Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVictims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18676. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders BillIn CommitteeDebate resumed from 16 April.Part 2 Non-contact ordersCAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):Labour supports the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. We think that Part 2 does provide with the provision of non-contact orders the opportunity to fill a gap that is currently there. There are measures currently in place to protect victims of serious crime. The Domestic Violence Act of course provides for protection orders but that means that basically victims have to have been in a situation where they were in a domestic relationship and the Harassment Act provides for restraining orders but only in circumstances of harassment. Basically the notion here is that we are talking about a non-contact order and these can be applied for as set out in in clause 7 of Part 2. A victim may not apply for such a non-contact order if another form of order is currently in place. That is important. It is not in addition to those other situations I have talked about—protection orders and restraining orders. It is a distinct situation and it will cover the sorts of situations where somebody might for example as we have seen evidenced in this country choose to live next door to somebody whom they have seriously assaulted raped or whatever.Of course we support a bill like this where we are trying to do something to recognise the ongoing effect of serious violent offending on victims and recognising that in fact we do have a real problem with serious violent offending in this country. There are no two ways about it. Of course it is interesting that we are speaking on these victims’ orders this week when we have in fact had the Glenn Inquiry report or part of it—the part that dealt with 500 interviews with people who have had violence done against them or with people who are working with women and children primarily who have been victims of domestic violence. It is quite timely that we are continuing to work our way through the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill.One of the other things I would point out at this stage is that although we support this bill we do have significant concerns about the piecemeal approach that is being taken around dealing with violent crime. We and I am sure colleagues of mine will be traversing this ground tonight about what we might do in a broader sense. The Glenn Inquiry does of course give us the opportunity to reflect on what we need to do. They have in that report that has been released this week raised substantive concerns about not only the magnitude of the problem we face but also the way the justice system is actually not working for victims of violent crimes. So although this bill fills a particular gap and we support it—we think it is a useful additional thing—what we would really need to be looking at if we were serious about this as a Parliament would be this whole area. We need to look at substantial reform in the justice system particularly we need to look at reform in our policing and of course we need to look at the wider issues around basically trying to prevent violent crime.I note for the record that in response to the Glenn Inquiry we had questions in the House this week where we were talking about what the Government’s response was to that Glenn Inquiry—that approach rather than a very narrow approach as is outlined in this bill. Labour suggested to the Government that we actually have some sort of cross-party consensus on issues like domestic violence; that we actually work together as a Parliament to try to look at real change across the whole range from prevention to looking after those who have been victims of violent crimes. In the Glenn Inquiry we were looking particularly at domestic violence but we also as a Parliament are very actively raising issues around sexual violence and the Social Services Committee is of course considering that issue at the moment. We really need as members of Parliament to say that we have some responsibility in this space to make change to try to prevent violent crime and also then to look after those who are victims of such violent crimes. We need to make sure that the criminal justice system does not revictimise them and does not make it too hard for them to get justice and to see those who have offended held to account for that offending.There were very good changes made in the bill as a result of the work of the select committee. I was not on that select committee but I want to acknowledge some of those changes. The select committee for example amended clause 7 of the bill to allow an application at any time after sentencing so that there is not potentially a gap at the point where the person is released from prison and there is a wider scope to the orders than parole conditions could provide. I think that was a very positive situation.There is also another concern that we have got and that is in relation to an application for an order being a civil proceeding and that victims would have to meet costs unless they qualify for legal aid. The select committee has mitigated that somewhat by allowing two types of order—temporary and final. In relation to the situation where the victim has to take their case to a judge in the presence of an offender that has been mitigated to a certain extent by allowing two types of orders temporary and final and the offender would be present only for the application to make a temporary order a final one. This would also assist in lowering cost and contact with the offender but not eliminate it. So we do continue to have a concern on that particular issue.I think the interesting point on this as I said earlier is that this is quite a specific thing. The regulatory impact statement said that potentially the number of orders that are likely to be issued on average could be as few as 10 per year. That is not a reason not to do something but I do go back to my earlier point that there is a broader range of issues that I think as a country we really do have a strong desire to see addressed. I would like to urge the Government to look more broadly at these issues; not to keep working in a piecemeal approach which is what is happening at the moment. I would suggest that we do use the opportunity created by the Glenn Inquiry to actually acknowledge that the community certainly sees the desire for a much more comprehensive collaborative and committed response to ensuring that the victims of violent crimes are not further penalised.