Beer in a can recipe for trouble
02/04/10 16:27 Filed in: News Releases
The police don’t want it; rugby fans don’t need it; and I don’t like it. Selling beer in cans at the Rugby World Cup could damage our international reputation. It is not worth the risk,” Jim Anderton said.
Rugby World Cup minister, Murray McCully has announced that spectators at world cup games will be able to drink beer from cans.
“All it would take is for a few intoxicated fans to use cans as missiles and chuck them at players in front of a world-wide television audience of over 500 million people. Our international reputation would be tarnished for years.
“This is our moment in the world spotlight. We won’t get another chance like this for decades. Murray McCully thinks it is not worth the cost of putting a system in our stadiums so that we can serve beer in plastic cups.
“It might cost $1 million to install that system at Eden Park but that is money well spent if it can protect our reputation overseas. The loss to New Zealand if a negative incident happens could be many more times that.
“The only people who benefit from cans at games is Heineken. They get their branding on every can. They wouldn’t if beer was served in plastic cups.
“The National government is prioritising the business needs of a beer company over New Zealand’s image as a good place to visit and do business. If a negative incident happens and gets transmitted across the world via YouTube and twitter in a matter of minutes, it will be on Murray McCully’s head,” says Jim Anderton.
Rugby World Cup minister, Murray McCully has announced that spectators at world cup games will be able to drink beer from cans.
“All it would take is for a few intoxicated fans to use cans as missiles and chuck them at players in front of a world-wide television audience of over 500 million people. Our international reputation would be tarnished for years.
“This is our moment in the world spotlight. We won’t get another chance like this for decades. Murray McCully thinks it is not worth the cost of putting a system in our stadiums so that we can serve beer in plastic cups.
“It might cost $1 million to install that system at Eden Park but that is money well spent if it can protect our reputation overseas. The loss to New Zealand if a negative incident happens could be many more times that.
“The only people who benefit from cans at games is Heineken. They get their branding on every can. They wouldn’t if beer was served in plastic cups.
“The National government is prioritising the business needs of a beer company over New Zealand’s image as a good place to visit and do business. If a negative incident happens and gets transmitted across the world via YouTube and twitter in a matter of minutes, it will be on Murray McCully’s head,” says Jim Anderton.
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Speech to the Alcohol Causes Violence conference
23/03/10 14:00 Filed in: Speeches
Any day of any week you can open any newspaper, or watch any news bulletin, and the evidence is plain: Alcohol-fuelled violence. Alcohol-fuelled crime. A culture of binge drinking.
Stories like these…
* A brutal and baffling weekend attack which left a young couple critically injured in a west Auckland park has nearby residents fearing for their own safety
* A man walking his dog found the young man semi-conscious in the park at 7am on Sunday morning with a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain
* Six hours into her shift, Heretini had had no break. But she rallied to care for her last patient, a young man with head injuries and lacerations to most of his body. He had fallen out of the window of a moving car while hanging onto the coat hanger handle above the vehicle’s back door.
* The veteran of the Malayan campaign and the Vietnam war was shocked by the viciousness and callousness of the youths. His daughter Jillian was knocked unconscious and her boyfriend was stomped on the head when they arrived home in a taxi as he was being set upon by the mob
* “She was drunk as a skunk”, he said. Mr McKenzie, who survived a serious heart attack two years ago, lost three teeth and received bruising and cuts to his head and body.
That’s just a sample of the sorts of headlines reflecting the every day reality of alcohol in New Zealand, and the results of our drinking culture.
On conservative figures prepared by the Ministry of Health the harm alcohol causes costs between $1.5 and $2.5 billion every year. Three out of five people who are arrested are under the influence of alcohol at the time they commit the offence for which they’re arrested.
If we want to reduce the level of crime in New Zealand, the fastest way we can make a difference, and the biggest difference we can make, would be to make alcohol less available. And conversely, in recent years when alcohol has been made more available, the harm caused by alcohol has risen as well.
Between half and three-quarters of all police work is associated in some way with alcohol abuse. Three quarters of adults arriving at emergency departments on Thursday, Friday or Saturday night have alcohol related injuries.
The Salvation Army says alcohol is present in four out of five domestic violence cases.
Here’s another statistic to make you think; according to a recent medical journal article, there are now 70,000 physical and sexual assaults a year in New Zealand that can be linked to alcohol. That’s 1350 a week.
I support changing the law to make alcohol less available.
I support raising the drinking age and restricting the number of outlets where alcohol is sold.
I support lowering the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit for drivers over 20 years of age from 0.08 to 0.05.
I would raise alcohol prices, reduce alcohol marketing and advertising and increase drink-driving measures.
If we made some of these changes then at least it wouldn’t be so easy for any teenager to walk into a corner shop and buy as much alcohol as they want for them and their friends.
The proliferation of outlets where teenagers can buy booze or alco-pops has to stop.
I want those who grant liquor licences to have greater scope to turn down licences.
If they can see that several dairies selling alcohol, and another off-licence on top of that, all in less than a few kilometres of each other, then licensing authorities need the ability to say - no, that’s only going to cause more social problems.
I’d like to give police more resources to monitor the way liquor outlets comply with the law.
I would like to see the opening hours of all off-licences restricted, for example from 8.00 am to 10.00 pm.
Who needs to buy beer or wine at 3am? Plenty of people are buying alcohol after midnight to continue a binge.
If we made some of these changes then there wouldn’t have been some of the horrific stories we have heard about in the news - such as the alcohol fuelled Auckland men who drove down to their local corner liquor store late at night to rob it and ended up shooting the owner.
It would make a difference, but on its own changing the law would be only one step. It would not be a miracle solution.
What is required is a change in our drinking culture. It is the cultural complexity of drinking that makes regulation of alcohol politically contentious.
We don’t take the steps that need to be taken because political decision-making runs head first into a culture of heavy drinking and of alcohol abuse.
I got attacked in the Dominion for being a wowser by a columnist who raved he simply wanted to just enjoy a glass or two of wine with his meal. That’s what happens when you try to deal with binge drinking and genuine harm.
There are a lot of people who use alcohol responsibly, and they feel that their lifestyle is being criticized and threatened. That’s what makes the issue politically contentious.
Those of us who want to promote responsible alcohol use have to deal with this issue. There is a crucial difference between alcohol and smoking - every cigarette is bad for you. Any use at all is harmful.
But the same is not true of a glass of wine with dinner or a beer at the cricket. Three glasses of wine a day, every day, over a long period, is classed as heavy drinking because over a long period it has harmful health effects.
But that is not the same as binge drinking that is fuelling violence and hospital admissions.
So we need to respond differently to different issues. That means targeted campaigns that raise awareness about the harmful health effects of heavy use on one hand; and targeted rule changes that actively reduce dangerous binge drinking on the other.
What both have in common is that there is a heavy drinking culture in New Zealand. And wanting to change our culture of abuse doesn’t make me a wowser or a party pooper; it makes me someone concerned to reduce crime, injuries and deaths as well as other serious harm to our nation’s health profile.
If we’re going to make an impact, we have to start with binge drinking and dangerous misuse, and we have to address the culture that makes those things acceptable.
Many people who use alcohol don’t abuse it, and therefore changing the culture has to focus where the harm is greatest: If we are going to make an impact on binge drinking and the harm alcohol causes then we have to be prepared to front up to drinking that is risky.
And we have to acknowledge that heavy drinking and binge drinking is widespread.
It’s rare for anyone today to be demonised for wanting to restrict smoking.
But twenty years ago Helen Clark was called every name under the sun for doing so as Minister of Health. A generation ago, people would go to parties and then brag about driving home drunk.
Today, it’s become socially unacceptable. People still do it, but not many people laugh about it any more.
The culture around drink driving has changed, but we have to be clear that it’s a much bigger process than simply changing the law. It takes decades to change social attitudes.
Teenagers are drinking to excess more often and in greater numbers.
And one of the reasons teenagers are getting boozed in harmful ways, and so often, is that the culture of drinking is promoting heavy alcohol use. We are sending out confusing messages to young people.
All-Black’s games and the summer cricket series drip in alcohol promotion. But we act surprised when Black Cap Jesse Ryder or All Black Jimmy Cowan get into trouble when they’re out on the booze.
The community vilifies them, rather than vilifying the alcohol companies who sponsor the games and encourage young New Zealanders to go out and drink to excess.
That’s why I believe one of the most effective changes we could make is to reduce or ban alcohol advertising, particularly at sports games.
The alcohol industry actively markets alcohol to young people. They make their profits by encouraging heavy drinking, and ‘growing’ new drinkers. Currently, $200,000 per day is spent on marketing and advertising alcohol. About half the marketing is spent on sponsorship.
Remember the tobacco industry’s sponsorship of big sporting events like tennis?
Now it is alcohol brands linked alongside major sporting events, for example, the Heineken Tennis Open and any poster of the All Blacks meant for display in a child’s bedroom or school classroom has the Steinlager logo prominently displayed.
The alcohol industry is extremely well resourced and determined to resist any changes that would dent its profits. In my view, all donations to politicians by liquor (or tobacco) companies should be banned, including sponsoring functions.
The liquor industry used to sponsor the annual press gallery party in Parliament House. Journalists themselves found this policy an uncomfortable fit and to their credit now pay for the function themselves or seek their newspaper or media outlet’s support for it.
But you still get bad press by taking on a lot of the alcohol issues like binge drinking. I’ll give you one example.
Six years ago, MPs who are now in government bitterly attacked me because I took steps to increase the excise rate charged on so-called light spirits. These were alcoholic drinks in the range 14 – 23% alcohol by volume.
The evidence showed plainly that the people who were buying them were kids, who bought bottles of cheap liquor on which to get smashed.
It was huge factor in binge drinking. One of principle manufacturers immediately reduced the alcoholic content of his product from 23% to 13.9% - to stay inside the law!
There was, however, a very large decline in the quantities of ‘light alcohol’ drinks sold for sale of around 80 percent. Overall alcohol consumption went down by half a million litres after the excise was increased. I would call that a huge success.
But I am under no illusions about the political cost of the measure. It ran headlong into the booze lobby, and the sneering about nanny state from people who don’t care how many kids kill themselves, until it’s one of their own.
