The second bit—that "excessive and disproportionate punishment by preventing sentencing judges from taking the circumstances of the offenders and offending into account.", is to me the real reason the Labour Party's against this. You see, this is about the judiciary and a judiciary-pleasing Government that wants judges to decide, not this Parliament. This is actually a constitutional argument. I'm not going to deliver a treatise on that here, but there is a growing trend from our judiciary in New Zealand seeking to push back against Parliament and assert interpretations that aren't conventional on parliamentary statutes and powers for themselves that they have never had. In relation to sentencing of criminal justice, courts increasingly want to assert that a complete judicial discretion belongs and exists for them. Well, they are wrong. There is no such principle. Parliament and its sovereignty determines sentencing policy, as well as a raft of other things, not the judiciary.