Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I draw it to your attention that the voting on Part 2 took well over an hour. I know that you were not in the Chair for most of the debate on that part, but the debate itself took about an hour and 20 minutes, and we took an hour and 10 minutes, I think, for the voting on it. People are listening to this debate. It is about a contentious issue that is of much concern to New Zealanders, and they are not getting a fair go here. Marc Alexander and United Future have had a real road to Damascus experience with regard to this bill. I think Marc Alexander took two calls, but he explained very little about the amendments in his name we are going through. There is a huge number of them. We are entitled to hear his explanation of them, and so is the public. So I ask you, Mr Chairman, to be a little more liberal on Part 3, so that we can all have a fair go. I was denied the opportunity to take a call on the previous part, and I make the point again that this is a contentious issue. The people out there who are listening to this debate want to know where we stand, and why we are doing what we are doing.

I thank the honourable member for his contribution. As I am in the Chair at the moment, I will take his arguments into consideration when the calls are given.

Before we start to discuss this important part in depth, I wonder whether the Minister would look at clause 62(1), which states: “Section 4(1) of the Legal Services Act 2000 is amended by omitting from the definition of transition date the expression ‘2001.’, and substituting the expression ‘2001’.” It seems to me rather ridiculous that the expression “2001.” should be taken out, only for the same expression to be then substituted. The Minister may take a moment or two to look at that, and then come back to us with an answer. I can tell him exactly where to find it. It is on page 54, in subclause (1) of clause 62, “Interpretation”.

This part reinforces, absolutely, the relationship that the victim of a serious crime will have to maintain with the perpetrator of that crime for the rest of his or her life. Let us be clear about that. Given that a violent crime is committed in this country every 9 minutes—that number has increased by about 15 percent under the rule of the Labour Government—and that Parliament today, in this bill, is not worried about the victims but about the perpetrators of those crimes—

💬 Brian Connell: The Government is.

My colleague is right; the Government is worried about the perpetrators of crime. The National Party does not have much time for them, at all. Here we have a bill about the best interests of the perpetrators of violent acts, and now we are able to see, in clause 73, that the relationship between the victims and perpetrators of crime is to be formalised, and that that link will be there for the rest of their natural days. That has to be a clear indication to the public of this country of how out of touch with them the current Government is, in the way it thinks about things.

As a consequence of this part, a change will be made to the Victims’ Rights Act 2002. Victims will now have to supply their information to the secretary—and the Minister may like to tell us who the secretary is—who will put details of their names, addresses, and other contacts on a file alongside the names of the police commissioner, the perpetrator of the crime, and a number of other State officials. That information will sit on the file, just in case a violent criminal finds his or her human rights offended against whilst in prison. So the victims of crime, who are out there fending for themselves, without even getting a fair shake out of the Accident Compensation Corporation most of the time, and with no other Government agency out there to hold their hands or show deep concern for them, have to have their names on the files next to those of offenders, just in case offenders’ human rights are violated while they are in prison.

If that happens and the prisoner goes to court and gets an award, the money is paid into an account and the victim is notified. Then the victim can make a claim on that money.

💬 Brian Connell: Yeah, right!

Exactly! What sort of Tui’s advertisement would that make? So the victim is to be notified that the prisoner—who has ruined the victim’s life, in many cases—has been awarded a sum by the State for hurt feelings or another transgression of that person’s human rights, and that if the victim wants to have a slice of that sum, he or she can make an application. The Labour Government, very generously in this bill, states there will be no filing fees involved in that application. But we know there will be costs, because the victim will have to make a case to get a slice of the money.

We are debating Part 3, which amends the Human Rights Act 1993. I have not had a chance to discuss the part with my colleagues, so I apologise to them, but I picked up some informal legal advice, and I hope the Minister in the chair, the Hon Rick Barker, will clarify whether I am right or wrong in this respect. I have been told informally that this legislation is one step away from allowing prisoners to sue for accident compensation. We are allowing them to sue for claims against prison officers and the Department of Corrections under the human rights legislation. We have denied them, and all New Zealanders, the ability to sue under accident compensation legislation and we have denied prisoners the right to be awarded compensation under that legislation. I am suggesting to the Committee, as has been suggested to me, that this bill is but a fraction of a step away from allowing prisoners to sue for lump-sum compensation in the event that they get injured by some “accident” in prison.

