Parole Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Parole Amendment Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I move, That the Parole Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

The Department of Corrections plays a crucial role in the criminal justice system by supporting the maintenance of public safety and the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders. Legislation needs to support Corrections to fulfil this purpose in relation to offenders living in the community on extended supervision orders, or ESOs, as they are known.

Today, we are legislating urgently to respond to a High Court judgment in June that has impacted the enforceability of some programme conditions for offenders on an ESO. There are relatively few people who have been impacted by the judgment in New Zealand—approximately 27, but they are high-risk offenders. This High Court judgment found that the wording of the Parole Act 2002 prevents offenders on an ESO with residential restrictions from being required to live with their programme providers. Using a single provider model to deliver both the programme and residence conditions for these high-risk offenders is a longstanding practice of Corrections. It ensures these offenders have a wraparound support and supervision during their reintegration in a stable and structured environment.

While the ESO regime was introduced in 2004, the part of the Parole Act that today’s bill seeks to amend was introduced in 2014. Section 107K(3)(bb)(ii) was not intended to affect this longstanding practice of using a single provider model; the wording of the Parole Act has done so inadvertently. Instead, this section was intended to avoid offenders being subject to daytime programme conditions that were, in effect, de facto residential restrictions. We need to pass this bill to urgently ensure that Corrections can continue to enforce these high-risk offenders programme conditions despite the June judgments, and can continue to impose these conditions in the future to support the reintegration of these offenders and to keep the public safe.

Corrections has continued to protect public safety following this judgment. This bill ensures that this will remain the case, by repealing section 107K(3)(bb)(ii) of the Parole Act, with this section being the subject of the High Court judgment. This bill means that Corrections and the Parole Board are protected from formal challenges and can continue to impose such conditions in the future. The bill has retrospective provisions to apply to the current impact of offenders and any future offenders on an ESO who have a single provider delivering both their programme and residential conditions. I’m confident that these amendments support Corrections to continue doing its job of maintaining public safety and supporting the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders.

I want to acknowledge the bill’s impact on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, or the BORA—the BORA rights of these offenders. You will see that the Attorney-General has issued a section 7 report on the bill’s inconsistency with section 7 of the BORA. This was anticipated as previous amendments to the Parole Act, including introduction of the ESO regime in 2004, were deemed to be inconsistent with BORA. Because public safety is paramount, these previous legislative amendments were still deemed necessary and passed into law by Parliament. Similarly, I consider that the changes in the bill are justified on public safety grounds and are in keeping with Parliament’s original policy intent. To assist in mitigating potential BORA intrusions and to compensate for the removal of section 107K(3)(bb)(ii), the bill adds an additional protection for offenders by requiring the Parole Board to undertake at least two-yearly reviews when the offender is living with their programme provider. This change ensures that programme conditions continue to have a reintegrative and rehabilitative focus, and are not for longer each day than is necessary.

In addition to added protections in the bill, officials at the Department of Corrections are working to ensure that offender rights are well covered during implementation. BORA issues can be dealt with in a thoughtful way through the Government’s response to the Law Commission’s substantive review of post-sentence orders, which is due to be completed in late 2024.

To conclude, I want to thank members for accepting the need to pass the bill rapidly through all stages. It is critical that we address the issues raised by the High Court decision as soon possible. I therefore commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on this, the parole special conditions imposed on extended supervision orders amendment bill, which has been rushed into the House today by the Government to fix a problem that has emerged over the last few years. National will of course be supporting this bill, and we support it being done quickly for the purposes of maintaining public safety.

So, just to give people a sense of what the issue is, there’s a small group of people—26, currently, across the country—who have been given extended supervision orders by a sentencing court for an offender who has exhibited long-term patterns of serious sexual or violent offending and who poses a real and ongoing risk of reoffending. So this is not a widespread or a large group, but a very small group of very dangerous offenders that the justice system has determined need to be looked after in a serious way, even after they’ve finished their jail sentence.

