Goff Phil: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17361. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): Can I begin by first expressing my disappointment that the Minister in charge of the Victims of Crime Reform Bill the Hon Judith Collins is not the Minister in the chair. I thought that perhaps under the cover of darkness she might have snuck back into the Chamber through the back way—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! The member would say that he is not referring to the absence of a Minister but he is indirectly doing that and I just caution him to not proceed down that line.Hon PHIL GOFF: I am sure you will not mind me saying that it is better in the Committee of the whole House stage to have a Minister in the chair who is the Minister in charge of the bill. When that Minister is here then she might be expected to answer questions.Having expressed that disappointment can I say that I acknowledge at least that in the chair is Chester Borrows. Chester Borrows is not only the Minister for Courts but also the sort of man who could recognise a conflict of interest and avoid it and if he made a mistake would tell the truth to the House about what he had done. So in that sense the Minister in the chair is a distinct improvement over the Minister who is in charge of the bill.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Totally washed up. What a hack—what a low-grade hack.Hon PHIL GOFF: Can I just say if the Attorney-General stops prattling on—if he wants to take a call then take a call. Perhaps he could stand up and explain to us why Judith Collins did meet with an unnamed official in a clear conflict of interest. If he does not want to take the call then he should shut up and I will invite you Mr Chairman to tell him to do that. Otherwise I will continue to ask him questions about his colleague the Minister of Justice and why the Minister of Justice should not be relied upon to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! I am on my feet. Right we will debate Part 2 of this bill from this point on.Hon PHIL GOFF: I am happy to do that. Can I say that I welcome this bill and the improvements that it makes but express another disappointment—notwithstanding the importance that I am sure the Minister in the chair would say is attached to the provisions in this bill—and question why it has taken 2½ years to get this bill back to the Committee of the whole House when these rights are being denied to victims and when every party in Parliament supports this bill. This is the sort of bill that you would have thought would be facilitated through the House. We will not hold it up unnecessarily. We have indicated that we are showing support for it. Once again we have a bill that took damn near 3 years from the point when it was introduced to the point when it goes through. There is no reason other than the incompetence of the management of this House that that should have happened with this bill.This part of the bill deals with amendments to the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act. The purpose of the clauses in this part is to ensure that victims’ rights in the adult jurisdiction are applied in the youth justice jurisdiction and I support that absolutely. It is also about increasing the participation of victims at hearings in the Youth Court and providing support for those victims. I want to come back to Chester Borrows to ask a question about the nature of the support that will be provided to victims who appear in the Youth Court. As the Minister for Courts will be aware court services for victims are not currently available in the Youth Court. So I would very much like the Minister in the chair to take the next call and explain to us whether the court services for victims will now be available for victims appearing in the Youth Court. It is a valid question. I am sure that the Minister will have the answer to that.The reason that I ask the question about whether those resources will be available—[Interruption] And still the Attorney-General prattles on. The reason that I ask about that is because in the regulatory impact statement it states: “Agencies have indicated that to successfully implement some of the proposals they will need to look to reprioritise funding from other areas.” The fact that the agencies say that suggests to me that no additional resources have been provided to ensure that the rights that we are supposedly giving to victims will be backed up by the services that are there ensuring that they get those services and that those rights are upheld.So it is a valid question to ask the Minister whether court services for victims will be available and if so how they will be funded. If it is reprioritisation can he assure us that those are not funds taken from another part of the justice system diminishing the rights of victims in that part of the service? They say that if they cannot reprioritise then this will result quoting from the regulatory impact statement “in pressure on services and service delivery may be affected.” That is bureaucratese for the fact that if there is no money there they will not be delivering the services properly and maybe they will not be delivering the services at all.I think that those are valid questions to ask the Minister in the chair and I invite Chester Borrows to take a call after I have finished and address those questions. Members on this side of the Chamber believe that that is the very sort of thing that the Committee of the whole House is here for and that the Minister should be prepared to answer them. Chester Borrows is one of the better Ministers. He will probably be willing to do that.I want to say that the things that I think are really important here are firstly that we do get the recognition of the automatic right of the victim to attend a Youth Court hearing. That is not currently the case; it will become the case. Having said that in the youth jurisdiction family group conferences are perhaps the best area where victims can participate in the process and where the process is properly restorative. At the moment the victim is encouraged to attend a family group conference to have a say on reparation to have a say on rehabilitation for the offender and to express how the actions of the offender have affected them. In fact under a Labour Government New Zealand led the world in 1989 in making these sorts of provisions for restorative justice for the family group conference and for the victim to be part of the process and not excluded from it. That is great.I am not sure why in the past we did not include the Youth Court jurisdiction in this. I can back up the words of the Principal Youth Court Judge who noted that sadly under the status quo the court is often left without any information on the victim. That is plainly unsatisfactory. This bill remedies that. It makes sense for the judge to have complete information about the offence when sentencing a young person in the Youth Court. There is absolutely no reason why the age of the offender should reduce the rights that victims have under the Victims’ Rights Act. So we are supporting this part of the bill because those two areas are remedied. The Ministry of Justice has rightly recommended that victims should have the automatic right to attend a family group conference that they should be able to provide a victim impact statement—that is really important—and that there should be amendments to clarify the application of the Victims’ Rights Act in the youth jurisdiction.The clauses in the bill that I think are important are clauses 35 and 38. Clause 35 sets out the rights of the victim to be consulted when a hearing is being held on the custody or potential custody of a child or young person and that the prosecutor must make reasonable efforts to ascertain the views of each of the victims. That is important. The Commissioner of Police must inform each victim of orders made by the court and any conditions such as conditions on bail that are applied. So this is a sensible provision. Itis not a political party - orientated clause. It has been recommended by the Ministry of Justice. It makes sense and it has been supported by the Principal Youth Court Judge.The other area is clause 38 which sets out the entitlement of the victim to be present in the Youth Court and also—I think the Justice and Electoral Committee made this amendment—to have a support person alongside the victim acting as their representative or as a support person for them. I think that that makes sense as well. Other clauses like clause 38A and 38B are about areas where the victim should be notified of certain things. When young people abscond from custody of course the victim should be told about that. If the offender dies then obviously that is a piece of information however regrettable the death of the young offender might be that the victim is entitled to. So I think this is a good area.I just come back to the Minister because I know he has been taking advice from the officials. It would be good to know why it took so long to get this bill back to the Committee. But it would be particularly good to know whether the resources are there to provide court services for victims whether the resources are there to ensure that the rights of the victims will actually be delivered upon and where that money is coming from. Was there any new money provided for the victim support services or is it going to be stolen from another area which will detract from the ability of the justice system to deliver elsewhere?