New Zealand First's Law-and-Order policy package will back our law enforcement, hold offenders to account, and keep our community safe.

New Zealanders deserve to feel safe, secure, and have their person and property respected.

To build safer communities, the government must ensure that the NZ Police have the resources and tools to do their job. New Zealand First is the only party in three decades with the record of seriously boosting police numbers with the necessary funding, training, and personnel to meet the challenges of our growing population.

Our justice system and sentencing regime needs to work properly while ensuring that victims of crime are prioritised over offenders.

We believe that for the most serious crimes of first-degree murder and rape or murder of a child, life means life – with no chance of parole.

We believe organised crime, in particular the growing influence of transnational crime, needs to be dismantled and we will establish a dedicated agency to come down hard on organised criminal activity.

We believe that the judicial system in many cases has failed to ensure offenders are held to account and justice is being delivered. We will significantly increase the use of minimum mandatory sentences for serious violent and sexual offenders.

We will introduce a formal degrees of murder regime that will ensure charges of murder are appropriately categorised with a higher chance of success and not fail due to technicalities.

We will increase the thresholds of parole eligibility.

We will strengthen the Coward Punch law to ensure a minimum mandatory prison sentence of eight years non-parole for causing death.

New Zealand First full Law and Order policy package:

Police and Enforcement

• Ensure that police have the resources to do their job.
• Establish a dedicated agency for organized crime with a responsible minister to dismantle transnational criminal networks.
• Abolish the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and replace it with a specialised division within the NZ Police.  

Justice

• Increase the use of mandatory minimum sentences for serious violent and sexual offenders.
• Put victims first by developing a reparation system where the state assumes responsibility for immediate reparation to victims and responsibility for recovery from the offenders.  
• Increase sentences for attempted murder and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm from 14 years to 25 years.
• Introduce a formal 'degrees of murder' regime that increases the minimum non-parole period from 10 to 20 years and recognises
  • 1st Degree Murder which is life imprisonment without parole - “Life means life”.
  • 2^nd Degree Murder which is aggravated life sentence with a minimum sentence non-parole period of 30 years
  • 3^rd Degree Murder which is pre-meditated life sentence with a minimum non-parole period of 10 years

• Limit sentence discounts for factors other than a guilty plea to 10%. Guilty plea discounts will remain limited to 25% to ensure clearer demarcations.
• Raise standard parole eligibility to 75% of a sentence for long-term offenders. Those convicted of murder must be assessed as having a low probability of reoffending before release
• New Zealand First will strengthen the ‘Coward Punch’ law so that Coward punches causing death, will require Judges to impose a minimum non-parole period of 8 years imprisonment.
• Review transport penalty regimes to achieve greater consistency (e.g., comparing red-light running with stop-sign running), effectiveness (fines versus demerits), and efficacy (infringements versus court-required appearances)
• Oppose any further extension of the Clean-Slate law. 
• Require District Courts to proactively publish sentencing notes within 72 hours and limit final name suppression to extreme cases. This aims to ensure openness prevails in the legal system.
• Treat burglary to a home or private dwelling the same as aggravated burglary or home invasion, recognising that this type of crime has impacts against the person not just property.
• Strengthen self-defence laws by:
  • Investigating the implementation of ‘Castle Doctrine’ and ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws so that individuals have the confidence to defend their person and their property without a duty to retreat.
  • Amend Police operational and prosecution guidelines to make it clear that a person who “excessively defends” themselves or another when attacked or confronted in their own home or business is to be treated as a victim unless overwhelming evidence to the contrary is collected.
  • Amend the Solicitor-General’s prosecution guidelines to ensure substantial weight is given to the unlikelihood of a New Zealand jury finding guilty, a person who “excessively defends” themselves or another when attacked or confronted in their own home or business.
  • Require the Solicitor-General to review and endorse any intention to prosecute a person defending themselves or another when confronted in their own business or home, including declaring the prosecution is in the public interest and considered likely to result in a conviction.
    

• NZ First will defend our children and introduce tougher penalties for sexual violation, including life imprisonment for rape against children.