Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill

I move, That the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill be now read a third time. We have heard a lot about this legislation from yesterday afternoon and through today, but what I want to just come back to is the situation we are dealing with. We have heard a lot from the Opposition that I think paints a reasonably misleading picture of how we have got here. But here is where we are. At the beginning of this year we were in a situation where for many, many years serious offenders returned to New Zealand without any sort of supervision or oversight. I accept that as Australia changed its law at the end of last year, which took effect at the beginning of this year, those numbers have increased. But the fact is that serious offenders—murderers, rapists, child sex offenders, drug offenders, violent offenders, the full category—have been coming back to New Zealand for many, many years without oversight, without supervision. I first became aware of this issue and got advice from my officials on 11 February. I immediately instructed them that I thought New Zealand needed a regime to supervise these offenders and the work has been moving since that time.

Suggestions that somehow the writing of the bill is when the work is done represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the process. For those who have not been Ministers and who have not been in this House, I can tell you that in the work of putting together a new regime, the drafting is the very last piece. You have to start with understanding the implications on the agencies, how you are going to resource it, what the right balance is between the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues and safety and security issues, and to do that you have to know and understand the quantum and the nature of the people being returned. So I have said from the outset that we have to have this in place. Let us get work under way to build it. But in the meantime we must conclude better information-sharing with Australia to make it work.

I got the issue put on the Prime Minister’s agenda at the end of February, to raise it right up the agenda. That led to finally concluding the information-sharing agreement with Australia. I always maintained that that had to be in place before we could finalise this, so that we could assess the impact on the Department of Corrections and so I could stand and say quite confidently that we understand the resources required for the Department of Corrections and for the police, we know the cost, and we have resourced it. I can say to this House that we have done that work. We have spent the time getting the police, the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Justice, the courts, and their Australian counterparts lined up, knowing what we need, and how it is going to work. This suggestion that you just rock up to the parliamentary drafters one day and say “Write me a bill that says something.”, and the rest of the time is just fluff, frankly is absurd; it is absolutely absurd. This piece of work has been going at pace since it was first raised with me.

That is more than the Labour Party members can say. Labour had offenders—serious offenders—coming into this country, all the way through its time in office and it did not do a thing. Frankly, I have been talking about this and putting out releases about the programme of work on this throughout this year, and not once—not once—would Labour members be able to point to a single statement, a single question, from them saying “Where is it? What’s happening?”, or calling for it. The only person speaking this year about this issue and about the need to do it has been me. I have worked on it. I have delivered at pace, but I have made sure we have got a regime that is fair to offenders, that balances their rights properly, that does not create a double jeopardy, but still provides the monitoring and assistance that I think New Zealanders need.

So now 9 months later, when this debate concludes, we will have a regime in place for the first time that supervises these offenders. I am very proud of that. I know that New Zealanders have been at risk from serious offenders in our communities without supervision, until now, and that is what we are moving to address. Can I also just address the fact that somehow this is a knee-jerk reaction to the arrival that we are expecting later this week. I can tell members in this House that if they follow the announcements I have made, which frankly they showed no interest in until they saw a chance to have a bit of whack, they will see that I have been making announcements that this bill was progressing at pace, it would be in the House this week, and would be progressed as fast as possible. The impending arrival of the offenders came after all of those announcements.

So what we now have is the conclusion of three pieces of work that I set up when the issue was raised with me in February. There will be a register to track and monitor these offenders that all of our law enforcement agencies can access. It will be a single point of information, no matter where they are in the country, sharing that information. That is in place—check. There will be an information-sharing agreement with Australia, so that when these people come back we have good advice on their psychiatric state, their criminal risk, their behaviour in prison, their known affiliations, their criminal histories—anything we need to make a proper risk assessment and to apply to the courts for whatever additional orders might be required. Having a regime in place where you can apply to the courts for orders, without that information, would simply have been a piece of paper. You have to have the information. We have it. We now have the regime to go alongside it.

This regime is about putting in place the same sort of oversight that offenders would have expected had they been released from a New Zealand prison. No supervision regime will ever remove the risk. We are dealing with serious offenders, some of whom will reoffend, as offenders who are released from New Zealand jails reoffend. But what we can now be comfortable with, and confident in, thanks to this bill, is the knowledge that the offenders who come back to New Zealand who have only just been released from prison—not people who have offended long ago; but the ones who have only just been released from prison—will be subject to the same sort of oversight, regardless of whether they have served that sentence in Australia, in New Zealand, or in some other country. I think that is appropriate. It would make no sense to have to serve parole if you stayed in Australia, but not if you came back to New Zealand. So this bill fixes that gap.

The last thing I want to make comment on is the Australian policy that this is all about. I said in my opening contribution that we are not responsible for Australian law. We do not like the way this policy operates. We do not agree with New Zealanders who went to Australia as very young children potentially being removed, when they have no ties to New Zealand. We do not like New Zealanders being held in immigration detention centres. But what we are saying is that although we cannot change that, we have absolutely expressed our concern at those policies at the highest levels. Mr Little is going to speak to Australian backbenchers. We spoke to the Prime Minister. We spoke to the Minister of Justice. We spoke to the immigration Minister. We continue to raise our concerns every single day—not every single day, but every single time we get that opportunity. We do not like that Australian policy, but at the same time these people will continue to return to New Zealand, as they always have, and now, thanks to this National-led Government, for the first time—the first time—we will be able to supervise them.

Can I make just one final point, which is that although the numbers will go up and have gone up since Australia changed its laws, a large number of that increase are not returning offenders. They have been deported on bad character grounds. It is about 40 percent, we understand. Furthermore, the extra part of the increase where they are offenders is because the Australian policy is now picking up much lower-level offenders, as we heard the Opposition members acknowledge. So when you are talking about that core of serious offenders, many of them were always deported back to New Zealand. They continue to be deported back, but now they will be supervised. They will be under probation. We will have the power to go to the court and get orders to protect the New Zealand public, because that is our primary goal. I commend the bill to the House with great pleasure.

I want to begin my final contribution on this bill by acknowledging that the Minister of Justice has, in the past week or maybe 2 weeks, engaged with us as an Opposition party on the finer drafting details of this bill. I acknowledge that that has indeed happened. But I can tell you that it is a sure sign that something is being done at great pace, with great haste, and, unfortunately, without the scrutiny that good lawmaking deserves, when you are being engaged with to that degree so late in the policy development. So, yes, I acknowledge that the Minister gave us a call and shared with us various iterations of the bill. But the fact that we were getting amendments on the morning this bill came to Parliament demonstrates part of the problem that we have with this process. When you rush law, you unfortunately make bad law. You inevitably make mistakes.

I want to debunk some of the myths that have been raised by Government members in defence of that process. They have said: “Look, we did it in a rush because this was as fast as we could go. We could not have produced this legislation any more quickly than we have.” They have made all sorts of claims about Opposition members in the process. I want to debunk some of the myths that have been raised in the House. Myth No. 1—the statement that somehow we are not allowed to raise process points because deportation is not new. No one has ever said that this is a new issue. Of course, we have had offenders deported back to New Zealand for many, many years and from many, many countries—legitimate citizens. In fact, the Minister’s own notes—

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: 700 under Labour. Nothing done.

