Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill

The Labour Party supports the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill. We support this bill because it should protect New Zealanders from criminals who have been released from a sentence of 2 years or less or sentenced to intensive supervision. It amends the Parole Act of 2002 and the Sentencing Act, also of 2002.

Intensive supervision is a community-based rehabilitation sentence that targets offenders who are at medium to high risk of reoffending, who have been convicted of more serious types of crimes, and who have got complex or severe rehabilitative needs. Intensive supervision can be imposed only by a judge. That is why it is important that when they are released into the community, these people do have electronic monitoring—i.e., a bracelet attached to their ankle so that their movements can be tracked.

The big thing, though—and we have got to get it out there right at the very start—is the fact that these electronic monitoring bracelets are only as good as the quality of the materials that they are made of. We have seen so many cases where electronic monitoring bracelets have been cut off—in fact, there was the infamous story on Story where a TV cameraman cut them off with a pair of scissors. Apparently, there is only about 1 percent of offenders at any given time who have cut off their bracelets, but earlier this year that 1 percent equated to some 47 offenders. It is easy for us to say “Look, let’s not get too worried about it, 1 percent is not that great a proportion.”, but when we say there are 47 offenders who have cut off their bracelets, that is 47 communities, 47 suburbs, 47 towns that are living with some element of fear because we have these offenders out on the loose. So it is important that we get this right—that the electronic monitoring bracelets are made of robust, sturdy material and that they cannot be cut off with just a standard pair of scissors.

I believe there is going to be even sturdier material that these bracelets are going to be made out of. The big thing is that sturdier material just requires a bit of a sturdier implement to cut them off, such as bolt cutters or tinsnips, so it is really important that the bracelets are very robust. There has to be some ease to have them cut off, for health and safety reasons, in case these offenders happen to be in a car accident and they have to be X-rayed and the equipment may affect the X-ray or the medical machines or the scanners, or whatever the hospital uses to check up on the health of these people. So I was thinking about what could be a decent system of robust bracelets, and I was thinking about how if you go shopping and you buy some clothes and they have got those tags on them—those tags set off a buzzer if you walk out of the shop with the clothes on—there is a special device used to remove those tags. Maybe that is the solution—that whatever the bracelet is made of is such sturdy stuff that the emergency rooms in hospitals actually have a box full of these little gadgets that can remove the bracelets if they need to be removed.

In terms of Part 1AA, it amends the Corrections Act and it mainly deals with those people who are on temporary release from prison. Temporary release is when somebody is let out, maybe on compassionate leave such as for a funeral. In fact, last Thursday I was contacted by the family of a woman who had passed away. Her daughter was ringing me to see what I could do in order to get her brother and a couple of nephews out of prison—the grandsons and the son of this particular woman were in prison. It was quite interesting that the two grandsons were fairly low-risk prisoners in Spring Hill Corrections Facility, and the son of this woman was in prison for manslaughter and was considered fairly high risk. What was strange about this temporary release was that the guy who was fairly high risk was actually allowed out to the funeral, whereas the two who were low risk, in Spring Hill, were not allowed out to their grandmother’s funeral. There is just an element of inconsistency there. They were in two different prisons: the two younger guys were in Spring Hill and the older guy was in Pāremoremo prison. But that is a classic example of when an offender may be entitled under temporary release, which is what Part 1AA is about, to have to submit to wearing a monitoring bracelet.

The purpose of the monitoring bracelet in that case, and in fact in all other parts as well, is, firstly, as a deterrent effect. If an offender is wearing a bracelet, the belief is that it will deter the offender from running off and breaching the conditions that relate to his or her whereabouts, but it is also to monitor compliance with the conditions that relate to their whereabouts. The bracelet itself can be used to verify compliance with any of the conditions—the whereabouts of the offender—and to detect non-compliance.

It also can be used to provide evidence, which I am assuming would be evidence to later on say: “Yes, that person was meant to be in a restricted area and has gone out and breached the conditions of where they should have been.” Also, it could be that if there was a criminal act committed somewhere in the vicinity, you would be able to either confirm or eliminate the fact that that offender may have been in the vicinity or at the particular place at the time that the offence was committed. The information from the electronic monitoring bracelet could be used to provide evidence at a later date. It could also be used to verify that the bracelet has not been tampered with, because if the bracelet has been tampered with, again, the offender will have breached a condition of wearing the electronic monitoring.