The Minister in the chair is shaking his head, but I suggest he give this some serious thought, because huge pressure will be put on prison officers as a result of the bill. There will be a blurring of the line between a genuine accident and what one might call an abuse by a prison officer. The line will be deliberately blurred. I would not want to be a prison officer, and I would not advise any of my friends or family members to be prison officers once this legislation comes in. Prison officers are being treated like second-best citizens. They will be prisoners in their own jails—maybe not physically but certainly mentally. Prison officers look after the roughest, toughest thugs we have in this country, and they will be set up every hour of every day of every week in order to have a claim taken against them, and this Minister and this Government will award those prisoners thousands of dollars of compensation. We know that some of it will be stopped and victims will get the right to argue over the claim, but we also know that there will be cases where these thugs will become relatively wealthy people, and they will leave jail with a lot of money.

In the House yesterday Keith Locke said that money is no good to a prisoner in jail. Yeah, right! I tell him that if these thugs get $40,000 or $70,000, or whatever the Government will allow them to get, they will use that money with evil intent. My colleague Dail Jones put forward a very, very good Supplementary Order Paper. It would have stopped money from going to the prisoners, in total—no ifs, no buts, no maybes. It recognised their ability to take legal action but it said that no money will go to a prisoner. That is the way most New Zealanders want it. Indeed, they want it tougher. Dail Jones’ amendment was a very good midway position. It recognised the human rights of prisoners and their ability to take legal recourse, but it said they will not gain from it. It removed the incentive for prisoners to take a claim against the Department of Corrections.

We have here a protocol between the Department of Corrections and the Office of the Ombudsmen, yet the Minister stood up here earlier today and said we need a review and we need a prison inspectorate. Let us look at the responsibilities of the Office of the Ombudsmen under this protocol. The Minister in the chair is looking as if he has never heard of this. It was signed up to by the Labour Government in 2003, and it gives the department some rights. It states that the Department of Corrections is responsible for the administration of prisons under the Penal Institutions Act 1954. Under the Ombudsmen Act 1975, an ombudsman can investigate decisions made by prison management that a complainant thinks are unlawful, unreasonable, or wrong. An ombudsman can also initiate own-motion investigations. That protocol was updated, upgraded—call it what you will—in 2003. The Minister says the Labour Government is not mollycoddling prisoners. Well, I do not know what it would do if it were mollycoddling prisoners. It would give prisoners every right it could think of. It is giving such rights to people like Gillies, whom my colleague referred to earlier, who virtually paralysed a law-abiding police officer who, like all police, goes out into the dark of night, looking after the public’s interests. Gillies virtually paralysed that police officer with a screwdriver, yet he got 40 grand because his feelings were hurt while he was in prison.

I want to refer briefly to some comments made by the previous speaker. The Greens are supporting the Government on this legislation. The Greens are trying to make themselves relevant just before the election, because they have been totally irrelevant for the last 3 years. It is a waste of their time, because they will be leaving Parliament. National certainly would not be dealing with the Greens.

Talking about relevance, it is totally irrelevant and obscene that under urgency, just weeks before an election, this Government should bring into the House this bill, which is weighted totally in favour of some of the worst criminals in our jails. As I said earlier, if the women on the other side of the House are happy that victims are only second class in this bill, when many victims of violent crime, as we know, are women, then good luck to them. But that is exactly why this Labour Government is on its way out of power. National will be sitting on that side after the election, and, of course, the Greens will be nowhere. New Zealanders are sick of this softly, softly approach to criminals.

If we look though this bill, we see that Part 3 also sets in concrete the fact that this bill is totally weighted in favour of offenders—including, of course, some of our worst offenders. On the other hand, if one is a victim one may or may not think it is worth going through this awful, awful process to try to get some recompense for the hurt and the suffering that one has endured at the hands of some of our worst criminals.

My colleague Gerry Brownlee made reference to clause 73, which inserts new section 33A. That new section basically sets out that information about victims is to be held somewhere in the office of the Secretary for Justice, alongside information about offenders. Why would anybody in his or her right mind have that sort of information sitting there? Although the bill supposedly says that none of that information on victims will ever be put before the offenders, before our worst criminals, how can we trust that sort of assurance from this Government? This Government does not know what is going on in its ministries. What has happened over the last 4 months has shown that very clearly. It has no control over what is happening in some Government agencies, and it will have no control over this issue, either.

The very fact that that provision relating to information on victims is included in this bill shows exactly what the Government thinks about them. If it is right to compensate victims—and National certainly says it is; in fact, we would be on the side of the victims, not on the side of these criminals—we should not have information about the victims sitting alongside information about the offenders, the criminals. Why do that? Why would victims go through the trauma of filing their claims, if the criminals are able to see the claims and comment on them? Why would any victim want to go through that process? Well, that is why this bill is a hoax. No doubt, it raised victims’ expectations throughout the country, but I do not know any victim who would put herself or himself through that trauma.

