Parker David: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8066. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): David Shearer in his contribution in the first reading debate said that as he understood it offenders from Australia who have been convicted and returned to New Zealand following conviction are arriving in New Zealand without particulars being provided to the New Zealand Government at the time as to what the offences were that they were convicted of in Australia and perhaps sometimes when they are arriving. I want to hear from the Government whether that is the case because there are only two explanations for that. Either there is irresponsible behaviour on the part of the Australian Government—firing convicted criminals back to New Zealand without telling the New Zealand authorities enough information so that New Zealand authorities can protect New Zealanders in case they need to be protected—or there has been absolute incompetence by the New Zealand Government in not getting that information which could have been made available if it had asked early enough. Those are the only two explanations I can think of and I want to hear if—Hon Michael Woodhouse: There are many others.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well the Minister of Police interjects that there may be many others. Take a call and tell us what is happening—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well wait for the Committee stage.Hon DAVID PARKER: “Well wait for the Committee stage.” he says. Well it would be nice if one of your members could actually take a call and address these important issues now.I want to turn to another issue. You know this bill was dropped on us. The first time we saw the wording of this bill in detail—the outline of it had been provided by Amy Adams to Jacinda Ardern. But in terms of actually seeing the legislation in written form—which has changed even in the last day as I said in an earlier contribution—was after question time today at about 3.30. We then had the first reading and we were all preparing for that. We are now into the second reading—and it is not even yet 6 o’clock—and I have had a chance to read through it a little bit further.I am concerned that we are ousting the jurisdiction of the court to overturn an improper determination by the commissioner of whether someone meets the criteria for being a returning prisoner that would trigger the provisions under clause 24 which says that a returning prisoner is then subject to standard release conditions. Clause 17 sets out the criteria to be applied to where the commissioner must determine that the person is a returning prisoner and then it sets out what should be in a determination notice. Then it says that someone can apply to the Commissioner of Police to review that determination—that is set out in clause 22 of the bill—and then it says in clause 28 of the bill that a court may vary or discharge those release conditions except that in clause 28(2) it says: “A court must not discharge a standard release condition with effect from a date that is less than 6 months after the date … of the determination notice.”I want to hear from the Government as to whether it thinks it is ousting the jurisdiction of the New Zealand courts to say that the commissioner was acting illegally and applying the wrong criteria during that 6-month period because I tell you what if I had come back from overseas and I had had a traffic conviction or something and been convicted of an imprisonable offence overseas—and it is not just Australia that this legislation applies to—and I got back here and was slammed with one of these notices that said that I was all of a sudden subject to these notices and I thought it was wrong I would actually want to go to the court and challenge it. I would not be happy with only having the right to go to the Commissioner of the Police and say: “Please trust me I’m a good criminal. Let me off.” You know I think that if the effect of this legislation is that we are ousting the jurisdiction of the court to consider these things in that period then that is poor legislation and it goes too far.I am not sure that that is the effect of clause 28(2) of the bill but it does say that a court must not discharge a standard release condition with effect from a date that is less than 6 months after the date of service of the determination notice being given so it is arguable I suppose that during that 6-month period the court does not have jurisdiction. It may be that you can take a judicial review route but I am not sure—it is not clear from this bill.This reinforces the point that the Labour Party made which is that we should have a two-track process here. We should be passing this bill under urgency because we have got no choice but to do it in order to protect people now and it should have a drop-dead date of a year—a termination date. On the same date we should be passing an identical bill through only the first stage and that bill should commence on the termination date of the bill that is a short-term fix. It should not have a drop-dead date but it should go to the select committee and then we can sort out through submissions from the Law Society from the Sensible Sentencing Trust—although I do not often listen to it; it does not often have much good sense to pay but it does have a right to make submissions—from Rape Crisis from the civil liberties groups and from all in the civil society who have got an interest in these things. That is how a proper Government would deal with this conundrum but this Government has refused to do it.Finally I also hear that some of these people are getting back to New Zealand with no money and no ties and are ending up sitting on the Work and Income doorstep the next morning because they have been delivered into the hands of New Zealand without any support being provided to them. I would hope that as the Government sort of realises that this problem needs to be addressed it also looks at what it needs to do to minimise the prospect of those people reoffending and to maximise the chance that they can be meaningfully reintegrated into our community in a way that means that they do not end up reoffending against other New Zealanders.I again return to this point as to whether we have got the balance right between protecting New Zealanders from returning criminals—we are not clear that we have got that right in this legislation and we do not have time to properly consider that under urgency; that should be being considered on a parallel track in the bill that should go to the select committee—and similarly whether we are going too far in regard to some people who ought not to be caught up in this and truncating their ability to go to court to test whether they are being properly caught up in it. That too could have been sorted out in the parallel-track process of the second bill which could have gone to the select committee today—today. I think it just shows a complete lack of proper process on the part of the Government that not only would it leave it so late to bring this legislation to Parliament but having forced it upon Parliament it will not actually agree to us letting that occur.The idea that the Government would itself review things in 2 years—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Hon DAVID PARKER: Before the dinner break I was talking about why it was important given that urgency has been accorded to this bill given that we have already found some defects in the bill and given that we do not know whether it goes far enough to protect the interests of potential victims being subject to crime by these returning criminals—and conversely we do not know whether it goes too far and catches people in the net who ought not to be caught and we cannot know in this truncated process because the Government has taken so long to get this bill to the House that urgency is necessary but none the less the normal protections that follow normal processes have not been applied—that we should have a two-stage process with two versions of the bill being read a first time now. The offer was made to the Government that one of them would have a drop-dead date or an end date of a year or 2 years—we were not too fixed on the specific date—and that that bill would be passed through all stages today. At the same time we would have a bill that was identical in all respects except that it would take effect only from the drop-dead date of the first bill and would pass only one stage and then go to a select committee.The Minister’s answer was that the Government was planning a review in a few years anyway. Well it is completely different and of course it is a review by the Government and the Government departments. If it gets this legislation wrong in ways that could have been fixed at a select committee it is not going to say in 2 years’ time or 3 years’ time: “Oh we got this all wrong guys.” It will be minimising the problems. It will be saying: “Oh well it was all right. There was this little detail that perhaps ought to have been fixed.”That is the difference between the Government being able to do things by itself and Parliament having oversight. If it was good enough for the Government just to do things quickly by itself without parliamentary oversight and public submissions from groups like the Law Society the Council for Civil Liberties Rape Crisis and other victim groups—if that was the way in which we ought to properly do things we actually would not have the normal three stages of legislation and the select committee process. I am dismayed that the Government has not taken up that very sensible offer that we made.