Goff Phil: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3254. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 I am very conscious of the circumstances under which the legislation that we are looking at now the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act was passed in 2005. I was the Minister in charge of that bill. The circumstances at that point were basically that in 1998 under the then National Government a behaviour modification or management regime was put in place. It was kept in that form through to 2004 when it was found that this regime was not operating as the Governments that initiated it and continued it had intended but was in fact operating in breach of basic rights that New Zealand as a nation had signed up to internationally. I would hope nobody in this House would suggest that a State when it has control over an inmate however heinous the crime that that inmate might have committed should not work under its own rules and the rule of law. 
What worried me at the time when a very large case was brought—a class action that might have involved considerable sums of money—was that these people who had committed particularly terrible crimes would get compensation for the abuse of their rights but their victims in turn who had suffered and still carried the scars of the offending against them by this particular group of people would still be outside with no compensation at all for the crimes that were committed against them by the offenders. That seemed to me fundamentally wrong. 
As Minister of Justice and since that time I have always felt that the principles of restorative justice are really important and that to the extent possible an offender should try to right the wrongs committed against the victim. That actually achieves justice. In our current justice system we do not often do that. We have the State against the offender and the victim is to one side; the victim almost does not matter. To me it seems that the victim needs to be at the heart of the process. 
We were not sure that this legislation was long term going to be the most appropriate form of the legislation that we needed and that is why we put the sunset clause into it. I have to comment that it is unfortunate that we are sitting here less than 10 days before the legislation expires in order to put in place replacement legislation to carry on the provisions for another year because the Government did not get its act together despite having 3½ years’ notice of this. 
We will support the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill because we want a new regime in place that really will work on behalf of the victims. That should be the focus of the review and it should be the focus of replacement legislation. I think what we need to do is to think more laterally than was the case in this legislation and in the proposed legislation from the Government. If any offender receives a windfall payment—they might win Lotto they might come into a big inheritance—but at the time that they were convicted of the offence against the victim they had no money and the victim got no restitution or reparation then subsequently the offender is able to make good for the victim the wrong that they committed. Why do we not think about broadening legislation so that in any case where an offender has badly damaged a victim and made no compensation reparation or restitution they should be required to make good the wrong that they have done to the victim? 
Let us not restrict this just to the inmate who is in prison. That is taking one small category of those who have offended and leaves the vast majority of the victims uncompensated by offenders. If we truly believe in a form of restorative justice why do we not think more widely and why do we not come up with a compensation scheme that allows—even some considerable time after the offence was committed—an offender now placed in a position to do so to put things right for the victim. 
I am conscious that under the existing legislation there are only five cases where the victims got compensation totalling about $45000. That is a drop in the bucket. Let us use this period of time of 1 year to think more laterally and come up with something that truly does put the victim at the heart of the justice system.