We shouldn’t be under any illusions that changing the law about where to buy alcohol, how you can promote it, who can buy it, and how much it costs, is going to be hard.
Voting on alcohol law in parliament is still seen as a conscience vote. Historically this is because the issue split the major parties, at the time of the prohibition debate and created explosive tensions between prohibitionists and others.
Today, there are no votes in parliament for prohibition.
But everyone professes to be for responsible alcohol consumption. In that case, there should be responsible alcohol laws. Conscience voting in parliament has made alcohol laws incoherent.
Laws get amended in chaos, debates border on the irrational and law-making doesn’t fully take account of health-based interventions, education, and public campaigns to change the way people behave.
The spread of diseases, waiting lists for elective surgery, unemployment or even climate change aren’t treated as conscience votes. Yet alcohol still is. Clearly there needs to be changes in the law surrounding alcohol sale and consumption. But we will only be successful when it is accompanied by a long and targeted marketing campaign.
Alcohol is an addictive drug. It reduces the health status of some of its users. It contributes to premature deaths. We’ve got a long way to go to get people to see alcohol abuse as a public health issue. And therefore we are all affected by the abuse of alcohol.
Alcohol is by far the most damaging drug in the country. The good news is that people who enjoy the many positive features that come with drinking in moderation - enjoying friendships, socialising and having fun - are starting to see that alcohol abuse is a big problem in our communities. Most people understand that we need to change our attitude to heavy drinking.
The fact that we are all here today is a sign that change is already happening.
Stories like these…
* A brutal and baffling weekend attack which left a young couple critically injured in a west Auckland park has nearby residents fearing for their own safety
* A man walking his dog found the young man semi-conscious in the park at 7am on Sunday morning with a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain
* Six hours into her shift, Heretini had had no break. But she rallied to care for her last patient, a young man with head injuries and lacerations to most of his body. He had fallen out of the window of a moving car while hanging onto the coat hanger handle above the vehicle’s back door.
* The veteran of the Malayan campaign and the Vietnam war was shocked by the viciousness and callousness of the youths. His daughter Jillian was knocked unconscious and her boyfriend was stomped on the head when they arrived home in a taxi as he was being set upon by the mob
* “She was drunk as a skunk”, he said. Mr McKenzie, who survived a serious heart attack two years ago, lost three teeth and received bruising and cuts to his head and body.
That’s just a sample of the sorts of headlines reflecting the every day reality of alcohol in New Zealand, and the results of our drinking culture.
On conservative figures prepared by the Ministry of Health the harm alcohol causes costs between $1.5 and $2.5 billion every year. Three out of five people who are arrested are under the influence of alcohol at the time they commit the offence for which they’re arrested.
If we want to reduce the level of crime in New Zealand, the fastest way we can make a difference, and the biggest difference we can make, would be to make alcohol less available. And conversely, in recent years when alcohol has been made more available, the harm caused by alcohol has risen as well.
Between half and three-quarters of all police work is associated in some way with alcohol abuse. Three quarters of adults arriving at emergency departments on Thursday, Friday or Saturday night have alcohol related injuries.
The Salvation Army says alcohol is present in four out of five domestic violence cases.
Here’s another statistic to make you think; according to a recent medical journal article, there are now 70,000 physical and sexual assaults a year in New Zealand that can be linked to alcohol. That’s 1350 a week.
I support changing the law to make alcohol less available.
I support raising the drinking age and restricting the number of outlets where alcohol is sold.
I support lowering the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit for drivers over 20 years of age from 0.08 to 0.05.
I would raise alcohol prices, reduce alcohol marketing and advertising and increase drink-driving measures.
If we made some of these changes then at least it wouldn’t be so easy for any teenager to walk into a corner shop and buy as much alcohol as they want for them and their friends.
The proliferation of outlets where teenagers can buy booze or alco-pops has to stop.
I want those who grant liquor licences to have greater scope to turn down licences.
If they can see that several dairies selling alcohol, and another off-licence on top of that, all in less than a few kilometres of each other, then licensing authorities need the ability to say - no, that’s only going to cause more social problems.
I’d like to give police more resources to monitor the way liquor outlets comply with the law.
I would like to see the opening hours of all off-licences restricted, for example from 8.00 am to 10.00 pm.
Who needs to buy beer or wine at 3am? Plenty of people are buying alcohol after midnight to continue a binge.
If we made some of these changes then there wouldn’t have been some of the horrific stories we have heard about in the news - such as the alcohol fuelled Auckland men who drove down to their local corner liquor store late at night to rob it and ended up shooting the owner.
It would make a difference, but on its own changing the law would be only one step. It would not be a miracle solution.
What is required is a change in our drinking culture. It is the cultural complexity of drinking that makes regulation of alcohol politically contentious.
We don’t take the steps that need to be taken because political decision-making runs head first into a culture of heavy drinking and of alcohol abuse.
I got attacked in the Dominion for being a wowser by a columnist who raved he simply wanted to just enjoy a glass or two of wine with his meal. That’s what happens when you try to deal with binge drinking and genuine harm.
There are a lot of people who use alcohol responsibly, and they feel that their lifestyle is being criticized and threatened. That’s what makes the issue politically contentious.
Those of us who want to promote responsible alcohol use have to deal with this issue. There is a crucial difference between alcohol and smoking - every cigarette is bad for you. Any use at all is harmful.
But the same is not true of a glass of wine with dinner or a beer at the cricket. Three glasses of wine a day, every day, over a long period, is classed as heavy drinking because over a long period it has harmful health effects.
But that is not the same as binge drinking that is fuelling violence and hospital admissions.
So we need to respond differently to different issues. That means targeted campaigns that raise awareness about the harmful health effects of heavy use on one hand; and targeted rule changes that actively reduce dangerous binge drinking on the other.
What both have in common is that there is a heavy drinking culture in New Zealand. And wanting to change our culture of abuse doesn’t make me a wowser or a party pooper; it makes me someone concerned to reduce crime, injuries and deaths as well as other serious harm to our nation’s health profile.
If we’re going to make an impact, we have to start with binge drinking and dangerous misuse, and we have to address the culture that makes those things acceptable.
Many people who use alcohol don’t abuse it, and therefore changing the culture has to focus where the harm is greatest: If we are going to make an impact on binge drinking and the harm alcohol causes then we have to be prepared to front up to drinking that is risky.
And we have to acknowledge that heavy drinking and binge drinking is widespread.
It’s rare for anyone today to be demonised for wanting to restrict smoking.
But twenty years ago Helen Clark was called every name under the sun for doing so as Minister of Health. A generation ago, people would go to parties and then brag about driving home drunk.
Today, it’s become socially unacceptable. People still do it, but not many people laugh about it any more.
The culture around drink driving has changed, but we have to be clear that it’s a much bigger process than simply changing the law. It takes decades to change social attitudes.
Teenagers are drinking to excess more often and in greater numbers.
And one of the reasons teenagers are getting boozed in harmful ways, and so often, is that the culture of drinking is promoting heavy alcohol use. We are sending out confusing messages to young people.
All-Black’s games and the summer cricket series drip in alcohol promotion. But we act surprised when Black Cap Jesse Ryder or All Black Jimmy Cowan get into trouble when they’re out on the booze.
The community vilifies them, rather than vilifying the alcohol companies who sponsor the games and encourage young New Zealanders to go out and drink to excess.
That’s why I believe one of the most effective changes we could make is to reduce or ban alcohol advertising, particularly at sports games.
The alcohol industry actively markets alcohol to young people. They make their profits by encouraging heavy drinking, and ‘growing’ new drinkers. Currently, $200,000 per day is spent on marketing and advertising alcohol. About half the marketing is spent on sponsorship.
Remember the tobacco industry’s sponsorship of big sporting events like tennis?
Now it is alcohol brands linked alongside major sporting events, for example, the Heineken Tennis Open and any poster of the All Blacks meant for display in a child’s bedroom or school classroom has the Steinlager logo prominently displayed.
The alcohol industry is extremely well resourced and determined to resist any changes that would dent its profits. In my view, all donations to politicians by liquor (or tobacco) companies should be banned, including sponsoring functions.
The liquor industry used to sponsor the annual press gallery party in Parliament House. Journalists themselves found this policy an uncomfortable fit and to their credit now pay for the function themselves or seek their newspaper or media outlet’s support for it.
But you still get bad press by taking on a lot of the alcohol issues like binge drinking. I’ll give you one example.
Six years ago, MPs who are now in government bitterly attacked me because I took steps to increase the excise rate charged on so-called light spirits. These were alcoholic drinks in the range 14 – 23% alcohol by volume.
The evidence showed plainly that the people who were buying them were kids, who bought bottles of cheap liquor on which to get smashed.
It was huge factor in binge drinking. One of principle manufacturers immediately reduced the alcoholic content of his product from 23% to 13.9% - to stay inside the law!
There was, however, a very large decline in the quantities of ‘light alcohol’ drinks sold for sale of around 80 percent. Overall alcohol consumption went down by half a million litres after the excise was increased. I would call that a huge success.
But I am under no illusions about the political cost of the measure. It ran headlong into the booze lobby, and the sneering about nanny state from people who don’t care how many kids kill themselves, until it’s one of their own.
We shouldn’t be under any illusions that changing the law about where to buy alcohol, how you can promote it, who can buy it, and how much it costs, is going to be hard.
Voting on alcohol law in parliament is still seen as a conscience vote. Historically this is because the issue split the major parties, at the time of the prohibition debate and created explosive tensions between prohibitionists and others.
Today, there are no votes in parliament for prohibition.
But everyone professes to be for responsible alcohol consumption. In that case, there should be responsible alcohol laws. Conscience voting in parliament has made alcohol laws incoherent.
Laws get amended in chaos, debates border on the irrational and law-making doesn’t fully take account of health-based interventions, education, and public campaigns to change the way people behave.
The spread of diseases, waiting lists for elective surgery, unemployment or even climate change aren’t treated as conscience votes. Yet alcohol still is. Clearly there needs to be changes in the law surrounding alcohol sale and consumption. But we will only be successful when it is accompanied by a long and targeted marketing campaign.
