Borrows Chester: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Borrows Chester: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 September 2011. Volume:675;Page:21244. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 In speaking to the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) I think it is important to note there are a few things that we witness in this House that are a bit rich. One of the things that is a bit rich is to hear members from the other side of the House criticise this Government’s move against domestic and family violence. They introduced into Parliament the bill that the previous speaker Carmel Sepuloni was speaking about and which is currently languishing at No. 72 on the Order Paper days after this House rose for the last election—and then she talked about urgency! What did the Labour Government concern itself with under urgency in the House? It concerned itself with the Electoral Finance Act under urgency. It squandered the time in this House that it could have been using on this domestic violence legislation to have a tilt at—jiggery-pokery—an election it knew it was going to lose. Yet Carmel Sepuloni gets up in this House and tries to confront this side of the House with digging around with Parliament’s time in order to feather its own nest. 
The other thing in relation to her talking about urgency is that those of us who were in the House between 2005 and 2008 remember the 1700 amendments to the emissions trading scheme legislation that the Labour Government shoved up in the morning and which were law by night. Labour members want to sit tall in the saddle on a high horse and claim the high ground but they are wrong wrong wrong and the public out there know it. 
Another duplicity that I cannot get over in this House comes from the Green Party because the Green Party in terms of this bill believe that it is fine to go on to private property to do a million dollars’ worth of damage to the Waihopai spy base and walk away free because of an ill-conceived perception of the claim of right. At the same time it is wrong to live in a household where one knows that child abuse is going on and to be able to walk away from any culpability whatsoever and say: “It’s not my kid you can’t pin it on me. It’s not my kid you can’t pin it on me.” The Green Party tries to justify its ridiculous stance on this piece of child protection legislation by saying that it is bigger than just this. 
We talk about poverty we talk about the causes and the drivers of child abuse we talk about those who are living in inequity we talk about those who have had a hard upbringing and we talk those people who have been abused themselves and go on to replicate that behaviour and it is all true. They all add to child abuse and guess what we cannot fix it with one piece of legislation. We have laws in this country against rape but people still get raped. We have laws in this country against murder and people still get murdered. We have laws against child abuse in this country and children are still abused—abused more than in just about any other Western country in this world. 
We have had a number of names called out tonight but what we forget is this: if any one of us had the finger pointed at us right now or a microphone shoved under our nose we might at best be able to name five children who have been abused and killed in the last 10 years. But what we know is that about one child a month is killed in this country. So in the last 10 years there have been 120 of them and largely they are faceless and nameless because of that abuse and the fact that that abuse is endemic in this country. 
I cannot believe that a party that sits where the Green Party sits will not support this legislation on those spurious arguments but I do not know why I am surprised. The Green Party is the party that believes that we should not be able to go to the supermarket and buy alcohol but we should be able to go to the dairy and buy Kronic; that if one has a bad back one should be able to grow a few plants of dope and that would not be a problem whatsoever. Its members believe that people can pee in a stream and poo in a caravan site but we have to have a clean streams accord and do something about that. It is absolutely duplicitous. They would criticise a dairy cow for doing exactly the same thing bearing in mind they are animals. So it does not surprise me whatsoever that the Green Party has absolutely no problem with saying in terms of this bill that it is OK for someone to walk to Waihopai slash the balloon with a knife and do a million dollars’ worth of damage but if someone is living in a house where they know a child is being abused and it is not their baby then they should walk away scot-free. That is rubbish. We believe that people should be held to account. 
Te Ururoa Flavell made a point that it takes a village to raise a family and I believe that it does take a village to raise a family. I believe that at this time in this country and with the statistics that we have to deal with we should hold that village responsible for the raising of that child. I say to the House there is nothing worse than having to investigate child abuse allegations and child homicide. When one walks into a house and is met with just a closed-door attitude and the fact that there are only two witnesses to whoever killed or abused that child and one is dead and could never speak for themselves as an investigator it is a horrible situation to be in. At the same time trying to investigate for instance a death in an institution where everybody involved in that institution has every reason in the world to shut up and say nothing and the rule of law and inculcating the right to silence allows them to do that is a very very difficult prospect. I can say that for investigators there is nothing harder to investigate than child abuse and child sexual abuse. 
I am pleased to see that the Government has taken a stance on offending in respect of sexual grooming. The provisions of this bill allow for instance an investigator who is engaging with a paedophile online to make an arrest hold someone to account and put them before a court on charges prior to an offence actually taking place. Obviously for an investigator to masquerade as a minor online in order to bring out the paedophile to be able to confront them with the nature of their offending and to explore what other offences they may well have been involved in the investigator needs the ability to engage with the offender and to stop the offender short of committing an offence against a minor. 
The bill also moves to increase the sentence for carrying a knife. In a number of our communities around this country carriage of a knife has become a regular thing. Unfortunately when young people are heading uptown on a Friday night a number of them are carrying knives. Previously the law required evidence of an intention to use that knife in a crime but the bill makes carrying a knife an offence if it is without reasonable excuse. That is how it should be because the risk of carrying a knife in volatile situations is one that is far too severe. 
I will finish by commenting on some remarks made by Su’a William Sio about where this Government has gone in respect of law and order. He was talking about South Auckland and its record of crime. We need to just bear in mind that going into the last election the previous Government had 300 police left in its quota of 1000 to put on the street. The incoming National Government said it would take that 300 and would add another 300 to the quota. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: Took from other places in the country to put them there. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: Three hundred of those 600 police were placed in South Auckland. What that has meant in South Auckland where that member who was interjecting resides is 25 police cars double-crewed with relievers and their supervisors for 24 hours a day. The Labour Government had 9 long years to do it and did not. Since the National Government added the extra police we have seen a dramatic reduction in crime in South Auckland—that is lives saved in South Auckland. However we will be waiting a really long time before members on that side would ever acknowledge any of it. More fool them.