Part 1AA is about temporary release. People can be temporarily released just outside prison limits. When I say “outside prison limits”, I mean outside the secure perimeter of the prison. There may be reasons why prisoners are allowed to do work outside, and there are actually, I believe, self-care units around prisons, but they are not within the secure perimeter area. So offenders may be compelled to wear these bracelets to make sure that if they are in a self-care unit outside the secure area of a perimeter, they do not disappear when they should have been inside the area, or, if they do disappear, they can be tracked. That is Part 1AA.

Part 1 itself amends the Parole Act 2002 and is about people who have, obviously, been paroled, whereas Part 1AA is about people who are prisoners but are on temporary release from the prison. The same sorts of conditions apply for the people who are on parole. They may be required to have electronic monitoring equipment attached to them—that is actually a part of the bill. It changes the law so that it makes it explicit that people might have to have these electronic monitoring bracelets attached to them, whereas previously I do not think it was quite so explicit. But, again, Part 1 is about the offenders on parole—

I want to first say that the Labour Party is in favour of this bill. It is supporting each of the clauses of the bill. Basically, what the bill does, of course, is it enables us to extend electronic monitoring to categories of people who were not included in the original legislation that I passed back in 2002.

If we look at Part 1AA of the bill we see—and this was a change made in the Law and Order Committee itself—that we are extending the potential for the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections to require electronic monitoring of people who are temporarily released from custody, which is under the amendment to section 63, and those who are temporarily removed from the prison, under section 64 and the amendments there. The purpose of it is quite clearly that we want to deter people who are out in the community on parole or under intensive supervision, or who may be out because they are released to go to a funeral or some other purpose for which they can legitimately be released, from breaching the conditions of their release and going about doing things that they should not be doing and offending in a way that they should not be. It also enables us to monitor the compliance.

The Labour Party will support anything that means that any offender who may be at risk of offending and creating new victims in the community will be deterred from doing that and brought to justice if they do do it, but I have got some questions that I would like to ask the Minister in the chair, Amy Adams. It is all very well for us to legislate in the Committee today to say that we are putting a condition on offenders that they have to wear an electronic bracelet if, in fact, these electronic bracelets can be and are being readily removed.

Kelvin Davis and I were in the Law and Order Committee’s Estimates hearing earlier this year when the Minister of Corrections came in with a great deal of fanfare and said: “Here is the old electronic bracelet, and here is the new one. Now I can cut through the old one. That’s easy. But I’d have to take a chainsaw to cut the new one off. They’d lose their leg rather than losing the monitor.” This is not making it up. This sounds like a fairy tale, but this is actually what the Minister came to the select committee and said—that these things were practically impossible to remove.

Well, I was watching television that night and I saw Billy Weepu get a pair of scissors and cut through it. This was an ordinary pair of scissors, and he cut through the electronic bracelet as easy as that. I have got a workshop at home that is full of tools that would cut through it: pliers and side cutters and hacksaws, or whatever. But to take a pair of scissors to a new bracelet that the country is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in getting and they could remove it that easily, when the Minister gave her commitment to all of us on that select committee—Todd Barclay was there. He saw it. He was there saying: “What a great Minister we’ve got. Look, she’s come in with this irremovable bracelet.” It was no such thing. The Minister was making it up. So we are engaged tonight in the Committee stage of this bill in very serious legislation that will extend the conditions under which we can require people to wear bracelets that they can readily cut off.

I want to ask the Minister whether she can give us the assurance that we are not wasting our time in the Committee tonight. I want to ask the Minister this as well. I saw a comment from John Key, and it was last year. He said it would be ludicrous—“ludicrous” was the word—if a person who is under electronic monitoring could readily remove the bracelet. Well, it is ludicrous. My question to the Minister is: if it is ludicrous, as her Prime Minister describes it, why are we passing legislation to extend the use of electronic monitoring when it can so readily be removed? You might say this happens only on very odd occasions. Well, the world is a very odd place, because in the last 6 years it has happened on 15,500 occasions when people have been in breach of electronic monitoring.

We then heard from the Department of Corrections, Mr Chairman, and I think you might have heard it yourself, because you were on the select committee. You heard—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, no.

—it say that there are 27 to 40 people out in the community at any one time who should be electronically monitored, but they have removed their bracelets and they have not been apprehended.

I want law that protects New Zealanders. I think that is what we all want in this House. That is why we are supporting this legislation, but what we have not had, and I hope the Minister will take the call, is an assurance that when we pass this law, it is going to have some meaning, and that we are not going to have a law that we pass—because we do that in this House; we pass law every day—that will not mean anything because the person whom we have just extended electronic monitoring to will take out their fingernail cutters and snip the bracelet off.