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):Right at the start of the debate when this Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill was introduced Labour said that it would support the bill. The reason for that was pretty clear-cut. We need to have a system that pays more attention to the victim. Sadly in relation to serious violent and sexual offending there are far too many victims. It is time actually to produce some fundamental change in the way our system works; to try to build more fences at the top of the cliff rather than try to do small repair jobs at the bottom.Frankly the bill as introduced was pretty weak. My colleague Carol Beaumont has referred to the regulatory impact statement. I say to the Minister of Justice that I was kind of astounded to read in the regulatory impact statement that the best estimate of your officials was that this bill might deal with 10 cases a year—10 cases a year. We are talking about thousands of cases of sexual and violent offending each year and the victims who arise from that. Each year hundreds maybe thousands of people are let out of prison and there was not protection for the victims in particular circumstances. Minister you will recall that the origin of this bill was a case in Invercargill where a woman was raped her offender was convicted he was sentenced to prison he served prison he was let out of prison—as happens at the end of your sentence or when you are released—and he moved in next door to the victim. The victim was absolutely powerless. Every day she faced the risk of confronting the man who had sexually violated her and there was nothing she could do about it. That apparently was what caused this bill to be introduced.The difficulty with the bill is that when it was introduced we found that it would have had no application at all to the woman whose case sparked the need for the legislation. Why was that? Because in order to have the protection of the non-contact order the offender had to be jailed for at least 5 years’ imprisonment. He had been jailed for 4 years. There was no protection in this bill for the very person whom it purported to protect. So that was a huge weakness. We indicated at the first reading of the bill that that was utterly inadequate and that we would fight to get that changed. In the Law and Order Committee they moved it to 3 years and after a discussion with the Minister personally she agreed to move it to 2 years. I think 2 years is appropriate. It brings it in line with the definition under the Parole Act which demarcates a serious from a less serious offence.But there are other important changes that we made in this legislation to strengthen it and they are set out in Part 2. The first is that the way the bill was introduced once again meant that you could not get a non-contact order until the offender had been released from prison. That was pretty dumb. That meant that there was always going to be a gap between the release from prison and the victim being able to get a non-contact order. In fact the victim would not always know that the offender had been released and there was real risk in it. So we made I think a very sensible change in the committee that you can get a non-contact order at any time after the offender has been sentenced. That was a sensible move.The other area of weakness that we addressed really came out of the submissions that the select committee heard. It was that some offenders were reasonably cunning in the way they sought to revictimise their victims. They did not do it themselves but they got an associate to do it. So what we have put into this bill is a provision that will allow the non-contact order to apply to people other than the offender. We have put reasonably strong safeguards in there. In order to have a non-contact order made out against a person who was not the offender they need one to have been encouraged by the offender to engage in the behaviour that is being prohibited; two to have engaged in those kinds of behaviour; and three the person’s behaviour has been and continues to be detrimental to the victim’s ability to manage the effects of the offending. So there were three key weaknesses in this legislation that we have addressed and I think the legislation is better for it.But I want to come back to the point that I made at the beginning. We will not be dealing with just 10 cases a year now. Maybe we will be dealing with scores of cases but the number is still pretty small. What we actually need is a substantial piece of legislation if we are truly to protect the interests of the victims. I found out from a victims organisation in west Auckland—indeed the chief executive has just been acknowledged in the Honours List this year—that maybe in one in 100 cases of sexual violation is the offender actually charged convicted and sentenced to prison. One in 100. One in 100 cases means that 99 percent of the victims are not seeing justice done. We have helped by helping another 0.05 percent of the victims. It is worth doing in specific cases because there is a gap in the legislation where people are not covered by the Domestic Violence Act they cannot get a protection order they are not covered by the Harassment Act and they cannot get a restraining order. We do address the gap but we do not address the problem.The problem lies in a number of areas. In part it is a case of protection. We have just considered the estimates on the police to find out that for 5 years in a row the police budget has been cut in real terms—cut by $114 million dollars. If we want to protect victims cutting the police budget cutting police staff and closing police stations does not appear to be a very good way of doing that. We are doing a mildly good thing here but not offsetting a very bad thing that the Government is doing by reducing protection of victims by cutting the police budget.Secondly you need attitude change and that is not short term; that is the change that we can make through our education system. There needs to be a concerted effort and I do not think anybody in the Committee would be opposed to that sort of education programme being run or opposed to more effective programmes for those in prison who are guilty of violent offending.The third area is this. I really want the Minister in the chair Judith Collins to address this because if this bill is about protecting victims then we have got to face up to the fact that we have a system that is not designed to protect victims. We have a system that is adversarial. We have a