Parole (Extended Supervision) and SentencingAmendment Bill

I move, That the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill be now read a first time. It is my intention to move that the bill be referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee for consideration, and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during questions for oral answer and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week when there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 193, 196(1)(b) and (c).

Part 1 contains the major policy initiative. It creates an active management regime for child sex offenders in the community, aimed at managing the long-term risks posed by those offenders. Part 2 contains a number of miscellaneous amendments to the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act. Some amendments clarify the legislation to ensure that the original policy intent underlying particular provisions is implemented. There are also technical amendments to deal with drafting errors.

The active management regime for child sex offenders will allow extended supervision orders to be imposed on child sex offenders who are likely to continue to sexually victimise children once their sentence is finished. There is currently no provision for that to occur. This bill allows monitoring, for up to 10 years, of child sex offenders who have received a finite sentence of imprisonment for a relevant offence, and who the court determines are likely to reoffend following the expiry of their sentence. Offenders covered by that provision are those who have committed child sex offences under the Crimes Act, or sexual violation, or attempted sexual violation where a child victim is involved.

The Department of Corrections will assess all offenders serving a finite sentence of imprisonment for a relevant offence to determine whether an application should be made, before the end of the sentence, for an extended supervision order. Where an assessment indicates that the offender has a high or a medium-high risk of offending, again the department will apply to the sentencing court for an order. The court can impose an order of up to 10 years, if satisfied that the offender is likely to commit further child sex offences once the offender’s sentence has ended. The offender will be given notice of the application, and will have the opportunity to appear personally or be represented by counsel to defend the matter.

The bill provides also for a right of appeal for both the department and the offender against any decision to grant or decline an application. If an offender is made subject to an order, standard parole-type conditions will apply automatically throughout the term of the order. In addition, the Parole Board can impose special conditions that can include home detention – type conditions and conditions prohibiting the offender from going to specified places or areas. Home-detention conditions can apply for up to the first 12 months. Other special conditions can apply for the full term of the order.

The board can also require the offender to be subject to electronic monitoring to check compliance with these conditions. The more rigorous conditions will apply to the highest risk offenders, who justify a more intensive management regime. Transitional provisions will ensure that orders can be sought for those currently serving a sentence, or under parole or release supervision conditions, as at the date of introduction of this bill. This ensures that those worst offenders, sentenced before the Sentencing Act of 2002 made preventive detention more widely available, do not simply “fall through the cracks”.

Part 2 makes a number of amendments to the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act to deal with minor issues. They include technical amendments that deal with drafting matters, such as incorrect cross-references, drafting omissions, and anomalies. This part also clarifies several provisions to ensure that original policy intentions underlying particular provisions are implemented. Amendments include changes to provisions relating to home detention, deferral of sentences, and minimum terms of imprisonment.

Front-end home detention is potentially available to those sentenced to a term of less than 2 years’ imprisonment. The bill amends the Act to make it clear that the law does not require that leave to apply for home detention be granted in the normal course of events. The amendments in the bill emphasise that the court has the primary role in determining whether wider sentencing considerations—such as denunciation, deterrence, safety of the community, the offender’s background, and information in the victim’s impact statement—make home detention inappropriate. This will reduce the number of offenders being referred to the Parole Board—which is currently declining 40 percent of those given leave to apply for home detention by the courts.

A related issue is the deferral of sentences to allow offenders granted leave to apply for home detention to make that application to the Parole Board. Again, that is being granted more frequently than intended. The bill requires that where a sentence is deferred the court must impose bail conditions. It also tightens the use of deferral by requiring the court to first be satisfied that there are exceptional circumstances.

The bill amends section 86 of the Sentencing Act, which relates to minimum terms of imprisonment, where the Court of Appeal has identified language taken from previous legislation as being problematic. The new wording makes it absolutely clear that minimal non-parole periods above one-third of the sentence should be imposed in cases where the statutory minimum would be insufficient to deter, denounce, and punish a serious crime. A similar amendment is made to section 103 relating to setting the minimum periods of parole in murder sentences. A further substantive change is to allow anyone on parole to be placed under electronic monitoring, where necessary to reduce the risk of reoffending. This has been determined as being consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Finally, I believe it would be useful for the select committee to consider Deborah Coddington’s Sex Offenders Registry Bill, regarding the registration of sex offenders, alongside this bill. The committee could examine whether a register might strengthen inter-agency information sharing and assist in the safety of the management of sex offenders in the community.