For a long time, there have been a number of providers throughout the country who look after this small group, and the practice has been that they stay overnight with a particular provider and, in many instances, during the day they are also looked after by the same provider. It’s emerged at some point along the way that somebody has raised the point that “Well, hang on, this may breach section 107K(3)(bb)(ii) of the 2002 Act.”, which says that a person shouldn’t be kept in the same spot by the same group overnight, or with the same provider. So that’s left a question mark about whether the practice that’s been under way for a long time is legal. In the worst case, I suppose if somebody was to challenge it, they could just walk free during the day or during the night—one of the two areas—and be unsupervised and a major risk to public safety.

One of the two fundamental questions that we have—and we hope that the Minister will explain and elucidate, perhaps during the committee stage—is when did the Government become aware of this issue? At some point, the Government made the decision to ask for a High Court declaratory judgment because at some point, obviously, the issue was raised as to whether the current practice was legal or not. So they decided, in their wisdom—I would have thought they would have had two options at that point, which is to say that if somebody raised a question of whether this is legal or not, they could have right there and then brought in legislation such as we have here to deal with the issue in order to be watertight and water safe. But, instead, they decided to go to the High Court and ask the question of whether the current practice stacks up under the legislation.

They went to the High Court, and then, on 27 June this year, the High Court determined that that section does prevent the board from imposing a special condition that requires an extended supervision order offender to reside with—or results in the offender residing with—their programme provider. I suppose the second question we have is: well, when the Government decided to go for that judgment from the High Court, why did they not have a plan B in place, recognising that there was always a chance that there was always a chance that the High Court might decide this?

I would have thought they should have had a plan in place, right then, right there, to sort the issue, but instead, what we’ve had is a period of nearly 2½ months following the judgment from the High Court where the judgment has been up online and, in theory, people could have read it and, in theory, they could have just walked away from their supervision. Now, it seems like the Government has got away with it and nobody has, but that seems to have been a reasonably risky approach. So I suppose our question is: when did the Government know about it and why did they not have a better plan in place when they went to the High Court?

Having said all that, what’s happened has happened, and so we agree that this legislation today is required in order to ensure that the current practice can continue. People might ask, “Well, why can the Government not just change the practice and have one provider to look after these people overnight and another one to look after them during the day?” The advice that we’ve been shown suggests that that could be done, but it would take a long time to get that in place and to find providers who are able to do that. I don’t know whether that’s the case or not. I assume that as that’s the advice we were given, and maybe we might be able to hear a little bit more also from the Minister to explain just why it’s impossible to do that or difficult to do that in a timely fashion.

Ultimately, this comes down to the effectiveness of any Government to keep New Zealanders safe from what is, like I say, 26 people currently—a very small group of very dangerous offenders. We would like to think that the Government would be absolutely focused on ensuring that the systems are in place to deal with that effectively. We support this legislation, but we are, like I say, concerned that the events were able to carry on in this way for a few months where that uncertainty was allowed to continue, and the response has been, I believe, a little bit slow in dealing with it. But we will have a chance to debate that briefly this morning and get the legislation passed so that New Zealanders can be reassured that the current conditions in place can continue. With that, I’ll leave it there. Thank you.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for an opportunity to take a call in relation to this bill. There are times at which this House makes legislation under circumstances of necessity, and I believe that this is one.

I’d first make a comment in terms of the use of urgency. I do know that sometimes we lament the use of urgency in the House, but in truth we provide for it in our Standing Orders, not only urgency but extraordinary urgency as well. So, as a matter of our parliamentary process, we recognise that there are times at which we will need to make decisions under circumstances of necessity. And certainly when there is a significant risk to public safety, that is justified.