Alcohol is an addictive drug. It reduces the health status of some of its users. It contributes to premature deaths. We’ve got a long way to go to get people to see alcohol abuse as a public health issue. And therefore we are all affected by the abuse of alcohol.
Alcohol is by far the most damaging drug in the country. The good news is that people who enjoy the many positive features that come with drinking in moderation - enjoying friendships, socialising and having fun - are starting to see that alcohol abuse is a big problem in our communities. Most people understand that we need to change our attitude to heavy drinking.
The fact that we are all here today is a sign that change is already happening.
Gangs and Organised Crime Bill
10/02/09 14:06 Filed in: Speeches
Jim Anderton's speech to Parliament on the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill
If I could sum up this Bill with one sentence, it would be that the government has wildly raised expectations about dealing to violent crime in New Zealand.
The Opposition will support this Bill, but it is not the silver bullet National promised.
It will not significantly reduce violent crime in New Zealand as National has promised.
It will not make the huge dent in crime that National promised New Zealanders. The previous government was already promoting this legislation and we would have passed something similar - but we would not pretend as National does that this is all you need to do.
I have no trouble declaring that the major factors in crime should be on the wrong end of tough law.
Gangs are a cause of crime, so we should be tough with them.
And we should be tough on all the causes.
There is one factor linked to crime that this government won’t even talk about.
There is one factor linked to sixty per cent of all people arrested.
What is that factor? Can the government members tell us? Can the government even say the word that is common to the majority of all crime in New Zealand?
It isn’t gangs and it isn’t P.
Both of those are serious threats and need to be dealt with. And if you are serious about them, you should logically be much more serious about a much more common cause of crime.
What is that common factor? It’s alcohol.
Sixty percent of everyone arrested is under the influence of alcohol at the time they commit the offence for which they are arrested.
Sixty percent. No other factor comes close.
So, because this government won’t even mention that alcohol is involved in most crime, it won’t do anything about sixty percent of all offending.
If you pass this Bill before you have dealt with the low hanging fruit, before you have dealt with the biggest factor in crime of all - then you are not serious about crime. You are joking and your raised expectations will ultimately disappoint and be held up to ridicule.
The National Government made a big issue out of crime in Opposition.
I am not going to quickly forget their pledges to seriously reduce the rate of violent crime.
They promised they would get elected and put an immediate end to the kind of violent crime that terrorised shop keepers in South Auckland.
Remember those shopkeepers? Remember the Indian community terrorised by attacks in those neighbourhoods?
How much neighbourhood crime is linked to the sudden proliferation of liquor outlets? How much is linked to the low drinking age that lets teenagers buy as much alcohol as they want on nearly every corner?
Will this Bill tackle that? No. Alcohol abuse is not even mentioned in it.
The government made the promises. The Government promised to significantly reduce violent crime.
Having raised expectations, this government is now accountable if it doesn’t deliver.
The government should not be culpable for violent crime. But the Government made it that way.
The government promised the New Zealand public it could make a difference.
Here is item number four on National’s Blueprint for change in August last year:
“National knows New Zealanders are sick of worrying about the surging levels of violent crime in this country. We are not going to put up with it. So National will launch a full-frontal attack on gangs and the "P" trade they support.”
Ok, so they are passing the law they said they would. Good on them - but now the acid is on Simon Power. The acid is on John Key: This is National’s full frontal attack on gangs and the P trade, and if it doesn’t deal effectively to the surging levels of crime National knows New Zealanders are sick of - then National is accountable.
Mr Key said it over and over again. He said it on stages, and he said it in tv debates - he said the major problem is gangs, because gangs make P, and P is the major cause of crime. So he said, when this government took office, it would pass this Bill, and violent crime would be significantly reduced.
I hope he’s right.
I hope this Bill really does make a huge difference, and that is why I’m voting for it, and it’s why the Opposition is voting for it.
We absolutely want this Bill to be successful.
But actually, I am not naive enough to make the promise Mr Key made, and National candidates made up and down the country - that they would significantly reduce crime.
Here is what Mr Key said in his speech on 29 January last year:
“Violent youth crime is at an all-time high. Robbery is up. Grievous assaults are up. Aggravated robbery is up. Young criminals are graduating from petty crime to more serious crime; unexploded time-bombs on a fast-track to Paremoremo.”
So is this Bill going to make a major difference to that?
I hope so. But don’t hold your breath. Mr Key wildly overpromised and now National is under-delivering.
Can I ask the government members here in the chamber - will violent crime be significantly reduced as of the date of the passing of this Bill?
Will that be virtually the end of it in the headlines?
Are they confident now they have fixed crime?
Or do they still want to tell New Zealanders they will significantly reduce violent crime as they promised. I wish they would. I wish this Bill had that effect.
But every violent crime from now on shows the failure of the key promise of this government - that they could stamp out violent crime by targetting gangs -- raised expectations far beyond what they can deliver and thus failed the communities they have promised to protect.
If I could sum up this Bill with one sentence, it would be that the government has wildly raised expectations about dealing to violent crime in New Zealand.
The Opposition will support this Bill, but it is not the silver bullet National promised.
It will not significantly reduce violent crime in New Zealand as National has promised.
It will not make the huge dent in crime that National promised New Zealanders. The previous government was already promoting this legislation and we would have passed something similar - but we would not pretend as National does that this is all you need to do.
I have no trouble declaring that the major factors in crime should be on the wrong end of tough law.
Gangs are a cause of crime, so we should be tough with them.
And we should be tough on all the causes.
There is one factor linked to crime that this government won’t even talk about.
There is one factor linked to sixty per cent of all people arrested.
What is that factor? Can the government members tell us? Can the government even say the word that is common to the majority of all crime in New Zealand?
It isn’t gangs and it isn’t P.
Both of those are serious threats and need to be dealt with. And if you are serious about them, you should logically be much more serious about a much more common cause of crime.
What is that common factor? It’s alcohol.
Sixty percent of everyone arrested is under the influence of alcohol at the time they commit the offence for which they are arrested.
Sixty percent. No other factor comes close.
So, because this government won’t even mention that alcohol is involved in most crime, it won’t do anything about sixty percent of all offending.
If you pass this Bill before you have dealt with the low hanging fruit, before you have dealt with the biggest factor in crime of all - then you are not serious about crime. You are joking and your raised expectations will ultimately disappoint and be held up to ridicule.
The National Government made a big issue out of crime in Opposition.
I am not going to quickly forget their pledges to seriously reduce the rate of violent crime.
They promised they would get elected and put an immediate end to the kind of violent crime that terrorised shop keepers in South Auckland.
Remember those shopkeepers? Remember the Indian community terrorised by attacks in those neighbourhoods?
How much neighbourhood crime is linked to the sudden proliferation of liquor outlets? How much is linked to the low drinking age that lets teenagers buy as much alcohol as they want on nearly every corner?
Will this Bill tackle that? No. Alcohol abuse is not even mentioned in it.
The government made the promises. The Government promised to significantly reduce violent crime.
Having raised expectations, this government is now accountable if it doesn’t deliver.
The government should not be culpable for violent crime. But the Government made it that way.
The government promised the New Zealand public it could make a difference.
Here is item number four on National’s Blueprint for change in August last year:
“National knows New Zealanders are sick of worrying about the surging levels of violent crime in this country. We are not going to put up with it. So National will launch a full-frontal attack on gangs and the "P" trade they support.”
Ok, so they are passing the law they said they would. Good on them - but now the acid is on Simon Power. The acid is on John Key: This is National’s full frontal attack on gangs and the P trade, and if it doesn’t deal effectively to the surging levels of crime National knows New Zealanders are sick of - then National is accountable.
Mr Key said it over and over again. He said it on stages, and he said it in tv debates - he said the major problem is gangs, because gangs make P, and P is the major cause of crime. So he said, when this government took office, it would pass this Bill, and violent crime would be significantly reduced.
I hope he’s right.
I hope this Bill really does make a huge difference, and that is why I’m voting for it, and it’s why the Opposition is voting for it.
We absolutely want this Bill to be successful.
But actually, I am not naive enough to make the promise Mr Key made, and National candidates made up and down the country - that they would significantly reduce crime.
Here is what Mr Key said in his speech on 29 January last year:
“Violent youth crime is at an all-time high. Robbery is up. Grievous assaults are up. Aggravated robbery is up. Young criminals are graduating from petty crime to more serious crime; unexploded time-bombs on a fast-track to Paremoremo.”
So is this Bill going to make a major difference to that?
I hope so. But don’t hold your breath. Mr Key wildly overpromised and now National is under-delivering.
Can I ask the government members here in the chamber - will violent crime be significantly reduced as of the date of the passing of this Bill?
Will that be virtually the end of it in the headlines?
Are they confident now they have fixed crime?
Or do they still want to tell New Zealanders they will significantly reduce violent crime as they promised. I wish they would. I wish this Bill had that effect.
But every violent crime from now on shows the failure of the key promise of this government - that they could stamp out violent crime by targetting gangs -- raised expectations far beyond what they can deliver and thus failed the communities they have promised to protect.
Sentencing Bill won’t reduce crime.
18/02/09 13:38 Filed in: News Releases | Backgrounder
The promise to significantly reduce violent crime won’t be kept, because the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill introduced to parliament today won’t make the difference promised, Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
He told Parliament the Government would be accountable if there were more violent killings after Government Ministers announced ‘Under this Bill there will be no more William Bells.’
“Ministers responsible for this Bill know it will not deliver the results they have promised,” Jim Anderton said.
The Bill’s Explanatory Note says any impact on prison numbers from this Bill “will not be felt for at least 10 years.” When the government announced it was getting tough with criminals it didn’t say that ‘getting tough’ meant doing nothing for ten years and a total of 70 extra prison beds after twenty years.
“New Zealand has a serious problem with violent crime. A recent survey showed only 43% of New Zealanders feel completely satisfied about their security and safety in their own home. New Zealanders are sick of crime and want to see criminals punished. That’s why when my colleague Matt Robson was corrections minister he started building more prisons than any corrections minister in history. So I support putting violent offenders away and my party helped put the prisons in place to do it.
“But this Bill does nothing to reduce violence. It doesn’t lock anyone up until they have already committed a serious violent offence. It doesn’t prevent crime.
