Roy Heather: Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Bill — Third Reading 
Roy Heather: Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:612;Page:9551] 
HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 It is with a certain amount of sadness that I rise to speak to the third reading of the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Bill. ACT New Zealand will not support the bill despite the fact that we came to the House last night when the bill had its turn wanting to support it because of the good changes and provisions relating to both the mentally ill and the intellectually disabled. In the original bill there were very good provisions for much better care of intellectually disabled people in particular. One thing that I think would have been a significant step forward was that compulsory treatment was to run concurrently with prison sentences. The commentary on the bill states: “The prison sentence will run while the person is in hospital or in secure care. If the need for treatment or care ceases the person will be transferred to a prison to complete any remaining period of the prison sentence.” This was something that was missing previously. There have been cases where patients have been treated and although they would have gone to prison for some time have been released into the community to the satisfaction of nobody. 
That was just one example of the promise showed by the bill. The problem now is that the Supplementary Order Paper that was dumped in the House on 21 October—the day before the bill was to be debated—allows no scrutiny at all. The Minister states that there is no risk involved with the changes and that they are innocuous changes and possibly they are but we have not had time in the debating chamber to scrutinise them thoroughly. Certainly the professionals who should be involved—medical professionals perhaps the legal profession and particularly the public and lobby groups—and who would have valid concerns and would want to come and be heard before the select committee on those provisions have not had that opportunity made available and we cannot accept that. Because of the good nature and promise of the bill as I have just described it is with sadness that we will not be able to support the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Bill because of the lack of scrutiny. 
If we look at the Supplementary Order Paper for a moment we see that the second bullet point on the explanatory note on the back page—page 44 of this very long and wordy Supplementary Order Paper—states that the Supplementary Order Paper makes a number of technical and drafting changes then leaves it at that. What exactly are these technical and drafting changes? I have had a bit of a flick through. I do not have a legal background and I found it difficult to find my way through the Supplementary Order Paper but I cannot see what was wrong in the first place to make this necessary. What was wrong with the bill as it was written up that required a Supplementary Order Paper of such length to be put forward? We were told it was because of procedural problems but why when this bill has been before Parliament since 1999—Wyatt Creech saw gaps in the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act and quite rightly drew up the bill to rectify those gaps and the problems that existed—has it taken 4 years for these procedural problems to be drawn to the attention of the House? If they truly were procedural problems then what is wrong with having right and proper scrutiny before the select committee? I think this shows that the Minister of Justice and the whole Labour Government have no respect at all for parliamentary process. It is an authoritarian “we know best” Government. Its motto is: “Don’t worry we’ll tell you how to live your lives.” and we are seeing it more and more often. In this spell of urgency we have seen it in bill after bill with huge Supplementary Order Papers dropped in at the very last minute with no regard at all and no respect for parliamentary process. 
Mr Goff could have made it very simple for himself. In the Supplementary Order Paper he could have outlined what has not changed in the bill. By telling us what had not changed it would have been much easier for anybody reading the Supplementary Order Paper to quickly scrutinise exactly what the changes were. He would have shown some respect for the people who had gone through the submission process—the people who had very valid concerns in the first place He would have been one of the first to admit that there were problems and that they needed to be rectified. He could have shown his respect for submitters. He could also have shown some respect for the parliamentary process and for his parliamentary colleagues. But we are left now asking ourselves what the real reason is for such a lengthy and wordy Supplementary Order Paper. The only conclusion we can come to—and in fact the conclusion we have come to on this side of the House—is that there probably are substantive changes in this Supplementary Order Paper. But they are substantial changes that nobody is going to get to scrutinise properly. Dail Jones who spoke just before me said that this has been seen before. Like his party the next time a Statutes Amendment Bill comes forward ACT New Zealand is not going to try to help the Labour Government smooth over the silly changes that have been made out of undue haste. Phil Goff has a bit of a track record in this respect. I would like to draw the House’s attention to the Victims’ Rights Bill. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No the member will talk about this bill please in the third reading. 
HEATHER ROY 
: Phil Goff does have a track record and he is showing yet again that he has no respect for the parliamentary process. He is showing an arrogant abuse of the parliamentary system. It is an arrogance that has only really been allowed to develop because of those people who support this minority Government and I refer here of course to the Green Party but most particularly to United Future which campaigned strongly on the fact that it would hold Governments to account and that things should be transparent. But where is the transparency now? The Labour Government asks for United Future’s support and it just rolls over and says: “Yes here it is.” There is no transparency at all. We had the opportunity. This side of the House called for the Supplementary Order Paper to be taken back to the Health Committee to be scrutinised properly. But United Future does not care about transparency; neither does this Government. They are happy just to let things come forward. The untrustworthiness of the Minister and also the untrustworthiness of the people who prop up this Government becomes very visible when we look at this. 
I come back to the fact that this is a very sad day because we on this side of the House are not able to support this bill. We cannot. We would like to have supported the bill as it stood initially. The Supplementary Order Paper casts nothing but questions and aspersions on the nature of the changes being made to this bill—changes that are of a very technical nature and are not going to be scrutinised. This Government does not want scrutiny. It wants us all to do what it says is best for the citizens of this country. ACT New Zealand is not going to buy into this. We say that enough is enough. Despite the fact that we would like to have supported this bill we will not be doing so.