Now, this bill is really the result of the declaratory judgement under the Declaratory Judgments Act 1908, which has been referenced already. Mr Goldsmith, when he was seeking responses to why it was at that stage, it was also made in the shadow of the case of C v the New Zealand Parole Board, and Mr Goldsmith asked the question of why we can’t find, very quickly, providers who would both be able to provide the rehabilitative treatment as well as the residential programmes. At paragraph 15 of the declaratory judgment, it speaks to an affidavit that was provided by Ms Brittany McNamara, who was the national manager of high risk at the Department of Corrections, and I’ll quote from it, in paragraph 16. She said, “It is often difficult to find acceptable housing for the riskiest ESO offenders in the community.” And so it is that practical issue, really, that has resulted in this declaratory judgment and indeed now this legislative change.

So in terms of the declaratory judgment, the parole board was seeking a declaration in relation to whether section 107K(3)(bb)(ii) prevented an accommodation provider from ever providing rehabilitative programmes, and they also posed two other questions for consideration. The first was that if it doesn’t, what limits, if any, does that section establish on the board’s ability to impose conditions that enable an offenders accommodation provider to also provide rehabilitative programmes. And finally, they posed a question about whether the parole board has the power to revisit its decision, imposing special conditions in the event that its previous decisions are found to be inconsistent with the law.

Judge Isaac’s provided a very thorough decision and he concluded at paragraph 104 of the judgment, “For the foregoing reasons, I declined to make a declaration sought by the parties. In my view, section 107K(3)(bb)(ii) of the Parole Act prevents the board from imposing a special condition that requires or results an offender residing with his or her programme provider.” Now, while that was the final decision, having read—I haven’t read the whole judgment—but having read parts of it, I did note at paragraph 86 that Judge Isaac did acknowledge that one can readily imagine a rehabilitative programme that might involve a residential component for entirely proper therapeutic reasons. What he says is, “As Mr Butler acknowledged, there is some strength in the party’s submission that the broad interpretation may be overboard in its effect, because in some situations there are no additional concerns about an ESO offender being subject to a programme operated by their resident’s provider. In this respect”—he goes on to say—“the concerns of Sir Ronald Young and corrections about the implications of a broad interpretation are well founded, but practical considerations must yield to the statutory language.”

That is really the core of the judgement in terms of where we are moving today. He goes on to say, “If Parliament wishes to enable programme conditions that require an offender to reside with the programme provider, it will need to amend the language it chose to adopt, which is what we are doing today. In doing so it will no doubt consider again the balance between protection of the community and the Bill of Rights implications.” And we have tabled with us the Attorney-General’s provisions today.

I would conclude by saying I do think bill of rights considerations are important, and indeed to compensate for the removal of section 107K(3)(bb)(ii) of the Parole Act, and because New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provisions are engaged, the bill adds in a balancing protection by requiring the parole board to undertake periodic reviews of their special conditions so that human rights, bill of rights protection is woven in there again. I will lastly say, again, that I do believe this is a bill of necessity and I commend it to the House.

Mr Speaker, thank you for the call. I’m a former Minister of Corrections in two different terms of Government, and extended supervision orders are something that I’m very well aware of—in fact, House, we had something to do with them, maybe as Minister of Justice. What people are talking about here, generally, is high-risk child offenders who, despite every rehabilitative measure that Corrections have taken—and Corrections do the most that they can possibly do to help people change their behaviours, particularly with these people—they have taken every step possible in that, should they reoffend, as they normally reoffend, then preventative detention would be the right course of action for a sentencing. The problem is, for that to happen, then these offenders that we’re talking out would have to go out and, in most cases, sexually molest children. And I’m not sure that there is anybody in this House who would think that we should let one child or one family go through that; or multiple children or multiple families go through that—because these 26 people will not, cannot, choose not to change their behaviours. They are an absolute nightmare for Corrections to deal with.