“If you want to reduce crime, the solutions are much more complex. It starts with reducing at risk behaviour, it continues to getting tough with young hoons on their way to a life of crime. And it includes addressing the major risk factors in prisons, like alcohol and illiteracy - because when over 90 per cent of criminals have an alcohol or drug problem, then you aren’t going to rehabilitate them and turn them away from a life of crime unless you fix those.
“We owe it to New Zealanders to get tough on crime. This bill does not. This Bill will lead to perverse results. This Bill will not deliver National’s promise to significantly reduce crime.”
Background: Alternatives to the Sentencing Bill
International evidence shows that changing the rate of imprisonment doesn't affect the crime rate. For example, Finland cut the number of crimes punishable by imprisonment. The prison population fell. The crime rate didn't change. Some states of the US went the other way and put offenders away for much longer terms. The prison population began growing enormously. The crime rate didn't change.
The point is that the likelihood of going to prison doesn't seem to affect whether or not offenders go out and commit crimes. So if we want to reduce crime, then there must be something else we can do to keep the public safe.
Young people who are at risk of becoming serious adult offenders are recognisable with increasing certainty as newborns, as school entrants, as young offenders and as early adult offenders.
Each of the main risk factors increases the probability of anti-social behaviour by four to ten times. The key risk factors are where the mother is:
- Young;
- Has little education;
- Is from a disadvantaged family where she received little care or attention;
- Is substance dependent;
- Is socially isolated; and
- Has a number of male partners.
This background doesn't condemn a child to adult offending. But it increases the risk. If all of these factors appear together, the risk increases many hundreds of times.
So the first step is to reduce the number of highest risk births.
We can do that by working with young women who fit the profile and who are in the social welfare and justice systems.
They need sexual health services - teaching them about contraception and avoiding exploitation. Teaching young women about the advantages of delaying child bearing until they are settled, mature and suitable support is available. The cost for each intervention is as little as about $500. The benefit to cost ratio has been assessed as fifty to one.
We need to back that up with more support for high-risk new mothers.
Family Start programmes are a good example of the sort of assistance that can be provided. Each intervention costs about $3000. The benefit to cost ratio is assessed at twenty-five to one.
And then we can move to children as they enter school.
Teachers have long been able to identify many of the school entrants that they believe will end up as adult offenders. For example an intervention for a five year old who is aggressive and defiant is estimated to cost about $5000-$10,000 per case with a success rate of 70%. The same behaviour at the age of 25 years costs $30-40,000 and has a success rate of only 20%.
Earliest possible intervention works best and costs less.
Children who are at risk of progressing to serious adult offending get easier to identify between the ages of ten and fifteen.
That is when they begin their offending career. The single most powerful indicator of a trajectory to serious adult offending is early repeat offending as a child.
The obvious risk factors include failure at school, substance abuse, deviant friends and a family that has problems - poor supervision, criminal parents and child abuse.
The remedies that work are fairly simple:
- Re-entry to school, with some incentive for doing well;
- Better parenting
- A complete ban on alcohol and drug use
- New social activities and friends.
Working with these kids to prevent them moving on to serious adult offending would mean intervention with about two thousand kids a year, at a cost of about $7-15,000 each.
If one in four of them moves on to a lifetime of offending without the intervention, and one in three interventions actually work, then the benefit-cost ratio is about 36-1.
We want to increase use of Day Reporting Centres.
They give the kids job skills and life skills; and help to place them in jobs;
More than half of the teenagers who enter the adult justice system are re-convicted within one year of ending their sentence. About 80 or 90% are re-convicted within five years.
Dangerous teenage offenders who commit violent and sexual offences would still go to prison. For the others an offence will still result in the appropriate penalty.
Attendance at Day Reporting Centres would be compulsory five days a week for six months, and might be accompanied by night curfews and electronic monitoring. The units cost about $10-20,000 per offender to run, with a benefit to cost return of 37-1.
Corrections Department research indicates the measures in this package could eventually reduce imprisonable offending by around 17% a year.
The earlier you intervene, the more effective the result, but the harder it is to work out where the intervention is needed. The preventive measures we support are not quick fixes, but they are effective. They will take enormous co-ordination across a number of government agencies - Corrections, health, CYFS, education and others.
He told Parliament the Government would be accountable if there were more violent killings after Government Ministers announced ‘Under this Bill there will be no more William Bells.’
“Ministers responsible for this Bill know it will not deliver the results they have promised,” Jim Anderton said.
The Bill’s Explanatory Note says any impact on prison numbers from this Bill “will not be felt for at least 10 years.” When the government announced it was getting tough with criminals it didn’t say that ‘getting tough’ meant doing nothing for ten years and a total of 70 extra prison beds after twenty years.
“New Zealand has a serious problem with violent crime. A recent survey showed only 43% of New Zealanders feel completely satisfied about their security and safety in their own home. New Zealanders are sick of crime and want to see criminals punished. That’s why when my colleague Matt Robson was corrections minister he started building more prisons than any corrections minister in history. So I support putting violent offenders away and my party helped put the prisons in place to do it.
“But this Bill does nothing to reduce violence. It doesn’t lock anyone up until they have already committed a serious violent offence. It doesn’t prevent crime.
“If you want to reduce crime, the solutions are much more complex. It starts with reducing at risk behaviour, it continues to getting tough with young hoons on their way to a life of crime. And it includes addressing the major risk factors in prisons, like alcohol and illiteracy - because when over 90 per cent of criminals have an alcohol or drug problem, then you aren’t going to rehabilitate them and turn them away from a life of crime unless you fix those.
“We owe it to New Zealanders to get tough on crime. This bill does not. This Bill will lead to perverse results. This Bill will not deliver National’s promise to significantly reduce crime.”
Background: Alternatives to the Sentencing Bill
International evidence shows that changing the rate of imprisonment doesn't affect the crime rate. For example, Finland cut the number of crimes punishable by imprisonment. The prison population fell. The crime rate didn't change. Some states of the US went the other way and put offenders away for much longer terms. The prison population began growing enormously. The crime rate didn't change.
The point is that the likelihood of going to prison doesn't seem to affect whether or not offenders go out and commit crimes. So if we want to reduce crime, then there must be something else we can do to keep the public safe.
Young people who are at risk of becoming serious adult offenders are recognisable with increasing certainty as newborns, as school entrants, as young offenders and as early adult offenders.
Each of the main risk factors increases the probability of anti-social behaviour by four to ten times. The key risk factors are where the mother is:
- Young;
- Has little education;
- Is from a disadvantaged family where she received little care or attention;
- Is substance dependent;
- Is socially isolated; and
- Has a number of male partners.
This background doesn't condemn a child to adult offending. But it increases the risk. If all of these factors appear together, the risk increases many hundreds of times.
So the first step is to reduce the number of highest risk births.
We can do that by working with young women who fit the profile and who are in the social welfare and justice systems.
They need sexual health services - teaching them about contraception and avoiding exploitation. Teaching young women about the advantages of delaying child bearing until they are settled, mature and suitable support is available. The cost for each intervention is as little as about $500. The benefit to cost ratio has been assessed as fifty to one.
We need to back that up with more support for high-risk new mothers.
Family Start programmes are a good example of the sort of assistance that can be provided. Each intervention costs about $3000. The benefit to cost ratio is assessed at twenty-five to one.
And then we can move to children as they enter school.
Teachers have long been able to identify many of the school entrants that they believe will end up as adult offenders. For example an intervention for a five year old who is aggressive and defiant is estimated to cost about $5000-$10,000 per case with a success rate of 70%. The same behaviour at the age of 25 years costs $30-40,000 and has a success rate of only 20%.
Earliest possible intervention works best and costs less.
Children who are at risk of progressing to serious adult offending get easier to identify between the ages of ten and fifteen.
That is when they begin their offending career. The single most powerful indicator of a trajectory to serious adult offending is early repeat offending as a child.
The obvious risk factors include failure at school, substance abuse, deviant friends and a family that has problems - poor supervision, criminal parents and child abuse.
The remedies that work are fairly simple:
- Re-entry to school, with some incentive for doing well;
- Better parenting
- A complete ban on alcohol and drug use
- New social activities and friends.
Working with these kids to prevent them moving on to serious adult offending would mean intervention with about two thousand kids a year, at a cost of about $7-15,000 each.
If one in four of them moves on to a lifetime of offending without the intervention, and one in three interventions actually work, then the benefit-cost ratio is about 36-1.
We want to increase use of Day Reporting Centres.
They give the kids job skills and life skills; and help to place them in jobs;
More than half of the teenagers who enter the adult justice system are re-convicted within one year of ending their sentence. About 80 or 90% are re-convicted within five years.
Dangerous teenage offenders who commit violent and sexual offences would still go to prison. For the others an offence will still result in the appropriate penalty.
Attendance at Day Reporting Centres would be compulsory five days a week for six months, and might be accompanied by night curfews and electronic monitoring. The units cost about $10-20,000 per offender to run, with a benefit to cost return of 37-1.
Corrections Department research indicates the measures in this package could eventually reduce imprisonable offending by around 17% a year.
The earlier you intervene, the more effective the result, but the harder it is to work out where the intervention is needed. The preventive measures we support are not quick fixes, but they are effective. They will take enormous co-ordination across a number of government agencies - Corrections, health, CYFS, education and others.
Sentencing and Parole Bill
18/02/09 13:29 Filed in: Speeches
Jim Anderton’s Speech to Parliament on the Sentencing and Parole Bill.
I have always believed that one of the most important things we can do in this House is to bear witness to the truth - to stand up and tell the truth about what we know to be true, despite the consequences.
What I know about this Bill, is that it is bound to play well as a popular measure, but that it is a fraud.
It will not deliver on the promises that have been made for it.
I believe the ministers responsible for this Bill know it will not deliver the results they have promised.
I believe they are pushing it through knowing it will not end violent crime, as they promised; knowing it will not make a significant difference as they promised.
The government has promised this Bill will ensure "there will be no more Williams Bells.”
That was the statement Rodney Hide made in his press release. Here is word for word what he said: “Under this Bill there will be no more William Bells.”
That statement is fraudulent. There will be more violent men who kill after this Bill has been passed. There will be lots more.
The promise the minister made in his press release will come back to haunt him and he will regret it.