This Government ought to be ashamed of itself. It will get punished for this bill, just as it will get punished for Dr Cullen’s piddly Budget that tells hard-working New Zealanders they are not worth it. On the other hand, this bill tells the crims that they are worth the Government’s time and effort. Shame on the Government members! And they know it. They are scrambling. Shame on them that one of the last pieces of legislation they are likely to bring in is being dealt with under urgency! They are being assisted by the Greens, who are trying to make themselves relevant. The Greens have been totally irrelevant for 3 years. Nandor Tanczos is no longer regarded as relevant by even his own party.

One of the things Part 3 does is make some consequential amendments to the Human Rights Act, the Legal Services Act, and so on, but in looking at where we put the emphasis on human rights, I think we need to find a balance. If we look at the victimisation rates in New Zealand, every year there are about 2,300 assaults, 4,600 grievous assaults, 1,000 abductions, 70,000 cases of sexual offences against women not including rape, and 95,000-plus burglaries. If we look at theft, half a billion dollars a year worth of goods walks out of our shops, through retail theft; and if members do not know what half a billion dollars looks like, it is the equivalent of eight city supermarkets having everything they sell in a year stolen. Alongside all of that, the law-abiding are the ones who pay every step of the way. They pay for it through higher prices for the goods they buy, to cover the cost of retail theft from shops.

We pay the police to go after the bad guys. We pay the court system, which is inadequate. In fact, 35,000 cases are waiting to go to court. We pay the corrections system to hold these guys in prison—about $40,000 a year if they are in minimum security and up to $76,000 if they are in maximum security. In terms of compensation, none of the victims of crime, including the people who have to pay for all of this—who themselves are victims of crime in that their pockets have been robbed to pay for this—have any access to compensation at all for what has been done to them. But if a person commits a murder, a rape, or a burglary—something one chooses to do—and goes to prison, and then has hurt feelings because of something done by a guard or somebody else, the prisoner can make a claim for compensation. The person chose to be in prison by the action of committing a certain crime, and then the prison system has to deal with the prisoner one way or another. People like Taunoa have to be put away and segregated to safeguard everyone else, but such people can collect compensation. They can be rewarded for their choice to have a life of crime. How the hell is that fair? How is it fair that the law-abiding and the victims are out of the loop in terms of compensation but those who commit crime are up for it? That is an absolute perversity.

The kind of people we are talking about are Denis Hines, who has 80 convictions, including one for slashing the throat of a rival gang leader when he tried to fire a gun, and of killing another; Gresham Marsh, who already had 60 convictions before killing an elderly couple, and told the police he just wanted to watch them die; Joseph Thompson, who had 129 charges, including 46 for rape, and had 50 victims, the youngest of whom was 10 years old; Jules Mikus, who had 60 offences. Then there is Douglas Ronald Corkhill.. He is aged 76. One would think he would slow down! But no. He faced 34 indecent assault charges on 12 October last year involving 11 boys. Eighty-six percent of those people will come out of prison and return to prison within 5 years. Seventy percent of them who go to prison have 10 or more convictions. And here is the kicker: Brian Alan Bolt, 48 years of age, was convicted on his 636th criminal offence—members heard that right—while on parole, and those people can get compensation.

This Government, with the support—up until today—of the irrelevant Greens, and their only relevance is to put the agenda of offenders ahead of victims, is pushing this law through under urgency. This problem has been around for quite some time. We have had the opportunity to deal with this problem, but the Government has decided not to take it up—against probably, some of the better judgment of most of its own members. United Future offered a moratorium until a decent solution could be found. But no, the Government chose to try to get this out of the public limelight, so it will not be tarnished with it during the process of election. The Government will not escape it. The reason why it will not escape it is that we will not let the public forget.

We come now to Part 3 of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill, and on behalf of National I indicate that throughout the extended debate that is taking place under urgency National has opposed this legislation. We have done that for reasons that we judge to be principled, and for reasons that we think reflect substantial community concern about the Government’s policy to compensate prisoners. Part 3 is one of the wrap-up provisions that one often finds in legislation. It makes amendments to a number of Acts, including the Human Rights Act, the Legal Services Act, the Limitation Act, the Privacy Act, and the Victims’ Rights Act of 2002.

