Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill

The honourable Grant—no.

I wish I was.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, premature.

I want to actually talk about both clauses 1 and 2 in some calls in this particular part of the debate. The first of those is to talk about clause 1, the title, which will be the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act. It is quite clear that in terms of this title, the “Information” bit is the focus of the bill. So we have had a number of contributions from members as we worked our way through Parts 1 and 2 about the way in which information is provided. We have had amendments proposed to try to ensure that the New Zealand public can feel secure that all the information that the New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections need is being provided. The jury is out on that. We have certainly seen, up to now, some considerable difficulties about the provision of information. I even heard the Minister of Justice on the radio this morning unable to tell New Zealanders where the first load of people coming from Australia on an aeroplane would land—did not know, she said.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: At an airport.

Yes, well, that is a good guess, Ruth Dyson, that it will be at an airport. That narrows it down a little bit, does it not? So it is still clear that there are difficulties and issues with the amount of information that is flowing to the Government.

We also had the Minister of Justice tell us that she did not find out about this until February. Well, that is hopeless. Clearly, her sources of information are very poor. The New Zealand media was reporting it in January; the legislation was passed in Australia in December. So the flow of information to the New Zealand Government has not been good. The Minister this morning on the radio blamed the fact that this piece of legislation is now being rushed through under urgency on the fact that she did not get the information about the prisoners that was required to draft this legislation until September. That is just ridiculous. And if that is actually accurate—that the Australian Government has been withholding that information from the Minister of Justice—well, it speaks volumes about the poor state of the relationship between New Zealand and Australia under this Government that the Minister of Justice did not even get access to the information required to draft this legislation until September. I actually do not believe that, by the way. I think that that is just a case of the Minister finding an excuse for having dragged her feet on this issue from December last year.

So the bill’s title, that this will be the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act—yes, it is about information, there is absolutely no doubt about that, but the failure of this Government to get on top of the flow of information on this issue, I believe, has been writ large by the Minister over the last couple of weeks. But the main part of the title that I want to focus on in this call is around the question of “Management”. So the title is the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill, and in the Chamber last night the Minister of Justice told us that we should not go looking in this piece of legislation for the way in which the offenders who are returning to New Zealand will be managed in terms of their reintegration. She told us last night that this was a justice bill. She said: “This is not a bill about reintegration.” Well, just pause on that thought for a moment. Is that not what it is all about when somebody actually goes into prison or, in this case, returns to New Zealand as a person who has been imprisoned and ends up in an effective parole-like arrangement? Is not the management of them all about reintegration and rehabilitation? That is what this bill should have been about.

To the credit of the officials, that is what they thought this bill should be about. They wrote in the regulatory impact statement and in the advice that we have now seen in this Committee all about the importance of reintegration. They gave paragraphs of material to it. They put it in the objectives, which should have been what this legislation ended up being about. And then the Minister of Justice stands up in this Chamber last night and says: “Don’t come looking in this legislation for information about what’s going to happen in terms of accommodation, in terms of employment, or in terms of health outcomes.”

Every member of this Committee who represents an electorate in a large town or city has dealt with a prisoner who exits the prison system and falls through the gaps.

💬 Peeni Henare: That’s right. Come to Tāmaki Makaurau.

That is right, Mr Henare. In my office in Wellington Central I have prisoners who come in. They have spent their $300 from the steps to freedom grant within the first 24 hours, and they do not have anywhere to live. We have to work with them because the Government decided not to fund the former Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society, now known as People at Risk Solutions, properly any more. We have to work with them to find their way forward. Imagine being somebody who comes to New Zealand under these arrangements who has no backstop and has not lived here for 45 years. They have got nothing, and the Minister of Justice says: “Well, don’t come looking in this legislation for anything that’s actually going to really help with”—to quote the title of the bill—“ ‘Management’ of returning offenders.” The Minister says: “Don’t go looking in this bill to see if we’re actually going to sort out their accommodation.”

Kelvin Davis raised this in the Chamber last night. What happens when those people come in? I heard the Minister say this morning: “Oh, they will be met at the airport and they will be asked ‘Have you got somewhere to live?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I do. I’ll go and stay with my cousin who I used to play with when we were 4 years old, which is the last time I saw them.’ ” We know that information that is provided in those moments is often wrong or misleading. Answers are given by people to get out of the way. They do not want to deal with any of these officials any more. “Yes, I’ve got somewhere to live.” Yes, that is a satisfactory answer. Box ticked; away we go.

