Goff Phil: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17370. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): First of all I was very patient with the Associate Minister of Justice answering the questions in Part 2 of the Victims of Crime Reform Bill. Unfortunately he neglected to take any call at all to answer the questions on Part 3. Maybe that is because he did not feel he had enough time to do so. So perhaps you would give him the latitude Mr Chairman to enable him to answer the two very clear questions which I think I repeated several times in Part 3 of the bill. So you have not missed out Minister. There is still the chance to come back and answer a couple of questions which I am sure members of your own party would like to hear the answers to just as much as members on this side of the Chamber would. So talk to your officials if you do not know what is going on because you are not the Minister and the real Minister ain’t here and we all know why she ain’t here—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order!Hon PHIL GOFF: Just in passing Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No. Order!Hon PHIL GOFF: Just in passing. Can I come to Part 4 of the bill which is “Amendments to Sentencing Act 2002”. Again the amendments that are proposed in Part 4 are I think sensible. They enable victims to be compensated by losses not covered by the Accident Compensation Corporation and we would expect that to be the case. They provide more opportunities for victims to participate in the restorative justice process.The interesting thing about this is that the Minister said earlier that restorative justice works and it improves outcomes—I think Minister you said in 37 percent of the cases. Restorative justice which was in the Victims’ Rights Act which I pushed through the House in 2002 is a good process but again for it to work it needs to be properly resourced. It is not something we force on the victim. It is entirely in accord with the wishes of the victim. If the victim wishes to have a process they should be able to. This is about the victim’s choice. If they do not wish to have that process then that should be up to them. They should not be under any pressure to become involved in a restorative process. But if the evidence is that we are getting positive outcomes and it does provide choices for victims I do want to be reassured that the resourcing is in place for the restorative justice process because again if I look at the regulatory impact statement it says that the current service provision is limited so the court can be required to refer cases only where the services are available. So perhaps the Minister could tell us in what percentage of cases the services are available and in what percentage of the cases the victim actually badly wants a restorative process but because of under-resourcing that victim cannot go through the process.Can the Minister please quantify when the restorative process will be available to a victim who very much wishes to participate in it and when it will not be available? And if the percentage of cases where the process will not be available is quite high which I suspect to be the case what is the Minister going to do to ensure that the resourcing is made available so that the victim’s right—in this case once again it is not a theoretical right but a right that can actually be put in place because the resources are there to allow it to happen? Minister you have been involved in the court process; you know that this is really important. So we need to know that this provision is not a theoretical provision that says “Wouldn’t it be nice for victims to be able to participate in restorative justice but very sad but never mind there are no resources to allow that to happen.” because that is clearly the warning that the regulatory impact statement gives this Committee. Again it is a vital question.I will keep talking for a bit longer just so the Minister can get the answer from officials. I appreciate that he wants to answer this as well as the questions—Hon Ruth Dyson: He’ll probably know it.Hon PHIL GOFF: Oh he might know it off the top of his head. Judith Collins would know but then Judith Collins is not available apparently to answer the questions and we know the reason for that.I listened carefully to the Minister’s partial answer to my question on an earlier clause in an earlier part of this bill and he talked about the offender levy being there to help out but all of us know that that offender levy is pretty limited. All of us know that the warning given by officials was “Hey we can’t do these things unless we reprioritise.”—that is take it from other areas. Again I would like the Minister to address this question of resourcing. Are the rights that we are promising victims sincerely—all of us in this Committee—going to simply lead to disappointed expectations because the resources are not there to allow restorative justice to happen? Perhaps the Minister could indicate in how many cases—[Bell rung] Oh well I will let the Minister answer now and if he does not answer it fully I can come back and ask him again.