A most bizarre situation has arisen. Not more than 150 metres away from here—and I am now speaking with reference to clause 61, which is the first clause in Part 3—the Government’s lawyers are arguing that there should be no monetary compensation payable. They are arguing that it is not required to be done as a matter of international law, and it is not required to be done as a matter of human rights. Yet here, those lawyers, retained by this Government, are met by a completely contrary argument. It is the argument contained in this bill that prisoners should receive monetary compensation. So 150 metres away from here the Government’s lawyers are saying one thing, and in this debating chamber the Government is saying precisely the opposite of that. To add fuel to the flames in that bizarre setting, we have the Greens supporting this legislation, through one of their members who stood up and said that although this is a bad bill, they will vote in favour of it.

I shall now talk about the Legal Services Act provisions in Part 3. They are all about the provision of legal aid to victims, so that they can mount claims to the bounty that prisoners score in jail as a result of successfully receiving a damages award. What we are all about here, then, is the setting up of a special tribunal that will form judgments on the merit of victims’ claims. We have the situation that compensation, after any legal aid charges and unpaid reparation are deducted, will be held in trust. Steps will then be taken to identify and notify the prisoners’ victims that money is available. They then have a fixed period of 6 months, I understand, to file a claim. There will be, and this is what this part is about, eligibility for legal aid, and normal court fees will be waived. So there is the rub. Legal aid is to be provided for those claimants who, as victims, seek to advance their claims. The claims will be determined by a District Court judge sitting as a victims’ special-claims tribunal, but—here is the but—the plan is that claims will be determined on the papers. It will only be the rarest instance, what are called “exceptional reasons”, that will justify a hearing. So legal aid is given on the one hand and taken away on the other.

The plan is basically that the tribunal will work from findings of fact in the criminal cases that led to the offenders’ conviction. What is wrong with that process is that it will lead to the re-victimisation of victims. I just throw up some of the challenges that will be presented to the person who is tasked to make the compensation apportionment decisions. We may have the case of living victims—say, people who have suffered at the hands of a serial rapist. Let us say that there were five of them. How will the damages be apportioned? Will the damages be awarded to each victim equally?

I shall take a very brief call, because I cannot tolerate the sanctimony that has been going on around this Committee for much longer without responding for a couple of minutes, at least. When the previous National Government was in power for 9 long years, it let more people out on parole, and it never ever built enough prisons to cope with the number of people who should have been locked up. The difference between the National members and us is—

💬 Dr Richard Worth: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The honourable member is supposed to be addressing Part 3. Part 3 is concerned with four or five statutory changes. We are nowhere near that issue.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): I thank the member for raising that. The previous speaker did indeed stick to the part. I know that the current speaker is just leading into it.

Thank you, Mr Chairperson. I was just doing a bit of rebuttal. Opposition members should not try to appear too holier-than-thou, when their own history is not very long ago. This legislation will provide victims with opportunities for assistance that they have never had before. I remind Opposition members that some people’s memories are a bit longer than theirs, and I say they should be aware of the sanctimony of what they are saying.

This part is, as has been said, the grab bag, the loose ends, of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill, which we are debating. On behalf of the ACT party I want to draw attention to the statements made by Mr Goff when he promised, yet again, to introduce a bill on this issue. Among the assurances in his press release of 4 October last year was the following statement about the legislation: “Victims will of course be able to bring civil claims for damages not only when the offender receives state compensation but also for any other windfall gains such as inheritances, the proceeds of any book written, or even winning lotto.”

I did not see anything about windfall gains of those kinds in the earlier parts of this bill, so I have looked carefully to see whether, as grab-bag matters, they are somewhere in Part 3. Part 3 does not seem to deal with Lotto winnings, income from books, or windfall gains. It deals with the Human Rights Act, the Legal Services Act, which provides for legal aid, the Limitation Act, the Privacy Act, and the Victims’ Rights Act. But I see nothing there to state that windfall gains will have to be put into trust when prisoners get them, or to facilitate people who have had their reparation claims ignored to get access to those windfall gains. Indeed, the bill is very, very strict about what a specified claim is; that is in a provision in an earlier part. The Government rejected my amendment to help to extend it, so we cannot deal with that.

The grab bag in Part 3 is actually very small. There is another Act that this part does not refer to. I think members will be stunned, given that they have heard all the assurances that the key thing is to make sure the complaints do not arise in the first place—that prisons must be made into places where there is no cause for a compensation claim—to realise that the Corrections Act does not seem to be touched by this bill. The bill is about reacting to the mistreatment of prisoners, yet the Government has not even bothered to do anything in it about the Corrections Act. I have an amendment to this part. In that amendment I reinstate some provisions that this Government left out of the prisons legislation or changed when it passed its new Corrections Act.