When we were at the centre that was responsible for monitoring, I asked a question of one of the people there. I said: “Why don’t you make these practically impossible to take off?”. He said: “Oh, what if it gets caught in a piece of machinery?”. That is what the answer was. Well, frankly, that is a nonsense. We should have a form of electronic monitoring that is extraordinarily difficult to remove. We are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace the existing bracelet with a bracelet that is just as useless, and then we expect the public to take us seriously when we say we are going to get really tough on these offenders, we are going to monitor them, and the community will be safe because we know where they are and what they are doing. Well, that cannot come about unless we have a system of bracelets that actually work, and unless we have a system that actually has some sort of sanction for the 15,500 people who have decided that they will breach the condition of their parole, or of their intensive supervision, or of their home detention, or whatever.

The current situation is not good enough. And one of the worries of the people who submitted to us on this bill was that the fact that offenders are wearing a bracelet does not mean to say they will not reoffend, and we saw that, dramatically and tragically, in the case of Tony Robertson, who was wearing a GPS monitor at the time he ran down, raped, and murdered Blessie Gotingco. When people see something like that, they also worry that maybe this Parliament is complacent—“We’ll put them on an electronic monitor, and everything will be fine.” Well, clearly, in that case it was not fine, and that family lives with the tragic consequences of the failure of our system every day of their lives.

So they are serious questions to the Minister. I approve of the groups that we are extending electronic monitoring to, but I remain totally unconvinced that we have a system that is actually working when you can use a pair of scissors to cut off your electronic bracelet, and where, if you are relying on only the electronic bracelet—as we apparently were with Tony Robertson—the person can still go out and commit a grievous crime. So what we are doing, in theory, looks very good; how this translates into practice is the question we should be asking as we work through the Committee of the whole House. What will the Minister say in explanation of the assurance that the Minister of Corrections gave to us as parliamentarians that these things were practically irremovable, when that was, clearly, absolutely inaccurate. Judith Collins—she—

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: “Snipper” Collins.

Yes, not “Crusher” Collins, but “Snipper” Collins. We actually spent 10 minutes of our valuable Estimates time going through this role playing where the Minister said: “This is how tough it is.”, and the bracelet was passed around the committee. It was not tough at all. We were misled, and I do not want to mislead the country tonight by saying that we will pass this legislation and, therefore, we will be safer from the activities of these offenders. Why cannot we, in the 21st century, have a form of technology that means that these things cannot be readily removed? That is a valid question. Legislate, yes, but if it means nothing, it is not taking us anywhere. I invite the Minister now to take a call and give us an explanation as to why we were misled that these were irremovable and what she is now doing about that problem.

It is a privilege to be able to speak in support of the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill. We have already heard this evening about which categories of people this bill is being extended to cater for. I just want to pick up on a couple of points that two previous members have mentioned—first, that at any one time around 47 people who are out on electronic monitoring are able to cut off their bracelet. That is in the context of 4,000 people at any one time wearing one of these monitored pieces of equipment. And, actually, it is also in the context that we have had this piece of legislation, which Mr Goff introduced, since 2012, monitoring some of our most dangerous criminals who are out in the public. But before then, there were literally thousands of people who were out in the community and should have been monitored but were not monitored because the technology simply was not there. Now what we are doing is extending that category down to lower-level offenders.

I think a perfect case in point, which was experienced last week through the media, was in Hutt South. It was about a sexual predator who is under electronic monitoring in the Hutt and who is potentially a risk to his community. That was part of a wider package of safety reforms that were in place to protect the community from that person. Electronic monitoring was in place for him, but there were also two other corrections officers who were monitoring his appearance 24/7 throughout the day. I think that the thing that this piece of legislation does is it extends to a wider category of people who are out in the community—people who are not going to live in prison for their entire lives and are serving sentences of 2 years or less. They are simply not going to be in prison for the rest of their lives. They are going to be in a community, they are going to be somebody’s neighbour, and they are going to be near areas where they could be a risk to the public.

Electronic monitoring in this sense extends public safety and it keeps pace with the technology as it is developed. When the Department of Corrections first implemented it in 2012, it was because the technology had developed to the point where it could reasonably implement it to the public and have a level of safety, ensuring that there were safeguards in place there. This is a good piece of legislation.

In the context of what Labour is trying to spin tonight around having people out there who can cut off their bracelets—well, yes, that is probably right. Unless they are going to be made out of titanium, you are probably going to be able to cut them off. But you know as well as I do, Mr Goff, from watching the news, that the human being who chopped off that electronic bracelet was no average-sized human being. He was a very big, strong person, who would, obviously, reasonably be able to cut the bracelet off. The fact is that it is 1 percent of people. This is a good piece of legislation, and that is why we are supporting it.

