Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill

Madam Chair, I am just looking at raising a point of order before commencing my speech, but perhaps I will come back to it in a moment. It relates to the last vote.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Shall we deal with it now?

Yes. I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. It relates to the last vote and whether it was appropriate that the question was put on schedule 1 as well as schedule 2. I am just looking at it quickly, as the vote took me by surprise. Madam Chair, I thought schedule 1 was concerned with Part 1—I am just seeing whether that is so—yet you took a vote on schedule 1.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I shall just clarify the matter. That is how the schedules are dealt with now. They are put separately, with no debate. The actual debate is included with the debate on the parts of the bill.

Right.

💬 Hon Rick Barker: Has the member not read the Standing Orders report?

I am well aware of the Standing Orders. It is excellent that that Minister is in the chair. He has had an easy ride tonight because he has chosen to stay out of the arguments. I will substantially confine myself to the title clause and commencement date, although, of course, as the Standing Orders make clear, the debate can be more wide ranging. I am sure the Minister is aware of that.

This legislation is called the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill. I would argue that it is the purpose of a title, first of all, accurately to capture what the content of the bill is, and also correctly to describe it in legal terms. This title is right in that parole supervision provisions are extended in Part 1, and sentencing amendments are contained in Part 2. But Part 2 goes far beyond that. It makes amendments to a number of pieces of substantive legislation: the Misuse of Drugs Act, the Bail Act, and also subordinate legislation—the Sentencing Regulations. So we have a case here—and it may not be a matter of great moment except to those archivists who later come to research the history of these legislative changes—that the title of the bill does not accurately reflect what its true content is.

The commencement provision is contained in clause 2. The plan is for the Act to come into force on the day after the date on which it receives the royal assent. That certainly is one of the legislative drafting possibilities. I think it is a pity, however, that, given the retrospective nature of some of the legislation, it was seen by the drafters as the best mechanism for its commencement.

I would like to talk briefly in the time that remains about the issue of electronic monitoring. The reason for that is it relates quite directly to the certificate that the Attorney-General gave on the breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Electronic monitoring has been with us for a while. It started off in New Zealand in about 1999, when it was picked up by the Department of Corrections to monitor offenders on home detention. We have in this bill a special condition requiring an offender to submit to electronic compliance with conditions relating to where he or she is. It usually involves an offender being fitted with a transmitter that continuously sends signals to a receiver. We have seen in recent times, with technological advances, the development of the Global Positioning System technology and other technologies that offer a tool for monitoring offenders in the community. The Global Positioning System has some distance to go. It is fitted to taxicabs with no great degree of reliability. I entertain similar doubts that, in trying to precisely pinpoint the location of offenders, there will be shortcomings in that process.

The relevance of it, though, is directly related to the Attorney-General’s report, because there were two issues expressed by the Attorney-General that were apparently of concern to her in the context of compliance with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The first related to the issue of search and seizure as contained in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The argument is that, in terms of search and seizure, there is a need for additional information about the proposed method of electronic monitoring.

Carrying on from the honourable Richard Worth, it is possibly the—[Interruption]. He is honourable. He is an officer and a gentleman by royal decree. Not all men are born officers and gentlemen, are they Mr Worth?

This bill should be more appropriately entitled “Cleaning Up Our Mess: Tidying up the Problems That We Created Because We Did Not Listen”, or “Know-it-all Legislation Corrected”, or “We Have The Answers To All Your Problems—Sometimes”. Those are a number of titles that could be accorded this legislation. I say that because the simple fact is that we would not be here debating this legislation if it was not a fact that the original Parole Act 2002 was flawed.

What is good—and I will compliment the Government on this, so the Government MPs need to listen up—is that this bill is a good step in the right direction. This bill will make provisions tighter for dealing with those serious child sex offenders, but it does not go far enough to address the fundamental flaws that were passed into legislation with the Parole Act 2002. That is what New Zealand First cannot sign up to. By voting for this legislation, we would be endorsing the original fundamentally flawed legislation, and that we cannot do, because we think it is wrong. We think it is wrong because this legislation allows for violent offenders to be on home detention.