I know that Corrections has to try and get these people out into the community and in housing and all that sort of thing once their sentences are served. I’d really love it if Corrections stopped trying to put them in my electorate—and I’m sure every member of Parliament here would feel exactly the same way—because they absolutely are a danger. When I consider the resource that goes into managing them in the community, it is immense. It’s not just one person with them during three shifts during the day. You’ve got to have multiple people, because otherwise what happens is that that caregiver can very well become manipulated by people who are psychologically able to do that. They are very clever at manipulating—that’s what happens with this sort of behaviour. The right place for them, frankly, in my opinion, is in jail, but the trouble is you can’t do that post the sentence that’s been delivered.

We are happy to support this bill because we know it is necessary. There are times when Parliament has to come together, grow up, and act in the best interests of the public and we know that the rights of 26—in most cases violent—sexual offenders against children must be trumped by the rights of children and their parents not to have to worry that they’ve got one of these people in their community unleashed, unsupervised, and out free. So yes, we do support it. I mean, there are questions about whether or not we could have toughened this up a bit further; dealt with that. But the point is that Parliament can’t always work out what a judge is going to say, what a decision is going to be—and that’s the point of Parliament being able to come together in urgency. We spend a lot of time in urgency talking about a lot of rubbish, but this is actually a good bill that we are taking to be able to protect the most vulnerable people in our community, which are our children, and I cannot believe that we would not do so unanimously—and I hope we do, because the children have to come first.

I know that some people who have never had anything to do with being the Minister of Corrections or working in Corrections may well look at Corrections and say, “Well, why can’t they do this?” or “Why can’t they do that?” But I want to give a big shout-out to the staff at Corrections who, every day, have to go to work with the people that none of us would ever choose to, and they are real heroes because they have to deal with this every single day. And being a staff member at Corrections is not always viewed positively in all parts of the community, but what we should do, I think, is to acknowledge the enormous effort that those staff put in—whether they’re corrections officers or whether they’re probation officers or whether they’re people in administration, who put in to helping people make better choices in their lives.

But the people we’re talking about here will never make better choices, and that’s the problem. In some cases, they have been incarcerated for many years, and despite every effort—every time they’ve been released, they will go back to their old ways. Their old ways is not a burglary—which is an awful thing to have happen to you. Their old ways are to destroy a child’s life, and frankly, I cannot believe that anybody would not want to support this bill. There are always questions about whether or not we could have had it a few months back, all those sorts of things—but the point is, it’s here. It’s here today, and we think—and we know—that the children of New Zealand come first, and they’re the ones that we have to do everything we can to help their family, their whānau, their parents to protect—and if we can’t do this together unanimously, then that would be a real shame on those who didn’t. So thank you for the opportunity to speak on it. I want to again shout-out to those staff in Corrections who do their very best under immensely difficult circumstances.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Parole Amendment Bill, which is a simple bill. It is to amend the Parole Act to clarify that offenders subject to an extended supervision order can reside with their programme provider in a residential setting.

It’s important for parliamentarians in this debate—and in all debates where considerations about the rights of detained people are considered—that we are really clear with what our intention is and the sort of rights balancing exercise that this Parliament is taking into account. The question here—and why we’re debating it—is what Parliament’s original policy intent was with section 107K(3)(bb)(ii) of the Parole Act. Because New Zealand Bill of Rights Act rights are engaged here, this bill would add a balancing protection by requiring the Parole Act to constantly review the way that those rights are being weighed up by the Parole Board, but it would also remove that section which is the subject of this declaratory judgment.

The point I’m making here is that when we consider those rights—and perhaps the Minister will elaborate on this in committee stage, because it’s useful for us to do that—the two fundamental questions are not the ones that the Hon Paul Goldsmith asked about—when the Government knew and why the plan was not necessarily in place—they’re questions about how specific this Parliament needs to be when we’re making decisions like this. And the first question that we should ask ourselves as parliamentarians is: is this a punishment? Is a rehabilitative programme which is conducted in a residential setting a punishment at all? That is an important consideration when Parliament designs this kind of legislation which gives people an ability to rehabilitate from what they have done or to continue to be treated, because that is one of the goals of our justice system and it was a subject in the declaratory judgment itself.

