Garrett David: Maiden Statements 
Garrett David: Maiden Statements 
[Volume:651;Page:883] 
DAVID GARRETT (ACT) 
: 
 In the 1980s my colleague Roger Douglas presided over an economic revolution in this country and it was sorely needed. Imported goods were rationed and supplied only by the fortunate holders of import licences which were issued to them by their mates in the then Government. Farmers were subsidised in every area of their endeavours and for things that had nothing to do with farming— subsidies that were paid for from high taxes paid by everyone including those on low incomes. In the words of the late great journalist Frank Haden the “gummint” as he called it has no money. It gets it from the people. 
Although they have been much criticised by many—and some of those who formed part of that Government are still in this House—none of the major economic reforms of the 1984-87 Labour Government have been reversed in the past 20 years. Today largely thanks to the reforms introduced by Sir Roger and those who came after him the incoming Government at least had a reasonable idea prior to the election of the serious economic problems it would face. 
I come to this House firmly believing that a revolution of no less a magnitude than the economic revolution of the 1980s is required to repair our broken justice system. Consider where we have come as a society in the 50 years since I was born. Measuring homicide rates per 100000 of population allows us to compare New York with New Plymouth and Dunedin with Düsseldorf. Until the beginning of the 1970s New Zealand’s annual homicide rate per 100000 of population was about 0.5 per year. Today our homicide rate is about three times higher than it was in 1970; it is about 1.5 per 100000 per year. That is a threefold increase or 200 percent compared with 40 years ago. 
Let us personalise it. Seven men are currently serving time in New Zealand jails for their second homicide. In other words they have already completed one sentence for culpable homicide either manslaughter or murder and killed again when they got out of jail—seven. Of the other killers currently in prison 78 had at the time they committed the killing for which they are now incarcerated served at least three previous sentences of imprisonment for serious violence. In other words 78 people would be alive today if at the time they were killed New Zealand had a three strikes law of the kind ACT is promoting. Some of the survivors of those victims are in the gallery today. 
It is not just homicide that has increased exponentially. In the past 9 years alone violent crime generally—stabbings serious assaults and aggravated robbery—increased 47 percent. No amount of spin from either politicians or officials can disguise that reality. Spurious explanations such as a greater reporting of crime are just that: spurious. Homicide and armed robbery have never been under-reported in this country at least not since we have had newspapers and a police force. 
The nature of crime has fundamentally changed in 40 years. A researcher today could pore over newspapers from 40 years ago searching in vain for stories about drive-by shootings gang members killing rival gang members’ children and contract killings; none of those things appeared until the 1970s or later. The fact that scum like samurai sword murderer Antonie Ronnie Dixon go about armed with automatic weapons is no longer remarkable in the literal sense of that word. One does not remark upon it because it happens if not every day then every other week. That is an appalling indictment on us as a society and sadly on this House as the place in which ever more liberal policy has been transformed into law. 
So just how did our society become so altered? One of the favourite explanations offered by many academics and others is unemployment. The only problem with that theory is that it does not fit the facts. We have recently come out of a period of 7 years or so of full employment. The former Prime Minister who has just joined us was quite correct when she said a year or so ago that everyone in New Zealand who wanted a job had one. Our unemployment rate in 2007 of less than 4 percent is regarded throughout the Western World as full employment. If unemployment causes crime why then did violent crime rise over the past 9 years by 47 percent during a period of full employment? 
If we go back much further in history to the Great Depression of the 1930s unemployment then was more than 20 percent and there was a minimal welfare safety net. People literally starved in this country. In 1932 there were food riots in Queen Street in Auckland. The rioters were not looting shops for camcorders and plasma TVs; they looted because they needed food to keep them alive. If unemployment is a major cause of crime why then did violent crime actually go down in 1932 in the midst of this deprivation and misery? The usual riposte when this little problem with the “unemployment causes crime” theory is pointed out is: “Well we were all suffering together back then.” Wrong! Disparities between rich and poor were actually greater 70 years ago. I have seen photographs of the members’ stand at the Ellerslie races in 1932—the same year as the riots. It is full of well-dressed people and the car park is full of large American cars with uniformed chauffeurs standing beside them. 
It is often said that we have the society we deserve. I quite agree with that sentiment but not for the reasons those who overuse that cliché usually have in mind when they say it. I firmly believe that we are reaping what we have sowed. We are reaping a harvest from a focus on rights without consideration of responsibilities by considering criminals as also being victims who just require the right kind of therapy in order to become decent citizens and by making our jails places to which some people are quite happy to return. 
A criminal with a record recently held up a bank in Te Puke and then waited outside to be arrested. His lawyer told the judge that he was not coping financially so he wished to go back to jail—back to a place where there are no bills with three square meals a day paid for and cooked by someone else and a cell with a plasma TV and underfloor heating. The story was not even on the front page. It is no longer remarkable but those who doubt me can check the  
New Zealand Herald 
 of Saturday 6 December. 