And no one has ever denied that, Maggie Barry. No one has ever denied that.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: No protections. So what did that member do about it?

Maggie Barry, can I just quote from Minister Adams.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: That member does nothing.

Do you want to listen for a moment? Do you want to listen?

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: Not really.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I am calling for order. If the Minister does not want to obey that, then she can go somewhere else. I do not care.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: Sure.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: And she is carrying on doing that right now. Do not do that.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I think if the member is willing to listen, I am perfectly happy to follow the facts as set out by the Minister. We have never disputed them. Yes, in recent years, as it states in the Cabinet paper, approximately 60 to 100 offenders have been deported to New Zealand each year after serving a prison sentence in an overseas jurisdiction. No one on this side of the House ever denied that. However, recent changes—the paper goes on to acknowledge—in Australia’s visa cancellation policy have resulted in a large increase in the number of offenders being removed or deported to New Zealand. Those numbers are then explained. The rate of deportations has increased from an average of five per month in previous years to 25 deportations per month since June 2015. So, yes, deportations have occurred before but not as we know it now—not as we know it now.

So what about the claim then that was made by the Government that at least the Government is doing something? Well, that is because it had it within its power. I am not just saying that because it has been in Government for 7 years—apparently, we can still be blamed for errors of times gone past—but we are actually in a different environment. Not only has Australia changed its laws in the last year, which means we have this rapid increase, but we also have more information available to us. So I say to Minister Barry that when Labour was in Government we had no information-sharing regime. Australia was not giving us the information that we now have through an information-sharing agreement, which was signed only in September, and we now have the ability to put in a regime like this. In fact, Amy Adams herself said that having a regime in place without this information would have been meaningless. So to somehow blame another Government for not having done something that the Minister herself claims would have been meaningless without that change in process, I think means that those claims from that side of the House are totally unfair and unjustified.

But the Minister has then made the argument that she has gone as fast as she could. Yes, we are not naive; we know how legislation is drafted: you create a regime and then you give your instructions to the Parliamentary Counsel Office. The Parliamentary Counsel Office, which literally writes the law for us, was not told what to write until about 3 weeks ago. This law that we are debating here was drafted 3 weeks ago. Anyone who has read legislation knows that it is a complex job. If you do not have time and proper scrutiny things go wrong. This started 3 weeks ago. Did it have to be that way? No, the Minister herself acknowledged that she knew that we had a problem—well, if she read the paper she would have known—well over a year ago. The Australians said “Hey, New Zealand, we are changing our laws. You should know about that.” a year ago. The Minister claims that she has been working on it since then. Really? Really—it does not take year to give drafting instructions to the Parliamentary Counsel Office. In fact, as far as I can tell, some of the Cabinet papers on this—which are the first step in the process—that went to the Cabinet saying “This is what we should do.” happened well after August. We know there was at least 6 months when nothing appears to have been happening and in that time hundreds of offenders were being packed up and shipped out.

So, yes, we have a problem with the time line for this bill—we have a problem with it. Our concern is that as a result we will have made bad law. What signs do we have that that might be the case? Well, let us look at the way that the law is going to work. The law has set out that there will three sets of different kinds of offenders coming back into New Zealand—three types of returnees—and we would add that the first category are those who should not be deported back in the first place. As the Minister said, we are not talking just about offenders who are being sent back to New Zealand; there is a character test that is the cause of about 40 percent of the people being deported back into New Zealand. They are failing a character test. These are people who believe themselves to be Australians who are being deported to New Zealand—a place they have no connection to—simply because they may have been born here or have New Zealand parents. On a character test they are being sent back. We think that is wrong and will continue to fight that. I acknowledge again the enormous amount of work that Kelvin Davis has done on that, because our Prime Minister has not.

The second group of people who are being deported here and are covered by this regime are what we call returning prisoners. Returning prisoners are those who are defined as having been released for having served a sentence for an offence that attracted a sentence of a year or more. They are being released and they have not spent 6 months out in the community. The rationale of the Minister is that if they have not spent 6 months out then we do not know whether they are able to reintegrate properly. So that group of deportees when they come back into New Zealand will be automatically be monitored—automatically. The point here is that you will notice that we are not focusing on the offence of the person being deported. It does not matter whether or not they have committed a highly violent crime or whether they have stolen something from the backseat of a car. That is not what New Zealand in this regime is paying attention to. It is simply whether or not they have been in the community for 6 months. That in itself has some issues attached to it.

Then the next category of people are those who have been out in the community for 6 months before they have been picked up by officials and sent back to New Zealand. For that category of people to be monitored, New Zealand’s Department of Corrections has to apply to a court. Those individuals could be murderers—and we know that some of them are. They could have been child sex offenders—and we know that some of them are. They will be covered by a regime only if the Department of Corrections goes through the courts. Our concern is that we have already since December 2014 had the ability to monitor serious offenders who are deported to New Zealand if the department asks for them to be. How many has it asked to be monitored in a year? Zero—not one. Thirty percent of people who have been deported back to New Zealand in the last 2 years are categorised as serious offenders. The Department of Corrections has applied for not one of them to be monitored. We are concerned that this bill is reliant on a department that is underfunded, under-resourced, and managed poorly at present, and we are giving them an enormous job.

In summary, this bill has been rushed unnecessarily. It has not been given due consideration and, yes, although we agree that we need a regime, we argue that we should have had another bill go through a full process to replace this one. It is disappointing that we are here in this House doing this at the last minute, because New Zealanders’ safety is reliant on our doing a much better job than this.

I rise to voice my support for the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. What this bill does in principle is to empower the Department of Corrections to supervise returning offenders. They are offenders who will be managed under standard as well as special conditions consistent with those used to manage offenders who are released from New Zealand prisons—consistent with those offenders. As the Minister of Justice has already said, this is a regime that is currently not in place. It is a regime that no other Government prior to this Government has seen fit to put in place.

This bill is about providing conditions to manage the risks of those returning offenders in the interests of public safety and public security. Public safety and public security are the No. 1 goal here. We have heard members opposite talk about reintegration and rehabilitation, and they are important, but the primary goal is to ensure the public’s safety and security from those offenders who are returning. How does that happen? Well, it happens through regular engagement by probation staff, by agencies, and by NGOs who are out there doing the mahi, doing the work, currently with offenders who are released from New Zealand prisons.

It is about managing those people and making informed decisions. This bill sets in place a framework within which we can obtain information from the respective authorities in Australia. That includes the Federal Government but it also includes state Governments. State Governments oversee the imprisonment of Australian as well as New Zealand citizens who are in state correction facilities.

Of course, secondly, it is about conditions that are used to facilitate the rehabilitation and the reintegration of offenders. Members opposite have talked about this but, as I have already said, safety comes first. Also what should be mentioned is that some of these returning offenders—quite a number of them—will be awaiting appeal. So whether or not it is appropriate to impose conditions in terms of rehabilitation and reintegration when some of these people will actually be returning to Australia needs to be determined within those conditions.