system where still even after various changes in legislation the victim feels that they are being revictimised in court. The victim does not want to go to court. The victim feels that they are going to be revictimised because of this adversarial system. I guess the question that I have for the Minister is why she is so opposed to changing the system in its fundamentals to having a more inquisitorial system that is better designed to protect the interests of victims and to get to the truth in order to help the victims themselves.I would have to ask the question about why we are not doing more in the area of restorative justice because a number of rape survivors whom I have talked to said they are actually not interested in a 20-year sentence for the offender; they simply want an expression of remorse and of contrition to confront the offender and to actually hear the offender admit that he was wrong in what he did. That does not seem enough to me in terms of a person who has been a victim in that way but it is a hell of a lot more than what they are getting out of the present system. In the present system—I come back to the statistics—99 out of 100 victims of sexual violation are not going to see justice done. Although this piece of legislation is a very small help it pales into insignificance compared with the nature of the problem that we should be addressing in this legislature. This is not enough. We need to do a lot more.In terms of the actual provisions of the bill I have outlined the key provisions where I think we have made changes that were necessary so that this legislation would at least have some real practical effect. I think we have closed the gap that we are talking about but we have not resolved the problem. That is why I ask the Minister to not simply bring a series of minor pieces of legislation to the House—we will always support any piece of legislation that will enhance and promote the interests of victims—but to do something that will really make a difference to the overwhelming majority and the too many people who fall victim to serious sexual and violent offending.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):I am pleased to take a call in this part of the proceedings on the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. I begin by saying that in a week in which the nation has had its attention drawn to the horrific reality of domestic violence and sexual violence for this Committee finding solutions—real solutions long-term solutions—should be front and centre of what we do right now. As my colleague Phil Goff has said—and indeed Carol Beaumont as well—although this bill goes some of the way and provides a solution of sorts to the dreadful embarrassing shameful problem that this nation has it is still a half-hearted effort. More could be done. I am going to come to two particular provisions to illustrate what I think the remaining problems are with this bill.Carol Beaumont talked about the fact that this bill still requires the victim to take the initiative. It is a civil proceeding that the victim must initiate. For impecunious victims getting access to legal aid so they can make an application of this nature has got a lot harder under this Government. It is just harder to get legal aid. In the Budget that has just been handed down this Government under this Minister of Justice has put up this outrageous proposition where legal aid is cut by another $12 million—$5 million out of civil legal aid alone—and now with this legislation when this legislation is passed the people who are looking to it for protection are somehow going to have to find the means to make the applications to court. The reality is that most of them will have to do it off their own bat. They will have to represent themselves because getting legal aid will be too hard and many simply will not be able to afford a lawyer. So that gap remains and I expect that that gap will get only ever larger.But this bill also in the two types of orders that it creates—the temporary non-contact order which happens or is granted on a without-notice application and then the final non-contact order which is granted or at least processed on notice and is granted after a hearing—will require adequate and sufficient resources to be available in the registries of our courts up and down the country. The reality is after the shameful act of cutting our legal aid the next most shameful thing that this Government has done under this Minister of Justice and her Minister for Courts is to gut the court registries of this country and put huge pressure on the remaining staff who are there to process applications. That pressure is only ever going to grow under pieces of legislation like this.I frankly despair at the thought and the prospect of victims of violent offending violent sexual offending and domestic violence when they are able to collect themselves process what has happened to them and start to take control of their lives then having to go through this process most likely at their own expense and deal with court registry staff who are under so much pressure and are probably unlikely to give them a lot of help. That is the justice system that we are developing under this Government and it is shameful. We have a Minister of Justice who is happy to swan around London mince around with Angelina Jolie photobomb Brad Pitt and talk longingly about protecting the victims of sexual violence in war zones but she cannot do enough for the good citizens of New Zealand and those who are in the unfortunate position of being victims of that sort of offending back here. Well we deserve better. The people of New Zealand deserve better.I want to talk about just a couple of provisions here because my colleagues Phil Goff and Carol Beaumont have talked about the bill. First of all I want to point out clause 15 “Discharge of non-contact order on application”. That allows an application for discharge to be made by a person against whom an order was made which could be the offender or an associate according to the bill “at any time”. An application for discharge can be made at any time. So no sooner is an order issued from the court with the victim having taken the initiative and gone to their own expense and negotiated and navigated their way through an under-resourced court registry the offender against whom the order is made can then at any time apply for a discharge. There is no constraint on that at all—no limitation on the offender no requirement that the order is in place for a limited period of time. You would have thought that at least