Parole Amendment Bill

I move, That the Parole Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I’d like to thank everybody for their time during this first and second reading speeches and for the insightful debate during the committee of the whole House. Very insightful, thank you, Mr Goldsmith.

The Bill amends the Parole Act 2002 to address the issues raised in the recent High Court decision of New Zealand Parole Board v The Attorney-General. The High Court found that section 107K(3)(bb)(ii) prevents offenders on extended supervision orders from living with their programme providers. This was not the intention when the section was drafted in 2014. This bill enables Corrections to continue to manage these high-risk offenders in ways that provide them with wraparound support and maintains public safety without the risk of formal challenge following the June judgment. Specifically, it does this by way of enabling offenders to live with their programme providers. This bill will increase safeguards to ensure that combined programme conditions and residential restrictions are no more restrictive than necessary by requiring regular reviews of conditions.

I think it is important to address the issues raised in the High Court decision as soon as possible. Programme conditions for approximately 27 high-risk offenders on an extended supervision order cannot currently be enforced, hence the use of urgency to progress the bill through all stages. I would like to thank MPs from around the House for their support of this important bill, and on this basis I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, we’ve all given a number of speeches on this very short bill today, which has gone through. You know, it is, I suppose, a bit of a metaphor for this Government’s overall justice agenda that on our final day in Parliament, we’re fixing an urgent problem with urgent legislation. It’s not somewhere we would want to be, but it needs to be done, and on that basis we support this legislation.

Ultimately, the practice that has been in place since 2004 to deal with a very small group of very serious—very serious—mainly sexual offenders who are clearly a danger to society, and in particular to children—a regime has been set up in place to help deal with the transition for these people back from prison into the community in such a way that keeps the community safe. Now, the practices have been in place since 2004; a law change was made in 2014 which wasn’t intended to change that practice but, in the course of time, some queries were made about how it fit with one clause of that legislation.

In 2021, a court case queried that; the Parole Board then looked into it and decided that they needed to get some clarity around this and asked the High Court to make a declarative judgment. They did that and said, “No, the law doesn’t allow you to do what you have been doing for some time.” Now, the consequence of that is that this small group of very serious repeat offenders would be able to set out, sort of without any restrictions, during the day. That’s not a risk that the Government is prepared to take and it’s not a risk that we here on this side of the House would be prepared to take.

So, when you strip it all away, that’s the choice we’re left with: do we support this or do we not? Of course we do support that, because I think most people in this House do prioritise public safety. That doesn’t mean we are unconscious of the trade-offs that we have to deal with when it comes to the human rights consequences for that. It does raise a whole range of issues, and the AttorneyGeneral’s report shows that, but, ultimately, Parliament has to make a judgment, and that judgment has been made. So, without further ado, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Following the debate this morning, I know that we in here in the House have traversed a whole range of views. As the National member who has just resumed his seat, Paul Goldsmith, has just mentioned: we have weighed up all the different factors. But ultimately, I think, we look back at our purpose of why we are here: to uphold the maintenance of public safety and the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders—so making sure that the offenders get the wraparound services that they need but at the same time protecting them from the community and making sure that they have the right programmes and those are enforceable on parole. So that’s why I think this is a good bill, and I do thank all the members in this House who have debated this bill rigorously today. So that’s why I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I don’t intend to repeat the comments that others have made, nor my own comments at the second reading. Of course, we’re passing through the various stages and readings of the bill quite quickly. The reason for that has been well explained from the Minister and then from others on all sides of the House. I do note that the Greens have taken a different position in terms of whether they regard this as being such an urgent measure and—

Golriz Ghahraman: And Te Paati Māori.

CHRIS PENK: And Te Paati Māori. OK. Thank you. They’re entitled to that view, of course, but we’ve landed where we have in terms of wanting to support the aim of ensuring that there isn’t a disconnect between the courts’ view of the matters and Parliament’s view of the matter, and we don’t wish for any public safety imperatives to fall between that gap.