I believe the first thing this Government should have done was to ensure the independence of visiting justices. The term “visiting justice” meant just that, until last year. It meant a judge who would go into a prison and be an independent person, armed with all the clout and authority of the judicial office, and give us all an assurance that our prisons were not like Turkish prisons—that people were not being beaten up and brutalised, and were not being made too frightened to report it. I thought that the visiting justices were independent experts who were not beholden to anyone, and who were assured that they would not get sacked or victimised by the Government, because they were judges. Well, the Government has kept the label, but under the Corrections Act a visiting justice is now simply an appointed employee of the Department of Corrections. The label “visiting justice” has been used, but the authority has been stolen—the brand that has been built up by judges in our system over generations. A visiting justice now just has to be a lawyer of 7 years’ practice. He or she can be a full-time departmental employee, who goes around using the label of visiting justice and pretends to be independent.

My amendment would reinstate the requirement for the genuine independence of visiting justices. I think that if the Government really meant what it was saying—if it really wanted to make sure that the causes of the payouts to prisoners would be removed—it would have included provisions to make the disciplinary system more robust. Then we would not have judges deciding to take it on themselves to invent remedies, and to punish the department by ordering that it pay $358,000 in legal fees and $55,000 to one of New Zealand’s worst scumbags, Christopher Taunoa, and thousands of dollars to his mates—over $500,000. If the Government meant what it said, it would not have responded to that situation with cosmetic legislation. And it would feel ashamed to see the Sensible Sentencing Trust—

Part 3 is a consequential part. It amends the legal services provisions to ensure that people have access to legal services and it puts caps on them. The second important aspect, and this was raised in part by Stephen Franks, is that it alters the statute of limitations and suspends it so there is a much longer period in which people can make a civil claim.

💬 Brian Connell: Yeah, right!

If Mr Connell reads it he will see that it does exactly that. And it does that for a number of reasons. It will strengthen the rights of victims to sue, which will be a very valuable tool in the future. Mr Franks says that in terms of claims the bill does not cover windfall gains that a person might get by virtue of Lotto or writing a book. We do not have to mention that. The statute of limitations is extended, so if a prisoner, at the end of a 20-year sentence, for example, writes a book and gets a substantial amount of money for it, then the way is still open for the victim to sue for compensation as a civil matter. If victims wish to do that, they will be able to do so. Without this amendment they would not be able to sue, because there is a limitation on the time in which to sue. If Mr Connell was on the side of victims, he would support this extension, because it improves their powers. [Interruption] But, as someone on this side of the Chamber has said, he is not quite that bright.

The second thing the bill does is amend the Victims’ Rights Act to ensure that the secretary is able to identify the victims. Gerry Brownlee asked who the secretary was. It is the Secretary for Justice; it is defined in the legislation. The hard-working deputy leader of the National Party has spotted that in clause 62 we are deleting “2001” and substituting “2001”. On the surface that seemed a very good argument that the amendment was foolish, but in fact the amendment is very pertinent. That member has missed a full stop. We are taking out “2001.”, and inserting “2001” without a full stop. Without this grammatical change, the clause would make no sense. It is a very important grammatical change. As I am sure Mr Dail Jones would say, it needs to be done. The grammar has to be correct, does it not?

Mr Peter Brown raised the prospect, as Opposition parties do—they try to raise all sorts of dire prospects of doom and gloom—that we would open the way to suing for accident compensation payments. The second thing Peter Brown said is that the Government gives prisoners money. The court gives them that money. Peter Brown knows very well that it is an order of the court, not a Government decision. I come back to the point that the reason the court can do this is that in 1994—when Tony Ryall, who has not taken a call in this debate, was in Government—we had the Baigent decision, in which a person who sued the Crown for a breach of human rights was awarded compensation. The then National Government decided that that was OK; it had no objection to that at all. I notice that Mr Tony Ryall has not stood up in this debate and denied it. The National Party did nothing about that ruling. Nor did New Zealand First when it was in power with the National Party.

I want to make a further point concerning the claim that has been made in this debate about compensation. Under the regime endorsed by the previous National Government a prisoner who claimed that he or she had suffered some breach of human rights could hold the matter over and do nothing about it at the time, and could sue for compensation some time later—go all round the board, land on “Go”, and try to get $200. This legislation will stop that, because it will require the prisoner to have exhausted all remedies and avenues before filing for compensation or going to court.