for orders made on notice where there has been a hearing and the court has heard from the offender or at least from the subject of the order there must surely be a minimum time for the order to apply before an application for discharge can be made. But that provision opens it up for the offender to harass the victim in other ways by applying for the discharge.Then I want to turn to clause 15B which allows the offender of course once an application has been made to require a hearing to take place. In terms of principles of justice I do not have a problem with that—I do not have a problem with that. But where I am concerned is where the registrar of the court then takes on a number of responsibilities. The registrar can take the application for a hearing set it down and in the subsequent clauses of the bill it is the registrar who can take the responsibility for explaining the impact and the consequences of one of these orders to a person against whom an order is made.I go back to my earlier point that the resources of our court registries particularly the District Court where these applications will be made are stressed beyond belief right now. The court registry staff are just absolutely under the hammer. You have only got to talk to some of them to find out that that pressure is unrelenting because this Government has said “We must squeeze more out of you. You must work harder.” We have got court registry staff not just working late on weekdays but now coming in on weekends just to catch up with the work they are doing particularly in relation to civil applications because they are often the most complex ones to process and to work out who has to be served with what what has to go to which court official and all the rest of it. The court registry staff in this country are under unreasonable and unremitting pressure because of this Government. When this bill gets passed they will be under even greater pressure and they will be required to deal with distressed people and it is just unreasonable.Mr King may think it is funny. Mr King may think that we should cut short this discussion and this debate on this very important issue. Maybe the National Party members really just do not care about the victims of this sort of abuse and the importance of these sorts of orders because to look at them to hear the Minister of Justice and look at her actions which frankly speak louder than words you would think they do not give a toss—they do not give a toss. That is why we have this bill in this form.I want to echo my colleague Phil Goff’s comments that it is well time well overdue for this country to have a comprehensive piece of victims’ legislation setting out rights and allowing victims to look to the State to afford them the protection that the criminal justice system ought properly to offer them. It is not enough to rely on victims to take the initiative in their distressed state to protect themselves. That is what this bill does. It is time we had a new set of principles so that victims can look to the State and the courts to provide them with proper protection at all stages of the criminal justice system. There is no reason in principle why the orders that are contemplated in this bill could not be part of either the sentencing process or the parole process so that the victim does not have to take on the burden of that responsibility yet again.As my colleagues have said we will support this bill because as is often the case something is better than nothing. But the people of this country are fast demanding something a lot better and it is the Labour Party in Government that will deliver it because this Government has shown in 6 years that it is not up to the task. It really does not care about victims and it is not doing enough.The question was put that the following amendments in the name of Hon Judith Collins to Part 2 be agreed to:add to clause 13A the following subclause:(2)On the hearing of an application made under subsection (1) the court may if it thinks fit vary any condition or direction imposed under section 11(2) in respect of a temporary non-contact order.;insert in clause 14(2) the following paragraph:(ab)vary or discharge a condition or direction imposed under section 11A(2):;in clause 20(2)(b) replace “2009” with “2014”; andin clause 20(3) replace “2009” with “2014”.Amendments agreed to.Part 2 as amended agreed to.Clauses 1 and 2Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):This bill is entitled the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill and the reason we have it before the Committee tonight is that there is currently in place no long-term mechanism that the police or the courts can use to prevent an offender coming into contact with a victim in the absence of a domestic relationship or evidence of deliberate harassment. This bill was designed to address a gap in the system. The Domestic Violence Act provides protection orders for people usually women who have been the subject of domestic violence. The Harassment Act provides protection for the victim against those who continue to harass them. But there is nothing in the current legislation that deals with the situation where a person who has been the offender against the victim can harass them silently if you like by their presence.What this bill tries to do is prevent things such as the following or the watching of the victim and the loitering near and the prevention or hindering of access to or from the victim’s place of residence business employment educational institution or other place that the offender knows the victim might visit. It is about stopping a person from following or accosting the victim. It is about stopping people making contact with the victim that is unwanted contact.Some people might say that when an offender has served his or her prison sentence then their rights need to be upheld alongside the rights of anybody else in the community. My view is somewhat different from that. Yes of course offenders do have rights but those rights cannot be superior to the right of the victim not to relive the suffering that they have had inflicted on them by the offender by seeing the presence of that offender in their community near their place of residence or at their place of work or education.There was a gap in the law. This bill closes that gap but let us not exaggerate the impact of what this legislation actually does. The Law and Order Committee found that there are 1000 people each year released from prison who would meet the sentencing criteria for being covered by this bill but equally officials have said