So with those comments made, I do think it’s probably fair to note that when Parliament passes laws very quickly, obviously there’s always a risk that you miss things or that unintended consequences haven’t been canvassed—and there’s consultation with the community. In this case—and, similarly, in the case of repeal-type legislation—I think it’s more permissible to act quickly because we are returning to what is a known state. We’re not passing, from scratch, a new measure that would have to come in from that which was understood before, and the world would have to sort of change and respond and that we wouldn’t have had, as lawmakers, the benefit of that discussion to create some sort of new regime from scratch.

What we engaged in the purpose of is returning the world to the situation that we had understood was already the case, but for the court ruling. So I think, at the risk of sounding defensive in terms of the parliamentary process being quite so quick, apart from the real-world imperatives, I also think in terms of House procedure and lawmaking in general, it’s defensible to the extent that we are merely clarifying something that Parliament had intended in the first place.

My second of three points was addressing the question of retrospectivity. So I would argue that we are not making law retrospectively to the extent that we are merely saying that the law that had already existed, in Parliament’s mind, does still apply. We’re not saying that the punishment for a thing now needs to be greater than it was, because that would be a retrospective application of the criminal justice system against a person—or 26 persons. We’re instead saying that we are going, we are returning—I’m trying to not use the word retrospective. I mean, to look backwards is literally the meaning of retrospective, but we are looking backwards but we’re doing so to say that the real-world understanding of what is the case under the Parole Act needs to return to how it was that Parliament thought it had made the situation in the first place.

Finally—and now I am actually repeating myself a little bit, but I think, if I may say, it’s an important point—I don’t consider, with respect to others who have a different view, that we’re in a double jeopardy situation whereby a person is having an additional punishment. I think we are ensuring that the terms of the punishment that was handed down to them in the courts in the first place is able to be served and managed. Because, of course, the parole system reflects part of a coherent whole-of-Corrections procedures anyway, whereby a person is sentenced and might have a period of incarceration and then have a regime whereby they are, you know, able to exit that—but in a managed way and with the rehabilitative programs that are meant to be part of that.

So I apologise, first, if that’s rather nuanced; and, secondly, more importantly, if it hasn’t been expressed that clearly, you’ll forgive me hopefully because this is a bill that many of us have seen literally for the first time only two hours ago—was introduced to the House at that time. It has been a quick process, but I think within the bounds of the constraints that we’ve had in terms of the realworld situation and also our desire to be helpful and pass this as quickly as it needs to. It’s been a pretty reasonable discussion; a helpful one.

I reiterate—as this may actually be the last National Party call on the matter—that we have joined with the Government to support their intent and the detail of making this change. We commend it, therefore, to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a short call on the Parole Amendment Bill. Just following on from the previous speaker, Chris Penk, I just want to note that most members of this House are supporting this bill today.

This bill has a real focus on rehabilitation, which is an important component of our justice system, ensuring that those people who are able to be rehabilitated—which I would say is most people in the justice system—are able to get the support they need to do that.

What this bill specifically does is correct an issue within the Parole Act, where those who are on extended supervision orders aren’t able to live with the rehabilitation provider, and so it limits the ability for that rehabilitation to occur.

I think most of us in this House, and most New Zealanders, would agree that ensuring people who are undergoing a rehabilitation programme can access the right wraparound support they need in order to do that is critical to the effectiveness of rehabilitation.

So this bill does correct a wee error that occurred, so it needs to come through the House. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for allowing me to speak on the Parole Amendment Bill. ACT is supporting this bill.

The thing is that we have to weigh up the victims, the public safety, and also those that are affected by the change that is effected by this bill. As we stated earlier, we do realise that, yes, it does a correction to the bills of rights for these parolees. However, there is a two-year review system being built in so that they are not just stuck there.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, this is a good system where these parolees are in a service that looks after them. They are getting attention during the daytime and rehabilitation programmes. And as the Minister earlier expressed, many of these probably are able to go out into the community under supervision for walks, for grocery shopping, so that’s a huge part of them also feeling that they are part of our community.

However, we agree that this needed to be put through, and I appreciate the Minister also informing us why it has been put through in such a rush so that this does not cause too many problems within the legal system.

