Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill

I move, That the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill be now read a first time. As the Minister of Justice, my paramount concern is, of course, the safety and security of the New Zealand public. The aim of this bill is to better protect the law-abiding public by ensuring that a similar regime of supervision applies to convicted offenders who served their sentences in prisons overseas as applies to those convicted and imprisoned in New Zealand. It puts into effect the third of three initiatives we have had under way to strengthen New Zealand’s oversight of deported offenders.

In late December 2014 Australia made changes to its immigration laws, and in February of this year it became clear to me that there was the potential for a greater number of New Zealand - born offenders to be deported back home than had previously been the case. Let us be quite clear: we cannot stop Australia exercising its sovereign right to ultimately decide to deport any category of people that its Parliament decides is lawful, nor can we change the fact that Australian law permits those being considered for removal to be held in detention centres during that process. We have registered at a number of levels that we do not agree with the policy and we do not like it, but the fact of the matter is that we cannot force the Australians to change their law. So we have created a supervision regime that will better protect New Zealanders from those offenders returning to New Zealand. As with those released from New Zealand prisons, we can never completely remove all risk, but this legislation is an important part of reducing the risk for law-abiding New Zealanders.

For generations Australia and other countries have deported New Zealanders who commit crimes abroad without any oversight back in New Zealand. On average, these numbers were around 80 to 100 each year, and included the most serious of offenders. With the recent policy changes in Australia, these numbers have increased to potentially around 250 to 300 a year, and this, of course, poses an increased risk to New Zealanders. However, it is important to note that not all these people are deported offenders. The new regime also includes deportations on character grounds, so the number of offenders being deported has not increased by that same amount.

It is critical that we have in place a regime that can manage and supervise the offenders who do return, many of whom have been convicted of serious offences. The proposed supervision regime as set out in this bill will mean that offenders who arrive in New Zealand shortly after being released from prison will be subject to the same sort of oversight as offenders who have served a similar sentence here. The proposed regime in the bill will apply automatically to returning offenders who are sentenced to more than 1 year in prison in another country, who return to New Zealand within 6 months of their release from custody overseas, and who were imprisoned for behaviour that would be an imprisonable offence under New Zealand law.

The bill contains three specific aspects. The first is allowing police to compel returning offenders to provide information—names, date of birth, fingerprints, etc., and, in qualifying cases, a DNA sample. The second is the standard monitoring and supervision conditions that will automatically apply to all returning prisoners who are sentenced to more than 1 year in prison in another country and who return within 6 months of being released from custody, including time in detention centres. This includes those who are released early. The regime will apply regardless of whether the offender is eventually deported or removed, or chooses to return voluntarily. The length of time each offender will be supervised will be based on the length of their overseas sentence. Finally, the bill gives new powers to the District Court to impose special conditions on eligible offenders, on either an interim or an ongoing basis. This allows the court to impose conditions on any offender who is subject to some form of monitoring or supervision at the time that they return to New Zealand, regardless of how long it has been since their release.

Another key addition to the proposals that I announced a few weeks ago is the inclusion of a mandatory review of the operation of the legislation by the Justice and Electoral Committee 2 years from the bill’s commencement. The proposal is that the bill is referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee for review and report to Parliament, as I consider that the issues to be canvassed are likely to traverse across operational, practical, and social matters as well as just legal matters. From the outset it has been my intention that criminals being returned to New Zealand should be subject to the same sort of oversight as offenders who have served a similar prison sentence in New Zealand, and this bill achieves that aim.

The Government has moved at pace to get this entirely new regime in place. This has not been an easy task, and it has involved working across three agencies and, of course, with Australian officials. A key aspect of the regime has been getting the information we needed from the Australians. With a register and information-sharing agreement now in place, I announced the proposed regime earlier in the year, confirmed Cabinet approval 3 weeks ago, and am now introducing a bill to Parliament. Developing an appropriate oversight regime for returning offenders is complex. We have needed to strike the difficult balance between offenders’ rights and public safety. Despite these challenges, we have introduced a bill that will provide protection for New Zealanders where there has previously been none.

The estimated time to draft a bill, from instructions being received to introduction, is around 80 working days. This bill was drafted, consulted on, and approved by Cabinet in just 12 working days. The quick turn-round demonstrates the Government’s urgency and commitment to protecting New Zealanders. Kiwis can be assured that this Government has done all it could and moved as quickly as possible to get an appropriate oversight regime in place, given the restrictions we have had in getting the information from Australia.

Throughout the development of this supervision regime, I have endeavoured to work with my parliamentary colleagues on all sides of the Chamber. In my view, political parties should be able to work together on issues as important as these. I would like to think that every party in Parliament recognises that there is a gap in the law and supports a bill that does something about it. I have been working with all of the parties in Parliament all the way through the process since Cabinet confirmed its approach. There are some areas that we do not necessarily agree on, but I have endeavoured to engage in numerous discussions with them and to provide opportunities for them to offer suggestions. They have received copies of the Cabinet paper and draft bills and have been updated regularly on revisions. We have gone backwards and forwards where we can, and I have done that in an effort to try to build widespread support, but, in the end, of course, voting decisions are theirs.

I also have to thank the Ministry of Justice officials and the Parliamentary Counsel Office for all of their tremendous work in getting this bill put together in such a timely manner.

To conclude, I wish to thank this House for accepting the need to pass this bill under urgency. There is strong public interest in putting in place appropriate systems to manage the risks posed by returning offenders. This bill does exactly that. I am proud of the proposed supervision regime and the speed with which we have responded to this issue, and I commend the bill to the House.

I want to begin by acknowledging that, as the Minister of Justice set out, she has indeed involved the Labour Party—in the last week or so—in the final stages of the drafting of this bill that is coming before the House. I will share, as will my colleagues, some of our misgivings over the content of this bill. We appreciated the opportunity to raise those with the Minister directly. I appreciate her giving direct responses to some of those misgivings, but, unfortunately, on some of them we have not yet reached common ground. I would say, though, that in principle we absolutely see the need for a piece of legislation like this. We continue to question, though, why it is that we are debating this bill in such a rushed way, when it was clear for many, many months now that this was going to be an issue that needed to be addressed. That is a legitimate issue that we raised, obviously, in question time today.

Before we begin this debate we need to be absolutely clear that there are two issues at play in debating the context of this bill. There is the debate around who is being deported and why. We will continue, by the good work of Kelvin Davis and of Andrew Little, to question the legitimacy of the policy that has been adopted by our Australian counterparts. Because, of course, offenders from overseas have been deported back to New Zealand where they are legitimate citizens for years now. Of course they have. But the operative word there is “citizens”. What we have seen at play in recent times is a real muddying of the waters over when one determines someone to be a citizen—or not.

We have individuals now who, for all intents and purposes, are not New Zealanders in their minds. They identify as Australians, their families are Australians, they have grown up in Australia, in some cases they are born in Australia, and they are being deported to this country. We will continue to battle on that point, on behalf of those who are resident here in New Zealand and whom it does not serve well for these individuals to be deported back here, but also on the principle of human rights that these individuals are encountering themselves. That is a point that needs to continue to be raised by all sides of this House at the highest level.

