Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise I think once again as the lone voice for the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and for the principle of legality in saying that this is a bit of a sad day for our Parliament. I know that my friends in the ACT Party also have a big problem—as do we in the Greens—with the process being adopted but I'll just address the substance of what we say is wrong with this bill first. This is something that did come into effect under a previous Government. No matter the process—and we had some backwards and forwards last night about that—what it is is taking care of the New Zealand end of a terrible and unfair and unjust Australian policy. We now know how that plays out in New Zealand and I do want to recall again as someone who was in the Auckland District Court through the first years of the returns of the 501s that we didn't see what this bill and the Act that it amends tell us it would do which was to keep us safe and keep the 501s off the streets and to ensure that they were rehabilitated. More than anything we saw an incredibly marginalised disconnected harmed group of people who were in effect—and I think they felt this—dumped here without wraparound support without access to rehabilitation or proper and safe reintegration into New Zealand society. That didn't just harm them; it harmed a community that they had joined as well and we saw them come through the courts again and again in very tragic circumstances. We saw the same people come through the courts deteriorating in their mental health and becoming more and more addicted in a harmful way to substances and of course we know—as all the evidence shows us—that it's social disconnection and it's the lack of systems that support a person into our community that contributes to addiction that contributes to mental health harm and that thereby contributes to offending. So this bill isn't about any of that and one thing that it's also not about—because I think there's some confusion—is continuing something like parole conditions that were imposed in Australia. This is a separate scheme. The people to whom it applies have most often completely finished their sentences and their parole conditions in Australia. What it also is not is a risk assessment tool that considers the circumstances of a person the circumstances of the offending and the causes of that offending and makes any kind of future risk assessment which is what parole would be about which is what we would be doing if we were talking about rehabilitation. So let's not pretend that that's what this is. What it is is a scheme—and the Law Commission pointed it out in 2019 when they came to select committee when there was a review of this law—that is a bulk application and we keep talking about how some of the people to whom this retrospective set of sanctions will apply as being high risk. Well the number of people to whom this will apply retrospectively is 41 and only 21 of them have been assessed by whatever tool—not in a transparent process—as being high risk. So who are the others and why if we are so concerned about risk and rehabilitation are we not imposing what the Law Society asked us to do which is an individualised assessment and scheme and programme that would help to bring down that risk and that would support a non-offending lifestyle? That's not what this is. Not only is that not what it is; it is also a scheme that is being applied retrospectively. So it is a sanction-focused scheme a restriction-based scheme not rehabilitative and it's being applied retrospectively which not only breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act unduly but breaches the principle of legality which is to say that laws must be knowable to be fair to the people whom they sanction. This lawmaking body—we today—is breaching that principle and breaching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and we're doing it under urgency without the appropriate means for the public and for the expert bodies that we entrust to comment on law and on rights to come here come to us and make submissions. We are taking away our own ability to make this law better by hearing from the public which is an essential part of lawmaking and in this case I would say it is far more essential because we know we're breaching rights and we're doing it in amending an Act that was itself passed under urgency. So it has never had that proper process and to say that we're going to bring it back after so many years where we have experienced that harm where we know there are things wrong because we've heard in a far more informal process from those expert bodies—we're bringing it back to Parliament finally just to make the retroactive application clear and nothing else? It feels a bit shameful. It doesn't quite feel right in the scheme of things where we as representatives of the people are meant to not only be cognisant of what the courts tell us but also of what the experience and the impact of the laws that we pass have been out there on the street. We're turning away from all of that and yes we are sovereign. Yes Parliament in our system is supreme but surely those principles and the processes that we've put into place ourselves as sovereign representatives are there for a reason too. Breaching them sometimes works because things are truly urgent or they are very clearly to the benefit of the public but when we know there is something so wrong as to be a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and we know so clearly that there are aspects of this law that are causing more harm even in a criminal justice context I think it is absolutely a shame that we're turning away from that today and we're pretending that what we're doing is clarifying a very technical point raised by a court because we're not. We are actually perpetuating harm we are lowering the standards of lawmaking in New Zealand and we're breaching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa I do not commend this bill to the House.