Borrows Chester: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
Borrows Chester: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10213] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 In looking around the Chamber and not wanting to be too presumptuous I make the assessment that maybe over about 28 years I have sat and listened to more sentences handed out than most of the people sitting here. I have to say that I have a lot of confidence in the ability of judges to be able to make good decisions around those whom they are sentencing. I guess it is fair to say too that at times I have been frustrated at the sentences because they have been too light or frustrated because I have felt they have been too heavy. 
In any event it is obvious from listening to the words of the judge meting out the sentence that a lot of local judges target their sentencing towards local offending and local conditions. Members may recall one particular regime that is operating in Taranaki at the moment where local judges have begun what they call a “remand contract”. Young people in particular who have been offending and are looking at going to jail on their next sentence are given the opportunity to sign a contract on remand whereby they will for instance by way of a sentence attend Burnham Military Camp enter the New Zealand Army and undertake its basic training and come back with a positive certificate as to their participation. They may well then be convicted and discharged and not have to serve a further sentence bearing in mind that the basic training they have done is far more rigorous than anything they would be likely to get in prison. 
As a relatively new MP—I have been here only about 18 months—one of the things that has struck me is the light-hearted manner in which members of Parliament go about creating the law with very little understanding of how it will be applied at street level. I think the debate around section 59 of the Crimes Act was a classic example of that. People who had philosophical points of view approached the writing of the law in a particular way without any real understanding of how it might be implemented. They were taking a party line on how the law would affect the people who were going to find themselves on charges or those who would be called on to implement it. 
It does not surprise me that the Minister has said that the judges he canvassed tended to be in favour of a Sentencing Council. What else would they say when speaking to the Minister of Justice? Looking around I have to say too that some of the recent appointments to the bench have been people who have not been to court for a number of years who have not practised law for some time in some cases or who have not appeared for instance in the Maori Land Court yet have been appointed as Maori Land Court judges. It does not surprise me at all that the people he has spoken to are quite happy with the situation as it is and he says are calling for a Sentencing Council. However when we speak to judges on a one-to-one basis and we do not hold a warrant as a Minister and judges can feel free to say what they like we find that they consider the creation of a Sentencing Council to be an enormous affront to their ability as judges to be able to enforce the law or to work the law as Parliament writes it. 
In all effects Parliament itself is the Sentencing Council and Parliament needs to understand that its members are sent here to make the law. That is our role as members of Parliament. If we do not like the job then we should not seek re-election next time round. The fact is that that is why we are sent here and we should not delegate to anyone else the responsibility for creating the law and enabling the law to provide sensible maximum sentences. That is why we are put here. 
I quite agree with my colleague Mr Power’s analogy in respect of a district health board. I believe that the whole area of sentencing corrections and parole for instance and the way that the law works has been an embarrassment for this Government. It wants to create something that stands between it and the way the law works by way of public accountability so it has created as Mr Power has said a “district health board” that it can hide behind. I cannot help thinking too that in doing so it can encourage those people who may contravene the law from time to time to become part of its constituency. I am absolutely convinced that if criminals ever do vote they vote for members on that side of the Chamber not ours.