In conclusion, the main change that this bill introduces is the power to place recidivist child sex offenders under extended supervision for up to 10 years. This will apply to offenders currently in prison or on parole, as well as, of course, those convicted after this bill becomes law. In the highest risk cases, such offenders will be under a strict monitoring and control regime. Crown Law has indicated that this may constitute a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. However, I believe that the right of children to be protected in these instances must come before the right to total freedom of a child sex offender released from prison who is deemed likely to offend again. Children are the most vulnerable group in our community and they warrant special protection. In these circumstances, I believe that a breach can be justified. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is nothing but a political gimmick by a Minister of Justice who is under pressure for his complete and utter failure in the leadership of the justice system in New Zealand. The fact is that this bill will do absolutely nothing to protect any child from a paedophile. Not one child will be protected from a paedophile because of this bill promoted by Mr Goff. All that this bill is about is trying to appear to be tough, whereas this Government’s record on this sort of stuff is appallingly bad. If it were not for the National Party in Opposition raising the appalling cases of Barry Allan Ryder and Lloyd Alexander McIntosh, this failed Minister of Justice would not have done anything.

Let me tell the House about Mr Goff. Mr Goff made his reputation on the back of Barry Allan Ryder, saying he would never let Barry Allan Ryder be released from jail. Mr Goff railed against Mrs Shipley and railed against Sir Douglas Graham, and said if he were Minister of Justice, those people would never be released from prison. Then we discovered that Barry Allan Ryder, a paedophile who repeatedly sexually abused young children, had been released under Mr Goff’s watch. What did Mr Goff say? He said he did not know that. Yet Mr Goff is the man who made his reputation on the back of that paedophile. He said that Barry Allan Ryder would never be released; he said he would not allow that to happen.

But Mr Goff did allow Barry Allan Ryder to be released, and Mr Goff never ever asked what the parole conditions were. When the National Party revealed to the public that Barry Allan Ryder was being released, and had been released, Mr Goff said that he was not going to ask what the parole conditions were. He said he could not ask that. It was not until the National Party, New Zealand First, ACT, and the media put pressure on the New Zealand Parole Board and this weak Minister of Justice that the parole conditions were released. Those conditions showed that this Government could not guarantee the safety of children in Christchurch with Barry Allan Ryder in the community. What happened is that Barry Allan Ryder, under the watch of this Government’s bureaucracy, was allowed to sexually abuse two young boys in Christchurch, and this Minister said he could do nothing. But he made his reputation on the case of that paedophile.

Then we discovered the case of Lloyd Alexander McIntosh—another offender whom Mr Goff said he would never allow out of jail. But we discovered that Lloyd Alexander McIntosh was being paroled—released into Palmerston North—and this Minister and Mr Maharey, only after pressure from the Opposition parties, decided they would say to the public of New Zealand that they would do everything possible to eliminate the risk his behaviour posed to children in Palmerston North. Lloyd Alexander McIntosh is a vile individual who was sent to jail for raping a 6-year-old child and who then, within months of being released from prison, raped a 23-month-old child. That individual should never be allowed out of jail. Mr Goff said he would stop that sort of person from being released, but he did not do so. Only when we raised the case did Mr Goff even look into the circumstances. What happened in that case was that those Ministers said they had 24-hour, 7-day-a-week supervision in place, and that would protect the people of Palmerston North. Well, what happened? Lloyd Alexander McIntosh assaulted a young woman in his home, while a security guard employed by this Government was outside the door. That man, Lloyd Alexander McIntosh, told somebody that he had almost raped the girl while a Government-employed person was outside the door. He was allowed to do that. Why did the security guard not go and stop him? It was because the security guard was worried about McIntosh’s privacy.

So the Government is rapidly, given the embarrassment of those two cases, bringing forward this bill. “Mr Get-tough Goff” says that this legislation means that paedophiles can be supervised 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week, for 10 years. Do members know what the National Party was able to reveal to the people of New Zealand? The only supervision that this bill provides for after 1 year is the attachment of an electronic bracelet. Apparently attaching an electronic bracelet will prevent a paedophile from reoffending! Mr Goff, who pretended to know all about the subject in the House, was embarrassed when he had to front up to the fact that all that a bracelet would tell the monitoring agency is where the person is, not whom he or she is with. That means that someone monitoring the electronic bracelet will be able to say where a paedophile is, but not whom the paedophile is with. That is the problem.

