Franks Stephen: Budget Debate 
Franks Stephen: Budget Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21060] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I was very pleased to hear Mr Fairbrother from Napier begin his Budget speech by referring to the Sensible Sentencing Trust and the Red Raincoat NZ Trust. For those listeners who do not know what the Red Raincoat NZ Trust is I believe that it is a trust prompted by the red raincoat of the girl found on the beach Teresa Cormack—or Kirsa Jensen? 
Shane Ardern 
: Teresa Cormack. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: I was also pleased to hear the member put into context the fact that money that goes to one purpose is necessarily taken from some other purpose. It is taken either from taxpayers or through a change in priority from something else that the Government is already spending money on. So the member Mr Fairbrother was not just giving a Budget speech and pretending that somehow the Government is simply handing out largesse created by bureaucrats or by the Government in Wellington; he was quite properly recognising that something that goes from the Government comes from somewhere. It shows the kinds of priorities the Government has. It is a practical tangible demonstration of what the community values what people vote for and what the Government values. 
I thought then of what this House spent its time on last week and of what Mr Fairbrother voted for when we passed the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill. We passed the bill—after many many hours and after days of consideration by the House and the select committee—to set up some new tribunals called the victims’ special claims tribunals. The Government has in this Budget budgeted to spend $534000 to set up the tribunals. They will comprise District Court judges who presumably will also be doing other things to fight the crime wave we are suffering from. Each year after this the Budget expects to spend $379000 a year on the tribunals. 
Why do I mention this in relation to the Sensible Sentencing Trust and the Red Raincoat NZ Trust? The reason is that the tribunals are to be set up to supervise and re-channel money that goes to prisoners for alleged abuses of human rights while they are in prison or on probation. The Government is promising there will be very little of that because it is going to make sure that prison guards have a proper disciplinary process and that proper appeal systems and other remedies are available to make sure there is not very much. In fact even before the Government has taken any of those steps we know that over the last 10 years the amount available for the tribunals to throw around has been about $60000 a year. 
So there we have some indication of what this Government’s priorities are. It will spend half a million dollars this year and $379000 a year for the next 4 years for a tribunal to distribute at most $60000 a year. It could have taken every victim of an offender who got an award from one of those breaches of human rights and given that victim four times what the prisoner got with no process of fault-finding at all. It could have said just that it recognised the hurt that would be caused when the victim saw the prisoner getting a windfall payment for some alleged abuse of human rights and that it would give out to that prisoner’s victim four times what the prisoner got—and it would still be ahead. 
This Government is spending more than $1 million to distribute $60000 a year. Can we think of a better example of the priorities of a Government that spends all its time spinning? It never asks itself whether something is a sensible use of tax money or why it is doing something because it knows that what it is doing is simply to cover its political tail. It has no interest in victims. Mr Fairbrother had an opportunity to vote against the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill. Probably had he advised the Prime Minister or the Minister of Justice that in conscience he could not support what he knew to be a useless piece of legislation the bill would not have appeared on the Order Paper—at least until after the election. The Government would not have stood for the embarrassment of an honest and obviously distressed man having to cross the floor to vote against the piece of legislative tripe this Budget is providing for. 
A new tribunal that will cost half a million dollars a year to set up will get $379000 a year from now on in order to distribute money to victims—and victims will have to have Lotto odds against getting any claims through because they get no new grounds of claim. The Accident Compensation Corporation still prevents them from claiming for personal injury. So it will be a very rare victim who qualifies to go in front of a victims’ special claims tribunal. But if there is such a tribunal then on past experience it will be able to qualify to distribute amongst the victims—and there will be hundreds of them—60000 bucks. And the Government spends $379000 a year to be able to do it. So I tell Mr Fairbrother that that is the explanation of what the Government’s priorities are. 
Mr Fairbrother talked about matching tax cuts against benefits. Let us look at one or two of the other spending priorities of this Government. If we look under Vote Corrections what do we find are the key Government goals most directly supported by this vote? [ 
Interruption 
] They are pretty naked about it anyway—“maintain trust in Government.” So the Government says to the prison service that its most direct object is not to keep bad people locked up not to protect people from those who are just incorrigibly evil but instead and I will read it: “The key Government goals most directly supported by Vote Corrections are:”—under the first bullet point—“maintain trust in Government”. There is silence. I do not see too much pride from the Government benches when the members in them hear that that is the No. 1 goal of Vote Corrections. 
What is the second goal? I suppose it might be about protecting people from criminals. It is: “strengthen national identity”—code for “love for the Government’s social policy”. The second goal is: “strengthen national identity and uphold the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi”. This is the prison service. Its first goal is to maintain trust in Government and its second goal is to uphold the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. What a load of tosh! This is the Government’s Budget. If Government members were not so totally soaked in political correctness they would read this and think: “Why do we put this in writing? We are sinking ourselves.” 
The third objective of the prison service—wait for it—is: “reduce inequalities in health education employment and housing”. We still do not have anything to do with bad people. We still do not have anything about criminals and about keeping people safe. What about the people in Feilding at the moment—the people in Feilding who do not know who has committed the recent crime there? They can quite rightly suspect it is probably somebody who recently has been released well before the end of his or her prison sentence because 80 percent of offenders do reoffend and they can probably assume there would have been—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Part of the Corrections budget was $30 million for psychological reports and $107 million for legal aid lawyers. Mr Fairbrother I am sure got a lot of that. Mr Fairbrother started his speech in the Budget debate with some crocodile tears for the Sensible Sentencing Trust. That trust could have done with three-thousandth of this Government’s Budget on law and order and justice. Three thousandth of it has gone to Victim Support. Just a tiny fraction of what is going on legal aid could have gone to Victim Support to the Sensible Sentencing Trust and to the Red Raincoat NZ Trust and all of them would have been over the moon with delight. Garth McVicar deserves the half million dollars that is being utterly wasted on the useless victims’ special claims tribunal. The Red Raincoat NZ Trust deserves just a fraction of what is going on legal aid. The Budget states what the Government’s real priorities are: lawyers like Mr Fairbrother.