Once again, I would like to thank all those that are involved within Corrections’ rehabilitation programmes that—day in, day out—are looking after these people that need this extra care. We’re talking about 27 people that are high offenders within the sexual and violent tendencies—and, most of all, this is why we are here today in this Parliament. It is to make sure that public safety is paramount. If we can help in some way for those whose future this bill will affect, as well as those that are currently under it, we will be very happy if that can be the case. But, also, we do know that there are many people out there that are just not able to be helped. We have to make sure that we have a good system, that these people are looked after, and, most of all, the victims and, hopefully, that there will be no more further victims of these people. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise for a third time, in a very quick succession, to raise the Green Party’s concerns about this bill. I thought I’d begin by answering a question raised by Paul Goldsmith earlier, when he said, “Is there really a 2016 judicial review that raised these same issues?” There is, and it was, in fact, referenced in the very first paragraph of the declarative judgment that came out in June that we’re all here to discuss. So, yes, in 2016, the National Party Government found out that these issues existed and didn’t act, and then successive Governments didn’t act for seven years. Then, in June, we had the declarative judgment. So it is deeply disappointing that we’re gathered here today, on the final day of Parliament, over an hour and a half or two hours, to quickly pass this law.

People who’ve spoken have kept saying we’re striking a balance, but, realistically, we’re not engaged with the balancing exercise at all. What we have is a court decision—or several court decisions, starting in 2016—that told us that a number, not just one, not just two, but six New Zealand Bill of Rights Act rights are being breached by the practice of Corrections in the application of the existing law. To be very clear, this is separate to the Sentencing Act, so it absolutely is not part of people’s sentences. This existing law is breaching in its application—or Corrections are breaching in their application of that law—six different rights. Now, to examine whether or not those breaches are necessary for public safety—and sometimes they absolutely are. That is built into the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act system: that we balance rights as against the interests of public safety or other people’s rights. Absolutely. But there has to be a good faith, serious examination of what is needed by way of the infringement of an individual person’s rights as against what we’re trying to achieve. What we haven’t done is that balancing exercise.

What we’ve done is we’ve found out that those breaches exist. We’ve gone, “Oh no, they’re really serious offenders and we quickly need to fix this before anyone finds out and tries to assert their right.” And we’ve come to Parliament and we’re passing this law to make it legal to continue to do the thing that we just found out was breaching all those rights. We haven’t actually examined any of them in detail. We haven’t examined the practice in detail. Some of us know something about the way that the programme is implemented, and some of us have raised the issue of child safety. Some of us have raised the seriousness of the offending. But, actually, that process needs to take place with the detail, with the lived experience, with the expertise of Corrections coming to a committee process, with other legal experts engaging in it. We need to relook at what we’ve been doing and why the court has raised these issues. That hasn’t actually happened. To be very clear, we’re just passing law to keep doing the thing we were doing. Whether or not it’s justified, we don’t actually know, because we haven’t examined it.

What we also haven’t done is look at what we can do to prevent people from being released. It’s also interesting that people are saying, “It’s not detention, but we don’t want them released.” What we haven’t done is look at the existing avenues we have to bridge that gap, like applying public protection orders, like implementing a sunset clause on this bill right now, so that that proper legislative process can take place at a later time—the way that was always intended; the way that it is our duty and responsibility to do as responsive, responsible lawmakers. So it is hugely concerning to us as the Green Party that this type of knee-jerk response would happen in the criminal justice space, where rights breaches are the most serious because they impinge on people’s liberties, and the most fundamental of those, with the mighty force of the State. I say again that, if we’re not willing to uphold fundamental rights when it’s difficult, when it’s a bit icky, when prejudice is high, actually, we can’t say that we are truly committed to a rights-based framework. So I don’t commend this bill to the House.

I am pleased to speak to the third reading of the Parole Amendment Bill and, ultimately, no more confusion. This bill fixes the anomaly of current legislation, and I want to thank all of our parliamentarians who have made contributions this morning and especially for your support. I want to thank our Minister, Kelvin Davis, for his leadership.