I have to say that this is not an issue that is new internationally. There have been examples of this happening in the past. Tonga, Samoa—they know policies like this. They have a growing population of people from Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Dallas. These are individuals who grew up in the United States, who have no recollection of life in Tonga, who identify as Americans and have no family in Tonga but have found themselves deported to that country, and have found a difficult path of reintegration, let alone rehabilitation. Because we know this is a policy that has been adopted by another country in the past, we can learn the lessons of a country like Tonga that has tried to then deal with the fallout of such a policy.

First, the lesson should be to battle the policy, and we will continue to make that point. The second lesson then is, in lieu of being able to successfully do that, how do you ensure that your country is prepared for those who have been deported back here? And there will be a range of categories: those who sit in the minor offences category, and those who do legitimately require—for the safety of the community—to be monitored within that community. But nothing in this bill speaks to the issue of proper reintegration and rehabilitation.

And yet we only need to look at our own experience with offenders being released from prison to know that key to someone’s successful rehabilitation is their access to housing, is their access to community support, is their access to employment, is their access to full health and well-being. That is fundamental if we want someone to be reintegrated successfully into a community. Why else, for instance, does the Department of Corrections have a policy of locating offenders in a prison close to their family and their community? Why else do we have Release to Work programmes? Why else do we ensure that parole boards do not release people from prison until they have appropriate accommodation? And, yet, here we have a policy where we already know people are walking out of an airport with nowhere to go, and nothing that I have seen in any of the Government’s preparation for this bill speaks to that point. That serves those individuals poorly, but, primarily, it serves New Zealanders poorly. They are the ones whose safety we should be ensuring when we are looking for answers in a piece of legislation like this. We know that we need to be prepared.

The Minister raised that, of course, we have had people deported to New Zealand over a number of years—but not to the scale that we are seeing now and not for the range of offences that we are seeing now. In fact, we are looking at five times the level of deportation per month than we have seen in the past. We know it is an incredible increase because those who are working in the community with these individuals have spoken of their struggle to manage that influx of individuals. What they have received? A paltry $100,000 I believe it might be, Mr Davis? PILLARS? A small amount of money in order to try to manage this huge increase in offenders.

Yet what are we doing in this bill? We know that the Department of Corrections, to be able to just make sure that it does the bare bones of monitoring—just checking where people live—needed an extra $5 million. So if you are going to do a proper job of wraparound and reintegration, you are going to need a lot more than that, and yet there is nothing in the preparation of this legislation that speaks to that point.

I want to speak briefly to the time line of this bill. We had a short exchange in the House before this bill came before Parliament about when the Minister first instructed Parliamentary Counsel Office. Of course, there would have been a bit of back and forth with officials before that point, but we know that drafting began in October. My question is, why were we able to identify that overseas offenders returning to New Zealand and going unmonitored would be an issue—in April 2014—and yet we did not begin this piece of work until October or, at a stretch, February? At the beginning of 2014, that is when we debated the Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill.

I want to read an excerpt from a definition in that bill. Section 107C of the Parole Act, replaced by clause 7 of that bill, sets out the meaning of “eligible offender”. It states: “(1) In this Part, ‘eligible offender’ means an offender who— … (b) is a person who (i) has arrived in New Zealand within 6 months of ceasing to be subject to any sentence, supervision conditions, or order imposed on the person for a relevant offence by an overseas court;”—by an overseas court. We knew in April 2014 that we needed to apply a regime for the serious end of offenders coming in from overseas, and yet we did not use that opportunity, when we identified that gap in our legislation, to put through a broader monitoring regime. Yes, we did not have an agreement with Australia around information sharing at that point. That did not stop us from doing the preparatory work. We all know what issues there are when you put through a last-minute piece of legislation.

This side of the House wants to ensure that we have a monitoring regime, which is why we have said that we will support the bill. But we also proposed, via David Parker and Andrew Little, that we have a dual bill process: that we put a sunset clause into this rushed piece of legislation for a year and that in this House, while we pass this bill today, we also conduct a first reading of a duplicate bill. That bill could then go through a full select committee process, a full second reading process, and a full final stage—all in time to replace the rushed, short-cut version in a year’s time with a bill that has had full consideration. We believe that would be a much better, more robust process to undertake, rather than waiting 2 years and simply having a select committee review that piece of legislation. We stand by that suggestion. We think it was a constructive one to make.

Any bill where you are putting in place the potential to curtail civil liberties should, at the very least, have a decent process through a select committee. The public should be able to have their say. The legal fraternity should be able to have its say. That is how we make good law in this House. Not by trial, which is essentially what this piece of legislation is about to go through. I will use my second reading contribution to talk about some of the areas where we have concerns that we are leaving gaps open; where we are relying on the Department of Corrections to highlight, in some cases, offenders who need monitoring regimes. We know it is a pressed department, but I will leave that to my second contribution.

It is an honour to speak on this, the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. Before I do though, I must convey my thoughts and prayers to the people of Paris, France, and all those caught up in terrorist conflicts around the world.

Returning to this bill, can I congratulate the Minister of Justice, the Hon Amy Adams, on introducing this bill. It has taken some time to work through what are some complex issues. As she has already stated in her first reading speech, it is about balancing the safety and security of the New Zealand public with individual liberties—as the last speaker, Jacinda Ardern, has mentioned—but it is also in response to the changes in immigration laws in Australia.

This has been a process where we have been working alongside our colleagues in Australia as well as the officials in order to bring about a framework for change that will be enduring and lasting. Department of Corrections officials have formed part of that group and have visited Canberra. I was in Australia in July when we signed a memorandum of cooperation in order for the sharing of the information from the states through to our Department of Corrections here in New Zealand to ensure that that cooperation and that level of collaboration is expected, and it certainly is required.

At present the vast majority of deported offenders are not subject to any formal management on their return to New Zealand. This has been the case, as the Minister stated, over a number of years. So this is the first Government—the first Government—to intervene and to respond to this need. What it does is solve this problem by giving the Department of Corrections and the police the powers that are necessary to supervise these deported offenders on their return to New Zealand. That will be consistent with the approach that we take to managing released prisoners from New Zealand’s own prisons. It does that by allowing corrections officers to manage the risk that these people pose to the public. A number of these offenders have been convicted of serious crimes and the Government’s duty is to protect our citizens from harm, and that is what this bill is about.

The last speaker did talk about protecting the rights of these deported offenders and these criminals in terms of their citizenship rights. Well, it was the Labour Government that was part of the agreement with the Australian Government to curtail some of the rights of New Zealanders in Australia. So she knows that, we know that, and the people of New Zealand know that.

I think the second point to make around some of these deported offenders is, you know, if they do not want to give up some of their rights in Australia, then do not commit the crimes. Do not commit the crimes—is that something simple to ask of some of these offenders?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: It’s a very good point.

Well, I think it should be made, Dr Smith. I think, you know, you give up some of your rights when you commit crimes.

