Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill be now read a second time. This bill demonstrates the Government’s commitment to supporting victims of serious, violent, and sexual offences. I thank the Law and Order Committee for its consideration of the bill. The committee received 10 submissions and has recommended that it proceed with some amendments. Nine submissions expressed clear support for the intent of the bill. The committee has recommended several changes to the bill. Many of these changes reflect a shift from the non-contact order being modelled on restraining orders under the Harassment Act to protection orders under the Domestic Violence Act. The Government agrees with the committee that many of the provisions around protection orders provide a better fit to non-contact orders than restraining orders. The changes made by the committee will ensure that the bill achieves its intended purpose.

That purpose is to create a new civil order called a non-contact order to reduce the likelihood of a victim of a serious, violent, or sexual offence coming into contact with the offender once they are released from prison. Research shows that the impact and effect of serious, violent, and sexual offences can last for a significant period of time after an offence has been committed. The healing and recovery process for victims can be hindered by ongoing fear and anxiety about contact with the offender. Victims can suffer significant setbacks in their recovery if they come into contact with the victim who offended against them. The Government is determined to support these victims.

There is a range of mechanisms in place to manage offenders after their release from prison. These include release conditions imposed by the court or Parole Board, as well as protection orders and restraining orders. However, these mechanisms do not cover all situations. Release conditions may apply only for a relatively short time or the victim may not qualify for a protection order or a restraining order. The non-contact order will fill this gap in the law. The Government wants to ensure that the victims of serious violent offences are not left feeling unsafe in their homes and unprotected by the law. The new order is flexible enough to ensure the conditions are practical and workable in the circumstances of each case. This flexibility should ensure that the order can be effective for victims no matter what their circumstances. For example, it should be able to prevent or limit contact with the offender whether the person who offended against them has moved next door, two blocks away, or 5 kilometres away.

An important change from the original bill is that eligibility for non-contact orders has been extended. The orders will now be available against offenders who are sentenced to a term of imprisonment of more than 2 years, rather than 5 years or more, for a violence offence against the victim. The bill is aimed at serious offenders, and the newer threshold reflects the definition of a long-term sentence under the Parole Act.

Another important change relates to the timing of an application for a non-contact order. In the original bill an application could be made only after the offender had been released from prison. The committee recommended that victims should be able to apply for an order at any time after sentencing. The Government has accepted this change. A victim will also be able to apply for a non-contact order without notice if the court is satisfied that delay would or might cause undue hardship for the victim. Where an order is made on application without notice it will be a temporary order. The temporary order will become final after 3 months unless the court, having considered any issues raised by the offender, orders otherwise. Victims will also be able to apply to have the order extended to associates of the offender. This will ensure that offenders cannot encourage others to do things that cause distress to the victim that they themselves are prohibited from doing.

Providing an appropriate punishment for breaches of orders is important to ensure that they are properly enforced. The original bill provided for graduated penalties for breaches based on the approach for restraining orders under the Harassment Act. The revised bill provides for a maximum penalty of 2 years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to $5,000 for any breach of the order. This will allow the court to respond to any breach of an order based on the seriousness of the breach, whether or not it is the first time a breach has occurred.

In summary, the non-contact order will help fill a gap in the justice system where victims are not able to access existing legal protection mechanisms to avoid contact by the offender. It demonstrates this Government’s commitment to supporting victims of serious offences, and it will help those victims feel safer while they continue on their journey of recovery. I commend this bill to the House.

Labour supported this legislation, the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill, at the first reading. The reason we did that was that we are prepared to support any reasonable piece of legislation that actually promotes the rights of victims. I am very proud to stand here as a member of the Labour Party, as Labour brought in the first Victims’ Rights Act back at the time of the fourth Labour Government, which I extended as a Minister under the fifth Labour Government.

