Sepuloni Carmel: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sepuloni Carmel: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 22 June 2010. Volume:664;Page:12068. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) 
: 
 The Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill extends the restrictions on the awarding of compensation brought in by the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005 for a further 2 years from 1 July 2010 to 30 June 2012. Labour’s position is that basically we passed the Act that this bill is seeking to extend and as this bill is only making a technical change to the date of the Act as an interim measure then of course we will be supporting this bill. This bill will ensure that victims will continue to get access to prisoners’ compensation. This temporary measure is to make sure that victims’ access to prisoners’ compensation does not lapse between the expiry of the Act and the commencement of the new bill that the Government intends to introduce later this year—so we hear. The aim of this bill is to amend the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act and because it is just a minor and technical change we support it. The current Act states that the awarding of compensation to victims expires on 1 July and that the victims’ claims process applies only to compensation in respect of claims made before that date. This bill will extend that application to June 2012. 
An interesting thing that has come up about this relates to the protection of victims’ rights. I will touch on some of the things that Labour did whilst in Government to ensure that victims’ rights were protected. We took that matter seriously and I think that is proven by our track record with regard to the legislation put into place by the previous Labour Government. We introduced and passed the Sentencing Act in 2002 which introduced a presumption in favour of reparation and resulted in this sentence being used more frequently. The Sentencing Act also recognised the potential of restorative justice processes to make offenders more accountable to victims and it enabled courts to take both financial and non-financial offers of amends by an offender into account. Labour introduced and passed the Victims’ Rights Act in 2002 which extended a number of rights to victims such as rights to information and the ability to have input into sentencing decisions through victim impact statements. In 2003 the Ministry of Justice launched a campaign to trace those who were owed money and it spent $385000 on advertising an 0800 number for people to call. The establishment of new collection centres further bolstered the collection and disbursement of reparation. In the 2003 Budget $9 million was allocated for that purpose. Labour passed the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act in 2005 which ensured that the victims of inmates who had been awarded compensation could claim against that compensation. The previous Labour Government has a proven track record with regard to taking the rights of victims seriously. 
I will now touch on the lofty promises made by the National Government post the 2008 election with regard to the rhetoric that it has put out about the protection of victims’ rights—because it has been rhetoric. The Government has had a whole line on being tough on crime and protecting the rights of victims. It has purported to represent victims at some sort of level that has never been reached before but unfortunately I think that its track record over the last 18 months shows that that is not the case. We need to look not only at what that Government has done in law and order but also at what it has done across the board. One area where it has failed to protect the rights of victims and failed to provide the necessary services required by victims to help them move on and progress in their lives is accident compensation. I think that this is relevant because when we hear the rhetoric going around about protecting victims and then we see that this other stuff is happening in relation to accident compensation we have to question whether that Government is fulfilling its promises to the New Zealand public. I am talking about sexual abuse victims who are no longer able to get the support that they need under the accident compensation scheme thanks to the changes that National has made. That is something that all of us on this side of the House have seen with regard to the constituents whom we are out there supporting advocating for and representing in this House. We have seen how the changes in policy that that Government has put into place with regard to accident compensation have failed those particular victims. 
I can think of one story I heard when I was in Waitakere recently—maybe a month ago—when I was meeting with different groups that provide counselling services for sexual abuse victims. This case was brought to my attention when I was meeting with those counsellors. It was in respect of a woman who had been sexually assaulted. It was a while ago but she was still suffering from that sexual assault. She had been receiving counselling that had been funded by the Accident Compensation Corporation and the counsellors were concerned that she would lose that funding. This particular victim and her family was very aware of this. The counsellor told me on that day that the woman’s son even rang the counsellor and said that she could not stop providing those counselling services to his mother. He did not think that his mother could do it without the counselling and he thought that she was at risk of committing suicide if she did not receive the service. 
On the same day that the counsellor was telling me the story someone else walked into the room and let her know that the corporation had declined to fund that woman’s counselling. We sat there and I asked the counsellor what she would do. She said that her group would continue to provide the service without the funding. There would be no support from the Government and no support from the Accident Compensation Corporation. The counsellors would keep giving the woman the counselling but they could not sustain that for a long period of time. That is only one example of a person who is a victim and who has been affected by the changes in accident compensation that that Government has put into place. Her right to counselling to recover to move on and to get the care that she needs has been taken away by a change in policy from members on that side of the House. Going back to what I was saying before we are concerned that what that Government says is purely rhetoric about the protection of the rights of victims. 
In that instance it was definitely not something that that Government saw as being a priority. Instead it has left that woman at risk having to look after herself and in potential danger. Talking about that issue a little more over the last couple of years the number of approved claims for counselling were between 200 and 300 each month. The number of approved claims for the whole of New Zealand in January this year was 11 and there were only six in February. So members on that side of the House cannot say that the policy changes they have put into place with regard to accident compensation have not had an effect at all. It is obvious that the care provided to these victims has shrunk to almost nothing. That is only one example of where that Government has failed to protect the rights of victims. 
There are many others. We could talk about the “three strikes” bill and about how some of the submitters on that bill told us very clearly that it would only see victims re-victimised. They would be at risk of having to go through longer court proceedings because of appeals and other things. Those were the things that came through very strongly in the submissions. The last thing that I will touch on is preventing more victims of crime. That is something that this Government over there has failed to do also. The latest crime statistics showed that the number of crime victims are growing not decreasing under National. As the Government’s response the Minister of Police has cut police numbers in a number of areas. We have seen in Waitakere that crime has gone up and violence has gone up yet recent information shows that the Waitemata district will lose 10 police officers. So that will not help with regards to the number of victims we see. We support this bill but we question the Government with regards to its ability and its track record to protect the rights of victims. Thank you.