People opposed to the views of groups such as the Sensible Sentencing Trust tell us—and they probably actually believe it—that our society has become much more punitive. That is nonsense. It is quite difficult to get sent to prison in New Zealand today. Prison populations have risen sharply simply because we have become a much more crime-ridden society. I recently read a biography of Sir Elton John which included a reference to an incident in New Zealand in 1974. John Reid Sir Elton’s then manager assaulted the well-known journalist Judith Baragwanath pushing or knocking her to the ground and then hit a man who came to her aid. It was a pretty ordinary assault at least by today’s standards. No weapon was used. Reid was sentenced to and ended up actually serving a month in Mount Eden Prison—not a month of home detention or 10 hours’ community work but a month in the cold stone castle. A month in jail for assault—how terribly terribly Draconian. I have been unable to ascertain whether Reid ever reoffended upon his release. Thirty-five years later it all makes rather quaint reading given what is now commonplace in the criminal courts every Monday morning. 
I have learnt from those who have gone before me that an essential ingredient of the good maiden speech is an explanation of why one comes to Parliament. It should now be obvious that my chief reason for coming to this place is an abhorrence of how our society has changed in regard to personal safety and a passionate desire to do something about it. Anyone who considers standing for Parliament must carefully weigh the effects on one’s life and family against what one hopes to or might reasonably achieve. 
For me it was also necessary to satisfy myself that standing for the ACT Party as opposed to simply voting for it or being a member of it fitted with my personal philosophy. In that regard I reached a turning point when I realised that what I thought was simply an electioneering slogan was in fact a core part of the ACT Party’s constitution. Clause 3 of the ACT Party’s constitution states that the first duty of any Government is to protect the safety of its citizens. That is utterly in accord with my personal beliefs about the function of government. It is also a function that successive Governments have been failing to perform. They have been failing to perform it for a generation with the degree of failure becoming worse. 
As naive and idealistic as it may sound I am here to try to play a part in changing that sad state of affairs. It is my firm belief that we can turn this mess around and once again become a country where children can walk to school without their mothers fearing for them. We can become a society where when she is older my daughter can—as my sisters did—go out for a walk on a hot summer’s night without fear of being raped or worse; a society where when the residents of a State housing block in Gisborne go to the beach they can leave their house not only unlocked but also open so as to benefit from the cooling breeze flowing through the house from the open front and back doors. I know this is true because I was there. That is the environment I grew up in. 
When one talks about this to New Zealanders under about the age of 35 they think that such a society is but a utopian delusion or if it ever did exist it must have been 100 years ago. It was as older members and members of the audience know only a little more than 25 years ago. A senior member of the Labour Party said in this House last week that there was in fact no golden age. Not true. In the New Zealand of the 1960s just like in the New Zealand of the early 2000s we had full employment and all of the components of the welfare State. We had most of what we have now without the crime. 
If I did not believe that we can once again become a society where law-abiding people go peaceably about their business and criminals are treated like the criminals that they are then I would not be here. I firmly believe we can return to that real and not illusory golden age albeit with licensed restaurants lattes and mobile phones. 
I believe that we can return to a system where a sentence of 5 years in jail means 5 years not 2 years; a system where a judge can sentence our most odious murderers to life in prison without parole; a system where prisons are humane but otherwise stark and cold places to which no one with half a brain would wish to return; a system where violent criminals get a second chance but not a third; and a system where three-time violent offenders go to jail for 25 years to life. 
 Having said that I say that we need to face up to the fact that our prisons contain many mentally ill offenders who should not be there. They are there because we have attempted over the past 25 years to treat all our social ills with imprisonment. The place to treat mentally ill offenders is in institutions set up to do so. We have secure units to treat the mentally ill; we should be using them. 
Those who say that our prisons are five-star hotels are exaggerating. Wanganui Prison New Plymouth Prison and Paremoremo west all of which I have visited are one-star at best. But those who say that they are hellholes are exaggerating much more. We have moved from a penal regime where prisoners worked in the quarry behind Mount Eden Prison before retiring to a cold cell to a system where work is voluntary and prisoners retire to a centrally heated cell with plasma TV. This change has coincided with the destruction of our once civil society. Whether those two phenomena are causally related no one knows for sure although there is convincing evidence from other countries that imprisonment does work but we just do not hear about it much. 
It is time to say “Enough!” to the ever-more liberal penal policies of the last 40 years and to try another tack. As someone in this House said last week only a fool expects different results from doing more of the same thing and that is exactly what we have been doing with penal policy for 40 years. But there is no quick fix and no one answer. If the policies I advocate were to be introduced as a package tomorrow their effects would not be seen quickly. It has taken us more than a generation to reach the sorry state we are now in and it will take us a generation to change it. We now have an entire generation of thugs who have grown up in the knowledge that there are no real consequences for bad and criminal behaviour. We need to raise the next generation knowing that they unlike their fathers will be held to account and will be punished for bad behaviour. 
Finally I will say a brief word to my family. Talamonuu ki hoku mali mo ’eku fanau faka’ofo’ofa ’a ia ’oku nau ’i heni fakataha mo au. Malo ho’o mou poupou’i au ’i he konga fo’ou mo fakato’aloto ko ’eni ’o ’eku mo’ui. Fakamalo ho’omou ’ofa’i au. ’Oku ou fakatauange ko ’eku mavahe mei he feitu’uni te mou ongo’i neu fai ha ngaue lelei mo tokoni ki hono fa’u ha sosaieti saiange ma’a moutolu. In my best but imperfect Tongan I sent greetings to my wife and family who are here with me today. I thank you for the support you have offered me in this exciting new part of my life and for the love you have all given me. I hope that when I leave this place you will feel that I have done some good and helped to create a better society for you my beautiful children. Thank you and I love you.