In terms of the reintegration services, corrections officers are working alongside organisations like New Zealand People at Risk Solutions, Goodwood Park, and the Manukau Urban Māori Authority in order to provide some of these social services, and it is a collaboration within Government. So the Department of Corrections will work alongside the police and will work alongside the Ministry of Justice as well as the Ministry of Social Development to provide some of the services that these returning offenders may require. But we cannot compel them to take up those services, because, obviously, they are citizens returning to New Zealand who have the ability to choose to take up those services or not.

As the Minister has already said, the length of the supervision period provided by the bill is clearly linked to the length of the prison sentence imposed on the deported offenders in those overseas jurisdictions. So the longer the prison sentence overseas, the longer that period will be on their return to New Zealand. So, for example, those on life sentences can be managed for up to 5 years out here in New Zealand. Eligible deported offenders will be subject to standard release conditions, which are the same as those currently used to manage prisoners in New Zealand.

In addition—and I think this is a really important clause within the bill—the Department of Corrections will be able to apply to the courts for the imposition of special conditions on deported offenders where it will help to reduce reoffending and enhance public safety. I think the last member who spoke should consider that point and consider the fact that the department, through its chief executive, can apply to the courts for special conditions to be imposed. One of the conditions, for example, can be the imposition of electronic monitoring where it is deemed necessary.

This bill complements some of the changes made in late December 2014 to enhance the extended supervision orders and introduce public protection orders. I know there have been some questions regarding the use of those orders, but there is a high threshold. Those changes were made to meet the need for those particularly high-risk individuals who do require extra supervision. So this bill provides for the Department of Corrections to apply for those extended supervision orders and public protection orders where appropriate.

I just want to sum up by saying there is an increased number of deported offenders arriving not just from Australia but from around the world—250 to 300 per year. I believe that this bill is an appropriate response to that need to, particularly, supervise those deported offenders who are high risk who return to our shores. It is about supervision and it is about monitoring but it is also about rehabilitation and reintegration, and that is why the support services and the Department of Corrections will be working alongside a number of Government agencies and also a number of NGOs that do fine work in the community to help these offenders reintegrate and rehabilitate as part of their release into the community.

That is why this bill provides the Department of Corrections and the police with the powers to manage some of those risks to the public posed by deported offenders. It is about offenders’ rights versus public security, but I will always come down in support of public security and public safety. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. The previous speaker, the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, was correct. We are debating this because of a law that the Australian Government enacted. That law was enacted in order to capture terrorists. What it has in fact done is cast such a wide net that it is now also capturing criminals, including low-level lawbreakers. What the Australians have done is subscribe to the politics of fear. They have created an enemy, and that enemy is now low-level crims. They have created the enemy, and they are using that enemy to justify all manner of human rights abuses.

My objection to their law is in fact the human rights abuses. Minister Adams was correct. The Australian Government has a sovereign right to make the laws as it sees fit, but the objection I have to the law it has created is that it lacks any proportionality where these low-level lawbreakers are now being subjected to the most heinous of conditions in detention centres. I believe that New Zealand has an obligation, as a member of the international community, to stand up and expose just how bad those conditions are. It is easy for us as a nation to condemn terrorist organisations and Third World countries for their human rights abuses. It is a lot harder for us to stand up and address the abuses of our closest friend and our ally, but that does not mean to say we are wrong to do it. I believe that we need to speak out wherever there is tyranny and abuse.

There is no justification really for the detention centres—first of all, because the prisoners could have their visa situation assessed before their prison sentence ends. If they go through that process and it is determined that their visa is going to be totally revoked before the end of their prison sentence and they get deported, I am au fait with that; I am OK with that. Better still, if the prisoners are let out into their communities and they spend time at home with their families, working, paying tax to the Australian Government, while that process is going through, that to me is an even better and more humane system. But if the Australians determine that they must detain these people, then all I think our New Zealand Government needs to ask is that they be detained in a humane fashion.

Everyone knows that I have been over there and I have met detainees. I have listened to their stories. We have heard how they have been abused and they have been antagonised by guards, and how they have been beaten. The Australian Government is denying all this. There is a simple reason why. The bigger the lie, the easier it is to hide. The Australian Government is hiding these human rights abuses.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Can I just draw the member’s attention to the bill. Can he sit down while I am on my feet; thank you. The member has spent about 3½ minutes outlining the current situation in Australia, which has been well debated not only in the House but also across the media. He now needs to bring himself to the provisions of the bill and to debate those, please.

The situation in Australia leads to these detainees being brought back. In a couple of days’ time, we are going to have a planeload of New Zealand detainees arriving on our shores. My colleague Jacinda Ardern rightly raised the question as to why it has taken so long and why this legislation has to be drawn up in such a hurry.

My first understanding of this problem was back in January of this year. Jacinda Ardern has said that this situation arose maybe in April of last year when we first became aware of it with other legislation. My understanding was that in January of this year a woman who committed murder in Australia was sent back to New Zealand and is living in Kaikohe, up in Te Tai Tokerau. She arrived with no conditions whatsoever imposed upon her. If she had been released into the Australian community she would have had all manner of parole conditions, but, because she was deported directly to New Zealand, she did not have any conditions imposed on her. At the time I said that it was really important that this situation be addressed. That woman, I do not believe, really holds much of a threat to the community. But let us change the situation. If she was a child molester and she arrived back in New Zealand, back in Kaikohe, and happened to live next to an early childhood centre or a school or a playground or a park, that is the reason why this legislation is necessary and the reason why I do support it going through. But I do not think that that should stop me criticising the process it has gone through and the hurried aspect of it.

Let us just also understand that these detainees do not want be here. They would prefer to be back in Australia with their families and their support networks. One of my main criticisms of this legislation is that although they are arriving here and they are going to have these monitoring conditions, which I agree with, my greater concern is that there is no social support in the legislation to really look after their needs. I understand that they are going to arrive in New Zealand and I think they will be given a couple of hundred dollars and 5 days’ accommodation in a motel somewhere. The concern is that they will be arriving basically with no food, no clothes, no job—nothing. That is why about 5 or 6 weeks ago I suggested that an appropriate response—a welcoming party—would be for the Government to open up and pay a marae to look after them for the first 3, 4, or 5 weeks of their time here in New Zealand. That way they would have somewhere to go to. That way they would be fed. That way they could have a whole heap of support services descend on that marae, to specifically address the needs that would help them to get back on their feet.

The other day the Prime Minister said that he is the only one standing up for victims. Well, my real concern is that if we do not have the support networks in place for these people when they arrive here, they are going to be set up to fail. If they do not have support networks and they do not get on their feet quickly, then they may have to resort to crime to get by, which is going to create new victims right here in New Zealand.

Another concern of mine is that when they arrive here, and if we do not have the wraparound support services for these people, then they are going to be easy fodder for gangs. They will be looking for someone, somewhere, to support them and help them get by and to protect them. The gangs will be sitting around, right now, going “Heck, we’re going to have 20 or 30, maybe a couple of hundred, ex-prisoners from Australia arriving here with very little support.”, and they can fill the void of the support agencies. I know Minister Lotu-Iiga said that the Department of Corrections is going to be working with various agencies, but it is not explicit here in the bill as to what that support is going to be. I think that the Government needs to act swiftly to make sure that these people are not set up to fail once they get here; that they are supported.