We do have to remember that the justice system is not simply the State against the offender. The victim has a right to be at the centre of the justice system, to be respected, and to have their rights upheld. That has not traditionally been the case under our system of justice. This bill was brought into Parliament because there was a gap in the protection that was accorded to victims. We had the Domestic Violence Act of 1995, and that enabled the granting of protection orders for those who were the subject of domestic violence. But not all acts of violence, of course, are domestic. For those who are being actively harassed by the people who had offended against them, there is the Harassment Act of 1997, and that also can provide restraining orders. But there was a clear gap in that system in cases where the offender was not related to or known to the victim and was not actively harassing them but was causing trauma to the victim.

The actual case that led to this, Mr Deputy Speaker, will be of interest to you because it comes from Invercargill. It was the case of a woman who was the victim of rape. The offender was sentenced to 4 years’ imprisonment. He was then released and he went from prison and moved immediately next door to the victim whom he had raped. Anyone in this House or any member of the public can imagine the trauma of being the victim of rape and finding that, after being released from prison, the rapist is living immediately next door to you. That was unacceptable. It was not tolerable, but there was no mechanism under law to deal with that situation and say that the victim has rights in that situation and that those rights are stronger than the rights of the offender, even after the offender has been released.

When I read about that case, I agreed that there was a gap. And then I looked at the bill that Judith Collins had introduced, and to my absolute amazement I found that her bill—full of rhetoric—had no substance that would have provided one iota of protection to the very victim who led to this bill being introduced. That is because the Minister put in a threshold level of 5 years. You had to be imprisoned for more than 5 years, or convicted and sentenced to more than 5 years, before the victim of your offending could get any protection under this bill. Imagine how your constituent, Mr Deputy Speaker, that victim, felt when she saw the bill and realised that not only would this bill not help her but it would not help countless dozens of other women who had been through the same experience as she had. That was utterly unacceptable.

When I read the regulatory impact statement, I found that this piece of legislation, introduced with great flourish, would protect 10 cases a year—10 cases. We are talking about offending that is running into hundreds and hundreds of cases and it is not good enough. I said in the first reading of this bill that it is not acceptable in the form that it is in. It needs to be strengthened. That threshold has to come down.

There was a very fortunate act of God. Well, actually, it was an act of Air New Zealand that helped me promote my case, because just a month or two ago I found that I was sitting next to the Minister of Justice. She was thrilled to see me, of course, and we had a very good conversation where I raised this issue with her. I made the point to her quite strongly. I said that 5 years is stupid. Officials and members of Parliament on the Law and Order Committee are coming back and saying that it should maybe be 3 years. These are arbitrary figures. They are plucked out of nowhere. They have no rationale. I said that the figure should be 2 years. It should be 2 years because under the Parole Act 2002, which I put through, 2 years was the definition of a serious criminal offence, where people were entitled to go on to victim notification registers, and so on. To be fair to the Minister, she acknowledged the inadequacy of the bill and she agreed that that change should be made.

So I am very happy to report back to the House today that the threshold level is 2 years, and I believe that that is an appropriate level of protection. It will involve a whole lot more people and provide a lot more real protection to victims who genuinely need that protection when placed in the same situation as your constituent, Mr Deputy Speaker.

There are a couple of other changes that I wanted to see and that I am very pleased that we have had put into this bill at this stage. The second thing that I thought was inadequate in the bill as introduced was that you could apply for a non-contact order—

💬 Jacqui Dean: All your own work, Phil.

Well, Jacqui Dean knows that because she knows who moved the amendments in the committee and how the discussion went. So I hope that she will get up and affirm the accuracy of everything I am telling the House today, which she will do because there were seven different witnesses on that committee as members of Parliament.

The second thing was—and, again, it was a concern for me with the bill as introduced—that you could not apply for a non-contact order against the offender until the offender was released. Well, we heard at the select committee of cases where, against even all of the rules of the Department of Corrections, the offender in prison was putting pressure on the victim while he was still in prison. Of course, there is no such thing as a non-contact order under this bill to cover that situation, because you can apply for it only after the person has been released. Well, first of all, the Department of Corrections should have stopped that, and stopped it dead in its tracks. It was totally inappropriate. But, secondly, this provides another protection because, from the moment of sentencing, the victim can now apply for a non-contact order.