I take this call on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill. We think that this bill could have been named differently, and we have some more appropriate names for this bill. One of them is the “Attempt at Keeping Prisoner Numbers Down Bill”, and there is the “Cost-cutting on Crime Prevention Bill”, the “Letting Dangerous Criminals Out in the Communities Bill”, and the “Saying One Thing and Doing Exactly the Opposite Bill”. These are the reasons that this electronic monitoring system has failed, and failed miserably, in the last 5-odd hours, or last 5-odd years—or it could be hours. This electronic monitoring system has failed 15,500 times, and this bill has failed to keep our communities safe. The Minister claims that this is going to keep our communities safe; it is not.

The other reason to disapprove of this is that communications between the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections and the Commissioner of Police have not been made mandatory in this bill. The Government should have made it mandatory. At the moment one hand does not know what the other hand is doing, and that was the reason that dangerous criminals like Phillip John Smith escaped the country, and that is the reason that somebody on an electronic monitoring system—as Mr Goff just mentioned—breached his electronic monitoring system and raped and killed Blessie Gotingco. So this electronic monitoring system has failed to keep the Blessie Gotingcos of this country safe.

The electronic monitoring system has had thousands and thousands of dollars spent on it, and the Labour Party member Phil Goff just spoke about the electronic bracelet being cut by an ordinary pair of scissors. Mr Barclay, you have not seen prisoners. They are not average human beings, all right? They can cut it as easily as Billy Weepu could cut it, so you need to look at the offenders whom we are dealing with in our prisons. It is not very hard for them to cut it. It is as easy as it was for Billy Weepu. So it would be wrong to think that just by buying a new type of bracelet that has been touted as next to impossible to cut, it is going to keep our communities safe. It is not.

We have serious issues with the entire intent of the bill. The intent is to keep the prison costs down and to keep our prison beds on low numbers. So we do have issues with the entire bill. The only thing we do agree with is that when the prisoners go on temporary removal and the electronic monitoring system is used as an additional safeguard, then it is OK. But it is not OK for the system to put those criminals out in the communities, depending on only the electronic monitoring device. Thank you.

Community safety is a matter of grave concern to many of our communities, and I know most New Zealanders pay their taxes in the expectation that the Government uses those taxes to ensure that our communities are safe. So when issues of community safety come before this House, we on this side of the House take them very, very seriously.

As outlined by my senior colleagues who have spoken earlier, the Labour Party supports this bill, but despite supporting it on the basis that we do want to ensure that there is safety in our communities, I have to say that I share the concerns that the Hon Phil Goff has shared with this Committee.

When I look at the report from the Law and Order Committee, it says that this bill seeks to amend the Parole Act and the Sentencing Act to enable the monitoring of offenders released from a sentence of 2 years or less, and of offenders sentenced to intensive supervision. I also note that in this committee’s report there have been significant changes made by the committee. I note that the committee recommended that new Part 1AA be inserted, setting out amendments to the Corrections Act, and inserted new clauses 2B and 2C. I also note that the committee recommended inserting clause 2D, which inserts a new section 64A into the Act.

Not having sat through that committee but having read this particular report, I do not get a sense of confidence—that the committee had confidence when the Minister tabled this piece of legislation. That concerns me. When Ministers who have the power and the resources table legislation that ends up being significantly amended by the committee, that concerns me as to what the real thrust of the bill is.

I heard the member from New Zealand First talk about whether this bill is really about reducing prisoner numbers to allow this Government to somehow paint itself as being able to reduce those numbers, but the Government is not necessarily concerned about law and order. I also note that in the regulatory impact statement—and we have in paragraph 28: “The department intends to provide the courts with advice on whether offenders are suitable to have their whereabouts restricted and monitored by GPS in pre-sentence reports.” I just highlight the fact that they identify family violence offenders who pose a high risk to their victims, gang affiliate offenders who pose a high risk to public safety, and the third one that the department identifies in this regulatory impact statement is high-risk sex offenders.

This is of concern to me because in Māngere we have one about whom the community has been agitating for some time now, and it is wanting this Government to remove him from the place that the Department of Corrections has placed him in. It has placed this high-risk sex offender right next door to a school in a community that has many, many children, and yet the department is aware that this high-risk offender also presents an imminent and high risk of reoffending. The department is aware that this sex offender raped a 13-year-old girl. The concern there is that despite the department and the Minister trying to assure the community that this offender has 24/7 surveillance and has electronic monitoring, it was only yesterday that a member of the community reported to me that they saw this offender at Pak ’N Save in the morning, and he was out in the public.