Thirdly, members opposite have talked about rehabilitation and reintegration not being in the primary legislation. Well, it is not appropriate that they be in the primary legislation because the conditions to determine the safeguarding and the monitoring and the surveillance of these returned offenders will set out quite clearly on an individual level how those offenders will be managed.

As has already been stated, the Department of Corrections has been working alongside other agencies, both justice and police, all year to prepare for the return of this increased number of offenders from Australia. The Department of Corrections has helped manage and supervise these people, as is envisaged by the bill. It is essential that we know who they are and what they have done, and that we have some detailed information around their needs, around the risks, and around some of the challenges that will be in place in terms of monitoring these offenders once they return to these shores.

That is why in July I went to Darwin and I signed a memorandum of cooperation alongside corrections Ministers from the various states. Ultimately, some of that more detailed information in order to manage some of these offenders is going to be required from the states. That includes psychological reports and some of the assessments and the risk analysis and risk assessments that those states do in order to manage those offenders both within those corrections facilities in the states as well as upon release, and the conditions upon which they are released into Australian society. This legislation is not to manage just Australian deported offenders; it is to manage deported offenders wherever they come from, right around the world. We know that there are also risky offenders that come from other countries. This legislation will capture those people.

In terms of rehabilitation and reintegration, I can say to this House that the Department of Corrections is working alongside other agencies. It is working alongside NGOs, like, for example, People at Risk Solutions, which does a wonderful job in the community helping to rehabilitate and reintegrate offenders. A grant of $100,000 was given to that society in order to help with the reintegration services for returning offenders. Of course, that will not be the only cost. There will be many other costs, and members across this House have noted the cost that will be incurred not just by the Department of Corrections but by other agencies in order to, in the long term, take care of and monitor these offenders.

Of course, the department will work alongside and in collaboration with some of these community providers, as well as social service agencies, local government, and other Government agencies in order to support these offenders as they adjust to life in New Zealand. That is in the same way that the department will work closely with deported offenders to ensure that they have this support alongside domestic offenders.

This bill has a twofold role. It is about holding offenders to account in terms of the conditions imposed and it is about safety and security for all New Zealanders. A mother of a victim came on Radio New Zealand National this morning and said it has the potential to save lives. It has the potential to save lives where monitoring of a high-risk offender will lead to a better outcome and avoid the risk to, and the deaths of, New Zealand citizens. I support this bill. It allows for fine work to be extended to offenders returning to New Zealand from overseas. It is in keeping with this Government’s track record of driving legislative change that strengthens our ability to keep the New Zealand public safe first and foremost as well as reintegrating and rehabilitating these offenders. That is why I commend this bill to the House.

I have very few problems with what the intent of this legislation is—that is, to collect information so that these deportees, when they return to New Zealand, can be monitored by the probation service, by the parole services, or by whoever needs to monitor them. That is not really the point. We have objections around the time it has taken to get this bill to the House, and the shoddy drafting of the legislation.

Let me give you an example. On 25 January, in the Northern Advocate, which is not exactly the world’s most widely read newspaper, there was a report about a woman who was deported from Australia. She had participated in a murder in Australia and was sentenced to a number of years in jail. She was deported back to Kaikohe. I will not name the woman, because she has to get on with her life. But she is not going to be much of a problem to the Kaikohe community. Murderers do not tend to go on and murder over and over again, except, of course, serial murderers, I must admit. That woman is very little risk to the Kaikohe community.

The point of the story is that in that newspaper report on 25 January the former Minister of Justice Judith Collins said that the deportation of prisoners was an issue that the Government was aware of and that needed to be changed. She then went on to say that the Government was looking into a monitoring scheme for serious offenders deported to New Zealand. That was in January. We had an admission by the former justice Minister, the predecessor of our current justice Minister, saying the Government was well aware of this issue and that it was looking into a monitoring system for serious offenders deported to New Zealand. And now, 11 months later, we are going through this whole process, based on legislation that has taken 12 days to draft. There is something seriously wrong with the story that the country has been told in terms of the genesis of this legislation.

The Minister who has just finished speaking, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, talked about the primary goal being public safety. We have no problems with that, but my question is: how does the bill protect public safety when we are deporting people from Australia and dumping them here in New Zealand with a couple of hundred dollars in their back pocket, with vouchers for 5 days in a motel, and then telling them they are on their own? How is it protecting public safety when they do not have the support systems around them? They do not have their family networks around them—they are back in Australia—and they do not have legal representation here in New Zealand, because their lawyer is back in Australia. How is New Zealand going to be a safer place if they do not have their support systems and do not have the proper networks and social services wrapping around them to the extent they should?

The Prime Minister stands up and says he is the only person who is speaking for victims in New Zealand. That is rubbish. If these guys are not supported to the extent they should be, what the Prime Minister is going to do with this regime is create more victims here in New Zealand, and that is what we are trying to prevent at all costs. That is why we say that this legislation, although it is good to look at the information-gathering side of things and all that, is missing something in the fact that there is little mention of the support services that need to be wrapped around these guys. Once their 5-day motel voucher has run out, where do they stay? What is going to be put in place for them? That is why I suggested some 5 or 6 weeks ago that the Government should fund a marae—and let us face it; many of these people are Māori—to look after these people, to cater for them, to accommodate them for 4 or 5 weeks while services can come in and provide some comprehensive wraparound, get them on their feet, and help them to get a job and an IRD number, and all those sorts of things that they probably do not have.

As I said in the Committee stage, many of these people have no connection to New Zealand. One person I met on Christmas Island, a young man by the name of Ronald Neilson, was born in Australia. He has no connection to New Zealand. He said to me: “If they are going to deport me, deport me to Bali.” He knows more about Bali than he does about New Zealand. Despite the fact that his parents were born here, he has no connection.

The Minister has made out like she is the only person running around doing things and that the Government has set up this information sharing about criminal risk. That is great. All this information sharing is fine, but the information that the Australian Government has not shared with us is the number of people who are on the plane that is meant to be arriving tomorrow, where that plane is going to land, or what the names of those people are—the most basic things. It has not shared that information with us. So it is fine for the Minister to get on her high horse and start talking about the great system they have set up for sharing information, but when it comes to what is happening on the ground and what is going to happen to tomorrow with the arrival of a planeload of deportees, they have not shared the most basic bits of information.

So how do we support these people? We do not know who they are. We do not know their criminal record. We do not know where they are going to go. I wonder whether those people know which motel they are going to be put up in. None of these questions have been answered. That means these people are bound to be dumped on our streets, and, if they do not have the support systems that they require and they run out of food and they run out of clothes and they are cold at night and they have no money, chances are they are going to have to resort to crime to get by. They are being set up to fail. All the monitoring in the world by the probation service does not put food in someone’s stomach, does not get them money, and does not give them a job. These are the issues that we have concerns about.