There is a second thing that makes sense about that. In a situation where the offender is released, there can be a gap between the offender being out in the community and the victim having to make an application and a decision being made. So there is a gap there, still, where the offender can quite lawfully approach the victim—a victim of his serious offending. With the non-contact order now able to be applied for any time after sentencing, we can remove the situation where a gap exists. Protection will occur from the moment the person steps out of prison, as well, of course, as the additional protection while the individual is still in prison.

So we got changes on the threshold that are good, and I think that the whole of the committee actually welcomed that change. We got changes so that you could apply for the non-contact order at any time after sentencing.

The third thing, which I think was important, was dealing with a situation where the offender used an associate to make contact with the victim. So the offender was using one of his mates as a surrogate for him to contact the victim, and the effect on the victim was just the same. She was under pressure because the offender was using a third party to approach her and contact her quite inappropriately. So we now have in this legislation a situation where an associate of the offender can have a non-contact order made out against them. There are three prerequisites to that. First of all, the offender needs to have engaged in the behaviour of actively encouraging the associate to do it, the associate needs to have engaged in the behaviour of doing it, and there needs to be a demonstration that that affects the well-being and the recovery of the victim. So that is the third change, which is quite important.

One other issue that I raised, and I know that my colleague Andrew Little also raised this, was the question of whether, under the non-contact order, this is putting all the pressure on the victim to take all the action to protect—usually—herself against the offender. Well, I raised that in the committee and the officials were adamant that there would be a very straightforward and relatively cost-free way in which the victim can achieve a non-contact order. But I would very much like to hear from Government members—because Minister Woodhouse did not include this in his speech—that we have the assurance that a person will be able to get these non-contact orders without the need for legal assistance and that there will not be costs imposed on the victim. The victim, for example, should not have to pay a filing fee for a non-contact order. I am not sure whether we covered that in the select committee, but I would like an assurance from the next National speaker or from the Minister that those sorts of costs will not be imposed.

With that, I say that I think we made considerable improvements to this bill. It is now a worthwhile piece of legislation, and we will be supporting it through the remainder of its passage into law.

I can tell Phil Goff, the member who has just resumed his seat, that the Hon Judith Collins was more than delighted to spend an hour with the member on the aeroplane, and it is lovely that he has chosen to take credit for every change that the Law and Order Committee has made.

It is interesting that he said that the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill was not good enough. He said: “The bill as introduced is not good enough, and it took me to make all the changes.” It is interesting. Well, that member needs to answer this. That member needs to tell the House how come it was good enough when he was the Minister of Justice? So please feel free to take a call to explain how come it was good enough when he was the Minister of Justice, which he has made an awful lot of during his time on the select committee when discussing these bills. How come it is not good enough when the National Government comes in and gets to and fixes things, but it was good enough when he was the Minister? So just answer that one, Phil Goff.

Anyway, coming back to the bill, we did have a very good select committee process—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: We could have done this 100 years ago.

A hundred years ago—the member has just said that it was 100 years ago when he was the Minister of Justice. We know that that member has been in this House for over 30 years and shows no signs of leaving because he loves it so much, but—oh, I do not know—under the new regime there might be some changes over on that side of the House, so maybe that member should keep his head down below the parapet.

We did have a very good select committee process, in fact, and it is true that the bill as introduced related only to offenders who had been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for 5 years or over. I do have to give credit to Phil Goff—just a tiny bit; not much—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Oh, come on. Do the decent thing for once.

—but I will do the decent thing and say that, OK, all right, Phil Goff did bring this matter to the attention of the committee. We do work collegially, believe it or not—believe it or not—and we did have a good discussion around the difference between 5 years’ imprisonment and 2 years’ imprisonment.