The evidence this Bill won’t work is spelt out in the Explanatory Note to the Bill.
The Bill says any impact on prison numbers from this Bill “will not be felt for at least 10 years.” I didn’t read that in the Ministers’ press release. I didn’t read in the minister’s statement that ten years after this Bill is passed, not one single extra person will be locked up.
I read that they were going to “get tough” with violent criminals. That’s what John Key promised.
He didn’t say that getting tough meant waiting ten years before one single person was locked up.
I did read John Key saying “New Zealanders are sick of waiting for promises on law and order to be delivered."
Well they’ll be waiting a long time for this one to be delivered.
I read John Key saying the last government took nine years to deliver - so he’s going one better and waiting ten!
After 20 years, the Bill says, an extra 70 prison beds will be needed.
So let’s add that up - the government says this Bill will end violent crime.
And it says it will end violent crime by locking up a total of seventy people between ten and twenty years from now. That’s about seven people a year.
That’s what National thinks is the extent of the violent crime problem in this country - seven violent crimes a year. It’s a nonsense.
This government has vastly oversold its ability to make a difference.
I remember in 1990 National got elected by saying it was going to end violent crime back then, too.
I remember John Banks saying he was going to get tough and put an end to murder and violence and pillage.
And one month later this country witnessed the tragedy of Aramoana. That was the worst mass killing in our history.
It turned out then that violent crime is a lot more complex than the cheap headlines National wants to get.
It will turn out the same this time. I know that. National knows that.
This country has a serious problem with violent crime.
I saw research this week that showed only 43% of New Zealanders feel completely satisfied about their own security and safety in their own home.
And therefore we owe it to New Zealanders to do something real about about violence.
But this Bill does nothing to reduce violence.
You don’t get locked up until the violent crime has already been committed.
This government is soft on crime because it won’t do anything to stop the crimes being committed in the first place.
The members opposite say they will reduce crime by locking up the most serious violent offenders.
But you don’t lock them up until they have already committed a serious violent offence.
It doesn’t lock them up before they commit it.
So what this Bill is really about is not reducing crime at all. It is about revenge. It is about denouncing criminals.
Now I actually agree there is a place for denuncuation in criminal sentencing.That’s why when my colleague Matt Robson was corrections minister he started building more prisons than any corrections minister in history.
So I support putting violent offenders away and my party helped to put the prisons in place to do it.
But you ought to be frank about what you are doing.
If the object of a Bill is to denounce crime, then say that - don’t come in here pretending that the Bill is going to reduce violent crime. This Bill isn’t, you know it isn’t, and that makes the very basis of this Bill a fraud, and it insults this House.
It insults the intelligence of members.
The object of this Bill is to pretend the government is getting tough.
If I’m generous I would say the object of this Bill might be to punish offenders more.
But I do not believe the object of this Bill is to reduce offending.
I actually put out a widely ignored and very detailed plan for reducing crime before the last election.
We went through every measure that expert research and expert policy shows makes a long term difference over time.
It starts with reducing at risk behaviour, it continues to getting tough with young hoons on their way to a life of crime. And it includes addressing the major risk factors in prisons, like alcohol and illiteracy.
Because when over 90 per cent of criminals have an alcohol or drug problem, then you aren’t going to rehabilitate them and turn them away from a life of crime unless you fix those.
And for all of those proven and efficient policies, the best estimate of the difference it would make was this - in the long run, it would reduce crime by about 17 per cent. That is about the most you can promise.
It is a long way short of what the government has promised for this Bill. They promised an end to violent crime - and now they are accountable.
We have heard a lot of songs about accountability from the government.
Now they are accountable for their promise to make a significant reduction in violent crime.
They are accountable for their promise their will be no more William Bells. God help them if there is one more after this.
So if it won’t make much difference to crime, what difference will this Bill make?
We happen to know the answer, because other countries have tried the three strikes and you are out approach.
It always results in huge anomalies. It always results in greater injustices. When you take away sentencing discretion, you get bad sentencing.
Let me give you one example: Imagine a woman who living with a violent thug with a record, and getting the bash.
What are the chances that she will now be even less likely to leave? What are the chances she will be much less likely to report a man when she knows it would mean that he would be locked up for life.
Those are decisions victims make all the time - and the truth is this Bill will ensure some women in exactly that position suffer grievously because of the horrifying dilemmas it will create. What is compassionate about that?
We owe it to New Zealanders to get tough on crime. This bill does not.
This Bill pretends to get tough.
This Bill will lead to perverse results.
This Bill will not deliver National’s promise to significantly reduce crime.
And I cannot support its vile cynicism.
I have always believed that one of the most important things we can do in this House is to bear witness to the truth - to stand up and tell the truth about what we know to be true, despite the consequences.
What I know about this Bill, is that it is bound to play well as a popular measure, but that it is a fraud.
It will not deliver on the promises that have been made for it.
I believe the ministers responsible for this Bill know it will not deliver the results they have promised.
I believe they are pushing it through knowing it will not end violent crime, as they promised; knowing it will not make a significant difference as they promised.
The government has promised this Bill will ensure "there will be no more Williams Bells.”
That was the statement Rodney Hide made in his press release. Here is word for word what he said: “Under this Bill there will be no more William Bells.”
That statement is fraudulent. There will be more violent men who kill after this Bill has been passed. There will be lots more.
The promise the minister made in his press release will come back to haunt him and he will regret it.
The evidence this Bill won’t work is spelt out in the Explanatory Note to the Bill.
The Bill says any impact on prison numbers from this Bill “will not be felt for at least 10 years.” I didn’t read that in the Ministers’ press release. I didn’t read in the minister’s statement that ten years after this Bill is passed, not one single extra person will be locked up.
I read that they were going to “get tough” with violent criminals. That’s what John Key promised.
He didn’t say that getting tough meant waiting ten years before one single person was locked up.
I did read John Key saying “New Zealanders are sick of waiting for promises on law and order to be delivered."
Well they’ll be waiting a long time for this one to be delivered.
I read John Key saying the last government took nine years to deliver - so he’s going one better and waiting ten!
After 20 years, the Bill says, an extra 70 prison beds will be needed.
So let’s add that up - the government says this Bill will end violent crime.
And it says it will end violent crime by locking up a total of seventy people between ten and twenty years from now. That’s about seven people a year.
That’s what National thinks is the extent of the violent crime problem in this country - seven violent crimes a year. It’s a nonsense.
This government has vastly oversold its ability to make a difference.
I remember in 1990 National got elected by saying it was going to end violent crime back then, too.
I remember John Banks saying he was going to get tough and put an end to murder and violence and pillage.
And one month later this country witnessed the tragedy of Aramoana. That was the worst mass killing in our history.
It turned out then that violent crime is a lot more complex than the cheap headlines National wants to get.
It will turn out the same this time. I know that. National knows that.
This country has a serious problem with violent crime.
I saw research this week that showed only 43% of New Zealanders feel completely satisfied about their own security and safety in their own home.
And therefore we owe it to New Zealanders to do something real about about violence.
But this Bill does nothing to reduce violence.
You don’t get locked up until the violent crime has already been committed.
This government is soft on crime because it won’t do anything to stop the crimes being committed in the first place.
The members opposite say they will reduce crime by locking up the most serious violent offenders.
But you don’t lock them up until they have already committed a serious violent offence.
It doesn’t lock them up before they commit it.
So what this Bill is really about is not reducing crime at all. It is about revenge. It is about denouncing criminals.
Now I actually agree there is a place for denuncuation in criminal sentencing.That’s why when my colleague Matt Robson was corrections minister he started building more prisons than any corrections minister in history.
So I support putting violent offenders away and my party helped to put the prisons in place to do it.
But you ought to be frank about what you are doing.
If the object of a Bill is to denounce crime, then say that - don’t come in here pretending that the Bill is going to reduce violent crime. This Bill isn’t, you know it isn’t, and that makes the very basis of this Bill a fraud, and it insults this House.
It insults the intelligence of members.
The object of this Bill is to pretend the government is getting tough.
If I’m generous I would say the object of this Bill might be to punish offenders more.
But I do not believe the object of this Bill is to reduce offending.
I actually put out a widely ignored and very detailed plan for reducing crime before the last election.
We went through every measure that expert research and expert policy shows makes a long term difference over time.
It starts with reducing at risk behaviour, it continues to getting tough with young hoons on their way to a life of crime. And it includes addressing the major risk factors in prisons, like alcohol and illiteracy.
Because when over 90 per cent of criminals have an alcohol or drug problem, then you aren’t going to rehabilitate them and turn them away from a life of crime unless you fix those.
And for all of those proven and efficient policies, the best estimate of the difference it would make was this - in the long run, it would reduce crime by about 17 per cent. That is about the most you can promise.
It is a long way short of what the government has promised for this Bill. They promised an end to violent crime - and now they are accountable.
We have heard a lot of songs about accountability from the government.
Now they are accountable for their promise to make a significant reduction in violent crime.
They are accountable for their promise their will be no more William Bells. God help them if there is one more after this.
So if it won’t make much difference to crime, what difference will this Bill make?
We happen to know the answer, because other countries have tried the three strikes and you are out approach.
It always results in huge anomalies. It always results in greater injustices. When you take away sentencing discretion, you get bad sentencing.
Let me give you one example: Imagine a woman who living with a violent thug with a record, and getting the bash.
What are the chances that she will now be even less likely to leave? What are the chances she will be much less likely to report a man when she knows it would mean that he would be locked up for life.
Those are decisions victims make all the time - and the truth is this Bill will ensure some women in exactly that position suffer grievously because of the horrifying dilemmas it will create. What is compassionate about that?
We owe it to New Zealanders to get tough on crime. This bill does not.
This Bill pretends to get tough.
This Bill will lead to perverse results.
This Bill will not deliver National’s promise to significantly reduce crime.
And I cannot support its vile cynicism.
National Govt has a casual attitude to the harm caused by alcohol abuse
10/03/09 13:13 Filed in: News Releases
The government’s casual attitude to alcohol availability shows it has its priorities wrong, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton told parliament on the introduction of the Sale and Supply of Liquor bill.
“Alcohol is an enormous factor in crime. Between half and three quarters of all police work is associated in some way with alcohol abuse. Two out of three people the police deal with as offenders have been using alcohol prior to the offence being committed.