The second thing that will happen, as we have made very clear, is that the Government will establish an independent prison complaints authority. This is quite different from the issue raised by Peter Brown about the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman does not have the sort of investigative powers that we would like a prison complaints authority to have. We want an independent prison complaints authority—one that has strength and teeth, so that if someone feels aggrieved he or she can write to the authority directly and have the matter resolved at that point. If processes are not working well, we want them fixed at the point at which they occur. This Government is committed to fixing the problem where it starts. Unlike the previous National Government, which did nothing to fix this problem from 1994 onwards, we will fix it. We will have an independent complaints authority to inspect prisons to make sure that such problems do not occur.

I want to come back to Marc Alexander, who talks about a moratorium. Even if this Committee agreed with his proposal about a moratorium as he has written it, the people who currently have an award for compensation by the court would not be captured by it. If the Court of Appeal upheld the decision, the money would have to be paid out. So the objective of that member—to stop the compensation being awarded to Mr Taunoa and others—would not be achieved. This legislation will ensure that if the court decides to uphold the award of compensation, then the money will go into this process and will be available to victims. I would have thought that Mr Alexander would support that. So this bill is, in fact, a more effective vehicle, although it does not have the simplicity Mr Alexander claims his proposal has.

I finish by saying that this bill does strengthen victims’ rights, despite the comments of the Opposition. It strengthens victims’ rights and ensures that we can hold our heads up in any forum and say that we have done the right thing. Firstly, we will do so by having a stronger prisons inspectorate. More important, this Government has made a commitment to undertake an inquiry to see how we can better support victims—how we can provide them with the necessary support and so on that one would expect for them. This will be a very complex issue. There is no simple, easy answer. But I want to say that no previous Government has ever attempted to do find one. This Government is prepared to do it. We will do the job very well, and we will be here after the election to make sure it happens.

That Minister has taken two calls of the most sanctimonious, politically correct nonsense I think I have heard since I have been in Parliament. What absolute drivel that was in self-justification! I tell the Minister that there is a very simple answer: prisoners simply do not get compensation. Throughout this debate the hitherto irrelevant Green Party has been voting in favour of this legislation, despite the much-heralded Trotskyite Keith Locke coming down to the House last night and saying that this was bad law. He said that it was bad law but that the Greens would vote for it, anyway. I am reminded of Groucho Marx saying: “Those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.”

The Minister talked also about international conventions as a means of justification. What about the convention that one shall not kill? The Minister just conveniently forgets about that. When the mother of the victim of Sam Te Hei came to the select committee, who is one of the most courageous people I have ever seen—I am coming to Part 3, because this is an important component of going to the heart of damages—she looked us in the eye and said: “What about justice for my little girl?”. We are not here for money—we do not want compensation. We simply want justice. What about her human rights? I found that an extremely compelling argument.

The Government tells us that it will change the statute, by means of clauses 63 and 64, so that it can put into play a situation whereby the victims of heinous crime will now have to go through this nightmare time and time again, because they can sue for compensation. As I have already said, they do not want compensation. What has happened to this society so that we have got ourselves into a situation like that? Whoever would have thought that 5 years ago—let alone now—we would have said that those who commit vicious crimes against humanity will be compensated? It is happening under a Labour Government.

Let us have a look at what takes place. The scenario is that a victim goes after one of the perpetrators, who has now got some money by virtue of the State. Having incurred substantial costs through the legal system to win it, that is now what will happen. In terms of deductions from the quantum, clause 17(1) states that the Secretary for Justice must “(a) first, pay out of that money any sum necessary to satisfy fully any relevant charge—(i) in favour of the Legal Services Agency; and … (b) secondly, pay out of that money any sum necessary to satisfy fully any amount of reparation owed by the accused or the offender;”. What the bill is saying is that the victims are third in the pecking order. Having gone through the battle to get compensation and having incurred their own personal expenses, offenders’ victims will now have legal aid in favour of the State and any other order payable against the offender deducted from the quantum before they get a look at the money That is not only disgraceful, it is inhumane. The bill is badly named. It should be called the “Prisoners Compensation Bill”, and I can hardly wait for the title debate just to express that view.

Whatever happened to this country whereby victims’ rights have become secondary to those who commit heinous crime? Why should we ever consider that that is fair, relevant, and just? Who thinks that it is fair, relevant, and just? Clearly, only the members of the current Government do, supported by the Green Party. It is not fair and we strongly oppose it.

Having listened to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Rick Barker, give his excuse for Part 3 of this bill—

💬 Brian Connell: It was an excuse.

