Faafoi Kris: Bail Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Bail Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12892. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the chance to take a call on the third reading of the Bail Amendment Bill. I do want to address some of the comments made by the Green Party member Jan Logie because as a member of the Law and Order Committee—and I acknowledge the others who are here today—I know that this is a very complicated issue.I also want to just touch on something that Ian McKelvie has just said as I think I was at the same session as him when we visited the Wellington District Court to see the process when judges are making the decision around granting bail. To an extent and I think it would probably be for about 85 percent of those decisions they are very fast decisions made in a kind of factory floor way. But there are a number of offenders who are coming into the court system and as we have seen what has unfortunately happened is that the decisions made by judges have not necessarily been the best ones and there has been reoffending while someone has been put out on bail. Although we support this piece of legislation with reservation as my colleague Andrew Little has said we think—and we have supported it because of this—that this piece of legislation is trying to get the balance right between the rights of offenders and the rights of victims. It tries to address the public mood of discontent of people out there and victims of offenders who have been put out on bail and the growing unrest that that just was not good enough.I also want to acknowledge some of the submitters who came to the Law and Order Committee. There was one particular session that Mark Mitchell from across the other side of the House has mentioned when we were all in Auckland about a year ago. That was a particularly tough day sitting through those submissions and obviously much much tougher for those people to come and give their submissions to us. I do want to acknowledge theMarceau family—TraceyMarceau the mother of ChristieMarceau—and also one submitter who for me stuck out and whom I still remember quite vividly and that is CharlieBorrell the father of AugustineBorrell a young teenager who was killed in Auckland. Those two submissions I think brought home to a lot of people in that select committee the real pain that is caused by offenders who are going out there while on bail and in those two cases committing the ultimate crime.I do not say that the concerns that Jan Logie has are unfounded and are not passionate but I think as a member of the select committee that we needed to do something to appease or to please those families out there who came to the select committee not just because of their own personal pain but to make sure that they prevented that from happening to other families as well. I do not think I could let that go without a response and I say that certainly on the Labour Party side of things although this is a National piece of legislation we do support it because we do know that there needs to be greater protection for the public out there especially when you are looking at the types of offenders who were being granted bail. I just wanted to make that comment.Again to those families and friends and the people out there who submitted to us thank you because it took a lot of courage to do that. There were some very emotional moments and I thank them for making those submissions. I also acknowledge Ian McKelvie and Jacqui Dean from the other side of the House and—who else is here today; that is probably breaching the Standing Orders—the other members of the Law and Order Committee.The headline clauses in this piece of legislation are clauses 7 and 8 and they are where we have got the reverse burden of proof for those people who have been convicted of previous crimes and who are charged with murder and other serious offences. One of the things that has already been mentioned here today is giving the judiciary better tools to be able to make better decisions when it comes to these bail applications. We certainly heard from the police about their processes around when they are opposing bail but there was some suggestion—and hopefully the Minister of Justice might be able to address this in the piece of legislation that she said will be brought to the House—about giving our bench much better risk assessment tools so that when a tricky case does turn up judges might be able to make much more informed choices. We heard about the ROC٭ROI system that the Department of Corrections uses to be able to assess how dangerous an inmate is and whether or not they will offend while they are incarcerated and heard that might be able to be taken and used in a court setting. There was one submitter—if I am reading my notes here correctly—Susan Platt who had done a bit of research internationally into some kind of risk assessment tool. She said that nothing had been done as of yet from all the international research and stuff that she was looking at and that New Zealand could be a world leader if it took the case to be able to have a risk assessment tool for our judiciary. Hopefully that might be something that New Zealand can do because if we were able to do that and able to use the technology that we could pioneer and have in place other countries could look at us to be able to make their communities much much safer as well.As I said earlier there are some reservations that we do have around this piece of legislation. One of those reservations has already been touched on by members on this side of the House but also by the Minister of Justice Judith Collins and that is the delays in the court system. At this stage I am not going to traverse that too much because I think what has been said has already been said. I think it is good that the Minister of Justice has acknowledged that that is a problem and hopefully that will be addressed in the piece of legislation that she will bring to the House.I do not think I need to take up much more time of the House. I just want to acknowledge once again the submitters who came to the Law and Order Committee. Although we do have some reservations we do support this legislation.