The reason that we did recommend to officials 3 years’ imprisonment and then 2 years’ imprisonment, which was even better, is that if you have a look at it from the victim’s point of view—and we had a victim in front of our committee yesterday who had been in receipt of domestic violence. We saw the photos of the gashes in her skull and her broken nose and we heard about the trauma that she is still living through now. Even though the assaults were some time ago—a year ago or more—she is still living through that experience very badly, and that is what drove this committee.

So I can tell you that it was not necessarily a desire to clobber offenders by bringing more into the net, from 5 years’ imprisonment—OK, we brought only a few into that—down to 2 years’ imprisonment. A whole lot more prisoners are captured, but what that means is that a whole lot more victims are able to take advantage of these victims’ orders, and that is what drove the work of this committee. In fact, it is the many, many victims who we were privileged to have made submissions to our committee. So that is one very good change that the select committee made.

We made another change within the select committee to these victims’ orders, which are unlimited, depending on what the shape of the final order looked like, so that the offender was not to reside nearby the victim and was to have no contact with them and not intimidate them in any way. Well, we had a look at the scenario of, say, a gang member who had subjected a woman and family to, say, domestic violence and who was put into prison, and then it was easy enough for him to direct his gang associates. We do see in the news, regrettably, these young gang prospects who will do anything to get their patch, so there is a danger always of these convicted men in prison directing their associates—the more gullible members of our society—to further harass the victim. What we have done is extended the non-contact order to apply to associates of the offender. Under certain circumstances we were always very careful to balance the rights of individuals in this. Of course the victim is first in our thoughts, but we must take heed of the human rights of the offenders as well. That was another good change that the select committee made.

Under the bill as introduced, the victim was able to apply to a District Court for a non-contact order at any time after the offender had been released from prison. Once again, we had a look at the implications of that. So what does that mean? Regrettably, it is nearly always a woman who has been the victim of some violent offence—sometimes domestic; normally domestic—who goes through the trauma of the offence, the trauma of the trial, sees the offender go into prison, then has the trauma of that offender being released. If it was a domestic incident, they had the ability to have a protection order. If it was a violent offence, a restraining order was an option available.

But there was a bit of a hole there in the legislation, which meant that the offender would be released from prison and then there would be a gap or nothing to protect the victim. It caused an awful lot of fear amongst women, children, and victims that the offender was able to get out of prison, and then who knew what they could do? They might have parole conditions, yes. They would have if it had been a sentence of longer than 2 years. But, even so, those conditions would expire after 6 months. Therefore, the committee decided to change the clause relating to applications for a non-contact order, so that they could take place any time after sentencing. That, I hope, will give a lot of comfort to victims, and that is what this bill is all about. Thank you.

The Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill has come back to this House in very good shape, and that is a great credit to the members of the Law and Order Committee and, indeed, to the Labour members on it. My colleague Phil Goff has told the House about some of the thorny issues that had to be dealt with, and I have no doubt at all that Phil Goff, a former Minister of Justice himself and one of the best Ministers of Justice we have had in a long time, did put up a good case for the sorts of changes that he talked about. That is the nature of Phil Goff. He is absolutely passionate about this issue, about the rights of people, and about an effective justice system and an effective criminal justice system. What a pity the current Minister of Justice, who really is the laziest Minister of Justice we have had in 40 years, does not bring the same alacrity and assiduity to the task that Phil Goff did when he was Minister of Justice.

This bill is in good shape and it reflects the fact that the practicality of victims’ rights, which have really been developed over the last 20 years, is now starting to take shape. There is no point in having fine words on a page of a piece of legislation; actually, it has to have real meaning in real people’s lives. The ability for victims, particularly those of serious violent offending, to be able to take practical steps to protect themselves is a good thing. This bill gives important protection to some of the most vulnerable victims of crime that we have in this country—those who have been the victims of serious and violent crime. It is good that the threshold, in terms of the sentence that the offender has received from the court, is lower. That is to say, as Phil Goff pointed out, it is not having been sentenced to 5 years’ imprisonment but to 2 years, because that is when the parole system mechanisms kick in. There ought to be scope.