Some of these people have not even committed crimes in Australia; they are being deported because they fail a character test. And let me tell you about something that I believe is extremely frightening, and that is an operation by the Australian authorities, its Border Force—that is the immigration people and the police. It is Operation Fortitude. Just google it. It is an operation that was meant to go ahead in October of this year where the Australian Police and the Australian Border Force were going to randomly check people’s visas on the streets of Melbourne. So, basically, they were going to be racially profiling, or profiling people and checking their visas. If their visas were not up to scratch, then they could have been detained and deported. And those people could well have ended up here in New Zealand for nothing more than just not having their visas up to scratch or completing that process properly.

That means we could have more people uplifted from their homes in Australia, from their families, and from their support networks and landed here on New Zealand soil where we actually have to look after them and where we have to re-establish them. And, of course, as I have said, if we do not do that properly, these people will be set up to fail, and they have not committed a crime. They will be set up to fail. Does that mean that they have to commit crimes to get by? Does that mean we create more victims in New Zealand?

I just want to finish telling the story, and I have told it already during the course of this debate, about a young guy, Beau Adams, whose entry into the Australian criminal system was on dubious grounds to start with. He had a domestic violence order put against him. The person who put that domestic violence order against him then texted him, phoned him, insisted that he drive her somewhere, they argued, she claimed that he broke the domestic violence order, and he was then imprisoned. And I do not even know that he went to court; he was definitely on remand. He was there for 159 days before he was eventually sent to Perth, from the east coast where he lived, and then on to Christmas Island. I am not even sure that that guy has been charged with a crime and he could possibly be sent back to New Zealand, where he has not been since he was 4 years old.

I know that Australia has the sovereign right to make the laws that it makes, but its laws are wrong and we in New Zealand are the ones who are bearing the brunt of its poor laws. And if this does not work, if this legislation that we are enacting now does not work, then we are going to create more New Zealand victims. Kia ora.

I will make only a brief contribution. I think many of the issues have been traversed. I just want to pick up on a point from the rather breathtaking speech that Kelvin Davis has just given to the House. He fears that under this legislation returning offenders will be “dumped on the streets”. Well, the news is that this piece of legislation fills the gap and will take care of people so they are not dumped on the streets. That is exactly the point of this legislation.

The point that I think is being missed by the Opposition is that this bill is about protecting New Zealand citizens. This bill captures those people—and I used that word advisedly—at the border, where, hitherto, in particular under the previous Labour Government, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of serious offenders came across our border unremarked, unknown about, only caught by chance if they were caught and then were, essentially, free to go into New Zealand society to live adjacent to schools and adjacent to families with one child, and that Government of the day did nothing. So spare me your hollow words across the House, because this is the legislation that is plugging that gap and making New Zealanders safer in their own homes.

I have sat through much of this debate listening to the Opposition saying that this Government is making bad law. Really? Is this Government making bad law? I did not hear a single argument about why. David Parker alerted us to a spelling mistake. Thank you very much. It may have been a point of grammar, but I did not hear any cogent argument as to why members opposite were saying this was bad law, because it is good law. What this law is doing is placing a new supervision regime, which is very similar to that which is imposed on New Zealand - based offenders when they are released from prison, when they go out in our society. Tell me what is bad about that. The thing is, the Opposition essentially agrees with the position of this Government, and that is where its objection to this bill has utterly failed. This is a good bill, and it will do as it intends to do, which is to make New Zealand safer for New Zealanders.

I suspect that this debate has actually been, at heart, one of furious agreement—to be frank—about the need for legislation to manage the issues for those who have been deported from Australia and elsewhere, who need some kind of monitoring for some reason, or the recording of their details with the Police. The content of the bill reflects that comparatively well.

I think the Government has made a mistake in not acknowledging its process failures as effectively as it should have. It would not be difficult to do, to acknowledge that it could have done a better job of consulting other MPs from across the House. I would note that Amy Adams did say that she is the only one who has been working on this issue. Well, my colleague David Clendon asked her for a meeting to talk about exactly this in July and was refused. So that is inaccurate, and it is unfair in the sense that if this had been, from the start, a collaborative effort across the political spectrum and with some of the critical external agencies—like the Human Rights Commission, the Law Commission, and the Law Society—we would have got a better-quality piece of legislation.

The Government has a tendency to keep its cards far too close to its chest and to not understand that there are real opportunities for cross-party engagement on these serious issues where we all agree. We all agree we need legislation to deal with the deportees. We all agree that the Australian legislation is disgraceful and is a breach of human rights; everybody thinks that what it is doing is wrong. So why not choose to work on those areas of common ground, as opposed to this manufacturing of huge drama in the House over the detail—detail that could have been properly worked out with a decent process?

It has been an interesting debate over the last 24 hours or so, and, as a result of the debate, we have made changes to the legislation. My own conversations with Amy Adams led to a constraining of the information that is going to be required of returning offenders. I am pleased for that. I am pleased that she was seriously considering that at the time. The House has agreed to change the time frame for the review of the law from 2 years to 18 months. That at least gives us a chance of getting a review completed and all changes made before the next election. Again, that is good.

No doubt better changes could have been made with more time and with even a short select committee process, by which we could have got some external analysis and external review of the legislation. That is what the Greens have asked for. Even a day’s worth of select committee would have been beneficial to find ways to improve the legislation. There is no Government department that knows everything, and sometimes you need the practitioners—the people who will put this law into practice every day—to give us their analysis of it and how it will actually affect their work, so we can make it the best possible legislation. Overall, I think that is why the Greens are abstaining on this legislation. We understand the need for it. There is broad agreement on the basic purpose. But the details—the law itself—could have been much better if the process had been more collaborative. It is an example to the Government that it really needs to be rethinking its strategy on some of these big issues.

I would say that the other area that is now left open and could benefit from a more collaborative approach from the Government is the rehabilitation for offenders. As the Government’s own paper on this bill, the regulatory impact statement, has said, there is a critical connection between reducing the chance of recidivism—further offending—and the quality of the support that wraps around an offender. Those two things cannot be separated from each other. In this debate over this bill, which is about the monitoring but not the rehabilitation, there has been very little from the Government—the Minister or other Government MPs—about the importance of it, about what they are going to do to increase services, and how they are going to better engage with communities. Kelvin Davis suggested funding for marae to do this work. It is great idea. The fact is, we know that agencies are already saying that they are well over their capacity to deal with returning offenders as we speak and are desperately looking for more support. Often some of those agencies are too afraid to speak out and to ask for more support, because of their concerns about being punished politically.

We now actually have this opportunity to set aside the politics around the issue and to have a cross-party working party, or it is a chance to have a conversation directly with the relevant Ministers—including the Minister for Social Development and the Minister for Building and Housing, as well as the Minister of Justice—to find out how we can best support the best possible support services and rehabilitation for those who are returning. If there is one way to stop reoffending, it is making sure that offenders have genuine options for making a decent life for themselves when they get back here.

We have heard a lot about—particularly from Kelvin Davis, and I do want to acknowledge his efforts in debate in this House; I think he has made some amazing contributions about the stories of the people who will be affected by this bill. He is quite right that there are people coming who have absolutely nowhere to go when they arrive here. They know no one. There is nobody here for them. What can we possibly expect for them but the worst outcomes if we do not immediately put in place intervention when they arrive? Not a punitive intervention—one that respects their dignity, gives them choices, and provides them with the support they need to take the next steps to build a new life here.