In my short contribution: when a person who meets the calibre of high-risk offenders moves into your local community, you take notice. And just some years ago, Corrections made that call—and I want to shout-out to Corrections—that a high-risk offender was moved a few doors down from one of our local primary schools. At that time, parents were alerted; the school community was alerted and elected leaders, and they came together. I want to shout out to Corrections for listening to our community, because they then made the decision to move that specific person to a more suitable location because that person needed help. This bill will uphold protection of our most vulnerable citizens—our children—protection of our communities, and, on balance, public safety. So specifically for our corrections officers, I want to thank them for their work. I strongly support this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

I understand this is a split call. Mark Mitchell, five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I just want to reiterate some of my earlier comments in the passage of the bill through the House today. Yeah, I acknowledge the Minister and the fact that the bill is in the House. It’s important that we do support it. It’s important that it is passed under urgency because, at the end of the day, public safety is number one, and we’re talking about the worst offenders that could possibly be out in our community, and those are child sex offenders, and recognising the fact that although the number is relatively small, the amount of harm that could be perpetrated is immeasurable.

I think the other thing that needs to be remembered is that although we do all believe strongly in rehabilitation and trying to deliver programmes that will allow a person to stop their offending and re-join society in a positive way, I think there has to be recognition of the fact that that some of these child sex offenders show no empathy, they show no remorse, and the evidence shows that they’re virtually impossible to rehabilitate. So the focus from the State should always be that public safety and especially our children—our most vulnerable in our society—are protected.

I’ll finish off by raising a couple of the concerns that I have about the fact that the High Court judgment was two months ago and we’re now using the last day of the sitting term to pass this under urgency.

I want to reiterate and just reinforce again the outstanding work that our front-line corrections officers do. Without a doubt, they do a job that many of us would not be prepared to do. They do a job every day where they are dealing with some of the worst violent and sexual offenders that we have in our country. They’re in prison for a reason, and that is, quite simply, public safety.

We often talk about and we get up in this House and we recognise the outstanding service and often the bravery and the dedication of our front-line police officers, our firefighters, our ambulance officers, our front-line emergency department nurses, doctors, and medical staff, but we very rarely stand in this House and acknowledge the outstanding work that our corrections officers do. They have just as important a role to play in keeping our communities safe, and they do an outstanding job, but they are largely invisible. Sadly, the only reason they normally come into public view is because something has gone wrong. I just want to acknowledge the fact that they are working under very trying and challenging circumstances at the moment, not having the numbers that they need to be able to deliver rehabilitation programmes and other things that they want to go about and do, and they have a very difficult job and I want to stand in the House and put it on the record that we thank them and we acknowledge the outstanding work that they do to keep our communities safe.

The only other point that I’d make—and I acknowledge the Minister on this, because the chair of the Justice Committee, Vanushi Walters, stood and said that we shouldn’t be using public protection orders (PPOs) on these offenders; it’s a breach of human rights. I completely, totally disagree. I think that we’ve already outlined and we’ve talked in this House at length about the risk that these offenders pose, especially to our children. If there was any time that a PPO should be used, it is to keep these offenders so that we know where they are and that public safety and the community safety is put at the heart of those decisions.

So I disagreed with that position. In all fairness—and I want to acknowledge the Minister because across the House, he agreed with me and said, “That is right; we should be using PPOs.” So although I’m on record saying that it’s disappointing that it’s taken two months to get into the House, because I can tell you now, our expectation on our front-line corrections officers is that they respond quickly and professionally. I don’t know if they’ve necessarily been backed up by the people that had the responsibility to actually look at the amendments, get them ready, get them fit for the House, and bring them back in. I think that if we expect our front line to be responsive and respond quickly, they should be backed up by those that are actually dealing with the legislation in that back office role with this legislation coming into the House. So on that note, we support the bill. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m happy to rise to speak to the third reading of the Parole Amendment Bill. As has been traversed extensively across the House, this is a simple but a very important bill that enables Corrections to continue to manage high-risk offenders on extended supervision orders in a way that not only provides them with wraparound support but also ensures public safety.

Using that single provider to deliver both programmes and also residential conditions has been a longstanding practice, and I’m very happy to support the changes being made. I commend this bill to the House.