I do have concerns about the Department of Corrections being able to monitor the situation when these people get here. We know that the department struggles to monitor people on electronic bail and in all sorts of other situations. We know it is struggling in prisons. I would like to think that the Department of Corrections does receive more in its budget to enable it to employ people who will look after these deportees.

Just to wrap up—and again we are going through this whole process over the course of the evening. I just want to wrap up by saying—and it does go back to the situation in Australia. At some stage in the future there will be an inquiry into the human rights abuses in the detention centres in Australia. I believe that when that inquiry does happen, guards will be called to the witness stand. They will be asked to testify and they will be asked the question—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member cannot go there. The member was given some latitude earlier in his contribution. This does not relate to the bill. The member should confine himself to the bill.

I do have just one sentence.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry, but the member cannot get into that situation. In effect, the Speaker has ruled that you cannot go there, and you should not go there.

💬 Jacinda Ardern: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My colleague is speaking to the origin of a significant number of these offenders who are being deported directly from this place. In fact, the bill itself references the fact that many of them will be held in detention before being deported here. It is explicitly mentioned in the bill, and I would have thought it would be in scope.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The provisions of the bill relate to the monitoring of those people when they are returned to New Zealand. Those are what the provisions are. It is fairly straightforward. The member has already been given 4 minutes of a 10-minute speech to cover that, when he was asked now to confine himself to the bill. Once the Speaker has intervened and said “Don’t go there.”, it is not in order for the member to say “Well, I’ve just got a little bit more to say.” I am sorry, but those are the rules, and I do not make them.

The detention centres are wrong and they need to be closed.

It is my pleasure to speak to the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill throughout the course of today. First of all, before I address the bill, a question was raised, quite rightly, that, in the bill provisions around the reintegration of returning offenders, who will be subject to conditions under this legislation are not noted in the bill. As my colleague in front of me, Jono Naylor, points out, no, it is not in the bill, and, in fact, that is not normally in the bill.

This Government has a very strong work programme under way traversing a number of relevant Government agencies involved in offender rehabilitation: New Zealand Police, the Department of Corrections, Immigration New Zealand, the Customs Service, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Ministry of Health, and also the Ministry of Social Development. Those agencies are working together—and have been for some time—to ensure that we are ready to support, monitor, and begin the reintegration of these offenders upon their return to New Zealand. So it is this Government’s priority, in fact, to ensure that there are plans in place for these individuals who are being returned to New Zealand and who will be subject to the orders that are passed in this bill, with a focus on reintegration but also keeping our communities safe. That is entirely consistent and in line with a number of pieces of legislation that have fairly recently gone through this House, such as the orders mentioned by a previous speaker.

On the extended supervision orders, perhaps a point around the context of this bill that I want to make is that this Parliament did put through extended supervision orders, which came into being in December, and also public protection orders for those offenders who did not commit their crime in New Zealand. But in the absence of an information-sharing agreement it was not possible at that time to extend parole conditions and supervision conditions or orders against offenders who committed their crimes outside of New Zealand. We were simply unable to craft up a regime for monitoring and rehabilitating offenders in the absence of an information-sharing agreement. That was completed in February of this year and here we are in November with the bill before the House.

Although the gap between February and mid-November might seem a long period to traverse, in fact an awful lot of work has been under way to put a system in order that will cater for those people who are increasingly being returned to New Zealand, many of whom are coming from Australia due to a change in its internal legislation with changes to its migration legislation. The register that is being brought about in this legislation to track offenders, and information-sharing arrangements with Australia will give us the detailed information that we need and puts the New Zealand Government, the Department of Corrections, police, and everyone else in a better position to properly assess and to monitor these offenders returning to New Zealand.

We still need all criminals being returned to New Zealand to be subject to the same form of oversight as New Zealanders when they complete their term of imprisonment for a similar prison sentence. So this bill implements a regime, a supervision regime, to cover the gap. There are three key aspects in this bill. The first aspect is to allow police to compel returning offenders to provide information—so that is their name, their date of birth, their fingerprints, and, in some cases, a DNA sample. Previously police could ask but there was no degree of compulsion. Secondly, there will be standard monitoring and supervision conditions that are automatically imposed on eligible returning offenders. So they are pretty standard and will apply to all eligible returning offenders. Thirdly, there will be new powers through the auspices of the District Court to impose special conditions. Those special conditions will be restrictions, for example, on not residing near a school, or not residing near a day-care centre or something like that. Orders can also be subject to electronic monitoring. There will be further interventions today on this bill and I will leave my contribution there. Thank you.

The Green Party is abstaining on the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill today. We recognise the need for legislation to manage the return of New Zealanders who have serious convictions after they have been deported from another country. This is an old issue. Such citizens have been returning back to New Zealand for years and years and years. There has been no legislation in place to effectively manage this issue in the past but we do recognise that there is an escalation over the consequences of that deportation policy, given the gross breach of human rights that the Australian law imposes on New Zealand people.

There is no doubt that Australia has the sovereign right to make any laws that it likes, but that does not excuse the wrongfulness of its law and nor does it mean that simply because it is Australia and we have a close relationship with it that we should be soft on Australia for its human rights abuses, and we still have serious concerns about New Zealand failing to raise this issue when Australia was seeking a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. That is the kind of time—exactly the right time—for New Zealand to stand in favour of the rights of our own citizens as opposed to the personal relationships between some members of Government in New Zealand and some members of Government in Australia. So I agree with Peter Dunne here when he described—I think he used the word “villain”—Australia as the villain; I think that is what he said, and his condemnation of its Draconian and unjust deportation laws.

We understand the need for legislation, however, to deal with that unjust law; we do not agree that such urgency is necessary. We want to see some kind of select committee process for this legislation even if it is a short one. This bill deals with a very complex set of issues, a very careful balancing between the rights of every New Zealander to be treated fairly and the issues of public safety where New Zealanders with serious convictions are coming home. We do not underestimate the complexity of that balancing: what is the right framework; what are the right impositions; who has the responsibility to undertake what actions; and how do you assess the potential risk, if you like, of some versus others who are returning, especially if you do not access to full information. All of that uncertainty and complexity is real, but we need to make sure we have the best possible law that deals with that because of the complexity.

We want to make sure that New Zealanders have the best possible systems in place to support the deportees when they return, particularly with much greater support for their rehabilitation and resettlement here. For those who have never—or hardly ever—lived in New Zealand this will be quite a culture shock and there needs to be some support around that. There are many community organisations that invest all of their time and effort into providing that support, and they need Government now to back them, and there is not sufficient backing in our view.

We also want every New Zealander to be able to access their appeal rights and, where a person has completed their sentence, not to be subject to any form of double jeopardy. They should not be punished twice—once in Australia for the conviction and then again here in New Zealand—because we have a legal regime that is inadequate, that tends to impose more obligations on a person than can be justified in the context of their personal circumstances—the circumstances of their conviction.