What about the health outcomes and the health issues? There will be significant mental health issues involved, not only, I might say, potentially, for those who are the returning prisoners and offenders, but also for others in the community who might know them or have some experience of dealing with them in some way—them or their families.

💬 Peeni Henare: Family in Australia.

Yes. Mental health issues are one of the biggest issues in terms of reintegration: the support that is required to be able to become part of a community. Again, the needs are greater here than they would be for released prisoners in New Zealand because the lack of whānau support, the lack of family around, actually will make those mental health issues even bigger. Where is that in this bill? Where is that in the bill that is about the management of returning offenders—that is what the title of the bills says: the “Management” of returning offenders. And the Minister says: “Don’t come looking in this bill for how we will actually manage them in terms of their mental health, in terms of their accommodation needs, in terms of how they will actually reintegrate into the community.” This is a perfunctory response, a rushed response, because the Government mucked around and failed to heed the warning signs coming out of the Australian lawmaking process, and as a result, that is not here in this bill.

I actually think it was David Clendon from the Greens last night who got up and spoke about how as you followed through the advice of the officials, the objectives that they put up, and then you found your way to the purpose of the legislation, it lost its focus. It suddenly became this very functional piece of legislation about information and its relationship with the Parole Act. So the title of this bill to my mind is actually a misnomer. This is not about the management of these returning offenders; it is, in fact, about the mismanagement of these returning offenders and the failure of this Government to have in place the kind of reintegration and rehabilitation regime that is now needed. These released prisoners and released offenders should not be coming back to New Zealand; they should be going to Australia, where their family is. The Government has failed in its advocacy in that regard. Now it is doubling up on the failure by failing to put in place a proper reintegration programme.

I just want to briefly, in the remaining time left to me, speak about clause 2, the commencement date, and the fact that this comes into force on the day on which it receives its Royal assent. That will probably be today, or tomorrow at the very latest. That is too late. That is a failure by this Government: the fact that here we are on 17 November 2015 when this will come into force. It was December 2014 when the Australian Parliament passed this legislation. I guarantee you if we look into the cables that emerge out of the New Zealand High Commission in Canberra there would have been one in December that said that a big change had just happened under Australian law about what happens to people who have served time in prison or who are regarded as being of bad character. I guarantee the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials were up to the task of doing that. Perhaps the Minister had gone off for her Christmas break; perhaps she was not focused on it. Come January there were articles in the newspaper. They would have been reported to the Minister, but the Minister failed to recognise those.

Tony Abbott came over here for the 1-day cricket game between New Zealand and Australia, which New Zealand won—Kane Williamson hitting a six with New Zealand nine down. I was there. I saw John Key and Tony Abbott meeting. Apparently that was when they finally got around to first discussing this—in February. John Key, perhaps in the euphoria of the Cricket World Cup, forgot when he got back to Wellington to say: “You know what, Amy Adams? We should actually be drafting up some legislation now, so we are ready on this.” Did not bother to do that—did not bother to do that. Sat around and waited for information to come from Australia, and then finally gets around to introducing a bill about 9 months later. That is hopeless; it is a failure.

It is relatively unusual for me to take a call in the Committee stage, but I will not be sitting in the Chair again on this bill. There are a couple of technical concerns that I do want to place on the record of the House. The more I have looked at it, the more concerned that I am. I am speaking in particular to clause 2 of the bill, which indicates that the bill is to come into force today or tomorrow, depending on when it gets through and when it is checked. But because it is coming in so quickly, my argument is that it has got to be technically right in its entirety.

There are a couple of points that I want to check with the Minister of Justice to make sure that we have got the drafting exactly as the Government wants it. The first one goes to clause 17(1)(c) in Part 2, which is outside of this bit but is of timely essence. If there is an individual who, in the Prime Minister’s words, is a murdering rapist who has finished their sentence in Australia who goes to Christmas Island for 6 months and 1 day and then returns here, are they intended to be covered? Because they are not covered by the bill. The drafting of the bill does not have them covered. The person who is 1 day out of Christmas Island will not be covered by this bill the way it is currently drafted because they have finished their sentence 6 months before. Christmas Island is not part of their sentence—so they will not be covered by this.

The next question I want to ask, I will put on the record that I have had a discussion about it with individuals who are responsible for the bill, and they have a different opinion because they rely on the Interpretation Act. The question goes to clause 17(1)(a) and (b) and whether that offence or an offence and that conviction are automatically considered in the plural. I want to put to the Minister the case of someone who has had 10 convictions of assault and been sentenced to 4 months on each of them—so 10 convictions of assault, sentenced to 4 months on each of them. Because they are separate convictions for separate offences, that means that they do not meet the criteria according to this bill. They can be quite a serious offender—quite a serious serial offender—but they are completely different offences. They have not just beaten up six people in one pub; they are been to six separate pubs and beaten people up in each of them. They have had different convictions and different offences. That is not cumulative; they are separate offences. The sentencing might end up being cumulative but because they are separate offences then my argument is that this does not apply.