that this bill will apply to a very small number of people. We do not know what it was. As the Minister of Justice had originally drafted the bill it would have applied to just 10 people. I have got to say that when I read the regulatory impact statement I was really worried about everything that I read in that statement that suggested that what the Government was doing and the officials were doing was premised on what the costs might be of extending the rights of the victims. Indeed when you look through the options that were put up the Government said: “This would be quite costly. We cannot do it.” Well let us start to think about the costs that are inflicted on the victim and the need to protect the victim which is what this bill is supposedly about.But I want to say that although this bill as the title suggests is about orders against violent offenders it is a drop in the bucket in terms of the actual problem of serious violent offending and serious sexual offending in our community. I had the terrible task earlier this week of visiting the family of the dairy owner Arun Kumar who was murdered in his shop in Henderson. Talk to the family and try to find words that are adequate to match the suffering of that family—an elderly dad who has lost his son; a wife Anita whose husband has died before her eyes and in her arms; and two children who know that their dad will never be there to be the grandfather for their children—and you realise that when we talk about victims we are not simply talking about statistics. We are talking about people real people and the enormous suffering that so many people have inflicted on them in our community—the suffering of violence and the suffering of sexual assault.It is time that we in this House made more than just the token effort of saying that we will patch the system here or we will patch the system there. It is time to look fundamentally at what is going wrong in our society and to build the fence at the top of the cliff rather than trying to make sure the ambulance at the bottom might arrive on time. When the offenders as in that case in Henderson are of the age of 12 and 13 you know fundamentally that something is happening that is wrong in our society and if we think that we can fix that by passing small pieces of legislation like this we are sadly wrong.We have to do more to address the causes of offending. That requires much more than legislation. We have to do things that ensure that the system works. In that case in Henderson you have got to ask the question of why a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old were not at school and what was happening to make sure that they should be at school. You have to ask the question of why a 13-year-old whose father is in prison and whose mother is constantly before the courts is left to his own devices and why there is nothing in the system to put him on the right track which might have prevented him from stabbing the dairy owner in the neck as alleged. That is why we need something more than simply this piece of legislation.We need a change in the system. In terms of sexual offending we need a system that will respond to individuals in a way that does not frighten them away from the system but that allows them to come into the system in order to see justice done. When only one in 100 of those who are victims of sexual violation get justice through the system that we have at the moment we know that the system is simply not good enough.So the Labour Party has come into the House at each reading of this bill and has supported the bill for the small but useful things that it will do for a small minority of victims. We will always support the victims but this bill as the title suggests is no panacea no widespread solution and no answer to the fundamental problems that after 6 years have not been addressed by this Government. It is not the time to make this into a political football but it is the time when this House should come together and say: “Let’s do something more than pass tiny pieces of legislation that apply sticking plasters.”Let us do something to make sure our system works. Let us do something to create a society that addresses the causes of offending. Let us do something to have a policing system where the police do not have their budget cut as they have had in every Budget for each of the last 5 years so that we now have fewer police staff out there working in the police force and fewer police stations. That is the track record. In Henderson the thing that people told us on the ground as we went from shop to shop was: “What we really needed was a community police station in this town. What we needed was to see our police out in the street. What we needed was some intervention when we could see the problem out there.” They needed to know that the system would respond to that problem and prevent the problem because after the damage has been done it is too late.So I say to the Minister of Justice that it is fine to have this small narrow piece of legislation. We will support it—we would support it if it helped just one person—but it is time to have a system that actually works for the greater good of a greater number of people. We need to address the causes of offending have a policing system that is visible on the ground and that works properly and have a justice system that encourages people to come into the system and see justice done because for far too many people today justice is not being done.DAVID CLENDON (Green):I want to take a short call and clearly the Chairperson has some enthusiasm for advancing the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. This legislation undoubtedly fills a gap. The Greens are supporting it with some reservations which we have expressed at the Law and Order Committee and elsewhere but it does fill an obvious gap. A person who has suffered an assault or attack of some sort at the hands of someone with whom they had a relationship—a domestic relationship or some other form of intimate relationship—can make an appeal for a protection order. It seems perverse that there is no similar provision for someone who has been assaulted by someone who does not meet the criteria for a protection order. Undoubtedly this new mechanism does fill that gap.I would reiterate what Mr Goff has just said and indeed what Carol Beaumont referred to earlier and that is that community safety and the safety of individuals will never be achieved simply through legislative instruments statutory provisions or indeed through longer sentences more jails or more and better policing—not