“But government members are the first to sneer about nanny state when someone tries to fix the problems. They claim to be anti-crime, but they also sneer and call anyone who tries to reduce crime the ‘fun police.’
“Alcohol causes between one and a half and two and a half billion dollars worth of economic and social harm every year. It is by far the most damaging drug in this country. It is the most damaging not because it is the most intrinsically dangerous drug - far from it. It is the most damaging because it is the most available drug. And in the recent years when alcohol was made much more available, predictably the harm caused by alcohol has risen as well.”
Last year, if the road toll among 15-29 year olds had fallen by the same amount as the general population, there would have been twenty fewer deaths of young New Zealanders.
In the years prior to 1999 the number of dead drivers who had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit had been tracking down. Since 1999, when the purchase age was lowered, the number of dead drivers has stopped tracking down.
In 2000 there were 4,079 fifteen to 29 year old car and van drivers involved in injury crashes. In 2007, there were 6,538 - an increase of sixty percent. The number of injuries among young people is far greater than the number among the general population.
“Sensible control is not prohibition, and pretending they are the same is irresponsible and distorted. I support reducing the availability of alcohol for young people and I support more restrictions on alcohol advertising and availability in the community,” Jim Anderton said.
“Alcohol is an enormous factor in crime. Between half and three quarters of all police work is associated in some way with alcohol abuse. Two out of three people the police deal with as offenders have been using alcohol prior to the offence being committed.
“But government members are the first to sneer about nanny state when someone tries to fix the problems. They claim to be anti-crime, but they also sneer and call anyone who tries to reduce crime the ‘fun police.’
“Alcohol causes between one and a half and two and a half billion dollars worth of economic and social harm every year. It is by far the most damaging drug in this country. It is the most damaging not because it is the most intrinsically dangerous drug - far from it. It is the most damaging because it is the most available drug. And in the recent years when alcohol was made much more available, predictably the harm caused by alcohol has risen as well.”
Last year, if the road toll among 15-29 year olds had fallen by the same amount as the general population, there would have been twenty fewer deaths of young New Zealanders.
In the years prior to 1999 the number of dead drivers who had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit had been tracking down. Since 1999, when the purchase age was lowered, the number of dead drivers has stopped tracking down.
In 2000 there were 4,079 fifteen to 29 year old car and van drivers involved in injury crashes. In 2007, there were 6,538 - an increase of sixty percent. The number of injuries among young people is far greater than the number among the general population.
“Sensible control is not prohibition, and pretending they are the same is irresponsible and distorted. I support reducing the availability of alcohol for young people and I support more restrictions on alcohol advertising and availability in the community,” Jim Anderton said.
Tribute to Senior-Constable Len Snee
12/05/09 12:51 Filed in: Speeches
Speech in the House
I join with other party leaders in expressing my deepest condolences to the family of Len Snee.
I too wish a speedy and full recovery to the injured as they lie in their hospitals.
I send my best wishes to their families who must be desperately worried as they pray and wait at the bedsides of the fallen.
Maybe the most sombre thing we do in here is send men and women into danger on our behalf.
We send them out knowing that sometimes, on our darkest days, they won’t come back.
When we send them out, we send them to defend New Zealanders.
They are there for us.
They go out as our bravest, and when they fall, some of us all falls with them.
Every police officer knows goes about their duty on every apparently normal day, with danger and unpredictability lurking.
They take on that danger on our behalf.
We can never repay sufficiently our debt to them, and we can not begin to repay the debt we owe to those who give their lives for us.
Most of us have learned a lot about Len Snee in the last few days.
We learned about his professionalism as an officer. We learned about his popularity in his community.
So I pay tribute to him personally and I hope his family, as they grieve, can find some small condolence in the respect and admiration his country is expressing.
I hope New Zealanders will show respect by declining to seek political mileage from this death while this wound is still so raw.
It is very easy to exploit the strong emotions we all feel over a tragedy like this. It is easy, but it’s wrong.
I want to congratulate the prime minister, and say I agree with his reaction when he said he was not going to be stampeded into a call for arming the police in their day to day operations.
That was the right response.
There will be lessons to be learned from this tragedy, and we will all have to reflect carefully on them. But the time for making political points isn’t here yet.
I am sure the family of the murdered officer are not yet ready to have him used for point-scoring about guns, nor for political mileage about drugs nor crime, nor about policing, nor mental health, nor any of the other issues that will inevitably give us pause.
This is a time to give thanks to the men and women whom we ask to protect us, to share the grief of Len Snee’s family and friends, and to express our strength as a community that comes together and makes our bonds stronger when we are confronted with tragedy.
I join with other party leaders in expressing my deepest condolences to the family of Len Snee.
I too wish a speedy and full recovery to the injured as they lie in their hospitals.
I send my best wishes to their families who must be desperately worried as they pray and wait at the bedsides of the fallen.
Maybe the most sombre thing we do in here is send men and women into danger on our behalf.
We send them out knowing that sometimes, on our darkest days, they won’t come back.
When we send them out, we send them to defend New Zealanders.
They are there for us.
They go out as our bravest, and when they fall, some of us all falls with them.
Every police officer knows goes about their duty on every apparently normal day, with danger and unpredictability lurking.
They take on that danger on our behalf.
We can never repay sufficiently our debt to them, and we can not begin to repay the debt we owe to those who give their lives for us.
Most of us have learned a lot about Len Snee in the last few days.
We learned about his professionalism as an officer. We learned about his popularity in his community.
So I pay tribute to him personally and I hope his family, as they grieve, can find some small condolence in the respect and admiration his country is expressing.
I hope New Zealanders will show respect by declining to seek political mileage from this death while this wound is still so raw.
It is very easy to exploit the strong emotions we all feel over a tragedy like this. It is easy, but it’s wrong.
I want to congratulate the prime minister, and say I agree with his reaction when he said he was not going to be stampeded into a call for arming the police in their day to day operations.
That was the right response.
There will be lessons to be learned from this tragedy, and we will all have to reflect carefully on them. But the time for making political points isn’t here yet.
I am sure the family of the murdered officer are not yet ready to have him used for point-scoring about guns, nor for political mileage about drugs nor crime, nor about policing, nor mental health, nor any of the other issues that will inevitably give us pause.
This is a time to give thanks to the men and women whom we ask to protect us, to share the grief of Len Snee’s family and friends, and to express our strength as a community that comes together and makes our bonds stronger when we are confronted with tragedy.
May Edition of Jim's eNews
29/05/09 12:15 Filed in: Newsletters
Budget Day 09 - Huge cuts in primary sector science
28.05.09
Nearly as much is being cut out of science and research in the primary sector as the government is investing in infrastructure.
The total value of primary sector science investment falls from $2 billion provided for in NZ Fast Forward under the last government to as little as $1.2 billion now.
Like for like government spending over ten years falls from around a billion dollars in the NZ Fast Forward Fund, to $610 million in the government’s replacement. “With matching private sector funding, the total investment in primary sector research and development falls by $800 million, or about 0.4 per cent of GDP.
In addition, the government has not replaced a cent of the cancelled research and development tax credit. Overall, the government is cutting innovation spending by more than the value of the personal tax cuts.
This is huge cut in science and research. It is a disaster for the future of New Zealand’s economy.
Other developed countries are preparing themselves to come out of recession stronger. New Zealand is preparing by switching from science and research to poltergeists and UFOs.
The government promised the primary sector it would spend more on science and research. It has broken that promise as surely as if it has broken its promise on personal taxes.
Winter rebate from electricity companies would be appreciated
22.05.09
The knowledge that many elderly New Zealanders huddle under blankets rather than turn on unaffordable heating should be a wake-up call to the power companies to return a winter rebate to their consumers this winter.
For many New Zealanders, this wintry weather brings on a bitter struggle with the cold and the dilemma of whether they can turn on a heater or not. Low income households, the elderly and students fear their electricity bills and well they might. I remember when the electricity bills came every two months – now the monthly bill is the same – or more – than the bi-monthly one was.
The Commerce Commission’s investigation into the wholesale and retail electricity markets showed that the electricity companies have not breached Part 2 of the Commerce Act but their extra $4.3 billion in earnings from 2001 to mid-2007 reveals they are charging with a take no prisoners mentality. The electricity companies’ profits are at the expense of New Zealand’s most economically vulnerable.
Since 2002, I have pushed for a return to consumers of some of the big profit increases from the state-owned power companies to help them with winter power bills. Low income households could be given $200 toward winter heating costs and power companies would still contribute as much to the government as they did last year. $200 would mean some households had a month of relief from winter heating costs. For superannuitants, beneficiaries and people who have lost their jobs in the downturn, it would make a huge difference.
The Commerce Commission’s ruling on the power companies should not be seen as a sign off for a return to business as usual. I am sure that New Zealanders would be hugely relieved to see the companies acting in the interests’ of their consumers with a winter rebate during this winter.
Comment on economics and the recession Response to Daniel Silva’s article in the Country-wide magazine
21.05.09
So Daniel Silva thinks that the current international recession isn’t going to affect New Zealand much. Well that’s all right then? Actually – no.
He’s quite wrong to think so for two significant reasons quite aside from the fact that any nation which earns its living as an international commodities trader is going to be affected by what happens to purchasing power in our major markets.See website for full response
Aucklanders should have elected, not appointed leaders
19.05.09
Letting Auckland vote would be a better way to make appointees to the Auckland super city transitional agency than a secret process in a government where decision-making is melting down.
Why is the government even appointing a board? The way we find people to run local government in New Zealand is we have democratic elections.
A government that listened to New Zealanders would not have a problem making a choice of leadership. The people do the appointing for it. In a democratic election, you are much more likely to get leadership that looks like Auckland. National seems interested only in leadership that looks like the National or ACT Party.
I am very concerned that the quality of decision-making in the government is falling apart as the pressure of actually governing comes on. The National government is making poor decisions or refusing to make them at all. It created a sense of urgency for itself over Auckland’s super city, and now it can’t even meet its own urgent timetable.
Needle Exchange Programme proven it worth
19.05.09
On the 21st Anniversary of the Needle Exchange Programme (NEP) - and the 4th year of the free one-for-one exchange of needles, I again would support and expand a needle exchange programme that provides free needles for intravenous drug users.