So it is a pretty simple series of questions. I know that some officials are of the opinion that “an offence” means “offences” and “that conviction” means “those convictions”, but, generally, when this Parliament is drafting laws and it deliberately means the plural because plural is more serious than singular it says so. It says “an offence” or “offences” and it says “that conviction” or “those convictions”. In my opinion, this bill does not do that. I want to place that on the record, and every argument that Mr Parker has used earlier as to a method of getting this bill better drafted applies.

It is my pleasure, as it were, to take a call on the title and commencement provisions within this bill. Obviously, the commencement date in particular has been the source of robust debate in this Committee, and I will again reiterate Labour’s position on that, but I want to start with, first, a very short reference to the title clause. Obviously, this bill—and there are a few iterations that I have seen during the quite rushed drafting of this bill, but the title that we are working to now is the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill.

The notion of the word “returning” implies a distinct connection between the individual whom this bill covers and their connection to New Zealand, and I think this comes to the heart of one of the debates, one of the issues, that my colleague Kelvin Davis has been battling for many, many weeks now. That is the notion that, yes, we are happy as a Labour Party to support a bill that monitors offenders who are legitimately being returned to New Zealand as New Zealand citizens. They are, for all intents and purposes, New Zealanders. They were born here, they have connection here, they have whānau here—they are New Zealanders.

We are happy to support the monitoring of those individuals for offences that they have committed overseas and for their legitimate return to New Zealand. We do the same to other countries—let us be clear. If we have someone who has come into New Zealand and committed a crime, we will try them in New Zealand, we will have them serve their time in New Zealand, and then we will deport them to the place from which they have originally come, where they reside—the place where their citizenship exists and lies.

But we must be absolutely clear that at this stage this bill is covering more than those people. This bill will also be covering individuals who, by Australia’s determination, are not Australians, and we refute that at the moment the place where it has chosen to draw that line is fair. If you said to any individual “Is it fair that a person who was moved to a country like Australia when they were a baby, has been raised in that country, has worked their entire life in that country, has married a person from that country, has had children who were then raised in that country”—is it fair to determine that because their first 7 months of life were spent in New Zealand, they are a New Zealand citizen, when they do not even identify themselves in that way? Our law books may define them in that manner, but if that individual does not even define themselves in that manner, is that fair?

Secondly, where does the threshold sit for when you can, therefore, define that that person should be deported? We know that—we have had lots of discussion in this House as to whether or not it has been fair or not to say to the Government that it should have moved more quickly. We maintain absolutely that it should have because the difference between the last 12 months and, say, the last 10 years is that last year the Australians changed their law. They changed their immigration Act, which allowed them to move the threshold for deportation. It is usually up here—a bar around the types of offences you had to commit before you were deported. They moved the bar so low that we now have people with very, very, very minor offending in the category for which they will be deported. On top of that—minor offending—there is also the fact that these people do not even see themselves as New Zealanders.

So that is why I think that the title of this bill, which is a title that talks about returning; the act of coming home—for some of these offenders that will be true. They will have whānau here, they will have community here, they will, for all intents and purposes, be New Zealanders. But for a large chunk of individuals, they are not returning home. They are being moved to an entirely new country, and that makes the job for New Zealand that much more difficult because the key to reintegrating an offender is their connection to community, their connection to a place to reside, their ability to work, and so on. So I dispute the use of the word “Returning” in the title, and I would argue that “Overseas Offenders (Management and Information) Bill” would be a better reference.

On to the commencement clause—this has actually become a cornerstone of the debate in this Committee. Yes, we have said from the beginning that we agree with the need for this provision—this Act—to come in rapidly, and as this commencement clause states, it provides that the bill “comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent.” For those listening, that basically means that as soon as we are done here debating it and the Queen’s representative in New Zealand gives it a signature, it becomes law. It then is in force. So that will be pretty quickly—that is about as quick as we ever make anything law in New Zealand. There is a good reason we do things slowly, usually—

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: Thanks for “Parliament 101”.

—and that is to get things right. That is to get things right. But the issue here—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: What was that grand contribution, Jami-Lee?

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: I said thank you for the “Parliament 101”.