I note that the Greens have voted to allow wife-beaters to have home detention. The Green Party that advocates so often for the rights of women, equality, and respect for women has voted to allow wife-beaters home detention. We do not agree. We do not approve of that in New Zealand First, and hence we will vote against it and tell everybody that the Greens do like it. They like the idea that wife-beaters should have home detention and be put in a position where they can bash women again. We do not agree with the fact that people voted against amendments that would have corrected that. The Opposition has done its very best to help the Government here.

We vote against this bill because the electronic compliance that this whole bill hinges on is already known to be flawed and faulty, and I will not bet the safety of a child against that. Sorry, but New Zealand First will not bet the safety of a child against that electronic monitoring. People talk about the global positioning system and the Government has been really quick to say—and Mr Goff has said often—that global positioning system technology enables us to know exactly where these people are. That is fine, but although Mr Goff might know where they are, he does not know what they are doing. It could well be that a sex offender who has gone home on home detention and is under 24/7 monitoring can be in the house, as required, but is offending, and the Government does not know it, and cannot do a thing about it until maybe the charges are recorded. We do not accept that.

The Government should not to talk to me about how accurate the global positioning system is. We know it is very accurate, but if it is so accurate, how did those British SBS guys get arrested by the Iranians? They had global positioning systems on their boats, and yet those systems did not account for human frailty. Hence we have a very high-profile example of how all the wonders of science and technology still cannot stop a situation from going wrong. If this Government is prepared to bank on this technology and tell the House that it will defend and protect all the children, then fine. New Zealand First is not, and that is where we draw the line.

I say to the Government that home detention is a jolly mess. It was never intended for violent offenders. The Opposition has tried desperately to move amendments and Supplementary Order Papers to reverse that decision, and regretfully, despite those attempts, the Government has rejected it. On that basis we cannot support the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill. Had the Government shown some flexibility and ability to listen to the Opposition, as it failed to do when the Sentencing Act and Parole Act were passed in 2002, maybe we would be in a different position. But we are not, and that is the way it is.

I am really pleased to be able to say that New Zealand First, United Future, and ACT have joined with National to support an amendment that would see no home detention for violent offenders and sex offenders. It is really good that they have come to that decision and supported Wayne Mapp’s amendment. But unfortunately, after all the rhetoric from the Minister and all the shouting out from the Labour benches, the Government has decided to side with the Greens and the Progressive Party against women and children—as Dr Mapp so succinctly puts it. They are siding against the victims of violence and the victims of sex abuse. That shows the Government’s true colours, which are that they are very much for the soft option when it comes to crime.

The biggest thing about this Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Act is its name, and that is about it. As my colleagues and I have said tonight, we are supporting it for one reason and one reason only: that it is at least a little move towards looking after the victims of child sex abuse. That is all it is, and it is only a little, teeny move.

I know that the Government will get out after this bill is passed—if it does, in fact, pass—sing from the tops of trees and say that it is the most fantastic thing. It will say that the bill is the most fantastic thing for victims of child sex abuse, just like it said it would stop this automatic two-thirds parole. What a hollow promise that was! It was a cynical vote-buying attempt, and, unfortunately, too many people—even those on this side of the House—believed that the Government meant what it said. Unfortunately, it was just a cynical move by the Minister of Justice, the Hon Phil Goff, to get a few votes. He has been and will be forever condemned by it, because we know that that man is soft on crime, just like his Government.

I notice that he has not taken a call tonight. I notice that he has not stood up for his bill. I notice that he does not care enough to take a call, and that has to be commented on. It is pretty appalling when the Minister in charge of the bill really does not care enough even to take a call. What he has put to us instead is a lot of Supplementary Order Papers. Instead of getting these things sorted out beforehand—instead of working with the select committee—he turned up afterwards with a whole raft of amendments. Of course, we got them at the last moment, and we are supposed to agree or not agree on them. It treats us in Parliament with a great deal of contempt when these sorts of matters are brought in at the last moment with no discussion, no opportunity to take them to caucus, no opportunity to talk to our electorates about them, and no opportunity at all to have an input into them.