What we had in this Parliament was the Department of Corrections being completely confused about this bill, and finally admitting that the 24-hour, 7-day-a-week supervision that Mr Goff had promised New Zealanders could be delivered only in the first 12 months, only if the person was under home detention conditions, and only if there was a full-time supervisor living in the home detention area. That means that not only does the person have to be under home detention—and as Mr Mark knows, what about the many New Zealanders on home detention who leave their bracelets on the bench and wander around the pubs anyway—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Oh, yeah! Where’s the evidence for that, or are you making it up?

It has happened in Mount Maunganui, and that Minister knows it. So what about all those people? They have their bracelets, and apparently they are on home detention; but there would not be one person on home detention who has been sent to a place where there is 24-hour supervision. There would not be one.

This legislation is a gimmick. It will not work. This Minister is only responding to the Opposition’s pressure. This bill is hopeless. I tell Mr Goff that he misled this House. I will tell members what the Department of Corrections told the Law and Order Committee: no paedophile will be monitored for 10 years. That is what the Government’s advisers told the select committee. Do members want to know what the extensive supervision of paedophiles will be? The head of the Community Probation Service told us that in the first few months, extended supervision will include two visits with a parole officer a week, and after 2 years it will go down to one visit with the parole officer every 3 months. Well, how will an electronic bracelet and a quarterly visit with a parole officer stop the likes of Barry Allan Ryder abusing young children? I ask Mr Goff how an electronic bracelet and a quarterly visit from a parole officer will stop a paedophile from abusing a child. It will not do so.

This bill is a sham. It will not save one child from the abuse of a paedophile. This Government is perpetrating a fraud on the people of New Zealand. There is no way that an electronic bracelet can stop a paedophile from reoffending. This Government should be passing a law that allows a judge to be convinced that some of those people should never be released from jail, and that extends preventive detention for those sorts of individuals. Mr Goff promised he would do something like that, and he has not. He talks tough, and votes soft.

I rise to speak in support of this bill that is being introduced by the Hon Phil Goff. I support the bill, despite that irrational and very unhelpful contribution from a former Minister of Justice, who actually had an opportunity when he had a warrant in that portfolio area to try to do something about the issues he raised in Parliament tonight. Mr Goff has introduced legislation that will bring about an active management regime for child sex offenders in the community, which will be aimed at managing the long-term risks posed by those offenders. It is a proactive and practical way of doing something about that, rather than sitting on the Opposition benches and crying crocodile tears over these very important issues.

That member over there on the Government benches certainly did not earn anything of the huge, magnificent salary that he is paid with that speech. That is the sort of speech that I will make sure New Zealand First members tout around his electorate, to show his constituents how much work he does in this House. It was an absolutely pathetic contribution, no doubt written by a senior Cabinet Minister, and handed to him the minute before he spoke, with an instruction from the whip to get up and read it out, and then to sit down and shut up. The party that member belongs to does not want to hear him speak in this House. That is why they gave him 1 minute to speak on a very important bill such as this, which we will support being referred through to the select committee.

💬 Darren Hughes: Get on and talk about it.

That member is now making a longer contribution, by interjection, than he has made in this House in 3 months. What a useless, pathetic example he is of a young man to have in this House. I have to say that that reflects this bill.

This bill is a sham and a scam. What the Minister did not tell the House about this bill is that it contains technical amendments to address drafting matters such as incorrect cross-references, anomalies, omissions, and greater clarification of expressions in the much-vaunted sentencing and parole legislation that he brought to the House. It contains amendments to clarify that much-vaunted legislation, hailed as Norm Withers’ answer to all his prayers. Here we are, now correcting and amending the wonderful sentencing and parole legislation, because as we said in the Committee stage—where I did not hear one contribution from that young man who spoke before me—it was flawed from the outset. We said it would not contain—

💬 Darren Hughes: I was not in Parliament then, you fool!

Well, it was a good decision not to have that member in Parliament then. Someone got it wrong thereafter. I would have thought that that young man would stand up and refer to that, but he did not. That was an absolutely pathetic contribution. My comments about that obviously hurt him, and that is why he is interjecting a lot. He does not want us to publish that speech throughout his electorate.