Jami-Lee Ross, I am speaking under the assumption that there are people out there beyond this Chamber who are watching, who might be interested in the way that we usually do things in this Parliament. Usually—usually—we would debate it first in this Chamber. Then we would send it to a select committee, and a select committee would ask the public to come and give its views.

That is not happening in this case. We are using a shortened period because the Government says we need this law to be in place very, very quickly. We agree we need something in now. What we dispute is that we should have started this process a year ago. Had we started it a year ago we could have given the public a say on this piece of law. We could have made sure that we did not have errors in it—and we have identified a number of drafting errors through this debate.

So what would we do as an alternative, given that we are here at this crossroads right now? No. 1, we would keep this commencement clause and allow this legislation to start immediately. But at the same time we would have taken a duplicate of this bill, and at the same time that we would have passed one into law we would have sent an exact copy of it to select committee for it to be reviewed properly—for it to be scrutinised properly. Then we would have made sure that this version expired after a year, and the version of this bill that had had proper consideration would then replace it. We proposed that to the Minister of Justice. We thought it was a really elegant solution, but unfortunately that has been declined.

What is our next option? Our next option is to look at when we review this piece of legislation. I absolutely accept the intent of the Minister when she set out that she wanted the bill to be reviewed after 2 years. She did not want it overlapping with the election period; she wanted it to be clear of that, for us to give proper consideration. I absolutely accept her rationale. Our view is that that is therefore an argument to make it even earlier. Give it a year. In 12 months’ time, in next December, let us kick off a select committee review with urgency. Make it over the same time period that you would usually receive submissions on a bill, so nice and tight. Receive submissions, collect your data and evidence, review the operation of the legislation—we could have it all done and dusted, back in Parliament by, say, March the following year, well within any election period.

So 12 months, we would say, would be the optimum, but if the Government does not want to go with 12 months then we would also support 18 months. Generally, we want a shorter time period for review, so we will be supporting both of the Green Party’s amendments, which would bring that review period earlier than the 2 years that have been stipulated. On this I would acknowledge the Minister’s absolute goodwill in engaging with other parties in trying to set an appropriate time line for review, but I see no argument against 12 months.

At the moment we are receiving 25 offenders on average—and that is increasing—per month. We will have had hundreds, inevitably, based on the statistics we are seeing coming out of Australia, by the time we come to review this in 12 months. We will know how it is operating. In fact, I would wager that if one case hits the headlines—if one monitoring case goes wrong and hits the headlines—we will be reviewing this legislation straight away. So why not make it 12 months? Labour will be supporting those amendments. I encourage the Committee to make the review period 12 months. In lieu of that I encourage it to make it 18 months. Either way, we have got to do something to make sure that this legislation is operating properly, because it has been rushed.

Talking to clause 1, the title clause, I pick up on a number of points that previous speakers have made. The title will be the “Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act 2015”, but Jacinda Ardern has made the perfect argument that many of these people are not returning New Zealanders. Let me give you an example. When I was on Christmas Island and visited the 8 detainees one of them was a young man by the name of Ronald Neilson. He looked and he sounded Australian, and let me tell you: the reason he looked and sounded Australian is because he was born in Australia—he was born there.

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: How does one look Australian?

“How does one”—obviously the member there has not been to Christmas Island, has not spoken to these people, and absolutely does not know what I know about their situation. It is fine for him to sit over there in his seat spouting off, but he does not actually understand the human side of this whole situation and he does not care.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Let me explain. This man is Australian. He was born there, and yet this bill that that member’s party has written talks about returning offenders. Well, he is not returning anywhere. He is being deported from his homeland. That is the point that the member needs to look at.

Then we talked about the offenders. We have got Kō Rūtene, who has not committed any offence in New Zealand or Australia. The Minister of Justice said last night that he is not going to be subject to this legislation if he gets deported back to New Zealand. There will not be somebody at the airport waiting to ask him for his identifying particulars and that, to ask for his identifying information, and that is good, but he is also not going to be eligible for the $200 in his back pocket or 5 nights in a motel while he is trying to get himself on his feet.

I also raise that case about Kō Rūtene because there are going to be more and more New Zealanders—or more and more Australian New Zealanders—who are going to be deported. I do not know if anyone has heard about the ill-fated Operation Fortitude, which was set up in Melbourne in late October, where the Australian authorities—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will sit. We are on the title and commencement clauses. You have had more than half your speech so far in summing up, which you are allowed to do. It is a peroration; that is fine. I would now like to hear something on the title and commencement.