I was told by the corrections officers that this offender has a range of conditions on his being placed next to Jean Batten School in Māngere. I am going to follow this up, but I am hopeful that the Minister on hearing this, and the officials hearing this, would ensure that this is not the offender whom we are talking about. This a note given to me early this morning by a member of the Māngere community, saying that they saw this man in Pak ’N Save—this is a person supposedly with 24-hour surveillance and with electronic monitoring. I do not know whether there were other people around monitoring him when he went to Pak ’N Save, or whether he has slipped the electronic monitoring and gone out.

I was listening to the Hon Phil Goff talking about how easy it is for people to slip the electronic monitoring. There have been a number of examples that have been repeated already in the media, not just this year but I would say in the last 8 years of this Government. People have been slipping their monitoring and then reoffending. That concerns me, because if this is about community safety, if it is about law and order, if it is about keeping our children safe—as far as the people of Māngere are concerned, we do not have that confidence at this point in time.

I have to say, it was highlighted to me by my colleague Susan Zhu in Auckland how members of the Asian community do not feel safe at all, with the offending that is happening in Auckland and the appearance that these communities are being targeted by offenders. Generally, we know that whenever a burglary or some crime is committed in the community, it is usually by somebody who has offended before and has served time.

So the plea I am making is that if the Government is true about its need to ensure that there is the ability for minor offenders to be able to attend funerals and whatnot, I want to know what it is exactly that it intends to do with the high-risk sex offenders identified in this regulatory impact statement, and how this Government intends to ensure that our children are safe from those who have a high risk of reoffending. At the moment, insofar as the people of Māngere are concerned, as long as that high-risk offender at imminent risk of reoffending is located a few houses down from Jean Batten School, the community does not feel safe.

What is worse now is that the parents are having to adapt their behaviour in order to try to present some semblance of confidence and protection to the young people who are around that particular school. If the story pans out that this neighbour did, in fact, see that this man was at Pak ’N Save yesterday—and supposedly he was under some electronic monitoring and 24/7 surveillance—has this man broken the conditions of his bail, being located here?

The other thing I will say is that electronic monitoring is not necessarily going to prevent people from reoffending. I am not sure that this Government has captured in this bill the holistic approach that it needs to take. As I pointed out earlier in another debate on a bill that this Government has introduced here, there is a need for this Government to address where we house those offenders who have been released and, particularly, those offenders who have a high risk of reoffending. Is it safe to place them next to children? I do not think so, and certainly the community of Māngere does not think so either.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Can I assure the member Mahesh Bindra that Mr Billy Weepu is not scary. Having played alongside him in the Parliamentary Rugby Team, I can say he is quite the nice chap, and, despite his size, he has been brought down by many small men in the Opposition. But I digress.

Most of the discussion around this particular bill has been around getting bang for buck. When we look at the increased use of electronic monitoring, as indicated by the regulatory impact statement, it actually does talk about that cost. Members on this side of the Chamber have mentioned that cost and asked whether the taxpayers are getting bang for their buck. Will this help secure our communities? Will this help our communities feel safer when they know that opening up the eligibility for those to receive electronic monitoring will not only bring a cost with that electronic monitoring—estimates of $3,500 per person, per offender. That might not sound like much to some people, but when we are talking about the risk it poses to our communities—$3,500. I am sure some will not mind paying that, but why would we pay that when there are still serious questions about this equipment?

Let us be very clear here. There are some serious questions about this equipment. Mr Goff has given fantastic examples of where this equipment has failed. We have already heard that the Law and Order Committee was told that this was as “safe as houses”—although that is questionable under the housing policy of this Government—that it is “safe as”, and that the community can feel safe. Then the entire country witnessed the actual thing being cut by a normal pair of scissors, and by a pretty good bloke in Mr Weepu.

We have got to ask these questions about the cost: $3,500. We know that the eligibility will be wider for those offenders, and there are still questions there. The electronic monitoring for persons temporary released from custody or temporary removed from prison—there are still some questions. As a member of Parliament I have been approached many times by whānau who are looking for the release of members of whānau who are locked up, looking for them to be released so that they are able to attend funerals—tangihanga—or to visit whānau members who are in the departure lounge on the way out of this world. There do seem to be—and I want to highlight the point raised by Mr Davis—some serious inconsistencies there, some serious inconsistencies. I have had those cases come through our offices where some of the worst offenders have been granted that leave—and good for them. Some of those on the lesser end of the scale have not been granted leave, and when questioned, no information has been provided to us or the families—to us or the families. Although I appreciate that perhaps this might allow for better monitoring of those who do get given leave to attend such events as a funeral, those inconsistencies are still there. Those inconsistencies are still there and will cause some challenges for those who are refused that particular leave. I can only imagine what that might mean for the corrections officers in the prisons who have to look after them.

