McKelvie Ian: Bail Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcKelvie Ian: Bail Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11530. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei):Tēnā koe e te Rangatira. E te Whare e tū nei tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa. This Bail Amendment Bill is another in a list of bills introduced to this House by this Government with a view to improving and reforming the law and order sector in New Zealand. There is an extensive list of those bills and many of them have been successful.The Law and Order Committee spent much time on this bill receiving a large number of submissions many of which related directly as has been said by a number of speakers already to the Christie’s Law campaign. The chairperson of this committee had a very difficult task in firstly sifting through those submissions and appropriately placing them and secondly dealing with what were some very testing submissions during the course of the select committee process. Some of these submissions described some very challenging and tragic issues so I congratulate the chairperson Jacqui Dean on her performance in handling this select committee. I would also congratulate the select committee on what was a very difficult task for its members. I found it quite testing at times.The select committee has reported back to Parliament a number of sound recommendations. A number of those have been dealt with already. I would like to deal with just a couple of them in the course of this short speech. One is related to defendants under the age of 20 and David Clendon referred to this in his speech. I would remind the House that these people are not amateur criminals. Many of them are hardened criminals and as we went through the submissions on this issue we came to the conclusion that a lot of these young people really need to be dealt with very firmly by the courts and we needed to give the courts the opportunity to do that. That is the first issue I wish to deal with.The second one relates to the amendment to the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act and it is the power to arrest a child or young person more than 14 years of age and less than 17 without a warrant where they have been released on bail and have repeatedly breached their conditions. Again this refers to the issue that David Clendon raised. These kids as you might call them are by no means amateurs and I think we needed to deal with that strongly too. The reverse burden of proof and a number of other issues have been dealt with very competently earlier in this discussion.I want to briefly touch on some issues that Phil Goff raised in the course of his speech related to numbers. He used a lot of numbers all of which are historical. I contend that changes this Government has made will transform those figures. You see our objectives of reducing crime and the effects of crime and the rehabilitation of prisoners and so on are having a great effect and they are working and the Bail Amendment Bill will add to that.Our judges carry a great deal of responsibility. They often carry the community’s safety with them as they make their decisions on bail. Our role is to give them the best possible tools to achieve that. This Government has a great record when dealing with law and order and I am pleased—in fact I am quite proud—to be part of a law and order section in this Government that I think is achieving great results. I have no problem in supporting this bill as it proceeds through the House. Thank you.