The second question is whether this is also detention at all, because the degree of freedoms that people have in these settings is different from what the Hon Judith Collins described as putting them in jail. It is intended to be so, and these providers provide a setting where these people can enjoy lots of the freedoms that they wouldn’t be able to enjoy in a prison setting. Those are important questions for us. This Parliament today is coming together to change the way that this operates to be much clearer. This is an improvement in our law and these are the kinds of decisions that we should be able to make under urgency.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Parole Amendment Bill. Being the Corrections spokesperson, I have had the pleasure of visiting a rehabilitation programme, such as mentioned in this bill, where the parolees are on release into the care of this programme and they are getting a rehabilitation programme while residing at this residence. This bill came in because of a High Court judgment that it wasn’t clear enough whether or not these parolees under daytime supervision could be in a rehabilitation programme as well as stay in the same location overnight. However, once you have been to one of these programmes, you see how well they do try to work with these people to try to rehabilitate them. As we know, we are only talking about 26 in this; however, the programme that I visited dealt with other people as well, whom they do try to integrate very well back into society.

However, these 26 are not so easy to rehabilitate and reintegrate back into society. As has been stated before, they are high-risk offenders with sexual and violent tendencies. It’s a sad reality that we do have these types of people still in our communities that we have to take care of and make sure have whatever little rehabilitation we can give them, and monitoring to make sure that they and the public are being looked after. Because we still realise that, yes, they are humans; yes, there is possibly something wrong with them; and we have to make sure that we do not override the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. However, the safety of the New Zealand public must come first.

So, in general, we are supportive of this bill, because we feel that New Zealand safety has to come first. I understand that out there we still need a lot more work done in the rehabilitation field with many of our prisoners in New Zealand in general. I would also like to thank our Corrections staff, who put themselves on the line daily to keep New Zealand safe—and also all the people that are involved with rehabilitation programmes, which I’ve also met in the course of being ACT’s Corrections spokesperson and visiting several of our prisons. The work and the mahi that they do is huge, especially to try to help rehabilitate people where they can.

But, with this bill, as we state, it was a court case that was brought to the High Court, and it was that section 107K(3)(bb)(ii) of the Parole Act that wasn’t clear enough. It showed that there was a loophole here—that, if a good lawyer had seen this, these 26 people may not be residing at the residence where they are also getting a rehabilitation programme. Now, again, National can argue, “How long did it take for them to find out that this was going on?” But, like anything, that’s not the case. This is a case of: we know there’s a problem, we know it has to be fixed, so let’s get it fixed today. This is what, to me, urgency or extended sittings are all about: when we find something that isn’t right and it has to be corrected as soon as possible. This is where I agree that we needed to get this through all stages.

Also, the thing is, like the Hon Judith Collins was saying about releasing people into your area, well, we all don’t want anybody in our area. However, we do know that these people have the right to be able to live—however, still with the proviso of people’s safety. The public’s safety has to come first. I know, in Christchurch, there was a facility that they wanted to build for sex offenders. The community came together and said, “Please, not in my area.” However, when you looked at that area, you could understand why they said no, because there were many schools very close to where this facility was. So, you know, there is a balance that has to be held: one for public safety and one for these offenders and getting their lives back on track.