It is not explicit in this bill, but perhaps a further development would be that the parole system can be used to effect some of these orders. Of course, allowing an application to be made before a convicted offender has been released from a custodial sentence makes sense, particularly when the threats of harassment or the threats of a presence in the vicinity of the victim have been manifest before the offender has been released. It makes sense to be able to make an application before the offender is released. That is all good stuff, and none of that can be criticised. It is good to see, as I said before, that the committee has been able to effect sensible change for the benefit of the bill and, ultimately, for the benefit of future victims—and let us hope there are not many of them.

There is one important issue left, and Phil Goff alluded to this as well. It is an issue that I think is important. I noted it at the time of the bill’s introduction and I notice it now. It is the cost to the victim. These are civil proceedings. The application for an order, under this bill, is a civil proceeding, and therefore the civil rules of the District Court will apply. That means that in the absence of anything else there will be a filing fee. If there is a hearing— and the bill explicitly notes that in some circumstances there may be the need for a hearing—then there will be a hearing fee as well. In some courts—and I am particularly familiar with the Employment Court—there is a specific basis on which a registrar of that court can waive fees. That is not as clear in the District Court, and perhaps something that we ought to be looking at—perhaps it could be the subject of a Supplementary Order Paper when this bill comes to its Committee stage—is some explicit provision for a registrar of the District Court who has received an application to be able to waive those fees.

If these orders are to be processed as it appears on the face of the bill, in some cases on the papers as opposed to having to convene a hearing, then we need to be able to keep the cost as minimal as possible. Likewise, if there is to be a hearing, particularly in relation to a final order, as provided for in the bill, since the orders have now been broken up into interim orders and final orders, or, at least, temporary orders and final orders, if there is to be a hearing for a final order, then let us keep the cost of that as low as possible. Let us have some provision for a waiver of those costs and fees. That really is the issue that remains. If we want these orders to be effective, and if we do not want victims to feel put upon yet again by an offender who has completed their sentence or is about to complete their sentence, and if we therefore want this remedy to be practical and effective, then we need to make sure that the orders are accessible and that any barriers or impediments to making an application for an order are stripped away. The cost factor is an important one. Anything that we can do to strip away that cost is a good thing. If it means that we have to give registrars of the District Court specific and express powers to waive fees, then we ought to do that. There is a cost, of course, for making an application, or even for varying it once an order is granted. If a victim seeks to vary an order, there is potentially a cost associated with that as well. Indeed, there is potentially a cost associated with discharging an order if it is not discharged by effluxion of time or through other means. So let us make this as accessible as we can for victims to take advantage of.

I just want to conclude, really, by repeating remarks that I have made in this House before. Although we have been developing victims’ rights in different pieces of legislation over time, and notwithstanding the good work that has gone on in previous parliaments and in previous Governments—usually Labour-led Governments—

💬 Simon O’Connor: Ha, ha!

—the reality is that it is long overdue, and Mr O’Connor knows it, for us to have a comprehensive, overarching piece of legislation to deal with victims’ rights so that there is one place where victims, or their advocates, or those who are assisting them or advising them can go to find out how a victim can respond to a particular set of circumstances and what a victim is entitled to. The first thing must be an understanding of the criminal justice system. The second thing must be access to an advocate, or someone to assist them to negotiate the fraught path of the criminal justice system.

Let us face it: victims do not choose to be in that position. Victims do not choose to be part of the criminal justice system. They are put there because of the actions of another or of others. It is incumbent on us, and I think that we have a moral obligation as a Parliament and as successive Governments, to ensure that they are afforded proper assistance to work their way through the criminal justice system. So let us have an overarching charter of victims’ rights. Let us have an overarching piece of legislation that spells out what victims are entitled to, what they can expect, what assistance they can get, and what assistance they will get. I think that is very important and I think it is long overdue. Labour’s commitment is that we will have that. We will have a comprehensive set of victims’ rights rather than them appearing in different pieces of legislation.

