Bakshi Kanwaljit Singh: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBakshi Kanwaljit Singh: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:3025. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (Chairperson of the Law and Order Committee):First of all I would like to take this opportunity to offer my condolences to the people of Nepal India and Tibet where the earthquake happened. I see that the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr Murray McCully has just announced another $1 million of aid to Nepal bringing it to $2 million of contributions from New Zealand. So that is what I wanted to start with.Thanks Mr Chair for the opportunity to talk about the justice system in New Zealand. As you said the reference should be to the last year. I will try to deal with this and try to comment on the things that we have achieved in the last year.It has been a clear policy of National to have better public services—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Sorry one thing that the member has to do at the beginning of his speech—I let him go on because he was making comments about Nepal—is move that the report be noted.KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI: I move that the reports be noted. As I was saying National has concentrated on delivering better public services in the past few years. We have built up a strong economy and safer communities and we are proud of that. That is the reason why we are in Government. Everyone wants to have a place of work that is safe and they also want to reside where there is no crime. People are feeling safe under the National-led Government. When I go out and talk to people they really appreciate what we have done. They are very comfortable with the economic conditions plus they feel safe at their workplaces as well as in their homes.The issue relating to the needs of victims and their families has been in the forefront of the mind. Labour promised on a number of occasions that a victim compensation scheme would be delivered but nothing happened. I would like to bring to the notice of this Committee and the people of New Zealand that National has delivered that. We gave support to more than 6000 victims from the offender levy. Another thing that I would like to share with this Committee is that we have passed a law to improve the coordination and delivery of victim support services where by giving their victim impact statement victims can express how the criminal action has or had affected their families and their future.The third thing that I would like to bring to the notice of the Committee is protection for victims by reducing the likelihood of offenders of serious violent and sexual offences coming into contact with them. Legislation bringing in tougher penalties for those who breach protection orders and increasing the term from 2 years to 3 years in jail was passed last year. We have plans to reduce reoffending and modernise our justice system.National has adopted a number of initiatives to move communities away from the crimes. Audiovisual links are one of the examples where courts and prisons are connected. These give an opportunity for the offenders to appear in court through these links—another example of modernising the justice system.I would like to acknowledge the Minister of Justice the Hon Amy Adams the Minister of Police the Hon Michael Woodhouse and the Minister of Corrections the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga for their work and commitment to improve our law and order situation in New Zealand. Our better policing has helped the country to achieve the lowest crime rate since 1978. Also our approach to addressing the issues involving family violence is well taken care of. This approach has helped—