I do want to speak briefly about the offenders who are still within the prison grounds but not in the secure area. Although I appreciate that they are still within the grounds, but not necessarily the high security areas, I wonder whether this is actually the best way of supervising them, because, clearly, if they are not able to go out into the community and, regardless of having served their sentence, they are still required to be within the grounds of a prison—I wonder, well, maybe the GPS monitoring is actually not the best way. These people still need 24-hour human supervision, constant contact with the officers, and constant contact with the right people to make sure that these people do not reoffend, that they do not slip away, because I would hate to think that horrible crimes will take place when those types of offenders who have—

I am still waiting for the Minister of Justice to take the call on the inadequacy of the bracelets, because we need to know before we legislate for the extension of their use that they are fit for purpose and not readily removed. We have the Committee of the whole House so that the Minister can hear the genuine concerns of the Opposition and respond to them. So I really do hope that the Minister will take the call, because otherwise we are going through the motions and the Government is just bulldozing the bill through. This bill is going through with our support. We are seeking reassurance that the intent of the bill will be carried through in practice because the things in it will work.

I have another series of questions for the Minister in the chair, and it is appropriate that she is the Minister of Justice, because what we have found when we are making these changes is that her colleague the Attorney-General has issued a report under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That report—and I want to quote from that report—applies to each of the clauses in this bill that we are working through. The Attorney-General, Mr Chris Finlayson, has said that he has “concluded that the Bill appears to limit the freedom of movement and the rights against unreasonable search and seizure and double jeopardy affirmed in…the Bill of Rights Act.” He says that this cannot be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

Normally, I would be deeply concerned about a report under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act that said that we were in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but, frankly, I think the Attorney-General’s report is a nonsense in these circumstances. I want to be reassured by the Minister about why a member of Cabinet would issue a report like this that actually, effectively, says we should not pass this bill that is before the Committee today. That so exactly what it does.

💬 Chris Bishop: It’s not in his role as a member of Cabinet. It’s Attorney-General—it’s not in that role.

No, no. The Attorney-General is wrong in the judgment that he is giving, or the law is an ass. I want to go through this with the Minister of Justice. She is well-qualified to answer my concerns here. The vetting says that the bill breaches the freedom of movement—well, exactly. Why do you put an electronic bracelet on a person who has been guilty of domestic violence if not to stop that person having freedom of movement to go to where the victim is and revictimise that person? So why is it that we are so deeply offended that the bill does what it is intended to do, which is to restrict the freedom of movement?

There is another category of offenders. These are offenders who offend under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Clearly, a condition of their release may be that they do not use or go to places where they can get alcohol and drugs. So of course, Minister, would you not want to restrain freedom of movement so that you can enforce a prohibition on that person going back to the substances that led them to offend in the first place?

There is another category of offender that my colleague Su’a William Sio talked about, and these are child sex offenders. One of the conditions that you place on such a person is that they do not go to a children’s playground or a school, but the Attorney-General is telling us that this breaches freedom of movement. Well, that is exactly why we are passing this legislation today. We do not believe that a child sex offender should have the freedom to go to a place where that person is tempted to reoffend and revictimise. So I am asking the Minister of Justice why it is that we are told by a member of the Government that this breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act on freedom of movement? If it does, is it not time, Minister, that we changed the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to accommodate what is demonstrably justified in these circumstances?

Then there is the question of search and seizure. If you go through the clauses of this bill, you will see that one of the purposes of each of these clauses is so that we can get evidence on an offender on parole, on home detention, or in some other form of restricted movement about the offences that they have committed. But then the Attorney-General tells us: “No, it breaches rights around search and seizure because we are using the evidence that that person has offended.” Mr Bishop, does that not sound to you like a nonsense as well?

Then there is a third thing. It says that if we pass this, we are breaching double jeopardy because we are punishing the offender again. I want to put it to the Minister that this is not at all a breach of double jeopardy. Double jeopardy is when you are punishing a person twice. I passed the original extended supervision order legislation. It was not to punish people twice. It was because the people whom the court was ordering that there should be extended supervision over, the court was saying were at risk of reoffending. So this is a preventive measure—a preventive measure—designed to stop people from reoffending. We know that the actual criterion set out under the extended supervision order is that it will be imposed on those who are at risk of reoffending.