The final, final point I want to make just about this bill is that the practical success of this bill will be in the enforcement of the orders and therefore in a police force equipped to understand the orders, enforce them, and be on hand if and when they are breached. Protection orders issued by the Family Court are breached every day, and we have seen a recent, very tragic case where there has been a catastrophic breach of them. We cannot allow that to continue. We need to know that successive Governments will resource our police force to ensure that these sorts of orders will have the backing of the State through the police, that they will be afforded priority, and that people can rest assured that they will be meaningful once ordered by the court.

Could I begin my comments just by endorsing Mr Little’s remarks about the need for a comprehensive review of all of the legislation and all of our practice around protecting and restoring victims’ rights. That is something that the Greens look forward to working with Labour on next year, when we have a new Government. In the meantime, to address the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill—the Greens are supporting this bill, albeit with some reservation. I was on the Law and Order Committee. I voted for the bill and I sort of stand alongside it. We did not do a minority report or any of those things, but we still have some concerns about the bill, some of which we might seek to address at the Committee of the whole House stage.

We are supporting the bill primarily because there clearly is a gap. It is perverse, in a sense, that a person who has been the victim of violence from a family member—I was going to say a “friend”, but that is the wrong word—or an associate, somebody close to them, can get the mechanism of a protection order, but somebody who has been seriously assaulted or abused in some way by a stranger does not have access to that. That is the gap that this bill seeks to fill, and we think it is appropriate. Clearly, there are cases—the historical cases—that have demonstrated the need for some sort of mechanism in order to add a layer of protection and, indeed, to add a layer of comfort to the victims of what are always going to be serious crimes in this sense.

I think some of the issues with the bill that I want to talk about may become apparent over time. I would love to be proven wrong. This bill might be seamless and without flaw—and that would be a good thing—but I do think that maybe there are a few things that we have still got wrong. Primarily, I would say that part of what this bill does is actually already covered by law. Some of the conditions that would be imposed on a person who is subject to one of these orders already exist. If I was an offender who had assaulted somebody and after my release I was found to be loitering around their house, watching them, obstructing them, leaving objectionable material where they may find it, or encouraging somebody else to do some form of harm to this person, I am quite sure that there is existing law and, in fact, that the police would very quickly be on the case and be responding in some appropriate way to that sort of behaviour. So some of what we are doing with this bill is already covered by existing law, and I do wonder at the necessity for replicating that.

Having said that, I do think that the third-party provisions, if you like—the fact that if I as an offender in jail, or as a recently released one, get one of my dodgy buddies to go around and cause harm or grief or fear or whatever, then it is entirely appropriate that the legislation should cover that sort of third-party aspect of it. I think that is one of the strengths of the bill, that it does recognise that it does not have to be the primary offender causing harm to a victim; it can be some other person—not least of all in gang situations, but even in situations where there is no gang activity or influence.

Mr Goff talked about the shift from the 5-year threshold to a 2-year threshold, and he makes a compelling argument that the 2-year threshold does align the bill with the Parole Act, and that is not insignificant. But I still have some unease—not least of all following the initial briefing we had and the talk about the numbers of people potentially affected by this. Five years was arguably too high a bar, and there was the one case already referenced where a 4-year sentence was imposed and that offender would have escaped the consequences or the provisions of this bill. My concerns about the 2-year sentence are partly that there is an issue of cost, but that is a secondary concern. It will inevitably mean significantly more cost associated with this. The more compelling concern I have is that we were told that currently or over the past 5 years there would have been something like fewer than 1,000 offenders released who would potentially be subject to one of these orders—something like fewer than 1,000. Let us say 800 or 900. Take out a few of those who would already be subject to protection orders, perhaps, and you are still talking about quite a few hundred people per year who potentially might be subject to one of these orders.

