Technology shortens our distances

Last week I went to Australia for not quite three days. It seems extravagant to go so far for so short a time, yet many do it frequently for work or for pleasure. For my trip, the purpose was to explore two areas where I have ministerial responsibility: courts and youth justice.

Australia has an advantage in the urban areas in that populations in the millions in a city mean, in comparison with New Zealand, the Aussies can have whole countries' worth of agencies, departments and facilities across short distances.

However, the story is quite different in their rural areas, where a policeman making an arrest in a country town might have to drive 300 kilometres to a court, then another 300k to place that person in custody, then another 300k to get home.

Technology is shortening those distances and, in New South Wales and Victoria, they are working hard to advance the use of audio visual links (AVL) to cut down the drive times. An application or an appearance before a judge or meeting with a lawyer may well be done by teleconference, saving hundreds of kilometres in travel time. Not having to drive those distances means people are free to work more productively in their own patch.

Another example was quoted where family members with a relative in prison had not been able to visit in years because of the distance. With the ability to "visit" via AVL, they can rebuild that relationship, which we know helps reduce the chance the person will reoffend once he leaves prison.

In an age where we don't shop, pay our bills, do our banking, book flights or send flowers anything like we did 10 years ago, there was always going to be change. Yet we frequently think of these changes as eroding services and not enhancing them.

The ability to lay charges in a court without typing out paperwork, driving to a courthouse, signing, swearing and filing the paperwork every time a person is arrested will save police and court staff huge amounts of time. It is estimated that an electronic operating model implemented in this country will save 93,000 man hours per year for police officers' and courts' staff time.

I was interested to compare the over-representation rates of Australian Aborigines in New South Wales (4 per cent of the population) and Maori (about 12 per cent of our population). Yet both make up about 55 per cent of the young people held in secure residence. While there is some movement towards addressing this imbalance on both sides of the Tasman, I can say we are moving faster and getting better results.

Once again, I find that although Kiwis have an innate sense that what is happening overseas must be flasher, bigger and brighter than what we are doing at home, this is not always the case. There is nothing arrogant about acknowledging we have a lot to learn and, at the same time, knowing we do some things very well in comparison to those who are bigger and richer.