Thank you, Mr Chair, but I am talking about people who are going to be deported under this bill who are said to be offenders, yet they have not offended. Operation Fortitude, an ill-fated police and Australian Border Force operation in Australia—it is going to end up that more people are going to be deported as offenders. Then we have the word “management”. Well, this is mismanagement, because these people’s situations will not be managed other than a couple of hundred dollars in the back pocket, 5 nights in a motel, and then nothing. There is going to be no support for them beyond that. What they are going to do is the question.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Tie it back to the title and commencement. Tie it back to the title and commencement.

I am talking about the management of these people.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Tie it back to the title and commencement. Tie it back.

It is. I am talking about the word “management”, which is in the title, Mr Chair. These people are not going to be managed.

The information that is then being collected—well, it is scratchy information at best. One of the best examples of the information that is going to be collected from them is their address. When you have just got out of Christmas Island—sorry, not you, Mr Chair. When a person has just got off Christmas Island, has just got out of a detention centre in Australia, and is brought back here, they will have no address. They have no address to return to. Let me tell you about another detainee who is coming back who has connections to the Bay of Plenty area. He was raised in New Zealand, where he had a horrific childhood, suffering all sorts of things. He witnessed his father murder his mother. His father committed suicide. He was sexually abused. He does not want to go back there to where he came from. He told me, on the island, that there is no way on earth he wants to go back to where he came from, to his former address, and possibly meet the people who have committed the abuses against him. So these people are not being managed. The information about them that is going to be collected, such as their addresses, is going to change, because their lives are in a state of flux. We need to be cognisant of that whole situation around it. The title “Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act 2015”, will not, I believe, really represent the full picture. It does not represent—

I am happy to take a call on the title and commencement clauses of the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. I want to begin by talking about the commencement clause first. The commencement clause in this bill is a very simple one. It means that the bill comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent, which is likely to be at some point in the next two or three days. The issues that I want to raise—because we have not had an opportunity to discuss this, because of the urgent nature in which this is being put through—is why this bill does not also have a sunset clause, why this bill is simply coming into force and never expiring.

The proposal that the Opposition put to the Government was that we would support the bill—and we are supporting the bill through—with an addition of a sunset clause under clause 2, the commencement clause, and a first reading of an identical bill that was then referred to a select committee for consideration. That would mean that the immediate provisions come into force straight away—or pretty much straight away; as I said, once the Royal assent is received in the next day or two. But, because there would be a sunset clause in here, the whole bill would expire after a certain period of time, once a new bill had been passed to replace it. The same bill could then go through the select committee process, which would allow a lot of the questions that have been debated in the House to be properly addressed and properly answered. That is not going to happen, because of the nature of the urgency.

Sometimes legislation is urgent, and in this case, with people coming back to New Zealand—or coming to New Zealand, I should say—in short order, there is a need for some transitional measures. Therefore there is justification for this bill to come into force straight away—

💬 Jacqui Dean: What about the victims?

Well, I am just saying—Jacqui Dean is asking me: “What about the victims?”. That is why I am suggesting that this bill should come into force straight away, but I am saying that the victims may also have a desire to have a say on this. Why should they be denied the opportunity to have a say on this legislation? Actually, sending it to a select committee does give the victims the opportunity to have a say.

It means that we could put the bill into force immediately. That means that there would be no increased risk, but it means that all those affected could actually thoroughly examine the bill and have a contribution to the process. Therefore, I think it is disappointing that the Government has not put a sunset clause into this legislation. I actually think, having sat through and participated in many, many urgency debates, that most legislation that goes through under urgency should have a sunset clause, with a more considered, deliberative process to ensure that there is a long-term solution in place, because there are very few bills that I have seen progress through the House that cannot be improved through a select committee process.

We then come to the title clause, clause 1, of the bill: “This Act is the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act 2015.” The first thing I want to highlight is that these are not necessarily returning offenders. First of all, they potentially never did any offending in New Zealand, so they are not returning to the point at which their offending took place. They are being deported from a country where their offending took place, and they would not necessarily regard themselves as returning to New Zealand, because some of them will not regard New Zealand as home. They would regard Australia, or another country, as home.

There is a fairness aspect here that needs to be considered. When we talk about people returning to New Zealand, let us put the facts on the table. In many cases they will have left New Zealand when they were very young. The fact that they were born in New Zealand is one consideration; they could have left as babies, having been born in New Zealand, and lived their entire life somewhere else. They could have been educated somewhere else. Their families could all be based somewhere else. Their entire relationship structure could be based somewhere else. They would potentially have been contributing taxes somewhere else, and now, having gotten themselves into trouble at some point—again, in some cases, quite minor offences could be resulting in people coming here—they find themselves deemed to be returning to New Zealand, a country that in many cases could be as foreign to them as any other place on the planet. So using the words “Returning Offenders” in the title of this bill potentially gives, I think, the wrong impression.