—and it was an excuse—there are a few matters I wish to take up. He told us that we could not have retrospective legislation to deal with those dreadful criminals and the payments for their hurt feelings. Time and time again in this House, we get retrospective legislation from this Government. Time and time again in this House we get told that something will be retrospective. There is always retrospective legislation when it concerns the Government taking money from hard-working taxpayers. Funnily enough, the one time the Government gets all squeamish about retrospective legislation is when money is going to criminals because of their hurt feelings. We in this House are supposed to sit here and swallow that one. Well, that is just too much of a dead rat, and, frankly, we are not swallowing it.

Obviously, retrospective legislation is never ideal, but there is a time and a place for everything. This is the time and this is the place for some retrospective legislation to sort out the nonsense of hurt feelings for people who have not shown one scrap of feeling for their victims and their victims’ families. Those people have been brought up—or dragged up—to believe that only they have rights. They do not have one responsibility, other than to themselves, and they care nothing about anything other than getting some money in damages off the taxpayer, under Part 3 of the bill. They can say: “Aren’t we lucky! It’s better than robbing the bank.”—and that is exactly what they are doing.

Then we heard from Mr Barker the pathetic excuse as to why Part 3 is in the bill. He said that the victims can sue the criminals. Now, we all know that Mr Barker is a very simple man, but at no stage did I think he was that naive. What planet is that man from? [Interruption] Is he from the same planet as Lynne Pillay? Perhaps he is. If he thinks those victims and their families wish to go back into a courtroom and sue the scum that has destroyed their lives, then all I can say is: what planet is he on? Of course they do not! Then he talked about how those criminals could write books. My goodness, I do not think they are writing books! He said they could write books and make money out of that, which would mean there would be money for the victims. Rubbish! All he needs to do is to think a little bit and get some advice. If he got some advice he would be told that the book could be written by someone else—in someone else’s name—who could then give the money to the criminal. In fact, the victims Mr Barker talks about will never get a cent. Criminals can write under ghost names and through books owned by companies. They will do anything so that not one cent goes to those victims. We on this side of the Chamber know that will happen, because we have thought this thing through. But Mr Barker thinks that those criminals will suddenly get a conscience and want to give money—

💬 Stephen Franks: Mr Goff.

Oh, Mr Goff will, too. Mr Goff—who is very silent on the bill today, I notice—wants to allow those vicious criminals to benefit from their crimes, but he says they will not be able to because somehow the victims will get the money. Well, I suggest he wakes up and smells the roses, because that will not happen under this bill, and certainly not under Part 3. Those victims have never asked for money. How much do we put on a life? What is the price of a life?

Hon Georgina te Heuheu: Not much, according to this Government.

Georgina te Heuheu has said it—not much, according to this Government. Actually, no amount of money will ever compensate a parent for losing a child. No amount of money will ever bring back the innocence and freedom a young girl had before she was raped—no amount of money. This Government does us no credit in this Chamber when it tells victims it will get them some money. The Government is taking the money off the victims, who pay taxes.

Part 3 of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill should have been the part wherein the Government grasped a nettle that the National Government was too afraid to grasp. When Baigent’s case introduced into the scheme of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act a right that judges had been developing all on their own—a right for financial compensation for breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—we had judicial lawmaking at its most naked. That remedy had in fact been considered by Parliament, and discarded. When the Law Commission was asked to comment, it was predictable that the commission—part of that same cosy establishment, part of the “anointed” in the justice establishment—would decide that it was a good idea to let judges run free. Now we are seeing part of the price. It is not that judges are not well meaning, it is not that they do not see a need, but there should have been a legislative response that said to them that when that kind of invention occurs, and when Parliament had clearly not intended it, Parliament should act.

Part 3 is the place that should see a reversal of the decision in Baigent’s case. If there is not enough courage on the part of the Government to reverse it completely, it should at the least have reversed it in relation to prisoners’ claims. What we would have had was what I have moved in my amendment to this part: a simple statement that, in relation to proceedings to do with prisoners’ treatment, the Employment Relations Act, the Harassment Act, the Human Rights Act, the Privacy Act, and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act will not give rise to orders for compensation or damages. That is very straightforward, and it is consistent with our constitutional theory. Our constitution assumes that if Parliament does not like what judges are doing, it changes it. But, instead, this Government and the last Government were too afraid to take it on. They were too afraid to assert that the people who make the law should be subject to being sacked by the people—that legislators should make the law, not judges. So we will see $500,000 spent in this Budget year, and $379,000, at least, in each of the next 3 years, on a tribunal that will be presiding over next to nothing.