That is something that, again, we all agree on. We all agree that should happen, we all agree how important it is, and we all agree that it is critical for public safety, so let us find a way of working together on this. The Government’s—I am not sure how to describe it—block about working with the Opposition means that it makes mistakes, and it makes mistakes that those members do not suffer. It is not anybody on the Government benches who is going to—

💬 Chris Bishop: Listen to the Greens. Oh!

This is an example of exactly what I am talking about. They are not listening to a contribution about how we can best work together; they are deciding to just shout. This is just a fact: they are not the ones who are going to be affected. It is the offenders—

💬 Chris Bishop: It does not actually mean collaborate; it means just do what you want.

Here we go again. They are just shouting, for no good reason. It is the offenders who will be affected. It is their victims who will be affected. So we need to make sure that when we are making law about other people, we recognise how far away we are from those lived experiences and how little we know about what really happens, and, therefore, make an additional commitment to those people who are directly affected that we will act in their best interests by putting aside the political arguments and shouting, and actually work on what is the best and most decent policy for New Zealanders. That is why we are in this business; that is why we are in the Chamber. Let us see if we can improve on that after this example. Thank you.

New Zealand First still supports this bill warts and all, but buying into it is a bit like buying a new car, especially if the old one has died and a new one is needed immediately. What one gets one will be stuck with for a significant period in the future, whether it is fit for one’s purposes or not. It would be good to have tested it properly before buying it, and probably one should have studied it for a few months to see whether it would be fit for purpose, but that luxury has long gone—and so it is with this bill. Clearly, it should have been introduced months ago. The Minister of Justice said the process started in February—and for her, yes, I am sure it did, but not for the rest of us. The rest of us have had just a few days to look at this bill, to study it, to see its ramifications, and to debate it, and that really is not good enough. That is not the usual process, which we have a right to expect in this Parliament for this kind of important legislation.

New Zealand First deeply regrets that it is necessary at this stage to pass such a bill under urgency. When you think about it, it has been almost a year since the Australians passed their legislation, and it has been 9 months since the process began in New Zealand to respond to that legislation. So in the end we get this rushed process to pass a bill under urgency when, in fact, much better could have been done, and that rushed process shows in many of the errors and the inadequacies in the drafting of this bill.

We in New Zealand First are quite happy to acknowledge that the fundamentals of the bill are perfectly OK. We are quite happy to ensure that offenders are identified on arrival in New Zealand, and we are happy to ensure that prisoners returning to New Zealand comply with Parole Act conditions and any special conditions that may imposed by the courts. We have no difficulty with that, but it is the detail of the bill that has caused concern. Those matters, as we know, are usually sorted out in the select committee process, and that process is missing from this bill. The most important aspect of that is that the public has no opportunity whatsoever for any input into this bill, and that is a very significant matter. I would have looked forward to hearing from organisations such as the Law Society and many others that have special expertise and could have contributed to a much better piece of legislation. We are not going to get that either, and that really is a shame.

The only saving grace is clause 37, which requires a review and report by the Justice and Electoral Committee after 2 years. The Minister’s amendment says now that it should be in an appropriate select committee after 18 months, but not even that is long enough in the circumstances. There were always two better options.

Firstly, I think Labour’s parallel process option is the one that ought to have been adopted. That would require, effectively, two bills—one passed now and the other to go through the select committee process in the normal way with full public consultation and so on. That would have been the best of both worlds. We could have had legislation that comes into force this week—as this bill will—and yet have a select committee process to sort out all of the issues that there are with it. I think that the only reason the Government is not willing to do that is that to do so would mean that it would be admitting it had acted too late. That is the reason why this Government is not willing to adopt that very sensible dual process, which the Labour Party proposed.

The other option was a closer date for review than 18 months. When you think about it, 18 months means May 2017 at the earliest. That is the time at which election issues are really starting to warm up, leading up to the election campaign for later that year. Effectively, it really means that the review would actually be in 2018. That is far too late. The opportunity to learn from experience after this bill is passed is in the first year. That really requires the review to start no later than 12 months from when this bill is passed this week. That is not being adopted and that also is a shame, because to wait until 2018 for a complete review will mean that a lot of issues that will arise will go unfixed for far too long.

This could have been done a lot better, and New Zealand First deeply regrets that the Government has not taken on board those concerns expressed by many of the Opposition parties in Parliament. We already know of some of the areas needing review, which could be—but will not be—amended right now. Indeed, Minister Adams herself produced amendments within hours of the first reading of the bill, so she herself knew that she was bringing to Parliament a bill that actually needed amendment from the very beginning. Opposition parties have offered amendments in good faith to try to help improve the bill. A few have been accepted, but most have not been seriously considered, and that also is a shame.

There was not the opportunity for a select committee process, which would have provided for much better amendments and review of the bill. Actually, when you consider it, this bill really could have been introduced by the Government at least, say, 6 weeks ago, because it has had at least 9 months, if not more, to bring the bill to Parliament. If it had done so 6 weeks ago, we could have had a shortened but worthwhile select committee process with public submissions, and especially submissions by expert organisations, and the result right now, this week, would be much better legislation.

I want to acknowledge David Parker and Trevor Mallard in particular, who raised drafting issues and issues of substance and placed them on the record. Those issues have not been dealt with, and they ought to be. It should not be necessary to wait until 2018, effectively, for those matters to be looked at again. David Parker in particular offered an amendment, which I thought was well worthwhile, to add words to clause 9 to add a requirement for offenders—as they are so called in the bill—to provide information about convictions and penalties. That information is obviously necessary. Why has it been left out? It would have been so simple to add those few words—completely harmless words, completely worthwhile words—which would have added some important information. But the Government has refused to do it, with some pretty weak excuses made by the Minister—excuses, I would have to say, that did not really make any sense. So the bill will now be passed without those words added, and it will be the poorer for it.

I raised a number of issues regarding clause 7, especially around the term “liable for deportation”. Those also have not been addressed. I raised issues about clause 10(2), concerning the period of detention. The Minister said case law could be relied on to define what a reasonable period is, but why not specify a maximum reasonable period in the bill? That would have been better, so the Minister’s response, I think, was completely inadequate on that. I and others have raised a whole raft of other issues—issues of substance, issues of drafting—and all of those will now have to wait, effectively, until 2018 before anything can be done about them. Really, that is not good enough for a process for legislation of this importance.

Finally, let me say this: New Zealand First has always supported the objects of this bill—the object of making sure that we are ready to accept a greatly increased load of offenders and returning prisoners, especially those from Australia but also from other countries. We have always accepted the need for that. It is probably legislation that should have been done years ago, so we have been happy to see this legislation come forward. We support it. What we do regret very deeply, and protest about very strongly, is that it has been so slow and that the opportunity for Opposition parties and, indeed, the public to have genuine and substantive input into this bill has been completely inadequate.

