O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Any student of history will remember Dresden. That was a time when the Allies bombed a non-strategic city a city that had no munitions factories and they did it for one reason: they wanted to warn the Russians of how tough they were of what the possible complications on the Russians were if they didn't comply. Well it didn't work. History shows it didn't work. So what it shows in coming back to this bill is that anything we do around crime any legislation we bring in we've got to know what we are trying to achieve with it. What we are trying to achieve in all Crimes Act amendment bills or whatever bill we bring in has got to be about reducing crime. It's got to be about making society a safer place. And when I look at this bill it simply fails that test.What experience has shown—and one of the previous speakers from our side mentioned about proximity to offending and how we actually influence and affect offenders is by ensuring that the punishment or whatever we call it is actually proximate to the offending. Attempting to punish offenders in this manner will simply not be relevant in what we are trying to achieve here in trying to reduce crime. It's quite interesting when I was reading through the submissions even the Sensible Sentencing Trust I see were actually opposed to this bill which gives some indication of just how effective it may well be.I'm personally not saying we don't punish these people and the previous speaker Louise Upston talked about how we need to make sure that people are punished. What I'm saying is that this will not do it. In fact what we are trying to achieve here is that the punishment that we are trying to achieve on people—that will just simply not do it. It will not achieve what we're setting out to do. Also because the very people we are setting out to punish—as in the example I used at the beginning around Dresden—the very thing we set out to try and achieve it will not simply achieve it because when we actually impose this we're actually going to be imposing it on those around the person we're trying to punish.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.GREG O'CONNOR: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to resume my presentation on this bill. Let me resume by saying I do believe there should be a consequence for those who don't comply. You may remember I did use the analogy of ensuring that when we send a message we're sending it to the right place and I repeat my Dresden analogy where the Allies attempted to send a message to the Russians at the expense of many thousands of innocent lives. So again I am stipulating it's important to get your message right to signal right and to make sure you're targeting the right area.I fear that quite frankly this legislation does not target the right area. For a start it's patently unfair because only the beneficiaries will be targeted by this. If you look at the report it shows that the majority of people who don't adhere to their community-based sentences or comply with their community-based sentences are actually people who are not on benefits so we're actually looking at a piece of legislation here that is actually just going to target a small proportion of those who actually don't comply.But more importantly I look at those who we're actually going to punish with this one as well because again my experience is that those who end up on community work are those who often don't live shall we say lives where the sort of normal sanctions that we might apply to those who have a relatively dare I say normal life will actually apply. They're people that whether we like it or not are not going to give up their cigarettes—those that smoke. They won't give up their drugs. What they will give up is paying those around them who will often be supplying the food supplying the necessities of life and even those who they supply the necessities of life to—for many of these people in fact their benefit will actually be their fixed costs and much of what they live on is what they've managed to eke a living out of often criminally. It's the very reason they ended up on community work in the first place.So going back to what I said originally we've got to be careful what we want to achieve with any legislation around crime. We've got to ensure that we actually reduce crime and don't inadvertently increase it. What I very much fear with this piece of legislation is that we will actually end up increasing crime because those people will—and you may say it will be petty crime. Well the people who actually lose out from petty crime most are those who can least afford to lose out from petty crime. Often it's the neighbours of those people often in the lower socio-economic areas who don't have insurance and who don't have the ability to actually even replace what they lose and they are the people who actually lose most. So again we have to be very careful where we target legislation like this. I think it will almost invariably result in an increase in crime which is one reason why I am opposed to that.I also mentioned before—around proximity. My experience is that when we're dealing with people—particularly at the lower end who are the people who are likely to not comply for any number of reasons here—is that when we do seek to impose some sort of sanction on them it's incredibly important that they understand the sanction. A financial one like this will take some time. If it actually does bring about or give them some cause for regret or cause for second thinking about their actions it actually won't be related to the act that they actually did or didn't do. It won't be related to the act of not complying with their community work.I think it's important to actually look at what those community work provisions are as well. It's community work which requires an offender to do a specified number of hours of unpaid work in the community for non-profit organisations; supervision which requires an offender to take specified rehabilitative programmes to address the cause of their offending; community detention which requires an offender to remain in an approved residence during certain time periods; and intensive supervision which requires an offender to take rehabilitative programmes to address the cause of their offending.So again the proximity between a financial penalty which would be imposed on them and as I said before mostly those around them—it won't actually have an effect on their behaviour. So when we do seek to impose the sanction—again as I said I think there should be a sanction on this—we've got to make sure that it's something that is going to work best for the whole of society. That's where we come back to—we cannot impose something that is very much piecemeal and that by itself will simply end up in an increase in crime. That will mean more people either on the community work or more people who if not on community work are actually in prison—that very thing we need to address.So I'm always a little suspicious of and often opposed to this type of legislation which starts as a good idea and probably those that conceived it did so with the right ideas. But when it's taken in full and when we work out how it will affect not just those who are going to be financially punished if they are beneficiaries—less than half of the people who don't comply. If we're only going to apply this sanction to those people then quite frankly it will simply not work.So while again I think those who conceived this—and I think this legislation has been through several sets of hands before it arrived at this stage—I think I'd invite them to sit back and have a look and see just what it is they want to achieve. If it's about making this country safer—I've heard claims across the House of being tough on crime. I mean so many of the tough on crime measures actually don't end up doing what they're intended to do. I personally am a great believer in A belief you will get caught is the greatest deterrent to crime". We need only look at our own driving behaviour for that. So I oppose this bill."