I was glad that the Associate Minister took a call to explain where the assurance was that victims would have access to the proceeds of book sales, Lotto wins, and inheritances. He said it is because the limitation period is being expanded—that is, the limitations will not run while prisoners are in jail. But that is only a small part of the problem for prisoners. They will not have access to those windfalls unless we also suspend or change the rules that prevent suing under the accident compensation scheme; or unless we make sure that when a windfall comes to a prisoner or ex-prisoner, someone knows about it; or unless we make sure that those prisoners cannot divert their entitlements. For example, as Judith Collins mentioned, we could have had some anti-avoidance provisions. None of that work has been done.

In this bill we see only enough to pass muster as a smokescreen of apparent action. There is no real commitment to prisoners’ interests. There is not the beefing-up of the role of Victim Support that the Minister of Justice foreshadowed on 4 October, when it was contemplated that there might be a role for such organisations as advocates. No, victims will be left to look at litigation against those people who have wounded them, and they will have to do that on their own resources, with all the current fears of throwing good money after bad.

There is a little bit of a relaxation of entitlement under legal aid. From what has been set out in this legislation I cannot tell whether it will mean anything to any people other than those who are too poor to qualify at present. But whether it reaches back into what people call the middle classes—those who currently cannot afford litigation, because only the poor and the rich can afford litigation—we cannot tell.

So I urge members to vote for the amendment I have put forward, which includes a new section 179A of the Corrections Act. It will be the only change to that Act in this bill. We might have thought this bill would be a substantial rethink of what the Government has done, but, instead, it has had its entire attention focused on getting rid of private involvement in the Auckland Central Remand Prison.

I want to carry on from my most able colleagues in their attention to Part 3, and in their overall attention to this bill. They have done a magnificent job. Part 3 amends the Human Rights Act. Clause 61, “Damages”, states: “Section 92M(2) of the Human Rights Act 1993 is consequentially amended by inserting, after the expression ‘920’, the words ‘of this Act and to subpart 1 of Part 2 of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2004’. ”

Subpart 1 of Part 2 is quite a substantial inclusion within the bill. It is interesting to note that the provisions always refer to prisoners and victims. That shows the intent—that the prisoner always comes first and the victim second. The New Zealand public made an overwhelming statement that they did not want prisoners to receive compensation. Not only has this Government provided a bill that gives prisoners an enshrined right with regard to suing for compensation, but also Part 3 amends the Human Rights Act to enshrine that right. I think that goes much further than what we anticipated when we started to debate this bill. I find that extraordinary in the extreme. That provision in clause 61 places emphasis on the fact that prisoners have a right to compensation. Instead of saying that prisoners do not have a right, and instead of curtailing that right in the way the New Zealand public has demanded, the Government has gone completely to the other extreme and instead is enshrining it in the Human Rights Act. I find that extraordinary. Perhaps the Minister will take a call and explain.

It is particularly extraordinary in light of the comments made by my learned colleague Dr Wayne Mapp. Some interesting comments have been made in the House regarding international law. Dr Mapp said quite clearly that international law does not state that we have to provide monetary compensation if any matters need to be addressed with regard to prisoners. If prisoners need some right to justice, then monetary compensation does not have to be a part of that. There can be other remedies. I am just so glad that National is opposing this legislation. It sensibly recommended having an inspectorate of prisons, and I think that is absolutely the way to go. Let us face it, it is far more fiscally responsible than what is being promoted through this bill.

💬 Brian Connell: And morally responsible.

Yes, and morally responsible. Victims in no way get any support from this bill. It is all about prisoners and what they can do; it is all about setting up prisoners to take advantage of and indulge in a huge number of rorts in relation to what is being provided for them.

Clause 63 relates to proceedings for which legal aid may be granted. Is it not extraordinary that victims have to go through the legal aid process and establish whether they are entitled to legal aid just to be a part of proceedings? I find that extraordinary in the extreme. Victims do not have first crack at any compensation that may have been granted. But I do not want to go there, because National totally opposes prisoners getting any form of compensation. Clause 63 is about the granting of legal aid. It raises the other matter that was commented on by my learned colleague Dr Richard Worth relating to the manner in which the tribunal will decide on how compensation is allocated. It will decide on the facts of the original case. How will the tribunal reflect on, take into account, or consider in any way, shape, or form the ongoing effects on the victims if it is dealing only with the immediate act of the offence and consequence of that offence, and not necessarily with the impact on victims? I raise questions around that.

I move, That the question be now put.

The amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 371 in the name of Marc Alexander to omit Part 3 is ruled out of order because it is a direct negation of the question. The proper course of action is to vote against the part.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Marc Alexander to clause 68 be agreed to:

to omit from section 113(1) of the Legal Services Act 2000, new paragraph (b).