Mitchell MarkMARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I have made a point of speaking because I do want to be able to make some serious responses to the issues that were raised by the members across the House. This is going to be somewhat of a challenge to be honest with you. Carmel Sepuloni: her contribution was that she is too busy to really look at it. She did manage to make some comment around keeping them out of court. Actually this bill if you look at it is about keeping offenders out of court. It is avoiding the stigmatisation that puts them back into court. Then we came to Jan Logie—that was a really interesting contribution. She is too busy as well to look at this and I found out that she does not like me any more—somehow I am going to have to try to deal with that; I am not sure how. She felt that it was a deep attack on beneficiaries.This bill is really simple. People who are actually on a benefit I believe have got a contract with the taxpayers of New Zealand who are paying them. If beneficiaries are given community service as part of a sentence often this is actually a real opportunity for them to get into their communities and do something positive. If they choose not to be compliant then I think that we should take steps to make sure we encourage them to be compliant.I will come to Mr Ball's comments in a minute because he raised a very interesting point. He raised a question with me of what happens to people who fail to comply with a community sentence who do not collect a Government benefit. The answer is very simple: at the moment if they are not a beneficiary if the taxpayer is not funding them and they are getting their revenue from another source—whether it be the private sector or whether you are self-employed—then basically if they are non-compliant they will be warned and then they will be taken back into court and they will be dealt with in court. What this bill is actually doing Mr Ball is it is actually giving offenders who have been convicted an opportunity to come and engage in their community sentence and it relates directly to people who are being funded and paid by the taxpayer. I come back to that social contract that they have and that responsibility that they have. This country is built on some pretty important values: personal responsibility and individual freedoms Mr Ball. So I am very surprised that you are standing up and saying that you are tough on crime and yet you want to let off offenders whom the taxpayer is actually paying and funding. You do not want them to be held to account and to actually come along and engage in their community sentence. That is a very interesting position that you are taking and I will be very interested to hear you get up in the House and try to defend that position.So let us move on from Mr Ball and let us go to Kelvin. Kelvin's contribution: I was really looking forward to this and he did not let me down right? He spoke about the Parliamentary Rugby Team which is very important Kel I admit that. Then he talked about tying prisoners to beds. I can assure you that there is nothing in this legislation that relates to tying prisoners to beds—thank goodness. Then to give him his dues eventually he admitted that he wanted to talk about things that actually were totally unrelated to the bill.But Mr Clendon surprised me and it was a pleasant surprise. He got up and it sounded like he was going to support the bill. He understood what it is about. It is about non-compliance.Hon Member: Did he trick you?MARK MITCHELL: He did. We thought he was going to cross the floor there for a minute—that is right. He did highlight that it is about non-compliance and he is absolutely right. This bill is about non-compliance. It is about the non-compliant behaviour of offenders who have been convicted of a crime who are receiving a Government benefit funded by the taxpayer. The expectation is this: that they front up and do their community service. They get into the community and they take the opportunity that they have been given to do something positive. If they do not do that then we will send a warning letter to them—not once but twice—to say that if they break the contract then we will start to reduce their benefits. I think that is fair. Thank you.