The Progressive Party successfully bid in 2004 for $4 million over four years to fund free-to-users, one-for-one exchange of used needles because we wanted to minimise the harm caused by drugs”.
Back in 2002, I was appointed as the Associate Minister of Health and the minister responsible for drug policy. I received an independent review of the needle and syringe exchange programme. It reported that the programme saves lives. It said the programme saved - back then, seven years ago - $35 million in treatment costs since it had been established.
The report said plainly that the needle exchange programme reduces the harm caused by drug use. It told me the programme had helped to prevent twenty deaths from AIDS and more than two thousand cases of Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS.
When you get a report like that in government, you sit up and take notice.
It makes a pleasant change from all the doom and gloom about things that don’t work. Here was clear evidence of a programme that worked.
There were people who sneered at that as liberal political correctness. I can tell you from personal experience there aren’t many votes in being wise or liberal about this stuff. But it was then, and is now, the right thing to do anyway.
The results have been very worthwhile. Obviously, I wish we didn’t need this programme. I wish we didn’t have drug use causing the harm it does, wrecking the lives of many people, and wrecking many communities.
But it does happen. It will keep happening. And if we care about vulnerable victims then our responsibility is to reduce the harm to them as much as we can. The needle exchange programme does just that and I endorse it for that reason.
Anderton brands Auckland bill as the “Removal of Democracy” bill
18.05.09
The Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill which will usher in Auckland’s “supercity” should be renamed the Removal of Democracy Bill.
The Local Government Act would have given Aucklanders a say in one of the most significant changes in local government in their region that they will see in their lifetime, but they are not going to have a chance to have that say.
In essence it is a great leap backwards to the days when 21 out of twenty two councillors lived east of Queen Street. It was the reason why a ward system had to be introduced so that all Aucklanders could actually be represented on their own Council. The conservative right-wingers have always resented that change and this proposal returns Auckland to the past they have always hankered after.
In real life terms it means, for example, the end of free swimming pools for the kids of South Auckland and any other future say for most Aucklanders in the way they want their local communities to deliver for them. Does anyone believe that those pools will continue to be free under the government’s proposal? I can already hear the self appointed Mayor of the super city, John Banks, making speeches about why the ratepayers of Auckland City shouldn’t be subsidising the swimming pools of south Auckland.
I support a strong regional government for Auckland. There used to be one – the Auckland Regional Authority (ARA) and I know about it because I was elected to it in 1977. We bought all the major regional parks and replaced the entire ancient bus fleet with new Mercedes Benz vehicles.
In 1989, the Labour government replaced the ARA with the Auckland Regional Council (ARC). In 1992, the then National government wanted to sell the Ports of Auckland and the water services, so they diverted ownership of these and other profitable assets into the newly established Auckland Regional Services Trust (ARST) with the plan to sell. What a shambles that would have been if it had been allowed to happen. It took all of the strength of the political group I led at the time to put a stop to that. Auckland has reaped the benefit ever since,” Jim Anderton said.
Now they’re having another go. This is a privatisers’ dream to sell the community assets of Auckland, and is entirely in line with Rodney Hide and the ACT party’s ideologies. Does anyone believe that this is in the best interests of Aucklanders?
You can understand in those circumstances why the National ACT government doesn’t want people to have a say as to whether or not they want this outrageous piece of community destruction to go ahead.
Tribute to Senior-Constable Len Snee
12.05.09
I join with other party leaders in expressing my deepest condolences to the family of Len Snee. I too wish a speedy and full recovery to the injured as they lie in their hospitals.
I send my best wishes to their families who must be desperately worried as they pray and wait at the bedsides of the fallen.
Maybe the most sombre thing we do in Parliament and government is send men and women into danger on our behalf. We send them out knowing that sometimes, on our darkest days, they won’t come back alive. When we send them out, we send them to defend New Zealanders. They are there for us.
They go out as our bravest, and when they fall, some of us all falls with them.
Every police officer knows that they go about their duty on every apparently normal day, with danger and unpredictability lurking. They take on that danger on our behalf. We can never repay sufficiently our debt to them, and we can not begin to repay the debt we owe to those who give their lives for us.
Most of us have learned a lot about Len Snee in the last few days. We learned about his professionalism as an officer. We learned about his popularity in his community. So I pay tribute to him personally and I hope his family, as they grieve, can find some small condolence in the respect and admiration his country is expressing.
I hope New Zealanders will show respect by declining to seek political mileage from this death while this wound is still so raw.
It is very easy to exploit the strong emotions we all feel over a tragedy like this. It is easy, but it’s wrong.
I want to congratulate the prime minister, and say I agree with his reaction when he said he was not going to be stampeded into a call for arming the police in their day to day operations. That was the right response. There will be lessons to be learned from this tragedy, and we will all have to reflect carefully on them. But the time for making political points isn’t here yet.
I am sure the family of the murdered officer are not yet ready to have him used for point-scoring about guns, nor for political mileage about drugs nor crime, nor about policing, nor mental health, nor any of the other issues that will inevitably give us pause.
This is a time to give thanks to the men and women whom we ask to protect us, to share the grief of Len Snee’s family and friends, and to express our strength as a community that comes together and makes our bonds stronger when we are confronted with tragedy.
Launch of the Finsec Banking petition
05.05.09
I would like to express my support for the Finsec petition, and for the retention of New Zealand jobs. Banks in New Zealand have been making enormous profits by mistreating customers and exploiting staff.
In the current global financial situation - the overseas owned banks in New Zealand are some of the most profitable in the world.
But they are still firing staff.
It’s time for them to give something back. It’ time for them to support New Zealand as good corporate citizens.
The taxpayer is giving the banks a crucial government guarantee. The government is right to do so. The banks need the guarantee to keep functioning. In a crisis, New Zealanders should be prepared to help each other out. And we should be prepared to use the power of government to make our economy stronger.
But there is a quid pro quo. It is perfectly reasonable to ask that in exchange for getting support from New Zealanders, the banks should, in return, support New Zealand in general and their own staff in particular.
MPs should not be able to fight by-elections
05.05.09
It’s a farce that sitting MPs are standing for election to parliament. I am drafting a members’ bill to stop MPs from standing for parliament in by-elections. In Mt Albert, there are three MPs standing for parliament. They are already MPs. If they want to represent the electorate, they already can. Any list MP can open an electorate office in Mt Albert and be a good representative.
What those MPs are really doing is using their parliamentary salaries and resources to bring in someone on a party list who has nothing to do with Mt Albert. For example, if the National candidate were to win she would be an MP just as she is now. But she would bring in a new MP who virtually no one has heard of, and who might never have visited Mt Albert in his or her life.
MPs who contest the seat but lose bring MMP into disrepute. Since there are three MPs contesting the seat, at least two of them have to lose and maybe all three will lose. If they are going to test their mandate, they should be prepared to live with the result.
In a general election, no MP has insurance. They have to get enough votes in their electorate or for their party, or they are out. It’s a democratic farce to have different rules in a by-election.
A simple bill that stopped a sitting MP standing in a by-election would force MPs to make a meaningful choice - if they really want to contest a seat, they should resign from parliament and contest it on the same basis as anyone else.
MPs shouldn’t fight a parliamentary by-election while they’re drawing a full parliamentary salary.
28.05.09
Nearly as much is being cut out of science and research in the primary sector as the government is investing in infrastructure.
The total value of primary sector science investment falls from $2 billion provided for in NZ Fast Forward under the last government to as little as $1.2 billion now.
Like for like government spending over ten years falls from around a billion dollars in the NZ Fast Forward Fund, to $610 million in the government’s replacement. “With matching private sector funding, the total investment in primary sector research and development falls by $800 million, or about 0.4 per cent of GDP.
In addition, the government has not replaced a cent of the cancelled research and development tax credit. Overall, the government is cutting innovation spending by more than the value of the personal tax cuts.
This is huge cut in science and research. It is a disaster for the future of New Zealand’s economy.
Other developed countries are preparing themselves to come out of recession stronger. New Zealand is preparing by switching from science and research to poltergeists and UFOs.
The government promised the primary sector it would spend more on science and research. It has broken that promise as surely as if it has broken its promise on personal taxes.
Winter rebate from electricity companies would be appreciated
22.05.09
The knowledge that many elderly New Zealanders huddle under blankets rather than turn on unaffordable heating should be a wake-up call to the power companies to return a winter rebate to their consumers this winter.
For many New Zealanders, this wintry weather brings on a bitter struggle with the cold and the dilemma of whether they can turn on a heater or not. Low income households, the elderly and students fear their electricity bills and well they might. I remember when the electricity bills came every two months – now the monthly bill is the same – or more – than the bi-monthly one was.
The Commerce Commission’s investigation into the wholesale and retail electricity markets showed that the electricity companies have not breached Part 2 of the Commerce Act but their extra $4.3 billion in earnings from 2001 to mid-2007 reveals they are charging with a take no prisoners mentality. The electricity companies’ profits are at the expense of New Zealand’s most economically vulnerable.
Since 2002, I have pushed for a return to consumers of some of the big profit increases from the state-owned power companies to help them with winter power bills. Low income households could be given $200 toward winter heating costs and power companies would still contribute as much to the government as they did last year. $200 would mean some households had a month of relief from winter heating costs. For superannuitants, beneficiaries and people who have lost their jobs in the downturn, it would make a huge difference.
The Commerce Commission’s ruling on the power companies should not be seen as a sign off for a return to business as usual. I am sure that New Zealanders would be hugely relieved to see the companies acting in the interests’ of their consumers with a winter rebate during this winter.
Comment on economics and the recession Response to Daniel Silva’s article in the Country-wide magazine
21.05.09
So Daniel Silva thinks that the current international recession isn’t going to affect New Zealand much. Well that’s all right then? Actually – no.
He’s quite wrong to think so for two significant reasons quite aside from the fact that any nation which earns its living as an international commodities trader is going to be affected by what happens to purchasing power in our major markets.See website for full response
Aucklanders should have elected, not appointed leaders
19.05.09
Letting Auckland vote would be a better way to make appointees to the Auckland super city transitional agency than a secret process in a government where decision-making is melting down.
