DAVID GARRETT (ACT): I begin by repeating an acknowledgment I made during the debate on the Committee stage of the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill that the members on the other side, I am sure, are concerned about victims. Mr Robertson and Mr Hipkins made interesting and informed contributions, and I acknowledge them.

“Three strikes” was one of ACT’s major policy planks at the last election, and it was No. 1 on the list of policies that we wished to advance in the confidence and supply agreement with National. I start by thanking the National caucus as a whole, the Ministers of Justice, Police, and Corrections, and the Prime Minister for honouring the commitment in the confidence and supply agreement both in the letter and in its spirit. I particularly acknowledge and appreciate the Prime Minister’s openness of mind in being prepared to look at the evidence that showed that including a qualifying sentence in the definition of a strike would have been fatal to the bill’s purpose and would have made it ineffective. I pay tribute to him for that.

I thank Dr Jennifer Walsh, an American academic who prepared a very comprehensive submission and came to New Zealand at her own expense to appear before the select committee and to speak to any member of Cabinet who wished to speak to her. Dr Walsh has provided invaluable help to me and to us by providing information to counter the misinformation about how the policy has worked in the 26 States of the United States that have laws of this kind, as well as very useful ammunition to counter the misinformation promulgated here in this House. Interestingly, that misinformation is the same kind of empty rhetoric that was seen in California in 1994.

In my maiden statement I said that I came to Parliament to try to make New Zealand a better and safer place. I truly and sincerely believe that this bill is a major step forward in that regard. Contrary to what has been said by members on the other side of the House and by some commentators, this measure is not contradictory to the Drivers of Crime initiatives that the National Party wishes to advance; rather, it is complementary to them. I offer an analogy: imagine that our criminal justice system is like a person who is suffering an acute overdose of drugs and who is in dire shape. In that situation one saves the person’s life first and worries later about where they got the drugs, who sold them to them, and why they felt the need to take them. The imperative is to save the person’s life. In this bill we have sent a message that repeat violent offenders have a choice. They can change their ways of behaviour or they can condemn themselves by their own choices to spending most of their lives in jail. It is their choice.

Again, contrary to what has been said by members on the other side of the House and elsewhere, this bill is not about locking people up and throwing away the key, and it never has been. I re-emphasise what the Minister said: the only people who will be locked up for life under this bill will be persons who have committed murder as a “third strike” and the worst of our murderers, people like Graeme Burton, William Bell, Liam Reed, and, sadly, a number of others whose names are less well known. This law is about protecting victims. I say again that this bill is about protecting victims. Since the election four more people have been killed by persons who would have been “three strikers”, and thus in jail, had this bill been in force at the time they committed those killings. That means four more lives tragically lost at the hands of repeat violent offenders who, for the most part, if not all of them, are beyond rehabilitation. We need to face that.

Contrary to Ms Dyson’s contribution, we say that there is absolutely no doubt that the policy will work. It will work in one of two ways: incapacitation and deterrence. The only question is how effective it will be. Incapacitation will put behind bars those who cannot and will not alter their behaviour. It will protect society from them. Members on the other side of the House pay lip-service to agreeing that that is where they should be. The other way that the bill — or the Act, as it will become very shortly — will work is by what is known as general deterrence, which means deterrence of others.

I put on record again that no one will be happier than me, personally, if there is never any third striker locked up. I say again that no one will be happier than me, personally, if no one is ever exposed to the full extent of this regime. But sadly the reality is that within days or possibly hours of this bill passing, someone will commit a first-strike offence. The reality is that that person will probably be someone who already has a lengthy record of violent offending.

When that person is convicted the media will report the first “strike” conviction, I have no doubt, and possibly it will report the next several after that. When the first second striker gets his final warning and a lengthy sentence, that will be big news too, and all the criminals will know about it. They know about this legislation now. Contrary to what members on the other side of the House think, criminals are not stupid. They may not have university degrees or even have finished high school, but they know about cause and effect as it affects them. All the criminals will know in 5, 6, or 7 years, when the first third striker goes away, whether their sentence be 14 years, if their conviction was for aggravated robbery, or 20 years, if it was for sexual violation. The crims will know about it, just as they know today when a child sex offender has been convicted and which prison he will turn up in. They know. They are not stupid. They know about the bill and its effects.

We know that because we were told so in the select committee. An earnest young man came along and told us how terrible the legislation was, how the criminals did not think and did not understand the consequences; then, without seeming to realise what he had said, he said that when he was in Päremoremo Prison last week he was amazed that all of the 75 criminals he talked to knew about this bill. I asked him immediately whether they knew about the Tariff (Malaysia Free Trade Agreement) Amendment Bill, which we had been debating in the same week. Of course, they did not, because it did not affect them.

This bill is not for the criminals, it is for all the victims who have gone before, and for all those who will now not be victims as a result of this law being passed. Sadly, there have been so many victims. This law says to John and Val Hargreaves and countless others who have lost loved ones that their loved ones did not die in vain. It says that they helped to spark a change of direction in our criminal law. I say to the mother of Emma Agnew, whom I have met, that her daughter did not die in vain. I say to the parents of Fitzgerald Risati, a Samoan choir boy who was literally out celebrating his birthday when he was stabbed to death by a scum gang member who was looking for a patch, that their son did not die in vain.

Contrary to the predictions from members opposite and from elsewhere, this bill is not the end of justice as we know it. It is not the end of compassion or justice. It is a turning point. It allows us, having dealt with the overdose, to focus on the children of today’s violent offenders and try to ensure that they do not follow their fathers. It is, in fact, a great day for New Zealand justice.