Well, it has been an interesting discussion over this last day and a half, as we have been hearing things. Some of them, actually, have even related to the bill. It has been interesting, and, I guess, disappointing, from my perspective, to have heard so much focus from a lot of people on Australian law, when this House should be dealing with New Zealand law.

I guess I would ask the question: is it the role of New Zealand to advocate for our citizens who are living abroad? Absolutely, yes, it is. And in dealing with that—and that is why I just want to commend the work that has been done by the Prime Minister, and by Ministers Adams, Woodhouse, and Lotu-Iiga, who have been dealing with their counterparts in Australia doing that work. But this bill is not about what happens in Australia; this bill is about what happens as a result of what is happening in Australia, which is that there are people who are being deported from Australia who are New Zealand citizens. Yes, maybe they do not have a lot of connection with New Zealand, but although they have been in Australia for all that time, unfortunately they have not become Australian citizens for reasons that only they can tell for themselves.

One of the concerns that I have heard from members opposite—and I just want to reiterate that this is not the case. There is a lot of talk about those people who are being deported for issues of character. Those people are not caught up in this process. The bill is very clear in Part 2 in its description of who a “returning offender” is and who a “returning prisoner” is. Those people who are being deported for issues of character—I think we would all agree that that is not necessarily a great thing for Australia to be doing, but they will not be picked up in this. So those people will not be victimised by this bill in the way that, I think, members opposite have been conveying, and I think that is disappointing.

This is a good bill. It is a bill designed to help keep New Zealanders safe. It is designed to ensure that those people who are returning after convictions in other countries will be treated in the same way that people who are being released from New Zealand prisons will be treated. I think it is only summed up, really, by the overwhelming support that it has had around this House. It is, in fact, a good bill, and I look forward to seeing it enacted, hopefully later on today or tomorrow.

This is a 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party—David Clendon.

Some years ago Sir Geoffrey Palmer made the comment that this legislature, this Parliament, contains the fastest lawmakers in the West, and, unfortunately, the experience of the last 24 hours or so demonstrates that I think we can still lay claim to that rather dubious distinction. In less than 21 hours, by my count, since this bill landed on the Table, we have had about 8 to 8½ hours of debate on a very substantive matter. This is not a trivial piece of legislation. We agree that on occasion there is need for haste. There are occasions when urgency is necessary and important.

We do not accept that this is a case of such compelling urgency that in a 10 or 11 - month process—by the Minister’s admission, at least 10 or 11 months of work have gone into this. Could we not squeeze out 1 week when we could invite members of the public, the community voluntary sector, the legal fraternity, and the judiciary to come and have an opinion about this bill? Even in the course of yesterday evening the Opposition parties were able to add value and to make this a better bill, on the basis of very little information, with very little time for analysis, and that indicates how much better this bill could have been had even a very truncated select committee process been allowed.

I particularly feel for the community voluntary sector. The success or failure of rehabilitating and reintegrating the people who do return to New Zealand, once they have been registered, supervised, monitored, etc.—a lot of the hard work of bringing those people back into our communities will be done by people in the community voluntary sector, some of whom are partially Government funded, but who, to a large extent, rely on voluntary time. They are people who give up their time, their energy, and their experience to try to bring people back into the fold. I think we should acknowledge that, and I think it is somewhat disrespectful of this Parliament not to have included that community sector in the preparation of this policy, which it will have a considerable part in implementing.

I must take a moment to acknowledge PARS, the Auckland-based group, which was formerly the Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society, and now I think it has rebranded as People at Risk Solutions. At least since the beginning of this year it has been sending people to the airport to meet offenders who have been deported—to meet deportees—and to endeavour to assist them. Two middle-aged women, women in the prime of life—or else there was one senior kaumātua who would go alone—would go out to the airport, not really knowing what they were dealing with; knowing that they were meeting deportees who may have been confused or angry, who may have had major alcohol and substance abuse problems. Out of that, their courage is extraordinary—courage to actually put themselves personally at risk in order to go to the airport, meet these people, and bring them back, and endeavour to get them at least a roof for the night and to link them in to whatever social services were available. They have been ignored, and I think that is very, very unfortunate and disrespectful of those people.

I will not dwell on the fact that the Minister of Justice sort of indicated she has been carrying the burden alone for this year. Actually, we put our hands up to be part of that. My colleague Metiria Turei made comment on that; I will not dwell on it.

The Greens are not opposing this bill. We are absolutely opposing the process; we are not opposing the bill, because we acknowledge there is a problem.

💬 Hon Craig Foss: Are you voting for it or against it?

No, listen carefully. We are not opposing this bill, nor are we supporting it; we are abstaining, for the simple reason—

💬 Hon Craig Foss: You’re paid to be in here to vote.

We are voting. We are not opposing this bill, because we understand there is a problem. We agree with the principle of aligning the treatment of returning offenders with what happens to people domestically. We understand the information-sharing issues. We think parole is a good thing. There was research put out earlier this year by Anne Opie indicating that longer periods on parole are an indicator of less reoffending, and that is a good thing. So we have no problem with the principles of this bill.

We could have supported it, had it been a better bill and had we had a better process, and it is unfortunate we have not seen that. We have heard reassurances that the support mechanisms will be put in place to ensure these people who are returned have some sort of a fighting chance of keeping out of trouble, keeping out of the justice system—of not reoffending. We will be looking to see that. We will be looking hard to ensure that the organisations, both Government and non-governmental organisations, that actually do that work are being properly resourced and properly funded, because without that, this legislation will have been a waste of time. It is not sufficient to supervise and monitor. We need support mechanisms. We will be looking to see they are in place. Thank you.

I have listened intently both here and in my office to the debates that have raged about this bill. There is no question that many of the members who have spoken have offered good advice to the Minister of Justice. The Minister has listened to some of that, and we are going to have a reduced period of time to review this legislation, given that it is going through under urgency and given that we are rushing to put something in place that should have been put in place many years ago—in fact, decades ago.

I think that the purpose of this bill, as widely discussed last night, is narrow. In fact, I am grateful that it is narrow and that, actually, we are going to deal with the justice aspect of this for parole and parole only. Some of the people who are returning to us have been treated poorly—that has been widely talked about. They have been treated harshly, and, in fact, if the 6-month rule applies, then for those people who have been in detention centres for 7 months, 8 months, and longer, this need not apply to them unless they are seriously offending. Some people have talked about the DNA swabs and the fingerprinting, which, again, applies only to those whom it would have applied to here in New Zealand under similar conditions for similar offences. So I am glad that there is a narrow scope.

We have talked about the people of questionable character. I have no idea why they are being deported merely for associating. One of those people, Kō Rūtene, as we have highlighted in the past, was picked up visiting someone in prison. Picked up visiting someone—if that is considered association, then we should be warning all of our Kiwis now not to go visiting anybody in prison for fear that they will be deported. In fact, my Facebook has been rife with instances and questions of people concerned about this legislation, about what is going on over there, and about whether or not coming home at Christmas time will see them stopped at the border and sent back. So I am glad that there is a narrow scope here.

I am glad that the Minister does not have extraordinary powers and that the courts will be the adjudicators of whether or not somebody who comes back 6 months after being released from prison will then need to have these parole conditions placed on them. I would not like to see any of those people who have already been harshly treated come back and be harshly treated again.

