill at its first reading and referral to the Law and Order Committee.I will personally be very interested to hear submissions on this bill because I have a bill that is a little similar to this but with quite different implications and different motivations behind it going into the members’ ballot. It is about having domestic violence as an aggravating factor at sentencing. I think there are some real synergies with this bill because of course one of the circumstances in which this bill would be brought to bear is in a situation where children are present during a criminal offence of—I am going to call it “domestic violence” but of course there is no actual criminal offence of domestic violence; possibly it would be an assault male versus female or however it is described in the Sentencing Act.Those situations are often—and far too often—occurring in homes and frequently children who are present are harmed when they are party to that type of offending. One of the stories I still recall—and it resonates with me whenever I think about the work our police do in this country—is the story I heard from a community constable about how important it was for him to do work in the local schools. He relayed to me a story about the fact that because children knew him and he had visited their school the children would come straight to him when sadly he was attending domestic violence situations in their homes. The children would come out of hiding—that is often what children do in these situations; they hide—and come straight to him. When the police knock at the door the children are even more terrified than they are of the events happening around them. But this particular police officer was telling me of the importance of having a relationship with the children in his community so that they knew that when he appeared at their door he was there to provide them with safety.So I think it is going to be quite instructive for us to see what submitters make of this bill. I agree with my colleague Jacinda Ardern—that is probably no surprise to anyone—in that I would much rather we were working at the front end of this and in a way whereby children are never put in this situation because sadly by the time this bill is brought to bear the harm has actually already occurred. The harm for an innocent child—who has no other option but to be party to a crime and to be in the vicinity of that crime—has already happened by the time a judge is considering an aggravating factor at sentencing. That is the saddest thing about the bill that we are debating here this evening. Having said that it is one measure that I hope will make some difference. I congratulate the member on bringing it to the House.