KEY POINTS:
Act MP David Garrett says he came to Parliament to try to change "the sad state of affairs" surrounding crime and justice.
"We can turn this mess around and once again become a country where children can walk to school without their mothers fearing for them," he said in his maiden speech yesterday.
"I believe we must return to a system where a five-year jail sentence means five years in jail, not two; a system where a judge can sentence our most odious murderers to life in prison without parole."
Mr Garrett said crime had changed fundamentally over the last 40 years and there had been a huge increase in violent crime.
"I firmly believe we are reaping what we have sowed," he said.
"We're reaping the harvest of a focus on rights without consideration of responsibilities - by viewing criminals as victims who just require the right kind of therapy in order to become decent citizens, and by making our jails places to which some people are quite happy to return."
Mr Garrett said New Zealand had moved from a penal regime where prisoners worked in quarries before going into a cold cell to a system where work was voluntary and they retired to a centrally-heated cell with a plasma TV.
"This change has coincided with the destruction of our once civil society," he said.
"It is time to say 'enough' to the ever more liberal penal policies of the past 40 years and try another tack. Only a fool expects results from doing more of the same."
- NZPA