So it is really important that we get this legislation right—absolutely critical. Legislation passed in haste always leads to problems. Those of us who have been here for a few years have seen time and time again Ministers coming back for urgent and rather embarrassing corrections where mistakes have been found some weeks later in the legislation that they said was so urgent it had to be passed immediately. What is even important with that is that we do not want New Zealanders being caught up in the consequences of hasty, mistaken legislation, especially when you are talking about legislation that uses the coercive power of the State. The right to detain a person is the most—not violent, but the most excessive use of power that the State has. If we are going to make law that allows for some form of detention or deals with those kinds of issues, we need to be very, very careful as to how it is constructed. So even just taking a few days for an external review of this legislation would be extremely helpful.

We have precedent for speedy but also considered legislation. For example, we can learn the lessons from the Canterbury earthquake bill. That bill was very hastily drafted in response to a terrible tragedy that happened in Christchurch. Despite the need for quick action and the emotional intensity of the issues surrounding the earthquake, the Government did agree to a short select committee process. I think it was about 24 hours; I might need to be corrected on that. That gave experts and members of the public a chance to help expose the gaps and the inevitable mistakes that you find in hastily drafted legislation. As a result of a very short select committee hearing, which was held in Christchurch, 30 changes were made to that legislation. It meant that 30 mistakes, or 30 inaccuracies, or 30 potential injustices were remedied before the Parliament passed it, and that is a good thing. That is why we have a democratic process for the passing of legislation.

Unfortunately, this bill is not going to be subject to that democratic oversight as it should be. It certainly is not unheard of for a bill to have less than 4 days of select committee hearings, and there were at least three other bills passed in the last Parliament that had 4 or fewer days of select committee consideration, but at least it gave a chance for an external review of the legislation. Taking some time, for example, to hear from the Human Rights Commission, from the Law Society, and from the New Zealand People at Risk Solutions among others would ensure that this bill is genuinely effective in the maintenance of public safety without unduly breaching the human rights of New Zealand citizens.

I do appreciate that I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Amy Adams on Friday about the then draft bill. The bill has been improved over the weekend, and that is good. We were concerned that the amount of information that was being asked of returning offenders—for example, all of their familial ties, which, quite frankly, is impossible to define let alone to provide—was quite Draconian. We are pleased to see now that the bill requires only the same amount of information that is required under the Policing Act. We were concerned to make sure there was equity in the treatment of the returning New Zealanders and the treatment of New Zealanders who obtain a similar conviction here. There is no need for more information. It needed to be much more equitable.

The review clause is an addition. It is better than not having one. Two years, in our view, is too long. We would prefer to see a review completed well before the election, because we are talking about a review just before the election—almost bang on to the month. That is too late, and an earlier review process would be better. We think that a sunset clause is probably better because that forces the issue, and Parliament does not tend to do anything it does not have to, as we have seen with the consequences of this bill. But at least there is some kind of review, and that process could be improved over the next day or so.

We were also concerned to narrow the definition of “returning offender” so that those with minor historical convictions would not be caught up in this legislation. That did not happen. We think that it is still an issue with the nature of this bill. It is too wide. It casts too wide a net, although we do understand how difficult it is to construct the perfect provision. It would be better if we had an external review through a select committee process to give us new ideas about how to improve the language of the bill and therefore narrow its impact.

We understand that some New Zealanders are returning to New Zealand this week—they are being deported—and that there is a need for some urgency. We think that those two issues could be split and that the dual process that was described by Jacinda Ardern is another way of going about this. We need to be creative when we are in these kinds of situations. On balance, we recognise the need for the legislation. We do not accept that it should go ahead without some kind of public scrutiny, and we would like to see that. Thank you.

New Zealand First will support this bill through all its stages. Offenders have, of course, been returned to New Zealand over many years without too much difficulty, and New Zealand no doubt has returned offenders to Australia in the same way. But never has there been an occasion involving the sheer number of people to be returned to New Zealand from Australia that we are about to see in the next few weeks, or months, or, indeed, years.

We first need to ask the question: what has changed that this should now be happening and why do we now need this bill? What has changed, of course, is Australian law and, more important, what has changed is the Australians’ approach to human rights issues altogether concerning their non-citizen residents. Whether we like it or not, the Australians are deporting people who should, in fact, not be subject to deportation, because they have resided in Australia for many years—many of them for well over 10 years. Some would have arrived as infants. Many have their families in Australia, their homes there, their jobs there, and their lives there. They are in every true sense really Australians despite their New Zealand citizenship. They are not New Zealanders by choice and have very little connection with New Zealand.

Nevertheless, these people are coming back, and we will need to deal with that situation in the way that this bill, or something like it, proposes. Many have actually committed only minor crimes, and some indeed may well have committed no crimes at all. It is actually doubtful in many cases whether their wrongdoing justifies deportation, and one of the things we will need to consider in this bill is whether the regime that is to be applied to them here in New Zealand would be justified either. Most of these people will actually be punished twice as a result of what the Australians are doing in creating the need for the situation to be dealt with in this bill. The long-term residents who are being deported have committed crimes in Australia as the product of Australian society, not as the product of New Zealand society, so should it not actually be the Australians who deal with the aftermath of that, and not New Zealand? Nevertheless, we have to deal with the situation as it actually is, not as we wish it should be. So we do need legislation of this kind.

It seems that the right-wing Turnbull Government, which is such an admirer of John Key, is looking for a way to impress the Australian public, and its deportation policy is one of those measures. The fact that it is a gross infringement of human rights seems to be no concern of theirs, but it actually is a lot of concern to us because we have to accept back here in New Zealand what are, essentially, in many cases, not really Kiwis who have committed crimes in Australia. It is actually an unreasonable imposition on New Zealand that our so-called Aussie mates are fobbing off some of their convicted crims on us, and that is the truth of the matter. By contrast, New Zealand does not deport people who have been here for over 10 years, and that is what we have a right to expect should happen in Australia as well. Australia needs to reconsider its human rights actions and record in this way.

New Zealand First does accept that this bill is needed. We regret that it is needed, but we accept that it is needed. It is needed so that we will have a mechanism for dealing with the people who are already beginning to arrive back here in significant numbers. But we should not do it without protest. John Key says that he has raised it with Malcolm Turnbull, with no obvious result. We should be making it clear that Australia’s law is wrong and should be changed. John Key has been acting more like a public relations man for the Australian Government than a Kiwi Prime Minister, and that is the truth.

There has been very little time to study the detail of the bill, but I do appreciate the Minister of Justice providing advance copies of the draft bill to us so that we could have a good look at it, because we know that the matter is urgent and we accept that this bill does need to be treated with urgency. There is a clear need to see that deportees are received here in an orderly way that looks after their need for reintegration and that allows New Zealand to impose conditions on their return to New Zealand so that the New Zealand public can be properly protected. In doing that, we will be doing nothing much more than what happens to New Zealand prisoners who are released from prison. So I do not see that the intent of the bill is really much of a problem for us.