to say that the latter particularly does not have a significant role to play. Ultimately we will achieve peaceful and safe societies when people have access to education health care housing and useful and productive employment. The social situations and conditions that breed crime need to be dealt with rather than simply the punitive and reactive mechanisms that we can deal with through legislation like this.Having said that we certainly will support this legislation albeit recognising that it is not a panacea; it is far short of that. We continue to have some concerns and unlike some of our Labour colleagues we have some concerns about the threshold having been reduced from 5 years to 2 years. That seems a significant drop. The original advice from officials was that the 5-year threshold was set because the policy intention was that the orders should be available only in the most serious and violent sexual offending. In part—and I do not entirely accept the notion that it was driven by cost—the Attorney-General’s report on compliance pointed to some potential compromising of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but conceded or acknowledged it was justified given that this order would be available only in response to the most extreme and serious offending as determined by that 5-year sentence. Regarding the fact that we are reducing this significantly to 2 years—although I understand the logic of aligning it with the Sentencing Act and with other legislation—information was given to us that a change in the threshold could undermine the Attorney-General’s conclusion that limitations imposed by the order could be justified under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That is not a trivial matter.My other reflection is that of course now that there are many many more people who will be eligible to apply for these orders the numbers will undoubtedly increase. The number of these orders could actually become quite significant not only because of the reducing of the threshold to 2 years but equally because of the other significant change which now enables people to apply for an order immediately post-sentencing at any time after sentencing. In the heat of the moment in the trial process yes the victim is often obliged to some extent to relive the very traumatic and unfortunate experience. At that point the victim is most likely to think “Yes we will apply for one of these orders.” whereas 2 or 3 years later on they might be perhaps more thoughtful in their approach. Time has passed and there is perhaps an acknowledgment that offenders can actually be rehabilitated in our prison system on a good day or on a best occasion. So I think the likelihood of large numbers of these orders being issued is something we can reasonably expect.Given that there will be more of these orders it does concern me that we might eventually come to a similar situation as the one we have come to with protection orders where the efficacy of protection orders is being questioned in part because there are a lot of them and in part because they are not necessarily respected or given weight either by the enforcement agencies or indeed by the people whom they are intended to protect. We have instances where a person protected by an order will willingly allow a breach of it and these consented breaches if you like lead to more serious breaches later on. The waters get seriously muddied the police are put into unfortunate situations and the integrity of the protection orders is compromised very often and makes them less of a protection than they might be.There is also the danger that people will become overly reliant and expect too much of these orders be it a protection order or the new victims’ orders and will assume that they will actually give them a very real protection. Unfortunately the orders cannot be entirely relied on. Ultimately no document statutory device or mechanism can provide protection. Sometimes it just requires common sense community and family support and all of those other things. Those two substantive changes made through the select committee process—the lowering of the threshold and the ability now for an order to be applied for and issued at any point after sentencing—we think could actually backfire and ultimately could put us in a less desirable situation in ways that were not necessarily meant to be. I can understand that there were problems with not having the orders available until after an offender had been released because there could then be a gap of time when the victim could feel threatened—or indeed could be threatened—before an order could be worked through the system but we think that immediately after sentencing is probably too early in the piece to allow for this very serious document this order to be applied.With those comments I do say again that we will support this bill but I would echo the comments made by other people that it is part of a piecemeal approach. We do look forward to having a clean slate—a new beginning in a sense—and an assessment of actually how you get justice and how you get community safety. That does require I think some more creative and zero-sum thinking than simply tacking on more and more provisions to existing provisions.I had a conversation today in fact with a person who had long experience as a lawyer in a provincial town. He had experience in everything from criminal law and family law through to tribunals—the whole gamut of legal action and advice. He among others is seeing practitioners who are understanding very well that our justice sector is in many ways under stress. We are not providing for a lot of the needs of people as they arrive and the priorities can be wrong. The system is stressed in many ways not least of all financially as has been mentioned. The capacity of our system to deal with people fairly and in a timely fashion is degrading—there is no question about that. With the cuts in legal aid many lawyers now simply cannot afford to function at legal aid rates if indeed people are deemed eligible for it. So we have some very serious problems in the provision of justice that need to be addressed and certainly piecemeal approaches like this bill simply will not do it. Thank you.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.Bill to be reported with amendment presently.House resumed.The Chairperson reported the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill with amendment and that the Committee had divided it into two bills and the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill with amendment.Report adopted.