Why is the government even appointing a board? The way we find people to run local government in New Zealand is we have democratic elections.
A government that listened to New Zealanders would not have a problem making a choice of leadership. The people do the appointing for it. In a democratic election, you are much more likely to get leadership that looks like Auckland. National seems interested only in leadership that looks like the National or ACT Party.
I am very concerned that the quality of decision-making in the government is falling apart as the pressure of actually governing comes on. The National government is making poor decisions or refusing to make them at all. It created a sense of urgency for itself over Auckland’s super city, and now it can’t even meet its own urgent timetable.
Needle Exchange Programme proven it worth
19.05.09
On the 21st Anniversary of the Needle Exchange Programme (NEP) - and the 4th year of the free one-for-one exchange of needles, I again would support and expand a needle exchange programme that provides free needles for intravenous drug users.
The Progressive Party successfully bid in 2004 for $4 million over four years to fund free-to-users, one-for-one exchange of used needles because we wanted to minimise the harm caused by drugs”.
Back in 2002, I was appointed as the Associate Minister of Health and the minister responsible for drug policy. I received an independent review of the needle and syringe exchange programme. It reported that the programme saves lives. It said the programme saved - back then, seven years ago - $35 million in treatment costs since it had been established.
The report said plainly that the needle exchange programme reduces the harm caused by drug use. It told me the programme had helped to prevent twenty deaths from AIDS and more than two thousand cases of Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS.
When you get a report like that in government, you sit up and take notice.
It makes a pleasant change from all the doom and gloom about things that don’t work. Here was clear evidence of a programme that worked.
There were people who sneered at that as liberal political correctness. I can tell you from personal experience there aren’t many votes in being wise or liberal about this stuff. But it was then, and is now, the right thing to do anyway.
The results have been very worthwhile. Obviously, I wish we didn’t need this programme. I wish we didn’t have drug use causing the harm it does, wrecking the lives of many people, and wrecking many communities.
But it does happen. It will keep happening. And if we care about vulnerable victims then our responsibility is to reduce the harm to them as much as we can. The needle exchange programme does just that and I endorse it for that reason.
Anderton brands Auckland bill as the “Removal of Democracy” bill
18.05.09
The Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill which will usher in Auckland’s “supercity” should be renamed the Removal of Democracy Bill.
The Local Government Act would have given Aucklanders a say in one of the most significant changes in local government in their region that they will see in their lifetime, but they are not going to have a chance to have that say.
In essence it is a great leap backwards to the days when 21 out of twenty two councillors lived east of Queen Street. It was the reason why a ward system had to be introduced so that all Aucklanders could actually be represented on their own Council. The conservative right-wingers have always resented that change and this proposal returns Auckland to the past they have always hankered after.
In real life terms it means, for example, the end of free swimming pools for the kids of South Auckland and any other future say for most Aucklanders in the way they want their local communities to deliver for them. Does anyone believe that those pools will continue to be free under the government’s proposal? I can already hear the self appointed Mayor of the super city, John Banks, making speeches about why the ratepayers of Auckland City shouldn’t be subsidising the swimming pools of south Auckland.
I support a strong regional government for Auckland. There used to be one – the Auckland Regional Authority (ARA) and I know about it because I was elected to it in 1977. We bought all the major regional parks and replaced the entire ancient bus fleet with new Mercedes Benz vehicles.
In 1989, the Labour government replaced the ARA with the Auckland Regional Council (ARC). In 1992, the then National government wanted to sell the Ports of Auckland and the water services, so they diverted ownership of these and other profitable assets into the newly established Auckland Regional Services Trust (ARST) with the plan to sell. What a shambles that would have been if it had been allowed to happen. It took all of the strength of the political group I led at the time to put a stop to that. Auckland has reaped the benefit ever since,” Jim Anderton said.
Now they’re having another go. This is a privatisers’ dream to sell the community assets of Auckland, and is entirely in line with Rodney Hide and the ACT party’s ideologies. Does anyone believe that this is in the best interests of Aucklanders?
You can understand in those circumstances why the National ACT government doesn’t want people to have a say as to whether or not they want this outrageous piece of community destruction to go ahead.
Tribute to Senior-Constable Len Snee
12.05.09
I join with other party leaders in expressing my deepest condolences to the family of Len Snee. I too wish a speedy and full recovery to the injured as they lie in their hospitals.
I send my best wishes to their families who must be desperately worried as they pray and wait at the bedsides of the fallen.
Maybe the most sombre thing we do in Parliament and government is send men and women into danger on our behalf. We send them out knowing that sometimes, on our darkest days, they won’t come back alive. When we send them out, we send them to defend New Zealanders. They are there for us.
They go out as our bravest, and when they fall, some of us all falls with them.
Every police officer knows that they go about their duty on every apparently normal day, with danger and unpredictability lurking. They take on that danger on our behalf. We can never repay sufficiently our debt to them, and we can not begin to repay the debt we owe to those who give their lives for us.
Most of us have learned a lot about Len Snee in the last few days. We learned about his professionalism as an officer. We learned about his popularity in his community. So I pay tribute to him personally and I hope his family, as they grieve, can find some small condolence in the respect and admiration his country is expressing.
I hope New Zealanders will show respect by declining to seek political mileage from this death while this wound is still so raw.
It is very easy to exploit the strong emotions we all feel over a tragedy like this. It is easy, but it’s wrong.
I want to congratulate the prime minister, and say I agree with his reaction when he said he was not going to be stampeded into a call for arming the police in their day to day operations. That was the right response. There will be lessons to be learned from this tragedy, and we will all have to reflect carefully on them. But the time for making political points isn’t here yet.
I am sure the family of the murdered officer are not yet ready to have him used for point-scoring about guns, nor for political mileage about drugs nor crime, nor about policing, nor mental health, nor any of the other issues that will inevitably give us pause.
This is a time to give thanks to the men and women whom we ask to protect us, to share the grief of Len Snee’s family and friends, and to express our strength as a community that comes together and makes our bonds stronger when we are confronted with tragedy.
Launch of the Finsec Banking petition
05.05.09
I would like to express my support for the Finsec petition, and for the retention of New Zealand jobs. Banks in New Zealand have been making enormous profits by mistreating customers and exploiting staff.
In the current global financial situation - the overseas owned banks in New Zealand are some of the most profitable in the world.
But they are still firing staff.
It’s time for them to give something back. It’ time for them to support New Zealand as good corporate citizens.
The taxpayer is giving the banks a crucial government guarantee. The government is right to do so. The banks need the guarantee to keep functioning. In a crisis, New Zealanders should be prepared to help each other out. And we should be prepared to use the power of government to make our economy stronger.
But there is a quid pro quo. It is perfectly reasonable to ask that in exchange for getting support from New Zealanders, the banks should, in return, support New Zealand in general and their own staff in particular.
MPs should not be able to fight by-elections
05.05.09
It’s a farce that sitting MPs are standing for election to parliament. I am drafting a members’ bill to stop MPs from standing for parliament in by-elections. In Mt Albert, there are three MPs standing for parliament. They are already MPs. If they want to represent the electorate, they already can. Any list MP can open an electorate office in Mt Albert and be a good representative.
What those MPs are really doing is using their parliamentary salaries and resources to bring in someone on a party list who has nothing to do with Mt Albert. For example, if the National candidate were to win she would be an MP just as she is now. But she would bring in a new MP who virtually no one has heard of, and who might never have visited Mt Albert in his or her life.
MPs who contest the seat but lose bring MMP into disrepute. Since there are three MPs contesting the seat, at least two of them have to lose and maybe all three will lose. If they are going to test their mandate, they should be prepared to live with the result.
In a general election, no MP has insurance. They have to get enough votes in their electorate or for their party, or they are out. It’s a democratic farce to have different rules in a by-election.
A simple bill that stopped a sitting MP standing in a by-election would force MPs to make a meaningful choice - if they really want to contest a seat, they should resign from parliament and contest it on the same basis as anyone else.
MPs shouldn’t fight a parliamentary by-election while they’re drawing a full parliamentary salary.
How to reduce prison populations
17/07/09 11:51 Filed in: News Releases
There are too many people in prison and the Chief Justice is right to raise the issue, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.
But he says the only viable way to reduce prison overcrowding is to reduce the level of crime by targeting drugs and alcohol.
“Longer prison sentences are not making much difference.
“The Chief Justice’s comments are the latest of a flurry this year looking at the justice system: Pita Sharples wants to build special Maori prisons for Maori offenders. The government wants to build prisons out of shipping containers. The next step will be putting containers on a container ship and shipping them offshore.
“All of these ideas are looking at the wrong end of the problem. Early intervention works best and costs less.
“If you intervene early, you don’t have as many victims, and you don’t need to worry about locking people up or letting them out.
“Three out of five offences are committed while the offender is under the influence of alcohol. If you want to cut crime, you can’t go past that figure.
“The government made big promises about significantly cutting serious offending. It won’t keep that promise, because it won’t do anything about the most common factor in criminal offending.
“Reducing the abuse of alcohol is a tough issue to fix. Until it is fixed, crime rates will remain high, more prisons will be built in local neighbourhoods, we will pay higher taxes to build them, they will continue to be overcrowded and they will continue to fail.”
But he says the only viable way to reduce prison overcrowding is to reduce the level of crime by targeting drugs and alcohol.
“Longer prison sentences are not making much difference.
“The Chief Justice’s comments are the latest of a flurry this year looking at the justice system: Pita Sharples wants to build special Maori prisons for Maori offenders. The government wants to build prisons out of shipping containers. The next step will be putting containers on a container ship and shipping them offshore.
“All of these ideas are looking at the wrong end of the problem. Early intervention works best and costs less.
“If you intervene early, you don’t have as many victims, and you don’t need to worry about locking people up or letting them out.
“Three out of five offences are committed while the offender is under the influence of alcohol. If you want to cut crime, you can’t go past that figure.
“The government made big promises about significantly cutting serious offending. It won’t keep that promise, because it won’t do anything about the most common factor in criminal offending.
“Reducing the abuse of alcohol is a tough issue to fix. Until it is fixed, crime rates will remain high, more prisons will be built in local neighbourhoods, we will pay higher taxes to build them, they will continue to be overcrowded and they will continue to fail.”