I am interested in the definition, as the Greens are, I hear, of what is a “returning offender”. The bill says that a returning offender is one who has been convicted of an offence that would be imprisonable in New Zealand for a term of 1 year or more—would be imprisonable for that period, not convicted for that period. We know that a lot of legislation provides for maximum periods of imprisonment, but we envisage that not all offending will be that serious, and, in many cases, the actual term of imprisonment will be a lot less. So I think there may be a bit of a problem with the bill in this respect, and that is one of the matters that will, I am sure, be the subject of a review when that happens within the next 2 years. So, notwithstanding that problem, New Zealand First will continue to support the bill because we do need a regime, and this is better than nothing, for the time being. But it is far from perfect, and I look forward to the review so that we can deal with some of those issues.

I also see that there are various provisions to identify people, including DNA profiling and powers for the police and others to ensure that the necessary information is obtained. Some of those look to me to be a little Draconian and I wonder whether they should be necessary, especially for some of the low-level offenders that we are going to be receiving back. So that is going to be another issue for review, I feel, within the next couple of years. The people who are returning can be required within 6 months to provide the information required. That seems to me to be a very long period, and I wonder whether that is too long. If this is such an urgent problem and needs to be dealt with so effectively and so quickly, then why should we be allowing a period of up to 6 months for that purpose? Again, I think that is going to be a matter for review within the next 2 years. It is not something that will cause New Zealand First to vote against the bill at this stage, but something that we will need to look at in the future.

The Commissioner of Police will determine who is a returning prisoner, and that is something I may be talking a little bit about in the second reading of this bill because, again, there are some issues there. There are also provisions for dealing with people who arrive after 6 months of release, and that applies to people who were being supervised in some way before leaving for New Zealand or who were subject to the equivalent of our extended supervision orders or public protection orders. That is not inappropriate, and I do not think that would be a matter for grave concern. It is a particularly important matter for public protection.

In the end, all of the fundamental provisions of the bill are acceptable to New Zealand First. We are not happy with the extent of some of them. I will be criticising them again later in the debate and I do hope they will be attended to, at least, when the bill is reviewed in the next 2 years. I want to commend the Minister for adding that provision to the bill, because the next 2 years are a period within which we are going to learn rather a lot, and the review then will be absolutely necessary. For the meantime, however, New Zealand First will support the bill.

I have to say I was slightly perplexed by one of the things that the previous speaker, Denis O’Rourke, referred to when talking about the difference between something that was an imprisonable offence and somebody being convicted, because, at least in this country, I do not think you can be imprisoned without first being convicted.

This bill is part of the Government’s ongoing programme to make New Zealand safer for our citizens. It is part of an ongoing programme, and over the last year we have seen an introduction of extended supervision orders, we have seen public protection orders put in place, and this is, again, just part of our ongoing commitment to New Zealanders that we will keep them safe. This bill does meet the expectations of New Zealanders that we will do what we can, where we can to keep them safe. It is the very least that we can expect—that those who are being deported from other countries who are convicted criminals will experience the same or similar types of probationary regimes as people who have been released from New Zealand prisons. And so, of course, this is absolutely paramount. This is the primary goal, the primary purpose, of what we are trying to achieve through this bill and, so, therefore, it is exceptionally critical that we get this in place.

I know that there has been concern about the urgency of it but, as we know, there are people currently being deported from other countries to New Zealand with nothing in place. So I think it is important that we are in a position to be able to get this through now that we have got a good bill that is drafted and is going to serve the purposes that we want it to, and that we now get this done as quickly as possible. So, therefore, I will commend this bill to the House.

As we heard just a few minutes ago from Metiria Turei, the Greens are abstaining on this legislation, and that is not a position we like to be in. We like to take a position to support or oppose. Whether we support or oppose legislation, we would all agree that most bills coming to this House are improved by appropriate process through the House and its processes. In this instance, the abstention decision was a difficult one. We do not disagree with some of the fundamental principles of the bill.

The Minister of Justice in her introductory comments made the point that the matter of deportees arriving in New Zealand—people who have offended elsewhere—is not a new problem. She gave us a figure of, typically, 80 to 100 people, historically, who might be returning to New Zealand with this sort of history behind them. She suggested that, possibly, we are looking at something like a three-fold increase in that—from 80 to 100 to, perhaps, 250 to 300 people whom we can expect per year, at least in the short term. That is a real problem. Acknowledging, also, that some of those people will not be offenders; they will be people deemed to be of bad character but who do not have a criminal record. So the numbers are not quite as severe as the Minister might at first have indicated, but we do accept that there is an issue; there is a problem here to be resolved.

Some of the underpinning principles of the bill we have no problem with, such as the notion of endeavouring to align the treatment of returning people with those who have offended and have served some sentence in New Zealand. That is not a bad principle—treating like situations alike—however, there is sufficient in this bill to concern us. We cannot support it, not least of all because, essentially, we have been flying blind on the Minister’s intentions. We got a draft bill—a rough cut of the bill—less than a week ago. I think Thursday last week we got to have a little look at what the Minister was intending. We have heard already that even in a couple of days we were able to suggest positive and useful amendments to the bill that will make it a somewhat better bill. It is an unfortunate reflection, I think, on this Government that it seems not to have learnt the lesson that engaging with stakeholders at an early stage in any policy development is likely to generate better policy, and is likely to get support for legislation if it is done in a timely fashion.

We have heard various opinions about when this process began; when the problem was acknowledged. We know that at least from the beginning of this year we knew that there was a problem, because the Minister and, indeed, others were hearing of the NGOs in Auckland that were endeavouring to offer some support to people who were landing at our airport with no support, no network, with a history of offending, and nothing was there for them. We have known this has been a problem for quite some time. In July of this year I wrote to the Minister. I sent a letter to her on 16 July asking for a briefing, for a conversation about her intentions and what the Government was planning to do about getting some sort of regime in place to manage this very real and existing, and even urgent, problem. Two weeks later I got a two-line response thanking me for my inquiry and telling me that the Minister had no time to speak to us at that point. That is not indicative of good process.

Would one not think that this was always going to be an issue that would be controversial? It was always going to be a matter that involved human rights, and we are seeing now the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report that indicates that, yes, there are real concerns about that. Would it not simply be good practice to engage with other parties fairly and reasonably to endeavour to build support, and, critically, for it to not only engage with us but to engage with the public? What does the regulatory impact statement—which, incidentally, we got to see about an hour ago when it landed on the Table—say? It gives a good overview of the policy advice that the Minister has received and the analysis that has been done. What are we told in this document about consultation? Well, it is not a pretty sight, I have to say.

There was targeted consultation with the New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections—entirely appropriate. An early draft of the regulatory impact statement—the policy advice—was circulated to: New Zealand Police; Department of Corrections; Crown Law; Parliamentary Counsel Office; Ministry of Health; Department of Internal Affairs; Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; New Zealand Customs Service; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Treasury. Nowhere do we see any reference to one of the many NGOs that might have added value to this. My time has now expired. I will return to the point of the lack of consultation—which has been acknowledged in the documentation—in a later contribution.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. I think it is fair to say that it has been no secret that I have been a critic of this whole process. That is not simply because of this bill, but the situation that we have had in Australia that has meant that we have had to rush to get something together to try to fix this situation where offenders are coming back to New Zealand and are being largely unmonitored, and we have no recourse to be able to do anything about that, and, in many cases, we did not even know that they were here.