I turn to the provisions on home detention in section 97 of the Sentencing Act and section 35 of the much-vaunted Parole Act. Excuse me! We were told there was nothing wrong with that legislation. All the Opposition cries were ignored—no problems. Yet here we are, using up valuable taxpayers’ time to correct and amend that legislation. Government members hate that.

💬 Jill Pettis: Sit down, then.

There goes the parrot—the fishmonger’s wife must be back screeching across the Chamber.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, no—

I thought that came from the gallery.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER:: The member knows that he must address members properly.

I was not talking to her. I just heard a squawk.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will withdraw and apologise.

Well, I withdraw and apologise for not recognising that the squawk came from that honourable member.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, no. Please be seated. The member will withdraw and apologise without making reference to what he is withdrawing and apologising for. He knows that is outside the Standing Orders.

I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. In the interests of fairness, a lack of prejudice, and good and proper order, I say I do not mind solid interjections that have a point. But screeching across the Chamber in that manner is surely unacceptable.

I return to home detention, and section 97 of the Sentencing Act. Who raised the issue about the problems contained in that section? It certainly was not Jill Pettis. It certainly was not that young man, whose name I cannot remember. It certainly was not Mr Goff or Clayton Cosgrove, and it certainly was not my honourable rugby-playing mate Damien O’Connor. That issue was raised as a result of a constituent in the Canterbury region telling me about a horrendous case where a person who had embezzled his company of $140,000—

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: A constituent?

It is a constituent that one of that member’s fellow MPs was not looking after. That is why he came to me. I will not say he came from the Christchurch central area, but he did not want to go to a Government member of Parliament, so he came to me. It was something to do with orientation or something; I do not know what the issue was. That man saw his employee sentenced to jail, and a week later he saw her on the street. The employee had got into trouble by gambling at the casino, getting herself hugely into debt, and she then embezzled the company she worked for of $140,000.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: Sounds like Tuku.

I thank Mr Cosgrove for that; I will remind Dover Samuels of that comment. That employee was sentenced to jail, and a week later she was found out on the street.

But, worse than that, that employee was spotted in the Hoon Hay Working Men’s Club, gambling on the pokie machines again. How did she get there? The much-vaunted sentencing and parole legislation allowed the judges to give her the right to apply for home detention and to give her that leave, and that leave was given at large in the community. It is called a deferred sentence. She is now out at large for another 3, 4, or 6 weeks, and is back into the same activity that got her into trouble to start with. And the businessman who is out of pocket by $140,000 has to swallow that and accept it. I think not! We raised that case in this House, and, finally, the Government is doing something about it. But what was the Government’s first reaction? It was to say it would cover it over by putting through a Statutes Amendment Bill. Like heck, it will! We said the Government should come back and address all the problems contained in that legislation, including that of child sex offenders, which Mr Goff is now attempting to deal with.

There is a fundamental issue with regard to child sex offenders that I believe this Government will not face up to, because the rot started during the time when Helen Clark was the Minister of Health. It relates to deinstitutionalisation, and to whether child sex offenders and paedophiles are mad or bad. Hello! There is no answer from Labour on that. Are child sex offenders and paedophiles mad or bad? Are the people who prey on our children doing so because they are bad, nasty, horrible people of sane mind, or because they are mentally impaired and intellectually disabled—mad, as opposed as to bad? If they are mad, they should not be in jail, and we should not be passing laws like this to catch them. We should have institutions and asylums where we can put those people and care for them, and where they are protected from society and society is protected from them. But this Government, fundamentally and ideologically, will not stand for, tolerate, or allow institutions to exist, because it has carefully constructed its arguments to stigmatise institutions.

Not only does the Government stigmatise institutions but it also stigmatises every person who supported them and worked in them. I remember Ruth Richardson being one person, and the Labour Party members being other people, who went about and condemned anyone who worked at the Templeton Centre as being institutionalised himself of herself. They said those workers did not know what they were talking about and had nothing constructive to offer. The warnings of such workers that this sort of thing would happen fell on the deaf ears of Helen Clark, who wears medals for closing 29 hospitals and getting rid of institutions.

💬 Jill Pettis: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. A case with regard to the allegation that the member has just made has been in front of the courts. What the member has just said has been proven to be totally incorrect, and I request that he withdraw and apologise. Helen Clark did not close 29 hospitals, at all.

It is a matter of debate. It was 32, actually.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is a matter for debate.