Using the phrase “offenders”, again, also potentially gives the wrong impression, because are they still offenders? They have previously been offenders. What if they have served their time and they have been released? They have done their time; they may no longer be offenders. They may have done everything required of them to turn over a new leaf. Why should they be regarded as offenders?

What a shambles. What a shambles this bill is. I am going to start by talking about the commencement date, to start off with, because I think that that is the part that shows what a complete shambles the Government has made of dealing with this issue. The commencement date for this bill should have been about this time last year, quite frankly, because that is when the Government says that it was informed by the Australian Government that it was making the law change that was going to bring these supposed returning offenders back onto our shores. Yet they were being brought here, and have been for almost 12 months now, without any supervision, without any of this so-called management and information that this bill puts in place.

I want to share a story about how this bill is too late, because the commencement clause should have been a lot earlier than this. I know that because in about August this year I went and visited People at Risk Solutions in Hamilton. That is the service that used to provide rehabilitation services for prisoners when they leave prison here in New Zealand. I say that they used to provide that because, in fact, that organisation has declined to take up the Government’s new contract in that area, because it is so appalled at what the Government is requiring in terms of that contract. But I will come back to that point a little later on.

The Hamilton People at Risk Solutions told me in August that it had had a number of these people who had been deported from Australia to New Zealand just cold calling it, rocking up to its doorstep and telling it that they had arrived. They had been deported back, they had no family, they had no support services, and they were knocking on the door of the People at Risk Solutions organisation in Hamilton, saying: “Please help us.”

The reason they were doing that was that they had been told by the Australian authorities that the People at Risk Solutions service in New Zealand would help them. That is what they were told when they were forced to leave the Australian shores. “Go and see the PARS service.”, the Australian authorities said. “They will help you.” Well, the Hamilton People at Risk Solutions service did help those people, because it felt so sorry for them—they were in desperate need of support—but it had no funding to do that. It had no prior notice that it was going to be required to do that.

This is a service that is struggling to survive because of the bad contracting regime that this Government has put in place for prisoners coming out of New Zealand services. It would not sign up to that contract. Here it was, a service that had shed staff very recently because it was principled enough to not sign the dodgy contract that the Government had put in front of it to continue to provide that service for people leaving New Zealand prisons. Here it was, having to struggle to provide that service for these so-called returning offenders, whom it knew nothing about. There had been nothing put in place for the management of those people, and they have been coming back to New Zealand since the beginning of this year, Minister Adams. What were you doing? What were you doing all of that time?

💬 Hon Member: What was she doing?

I am sorry. To the Minister, I ask what was the Minister doing all of that time while those people were returning in ones and twos and threes and fours to New Zealand’s shores without any support mechanisms in place and without the forethought of the New Zealand Government to do anything for their plight?

That is not only a problem for those people in that situation, but that is a problem for New Zealand society. We know that people have been in these dreadful situations where they have been deported. They have been in the sorts of conditions that Kelvin Davis witnessed over in Christmas Island. They have served their time. They have then been thrown into detention centres without any certainty about how long they were going to be there. What I have heard, as Labour’s immigration spokesperson, is that many of these people found the conditions in these detention centres, particularly on Christmas Island, to be more dangerous than—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Come back to the bill.

—what they had been seeing in prison, so they felt less safe. The reason why I raised that is that it is directly related to the commencement clause. These people were not getting the support from the New Zealand Government when they arrived in New Zealand, and yet they had been in these very dangerous situations—traumatised, arriving on our shores, without any help. I am going to divulge—

There will be plenty of opportunity, I am sure, for my colleague Sue Moroney to take another call to finish off that contribution. Mr Chairman, it will be a relief to you, I am sure, that I want to speak to clauses 1 and 2, on the title and commencement.

I want to begin with a contribution on the title clause. An earlier contribution described the title of the bill, Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill, as a misnomer, and I think that is an entirely appropriate reference. The bill’s title is wrong, it is misleading, and it is totally inadequate to describe the purpose of this bill. And I have to say that I think all members in this House would agree with the purpose of the bill; it is to make sure that New Zealanders are protected. People who are convicted of offences overseas and come back to New Zealand deserve to have a level of security around them that other New Zealanders have if they commit comparable crimes and serve sentences in New Zealand.