Also, the other factor is, for these offenders, if they are fortunate to have caring family that still want to be part of their lives, being able to be released somewhere where they may be able to have a positive family around them as well—that is a very large thing for the rehabilitation of any prisoner: to have some form of family there. But, also, we know, when you have these high-risk sexual and violent offenders, that’s not always the case, because a lot of the family members do want to cut ties with them because of their offending. That’s very sad that we still have that. But the thing is, when we have a very large country, there are lots of spaces that we need to put people in, but the thing is that, one, we’ve still got to make sure that the public is aware and that they feel comfortable that these people aren’t going to be walking loose within their community, and, two, we also have the bill of rights, to make sure that these Corrections parolee people are also being well treated and looked after. From what I’ve seen from some several of these residential programmes, they are indeed, and also the people that work there do a lot of work to make sure that our community is safe. So, with that, Mr Speaker, I would like to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill is a perplexing move by the Government. We keep talking about this shocking court decision that came out, but it actually came out in June, not yesterday, and it was a result of issues raised in, in fact, a 2016 judicial review of this programme. We’ve had seven years to do something about this problem that we’ve found ourselves in—so we’ve had two Governments not act. We’ve had seven years to not get it right and not need the final day of Parliament to have an all-stages, rushed job of this bill.

It’s also funny because it’s like the court found some technical issue and we’re just quickly fixing it. The court found a breach of six of the 30 fundamental rights contained in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So one in five of the rights that we’ve committed to as a House of Representatives and a nation are being breached by the programme that we’re talking about.

Normally, when an adverse finding like that happens, the idea isn’t that you’d quickly legislate to overturn that precedent—that you’d quickly legislate to say we want to breach those rights in one day, without a select committee process. Normally, it means you’d go back to the drawing board, you’d look at the rights that are being breached, and you’d look at—as the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act requires—to what extent they can be justified to be breached in a free and democratic society. You’d come up with solutions that are right for the risks, and there are risks here. You’d do that lawmaking process with the notice that the court has put you upon to get it right.

So, instead of that, we’ve got this knee-jerk piece of lawmaking, and I do acknowledge that there are risks. I do acknowledge that we do need to get this right. But I want also the Government to notice that not only has this not just urgently come up right this minute but that even if it had, we have public protection orders already in place in our law that could easily apply to the 27 people—I’ve heard it’s 27 and 26; I’m not sure what happened to that one last person between the Labour and the ACT speeches—and process them properly with law that’s in place. We could begin this process, hear from the experts, hear from the public, hear from the justice community, the probation systems that are in place and what we actually can do within the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act framework, to legislate properly.

I just do want to say that if we commit to having a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act system—a human rights framework—it means being committed to applying those rights when the worst has happened. We can’t do it just when it’s easy, we can’t do it just for the people we like—that’s what the human rights framework is for.

In fact, the criminal justice system is the front line of our human rights - based system. If we’re willing to let it go when terrible things have happened or when we don’t like the people, then we can’t really say that we operate in a human rights - based system at all. If we’re willing to push laws through in one morning when our higher courts tell us that we’re breaching one in five of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act fundamental rights, we can’t say that we’re even really committed to this democratic process.

So this is bad lawmaking. It’s not urgent and necessary, because other mechanisms exist in our law to make us safe for the time that we need to get this piece of legislation right, follow the democratic process, and highlight the rights that need to be balanced.

It’s a surprise to see this bill come through the House this morning, and it’s a degradation of both this House and our justice system. I don’t commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to take up the issue that my friend Golriz Ghahraman has just talked about, because I think it shows quite a stark contrast in what I think and what she does.

This is a bill that’s really practical. It’s about real people who could be really hurt. Our job as parliamentarians is to make that call sometimes. It is a hard call. You’ve heard the speeches from every side of the House. Nobody’s being unthoughtful or are disrespectful of people’s freedoms and rights. But that has to be balanced with the freedoms and rights of others. Sometimes, we need to make the hard call, and that’s our job. If, in fact, we are brittle about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, we’ll erode people’s confidence in those rights, because they will erode the very joy and privilege and wonder that it is to be a child in this country, because people will be let into situations where they are in danger to those children.

So I, for one, am pleased to see something like this prioritised at this point. I don’t think it has been not considered; I think it’s been considered, and a reasonable, practical decision is made. That’s acknowledged by the judge who talked about how practical considerations had yielded to the language in the last Act. We’re here now to do something that’s important to New Zealanders. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I just want to acknowledge the fact that the bill is in the House, even though it is the last sitting day. We have a responsibility as a House to be able to support the Government in addressing this issue.

