Government to introduce bill cutting funding for cultural reports, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon fronts media

The Government plans to introduce a bill in the next parliamentary session to axe funding for cultural background reports - which would achieve an item on its 100-day action plan.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told journalists today it would help to restore personal responsibility into the law and order space.

The reports have been controversial as they are often cited as contributing to a judge’s reasoning for giving a discounted sentence. The reports are to provide context about an offender and their upbringing and history, and have been called invaluable by many in the justice sector.

But they were also seen as potentially a box-ticking exercise where there were limited controls over who could write one, meaning the quality of information could be questioned.

The previous government, under political pressure from National and Act, ordered a review of them to ensure they were fit for purpose.

Act campaigned on scrapping the reports entirely, while National wanted to scrap government funding for them; their monthly cost has skyrocketed from a few thousand dollars in 2017 to well over half a million dollars.

The Government also wants to cap sentencing discounts at 40 per cent, which would essentially put a constraint on the limits of judicial discretion.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said cultural reports offered no apparent benefit to victims. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said the cultural reports offered no “apparent benefits to victims of crime”.

The bill would remove cultural reports from the legal aid scheme, he said.

Goldsmith also announced it was getting rid of the previous government’s target to reduce the prison population by 30 per cent over 15 years - also part of its 100-day plan.

This is essentially redundant, as Labour leader Chris Hipkins had already declared the target history during the election campaign.

The prison population has been increasing since the end of 2021, and is expected to increase further with the coalition Government’s harder line in law and order; a new 600-bed facility at Waikeria Prison near Te Awamutu is expected to be finished in November this year, including a 96-bed mental health unit.

A further challenge as the prisoner population rises will be a shortage of Corrections staff. The Herald earlier reported Mt Eden Corrections Facility, the country’s busiest prison, was more than 60 officers short late last year.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Luxon said cultural reports were intended to be for family friends to be able to speak about the offender, and those people would still be able to do that.

The change wouldn’t discriminate against poor people, he said, and it would eliminate the “cottage industry” that it had become.

Goldsmith added: “We’ve got to be careful about the fiscal impact.”

Luxon said there was currently prison capacity for 11,000 people, and with currently 9300 prisoners, there was an adequate cushion. He estimated with harsher sentences, modelling showed there would be an extra 200 to 400 extra prisoners over five to 10 years.

Other 100-day law and order policies about gangs as well as firearm laws were still being worked on, Luxon said.

“We want to make sure we do it once and we do it right.”

On Labour having already scrapped the prison reduction target, Luxon claimed it was unclear during the election campaign what Labour’s position was.

“We’re making sure there’s no ambiguity,” Luxon said.

The Prime Minister said the Government was still working on its crime reduction targets.

Most of the 49 items in the Government’s 100-day plan are incomplete, thanks to the summer break taking up a large chunk of the Government’s first 100 days. The Government has a rare four-week sitting block beginning next week, in which it hopes to tick off the rest. The deadline for the plan is the first week of March.

Today, the Government plans to shift the agenda to social policy.

The announcement comes as ministers return from a fiery reception at Waitangi, where debate focused on Act’s Treaty Principles bill.

Luxon also copped criticism for a speech that repeated sections of the speech he delivered to Waitangi last year.

Parts of Luxon’s Waitangi speech were copied word for word from his previous speech in 2023, sparking online criticism of his originality.

Luxon told Three’s AM we will probably be seeing him doing the same speech next year.

“So people can trust us when we say there will be no change to the Treaty,” Luxon said.

“There is a lot of misinformation, a lot of misunderstanding about what our Government thinks about the Treaty.”

He reiterated he only used “extracts” from the previous speech and expects “he will have the exact same message in 2025″.

Luxon refused to back down following the criticism and hinted at reusing other important speeches in the future, such as his Anzac Day speech.

He had “no regrets” about his speech.

Today, the Act Party continued to drive the debate on its Treaty Principles bill, launching a website to spread “facts” about what it was trying to do. Seymour and Act hope to convince their coalition partners to back the bill.

The proposal, to redefine the Treaty principles, is already quite popular; an October Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll found 60 per cent of people supported the idea, compared to 18 per cent who did not. Support for actually having a referendum is far lower; just 45 per cent want to hold a referendum, compared to 25 per cent who oppose the idea.

The bill was promised to Act as part of its coalition agreement with National, but unlike other promises, this promise was only to support the bill as far as the select committee stage.

Today, Luxon said the bill had caused some tension and it was not something National supported, but it was a compromise in an MMP environment.

“We won’t be supporting it beyond that [select committee],” Luxon said, regardless of whether it included a referendum clause.

“We will not be supporting that bill,” Luxon added, specifying that he was speaking as National Party leader rather than Prime Minister.