What else do we have in this bill? Home detention is an issue, and it will be partially addressed in this bill. We would be a lot happier if this bill contained the repeal of all home detention law altogether. Part of the control on the paedophiles and sexual predators who attack children depends and relies on 24/7 supervision, which we now know will not necessarily involve having a person standing beside the criminally convicted offender. It may instead rely on electronic monitoring. The honourable Dale Jones is a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, and he will be sitting on it through the consideration of this bill. We will be looking at that issue closely. Everything that we have heard from members of the Department of Corrections in the Law and Order Committee is that an ankle bracelet will not stop a paedophile abusing or sexually molesting a child. The ankle bracelet does not leap to criminals’ necks and choke them to death, does not handcuff them to the nearest power pole, and does not physically restrain them. All that it does is to go off when they are outside their designated place. We now know that the designated place is subject to whatever conditions or impositions the Parole Board and probation officers impose, which is just so open-ended as to be ridiculous.

We have heard much about global positioning systems from the Minister himself. Let me tell the House that a global positioning system device will tell us where a person raped a child; it will not stop that person doing it. This bill is fundamentally flawed in those respects. If we are to have 24/7 supervision, let us have it in a mental institution or a proper asylum where the staff can give the person good medical care, and where the person will be out of circulation but will be looked after professionally, not looked after by a Chubb Security guard who is paid $9 an hour and has had no professional training whatsoever on how to care for, monitor, and look after people like that.

It is timely that this bill has come to the House and that we are finally to deal with some of the problems. But I suggest to this House that this Government has a lot more cleaning-up to do in its own backyard, and much of what needs to be addressed dates from 1984-87. Is it not sad that such a number of casualties in the community have fallen by the wayside since then?

The Green Party supports this bill. The Green Party supported the sentencing and parole legislation when it came through this House, and this bill contains a number of amendments to it. At the time we welcomed that legislation, because we thought it made a number of significant advances in the area of sentencing and parole—in particular, the legislative provision that it made for restorative justice, and also the recognition that the safety of the community should be the primary consideration when considering parole. It removed an inflexible arrangement under the previous legislation that had provided for automatic release. So the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act allow for earlier release when that is warranted, but also allow a person to be kept in prison until the end of his or her sentence if that is necessary. That legislation also amended the provisions around preventive detention, and made that provision more available. It made it more likely that people convicted of particularly heinous offences will get preventive detention.

This amendment bill has provisions to clarify the intention of some parts of the current legislation and to rectify some technical errors, but in many ways the major thrust behind this bill is to address a specific problem that was outstanding from the previous legislation—legislation that was presided over and left unaddressed by the parties of the right that, whenever we have justice and law and order debates, come into the House and make much noise about how they are tough on crime. But, of course, what we hear from them is a lot of talk. As my colleague Darren Hughes mentioned, when they had the opportunity to actually address the situation they did very little.

💬 Ron Mark: So did the member.

I say to Mr Mark that I was not here in Parliament then. One of the things that concerns me is hearing some members of this House stand up and describe with such relish some of the heinous acts that we are talking about. That really makes me wonder, sometimes.

Tony Ryall and Ron Mark both criticised the electronic monitoring provisions. I am not sure exactly what they suggest, but it seems to me that the alternative is to suggest that we keep people locked up indefinitely after their sentence has expired, regardless of that fact. The point is that this is a problem that arose under the old legislation. Under the current legislation such people would get preventive detention. The fact is that they were sentenced under the previous regime, and this bill is an attempt to clear up that anomaly and deal with that issue, which was so ignored by the parties of the right when they were in power.

The bill provides for extended supervision for up to 10 years after the expiry of a sentence. The Green Party is concerned that those provisions do not comply with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and that there are issues around double jeopardy. Effectively, people are being resentenced for something they have already received a sentence for, and there are clear privacy implications around the electronic monitoring provisions. We believe that those things need to be looked at very carefully in the select committee—in particular, at how warranted those provisions are, and, if they are warranted, at how best to constrain those powers so that the abuse of them is minimised.

However, the Green Party does agree that we have to do something about the situation. We have to do something to address the very serious problem of convicted child sex offenders—who will almost certainly reoffend—being released into the community at the end of their sentence. It is not good enough for us simply to say that we will wait for them to reoffend or to attack again before we do something about that, and to see another traumatised child. We have to do something about that, so the Green Party supports the referral of this bill to a select committee. We acknowledge that the bill attempts to balance the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act concerns with the concern for the safety of the community. We are not sure that the bill has fully achieved that, but, of course, the job of the select committee is to work through those details.