I want to acknowledge the Green speaker, Golriz Ghahraman, who highlighted the fact that it goes back to 2016, when the issues were raised, but it’s apparent that those issues were probably contested and the Government finally decided to seek some advice and take it to the High Court and get a judgment on it, which they did. But the thing that really concerns me is the fact that the judgment came back on 21 June; that’s two months ago. I don’t know whether the Government had done any prior preparation in terms of if the judgment was against the current rules or whether it was going to support the current regime, but it clearly came back and it said: no, the current rules—there is a breach.

I don’t know why we’ve waited two months—on the last sitting day of Parliament—to bring this bill into the House, when we are talking about some of the worst recidivist and dangerous offenders that we can have in our community. Not only that, but they are the biggest risk to the most vulnerable people in our community, and that’s our children. So I really am puzzled as to why this bill was not brought to the House within a week, maybe within a fortnight, of the Government receiving the finding—why we’ve waited two months to continue to operate a system that we know, and the Government has known, is in breach of the law.

I just want to take a minute, too, to acknowledge all the staff—the front-line staff, in particular—that work in our corrections system. We often stand in this House and acknowledge, rightly so, our first responders, whether they be front-line police officers or our paramedics or our ambulance officers or our fire fighters or our nurses and doctors, manning our emergency departments. But we very rarely stand in this House and talk about and acknowledge our corrections officers. They have got just as important a role to play in our community in terms of keeping us safe, but they’re often invisible. They’re doing the work that we don’t see.

It’s been highlighted that they have a pretty tough work place that most of us wouldn’t want to take on and they deal with the people that as a society we say are too dangerous to be out in the community. I think that we owe it to them that if there is a High Court ruling showing that they may be themselves put in a difficult position, because there is now a breach of the law, we act quickly and far more quickly than waiting two months in getting this bill into the House. But in saying that, of course we’re going to support the bill. It’s important that this is passed under urgency today and it’s important that the public can be confident that our laws are actually supporting our front-line corrections workers and they are able to actually keep these people under control.

I’d like to talk to the issue around the fact that we should not for one minute kid ourselves around the serious risk that these people—often they show no remorse, they show no empathy and it’s probably highly likely that you’ll never rehabilitate a serious recidivist child sex offender. So it’s important that we do pass this bill, but I just want to put on the record that I don’t think it’s good enough that the Government waited two months to actually bring this to the House. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

In response to that previous speaker, the Hon Mark Mitchell, yes, late June was the ruling. But the impact of the judgment was high, so work had to be done. The complexity of the matter was excessive, so work had to be done. It wasn’t just something you do overnight with the flick of a pen; there actually is the legal team, there are the implications, there are the operational solutions. Work has to be done, and we’re here now.

So we’re here. I know, in looking through, that the Department of Corrections have done all they can to ensure the safety of community and to ensure what they’re doing is correct, and we’re here to pass it together.

I just want to acknowledge the Hon Kelvin Davis. I know not many Ministers choose Corrections, and he has. He chose it because he wants to ensure that our corrections system is fit for purpose in the 21st century and that it looks after wellbeing of all incarcerated but also all those in the community as well as communities. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to rise and take a call on the Parole Amendment Bill, all stages. I do so sitting here, having listening very carefully to the comments made on all sides of the House this morning, and also reflecting on the work of my father, who served as a corrections officer for 33 years.

We’d have quite long discussions as I was going through my law degree, and he would say that the vast majority of people that he had encountered throughout his career could be rehabilitated and successfully reintegrated into our society. He took great pride in helping them on that journey. He would say to me that there are a very, very, very small number of people who, no matter what support you try and wrap around them, are still at a high risk of repeat offending in our community. It’s these people that we are here discussing today. These are, as has been said, individuals who are at a very high risk of reoffending, and in a very, very harmful way to members of our community.