I was reminded earlier today at the White Ribbon breakfast of how important it is for relationships to be open and respectful. I would recommend to Parliament that we reflect—and a number of members were at that breakfast this morning—on some of the contributions that are made as this bill proceeds, because as is obvious in clause 2, on the commencement date, this bill is going through an unusual process.

We are not having the usual process of a bill being introduced by a Minister clearly outlining the point of why are we having the bill introduced to Parliament. It then usually gets referred to a select committee, where people with expertise in the area or people who just care a lot about it can make a contribution and can add to the thoughts of Parliament. We then come back and go through a considered debate in detail. But we have not had that opportunity, because, as clause 2 outlines, this bill, having been introduced only yesterday, has gone through the entire process until 10 o’clock last night, starting again at 9 o’clock this morning, and it will go through until midnight tonight without the opportunity for that rigour.

The Labour Party proposed a parallel process to the Minister of Justice. We have heard that this bill needed to be introduced under urgency because we have got a boatload of so-called—as described in the title of this bill—returning offenders coming to New Zealand this week. So we had to do this bill under urgency. Why was work on this legislation not commenced last December, when everyone in Australasia knew that the Australian law had changed and that offenders were going to be treated differently in terms of them having to be returned to their country? I will ask the Minister again: what happened between December 2014 and November 2015, when we suddenly have a bill—which has taken only 10 days to write—introduced and passed through all stages under urgency, when everyone in Australasia knew that the Australian Government had changed the law in December 2014?

Then in February of this year when the then Prime Minister of Australia met with the current Prime Minister of New Zealand at the cricket, did they not discuss the implications of this significant law change on New Zealand? And if they did, did the Prime Minister just forget to pass on that critical bit of information to the Minister of Justice?

There is no explanation as to why this bill has been introduced under urgency and rushed through, and why, under clause 2, we are going to see the Act coming into force the day on which it receives the Royal assent. We have had a year. We are rushing through legislation. We know what happens when legislation is rushed. It is always wrong, and critical questions from members of Parliament—none from the National Party, because none of them has made a contribution—are still unanswered.

So just to go back to the title, clause 1 of this bill—“Returning” is one of the biggest misnomers. We have heard over recent weeks tragic stories of people who went to Australia as children. They have no connection with New Zealand other than in theory, and have been raised, made friends, made contacts, have worked, and have contributed in Australia as though that was their place of birth—but in clause 1 they are described as returning. Many of those people do not see themselves—

I move, That the question be now put.

I am going to hear the Hon David Cunliffe.

I appreciate the opportunity—in fact, it is my first opportunity—to offer my support to this bill and to reiterate that of the Labour Party. I want to use this title and commencement opportunity, which is, by convention, an opportunity to sum up some of the arguments that have been raised during the course of the bill, in the Committee stage in particular, to reiterate, firstly—

💬 Tim Macindoe: No, it’s an opportunity to talk about the title and commencement.

—in relation to the title; thank you, Mr Whip—firstly, Labour’s support for the bill, because our priority is, and always has been, to keep New Zealanders safe. It is important when we have prisoners returning to New Zealand that they are both monitored for safety and rehabilitated into society. I think it was Tony Blair who said—and it is not that I agree with everything he has ever said; certainly some things I do not, but I like the line where he said that it is important to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. We must ensure that this bill addresses both of those dimensions in its implementation. That is why Labour lent its support to extended supervision orders and why we have consistently pushed for the Government to establish an information-sharing regime with Australia in relation to deported offenders. However, we have had some concerns with this bill.

I see the Minister in the chair, the Hon Amy Adams—like my colleague Ruth Dyson, we were both at the White Ribbon breakfast—and I need to acknowledge the Minister. I thought she spoke very well on that occasion. I am not sure that the Minister’s timing has been as good with this bill. We have known about this issue for months—close to a year. We are here 2 days before the first planeloads of ex-Christmas Island detainees are due to touch down, and we are passing this through Parliament under urgency, through all stages, denying the public their normal opportunity to have input through the select committee process. The question has to be asked—and the Minister may care to address it, because we ask the question respectfully—why we have got ourselves into this situation. It is certainly not because Labour or other Opposition parties have been stalling it, because we are supporting the legislation overall. I think the public deserves an explanation as to the timing and process.