As has been said, one of the provisions concerns the minimum non-parole period. It is clear that the Court of Appeal has asked Parliament to clarify the intention behind those provisions of the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act. The bill does that, and it is important that we are responsive to the courts when they ask for that clarification. The bill talks about using minimum non-parole terms where one-third of a sentence would represent insufficient punishment, denunciation, and deterrent, and also to clarify that the safety of the community is relevant. The Green Party is of the opinion that the safety of the community should be the paramount concern and should be the core issue that informs that decision. Again, that is something we need to look at further in the select committee.

The Minister has already talked about the provisions around home detention and the deferral of the beginning of a sentence. With regard to home detention, it is clear that the proper function of the court is to filter such applications, to ensure that cases generally meet the eligibility criteria. Then it is up to the probation service to identify whether specific circumstances meet the criteria. The courts have been remiss in addressing that issue, and have been too prepared to allow applications for home detention. The fact that over half of them are being knocked back shows that that is the case. Again, the bill contains a sensible provision to tidy that up, and to reinforce and clarify the policy intention behind the legislation. Similarly, that is the case around the deferral of the starting date of a sentence.

The Green Party supports the bill and believes that it is useful. It addresses a serious problem that continues from the previous legislation. It contains some provisions to tidy up and clarify the current Sentencing Act and Parole Act. The bill contains some challenges for the Justice and Electoral Committee, and it will work through those things.

I finish by mentioning that Ron Mark did raise some very serious concerns around the issue of mental health and inmates. He is quite correct that that is a serious problem. The estimated number of people in the prison system who have mental health issues tells us that this Parliament must address those problems. We cannot continue to lock up people who are mentally unwell because we do not provide proper supervised facilities for them in the community outside the prison system, or within the prison system. We agree with Mr Mark that that issue does need to be addressed and that this Parliament needs to take it seriously. Apart from that, I commend this bill to the House.

I rise for United Future in support of the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill. The bill before us that provides for a regime of extended supervision for dangerous sex offenders is—at least in intent—timely. In the very near future, a number of child sex offenders sentenced under the old sentencing regime will be coming up for parole and eventual release. Under the new Sentencing Act, the worst type of sex offenders to which the new regime applies will have received preventive detention, and the justice system maintains control over them potentially for the rest of their natural lives—if not in actuality, through the imposition of that penalty. But as the Minister has already mentioned, at present we face the situation where a number of offenders—there is not expected to be a huge number—will slip through the cracks and soon find themselves out in the community free to offend again, which almost certainly they will.

A bill of this sort is necessary, and that is why we will support it through to a select committee. Further, we recognise the time-sensitive nature of the bill. The longer we leave it, the greater the opportunity there is for offenders to be left unsupervised in the community. That is why we will support the Minister’s motion to have the Justice and Electoral Committee sit during House hours.

The bill provides for a regime of supervision for child sex offenders to take place for a maximum of 10 years, although the exact supervision time is left to the discretion of the courts. Given my experience with the courts’ use of maximum penalties, I fear that many offenders may not actually receive 10 years worth of supervision after they exit the prison system. In many cases, they may need even more. How often have we seen examples of child sex offenders who will display a pattern of pathological offending for their entire lives? If we set 10 years as the maximum, how long will they actually get? Probably 4 or 5 years. My view is that we ought to set a higher maximum, given the expectation that the courts will generally apply only about two-thirds of the potential sentence, or less. I will be interested to hear the views of experts at the select committee on the appropriate time that such offenders ought to be monitored for, and how they should be monitored.

Some have complained that the new regime breaches a number of provisions in the Bill of Rights—namely, the double-jeopardy rule that an offender ought not to be punished twice for the same offence; the principle against retrospective law that offenders ought to know what penalty they are in for when they commit the offence, and the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The Attorney-General found that the bill before us breached the Bill of Rights in those ways, and that such breaches were not demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society.