So the three grounds that the Attorney-General has given us, on advice from his ministry, do not stack up and do not hold water. This is not the first time this has happened in regard to extended supervision orders. Why are we going through the farce of having laid on the Table of this House a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that patently cannot be right in terms of saying that what we are doing tonight is demonstrably unjustified?

💬 Chris Bishop: That’s up to us. It’s a parliamentary bill of rights.

OK. What I want, Mr Bishop, from the Minister is an explanation why we are yet again going through the farce of having a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that says we should not be doing what we are doing, when I believe that it is demonstrably justified that we do this to protect the safety of the community. So is it too much to ask the Minister to take a call and give the Committee an explanation of why we have this report laid on the Table of the House by the Attorney-General that says, effectively, we should not be doing this as a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, when there are demonstrable reasons why we should, and we are not ignoring the rights of the offender as much as we are enforcing the rights of innocent people not to be victimised in a situation of genuine risk. How many times will we go through this process again where we go through the motions when we are passing legislation and the Attorney-General says “This is all bad; it is not justified, it restricts people in an unfair way.”, but we do not believe that that is the case?

So I have got two sets of questions—just so the Minister has not forgotten them—(1) if we pass this legislation, do we not need the legislation to work? Do we not need the public to have assurances that somebody does not just snip off the bracelet and walk away? You know, I heard Todd Barclay saying “This happened only 40 times.”—happened only 40 times—15,000 times the electronic monitoring rules have been breached: some of them minor, some of them serious. There have been 26 to 40 people out in the community creating some risk to New Zealanders. We have them under electronic supervision so that we know where they are and what they are doing. They have taken them off, we do not know where they are, we do not what they are doing, and sometimes they do appalling things while they are in that situation. So there is that set of questions.

We want this legislation to work, and work properly, to enhance the safety of New Zealanders and to stop New Zealanders from being victimised, and we want an answer on why we lay a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet on the Table that the Government—apparently, because it is continuing with this legislation—intends to ignore and dismisses as being irrelevant. Well, if it is irrelevant, we should not just ignore it. We should change the provisions in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act so that they make sense, so that when we restrict the rights of offenders in order to protect the rights of other New Zealanders, that can be regarded as a justifiable act.

They are genuine questions, Minister. I would very much like that you take a call and explain the Government’s position to the Committee.

I move, That the question be now put.

Everything that Phil Goff said, and more—what a fantastic speech from the member, and I wish everyone else could be as eloquent as that and explain things so clearly.

But, look, I really do want to take Todd Barclay, the member from somewhere down south of here, to task for his comment about Billy Weepu. Obviously, the member knows nothing about those people who are incarcerated in prison. He is so out of touch with this whole issue. He is making out like Billy Weepu must be the biggest person in New Zealand, and the only person capable of cutting through a bracelet with a pair of scissors. Well, if he actually knew a bit about the corrections system and actually went and visited prisons, he would see that there is any number of people who are bigger than Billy Weepu and just as capable of cutting through a bracelet with a pair of scissors, or with a pair of nail clippers, like Phil Goff said.

Just last week I went into Wiri Prison to talk to a guy. I tell you what, he was a man mountain—he was a man mountain. Todd Barclay is saying that that guy may never ever get out and would have to have a bracelet on his leg but he would not be able to cut through it—you know, it is just ridiculous. As Phil Goff has said, 15,500 people have breached their electronic monitoring conditions. I can bet you that a fair percentage of those people were just as big and just as powerful as Billy Weepu. I mean, he may be the centre in the Parliamentary Rugby Team—and not all of our backs in the team are built as big and as strong and as powerful as Billy Weepu—but the fact of the matter is Billy Weepu is just like any other New Zealander. Anyone who has got a bracelet on has got the potential to cut through it, or to have family, friends, and associates who equally able to cut through these electronic monitoring bracelets.

As was mentioned, the Minister of Corrections turned up in our Law and Order Committee and she said: “These new bracelets are the greatest things ever. They will never be able to cut through them, and an offender has a choice: either leg or no leg.” Within hours the Minister was just made to look like a total fool, and that snip, snip, snip of Billy Weepu’s scissors was the snipping of the Minister’s credibility.

As Peeni Henare has said, these bracelets cost $3,500 per offender. At any given time, there are 47 people who have breached their conditions. That is 47 times $3,500—I was a maths teacher. If Peeni was a student, I would expect him to have the answer of what 47 times $3,500 is, but that is a lot of money that is being invested and just going down the gurgler.

