Adams Amy: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8079. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I have just been listening to the debate over this first part of the bill and I wanted to wait to get a bit of a sense of some of the issues that members wanted to raise before I responded. So I want to go through a few of them.Kelvin Davis in his contribution was asking the question about whether and how the regime would apply to someone who may have been deported from Australia who had no criminal convictions. It is a fair point and I want to make it very clear. I indicated in nodding and shaking my head what was happening but I thought it was better to get it on the record. I want to be really clear about this. This bill is not about replicating the decisions Australia has made as to who should be deported. We do not take that into account. So if Australia deports someone because they are of a bad character it says or because they have some other concerns to Australia that is not a trigger under this bill. The only thing that triggers the provisions in this bill is a conviction for offending that in New Zealand would have been an imprisonable offence and for a minimum length of time.So if someone was convicted in—I happen to know that in Thailand it is an offence to insult the royal family. Well that is fine; it is not an offence here. So clearly if that person were deported back it would not be triggered. Similarly if a particular person in Australia is deported back to New Zealand who has no criminal charges or convictions but for other reasons which the Australians obviously have to work through and to justify they are not caught by this bill. This bill is not about being punitive and adding a layer; it is about trying to pick up exactly—well “exactly” is too strong—or in as similar way as possible the conditions that that offender would have been under had they served the same sentence in New Zealand. That is why the test is always “Have you served the minimum of a year in prison?” because that is the threshold we use for release conditions and “Is it conduct that would have been imprisonable in New Zealand?” because again we are not going to impose someone else’s standards and if it is then we need to mirror what we would do in New Zealand.The question was also asked about the 6 months. I think I mentioned in one of my contributions—the member may not have been in the Chamber earlier this evening or earlier today—that the intent of the 6 months is to say that these conditions are about monitoring an offender while they reintegrate from a period of being incarcerated in an institution. Once they have been back in society for some time the need is not the same. These people have served their sentence. This is about saying as they come out from that very restricted environment we know that is a very high-risk time for reoffending and so we want to support and monitor and oversee these prisoners in the same way that they would have been in New Zealand.The call I had to make—and yes it is a line call; you have got to put it somewhere—is that if they have been out in the Australian community for more than 6 months then that case cannot be made in the same way that we need to help them with that reintegration. Within 6 months we think the case can be made. However the question was asked about what happens if they have been out for 7 months and they still need monitoring. The bill provides that if they come back to New Zealand and are subject to an ongoing monitoring regime—let us say they have got lifetime monitoring because there was serious concern in Australia that they needed to be watched—then it enables the New Zealand authorities to go to the courts here and say “Well actually in this case we think it is made out” and would they look at it. It does not apply automatically but there is that provision if they were subject to an ongoing monitoring regime.The other point I just wanted to pick up on was Grant Robertson’s contribution just immediately before I rose to my feet talking about issues like health and education and housing. And actually it feeds back to Kelvin Davis’ points as well around reintegration and the difficulties that some of these offenders are likely to have reintegrating given that some of them—not all of them—have very few if any ties to New Zealand. That is a very valid concern. That is the concern that we have been raising actively with Australia all throughout this process. We have not got it to change its view on this but this is one of the two key concerns that we are raising time and again with Australia: deporting people back to New Zealand who other than their DNA are really not New Zealanders. They were born here they have citizenship—and with that go a whole lot of protections—but actually for a number of them that is the extent of their connection.We absolutely agree that that creates additional difficulties with reintegration of some of these offenders and I think creates a very valid ground as to whether the moral view of whether they should be sent back has been properly applied. But as everyone in this Committee has acknowledged we can all have views on that we can all express them and I think many of us share them but none the less Australia has made the decision and there is a certain extent of also having to deal with it.So the bill is looking at the justice aspects of that. That is not to say that there are not really important issues around things like health and education and welfare support and employment and financial assistance. I can tell members in the Committee that agencies and Ministers in those areas are actively working to make sure that we have the right framework and advice and support in place. Once these offenders land in New Zealand they are New Zealand citizens and they have access to exactly the same support entitlements and assistance needs as their case warrants. We all know that the Ministry of Social Development and the like work through that on a case by case basis. None the less they have a particular piece of work to try to work through those issues. I do not purport to have provided for all that in this bill. This bill is about picking up the parole oversight part of the puzzle. I am not saying that the rest is not critical; it is. I have not seen anything that suggests legislative change is required though. That piece is also going alongside it.The final comment I just want to make in this contribution on this part—because it is obviously the very reasonably functionary part of the bill; the next part is far more where the substance is and so I want to save our time for that. But the other comment I am just going to make is that it does seem somewhat incongruous that on the one hand this is being called rushed and it is all being rushed and crammed through and on the other hand we have taken far too long. You know you cannot have it both ways—you cannot have it both ways.The one point I would make is that when Mr Goff asked why this legislation was not in the House a year ago Australia had not changed its law a year ago. We found out on 12 February. We started work immediately. We have not stopped work on since 12 February. This is the process it takes to get into this place. I am very proud that that process has worked well. Officials have had one hand tied behind their back trying to get information out of Australia. Frankly people who think that you can just have an idea one night and then get it into legislation in the House for something this complex are revealing I think the fact that they have not had ministerial roles dealing with issues of this complexity.And that does not even take into account—even Jacinda Ardern mentioned it in her second reading contribution—that Labour could never have done this because it did not have the information-sharing agreement in place. Well exactly. We had to have the information. We now have that information and we have acted. So we started as soon as we found out. We have not stopped. It is in the House quickly because it needs to be passed quickly. But to suggest that somehow nothing has happened and it could have happened a year ago is wrong and frankly belittles the debate that we should be having on this pretty important issue.