This is about the safety of our communities. For that purpose we are happy to support the bill, but also because the Minister herself has made the attempts to come and discuss the issues that we have had with the proposed draft that we got to see, and to make some small amendments here and there to ensure that it is as reasonable and fair as we are able to do.

I take on board the points that the Opposition has made around the urgency and the time. If we were able to give it some consideration and at least go to the select committee stage, maybe we could have crafted this and taken on board the opinions of those people in the community who do work in this space.

I have been given assurances and have seen some of the work that has been going on with rehabilitation. It is something that as a party we have been very concerned about, hence the reason why we have established things like Whare Ōranga Ake for the rehabilitation of offenders and to reduce recidivism. I want to support Metiria’s comments around that rehabilitation, to ensure that these people coming back—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Can I just ask the member to refer properly to other members. Thank you.

—yes, thank you—will be adequately supported not just through parole conditions but through rehabilitation and support services, as we know that they are being alienated from their families.

The People at Risk Solutions group, which David Clendon has spoken about, has been doing an amazing job, and it needs to be commended for that job. We as a Government need to ensure that groups like it are also supported post putting this bill through. I want to assure communities that we have given it great consideration, albeit in the condensed time. This is for the safety of our communities. Although we have been loud about those people coming back for minor offences, we do recognise that there are also people caught up for major offences and that they will need our support, our monitoring, and our care. Therefore we support this bill. Thanks.

There were a number of comments made about this bill. One of them, which was of interest during the second reading, was a comment by Mr Shearer with regard to the fact that the events of tomorrow, Thursday, will be “Con Air”. He talked about the aspect of a number of offenders who will be returning from Australia back to New Zealand, as well.

If one thinks about that movie, Con Air, it is an interesting story. In that story, a 1997 American action film, a hundred of the most serious offenders in the United States were on a plane, going to a detention centre, but inside there was one Cameron Poe. He was an army ranger who unfortunately, through a situation and a circumstance, found himself convicted of manslaughter. So out of a hundred there was one who was there, and there was Vince Larkin, who was the US Marshal, who was there to try to save the day for this one offender.

I think that the movie proves the point of some of the comments that have been made by the Opposition, which is that it is true to say that there will be some of those detainees who do deserve justice—who have possibly been unjustly imprisoned or detained, for whatever reason. We on this side, in the Government, also understand and recognise that. However, we also want to recognise that inside of that there are a number who, for their own circumstances, and some outside of them, are put in that situation where they have offended and have, in a sense, broken the law.

This bill has been rushed through, as we know, because of the changes in the Australian Migration Amendment Act 2014, which amends the old Migration Act 1958, that mean character and general visa cancellations mean that we have now got this rushed aspect. Previously there had been up to 80 to 100 offenders returning to New Zealand; now the estimated forecast is up to 250 to 300—hence the reason why we have had to move to urgency.

The comments across—and I know even from New Zealand First that Denis O’Rourke has been in favour—are that the principles fundamentally have been right. I just want to comment on one thing that I think has been raised in regard to the question: when these offenders return, what provision will be made for them? This is called the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. In other words, it is a bill that is particular in its cause and purpose to ensure that when they do arrive we ensure that there is supervision and monitoring in place in that process. However, they will still be subject to the conditions that mirror those in the Parole Act of 2002. Therefore they will still need to go to a probation officer, who will ensure that their living and working arrangements are appropriate and also whom they associate with.

The other thing that is important is that those offenders who return to New Zealand will be able to access the prisoners’ aid and rehabilitation that has been talked about, such as from the New Zealand Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society Inc. and the services that it offers. The last thing that I want to say is that the Ministry of Social Development will ensure that they receive all the Government support that they are entitled to. We have talked about 5 days, which is part of a period to be able to reintegrate back in again, but they will still have those support services that we think are important.

This bill has been rushed into urgency because it does meet a need of safety and concern for all New Zealanders, not least all those who are offenders who are returning not just from Australia but from other parts of the world. The bill is intended to be able to ensure that we have a regime of supervision that monitors them in such a way that if there is any repeat offending, that can be dealt with, and, at the same time, there is an appropriate process to lead them on to hopefully being good citizens who contribute to New Zealand, as well. We believe that this bill is right. The monitoring and review by the Justice and Electoral Committee in 2 years is appropriate, rather than having a sunset clause. So I do commend this bill to the House.

Can I begin by responding to Marama Fox’s contribution, the vast majority of which I agreed with. Thank you for that contribution, Marama Fox. But there was one mistake made, I think, and that was—if I understood your contribution correctly—when you said that if someone has been in a detention centre for 6 months following their imprisonment, they will not be caught by the returning prisoner provisions of this bill. Actually, that is not correct. The bill at clause 17(2) says that that 6-month period runs from the release of custody, and release of custody means “if a person is detained in an immigration or other facility following release from prison,”. The date is from the release from the immigration or other facility, not the release from prison. I am pretty sure—in fact, I am sure—that I am right about that. I have just read from the relevant subclause of the bill.

I do not say that to criticise the member but to highlight the problems that we have in Parliament when we pass legislation under urgency. It is understandable that members who make contributions to this debate cannot be expected to get their heads around all of the finer details and, indeed, around the effect of important provisions like that one. I take it, from your comment, you would think that that is going too far, in respect of this legislation, and that underscores the fact that maybe we are. I have also pointed out other examples of where we might be going too far, and I have pointed out other examples where we are not going far enough to protect the interests of New Zealanders.

If I could re-traverse the issue that we had discussions with the Minister in the chair about earlier—about whether you can get the required information from someone who has returned to New Zealand having had a conviction overseas that is not necessarily known to the New Zealand authorities, which I think is an appropriate thing that the New Zealand authorities should be able to learn from the offender if they have not learnt it from Interpol or some other country. This bill does not allow the police, at some later stage, to require someone who was convicted and has served a sentence for a serious offence overseas to have to tell the New Zealand authorities about it if they ask them about it. The Minister said that that will never be a problem, because they can get that information from overseas authorities. I am sorry—that is naive and untrue. It is just not right. Take, for example, someone who was in Syria. Do we really think that we could get proper information from Syria about what convictions a returning New Zealander might have had whilst in Syria some years ago? It is fanciful. It is laughable. It is also true in respect of various other African and Asian regimes. It is just not believable.

We still have the possibility of people returning from those jurisdictions to New Zealand, and there is no record in the New Zealand system of those persons offending overseas—and these will not be common occurrences, but, none the less, they are things that we can think of that could occur and that we should have a legislative fix for. What happens when, for example, someone is investigated following a crime that they are alleged to be involved with in New Zealand? These are distasteful examples that we do not like to talk about, and I do not want to ramp them up because I do not like trying to spawn fear in society and I am not trying to do so here, but it is true that some sex offenders against children have a recurrent problem. It is actually one of the reasons why the likes of Australia want to get rid of them out of there and send them back here. If they have come from another country, not like Australia, where you could get that information, I would want there to be a duty upon the person to say: “Well, yes, I was in Syria. I lived there for 20 years, and that’s why there’s no record of me being in New Zealand, because I’ve been overseas for 20 years.” That person should have a duty to disclose their convictions.