I beg to differ, as does much of the public. In my view, such limits on offenders are completely and utterly justifiable, given the severity of the offences committed. They are justifiable because they must be weighed up against the rights of others to be free from the sick and perverse violence that those offenders carry out on our most vulnerable. They are justifiable because it is exactly that kind of narrow thinking about the absolute rights of those offenders that all too often produces the absurdities of our justice system that frustrate so many New Zealanders in their search for justice. They are justifiable for all victims of sexual violence who find that their rights as victims have been ignored in favour of the rights of those who have so grievously breached ours in the first place. They are justifiable because implicit in the social contract is an expectation of the State that when we as individuals give up our right to exact personal revenge on those who have wronged us, the State will deliver that justice for us, and against those who have harmed us.

Just how are the parents of children who have been offended against supposed to feel, knowing that their child’s rapist will soon be out, and that there is nothing that can be done about that, short of them taking up the shotgun themselves? We have only to look at Mark Middleton’s anger and rage to understand exactly what parents will feel. That is why I support this new amendment, because it goes a very small way towards resetting that balance. It is a recognition that sometimes offenders no longer deserve all the protections and rights that all other innocent citizens have had, simply because they have trampled all over ours.

There are a number of other matters in the bill that I would also like to comment on briefly. Section 86 of the Sentencing Act is to be amended to clarify that in setting minimum non-parole periods, the safety of the community is actually taken into account—a seemingly obvious factor to account for when determining any prison term—and United Future applauds that change.

United Future also supports the use of this bill to plug a number of holes regarding home detention and deferrable sentences. Presently, we see many cases in which offenders provided with leave to apply for home detention are also granted a deferral of sentence while they apply to the Parole Board. However, they will often wait until the end of that deferral period before applying for home detention. Of those who do, about 40 percent are finally turned down. This situation clearly casts significant doubt on the safety of allowing such convicted offenders deferred sentences in the first place.

The bill addresses this issue in a number of ways. Firstly, sentence deferrals are being granted far too easily. In large part, this has been due to the courts’ interpretation of the phrase “special circumstances.” Section 101 will be amended to provide that deferrals are granted only in extraordinary circumstances. The effect of that is that sentence deferrals will be granted in considerably fewer cases. Secondly, the bill clarifies the courts’ role in determining applications for leave to apply for home detention. Until now, the courts have interpreted section 97 of the Sentencing Act as narrowing their discretion in deciding that leave to apply should be granted in the normal course of events. Clearly, this ought not to be the case. One need only look at the recent case of Darren McDonald to be convinced of that. Thus we are pleased to see that the courts’ role has been clarified and widened to emphasise the fact that they have a sifting role to apply to home detention applicants.

This bill is far from perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. One of the main problems already discussed prior to this debate is the mental health aspect. We have taken away the ability to incarcerate people in institutions with the false promise of community care that simply cannot do the job. In return, we have had police having to play psychologist, and the court system having to play psychologist and psychiatric nanny in putting these people in prison—a place where some of them simply do not belong. We have to revisit how we actually protect our citizens from these individuals outside of a prison environment. I think we need to revisit the mental health aspect, and the opportunity of putting in place institutions that can account for these individuals.

I commend this bill to the House, but I trust that the select committee will take a well-meaning but flawed bill and return to the House a bill worthy of the victims it seeks to protect in the first place.

I rise to speak on behalf of the ACT party on the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill. I would like to start by saying what a risk repeat child sex offenders are to society. They strike fear into the hearts of parents up and down the country. It would be one’s worst nightmare to know that a repeat child sex offender had moved into the neighbourhood and was being unsupervised. If repeat child sex offenders are released and are in our communities up and down the country, we have to say that parents are justified in not wanting their children to walk home from school any more, and in not wanting their teenagers to be out at night roaming the streets any more. At the moment we do not know where these offenders are, but what we do know is that every so often they offend, and when they offend it is a terrible tragedy.

This bill would be welcomed by Parliament in general, because it seems to signal that the Government is addressing a real problem in our communities. It sounds like a bill that actually will protect children. When we read the bill, we see that when such offenders are released from prison, they will be on home detention for 12 months and monitored for 10 years. So on the face of it, it sounds good, but I have to say that this is typical Labour Party spin. It is flimflam. If we look beneath the surface of this bill, we find that there is no substance to it. It is simply fine words to make New Zealanders think the Government cares, when there are no teeth in this bill that will keep those sex offenders off the streets and children safe. It is very disturbing to be an Opposition member of Parliament and see a bill that is simply a joke—and that is what it is. In spite of the fine words of the Minister, this bill will not save children—not at all. If the Minister were actually serious about trying to do something in this area, there is a multitude of things he could have done, but it would not have been the words in this bill, which are simply words without substance.