I talk about the situation in Christchurch, where it was found that a man who had been convicted of paedophile offences had been returned on a plane straight out of prison, dropped off at the airport in Christchurch, and was then recognised and living at the time with a family with young children, just down the road from a school. That is when it came to my attention how little we knew—with the information sharing coming from Australia that was non-existent at the time—how little we had done to prepare for this despite the fact that this had been happening in this country for many, many, many years, and how little the Australian Government actually thought of us to do it in the first place.

I have been outraged—outraged—that deportees who have committed serious offences have been coming here for a long period of time with no information, outraged that when all of this started to come about and some pressure came on the Australian Government that it actually then took those deportees and put them into detention, effectively giving them a double jeopardy—as has been mentioned here—and impeding their human rights, because to be there in the first place is exactly what that is. I have been outraged that people who have committed no offences are being deported, and, therefore, we come to this situation that we are in today: rushing through a piece of legislation to try to deal with these issues that we have all spoken out against, actually, from both sides of the House—some more fervently than others, but we have all criticised the Australian Government for the place that we find ourselves in now.

I actually want to commend the Minister for taking the opportunity to come and speak with us personally. We had a number of issues that we were concerned about when the draft bill came to us—concerns that we were able to have alleviated through those discussions and some minor amendments that were made. Therefore, the reason we are supporting it through urgency is that we have had our concerns satisfied that those things have been addressed, but, as you see, a number of people have also picked up other things that may get addressed in the second reading and in the Committee stage.

I also want to commend the Minister and the members of the National caucus, and the other ministries, because we are concerned not just about the law and how it pertains to these people who are coming back from Australia and into New Zealand but about their reintegration, about their manaakitanga, and the way that we are able to support them so that we do not have new instances of new crimes being perpetrated on a new set of victims in our country. I agree with the New Zealand First member that, actually, Australia has washed its hands of these people who have grown up in Australia, have been criminalised in Australia, and have been sent back to us for us to clean up its mess. I do not say that lightly. It is not about the people. We need to make sure we support the people because they need to be able to come back and integrate into our society so that we can ensure the safety of our people. So I do commend the Minister for getting this legislation on the table.

I am absolutely appalled that this is a blatant disrespect of our nation from the Australian Government, specifically so around the people of questionable character. I have been given assurances that the monitoring system and the regime that will be put in place will not be any more erroneous than it would have been if they had had those conditions placed on them in Australia, and that there will not be an extension to that so they will not be further stigmatised in this country after having gone through some horrendous things in their country, when they come back here. I am assured by the Minister that that is taken care of.

We need to have time to go through it very carefully before the second reading—and that points to the urgency of it—but I want to make sure that something is done. We should have taken the opportunity to speak out against it. We did not. We had the chance, and New Zealand should have reconsidered that at the United Nations periodic review, and now we are rushing through legislation to deal with the mess that the Australian Government has made. Thank you.

I just want to make two quick remarks about the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. Firstly, just to deal with this issue of urgency—is the bill urgent? The answer is absolutely yes. There has been some debate in the first reading about when exactly this issue arose and who exactly knew what and when. Jacinda Ardern, I think, in her first reading speech said that everyone has been aware of this since April 2014, and Kelvin Davis says it was December 2014, and others have said perhaps it was in the new year. But I think the key point is that, regardless of when this was picked up on, the effect of the Australian policy change, through its migration amendments in December 2014, has been to throw into stark relief the consequence that more people will be deported from Australia to New Zealand. It averaged about 80 people before the policy change and it is now expected to be about 250 to 300. So the key point is: what is the parliamentary and legislative response to that? It is important that we get that right.

Actually, the Government has been working quickly over the last few months to get that right, and it actually takes time to get information-sharing agreements in place. It takes time to get a register in place, and to get the information from the Australian authorities to make sure that we can do this properly. So now we have the legislation before the House, and the Minister of Justice has talked about how quickly the officials have moved on this. I think they have done a good job.

Actually, if you read the section 7 report that the Attorney-General has laid before the House under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, he commends how quickly the officials from the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Justice, and from other agencies have moved to make sure this happens. I mean, this piece of legislation deals with numerous rights under the Bill of Rights Act: the right to be free from search and seizure, the right of freedom of movement—numerous rights under the Bill of Rights Act, all of which could potentially have been impinged on by this legislation. In all respects, bar one very small matter that was to do with DNA samples, which is something from back in 2009, this complies in the Attorney-General’s legal view with the Bill of Rights Act. I think that speaks volumes, actually, about how hard the officials have worked to get this regime into place. So that is the first issue.

Just very briefly on the Australian policy—does anyone like the Australian policy on this? No—no, indeed. Numerous members of the House, to varying intensity, have expressed that view, but the critical point is that we need to do something in response. I take issue with what Mr O’Rourke said, briefly, about how the Prime Minister has been a—I think it was a puff—public relations person for Malcolm Turnbull and the Australian regime. Rubbish. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was actually a very good speech from Mr O’Rourke, so I will not go too hard on him, as I sometimes am wont to do—it was actually a very constructive speech, and, actually, it reflects the general degree of constructiveness and collegiality that the House is expressing on this bill. So with those brief remarks, I commend this bill to the House.

The Hon David Parker, I understand, for 5 minutes.

Correct, so I should start. This bill is being considered under urgency. It has been brought to the House after, we are told, 12 days of drafting, because the Government has been so ineffective in running earlier processes that it did not get to parliamentary draftspeople until 12 days ago. And it stands out obviously in the form of the bill. Take clause 7—“Who is returning offender” does not even make grammatical sense. There will be a number of other mistakes in this bill.

Unfortunately, this House has to deal with it under urgency, and we actually agree that given that the Government has got to this point it should be dealt with under urgency, but it does take away liberties from people. The Attorney-General says that those interferences with the liberties of returning criminals are justified, and I think he is probably right, but we cannot be sure that that line is drawn in the right place exactly, without considering these things carefully. Neither can we be sure that it is going far enough to protect the New Zealand public, without these things being considered carefully.

I thank the Minister, Amy Adams, for her interactions with the Labour Party, and in particular with Jacinda Ardern, but it is obvious from those interactions that the form of the bill has been changing substantially in the last day, and yet we are expected to believe that the form of this legislation will be perfect. I made a suggestion through Jacinda and Andrew Little that we guard against mistakes here by passing two forms of this bill today. One would have a sunset clause that would say that it expired after a year—we said: “Say a year.” If the Government came back and said “Say 2 years.”, we probably could have lived with that, but it should have had a sunset clause.

At the same time, under the same debate with no more parliamentary time, we offered to cooperate with this at the Business Committee. We said: “Pass a second version of the bill, identical except that it would not have a sunset clause and it would not commence until the date of the sunset clause in the first bill, and send that to the select committee.” And then, starting tomorrow, the select committee could have heard from the Law Society, heard from the victim impact groups, and heard from civil society as to where the flaws are in this bill, because there will be flaws in this bill.

