In New Zealand’s ongoing debate over justice reform, one group remains consistently sidelined with a section of the political class: the victims. The recent backlash from the Labour Party against a new sentencing provision—where judges may consider an offender’s compensation to their victim when determining a sentence—shows just how reluctant some political leaders are to centre victims in criminal justice policy.
Labour has condemned the policy on the grounds that it could create inequality between offenders, claiming that wealthy individuals might be able to “buy their way out” of prison time while poorer offenders cannot. This argument, while dressed in the language of fairness, is a deflection. It avoids the more important question: what does justice look like for the people who are actually harmed by crime?
The idea that compensating victims could influence sentencing is not radical. It does not guarantee shorter sentences for those who pay, nor does it let anyone off the hook. It simply gives judges another tool—a human tool—to acknowledge when an offender makes a genuine attempt to repair harm. Labour’s response, however, treats this tool as a threat rather than an opportunity. Their focus is not on victims, but on making sure offenders are treated equally, even if that means victims continue to receive nothing.
That position is more than a missed opportunity—it’s a betrayal of the people the justice system is supposed to protect. It’s easy to argue that compensation introduces inequality between offenders. What’s harder—but far more necessary—is to ask why the system has tolerated massive inequality between offenders and victims for so long. Victims are rarely compensated in meaningful ways. They often leave courtrooms with no recognition of the financial and emotional cost they’ve endured. They are frequently retraumatised by the legal process. And they are largely invisible in policy debates that revolve almost entirely around sentencing length, rehabilitation, and systemic bias.
Labour has said this reform won’t work because most offenders can’t afford to pay. But instead of offering a plan to make compensation more enforceable, or advocating for better systems to support victims, they’ve chosen to oppose the very idea that victims could get something real out of a criminal proceeding. That’s not leadership. That’s evasion. It’s easier to score political points by invoking fairness among offenders than it is to admit the justice system is already deeply unfair to victims.
This is not about whether the reform is transformative. It won’t overhaul the system. It won’t solve the deep structural problems that plague our courts. But it does something that most policies don’t—it puts victims on the radar. And that’s precisely why the political response matters. When a party actively works to remove even that small gesture, it reveals a mindset stuck in an outdated, offender-centric view of justice.
What Labour should have said is this: compensation alone is not enough—but victims deserve more. They deserve practical, enforceable mechanisms to receive what they’re owed. They deserve access to trauma-informed support, to legal aid, and to a process that doesn’t sideline them after their first police interview. They deserve to know that someone in Parliament is thinking about them—not just the person who harmed them. That would have been the responsible position. That would have been leadership.
Instead, concerns for hypothetical disparities between offenders have overshadowed the lived reality of thousands of New Zealanders who have suffered loss, violence, and trauma with little or no redress. For these victims, justice often feels like a hollow word—an abstract process that excludes them from its outcomes. They’re expected to show up, relive their pain in court, and then quietly disappear while the legal system debates rehabilitation theories.
Political leadership demands more than technocratic quibbling about fairness between people who have committed harm. It requires the courage to acknowledge the people harmed. It requires policies that deliver real-world results—not just ideological consistency. Until that shift happens, victims will remain footnotes in their own stories—referenced politely in press releases but excluded from the benefits of reform.
The sentencing provision in question may be small, and imperfect, but it says something our system rarely does: that victims matter. Labour’s reflexive rejection of this measure speaks volumes. If even a modest attempt to offer victims compensation is too much, what does that say about the political will to ever prioritise them in more meaningful ways?
The challenge now is clear. Victims don’t need more apologies or vague commitments. They need a justice system—and political leaders—that actively sees them, hears them, and fights for them. Anything less is not justice. It’s betrayal.