Secondly, in relation to the management and information aspects of the bill, which are contained in the title, the management requires, as I have said, both the tracking and public assurance function, and also the rehabilitation function. As the Committee has discussed this bill through the Committee stage and we have worked through it clause by clause, and as my colleague Kelvin Davis has repeatedly said, there ain’t much here about rehabilitation. And it is very practical stuff. When someone who has not lived in New Zealand since they were 2 or 3 years old—and that was 30 years ago—gets off a plane and they have no family here, they have no friends here, they have no job here, and they have no money because they have been in prison in, say, Australia or they have been in detention, and they get off the plane and they have whatever it is, the $100 that they get started with and a voucher for a motel for 5 days, what then?

The answer is there is sweet nothing for them beyond that. The likelihood is that the lowest common denominator will emerge and people may be taken up by gangs or other environments that are not going to be conducive to the public interest. It is so much cheaper and so much better to put the fence at the top of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom—to keep people out of bad company by supporting their integration back into society. So in the title of this bill, “Management and Information”, we just wish there was a bit more management to go alongside the information.

The third thing we want to raise is that the part of the regime for the most serious offenders has to be triggered by the Department of Corrections—again, a management and information issue. The problem with that is that the department has been rumpy—that would be the best description. The Minister of Corrections has been on termination watch over his management of the Serco circus. We have had fight clubs, we have had violence, we have had drug use, and we have had all sorts of carry on in the privatised prisons. It has been very much—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of this.

—the same as the sort of things that have been shocking the public about Christmas Island.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No—that is not part of this.

So the management of corrections has been wanting, and we want to make sure that the management of returning offenders under this bill—

I think a good name for this bill would actually be the “Closing the Gate After the Horse has Bolted Bill”. Let me read a quote. It says: “The Government is looking into a monitoring scheme for serious offenders deported to New Zealand.” Is that a quote that came from the Minister of Justice that we have heard in the debate in the last couple of days? No. That is a quote dated 25 January 2015. Minister, your Government has been well aware of this all year—for longer than this—and yet you tell us that a bill has been drafted in the last 10 days. This is an issue that has been on the table. That quote is from the press. That quote is not from a select committee paper or from some sort of article that we got out of the Official Information Act. That was in the press. This is a bill that should not be here under urgency, because it should have been passed by this House about 6 months ago when we realised there was a real problem here.

If we have a look at this bill and the words that make up the title, which is what we are debating, the first one is “Returning”. If you look at the Oxford Dictionary, which is used as the legal benchmark for the definition of language, it says the meaning is to come or go back to a place. As Kelvin Davis has alluded to, there are some people who are actually being deported back to New Zealand, whence they had never come. There is no provision in this bill to send an offender back to the city that their family might have come from or where their support networks might be located, if, in fact, they have any support networks. As we have heard, they get $300 in their back pocket when they land in New Zealand. If their family is from Invercargill, from Napier, or from anywhere else in the country, they have zero ability to even get back to a place where they may have an opportunity to start a new life, where they just might have an opportunity to become a productive citizen. There is no provision for that whatsoever.

Let us go to the next word, “Offenders”. I think in the 21st century one of the basic tenets of our democracy is that you give people a second chance. If they have made a mistake that means they end up in jail, they have done their time once they leave that jail. It does not matter what the mistake was or how bad it was or what previous life they led—if they have served their time, then they deserve a second chance. They are not offenders once they are out of jail. That is a misnomer. I think it denies these people the ability for a second chance where their support networks are, where their families are, and where they have built a life.

Let us have a look at the next word, and that is “Management”. When you look at the dictionary definition of “management” as well, it normally has a proactive connotation. It is about a way forward. This bill provides no way forward for any of these offenders or these Kiwis—or Australians—returning back to New Zealand. We have not heard how they are going to be managed—that will allow them to transition from the life they came from, from the detention centres they were in, from the jails where they spent time, back to being productive members of society. That must be the ultimate gain for any community: to make sure that people have a second chance and that we put the processes in place and the management in place that allow them to once again have the opportunity to become productive citizens.

And then we go to the next word—let us forget “and”—which is “Information”. What is this information going to be collected for? The Minister has provided no indication whatsoever of how this information is going to be used in a proactive way to once again allow these people to get on their feet and become productive members of society, which is what we need to do. So this is not the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. It should be the “Government Mismanagement and Non-Information Bill”. What this is dealing with is one point in time: a specific point in time when a person from Australia who has done their time lands in New Zealand. That is that. It does not deal with the situation that then arises for our communities and for the person who has returned to New Zealand. It does not tell us how or what the community is going to provide for these people that will allow them to become productive citizens. It does not provide us with any opportunity for what that person themselves is going to be responsible for or how they are going to be given any sort of management plan to allow them to integrate.

I move, That the question be now put.