I have a fear that if they proliferate, if suddenly we are seeing literally hundreds and hundreds of these things in place at any given time, it almost devalues the importance of them, and it certainly puts increased load on the police in terms of enforcement. We have a lot of protection orders out there at the moment, and we know already that we have seen some tragic consequences. Police have reported to them breaches of protection orders. They need to make a call as to the urgency or significance of them. Generally, I am quite sure they get it right, and I am quite sure they work very hard to get it right every time, but on occasion things will fall through the cracks. They will be sort of downplayed in terms of priority. I do fear that the proliferation of these orders will devalue them in terms of enforcement and that there will be situations where there is not a sufficiently fast response because, after all, it is only another victims’ order when you have hundreds and hundreds of these things in force, as almost inevitably we will. So I think that is something that we may need to give a little bit more thought to.

As I said, the financial cost is certainly a secondary concern, but it is not a trivial one either. In terms of the issue of the point at which somebody can apply for one of these orders and in terms of applications generally, I think I entirely agree with the intention of the bill that the application costs should be minimal, should be very, very low; that it should not necessarily mean engaging a lawyer; and that the application process should be swift and straightforward. Obviously, there needs to be an opportunity for the person, the defendant, if you like, to defend themselves to oppose the notion. But I do think we must make very sure that neither process nor cost is a barrier to the application of these, and I think the language of the bill and, indeed, of the explanatory note does seek to ensure that.

But I do still wonder about the notion that these things can be applied for immediately post sentencing. Again, I think it will result in many more of these orders being applied for and issued. After all, on what basis would a court deny or reject an application for an order immediately post sentencing? If a person had recently assaulted someone with sufficient severity that they are subject to at least a more than 2-year sentence, it is most unlikely that a court would have many grounds on which to say no. Allowing the order to be applied for and imposed very soon after sentencing assumes that the prison is actually going to fail in its job of rehabilitation. Yes, we know that there are often recidivist offenders, people who continually offend, and they are very likely to offend again, but even serious assaults can sometimes be the outcome of a very unique and specific set of circumstances and be highly unlikely ever to be replicated. I do wonder about the assumption built into this provision that there is no likelihood of rehabilitation coming through sentences of 2-plus years, and I do think that that is, again, something we need to give some thought to. The argument made was that, yes, while still in prison people can threaten or cause grief to a victim. Well, that is right—they can, but that is only because they are breaking the rules. Obviously, the Department of Corrections works very hard to ensure that prisoners cannot have inappropriate communications outside of prison. As I said earlier, I do believe that the third-party issue, where an inmate might persuade one of his friends or associates to go and cause grief to a victim, is readily covered by existing legislation. So I think we need to get something a little bit more nuanced in terms of immediately post sentencing.

The likelihood of a victim wanting one of these orders a short time after the offence has been committed and thinking: “The person has gone down. Right. I’ve got an opportunity to impose some more burden on them.” is clearly going to be something that a lot of people will want to do. I fear that it could almost become a default position, where anybody who is subject to more than a 2-year sentence will find themselves with one of these orders imposed on them. And I return to that notion of these orders being devalued in terms of the likelihood of the orders having a status, if you like, or not having the sense of this being a very serious matter, with the orders issued only for the most vile and objectionable cases of assault on people, and the need to give protection to these people, these victims, to allow them to get on with their lives. There is a balance in that if somebody does come out of prison, perhaps the best place for them in many regards would be to return to the community within which they have offended, albeit with some protections and comfort for the victim.

As I said, we are supporting this bill, and we will continue to support it because there is a gap, but we have some concerns and we will address those in the Committee stage. Kia ora.

I am very pleased to take a call on this bill, the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. I would like to acknowledge the chair of the Law and Order Committee, Jacqui Dean. The work that was done in the select committee was very much a team exercise, but after hearing Mr Goff you would think it was an individual sport. I want to acknowledge my colleagues from the National Party, the Labour Party, the Greens, and New Zealand First, all of whom worked very hard on this bill.

Jacqui Dean referred to a young woman who appeared in front of our select committee on Wednesday, in relation to another matter. She had been subjected to a very serious assault in a domestic violence situation.

I am sorry to interrupt the member but the time has come for the House to rise.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.