Cosgrove Clayton: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cosgrove Clayton: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 22 June 2010. Volume:664;Page:12070. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 Given the wide-ranging nature of this debate but within the scope of the bill that the Government whip has indicated I want to touch on a couple of things that were said that are germane to this Committee stage which were noted in the previous debate. We touched on a number of points. We said that Labour would support this legislation. Why? Because we wrote it. The extensions to it are technical in nature. They simply extend the provisions and the timing provisions for 2 years which were put in place by the previous Labour Government. I listened to the debate with interest but we noted that if this Government was serious in respect of how it deals with victims the acid test was not a technical extension to this bill. The acid test as colleagues on this side of the Chamber have alluded to is how we deal with victims as a whole. The most germane example that members on this side used was the lack of resources that have been cauterised by this Government in respect of victims of sexual abuse and sexual crime. I waited and watched other members and I noted Mr Borrows’ contribution on two points. I invite the Minister to rise and enlarge on Mr Borrows’ point. He said he acknowledged the lack of funding and the denial of funding to victims of sexual crime. He went on to say because I wrote it down: “This will be a priority for this Government.” 
I commend him for the sentiment but the victims are still waiting. They waited at the last Budget they waited at the Budget before that and they wait tonight. They are sitting in dark and cold places waiting for a Government to stump up with some sort of money so that they can get the counselling and the help that they so desperately need. If funding is a priority I say to the Minister I would be very interested to know when where which agency if not the Accident Compensation Corporation how much and how the wrongs that this Minister and this Government have perpetrated will be put right in the denial of funding for victims of sexual crime and sexual abuse. 
I listened with interest to the contribution from the ACT Party members—those bastions who say that they stand beside victims more than anybody else in this Parliament. Was there a contribution? Well I listened very diligently. There was no contribution from the ACT members—none zip silence. What does that say? I then listened to the Maori Party members’ contribution. It was an interesting one. There were some fair points made I have to say about some very tragic and appalling circumstances many years ago. But I also waited for that Minister and that support party to get up and also say: “Hang on. We think that the Government that we aid and abet every day has done wrong by pulling the rug out from under victims of sexual crime and abuse by cutting their funding by not allowing them to get the help that they received under the previous Government.” There was not a word. Oh no. That would be a bit of a tough one would it not? It would be tough to stand grit one’s teeth and criticise the governing party that stands over us every day and demands our vote demands our support and demands our accountability. 
What about the Maori victims of sexual crime who are denied funding under this Government? Did we see the Minister and the co-leader of the Maori Party stand up for her constituents and the constituents that her party purports to represent and say it is wrong that her constituents who are victims of heinous and tragic crimes that they live with every day are denied the funding that they need because of this Government? Oh no. That would be a bit tough would it not? We can talk about history. We can talk about other injustices that occur and we pay respect to them. But oh no it is being a bit meek and a bit mild. It is a bit tough to stand up and say: “We don’t agree with what they have done.” 
I challenge Ms Turia Mr Boscawen and others who were very silent on this issue because of course every day they aid and abet the injustice that is perpetrated by that party. I acknowledge that at least Mr Burrows addressed the issue and at least he said it would be a priority for the Government in the future. The difficulty for Mr Borrows is that he does not sit in Cabinet; maybe he should because at least he is prepared to address it in the debate. His Cabinet colleagues every day on a Monday morning sit there and do nothing about it. I say to Mr Borrows good on him! He said it would be a priority for this Government. I take him at his word that he is knocking down the doors of Nick Smith’s office and other colleagues and asking what priority means. When? Where? What agency? How much? When will we help these people? 
But I challenge every member over there Mr Bakshi and others to stand up and tell us what they will do to assist the victims of sexual abuse and sexual crime. Because of their Government their vote and their aiding and abetting of their party when will those constituents actually get assistance? It is not good enough to say that it will be a priority in the future. I say again that these people waited in the Budget before last. These people waited in the Budget we have just had. These people waited tonight and every night this week and will wait next month and the months after. They have their own nightmare every day and every night as they live with what was done to them and they live with the fact that because they do not have the means they cannot access the resources that they desperately need even though there is probably somebody in the clink and there is no dispute that a crime was perpetrated against them—there is a verdict that says they were done over assaulted maligned and treated tragically and disreputably. No one disputes that. 
The acid test is not this legislation; this legislation is about extending what we did when we were in Government. The acid test as to whether the Government is committed as I have said before to assisting the victims and the most vulnerable is what it is going to do about those victims whose funding those members over there in that Government cauterised. Oh no. Members can hear a pin drop in here can they not? There is not a word. Mrs Turia smiles. Well I say to Mrs Turia as she grins away at me that when she does her next clinic and a member of her constituency Maori or Pakeha walks into her office and says: “I need help; I was raped I was assaulted I was abused.” and that constituent cannot get the assistance that he or she had in years past because of the vote that that member and her ilk give that Government every day I wonder whether Mrs Turia will sit there quietly meekly and mildly as she does in that Mother Teresa - like way and grin at that constituent. I wonder whether she will. 
I think better of that member actually; I suspect she will not. But again it is the acid test. She is a Minister. She has incredible power. She actually has the power as a coalition partner to not only stamp her feet but to say that she and her party are out of here that she is not going to tolerate this. But no they are—to use the biblical phrase—like lambs to the proverbial slaughter. Well I say to Mrs Turia Mr Boscawen Mr Garrett and the Sensible Sentencing Trust that those who stay silent and do not protest this injustice against protecting the most vulnerable those who stay silent and bear witness to it will have to be accountable to their various constituencies both at an election and in other places and other times. 
I invite the Minister in the chair to deal with Mr Borrows’ pertinent point: he said this will be a priority for the Government. I invite him to get up—we will give him as long as he wants—and tell us when this injustice will be righted when the money will flow and become available and what agency will administer it. These poor folk live with it every day and every night. As I think my colleague Lynne Pillay said some are no longer with us. They have taken their own lives because they cannot cope they cannot deal with the crime that has been perpetrated against them and they receive no assistance from this Government. How many lives could we have saved if we had ensured despite the bureaucratic bickering over there from Nick Smith and others that—to hell with it—these people would get the assistance they need? How many victims’ lives could we have saved? 
I say to people who get up and make lofty statements about victims that here is where the rubber hits the road. We will wait and see what happens in the lead-up to the next election because I suspect all of us on all sides of the House have had victims of these crimes come to us in terrible circumstances begging for assistance. They should not have to beg. The Government that they are governed by in this country is there to assist them support them stand by them keep them alive and give them the assistance they need.