“As Minister of Justice last term, I introduced a number of bills to the house which worked to protect the rights of New Zealanders. Firstly, the New Zealand Bill of Rights (Entrenchment) Amendment Bill will, as the title suggests, entrench the NZ Bill of Rights - the one document which outlines the freedoms that all New Zealanders are afforded. This bill, once passed through the house, will make it so that any amendment to the NZBORA requires a 75% majority in Parliament or a binding referendum. For too long our rights had gone unprotected due to political maneuvering in the year that the NZBORA was passed, and this bill will entrench them so that they may not be overturned so easily.

“Secondly, our government passed the Criminal Justice Reform (Youth Court Age) Amendment Act 2018, which repealed a number of incredibly harmful provisions of Labour’s Criminal Justice Reform Act 2018. This Labour legislation raised the Youth Court age to 21, meaning that adults in all other aspects of our legal system would be treated as children in court. In addition to this, it repealed provisions of our criminal justice legislation which allowed for those subject to Youth Court jurisdiction to be criminally liable for murder, rape and manslaughter. The passage of the Criminal Justice Act 2018 was a massive failure for New Zealanders, and this amendment by my government worked to make Kiwi streets safer.

“Thirdly, I submitted the Corrections (Prisoner Rehabilitation Reform) Amendment Bill, which was unfortunately not read prior to the dissolution of Parliament due to an error on the order paper. This bill is the crown jewel of the Liberal Party’s justice policy: legislation which mandates the provision of NCEA literacy and numeracy programmes in prison, in addition to NZQA trade certification programmes. 52% of prisoners in New Zealand are sentenced to prison within 5 years of the completion of their previous sentence, and for teenage offenders the rate of recidivism is 71%. For a developed country like New Zealand, we’re performing far too poorly. This bill would incentivise participation in rehabilitation programmes by allowing for sentences to be reduced upon the achievement of NCEA literacy and numeracy standards, and of NZQA trade certification programmes, by a maximum of 8 weeks per year of the sentence. Rehabilitation of non-violent prisoners is especially important as it allows for ex-convicts to be qualified in anything but crime. Those who are released from NZ prisons are often illiterate and are incapable of finding any gainful employment; this bill would work to change that.”