Hughes Darren: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Hughes Darren: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:606;Page:3342] 
3.  
DARREN HUGHES (NZ Labour—Otaki) 
 to the  
Minister of Justice 
: What information does he have on the accuracy of OECD figures which suggested that in 1997 New Zealand had the world’s highest teen crime offending rates? 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 The figures purporting to compare international juvenile offending rates are totally invalid because they fail to compare like with like. For example figures for other countries are based on the number of offenders while New Zealand’s figures list the number of offences. Thus a single offender who committed 50 offences may be listed 50 times in the New Zealand figures but would be listed only once in the statistics of other countries. 
Darren Hughes 
: Has the Minister taken any action to ensure that that misrepresentation of New Zealand’s comparative crime rate is corrected?  
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Yes information from the Ministry of Justice indicating why the OECD figures are misleading has been conveyed to the OECD through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I am pleased to say that a prompt and fulsome letter of apology has been received from the OECD. The OECD admits that its comparison is ill-founded and misleading. It has issued a correction to the international media. It has taken the data off its website and it has included an erratum in hard copies of its publication.  
Simon Power 
: Can the Minister confirm that the police are having great difficulty in resourcing his new youth offending teams and that papers confirming the concerns of the people attending the ministerial task force on youth offending have been withheld; and what effect will the under-resourcing of youth offending teams have on cutting youth crime? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: No I cannot confirm that because no information at all has been provided to me suggesting that the police have that concern. In fact I do not believe that they do have that concern. 
Craig McNair 
: Does the Minister still view the issue of youth crime or teen crime as a serious issue for our youth and what is he going to do about it? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Yes notwithstanding the fact that those OECD figures are wrong of course we are concerned about the level of youth offending. I would make the point to the member that the police figures I have in my hands suggest in fact that youth offending has dropped over the last 5 years. It is nevertheless still a serious problem which is why the youth offending strategy was launched last year with great support right around the community—from the police the judiciary and people working in the general area. 
Stephen Franks 
: Why should the victims of New Zealand’s disastrous youth crime have any confidence in claims about figures from the Minister when the Youth Court states there is“no centralised collection of statistics and trends about youth offending”—and I quote it—and he is the Minister responsible for the mysteriously missing 2001 national crime victimisation survey which was conducted in 2001 by ACNeilson at a cost not far short of $1 million the contracted final report date— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: This question is already too long. The member must come to the point very quickly. 
Stephen Franks 
: —for the survey was 29 March 2002 and the embarrassing material is apparently withheld for the reworking of the data? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: The statement the member has made is utterly wrong. All I can say is that if there is anybody who should be embarrassed in this House it is Mr Franks who as soon as he saw the OECD figures could not wait to be opportunistic and to knock his own country and endorse figures that the OECD has acknowledged were utterly wrong. It is time that member did his homework and then he might have some credibility in this place. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I do not want to have to make this comment again this session but I ask all members to turn their cellphones off. It is not good enough. Members do not have to have them on in the House. 
Sue Bradford 
: Is the Minister concerned that unsupported and out-of-work 16 and 17-year-olds find it almost impossible to get any social welfare benefit and are staying in—or turning to—prostitution in order to survive and are then labelled as criminal? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: That is somewhat outside my portfolio area. There are emergency benefits available to people of that age but they are not available automatically because we do not want to create wrong incentives for people to leave home who should still be at home. 
Marc Alexander 
: In the light of the original question does the Minister also question or refute the OECD data that shows New Zealand has the highest rate of cannabis use amongst people aged 15 years and over; if not what plans does he have to address that criminal justice problem? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: While I do not have the database for that it would be my assumption that New Zealand does have a comparatively high level of cannabis use. I guess that is a problem that everybody in this House would recognise. We have a ministerial task force— 
Opposition Members 
: What are you going to do about it? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: I am about to tell the Leader of the Opposition who did nothing for 9 years what we have been doing about that. We have launched a ministerial-led strategy for dealing with alcohol and drug abuse that is now working on a total of 34 different projects—most of which have been announced to the public—because drug abuse very clearly is linked in with criminal offending. I seek leave to table the letter from the OECD dated 10 February apologising for misleading members. 
Document laid on the Table of the House.