I would also like to turn to new section 54IA(6) in clause 10 in Part 2, and it talks about the annual report of the Department of Corrections. It is going to have to include in its annual report the following information about the use of electronic monitoring in the year being reported on: “(a) the number of offenders who were at any time subject to an electronic monitoring condition: (b) the average number of offenders who were subject to an electronic monitoring condition and the average duration of the condition: (c) the percentage of offenders who, while subject to an electronic condition, were—(i) convicted for failing to comply with the condition; or (ii) convicted of any other offence:”.

I would also like to know just exactly how much this is all costing us. If we have got 15,500 people who have already breached the conditions of their electronic monitoring, that is a lot of money that is going down the gurgler, and it is really, really important that the communities and that our country can have faith in the technology and the materials that these electronic bracelets are made up of.

It is also a concern to hear—as Su’a William Sio said—that today a sex offender who has a conviction for raping a 13-year-old girl and who is meant to have 24/7 surveillance and an electronic monitoring bracelet was allegedly seen at a supermarket.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. I want to bring attention to section 15A(3), in clause 5. It says: “An offender who is subject to an electronic monitoring condition—(a) may be required to have electronic monitoring equipment attached to his or her body;”—that is straightforward—“and (b) must comply with written instructions from a probation officer that are reasonably necessary for the effective administration of the electronic monitoring (for example, an instruction to regularly charge the equipment); …”.

To regularly charge the equipment—I think that makes a little bit of sense. You have got to make sure that the bracelet is able to be monitored and has a bit of power. So I think that is a pretty fair request through a written instruction from the parole officer, but I wonder what else might be in that scope. I wonder what else might be considered a reasonable request on the part of the probation officer to that particular person. Sure, I understand that on the serious end of the spectrum around those offenders it is important that some heavy restrictions be placed on them, but I wonder what that might mean for the lower end of the scale. I am just putting the question out there.

I wonder too whether this is the best technology or the best equipment currently available out there. With the technology nowadays, I would imagine that for somebody with domestic violence convictions who is out on electronic monitoring, you can pinpoint places that would automatically set off an alarm. For example, if I want to mark spot X when I go fishing, I mark it on my phone, and I can constantly go back there. It actually sends me a reminder that I am in the vicinity—all on my smartphone.

I wonder, then, whether this particular equipment is actually the best available to do what is a pretty difficult job. If somebody with domestic violence charges is ordered to stay away from a particular area and to not be in the vicinity of a particular area, I wonder whether or not the technology should actually have a pre-warning system that allows those who are monitoring it to actually stop any potential crime before it takes place, or before the person who is being supervised actually breaches the order imposed on them by coming within a certain vicinity of a person, or coming within cooee, or a stone’s throw, if you like, of an actual location. I wonder, because a quick Google search will actually show that there is technology out there that can do that. We have already heard about the failures of this particular device—“snip and walk away”, and the need to charge them pretty regularly—but I wonder whether or not this is actually the best use of technology that is already available on the market. I am just asking the question, putting it out there.

I wonder how wide the scope went to ensure that the tools, the devices, the bracelets that are being used are the best bang for the buck, to make sure that we actually can monitor these people properly. It is not simply about just sitting and staring at a computer screen, hoping that the GPS bracelet does its job or that the offender has followed the written requirements given to them by the probation officer to make sure the device is charged, but you can actually predetermine some of these things. In the famous words following the All Blacks’ victory on Saturday: “You can front-load.” Front-load—make sure that you are actually ahead of the game. Make sure that when we put in place legislation like this, we are not back here trying to change the legislation again just to keep up with technology.

We already know—like I said, a quick Google search on my phone showed me—that there is already technology out there to do exactly what was described by the captain of the All Blacks team as front-loading—getting ahead of the issue here and making sure that we keep victims safe and that these offenders do not go on to reoffend. It could be a simple thing, like coming into—as I have already said—the proximity of a particular place where the order says they are not supposed to go. I wonder, like I said, how wide the scope went to make sure that this is the best technology bang for our buck.

I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

Parts 1AA, 1, and 2, schedule, and clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

The Committee divided the bill into the Corrections (Electronic Monitoring of Offenders) Amendment Bill, the Parole (Electronic Monitoring of Offenders) Amendment Bill, and the Sentencing (Electronic Monitoring of Offenders) Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 189.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register), formerly the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill, and the Evidence Amendment Bill with amendment, and the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill without amendment, and that the Committee had divided it into three bills.

Report adopted.