Alexander Marc: General Debates 
Alexander Marc: General Debates 
[Volume:606;Page:3798] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 On Wednesday last week Tim Barnett was talking about the Prostitution Reform Bill and about an idea whose time has come. There is another issue that is a little more basic than that. It is an idea whose time has come and definitely gone and that is to get politics out of our cultural violence and reach down for some solutions.  
A letter has been circulated around all the parties I presume from the Sensible Sentencing Trust. It asks for our support and help to form a cross-party criminal justice interest group to meet with the Sensible Sentencing Trust on a regular basis “to develop ideas and policies that will lead to a safer country for all New Zealanders.” That is something that I think we could all agree with. The letter reads: “Sensible Sentencing is strictly a politically non-aligned organisation and the intention is not to try and obtain a consensus on the best way forward on party lines but on what is actually best for New Zealanders as a whole.” The simple fact of the matter is that crime does not affect just Labour Party supporters National Party supporters ACT supporters and United Future supporters. It affects everybody in this country and it is up to all of us to put our party political differences aside and actually start doing something about it. An understanding of how we interpret statistics for example can take us a long way along the road to a meaningful dialogue. On one side of the House figures are thrown up at the expense of the other and vice versa. We get no closer to any semblance of truth or any semblance of an idea of the best possible way forward.  
I am heartened that ACT has an open mind on this proposal and would like to see it pushed forward—assuming that there are reasonable grounds for an understanding. Looking at the statistics would be one of the ways we could do that. I am heartened that New Zealand First also has an open mind on it and has given a cautious thumbs-up to at least seeing if the idea could be fruitful. I can ask for no more; neither can the Sensible Sentencing Trust.  
To put things in perspective let us look at some figures. Between 1991 and 2000 aggravated robbery increased by 53 percent and there were 434 convictions in 2000 alone. Serious assault in the same time period increased by 129 percent and there were 3251 convictions in 2000 alone. Threatening to kill or do grievous bodily harm increased 135 percent. Grievous assault increased by 91 percent for males and by 80 percent for females. Assaults on children increased by 85 percent. Wilful damage and property offences increased by 42 percent.  
We have accepted a culture of violence and we have to do something about it. Irrespective of political persuasion every person in this country has a right to expect that the people they care about and love will come back to their homes unharmed at the end of the day and we are doing very little about it. The 33 years non-parole period given to Bell recently is a step in the right direction but we need to widen the scope. We need to go out and assure New Zealanders that we will put this problem at the forefront of our interests. This is not a party political thing; it is something that we should all be concerned about. We should be united to fight crime in this country. It is an all-out war. We talk about Iraq and terrorism but we have it right here in this country. It is the violence that we are allowing to happen in our streets every single day.  
I welcome any attempt by all members of this House to join together put political differences aside and be constructive for once. New Zealanders deserve that kind of commitment from all of us and from each party. Alongside the Sensible Sentencing Trust I invite every member of this House to join together to do something about the scourge that is running rampant throughout this country. We have police issues in Auckland and as the case in Waitara has shown we have problems with the ability to back up our police. We have to start doing something about it now.