That shows just what contempt Mr Goff obviously feels in relation to this particular area. Obviously parole, extended supervision, and sentencing amendment bills are not nearly as much fun as foreign affairs. Quite clearly, the Minister of Justice has lost the plot when it comes to justice. He is now the “Minister of Overseas Travel” and is only slightly behind “Holiday Helen Clark” in her particular movements overseas. Justice has been left in the very shaky hands of several Associate Ministers of Justice, and unfortunately, despite the attempts they have made, they are not really coming to grips with it. That is why we get this sort of legislation.

Any attempt made by members on this side of the House to toughen such legislation up and give it a bit of spine is treated with a dismissive wave and a “No, we will not vote for that, because it was not our idea.” This Government continues to treat the victims of crime with contempt, continues to wave away any view that is not its own, and continues to be able to oversell its spin on these sorts of amendments to try to get what it wants.

The title of this bill is the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill. The Minister has tabled Supplementary Order Paper 229 to divide it into the component parts, and, of course, it will be renamed then, but nothing in clause 1 properly reflects the real driver of this bill. This bill is an attempt to protect the Privacy Act. It is an attempt to avoid using ordinary common sense, which would allow New Zealanders to do what they have done with sex offenders for generations until now. What ordinary communities did with child sex offenders up until the last 30 years—and, indeed, until the Privacy Act and the emergence of the whole “we know best” movement in the criminal justice establishment—was to try them in open court. Everyone in the community knew whom the sex offenders were. They were not lynched; they were not hounded to death. They went back to their communities, and the communities, who knew the temptations such offenders were subject to, made sure that they did not get a second chance at offending. Sex offenders did get a second chance at working, at trying to rebuild their lives, and at being part of the community, although they were always suspected. This bill states that instead of communities being allowed to know whom the offenders are, they should leave it to the justice establishment and the experts to do the monitoring of sex offenders.

This bill could have been an opportunity to resolve once and for all the hassle between the police, the Department of Corrections, and all the other do-gooders employed by the Government over whether it is proper for the police to go around a community and tell people just what kind of exposure they are facing—to go and warn people when there is a paedophile in the community who may be hanging around a school. This bill could have been a chance to confirm that it was entirely in order for people to know that. This bill could also have been the Minister’s chance to do his own version of my colleague Deborah Coddington’s Sex Offenders Registry Bill. Instead, we have the Hon Phil Goff’s Supplementary Order Paper 223, which is not reflected at all in the title of the bill or in clause 1, and is a piece of bureaucratic bumf.

This bill is the outcome—which the Justice and Electoral Committee was not allowed to see—of the dispute between the various agencies about how far they can go in sharing information about sex offenders. When we asked officials at the committee why they did not just use the provisions of the Privacy Act that state the privacy principles are subject to law enforcement purposes, they told us in a sort of—I would have to say—embarrassed way that discussions were continuing. They had not resolved the proper form of the protocols that were being developed between the agencies. What protocols? Why was there the slightest doubt about that issue? What has made the justice system—which was once open court justice, where the facts would have been out in public, the conviction would have been known to everyone, and anyone who wanted to find out could simply have looked at the court register—into a system whereby the last residues of open justice are being buried in information-sharing protocols? We have two full pages of rules about managing the risk. What about minimising the risk?

The Supplementary Order Paper that purports to allow information sharing at the same time states that nothing limits the operation of the Privacy Act or of section 182 of the principal Act. That insertion into the Corrections Act states that the Department of Corrections, the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, Housing New Zealand Corporation, the Ministry of Social Development, the New Zealand Police, and any sector agency named by the Minister can share information for some very limited purposes. If that had been mentioned, and if the people had realised that Mr Goff’s vaunted extended supervision was a substitute for people being allowed to know themselves whom the offenders were—a substitute for open justice being used for the purpose for which it was intended—he would not be able to trumpet it.