Dalziel Lianne: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Dalziel Lianne: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 It is important that I follow on from my colleague Stuart Nash because I think that one of the serious issues that the Government has failed to stand up and address tonight— 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: In urgency don’t forget. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Yes. I think the Opposition no the Government sorry—it will be the Opposition—is being totally unfair and unreasonable about this particular bill the Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill. It is introducing it at the same time as it is reducing entitlements for victims in other areas. So it is ironic indeed that we are debating a bill that takes a $50 levy from offenders. 
Let us look at who will actually pay it. I think it is extraordinary that the tariff is an equal tariff—it applies right across the board. The level of offending committed does not matter; $50 is the amount paid. When we think about how that $50 tariff is going to play out we realise that the bottom line is this: people who go to jail and have no income at all will be the ones who do not pay the levy; the ones who do not go to jail because their offending is at the lower end of the scale and continue to work or who get home detention and continue to work will pay the levy. How is that sending a message that makes any sense to anyone at all? 
The bottom line is that the Government has decided that it would like to meet one of the commitments that it made during the election campaign by creating a hugely expensive and bureaucratic system to transfer some money within the system in order to provide additional funding to certain victims’ groups. I am deeply concerned about this because from the way that the legislation has been framed the levy has to go to victims’ organisations that provide services and they have to be signed off by the Secretary for Justice. Would it not be more efficient and more cost-effective to provide the money directly to do a vote line transfer to Victim Support and give it the capacity to assess where the need might lie? 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Because they struggle. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Because it does struggle with the work that it does. I know that the work that it does is incredibly valuable. I want to highlight that in respect of a particular crime that occurred in my electorate. Two bodies were discovered in an Aranui house. What happened was that Victim Support was tremendous with the family of Tisha Lowry. It went to them it supported them and it offered them the assistance that they needed. The family could not speak highly enough of the work that it did. But there is another set of victims when there is a serious crime and that is the neighbourhood. I know that the Minister of Justice knows that. The immediate neighbours of that particular criminal offending lived in the other half of that house. A wall separated the two homes but the floorboards covered the same bit of dirt. There is no way that that family is ever going to be able to live in that house ever again. In fact I am sure that the house will be removed from the property at some point. The point I am making is that nobody said the immediate neighbours were an obvious victim of the crime yet immediate neighbours always are. In this case that was probably more obvious than it would be in many other cases. I have talked to Victim Support about whether in a situation like that it might be a good idea for Victim Support to sit down with the police and make some assessments about what support could be given very early on. The neighbours found out from the media that bodies had been dug up from under their floorboards essentially the night before—that that was the digging sound and the lifting sound that they could hear from their home. 
I feel great sympathy for the individuals caught out in this particular case. I do not agree with some of the statements that they made publicly about the level of support that they got and I have told them that. But I have also made the point that it is really important to think about these things across the board. I think that is what this sort of funding if it were given to an organisation like Victim Support should do.