Home detention is a joke—we already know that. There are so many instances already where offenders leave the bracelet at home so that Chubb thinks that they are in their houses; meanwhile, they are out around the town with their mates. That goes on today. How does the Minister think it will be any different for child sex offenders? Well, it will not be. There will be no extra monitoring—nothing. Again, people will think it is a good idea, but it will not work. There is nothing to stop those sex offenders using the Internet and doing all sorts of things that most of us would not even dream of. There is nothing to stop people from visiting their homes. The bracelet is meant to stop them going out, but we know that people can get away with going out and, as I said, leaving the bracelet at home.

The extended supervision is a joke. The Law and Order Committee has already heard that offenders cannot have that supervision—that no paedophile can be monitored for 10 years. The officials were quite clear on that. They said it would not work, so those words in the bill are totally hollow. All they are designed to do is make New Zealanders who do not know the detail of this bill think that the Government cares. Well, it simply does not.

I understand that when somebody comes out of prison and goes on extended supervision, they might get two visits a week from the parole officer in their own homes. Two visits a week! What about all the rest of the hours in the week? They will be up to their own tricks, and nobody will be keeping an eye on them. After that, it will diminish to one visit every 3 months. How can the Minister stand in this House and tell members of Parliament and the country that extended supervision is tough when it means one visit every 3 months? What a joke! That is disgraceful and pathetic from that Minister.

The bill also brings in retrospective provisions, and I have to say that the ACT party does not agree with that. If we had good policing, we would not need retrospectivity—it is not a good way to bring in laws. Tough policing would do exactly what this Minister wants to do by way of retrospective clauses. If we look at the real issue—and it has been brought out in this debate—we see that there are some people who commit offences against children and who should not be out in the community ever. They should be on preventive detention. They should never be released.

But I have to challenge that Minister whether an ordinary criminal prison is the right place for them to be. I think he would agree that the answer is no. They should be in special forensic mental health institutions. We have one or two in New Zealand, and that is all. There are simply not enough of them to cope. We need more of them in this country so that those people who have a particular mental health problem that makes them into monsters—essentially, those who cannot be trusted to be out in the community—are treated in an appropriate institution, instead of being in a prison where the prison officers cannot even administer medication to them. We have an absolutely hopeless situation where probably 10 percent of prisoners in this country need proper medication, and the prison officials cannot give it to them because the Acts do not allow it.

These people should be locked away in proper institutions and given the correct care they need. They should not be allowed out onto the streets under this stupid regime of supervision that the Minister is trying to pretend is tough. It is a joke, and it is also pathetic. The bill was written by a Labour Party that wants to pretend it is tough on crime, when all of us in the Opposition know that it is soft on crime and just talks tough.

This bill is a disgrace. It does not address the very serious problem of those repeat sex offenders who want to offend against anybody over the age of 16. The bill has all these tough provisions—as long as the victim is 16 years of age or younger. What about people like Taffy Hotene? I ask the Minister how he would feel if that dangerous, recidivist, violent rapist was released on parole in his neighbourhood? How would the Minister feel about his wife and daughters walking down the street at night on their own, knowing that that monster would be out there? This bill does not deal with people like him. It deals with people who are child sex offenders, but there is not much of a difference between a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old. We all know that. The Minister should at least have had the decency to extend the bill to all violent, repeat sex offenders. The clear reality is that this bill looks at just a portion of the problem faced by society and not at the whole lot.

My colleague Deborah Coddington drafted a Sex Offenders Registry Bill. It was modelled on legislation in the United Kingdom and Canada. It was drawn and supported by the House to a select committee. I believe that that this is why this bill is here today. It has nothing to do with the Labour Party’s decision that we should do something about the problem. It was forced and embarrassed into doing something because it could not bear to see an ACT bill become law. It is disgraceful that a better version of this bill was not brought into Parliament years ago.

I suppose we have to say that at least we now have a bill that addresses the problem of repeat, recidivist sex offenders. My passionate hope is that all of the submitters have the courage to say what should be done, and that the select committee can gut and rebuild the bill in a way that will actually mean something and protect New Zealanders from the worst type of offender.

Bill read a first time.

I move, That the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill be referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 193, 196(1)(b) and 196(1)(c).

Motion agreed to.