SpeechHon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): Colleagues in the House first may I first reiterate the sentiment made by my colleague Vanushi Walters and acknowledge the serious event that is occurring in Tāmaki-makau-rau and the outer regions right now. Our thoughts are with them all as this is the second substantive event in a very short period of time. The collegiality in this House will mean that I know that many people will be concerned for the friends their families those businesses those communities and those that indeed just suffered immeasurable harm. Ki a mātou nei ka whiua ōku nei whakaaro ngā whakaaro o tēnei Whare ki a rātou.[To us our thoughts the thoughts of this House are thrown to them.]Turning to some of the substantive questions and queries that have been put down by my colleagues this afternoon I think—as we do in an ordinary committee of the whole House—what I'll do is just answer in piecemeal: as you go I'll go.So starting with those three substantive issues that the Hon Paul Goldsmith mentioned just now. The first was with respect to the increase in violent crime and making the clear statement around that 33 percent increase in violent crime. I think there's probably a range of different things that we've been looking at when we are tracking the data for why there is an increase in violent offending particularly from that period between 2018 and 2023. I am on record as noting the police data has shown a 37 percent increase in the reporting of violent offences. The number of people entering the court for violent offending has also increased by 8 percent since July 2022 although I guess it's probably useful for this committee to also note that that is still lower than that in 2018.What we are seeing and particularly since the introduction of a range of reforms that came in to address family harm in 2018—the commencement in 2019—we introduced a raft of measures in this House to enable those that were victims of violent offending within their domestic situation their familial situations to be able to (1) report more easily (2) we introduced different types of offending and (3) provided more resource to ensure that family violence and family violent offending is more accounted for.What we've seen is that as the crime rates have lifted the number of family violence offending has lifted. Clearly—to us on the evidence that's been provided to us through the data—one of the very clear drivers is why we are seeing an uplift in that violent offending offending that hasn't previously been able to be caught. I am pleased that this House had the foresight to introduce that range of remedies and provide police those powers—of course alongside other tools—to ensure that we were adequately capturing the harm that is caused in the home. Turning briefly to youth crime because there's an interesting corollary there. Yes I think it's very clear that we can see—whether it's through ram raids or other types of offending—we've seen a substantive increase by children and young people when it comes to particular forms of offending. I want to touch on because the members have touched on that in this House ram raid incidents began to increase from December 2020 and peaked to date at August 2022.Something that's interesting when we start to look at that trajectory though of crime is that it's still lower than when we took office in 2017. What we saw over the past decade is very clear evidence that shows youth offending is tracking downwards over the past 10 years. It continues that downward trajectory until around just after COVID and then we see that sharp increase. We're not yet up to those rates where we were in 2017 and prior to then.One of the questions that the member asked this afternoon was whether or not we could be confident that the investment into some of the programmes and the ways that we are capturing our young people are effective. Well I guess there's a couple of ways that we could answer that. One of the less pleasing in my view things that I see in the statistical evidence is that we have one of the highest incarceration rates right now for young people and children as a consequence of youth offending.Secondly what we see is that where we have trialled programmes such as the Better Pathways Package for young people—which is a significant investment into whole wraparound services for young people based in their communities—we are seeing a peak and then a decline in youth offending in those areas. How do we know that's the case? Because we've got other areas where we haven't taken those same approaches and we've seen an increase.So I am confident that the measures that we are taking—which provide alternatives away from kiddie kindergrounds for ultimately gangs and gang lifestyles and life of harm—or a significant and substantial investment into young people working with them to realise their potential. We've seen a reduction in recidivism rates we've seen a more complete re-entry we've seen a reduction in crime and we've seen much more evidence that highlights that people get back into a different way—a more positive way—of contributing to the community. So I am confident in the ways that we have been trialling and managing ways of dealing with this incredible peak in youth crime post the back of COVID.On the third issue my colleague raised—it was on court delays—I guess I'll just make a brief comment there and then I'll come back and—let's just answer as we go through. But a couple of things I'll note there: that as a justice sector that was funded for multiple appropriations at the last Budget there were four key priorities for that cluster of those justice agencies: Corrections Justice Police and there's a few others including the Serious Fraud Office and Crown Law.So the four priority areas there were the reduction of delays a real focus on remand increasing support to victims and then one which was more about the internal way that those agencies operated. Most of the remand increase in the last year is due to an inflow of serious cases as opposed to delays—that's what the evidence is showing us—but I will accept there's certainly more work to be done there and we'll engage throughout the course of this.