I say, Amy Adams, why did you not respond positively to that request? The Minister Amy Adams replied saying: “Well, we’ll have a review after 2 years.” That is not the same thing. That is a review as to whether the legislation was working as anticipated; it is not “Review now as to whether this legislation is right tomorrow.” That was a very good offer from the Labour Party as to how you get the balance right between protecting the public—because we might not have properly protected the public in the form of this bill—and making sure you are not unduly penalising people post-release who should not be further put upon. I cannot understand why the Government did not accept that.

The final point I will make, because I think I am just about out of my 5 minutes—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, you have got a minute and a half yet.

I have got a minute and a half left. Why is it that on a bill like this, which is being introduced in such a hurried way under urgency, the Government members are not taking their allotted time? Why is it that they are not taking the trouble to actually read this legislation? They only need to get to clause 7 of the bill to find the first obvious grammatical mistake, which is on page 4 of the bill—it is not a long way to read through it to get that mistake. Why is it that we have not had a discussion as to how it is that we guard against the risks that we are creating—[Bell rung]—through the urgency motion? My colleague David Shearer will take the rest of this 10-minute call to illustrate to the public how lax this Government has been in terms of meeting time lines so that we would not be doing this in such an urgent manner.

The honourable David Shearer, for 5½ minutes.

On Thursday “Con Air” arrives: a flight that is chartered by the Australians that is arriving here with 20 people who have just been released. They will arrive here, and we hope that the legislation that is going through urgency here will be in place for the arrival of that plane. That is a disgrace, when this Government knew last year, on 14 December, that Australia had changed its laws.

And that Minister of Justice over there received on 12 February a memo from her ministry that said “The number of offenders being deported to New Zealand from Australia is likely to increase significantly as a result of recent changes to Australian law.”, that “Some deported offenders who have been convicted of very serious offences may pose a significant risk to the New Zealand community.”, and that “Offenders born in New Zealand who have lived most of their lives overseas are likely to face additional challenges reintegrating into the community and avoiding reoffending.” That is a disgrace; that was in February this year, and here we are with 2 weeks of Parliament to go and we are ramming through a piece of legislation that should have been written months ago.

In the meantime there have been dozens of people who have already come back. Some of those have come back on charter flights chartered by the Australian Government, which is too worried to put those people on commercial flights and instead is putting them on charter flights. As the Minister of Justice herself has acknowledged, although some of those people are there for relatively minor offences, they include people who have been convicted of murder, of manslaughter, of rape, and of paedophilia. We have no checks and no ability to stop those people when they arrive, and they will disappear into New Zealand. The police themselves say that 43 percent of those people who have arrived need to be on some sort of supervision list—43 percent.

And last week we had the audacity of the Prime Minister, who stood up here, in an extraordinary outrage, and said that the National Government was protecting New Zealanders. Can you imagine what he should be saying now? He should be apologising to New Zealanders that the Government has nothing in place for those people who have arrived back—nothing in place. He should be apologising now for not making the preparations, for not standing up to the Australians, and for not saying to Mr Turnbull—instead of having some sort of love fest—that nobody coming into New Zealand can come back unless the Australian authorities give the details of what they were convicted for.

Right now we know that the Australian authorities are not giving us those details that we are seeking from them, so we actually do not know who is coming through to New Zealand. We do not know what crimes they have committed and what risk they might be to New Zealand. Instead of Mr Key saying that we have a wonderful relationship with Australia—yes, we might have a great relationship with Australia, but, at the end of the day, that relationship should serve to further our interests, and this is certainly not in our interests, when they will not in any way cooperate with us in giving us the information about returning criminals to New Zealand.

If we had just some sense of cojones in that Government, we should at least say to the Australians—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! That is a term that has been ruled out previously. The member will withdraw it.

I withdraw that. If this Government had any sort of moral standing, it would have said to the Australians: “You don’t tell us who’s coming, we don’t let you land.” It is as simple as that.

I believe that we are in a serious situation, where the Government has been telling us all along that it is standing up for our protections and our freedoms. It is certainly not. It is not standing up for us when it comes to New Zealanders coming back here with criminal convictions and no legislation and no procedures in place to receive them, and it is not standing up for those New Zealanders who have been wrongly detained in Australia by Australian authorities after having done their time. That too is a right that should not be taken away from anybody. That Government is absolutely shameless, and it should be ashamed of itself and of the way that it has actually treated New Zealanders.

Ah—Alfred Ngaro. I apologise; it was the first name that I was losing.

That is all right—thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Look, there has been a lot of huff and puff and heat from the other side in the previous speeches that have been made but when we talk about actions of a Government, the Minister of Justice has already spoken about the fact that in 9 years under a Labour Government, nothing had been done. An estimate of around about 700 offenders had come into the country under that watch, so this is not the time to turn around and ask what it is that we have done—what is it that the Government has done—because even during those members’ time, we know that there were a number who came through. That is right—we will not hear anything from the other side, because they are silent on that, but what we are unanimous about—

💬 Kris Faafoi: Did you not just listen to David Shearer? Are you deaf?

No—he actually tried to put the blame and the accountability fully on this Government. The Minister was also really clear that actually when she was officially informed was February of this year. So what this Government is doing and what this Minister is doing is taking the initiative with the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill, rather than allowing this to continue to lapse.

We know that under the regulatory impact statement it is really clear. The issues of concern, which will concern all New Zealanders—and to my colleague Mr Bishop when he talked about the purpose of urgency—are that in the regulatory impact statement, on page no. 3, it clearly indicates that since 2013 approximately 70 percent of returning offenders have been convicted overseas of serious offences. Hence the reason for urgency; hence us putting this in place, because we think this is absolutely important. The offences that we are talking about are assault, they are armed robbery and burglary, they are rape and sexual assault, they are murder and manslaughter—they are of the kind that is of great concern to the community and to the nation as a whole. We know that there will be a long term of urgency in the House.

I just want to finish off with a couple of comments. The bill contains three key aspects that I think are really important. The first is allowing police to compel returning offenders to provide information. The information sharing that we are talking about is important, and it may require DNA sampling. The second is around standard monitoring and supervision conditions that are automatically imposed on all eligible returning offenders. The third, which we will hear more of, is new powers of the District Courts to impose special conditions, such as restrictions on not residing near a school, that can be subject to electronic monitoring. I believe that this bill is important. It is important that we get this through the House in urgency. I commend this bill to the House.

I am about to put the question, but before I do put the question, I just want to make a ruling, because it appears that we have some conflict between our Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings. Some members during the debate have indicated that they intend to abstain, but I have not heard any member indicate that they are going to vote No. Normally the expectation is that members call for a further vote only if they wish to challenge the outcome and have given their voices in the minority, and Speakers’ rulings 73/4 and 74/1 indicate that. However, it is my view that it is in the House’s interest for members to be able to record their position when they wish to abstain. This is consistent with Standing Order 140 and with the principle that members cannot call for a further vote if they voted with the majority. So I am indicating that notwithstanding previous rulings I will take a division on the question, notwithstanding no member saying No.