Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Amendment Bill

Look, I just want to acknowledge the tone of the House this evening and particularly some of the contributions made by the honourable member Michael Woodhouse, just to give the context by which this law came into being. It was in 2014—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member—sorry, I didn’t pick it up in time, but the member needs to move the second reading.

I move, That the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Just understanding the context by which the original bill came into force in New Zealand, it was on the back of a decision and, whether it was political or otherwise, it was a decision made in a completely different jurisdiction based on that Government’s policy decisions of the day. What that meant, though, is that New Zealand had to respond, and had to respond swiftly. This was the bill that was produced—the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Amendment Bill.

I won’t get too much into the details of what all speakers in this House have said—we’ve got time to do that in the committee of the whole House—but there are a couple of things I just want to pick up: why are we doing this? Look, there were varying views from the contributions made by the National Party as to whether or not we should be doing this. Why are we doing this? It is public safety.

Now, I know that the Green Party will respond and say, “Oh, well, they’re just trying to look tough on crime.” No, we’re not. We’ve got 40 offenders that are currently managed under that regime that, in absence of the stay that was granted by the court under urgency at the end of the year, would be in our communities, in absence of any oversight by any agencies. These are serious offenders and I won’t go through the nature and the context of each of them but if they had been people that had undergone a sentence in a New Zealand context, there would be a right expectation by New Zealanders that there would be some kind of oversight of those individuals as they come out into society, by dint of the offences that they had committed; 40 people that would have to be released into New Zealand—that was at that time. Since then we’ve had more and more people return to New Zealand.

Now, this is not a statement about whether or not a different jurisdiction’s political decisions to release people with New Zealand DNA into our communities, in absence of any support infrastructure otherwise is the right thing. But it is something that we as good governors have to respond to and have to respond to with public safety and, actually, their safety, at the forefront of our minds. People need some kind of support when they come in to New Zealand, and this is the regime that was established to provide that.

So I won’t delve too much more into the details—there’s time to do that later—but I want to acknowledge the overarching tone of the House tonight, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I acknowledge the Minister of Justice for her contribution. As she’s noted, the tone has been constructive—if I can put that word in her mouth—and, in turn, I want to acknowledge that she has engaged with other parties across the House in the spirit of good faith to allow as much discussion and ventilation of the issues as possible in the circumstances. So I think that’s positive, if I may say.

I think it’s worth stating for the record that the person known as G in the particular court action that sparked this case will not be affected by the action of this Parliament. So we’re not denying that person their day in court or the fruit of their litigation, if it should go well for them, because that’s specifically an exception inserted at Part 4 of Schedule 1 of the Act, as it will be amended.

The only additional comment I would make to the reflections I made at first reading would be just to muse that, as far as I can tell in examining all of the papers—the decision itself, the reports from Attorneys-General, and, of course, the bill and other ancillary documents—it’s unfortunate, it seems to me, that the court didn’t choose to make a declaration of inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, as opposed to reading the legislation in a particular way that they thought would render it consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Of course, if the court had taken the action of a declaration of inconsistency, then Parliament could have and, indeed, would have been obliged to respond in some way that reconsidered the question of inconsistency, and, of course, it might be said that the High Court felt it had no option but to find as it did because, in their view, there was ambiguity.

But I think in order to decide that there was ambiguity, they would need to have decided that there was an unresolved question of inconsistency, whereas, as I’ve said previously, the Attorney-General in 2015, at the time of the bill’s passing, did not consider that there was a retrospective application or, indeed, double jeopardy, because there was no negative element. There was no punitive element to the regime—certainly not additional to what a person could have expected had they committed the offence in New Zealand—so there was no retrospectivity in that negative sense of looking back and applying an additional penalty. So the whole thing ends up reasonably circular.

I’m not sure that I’ve expressed it terribly well, but I think that for courts looking to highlight what they consider to be matters of inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, it would—and I say this as respectfully as I can manage in the circumstances. It would be preferable for them to err on the side of giving effect to what Parliament surely intended at the time, but to highlight, then, if they think that that would produce inconsistent results with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and to make a declaration accordingly, and then allow the lawmaking institution—in the legislative sense of that phrase—to respond in due course, as we have now allowed and, indeed, required.

So I’ll conclude my remarks there. But I look forward to any engagement across the House, including, if the Attorney-General himself would care to make a contribution, I’m sure we would all greatly benefit from that.

Debate interrupted.