We cannot have those discussions at select committee; neither can we have the submissions that we would get from the Law Society or from Rape Crisis, or even from the Sensible Sentencing Trust, which, as an organisation, I generally abhor for its hypocrisy and for its wrongheadedness—its hypocrisy being shown by events with David Garrett when he was here, having backed him for a discharge without conviction and name suppression after he had been found to have stolen the identity of a dead baby as part of his passport fraud, when it generally opposes both for criminals. That sort of hypocrisy annoys me, but none the less, I respect its right, in a civil society, to make submissions on legislation. I would defend even the right of the Sensible Sentencing Trust to come along and say that this legislation does not go far enough—if that was its view. We have heard from Marama Fox and others about how People at Risk Solutions—and I would say the Howard League for Penal Reform also—has got a relevant interest in these things. It might not be directly in respect of this legislation, because this is about management and information, but if there is no parallel process elsewhere in Government dealing with the need to help these people reintegrate and minimise the risk that they will reoffend, that is actually something that would be highlighted by those submissions to select committee. That is one of the reasons we have these processes.

I want to say why all of these things go to the underlying principle of why it was that the Labour Party suggested we have a parallel process with a sunset clause for this legislation. It was a very simple process we were suggesting. It would not have elongated this process in the House. We could have had two bills being considered at the same time. The parties of Parliament would have agreed to that through the Business Committee. One of the bills would have been taken through all three stages under urgency, and it would have had a sunset clause or an end date of a year, say—we were flexible as to the date—and then the second form of the bill would have passed only its first reading and would have commenced at the end date of the first version of the bill, and it would have gone to select committee. Through that process, we could have advertised tomorrow, we could have heard from submitters, and we could have taken the time to actually get this legislation right.

I do not think we have fixed even the grammatical error that is in clause 7 of the bill. It was pointed out to me by David Shearer and raised by me in the first reading debate. It says “Who is returning offender”; it means “Who is a returning offender”—they have missed out an “a”. That sort of error should be fixed. There will be other mistakes in this bill that could be of import as to what the legislation actually means. We have not had the time to deal with that. It would have been fixed at select committee if the Government had chosen the process that we suggested. The idea that a review via an established select committee is the answer—I do not think that is right. Select committees do not have to hear submissions. The select committee is controlled by the Government. This select committee will have a majority of Government members. They can just say if this is too much of an embarrassment or if they do not want this particular item coming up—they can actually cause that inquiry to be very short. They do not need to hear submissions from the public. They do not need to do a proper job. If it is too embarrassing, they probably will not. Governments often act like that.

The reason that we have multiple stages of processes—there is the Committee stage some time after a select committee has looked at the legislation—is actually to make it better legislation. We have offered the Government a practical way to achieve that, and it has thumbed its nose at us. I think it actually shows what scant regard the Government, including the Minister Amy Adams, has for proper processes and for getting the balance right between individual civil liberties and protecting the rights of the public, both of which are relevant on this occasion.

Finally, can I end by saying that I am pretty fed up with the position that the Australian Government is taking in respect of New Zealanders living there. As others have said earlier in this debate, it is true that we deport some serious criminals back to Australia, but it is also true that if people live in the country from close after their birth, then they are, effectively, Australians. Why is it that we are not ensuring that those people in Australia have all the rights of Australians, including the right to live in their country after they are convicted of less serious offences? Why is it that they cannot get proper social support? They pay for social insurance like disability insurance. They actually pay, and they do not get it—they are excluded from the scheme even though they pay for it. They cannot get decent support as students. Women who break up with their partners and have children in the country cannot take their children out of the country and back to New Zealand because of the Hague convention, yet they cannot get the support that they need in order to maintain themselves and their children while they are there. Those things should be addressed properly by the Government. They are not—we do not hear the Government standing up for the rights of New Zealanders in that regard.

Final point—I am still offended by the Prime Minister’s comments last week about our supporting rapists. It was a low point in this House, a low point for the Prime Minister, and particularly galling given that clearance and conviction rates in respect of rapes that occur in New Zealand are decreasing under the Police department under his watch.

I just want to start my brief remarks in this debate by picking up from where Mr Parker left off. I think it was, as is typical for Mr Parker, a learned contribution to the debate, and there are a few areas I agree with him on.

What I do disagree with him on is this issue as to whether or not the Justice and Electoral Committee will do a good job in reviewing this legislation. I am a member of that venerable committee, which is chaired by Jacqui Dean, and Alfred Ngaro, next to me, sits on that committee as well. We will do a good job in reviewing this piece of legislation. The Government does not have a majority on the Justice and Electoral Committee, and, actually, I am surprised that Mr Parker would impugn the integrity of the committee, because we will do a good job working that through.

The other point I want to make is to respond to Mr Parker’s remarks about how the Government has scant regard for properly calibrating the balance between civil liberties and public safety. Actually, if they read the section 7 report that the Attorney-General has provided to the House, members will find that officials have done a very good job in a short space of time of drafting this bill in a way that strikes that right balance—so much so that only one, very minute part of this bill conflicts unjustifiably with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and that is the section around DNA sampling.

Finally, I want to pick up on Mr Clendon’s remarks about how the New Zealand Parliament is the fastest lawmaker in the west. This is something that Geoffrey Palmer said a few years ago. That was definitely true back in the days of Rob Muldoon, you know, when we had the Economic Stabilisation Act. I think it was Sir Robert who said you could do anything in this country as long as you hang your hat on economic stabilisation. When we had that Act, which allowed the Minister of Finance—who at the time was the Prime Minister—to literally do anything to the New Zealand economy through the stroke of a pen under regulations passed through the Executive Council, that was certainly true, but that has been repealed. We now have MMP and so it is a lot harder for Governments to do things.

But it is certainly true—and this is why this is relevant to this bill—that every legislature around the world retains the ability to do things quickly. Every Parliament retains the ability to do things expeditiously, under urgency—call it whatever you like. Every Parliament has that ability. Why? Because sometimes you get circumstances like we have before the House today. Sometimes it is necessary to move fast and pass laws. Sometimes it is necessary to get a framework and have Parliament move quickly to put that in place. That is certainly true when it comes to this situation. It has been well canvassed by members, particularly on this side of the House, as to why it is necessary to move quickly. It has been well canvassed why we do need to pass this bill as quickly as we can. The officials have done a good job. And finally, in closing this debate, I want to say that this is a Government that stands up proudly for New Zealanders, this is a Government that stands up for the rights of Kiwis in Australia, and it is necessary that we pass this bill. And with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Before I put the question, I will quickly summarise a ruling that I made yesterday, on the understanding that there are members in the House who wish to abstain from voting. Normally one can call for a party vote only when one is opposed to the decision, but that, unfortunately, leaves us in a position where abstentions, where there is not otherwise a division, cannot be recorded. So what I did on the first reading and what I will do on this reading is that I will indicate that there is to be a party vote on this question.