So we are having to walk a fine line here in balancing the rights of our community to be safe, but also against the rights of these individuals to reintegrate into society. Extended supervision orders (ESOs) are a way that we can ensure protections and wrap-around support around those individuals, but in a way that they can still engage, to some extent, into society. For example, there was a well-known individual subject to an extended supervision order who resided just near the Whanganui Prison. The people supporting that individual took him down to the wharf to go fishing. He was able to go into the supermarket and do his own groceries etc.

So we’re not talking about keeping these people in jail. We are simply talking about and making a practical fix here today to ensure that those extended supervision orders can continue, and that an individual subject to one of those ESOs can remain in residence with those trying to support them and rehabilitate them. So, on that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Under urgency, this Parole Amendment Bill has been introduced to the House, and the National Party without hesitation supports this, as has been noted and shared by my colleagues who have previously spoken and addressed the House. The Hon Judith Collins has spoken from the experience previously as a Minister of Corrections, a Minister of Justice, and spoke on the basis of extensive knowledge and experience around these violent offenders, and particularly sexually depraved, sexually deranged, and sexually violent offenders. That’s what this bill is about, in terms of addressing what has been detected by the courts as an anomaly in terms of the law.

As spokesperson for children for the National Party, without hesitation, without reservation, the National Party and I as the spokesperson for children support this bill, because, as has been heard in the House, this is about balancing rights and correcting the law where the court has deemed that there has been an inconsistency and that under the Parole Act, the extended supervision order has, effectively, been breached with the implementation of these residential rehabilitation programmes. In terms of balancing of rights, without hesitation, the children who have been the victims of these sexual abuses, their rights are far greater, and so it is just, it is right, that the duty we have as parliamentarians is to amend the law. I take a short call on this basis.

The National Party is concerned, as has been heard—the Government is amending and correcting what has been an anomaly and how that’s been interpreted by the courts. There is concern that under urgency, on the last day of this 53rd Parliament, the Minister of Corrections, who is also the Minister for Children, is front-footing this now. It’s noted that this declaratory judgment came out on 27 June, and so there is a question as to why this wasn’t given greater priority—and no doubt in my mind, in terms of children’s rights in this country, the importance of this legislation to be amended to ensure their protection.

Under urgency last night, also, was a member’s bill that again addressed the issue of violence, and it was around family violence and the importance to prioritise the victims. That’s what the National Party’s position and stance is, to acknowledge that victims have been victimised and to ensure that there are ongoing protections that are in place under the law. So, without hesitation, without reservation, the National Party is supporting what is the correct thing to do.

As spokesperson for children, I am somewhat perturbed to hear the Green Party’s stance on this in opposing this bill, in opposing it on the basis that it’s viewed that the breaches of sexual abusers’ rights for some reason take priority and precedent over children who are victims of these sexual abusers. So I put that on the record as spokesperson for children. I’ve always said, and I will always continue to advocate, as I have done in my former life, the paramountcy of children’s interests and their welfare.

From the National Party’s point of view, this Parole Amendment Bill will ensure that our children are cherished, that their rights are far greater than any sexual abusers’ rights under this law. So, without hesitation, without reservation, the National Party supports this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take the final call on the first reading of the Parole Amendment Bill. I am not a lawyer; I am a māmā, I’ve been a teacher, I’m a member of a community, and what I know is that normally I don’t have to think about this because I trust the system to keep us safe while at the same time making sure that we have safe, stable, structured environments for reintegration of these offenders. I’m grateful that we’re able to see the balance of urgency for public safety—the balance between that urgency and being very considered in making sure that this bill is right. It is because of that, given that there seems to be a lot of consensus about the why and the how, that I commend this bill to the House.

According to a determination of the Business Committee, the Parole Amendment Bill is set down for second reading immediately.

Second Reading